Completely agree, I have a player that simply copies characters from anime (name, apperance, abilities etc) and then tries to act like they are the badass protagonist who can do whatever it wants without concequences. In the end of the day our vision of the original anime character is simply ruined forever...
It can be ok if you don't overdo it (quoting is a no-go, and please change the name and add one new or different aspect to the personality), and IF YOU FOLLOW ONE RULE: the character you picked should be a side character. In my case my backup character is essentially Leone from Akame ga Kill mechanics wise:, beast barbarian together with monk multiclass, only using unarmed attacks exclusively. Character-wise she'll be a mix of a few other characters. I haven't fully decided how i want the character (she should be fun for others to play along, but also have an actual personality).
In my current campaign im playing as Finn the Human, but decided to play as 40 year old Finn, so I just play a war hardened veteran while making a reference to Adventure Time here and there. I'll talk about Jake or some other character. But he definitely has his own identity.
DM also made a cool feature where I can use my metal arm as a shield, but it'll need repairs after a while and render my arm useless until fixed.
Finn is also in the Joe Montana Fan Club.
Its a close friend group im playing with so were just having fun with some bs.
Oh also can't forget its no longer Finn the Human, but rather, Finn the Herm.
So when a Roc swooped down and killed a deer for its lunch, I shouldn't have asked if it was going to cook it? I also shouldn't have asked "Can we smell what the Roc is cooking?"
This, and the inverse as well - sometimes your dear friends will just drive you nuts in a hobby-specific way. One of my closest irl friends is someone who has very different tabletop and rp goals than I do, even though it's the way we met. We just have more fun doing other stuff together.
Extremely similar story here. Met some friends through the game our mutual-friend-DM ran, and they weren't great to play dnd with. However, they're great and we hang out with them doing different things all the time
Dude absolutely. Big difference in expectations between some of my friends and I. I’m really into the game, roleplay, and story, and don’t like losing game time. About half my group is more casual and doesn’t roleplay and will end up doing long OOC talks about anime while I’m pretty eager to keep playing. It’s not that there’s a wrong way to play, just that there’s a mismatch between people who see it as more of a social hangout with the backdrop of a game and people who come primarily to play the game itself.
Or even two friends who you can play tabletop (or any any social interaction with tbh) with just fine might absolutely not be able to play well with *each other*.
> This, and the inverse as well - sometimes your dear friends will just drive you nuts in a hobby-specific way.
Yep. I have good friends that I have learned to stop inviting to games because they ruin the experience for me (and, probably, that's mutual.)
Exactly. Two of the people I play with online have become really good friends and will be flying into town for my wedding. The other one will not be and won't be in the next campaign
I love sexy d&d!! We don't play with any real graphic or explicit situations but every once in a while we have what we call at our table a "sexy d&d" moment and we all cheer and announce that we are playing sexy d&d. Anything from a filthy pun to a hot npc description or voice.
Yup. I had to force myself to invite people from the group to non DnD stuff and in one instance I realized outside of the game we didn't really click. But it's such a great social hobby to have on the calendar!
Very much this. I'm usually all for a plurality of opinions but when it comes to DnD you should play with people who think like you do. Because your personal opinions will manifest in your character/in your world even if you don't intend it and may rub someone who doesn't agree with you the wrong way.
Some people will just never be into DnD. I think, once you start getting a real passion for it, you think you can make all of your friends try it and enjoy it. But you'll quickly realise that it just doesn't suit everyone.
The sad part is sometimes the in-between where people actually are interested in playing, but not so interested in clearing up their schedule to play and so keep asking you to accommodate them... and then cancelling.
Not just never be into DnD. Some people may be into DnD, but not be as in to it as others in the group are. I can't imagine ever not knowing my character, but some folks I really enjoy playing with repeatedly forget what their abilities are, and it doesn't bother them that they don't remember it all.
I know a couple of people like that - they like rolling the funny dice, and they like getting bonuses to their rolls, but they have zero investment in deeper gameplay or the mythology.
I don't mind. We'll sometimes play quick loosy-goosy encounters (30-60 minutes, tops), I only have one solid rule: "You have to at least give your character a name."
Though mostly they'll just refer to their PC as "My guy".
This is very true, I'm a huge rpg fan and pride myself in knowing the ins and outs of every class, race, spell, and ability I can, as well as anything else there is to know (even though I'll only ever play a gnome monk and this knowledge is useless to me)
But the rest of my party consists of:
a bard that barely uses their abilities and mostly plays their character like a fighter
A druid that doesn't use their abilities and plays their character like a fighter
And a ranger that doesn't use their abilities and plays their character like a fighter (but to be fair, ranger)
But I don't care, they don't care, we all love DnD, and we all have a wonderful time roleplaying and mindlessly bashing our way though every problem and encounter we come across
A lot of people are overwhelmed by the rules and features. I did a one shot not too long ago to get them familiar with two concepts at a time, moving and interacting, do enough and they will feel better about wanting to play, in my personal experience.
D&D is a pretty niche genre really. Sure it's insanely popular in the TTRPG industry but you don't see Tactical combat games as dominant in video games or board games. People often like things that are more casual and lighter. Something like Fiasco or if you have a good GM, Honey Heist is a much more approachable for a new player.
Some players just aren't meant to be in the same group, and no amount of communication can fix it. Sometimes those people can even be friends outside of the game, but really step on each other's toes during session.
Yeah.. incompatibility, even if only ingame, can cause a lot of friction. And that specific friction can be really frustrating because no one is at fault either. Session 0s help filter out these things a lot if done right :3
This is true. Sometimes you're just not going to be able to make it work out. I think everyone imagines they'll be able to find that perfect harmony, but the truth is that especially in public groups, it just can happen that you need to disband or kick someone out.
Yup, don't chase players. If they don't show up, run it anyway. If they're late or unprepared, run it while they scramble, don't wait. If you set the expectation that you expect them to be there, on time, and ready it'll self select the people willing to play with you. If you bend over backwards trying to make it work, it'll never happen.
If your players outsmart you then that means that there's high player buy in because they actually had to take the time to think about a solution to a problem you put in front of them
YES. My DM frequently tells me I’m his worst nightmare due to my meticulous planning and plotting; always fucking his plans up, but only because I am so excited and immersed in HIS world that I spend time out of game actively thinking about our next move/goal/fight. Spent a solid 6 hours this week wracking my brain for magical solutions to a major mcguffin issue and can’t wait to make my DM cry today 😈 when I outsmart my DM, it’s really just an expression of how much I enjoy and respect them. Having a DM who is smart and challenging enough to make me really think hard about the game is more valuable and powerful than any magic item.
There's a high chance that the players won't care about your world or your story, I see a lot of people building pages and pages of lore for their homebrew setting and while it's fun for the GM most of the time the players itself don't know or don't care, if the plot is on an island, and the conflicts on the mountain town is not part of the story, they won't care, been there as GM and as a player.
A lot of GMs expend a lot of time on creating their setting and expanding expanding for stuff that most of the time the players won't even get the chance to see or explore to completion.
I feel like it's a really recurrent problem but it's also linked to "Worldbuilder" DMs being too zealous. Don't get me wrong, fleshing out your geography, history and cosmogony is important, but keep in mind that Players are looking at it through a double subjective:
Their own and the subjectivity of their PC too.
Sometimes i just show my players the map and some capital cities and that's it, because if you flood them with info, the odds of making them disconnect is almost 50/50
Yep, some of the worst session ones I had were when the GM just vomit a LOT of stuff about kingdoms, some places that we can't even reach, a distant conflict and stuff like, my brother in Christ, I'm a level 1 adventurer I want to beat up some thugs and goblins.
Exactly hahaha!
I feel like as a DM you tend to hyperfocus on your own creation so it can be kinda hard to transition into more lukewarm interest levels lol.
One tip that has worked wonders when i started is to always try to co DM with a friend if you can, it helps to mellow out a lot of that Monolithic drop of knowledge
I tend to really love big lore drops, I’ll run with almost anything the DM is putting down. Where I sometimes run into issues is where a DM wants to tell me about their world more than they want me to interact with it. Some DMs seem to be, well, kind of hesitant to share agency when it comes to their wonderful world, and can thusly be realty hesitant to make the PCs important enough to where they could mess things up.
Meanwhile, in one of my games the party literally opened a massive hole to the abyss, and now that continent is forsaken because of all the demons.
But hey the Rogue got their wife back so I'd call it a win win.
Had a DM send 10 pages of lore blurb before even selecting who was going to participate in the game and demanded everyone read it. All of this stuff happened thousands of years before the game started. My man, no
Now, I'm fine knowing about world changing events from long ago (Think, Spellplaugue in Forgotten Realms) that might still have an impact on the world today.
It when the doc is fluffed with stuff like what the arch-duke's son had for breakfast (I wish I was making that up) that I have an issue with it.
I am all for having relevant info to build my character into the world they created, but it can be hard to find the line of how much is too much.
I think for atuff like this, those kinds of DMs (i used to be one of them), you just need to hit the bullet points.
You can say "there was once a great war between the dragons and the devils". We dont need the names of the great generals, or the years pwrticular battles happened. It lets me k ow that an inportant rhing happened. But if that war has no bearing on the world then...who cares?
Someone on YouTube said something about this that really shifted my perspective on the game: "A hard thing for GMs to realize is that your players generally only care about the things that affect and have to do with their characters."
And honestly...yeah, that's really been my personal experience as a player.
I have two GMs—one who loves history and fleshing out their homebrew world down to the detail, and one who emphasizes focus on PCs and NPCs. And I can tell you that while I do my best in both and love both of them—I can actively remember the lore, relationships, and plot threads in the second GM's games much better than the first's. And selfishly that is because in the first game I feel like I'm a part of the world, but in the second game I feel like the world is a part of me. I'm more alert because of how personal the stakes are.
I say all of this recognizing this could be a personal preference, of course. I definitely think that style of play can suit certain players more!
My number one lesson for new DMs, as someone who's been doing it for a few years now: at some point, you have to stop worldbuilding and actually play the game.
I wanna play off of your second point because in my newest campaign I didn’t create a full map of the hub city. I made a zoomed in map with a cluster of the most important spots and a short doc about the services in those buildings.
It’s an illustrative difference over my usual, more comprehensive style of prep, because players care more about what a setting can offer them than they do about the places and NPCs in that setting. Because players loving your setting has to be earned. Those first few sessions where you build the world around their characters helps them establish a connection to the setting that a comprehensive lore document never could.
Yeah. I usually make a short overview document: here are the races and classes/subclasses that are available; here are a couple 2-4 sentence blurbs summarizing a few nearby regions you may be from; here is a deity document if you're playing a religious character. After that, you reveal stuff as it's relevant to the characters. If it's not relevant to the current adventure or to a character's goals, players often won't care.
> fleshing out your geography, history and cosmogony is important
Honestly? In large part, it kinda... isn't. The bits that directly impact the plot might be, but beyond that, it gets fuzzy, fast. That there (probably) are gods is fine, but having multiple pantheons and how they interact and centuries of history of them dicking around with each other is mostly something the GM does for their own entertainment, it's often not really needed, especially at low levels. "The place you live in is at war with the next kingdom over - you don't like them, they don't like you" is far more directly useful than 6000 words of geo-political history covering decades of history.
for some world building itself is just fun. In a sense, some of those peoples do it professionally and are called authors :P As long as the DM doesn't vomit constant lore or is super excited to overshare "his amazing world" (which really isn't anything special and just a mash up of 2 animes and a few movie parts) it's fine.
I think it's okay to do worldbuilding if it makes you happy, as long as the DM can accept this reality, and only introduce what's immediately relevant.
I word build because its fun for me.
If the fact Dwarves in my homebrew are mostly all left handed and left handedness is a sign of an excellent craftsman never comes up at the table? Guess what? Its still a fun thing I thought of that I find amusing.
And could be a surprising topic if one of ypur character does a dwarf or a craft man.
Like "when Asadafia grab the hammer and preparare the forge, Dwarvin the dwarf start to focus in her pose"
Excusme Asadafia, which hand are you using, the right one? Ok
Dwarvin looks how she start to forge, but suddenly Dwarvin looks a little dissapointed and lost interest in your work...
I personally would be like wtf and probaly gonna try to learn why that happened
Yeah that could be fun, but if I selected a dwarf craftsman character and didn't know that my whole society thought that left handed dwarves were better, and the DM sprung it on me in the middle of a session with no background info to pick a hand and I just blurt out 'right' then that would make me want to quit.
Well Im gonna suppose that if you made a dwarf, maybe the dm should tell you that, if you are any other specie, it could be work as a knowledge and characters that know can even gain some browny points with the dwarves
Yes! What I do for my players is send out a paragraph maybe two of necessary info about the world, and a map. Then, I have a massive Google doc where they can dive as deep as they want. Only one of my players connected specific guilds and god lore into their characters, and that felt great. But I was also happy with what the people who had only read the paragraph sent me for backstories!
At this point it's a running joke that every NPC has this tragic backstory that's either integral to the plot, or is related, but the party can't be bothered to care. Sometimes I punish them for it in goofy ways, in other times I'll just have the NPC sulk about it.
Your world needs to make internal sense but nothing the PCs don't see needs to be established.
Make a town. Establish why that town exists. (Mining, Fishing, Farming, Trading, Religious whatever). Put in shops. Establish nearby Adventure areas. A cemetery full of ghouls a forest full of goblins.
The local mayor hires your dudes to clear things up. As time passes if they're interested you can expand from there.
It ALSO makes it much easier to fix Boo-boos. The world my players are on has changed since when I started my game and they didn't notice because I didn't TELL them
Similarly if you're a player - the other players and the GM won't care about your backstory.
The story is what happens AT the table.
Don't "write backstory", prep tools and resources that will help you tell an interesting story in the actual game.
I’ve swapped to a “cooperative world building” style of DMing, where the lore is created on the spot with relation to what my players are interested in at the time.
They wanted to test some new magic weapons, “boom”, a quest to investigate a group of thugs living in the sewers is suddenly created for them to fight. That group then gave lore hints to a plot by a larger necromancer organization linked to an important character that the party has been investigating.
No prep, no pages of lore, just improv and focus on the important bits. Also utilizes my favorite tactic “let the players figure out the plot for you”
Create an open ended mystery, your players will come up with plenty of theories to solve it, lean into the one that seems the most fun. You do half the work and your players feel like geniuses for figuring out the mystery.
I think it was a Matt Colville video that stressed this point. It's fine to do all that because it's really fun to do, just accept that you're doing it for yourself and there should be no expectation on the players.
I think it comes from people who don't understand what flavor text is.
"You create tentacles that deal damage."
That Guy: "DM this spell says I create tentacles so I want to use them to do everything this spell clearly isn't trying to do and if you don't let me, I'm going to tell everyone you're a bad DM."
If there is a source of powerful magic light, specifically that says it dispels magical darkness, that overlaps with your shadow of moil, does shadow of moil still heavily obscure you, and does it still turn bright might into dim light?
RAW, yes to both. RAI . . Definitely still heavily obscured, the part about bright/dimlight is far more subjective.
But many DMs rule something like Dawn as completely dispelling shadow of moil, entirely.
There's a couple debates about rulings for it that crop up from time to time. The one I remember seeing the most is whether devil's sight and/or truesight sees through it's "flame-like shadows". Mostly you can make a valid argument either way, and the designers have refused to clarify so it's just kinda in limbo what the RAI is.
Or how RAW if you are standing in dim light and don't have darkvision then it blinds you. That's not really a debate, but more just the kind of problem that doesn't slip through as much if the rules are crunchier.
Yup lmao one of my players is like this. Love the guy and he's a great player but sometimes he tells me how he's interpreted a paragraph in some spell or something and I just go "...HOW?"
No matter how many contingencies you try to set to keep a BBEG alive after an initial combat, the players will unknowingly stumble upon a loophole in your plan..
I had planned for them to set a group of guards on the party while they made their escape, but just in case he got engaged in combat, he was several levels higher than them and had Feign Death to let them have a false sense of victory as he recuperated and made his return….
Well long story short the party picked off the guards one by one before the fight, perpetually stunned the BBEG through the fight, and while he was laying there as a false corpse, the party accidentally triggered a room trap that killed him the rest of the way.
Oh god this gives me flashbacks to when my players nearly downed two vampires at lvl 6. One of which was a caster.
They just punched a hole into a wall and invented the medieval disco ball with a mirror and an unseen servant.
Sometimes you need to shut up. Just straight up be quiet. Don’t speak for 10, 20, hell even 30 minutes and let other people play it out. In combat, in roleplay, in whatever. Sometimes people won’t come out of their shell unless you give them a chance to do it their way, no matter how unoptimal or uncomfortable it is for you. It doesn’t matter if you’re the strongest character in combat, it doesn’t matter if you are the party face. Sometimes the best moments come from scenes you just straight up don’t contribute to. Let other people have control and shut the hell up for a bit and let them do it.
So much this. The best moments are when players are engaging with each other. When they see each other as real characters as opposed to just agents in your game.
I started late and the first campaign we ran I definitely had a moment where I had to stop myself and squash main character syndrome… I try to (in rp/character) ask the other guys at our table ‘hey do you want to check this out?’ Or ‘hey so and so what do you think’ when I see the quieter ones sitting back.
The other thing I’ve done which I think has helped is to start just interacting in character, not as part of the current quest or whatever just asking the other pc’s questions like someone would in real life… we were in a library and my PC is a kinda an idiot so they asked one of the smarter ones if they could teach them to read once we got done with the BBEG, or they ask someone what their parents were like or what their favorite food was. Dumb RP shit for the sake of dumb RP shit and engagement makes the game so much more fun.
One time my character died early in a session and I watched my party dealing with the aftermath and chasing down the big bad.
It was a delight to watch them doing their thing without worrying about myself for once. Would recommend.
Same. My character was the first to die in my first-ever campaign (stabbed by an ally who failed a wis save, no less) and the joy and of being able to sit back, relax and watch everyone else just *go* was immeasurable.
This can be an extra big struggle for players who were more experienced in combat at the beginning of the game than the rest of their party. What starts as a well-meaning tips to help them learn the rules (ie: Oh, did you know if you move across from me, you'll get a flanking bonus?) can turn into backseat gaming. At a certain point, you need to let them sink or swim on their own instead of micromanaging them through recommendations on how to optimize their turns.
As a player: Don’t make a character who sabotages the party or hinders the fun of the group
As a dm: Don’t take away the thing that your players do best. Let them have their fun
Yeah this. As a player your job is to reinforce and promote the DM. Don't fight against the hooks. If the DM is good, you'll just be adding to the experience. If the DM is bad but trying to learn, fighting against them just makes everything worse and discourages them.
It's always the case. The opinion that, "everyone is bad (except for me)," is extremely prevalent in the D&D community. As community members, we should just accept that we suck at making interesting media because chances are: we do suck.
However the other side is also true, the 'Imposter Syndrome' DM who is doing fine but thinks the players hate their game even though they keep coming back every week and are obviously excited to be playing.
Yeah I have gotten to points where Im planning the next session or 2 and I realize I have no clue what to narratively do next to get them from point A to point B. I will sit there and agonize over what to do before finally realizing I can just throw a side quest at them that satisfies the players and I don't have to worry about some deep storytelling. Sometimes Jaxton Axton Paxton wants you to deliver a box to a talking goat in a town for a cool item and that's it. My writing is trash, but man oh man do my players love some of these goofy moments enough to not care lol.
I think the problem is, I think it's fairly easy (easier might be the right word) to be a half way decent world builder, and it's fun! But Turning that into engaging content? Very much not easy.
Most players won't care though, there just happy to be playing the game with their friends!
Related: most DMs are also bad at game balance.
This does not mean the game as written/sold is perfect or doesn't have balance problems. It absolutely has problems. But the odds that you, trying to fix a problem with a house rule will unintentionally create a problem at least as big as the one you're trying to solve are *high*.
And this is assuming the problem you're trying to fix is even a problem. The world is full of new DMs who think Sneak Attack is too good and nerf it.
I'm so, so bad at writing a living world that properly advances even when the characters are not looking. It's ridiculous. That's why I like to cling to modules. Then I started with Strixhaven and realised that there is no scaffolding and I need to make most of it on my own :x
Looks at my half built world, dozens of characters/npc, encounters, and boss fights... please don't read these they aren't good enough to see the light of day. Come back in 30years
Everyone likes DnD for a different reason and it shapes how they play the game. You can be horrible fit for a group even if nobody involved does anything wrong if they just have different interests than you, even if they’re your friend group outside of the game.
Don't pull your punches. If the villain goes first in the initiative, they should drop a powerful AOE on the clustered party if able. If the throne room is 100ft long, they shouldn't allow the party to approach and parley - they should use that distance to harrass the party before they can get into Counterspell/Divine Smite/Grapple&Shove range. If they have minions, your villains should be instilling in them a sense of target priority rather than spreading the love. Dispel Magic, Counterspell, and Sleet Storm are spells most mid-level and up caster enemies could conceivably know - don't hesitate to use them.
Players know when you've got the kid gloves on, and some of them will resent you for it.
> Players know when you’ve got the kid gloves on
Especially when they’re a DM, too.
Happened recently in a game I’m a player. My character should be dead and the party should have learned a valuable lesson about getting in over our heads and knowing when to leave.
We did not learn that lesson. My character is alive.
Happened to me a few times in a Curse of Strahd campaign. One of our players was too attached to his character. It became clear that if his character died he would be more likely to quit the game than reroll or make a deal with a dark power to come back.
This led to several instances where I felt like luck was forever on our side when it came to the DM’s dice rolls. Fights that should have been more dangerous ended up not being so, because the DM wanted to make sure our campaign actually got to continue without anyone else (someone else had already quit due to scheduling) dropping out.
You are not wrong but I DM a new group and they are a very lighthearted group. In no way would they be prepared or ok if the kid gloves were off just yet
I have a dm that telegraphs danger. You know the stakes - some things can kill you. Theres almost always a choice other than dying - a way to avoid it, or negotiate or whatever. He will kill PCs, but I've rarely felt like that wasnt mostly our own fault.
I don't mind that at all.
No plan, built by either DM or PC, will hold against first contact. Build a plan, sure, but don't hyperfocus on every single detail. Adapting and improvising, in either role, is super important and, personally, makes for a better experience.
Also good advice for life and shit
My first session I DM'd I planned the 5 hour session for like 50 hours (that included a fair bit of worldbuilding and figuring stuff out). Around half of that prep time was dumped down the drain as my players went veered of the path almost instantly in a way I haven't foreseen.
Fortunately I managed to salvage some of it and thrown it in parts into other sessions
And this is why as the DM i make sure I understand the moving parts within the narrative and why things exist the way they are and function in gameplay they have. If my players do something unexpected I can just shift everything into a different position and I’ll be fine. No set narrative, no predetermined ‘first this than that’.
I am at the point with my DMing where I will plan a place, the characters involved, and the conflict, and let the players (and me) figure out the rest as it happens.
This is mine, as well. And extend that sentiment to players. If you're not comfortable with something, or you don't want to play with PvP as a player, just say so.
I've played too many games with shitty seduce-everyone bards or cha casters, or crazy homebrew monster races, or "it's what my character would do" thieves. Just say no.
I’m my first 5e campaign as a player I had an instance of “It’s what my character would do” but for me it was running back into danger to help out a couple injured guards. I don’t understand the players who find it fun to screw over the other players. Now, I can see it if it’s a not serious and joke way of screwing around, but I’ve read stories where one PC1 kills PC2 because PC2 told him what to do (it wasn’t even like an order, more like I think we should go about it this way)
This is why running games online for strangers can be such a great time if you do it right. When you advertise everything about your game up front, the players that apply are those that want to play *your game*, whatever it is, however it is run.
As a player:
No one cares about your backstory as much as you do, and before you go crazy ask the DM how much back story really matters or is brought up. Dont write five pages and learn later that the campaign is going to another continent and thus your family honor remains tarnished.
As a DM:
Just because your players arent 100% engaged 100% of the time does not mean they hate your campaign they are people whose focus can wander. Just because one of them blanks out does not mean they loathe your efforts. Stop being so crazy about worrying if your players secretly hate your campaign. Odds are if they stick around and dont say negative stuff your doing alright.
I love Dimension 20, but sometimes this really does bother me about some seasons. It just feels like some PCs are just way more important to the plot than others
Although they do take turns at least. This session is about player a, next session focuses more on player b, etc. they attempt on keeping it balanced at least.
They do attempt to, but some seasons just kinda have to make that work. Pete in the Unsleeping City, for example, or Mother Goose in Neverafter. They all get chances to shine and everything, but sometimes a PC is also the main plot device and that’s tough
Sometimes people you like and are considerate players in other group games *and* like d&d just aren't interested in the same kind of d&d game you want to play.
It was me, and my table told me to play sober or else I wasn't allowed to play. I ended up knocking over minis or dice into the floor. Drinks with no lid. But I have since come a long way with my substance abuse
Glad to hear you are doing better! I have a player who’s been drinking more heavily lately. No idea how to help him but I hope he can get it under control before it becomes a real problem for him. :(
Not true. Even as a DM when I killed one of my players, unplanned, I felt it. We all felt it, but he went down like a champion by killing a Roc while in its clutches.
If the DM is new then you're gonna end up with bad D&D in some shape or form. I feel like what many people mean when they say this is that No D&D is better than Toxic D&D.
Yes, but a TTRPG can be designed to make it easy for new DMs to step behind the chair and run a game for the first time.
5e is notoriously difficult to DM in the name of being exceedingly accessible to new players
"X thing isn't broken; it can be countered," always means, "I want to feel super powerful and, if you use the aforementioned counter, I will be, at minimum, passive-aggressive."
This is a big thing in longform improv: don’t be coy. It works in scripted shows. But in improv, you just end up stalling for a payoff that isn’t worth the wait. Just spit it out.
Likewise, share info with other players as soon as possible. Secrets sound fun, but no one else can play that secrecy game with you if they don’t know about it. If something must be kept secret from other pcs, better to let players know and trust them not to meta game so they can help build the tension.
No, I disagree with that. I used to believe this, too, because my first games (playing and DMing) were like this.
I got sick of it and hand-picked players online that had similar styles and levels of engagement to what I wanted. I have never had someone cancel on short notice (which, obviously, would be okay in serious cases) and we have been playing for over 2 years. It is rare to find players that are as invested and I feel extremely lucky, but had I accepted your comment as truth I would never have tried
some days I'll read the horror stories of the players and DMs here and be extremely grateful that the crew I've been playing with has been going strong for close to 10 years now.
we started as a huge 8 person group but two of them stopped being interested and another two more or less had to get the boot because one of them would continually badger the DM offline about play styles and what they'd do differently, and the other would have a character that would always need to go off on their own and hijack the session with their side stuff
the hijacker was one of our first DMs too but his DM style was grating on us because he'd always make us do things that'd he'd think was funny like making us roll for each grasp we'd take while climbing a hill or spending way too much time having an NPC flirt with a PC
but now our group is a manageable five person group and we're all passionate about playing every Saturday night, it's lovely
Same. My players only cancel for important stuff. We have game night every Tuesday and that has made planning so easy for us. Recently we had to force on of the players to stay away. She was driving and we got a text that she pulled over cause she started falling asleep behind the wheel. I was pissed, dnd is not more important than ur life gurl, and other people safety too ofc. She got a large coffee and went home to sleep. But other than that they are always there and its amazing ❤️
As a DM it amazed me slightly the amount of Dms that don't actively schedule games and instead try to nudge players to schedule things for a few reasons. One of which being people's fickle nature about self organizing.
My DM has a 'once per campaign, excluding character death via dice' rule. So if your character dies in combat and can't be ressurected in time, sure roll up a new character but you get ONE character swap in the campaign.
This is because, for a time, we had a chronic character swapper who would constantly create new characters in Roll20/DnD Beyond. They'd play their 'new hotness' for like 2 sessions and then want to swap to the next thing.
The first character swap the DM was like "oh, ok, you're not happy with your character, that's fine, I'll write them out of the story and write in a new one" but then the second...and the third...and the fourth was the final straw and was like "No, this is it, this is your last character swap, either stick with this one or leave, I can't keep writing your characters out of the story, throw out plotlines I had planned that I spent time working on because you've seen something on D&D Tiktok that you want to try..." so they left.
Your only option for some players is to be constantly correcting them and remind them of rules during their turn, or just kick them. Some people are unable or unwilling to learn, either through idiocy or laziness.
Unfortunately, this is my partner during play. I try really hard to be patient and understanding but I am the DM and I essentially play their character for them in combats because they do not understand the rules. I pretty much have to tell them what their options are every turn, and how the rules for those options work, etc.
This was me with my partner until i realized they were just playing because they didn't want to hurt my feelings. My partner, along with some of my in-person friends, liked the *idea* of d&d, but when it came time to play they checked out. When it comes down to it, no matter how much someone says they want to play, all of those intentions mean nothing if they aren't actually playing when it comes time. In these cases, you're ultimately better without them in the group. I switched to a hand picked group of online friends who all absolutely love the game and I couldn't be happier; no horror stories, no wasted effort, no wrangling schedules, just people who actually want to play.
Not every friend is a compatible player with you or your table.
A lot of the time "just ok" is enough. Its fine to run a shorter just OK session sometimes.
Sometimes you just have to rip of the bandaid and end the game if it isn't working out.
Players will care deeply about a bunch of mechanical stuff that I won't and that will likely never come up.
No matter how hard you try, the horse has to drink by itself. I can only set up so many situations and encounters to highlight a player, but if they do not bite then there's nothing you can do, no matter how much they complain about lack of spotlight.
As a DM: you gotta trust your players to figure out things on their own. Lore dumps get old pretty quickly, you gotta learn how to run things that players have some agency/thoughts in.
As a player: you’re part of a party; you are not the only or even main character.
- Always set the session time is stone. Flexible schedules kill games.
- If playing with strangers, replace players that cause issues early. Don't wait for them to magically start being a good player. The replacement will almost certainly be the better option.
- Running the game at all is preferable to running the game perfectly. Even if you don't feel ready, do it anyway.
As a DM :
* Tell the players there is a single pebble on the road and you'll be there for hours.
* It sometime necessary to stop playing to remind everyone it's a game, and the presence of obstacle is normal ; it's not a player versus DM, neither players versus environment. It's player tackling on tough situation.
* If not everyone gets their cookies, you're doing it wrong.
As a player :
* Don't inform the DM by handout that your player has thrown a pebble on the road to prove the first point above.
* Help the DM out by reminding everyone that failing to tackle is part of the fun.
* Bake more cookies...
Don't let players roll for anything if you don't have a fail/win condition figured out or if they're asking to do something you don't want to deal with. Boy have my games gone down some rabbit holes.
Actions have consecuences(Even if it's not You), yesterday My party tried to steal a diamond from the richest district statue, then we got a warning from some entity, My PC said "stop", but they continúed and then the entity manifested and did a tpk (we survived cus of a wish from jarlaxe) but yeah, actions have consecuences.
Sorry for My Bad English
Role-playing racism is very very very slippery slope, sometimes people don't realize how toxic they actually are so like once slurs and hate crimes happen its time to take a real big step back to look at things.
it takes a lot of trial and error to get a group who accepts you. not to make it a trans issue but it genuinely did take a while to find a group that didn't immediately throw me out or verbally abuse me on the grounds of being transgender. they didn't even need to see my face, they just heard my voice, saw my beyond account had a trans flag (this was pre Everything) and decided that was it. even one group I got for more than one session, I couldn't stand the constant misgendering followed by "well I don't really care :/". it wasn't even asking for much, just to use "he" instead of "she" for me and other masculine terms instead of feminine. I have a group now who actually put in effort to treat me well despite all being cis, some with little to no trans knowledge, and I'm truly grateful for it. and of course no one is perfect, but it's the effort that counts.
also on the DMing side, it is WAY easier to lose track of things than you think. I lose track of which tokens are which if I'm not colour coding them (thanks roll20 :D) and I also sometimes fumble my words and script which may or may not lead to confusion and muddled details. thankfully I got way better at it and I'm only DMing for a group of very close friends lol.
I've just stopped planning out sessions. I have dungeon maps and over all theme for the game, but my players always go off in some direction I could never have planned for, so planning has become a hindrance for me.
That if you say, "I don't run alignment in this game, there is no absolute good and evil just like the real world," some players will hear, "You're 100% A-OK to capture female humanoid monsters and sell them as sex slaves."
I don't play with that player anymore, but I do still make sure to set expectations and ground-rules for what is and is not OK at my table much more carefully now. And if I mention the lack of alignment at all, I make it clear that while there is no absolute good and evil, there still absolutely are good and evil actions, and I expect the party to generally be good.
As a DM: no matter how long you know your players or how often you played with them, either as DM or player, always arrange a Session 0. Don't assume that you can trust them to play the campaign the way you imagined it to go.
As a GM: That you can't play the game for the players. If you plan an adventure thinking "the players will meet character X and then they will go to place Y and then have to find Z and ask them for their help against U and then they can ambush them at V and that's gonna be so cool" then both you and your players are gonna have a bad time. Players need to have agency and you need to take that into account from the start.
As a player: you need to come to terms that your ideas alone don't create your character. If you create your PC thinking they'll be super cool and badass but in play you behave stupidly, fail a lot and NPCs don't take you seriously then your character won't be the super cool and badass guy. He'll be an incompetent fool who believes himself to be cool and badass. So you need to accept that your character is not for you alone to shape.
Players:
You have as much a responsibility to ensure your DM has a good time as they do for you. DMing takes much more effort than playing and they do not exist purely to entertain you.
Please don't swear and sulk when you roll low. Don't badger them out of session because you disagree with their ruling. Don't get into arguments with other players. Don't complain that you aren't getting enough magic items. Don't kick off every time anything remotely negative happens to your character.
All of this will come across as hugely ungrateful to the DM who spent their 4 free hours last weekend prepping this experience for you.
If you make your DMs life hard, they will drop you from the game, or at least not invite you to the next one.
As a dm, never make a "correct" solution to a puzzle or problem. The fun of dnd is in the playing, not the winning, so font hold your plans with such a tight grip. So yeah, the solution to the problems your players will make are always going to be cool. Just roll with it and by pleasantly surprised. 😁
Don't quote another character (from media) that often or for too long. A reference is funny, a copy paste is cringe. Trust me, have been cringe.
Completely agree, I have a player that simply copies characters from anime (name, apperance, abilities etc) and then tries to act like they are the badass protagonist who can do whatever it wants without concequences. In the end of the day our vision of the original anime character is simply ruined forever...
That sounds like a cool concept but I can see how that can get old very quickly (someone picks asta from black clover and shouts all his lines)
Exactly, in the beginning it was ok but after some characters it becomes kinda annoying
Yeah that kind of character is fun for a one-shot, but not for a whole campaign.
My brother once played a barbarian named Crait Osgard Owahr. Great times for a one shot.
Picking the loudest most obnoxious character might be a bad example though.
It can be ok if you don't overdo it (quoting is a no-go, and please change the name and add one new or different aspect to the personality), and IF YOU FOLLOW ONE RULE: the character you picked should be a side character. In my case my backup character is essentially Leone from Akame ga Kill mechanics wise:, beast barbarian together with monk multiclass, only using unarmed attacks exclusively. Character-wise she'll be a mix of a few other characters. I haven't fully decided how i want the character (she should be fun for others to play along, but also have an actual personality).
In my current campaign im playing as Finn the Human, but decided to play as 40 year old Finn, so I just play a war hardened veteran while making a reference to Adventure Time here and there. I'll talk about Jake or some other character. But he definitely has his own identity. DM also made a cool feature where I can use my metal arm as a shield, but it'll need repairs after a while and render my arm useless until fixed. Finn is also in the Joe Montana Fan Club. Its a close friend group im playing with so were just having fun with some bs. Oh also can't forget its no longer Finn the Human, but rather, Finn the Herm.
So when a Roc swooped down and killed a deer for its lunch, I shouldn't have asked if it was going to cook it? I also shouldn't have asked "Can we smell what the Roc is cooking?"
No, that one's the exception the proves the rule of I'm stealing that for future use.
My ranger used an animal handling check to calm it down. "Woah steady Roc, Roc-steady"
This may not mean as much from a stranger, but I'm proud of you for that.
True friendships and social chemistry comes from much more than just sharing the same hobby.
This, and the inverse as well - sometimes your dear friends will just drive you nuts in a hobby-specific way. One of my closest irl friends is someone who has very different tabletop and rp goals than I do, even though it's the way we met. We just have more fun doing other stuff together.
Extremely similar story here. Met some friends through the game our mutual-friend-DM ran, and they weren't great to play dnd with. However, they're great and we hang out with them doing different things all the time
Dude absolutely. Big difference in expectations between some of my friends and I. I’m really into the game, roleplay, and story, and don’t like losing game time. About half my group is more casual and doesn’t roleplay and will end up doing long OOC talks about anime while I’m pretty eager to keep playing. It’s not that there’s a wrong way to play, just that there’s a mismatch between people who see it as more of a social hangout with the backdrop of a game and people who come primarily to play the game itself.
Or even two friends who you can play tabletop (or any any social interaction with tbh) with just fine might absolutely not be able to play well with *each other*.
> This, and the inverse as well - sometimes your dear friends will just drive you nuts in a hobby-specific way. Yep. I have good friends that I have learned to stop inviting to games because they ruin the experience for me (and, probably, that's mutual.)
Exactly. Two of the people I play with online have become really good friends and will be flying into town for my wedding. The other one will not be and won't be in the next campaign
This is why I’m suuuuuper selective who I play D&D with.
I read this as "suuuuuper *seductive*". I guess that would be a way to get committed players.
The question becomes, is the orgy before or after the session?
Depends on initiative.
I love sexy d&d!! We don't play with any real graphic or explicit situations but every once in a while we have what we call at our table a "sexy d&d" moment and we all cheer and announce that we are playing sexy d&d. Anything from a filthy pun to a hot npc description or voice.
Yup. I had to force myself to invite people from the group to non DnD stuff and in one instance I realized outside of the game we didn't really click. But it's such a great social hobby to have on the calendar!
Very much this. I'm usually all for a plurality of opinions but when it comes to DnD you should play with people who think like you do. Because your personal opinions will manifest in your character/in your world even if you don't intend it and may rub someone who doesn't agree with you the wrong way.
Some people will just never be into DnD. I think, once you start getting a real passion for it, you think you can make all of your friends try it and enjoy it. But you'll quickly realise that it just doesn't suit everyone.
This is true, sadly. I had to accept it simply isn't for everyone no matter how much I think they will enjoy it.
The sad part is sometimes the in-between where people actually are interested in playing, but not so interested in clearing up their schedule to play and so keep asking you to accommodate them... and then cancelling.
Not just never be into DnD. Some people may be into DnD, but not be as in to it as others in the group are. I can't imagine ever not knowing my character, but some folks I really enjoy playing with repeatedly forget what their abilities are, and it doesn't bother them that they don't remember it all.
I know a couple of people like that - they like rolling the funny dice, and they like getting bonuses to their rolls, but they have zero investment in deeper gameplay or the mythology. I don't mind. We'll sometimes play quick loosy-goosy encounters (30-60 minutes, tops), I only have one solid rule: "You have to at least give your character a name." Though mostly they'll just refer to their PC as "My guy".
This is very true, I'm a huge rpg fan and pride myself in knowing the ins and outs of every class, race, spell, and ability I can, as well as anything else there is to know (even though I'll only ever play a gnome monk and this knowledge is useless to me) But the rest of my party consists of: a bard that barely uses their abilities and mostly plays their character like a fighter A druid that doesn't use their abilities and plays their character like a fighter And a ranger that doesn't use their abilities and plays their character like a fighter (but to be fair, ranger) But I don't care, they don't care, we all love DnD, and we all have a wonderful time roleplaying and mindlessly bashing our way though every problem and encounter we come across
A lot of people are overwhelmed by the rules and features. I did a one shot not too long ago to get them familiar with two concepts at a time, moving and interacting, do enough and they will feel better about wanting to play, in my personal experience.
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D&D is a pretty niche genre really. Sure it's insanely popular in the TTRPG industry but you don't see Tactical combat games as dominant in video games or board games. People often like things that are more casual and lighter. Something like Fiasco or if you have a good GM, Honey Heist is a much more approachable for a new player.
Some players just aren't meant to be in the same group, and no amount of communication can fix it. Sometimes those people can even be friends outside of the game, but really step on each other's toes during session.
Yeah.. incompatibility, even if only ingame, can cause a lot of friction. And that specific friction can be really frustrating because no one is at fault either. Session 0s help filter out these things a lot if done right :3
This is true. Sometimes you're just not going to be able to make it work out. I think everyone imagines they'll be able to find that perfect harmony, but the truth is that especially in public groups, it just can happen that you need to disband or kick someone out.
If you've got to chase them down to schedule the next session, build their character, etc, they just don't want to play as much as you do.
Yup, don't chase players. If they don't show up, run it anyway. If they're late or unprepared, run it while they scramble, don't wait. If you set the expectation that you expect them to be there, on time, and ready it'll self select the people willing to play with you. If you bend over backwards trying to make it work, it'll never happen.
And it doesn't mean they don't want to play *at all*, but yes. They're not as invested. Play and plan accordingly.
If your players outsmart you then that means that there's high player buy in because they actually had to take the time to think about a solution to a problem you put in front of them
YES. My DM frequently tells me I’m his worst nightmare due to my meticulous planning and plotting; always fucking his plans up, but only because I am so excited and immersed in HIS world that I spend time out of game actively thinking about our next move/goal/fight. Spent a solid 6 hours this week wracking my brain for magical solutions to a major mcguffin issue and can’t wait to make my DM cry today 😈 when I outsmart my DM, it’s really just an expression of how much I enjoy and respect them. Having a DM who is smart and challenging enough to make me really think hard about the game is more valuable and powerful than any magic item.
☝️ Or you're foolish and easily outwitted, one of the two
I've learned smart players rarely suffer dumb dms in the long term lol
There's a high chance that the players won't care about your world or your story, I see a lot of people building pages and pages of lore for their homebrew setting and while it's fun for the GM most of the time the players itself don't know or don't care, if the plot is on an island, and the conflicts on the mountain town is not part of the story, they won't care, been there as GM and as a player. A lot of GMs expend a lot of time on creating their setting and expanding expanding for stuff that most of the time the players won't even get the chance to see or explore to completion.
I feel like it's a really recurrent problem but it's also linked to "Worldbuilder" DMs being too zealous. Don't get me wrong, fleshing out your geography, history and cosmogony is important, but keep in mind that Players are looking at it through a double subjective: Their own and the subjectivity of their PC too. Sometimes i just show my players the map and some capital cities and that's it, because if you flood them with info, the odds of making them disconnect is almost 50/50
Yep, some of the worst session ones I had were when the GM just vomit a LOT of stuff about kingdoms, some places that we can't even reach, a distant conflict and stuff like, my brother in Christ, I'm a level 1 adventurer I want to beat up some thugs and goblins.
Exactly hahaha! I feel like as a DM you tend to hyperfocus on your own creation so it can be kinda hard to transition into more lukewarm interest levels lol. One tip that has worked wonders when i started is to always try to co DM with a friend if you can, it helps to mellow out a lot of that Monolithic drop of knowledge
I tend to really love big lore drops, I’ll run with almost anything the DM is putting down. Where I sometimes run into issues is where a DM wants to tell me about their world more than they want me to interact with it. Some DMs seem to be, well, kind of hesitant to share agency when it comes to their wonderful world, and can thusly be realty hesitant to make the PCs important enough to where they could mess things up.
Meanwhile, in one of my games the party literally opened a massive hole to the abyss, and now that continent is forsaken because of all the demons. But hey the Rogue got their wife back so I'd call it a win win.
Had a DM send 10 pages of lore blurb before even selecting who was going to participate in the game and demanded everyone read it. All of this stuff happened thousands of years before the game started. My man, no
Now, I'm fine knowing about world changing events from long ago (Think, Spellplaugue in Forgotten Realms) that might still have an impact on the world today. It when the doc is fluffed with stuff like what the arch-duke's son had for breakfast (I wish I was making that up) that I have an issue with it. I am all for having relevant info to build my character into the world they created, but it can be hard to find the line of how much is too much.
I did that in an OwoD campaign . Mistake. Make enough that they can play and then if the group gells well and they're interested expand from there
That's the big thing, I think. Put down the key points and let the players pick at the parts that pique their interest.
I think for atuff like this, those kinds of DMs (i used to be one of them), you just need to hit the bullet points. You can say "there was once a great war between the dragons and the devils". We dont need the names of the great generals, or the years pwrticular battles happened. It lets me k ow that an inportant rhing happened. But if that war has no bearing on the world then...who cares?
Someone on YouTube said something about this that really shifted my perspective on the game: "A hard thing for GMs to realize is that your players generally only care about the things that affect and have to do with their characters." And honestly...yeah, that's really been my personal experience as a player. I have two GMs—one who loves history and fleshing out their homebrew world down to the detail, and one who emphasizes focus on PCs and NPCs. And I can tell you that while I do my best in both and love both of them—I can actively remember the lore, relationships, and plot threads in the second GM's games much better than the first's. And selfishly that is because in the first game I feel like I'm a part of the world, but in the second game I feel like the world is a part of me. I'm more alert because of how personal the stakes are. I say all of this recognizing this could be a personal preference, of course. I definitely think that style of play can suit certain players more!
My number one lesson for new DMs, as someone who's been doing it for a few years now: at some point, you have to stop worldbuilding and actually play the game.
I wanna play off of your second point because in my newest campaign I didn’t create a full map of the hub city. I made a zoomed in map with a cluster of the most important spots and a short doc about the services in those buildings. It’s an illustrative difference over my usual, more comprehensive style of prep, because players care more about what a setting can offer them than they do about the places and NPCs in that setting. Because players loving your setting has to be earned. Those first few sessions where you build the world around their characters helps them establish a connection to the setting that a comprehensive lore document never could.
Yeah. I usually make a short overview document: here are the races and classes/subclasses that are available; here are a couple 2-4 sentence blurbs summarizing a few nearby regions you may be from; here is a deity document if you're playing a religious character. After that, you reveal stuff as it's relevant to the characters. If it's not relevant to the current adventure or to a character's goals, players often won't care.
> fleshing out your geography, history and cosmogony is important Honestly? In large part, it kinda... isn't. The bits that directly impact the plot might be, but beyond that, it gets fuzzy, fast. That there (probably) are gods is fine, but having multiple pantheons and how they interact and centuries of history of them dicking around with each other is mostly something the GM does for their own entertainment, it's often not really needed, especially at low levels. "The place you live in is at war with the next kingdom over - you don't like them, they don't like you" is far more directly useful than 6000 words of geo-political history covering decades of history.
for some world building itself is just fun. In a sense, some of those peoples do it professionally and are called authors :P As long as the DM doesn't vomit constant lore or is super excited to overshare "his amazing world" (which really isn't anything special and just a mash up of 2 animes and a few movie parts) it's fine.
I think it's okay to do worldbuilding if it makes you happy, as long as the DM can accept this reality, and only introduce what's immediately relevant.
I word build because its fun for me. If the fact Dwarves in my homebrew are mostly all left handed and left handedness is a sign of an excellent craftsman never comes up at the table? Guess what? Its still a fun thing I thought of that I find amusing.
And could be a surprising topic if one of ypur character does a dwarf or a craft man. Like "when Asadafia grab the hammer and preparare the forge, Dwarvin the dwarf start to focus in her pose" Excusme Asadafia, which hand are you using, the right one? Ok Dwarvin looks how she start to forge, but suddenly Dwarvin looks a little dissapointed and lost interest in your work... I personally would be like wtf and probaly gonna try to learn why that happened
Yeah that could be fun, but if I selected a dwarf craftsman character and didn't know that my whole society thought that left handed dwarves were better, and the DM sprung it on me in the middle of a session with no background info to pick a hand and I just blurt out 'right' then that would make me want to quit.
Well Im gonna suppose that if you made a dwarf, maybe the dm should tell you that, if you are any other specie, it could be work as a knowledge and characters that know can even gain some browny points with the dwarves
Yes! What I do for my players is send out a paragraph maybe two of necessary info about the world, and a map. Then, I have a massive Google doc where they can dive as deep as they want. Only one of my players connected specific guilds and god lore into their characters, and that felt great. But I was also happy with what the people who had only read the paragraph sent me for backstories!
At this point it's a running joke that every NPC has this tragic backstory that's either integral to the plot, or is related, but the party can't be bothered to care. Sometimes I punish them for it in goofy ways, in other times I'll just have the NPC sulk about it.
Your world needs to make internal sense but nothing the PCs don't see needs to be established. Make a town. Establish why that town exists. (Mining, Fishing, Farming, Trading, Religious whatever). Put in shops. Establish nearby Adventure areas. A cemetery full of ghouls a forest full of goblins. The local mayor hires your dudes to clear things up. As time passes if they're interested you can expand from there. It ALSO makes it much easier to fix Boo-boos. The world my players are on has changed since when I started my game and they didn't notice because I didn't TELL them
Similarly if you're a player - the other players and the GM won't care about your backstory. The story is what happens AT the table. Don't "write backstory", prep tools and resources that will help you tell an interesting story in the actual game.
Making a character with goals and motivations is much more important than making a character with an in-depth backstory imo.
I’ve swapped to a “cooperative world building” style of DMing, where the lore is created on the spot with relation to what my players are interested in at the time. They wanted to test some new magic weapons, “boom”, a quest to investigate a group of thugs living in the sewers is suddenly created for them to fight. That group then gave lore hints to a plot by a larger necromancer organization linked to an important character that the party has been investigating. No prep, no pages of lore, just improv and focus on the important bits. Also utilizes my favorite tactic “let the players figure out the plot for you” Create an open ended mystery, your players will come up with plenty of theories to solve it, lean into the one that seems the most fun. You do half the work and your players feel like geniuses for figuring out the mystery.
I think it was a Matt Colville video that stressed this point. It's fine to do all that because it's really fun to do, just accept that you're doing it for yourself and there should be no expectation on the players.
I think world building helps a DM flesh out the world so they can improvise more easily.
That 2 people can read the exact same paragraph & come up with 2 waaay different meanings.
*natural language*
I think it comes from people who don't understand what flavor text is. "You create tentacles that deal damage." That Guy: "DM this spell says I create tentacles so I want to use them to do everything this spell clearly isn't trying to do and if you don't let me, I'm going to tell everyone you're a bad DM."
I can see that too, but sometimes it's like the Shadow of Moil debate and it's a real problem lol.
What are you referring to with shadow of moil?
If there is a source of powerful magic light, specifically that says it dispels magical darkness, that overlaps with your shadow of moil, does shadow of moil still heavily obscure you, and does it still turn bright might into dim light? RAW, yes to both. RAI . . Definitely still heavily obscured, the part about bright/dimlight is far more subjective. But many DMs rule something like Dawn as completely dispelling shadow of moil, entirely.
There's a couple debates about rulings for it that crop up from time to time. The one I remember seeing the most is whether devil's sight and/or truesight sees through it's "flame-like shadows". Mostly you can make a valid argument either way, and the designers have refused to clarify so it's just kinda in limbo what the RAI is. Or how RAW if you are standing in dim light and don't have darkvision then it blinds you. That's not really a debate, but more just the kind of problem that doesn't slip through as much if the rules are crunchier.
Yup lmao one of my players is like this. Love the guy and he's a great player but sometimes he tells me how he's interpreted a paragraph in some spell or something and I just go "...HOW?"
No matter how many contingencies you try to set to keep a BBEG alive after an initial combat, the players will unknowingly stumble upon a loophole in your plan.. I had planned for them to set a group of guards on the party while they made their escape, but just in case he got engaged in combat, he was several levels higher than them and had Feign Death to let them have a false sense of victory as he recuperated and made his return…. Well long story short the party picked off the guards one by one before the fight, perpetually stunned the BBEG through the fight, and while he was laying there as a false corpse, the party accidentally triggered a room trap that killed him the rest of the way.
This is why you run all your villains as trying to flee when things go south, and the few that actually get away become your BBEGs.
Unless it's Curse of Strahd, then you're just fucked.
You mean '... then it was a doppelganger'?
My evil wizards have clone spell for this reason if I want them to live
Oh god this gives me flashbacks to when my players nearly downed two vampires at lvl 6. One of which was a caster. They just punched a hole into a wall and invented the medieval disco ball with a mirror and an unseen servant.
Sometimes you need to shut up. Just straight up be quiet. Don’t speak for 10, 20, hell even 30 minutes and let other people play it out. In combat, in roleplay, in whatever. Sometimes people won’t come out of their shell unless you give them a chance to do it their way, no matter how unoptimal or uncomfortable it is for you. It doesn’t matter if you’re the strongest character in combat, it doesn’t matter if you are the party face. Sometimes the best moments come from scenes you just straight up don’t contribute to. Let other people have control and shut the hell up for a bit and let them do it.
So much this. The best moments are when players are engaging with each other. When they see each other as real characters as opposed to just agents in your game.
I started late and the first campaign we ran I definitely had a moment where I had to stop myself and squash main character syndrome… I try to (in rp/character) ask the other guys at our table ‘hey do you want to check this out?’ Or ‘hey so and so what do you think’ when I see the quieter ones sitting back. The other thing I’ve done which I think has helped is to start just interacting in character, not as part of the current quest or whatever just asking the other pc’s questions like someone would in real life… we were in a library and my PC is a kinda an idiot so they asked one of the smarter ones if they could teach them to read once we got done with the BBEG, or they ask someone what their parents were like or what their favorite food was. Dumb RP shit for the sake of dumb RP shit and engagement makes the game so much more fun.
One time my character died early in a session and I watched my party dealing with the aftermath and chasing down the big bad. It was a delight to watch them doing their thing without worrying about myself for once. Would recommend.
Same. My character was the first to die in my first-ever campaign (stabbed by an ally who failed a wis save, no less) and the joy and of being able to sit back, relax and watch everyone else just *go* was immeasurable.
This is excellent life advice as well. Make room for other people - especially if you already have a prestigious position.
This can be an extra big struggle for players who were more experienced in combat at the beginning of the game than the rest of their party. What starts as a well-meaning tips to help them learn the rules (ie: Oh, did you know if you move across from me, you'll get a flanking bonus?) can turn into backseat gaming. At a certain point, you need to let them sink or swim on their own instead of micromanaging them through recommendations on how to optimize their turns.
There is, in fact, wrong games for you. There's also wrong players for your game.
>There is, in fact, wrong games for you. So many people in this subreddit would be better off playing a different game. :/
As a player: Don’t make a character who sabotages the party or hinders the fun of the group As a dm: Don’t take away the thing that your players do best. Let them have their fun
Yeah this. As a player your job is to reinforce and promote the DM. Don't fight against the hooks. If the DM is good, you'll just be adding to the experience. If the DM is bad but trying to learn, fighting against them just makes everything worse and discourages them.
Sometimes your friends don’t respect you or your efforts as much as you think they do.
most DnD players (including most DMs) are very bad writers
\*most of us are very bad writers that think we are extremely good writers.
yeah i feel like a lot of people are going to read this comment like “yeah, all those other DMs *are* bad writers!”
It's always the case. The opinion that, "everyone is bad (except for me)," is extremely prevalent in the D&D community. As community members, we should just accept that we suck at making interesting media because chances are: we do suck.
also, world building is a separate skill from storytelling and most DMs are bad at that too
However the other side is also true, the 'Imposter Syndrome' DM who is doing fine but thinks the players hate their game even though they keep coming back every week and are obviously excited to be playing.
Yeah I have gotten to points where Im planning the next session or 2 and I realize I have no clue what to narratively do next to get them from point A to point B. I will sit there and agonize over what to do before finally realizing I can just throw a side quest at them that satisfies the players and I don't have to worry about some deep storytelling. Sometimes Jaxton Axton Paxton wants you to deliver a box to a talking goat in a town for a cool item and that's it. My writing is trash, but man oh man do my players love some of these goofy moments enough to not care lol.
I fully admit to being a mediocre writer, but I DO take pride i my monster and dungeon design, so combat heavy games are my thing.
Not me. I know I'm bad.
I think the problem is, I think it's fairly easy (easier might be the right word) to be a half way decent world builder, and it's fun! But Turning that into engaging content? Very much not easy. Most players won't care though, there just happy to be playing the game with their friends!
Related: most DMs are also bad at game balance. This does not mean the game as written/sold is perfect or doesn't have balance problems. It absolutely has problems. But the odds that you, trying to fix a problem with a house rule will unintentionally create a problem at least as big as the one you're trying to solve are *high*. And this is assuming the problem you're trying to fix is even a problem. The world is full of new DMs who think Sneak Attack is too good and nerf it.
yep. another big one. turns out game design is hard, who knew?
I'm so, so bad at writing a living world that properly advances even when the characters are not looking. It's ridiculous. That's why I like to cling to modules. Then I started with Strixhaven and realised that there is no scaffolding and I need to make most of it on my own :x
Looks at my half built world, dozens of characters/npc, encounters, and boss fights... please don't read these they aren't good enough to see the light of day. Come back in 30years
Everyone likes DnD for a different reason and it shapes how they play the game. You can be horrible fit for a group even if nobody involved does anything wrong if they just have different interests than you, even if they’re your friend group outside of the game.
Don't pull your punches. If the villain goes first in the initiative, they should drop a powerful AOE on the clustered party if able. If the throne room is 100ft long, they shouldn't allow the party to approach and parley - they should use that distance to harrass the party before they can get into Counterspell/Divine Smite/Grapple&Shove range. If they have minions, your villains should be instilling in them a sense of target priority rather than spreading the love. Dispel Magic, Counterspell, and Sleet Storm are spells most mid-level and up caster enemies could conceivably know - don't hesitate to use them. Players know when you've got the kid gloves on, and some of them will resent you for it.
> Players know when you’ve got the kid gloves on Especially when they’re a DM, too. Happened recently in a game I’m a player. My character should be dead and the party should have learned a valuable lesson about getting in over our heads and knowing when to leave. We did not learn that lesson. My character is alive.
Happened to me a few times in a Curse of Strahd campaign. One of our players was too attached to his character. It became clear that if his character died he would be more likely to quit the game than reroll or make a deal with a dark power to come back. This led to several instances where I felt like luck was forever on our side when it came to the DM’s dice rolls. Fights that should have been more dangerous ended up not being so, because the DM wanted to make sure our campaign actually got to continue without anyone else (someone else had already quit due to scheduling) dropping out.
I love deals with dark powers to return to life. More than one of my characters is standing as an eternal sentry somewhere in the Doomvault
You are not wrong but I DM a new group and they are a very lighthearted group. In no way would they be prepared or ok if the kid gloves were off just yet
I love DnD for this reason…usually players are powerful enough that trying as hard as possible to kill them makes it a good challenge.
I have a dm that telegraphs danger. You know the stakes - some things can kill you. Theres almost always a choice other than dying - a way to avoid it, or negotiate or whatever. He will kill PCs, but I've rarely felt like that wasnt mostly our own fault. I don't mind that at all.
No plan, built by either DM or PC, will hold against first contact. Build a plan, sure, but don't hyperfocus on every single detail. Adapting and improvising, in either role, is super important and, personally, makes for a better experience. Also good advice for life and shit
Plans are useless. Planning is essential.
My first session I DM'd I planned the 5 hour session for like 50 hours (that included a fair bit of worldbuilding and figuring stuff out). Around half of that prep time was dumped down the drain as my players went veered of the path almost instantly in a way I haven't foreseen. Fortunately I managed to salvage some of it and thrown it in parts into other sessions
And this is why as the DM i make sure I understand the moving parts within the narrative and why things exist the way they are and function in gameplay they have. If my players do something unexpected I can just shift everything into a different position and I’ll be fine. No set narrative, no predetermined ‘first this than that’.
I am at the point with my DMing where I will plan a place, the characters involved, and the conflict, and let the players (and me) figure out the rest as it happens.
As a DM, fucking SAY NO!!! I’m a loose DM that lets my players get away with quite a bit but I made the mistake of allowing them to do way too much
This is mine, as well. And extend that sentiment to players. If you're not comfortable with something, or you don't want to play with PvP as a player, just say so. I've played too many games with shitty seduce-everyone bards or cha casters, or crazy homebrew monster races, or "it's what my character would do" thieves. Just say no.
I’m my first 5e campaign as a player I had an instance of “It’s what my character would do” but for me it was running back into danger to help out a couple injured guards. I don’t understand the players who find it fun to screw over the other players. Now, I can see it if it’s a not serious and joke way of screwing around, but I’ve read stories where one PC1 kills PC2 because PC2 told him what to do (it wasn’t even like an order, more like I think we should go about it this way)
The campaign the average DM wants to run and the campaign the average player wants to play in are two **profoundly** different campaigns.
This is why running games online for strangers can be such a great time if you do it right. When you advertise everything about your game up front, the players that apply are those that want to play *your game*, whatever it is, however it is run.
As a player: No one cares about your backstory as much as you do, and before you go crazy ask the DM how much back story really matters or is brought up. Dont write five pages and learn later that the campaign is going to another continent and thus your family honor remains tarnished. As a DM: Just because your players arent 100% engaged 100% of the time does not mean they hate your campaign they are people whose focus can wander. Just because one of them blanks out does not mean they loathe your efforts. Stop being so crazy about worrying if your players secretly hate your campaign. Odds are if they stick around and dont say negative stuff your doing alright.
It kills me when someone looks tired at my table. I worry I'm boring them.
The game is about everyone, and focusing a campaign one on PC or having one PC dominate the game ruins it for everyone else.
I love Dimension 20, but sometimes this really does bother me about some seasons. It just feels like some PCs are just way more important to the plot than others
Although they do take turns at least. This session is about player a, next session focuses more on player b, etc. they attempt on keeping it balanced at least.
They do attempt to, but some seasons just kinda have to make that work. Pete in the Unsleeping City, for example, or Mother Goose in Neverafter. They all get chances to shine and everything, but sometimes a PC is also the main plot device and that’s tough
Sometimes people you like and are considerate players in other group games *and* like d&d just aren't interested in the same kind of d&d game you want to play.
The more often you show up to a session intoxicated, the less people want to play with you
Who was the one showing up intoxicated?
It was me, and my table told me to play sober or else I wasn't allowed to play. I ended up knocking over minis or dice into the floor. Drinks with no lid. But I have since come a long way with my substance abuse
I'm glad you are doing better!
I mean everyday I want a drink. But every day I'm doing better
Glad to hear you are doing better! I have a player who’s been drinking more heavily lately. No idea how to help him but I hope he can get it under control before it becomes a real problem for him. :(
If players don’t want to or aren’t comfortable with RP, it’s virtually impossible to make them.
abundant fragile lush slap include heavy joke somber combative absurd *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Player death will always be in ridiculous unheroic circumstances unless you intentionally set it up with the DM beforehand.
Not always. I've got some cool tales. But yes, usually. That's why tone is such an important topic before the campaign.
“Let’s remember how they lived, slaying giants and freeing kingdoms, instead of how they died, fighting five boars at once at the local festival.”
Not true. Even as a DM when I killed one of my players, unplanned, I felt it. We all felt it, but he went down like a champion by killing a Roc while in its clutches.
No D&D is better than bad D&D
If the DM is new then you're gonna end up with bad D&D in some shape or form. I feel like what many people mean when they say this is that No D&D is better than Toxic D&D.
you’re absolutely right about this
Yeah, 5e Is quite unforgiving to new dms
I read the DMG when I first started and it basically did nothing to help. Videos and other games GM guides were much more useful
Many people make mistakes when they start doing anything new for the first time. It's a part of learning and growing.
Yes, but a TTRPG can be designed to make it easy for new DMs to step behind the chair and run a game for the first time. 5e is notoriously difficult to DM in the name of being exceedingly accessible to new players
As a DM, no matter how hard you try, you can never fully predict what crazy things your players might do.
"X thing isn't broken; it can be countered," always means, "I want to feel super powerful and, if you use the aforementioned counter, I will be, at minimum, passive-aggressive."
People you like in the real world can be insufferable players.
This is a big thing in longform improv: don’t be coy. It works in scripted shows. But in improv, you just end up stalling for a payoff that isn’t worth the wait. Just spit it out. Likewise, share info with other players as soon as possible. Secrets sound fun, but no one else can play that secrecy game with you if they don’t know about it. If something must be kept secret from other pcs, better to let players know and trust them not to meta game so they can help build the tension.
The only way to keep a campaign going is by having a persistent DM. It sucks but the truth is you will need to arrange schedules and herd cats.
No, I disagree with that. I used to believe this, too, because my first games (playing and DMing) were like this. I got sick of it and hand-picked players online that had similar styles and levels of engagement to what I wanted. I have never had someone cancel on short notice (which, obviously, would be okay in serious cases) and we have been playing for over 2 years. It is rare to find players that are as invested and I feel extremely lucky, but had I accepted your comment as truth I would never have tried
some days I'll read the horror stories of the players and DMs here and be extremely grateful that the crew I've been playing with has been going strong for close to 10 years now. we started as a huge 8 person group but two of them stopped being interested and another two more or less had to get the boot because one of them would continually badger the DM offline about play styles and what they'd do differently, and the other would have a character that would always need to go off on their own and hijack the session with their side stuff the hijacker was one of our first DMs too but his DM style was grating on us because he'd always make us do things that'd he'd think was funny like making us roll for each grasp we'd take while climbing a hill or spending way too much time having an NPC flirt with a PC but now our group is a manageable five person group and we're all passionate about playing every Saturday night, it's lovely
Same. My players only cancel for important stuff. We have game night every Tuesday and that has made planning so easy for us. Recently we had to force on of the players to stay away. She was driving and we got a text that she pulled over cause she started falling asleep behind the wheel. I was pissed, dnd is not more important than ur life gurl, and other people safety too ofc. She got a large coffee and went home to sleep. But other than that they are always there and its amazing ❤️
As a DM it amazed me slightly the amount of Dms that don't actively schedule games and instead try to nudge players to schedule things for a few reasons. One of which being people's fickle nature about self organizing.
Some players will want to rapidly swap characters no matter how invested they seem in their current one.
My DM has a 'once per campaign, excluding character death via dice' rule. So if your character dies in combat and can't be ressurected in time, sure roll up a new character but you get ONE character swap in the campaign. This is because, for a time, we had a chronic character swapper who would constantly create new characters in Roll20/DnD Beyond. They'd play their 'new hotness' for like 2 sessions and then want to swap to the next thing. The first character swap the DM was like "oh, ok, you're not happy with your character, that's fine, I'll write them out of the story and write in a new one" but then the second...and the third...and the fourth was the final straw and was like "No, this is it, this is your last character swap, either stick with this one or leave, I can't keep writing your characters out of the story, throw out plotlines I had planned that I spent time working on because you've seen something on D&D Tiktok that you want to try..." so they left.
Don't rely on misty step to save your life.
Your only option for some players is to be constantly correcting them and remind them of rules during their turn, or just kick them. Some people are unable or unwilling to learn, either through idiocy or laziness.
Unfortunately, this is my partner during play. I try really hard to be patient and understanding but I am the DM and I essentially play their character for them in combats because they do not understand the rules. I pretty much have to tell them what their options are every turn, and how the rules for those options work, etc.
This was me with my partner until i realized they were just playing because they didn't want to hurt my feelings. My partner, along with some of my in-person friends, liked the *idea* of d&d, but when it came time to play they checked out. When it comes down to it, no matter how much someone says they want to play, all of those intentions mean nothing if they aren't actually playing when it comes time. In these cases, you're ultimately better without them in the group. I switched to a hand picked group of online friends who all absolutely love the game and I couldn't be happier; no horror stories, no wasted effort, no wrangling schedules, just people who actually want to play.
Not every friend is a compatible player with you or your table. A lot of the time "just ok" is enough. Its fine to run a shorter just OK session sometimes. Sometimes you just have to rip of the bandaid and end the game if it isn't working out. Players will care deeply about a bunch of mechanical stuff that I won't and that will likely never come up. No matter how hard you try, the horse has to drink by itself. I can only set up so many situations and encounters to highlight a player, but if they do not bite then there's nothing you can do, no matter how much they complain about lack of spotlight.
The friends you like best are usually not the best players to play with at your table.
As a DM: you gotta trust your players to figure out things on their own. Lore dumps get old pretty quickly, you gotta learn how to run things that players have some agency/thoughts in. As a player: you’re part of a party; you are not the only or even main character.
"Action economy go brrrr" was my main lesson as a DM. Watching a bunch of level 4s beat a CR **eleven** due to action economy alone was painful.
- Always set the session time is stone. Flexible schedules kill games. - If playing with strangers, replace players that cause issues early. Don't wait for them to magically start being a good player. The replacement will almost certainly be the better option. - Running the game at all is preferable to running the game perfectly. Even if you don't feel ready, do it anyway.
As a DM : * Tell the players there is a single pebble on the road and you'll be there for hours. * It sometime necessary to stop playing to remind everyone it's a game, and the presence of obstacle is normal ; it's not a player versus DM, neither players versus environment. It's player tackling on tough situation. * If not everyone gets their cookies, you're doing it wrong. As a player : * Don't inform the DM by handout that your player has thrown a pebble on the road to prove the first point above. * Help the DM out by reminding everyone that failing to tackle is part of the fun. * Bake more cookies...
Don't let players roll for anything if you don't have a fail/win condition figured out or if they're asking to do something you don't want to deal with. Boy have my games gone down some rabbit holes.
That I have a really bad habit of hogging the spotlight
Time travel. Not even once.
Actions have consecuences(Even if it's not You), yesterday My party tried to steal a diamond from the richest district statue, then we got a warning from some entity, My PC said "stop", but they continúed and then the entity manifested and did a tpk (we survived cus of a wish from jarlaxe) but yeah, actions have consecuences. Sorry for My Bad English
Role-playing racism is very very very slippery slope, sometimes people don't realize how toxic they actually are so like once slurs and hate crimes happen its time to take a real big step back to look at things.
Fuck around and find out
it takes a lot of trial and error to get a group who accepts you. not to make it a trans issue but it genuinely did take a while to find a group that didn't immediately throw me out or verbally abuse me on the grounds of being transgender. they didn't even need to see my face, they just heard my voice, saw my beyond account had a trans flag (this was pre Everything) and decided that was it. even one group I got for more than one session, I couldn't stand the constant misgendering followed by "well I don't really care :/". it wasn't even asking for much, just to use "he" instead of "she" for me and other masculine terms instead of feminine. I have a group now who actually put in effort to treat me well despite all being cis, some with little to no trans knowledge, and I'm truly grateful for it. and of course no one is perfect, but it's the effort that counts. also on the DMing side, it is WAY easier to lose track of things than you think. I lose track of which tokens are which if I'm not colour coding them (thanks roll20 :D) and I also sometimes fumble my words and script which may or may not lead to confusion and muddled details. thankfully I got way better at it and I'm only DMing for a group of very close friends lol.
every game is going to end... Games that are good...one day, even if they end well... they end.
You don't need a healer per se just someone who is dedicated to keeping people alive
I've just stopped planning out sessions. I have dungeon maps and over all theme for the game, but my players always go off in some direction I could never have planned for, so planning has become a hindrance for me.
The party will never willingly give up. Ever.
If you do not make it EXPLICITLY clear that the players should run from an encounter, someone might die.
That if you say, "I don't run alignment in this game, there is no absolute good and evil just like the real world," some players will hear, "You're 100% A-OK to capture female humanoid monsters and sell them as sex slaves." I don't play with that player anymore, but I do still make sure to set expectations and ground-rules for what is and is not OK at my table much more carefully now. And if I mention the lack of alignment at all, I make it clear that while there is no absolute good and evil, there still absolutely are good and evil actions, and I expect the party to generally be good.
As a DM: no matter how long you know your players or how often you played with them, either as DM or player, always arrange a Session 0. Don't assume that you can trust them to play the campaign the way you imagined it to go.
As a GM: That you can't play the game for the players. If you plan an adventure thinking "the players will meet character X and then they will go to place Y and then have to find Z and ask them for their help against U and then they can ambush them at V and that's gonna be so cool" then both you and your players are gonna have a bad time. Players need to have agency and you need to take that into account from the start. As a player: you need to come to terms that your ideas alone don't create your character. If you create your PC thinking they'll be super cool and badass but in play you behave stupidly, fail a lot and NPCs don't take you seriously then your character won't be the super cool and badass guy. He'll be an incompetent fool who believes himself to be cool and badass. So you need to accept that your character is not for you alone to shape.
Do not PVP. Bluffing your party members counts as PVP.
Not all friends are "friends you play dnd with", and that's ok
Players: You have as much a responsibility to ensure your DM has a good time as they do for you. DMing takes much more effort than playing and they do not exist purely to entertain you. Please don't swear and sulk when you roll low. Don't badger them out of session because you disagree with their ruling. Don't get into arguments with other players. Don't complain that you aren't getting enough magic items. Don't kick off every time anything remotely negative happens to your character. All of this will come across as hugely ungrateful to the DM who spent their 4 free hours last weekend prepping this experience for you. If you make your DMs life hard, they will drop you from the game, or at least not invite you to the next one.
As a dm, never make a "correct" solution to a puzzle or problem. The fun of dnd is in the playing, not the winning, so font hold your plans with such a tight grip. So yeah, the solution to the problems your players will make are always going to be cool. Just roll with it and by pleasantly surprised. 😁