Tell the next person in initiative they're on deck and then have a turn timer
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DepressperadoI just wanted to see you laughingin the pizza rainRegistered Userregular
I realized that I was running two Champion Fighters at the same time, in different campaigns, and was like "that's too many."
So my High Elf Farmer (still fancier than everyone except other High Elves) Fighter took the heat poison after the Party foolishly angered a green dragon. She jumped off a staircase and grabbed it's tail. Eventually it shook her off and she fell 60 feet with 4 HP.
I critted my death save twice, so I'd pop back up with 1 life and be like "HEY JERK, STILL NOT DEAD", until it finally got me unconscious and couped my gras and Bud Light died.
I'm gonna make a Boy Detective now, Rogue with Investigation and Insight and such, and a hand crossbow. Milo Beansmith, the best detective in Phandalin.
Hmm I think I have a problem in my group with a player. This is the third game I've run shes played in and its the third character in a row who is: Always wearing black, hates everyone, has a specific goal in mind and doesn't care about anything at all about that. We got in an actual argument about this last night, I told her if she was bored (since shes always on her phone) she doesn't have to play. She said she just plays characters like her and her characters don't give a fuck about stopping a thing or getting to know people in the group. Like she said she honestly doesn't know why her character is still here helping the rest of the group stop the BBEG from destroying the world because she already got what she wanted.
My argument was that, I dunno, I feel like thats not playing the game? Thats coming up with a reason to not interact with anything, and even if your aloof or don't care most people at least care about themselves, and if something kills everyone, they tend to be part of everyone, so at least self preservation could be a motivated, and if she wanted to make a new character she could have said something. She said I'm just mad at her for not "Playing the game how I like to play it". I don't think I am, I think my reasons are valid. If every character doesn't want to even talk to others...its not very much of a character in the game?
Also she wants to DM next, and its her first time so I'm trying to help her this is where it gets...more complicated
She wants the campaign to revolve around a creature that has kidnapped and devoured every child in a city. Not a small town, a huge city.So one creature has somehow eaten thousands of kids without being caught. And there is nothing the character can do it stop it or save ANY children. They are all already dead, for reasons. I told her this sounds less like an entire campaign and more the start of one, and tracking down the creature could be a few sessions worth of content...and also that maybe let the characters have at least a chance to save SOME of the kids because spending hours tracking a thing down only to find they didn't, and couldn't, make any kind of difference is kind of demoralizing. Her response was "Well maybe for you, but not everyone wants to be a hero who saves people" and yeah sure, but whos all excited by dead kids? Also one of our players wives just had her third miscarriage and two others have a baby under 1, so I feel like this is in poor taste. I feel like she just started with "Creature eating kids" and worked backwards, and some of the details shes already set up, like crime scene sketches the characters can steal from the guard captain or witness testimonies are very detailed and gruesome. I told her in general it might not land well and her response was "Thats a person problem for them, not me" and I am...really shocked.
In 16 years playing RPGs I have never run across issues like this and am totally unsure what to do.
Kick her ass out of the group?
Oh yeah, its uh, my wife
It really sounds like you may need a session 0.5, where you lay out some clearer ground rules. In my games, I'm always clear from that outset that:
1. You are heroes, and heroes are made, not born. You are fighting for something, what is up to you, at least partially, but you are fighting for something
2. You are a team. The players are taking time out of their lives to play this game together, it is not fair - borderline insulting - to not play together.
3+ Stuff about tone and off limits topics and everything else.
I will say, part of the issue is none of my other players are engaging in out of combat character stuff. Hopefully thats changing with us moving to Saturday play days but one of my players is a 3rd grade teacher and every game on Friday nights shes like exhausted and half asleep so I can't blame her. Her husband is...a very nice person who I really like. He just is also very very thick and doesn't like "reading" and "basic math". The 4th just smokes weed the whole game. I think the party as a whole is dragging everything down.
Would it be too much to say play Apocalypse World instead?
It doesn’t sound like anyone there is in the mind-frame to play a heroic high fantasy journey. Something set in one place with in-built allowance to be shitheads sounds about right.
Would it be too much to say play Apocalypse World instead?
It doesn’t sound like anyone there is in the mind-frame to play a heroic high fantasy journey. Something set in one place with in-built allowance to be shitheads sounds about right.
This might be a good idea going forward. Though I would argue its possible to be a shithead in D&D and still follow a narrative. The mechanics of Powered by the Apocalypse might be simpler for them to get too.
At this point I'm riding it out, were like 5 session from the finishline and I've never been or run a campaign that actually finishes before.
Bucketman, I wish I had better advice for you, but it's pretty well covered in previous posts.
For her campaign idea though, my first thought was that something was stealing the children from their dreams, via the astral plane or something. It happens to children and not adults because children are more open to dreams, whereas adults are jaded and less open. They're being stolen away so their imaginative dream energies can be used to power an inter-planal rift through which to invade the material plane. They have to go this route because powerful wards by powerful wizards have been erected eons ago to prevent large scale transport between the planes to stop such an invasion.
It's a neat story seed she has, but it sounds like she wants to write her own story, and TTRPG is a cooperative storytelling environment, no one person gets sole control. I've played in games where the DM wanted help writing a book idea they had by using the party to do some of the writing. It was never fun for anybody. She should just write it herself, she'll be happier than if the players keep ruining her story.
She has some good meat on the bones, but she needs a whole chicken to bring this hen to roost.
Two town on opposite sides of a giant Mississippi but bigger style river. Both have mountains near them, one north and the other south. Turns out the mayor of the town on one side made a deal around 25 years ago with a devil to make their town more prosperous then the other side. Boom, gold rush. Town on the east bank of the river becomes a success overnight and transforms from a town into one of the biggest cities in the kingdom. Now children are disappearing. No one knows the mayor made a devil deal except the mayor herself, and a Bodui (maybe a Boudin? She found a stat block for it on a homebrew site but its basically Pennywise but not like from another dimension.). It'll turn out the monster doesn't even have anything to do with the mayor's thing, but the mayor suspects it does, and that will lead to having to deal with that. Some devil is coming to get its due from the town somehow and the mayor is unsure how.
I actually really like the idea! Its just the hard, hard detailed focus on the gruesome child murders.
She has some good meat on the bones, but she needs a whole chicken to bring this hen to roost.
Two town on opposite sides of a giant Mississippi but bigger style river. Both have mountains near them, one north and the other south. Turns out the mayor of the town on one side made a deal around 25 years ago with a devil to make their town more prosperous then the other side. Boom, gold rush. Town on the east bank of the river becomes a success overnight and transforms from a town into one of the biggest cities in the kingdom. Now children are disappearing. No one knows the mayor made a devil deal except the mayor herself, and a Bodui (maybe a Boudin? She found a stat block for it on a homebrew site but its basically Pennywise but not like from another dimension.). It'll turn out the monster doesn't even have anything to do with the mayor's thing, but the mayor suspects it does, and that will lead to having to deal with that. Some devil is coming to get its due from the town somehow and the mayor is unsure how.
I actually really like the idea! Its just the hard, hard detailed focus on the gruesome child murders.
I think there's some good stuff in there too. Maybe ask what it is she wants from the hard focus on irrevocably murdering children angle, and then ask her to compare and contrast that to how she thinks the other members will take it as a method of helping her see that it's not going to go well with this group? And that's fine, not every game is for every group.
I dunno man. The fact that it's your wife makes it stickier than usual.
I think that in a cooperative activity (actually, also in a competitive activity) you have to respect the other people at the table - the people, their likes and dislikes, their comfort levels, their time, etc. I think you should do this because it's a decent human thing to do - but also from a cold, utilitarian point of view, people aren't going to want to play with you if you create bad experiences for them and show them you don't care about them.
I guess what I'm getting at is that you suggesting "It may be a bad idea to depict child-murder to someone who's had three miscarriages" and the reaction being "That's their problem, not mine" causes me a great deal of alarm and distress.
This is going to come off as rude, I suspect, but I'm going to ask anyway; If your wife('s character?) doesn't want to play with the other people('s characters?), why is she playing? If she doesn't care about the other players having a good time, why does she want to GM?
I will say, part of the issue is none of my other players are engaging in out of combat character stuff. Hopefully thats changing with us moving to Saturday play days but one of my players is a 3rd grade teacher and every game on Friday nights shes like exhausted and half asleep so I can't blame her. Her husband is...a very nice person who I really like. He just is also very very thick and doesn't like "reading" and "basic math". The 4th just smokes weed the whole game. I think the party as a whole is dragging everything down.
So you've got a rogue/assassin, a wizard, a barbarian, and a ranger.
I have a sudden hankering to play a barbarian who is also educated. Like, they have CHOSEN to live outside of society, because they studied history and found nothing worth the hassle.
I had a concept for a Barbarian with a Noble background. Aristocrats are all about their ancestors, after all, only his Ancestral Guardian was a Colonel Mustard type with a shooting stick, and the elaborate tattoos described in the book took the form of a family tree and coats of arms
His Rage was essentially him yelling, “THIS. WILL. NOT. DO!” and hitting people with a polo mallet as his monocle pops out
I think that in a cooperative activity (actually, also in a competitive activity) you have to respect the other people at the table - the people, their likes and dislikes, their comfort levels, their time, etc. I think you should do this because it's a decent human thing to do - but also from a cold, utilitarian point of view, people aren't going to want to play with you if you create bad experiences for them and show them you don't care about them.
I guess what I'm getting at is that you suggesting "It may be a bad idea to depict child-murder to someone who's had three miscarriages" and the reaction being "That's their problem, not mine" causes me a great deal of alarm and distress.
This is going to come off as rude, I suspect, but I'm going to ask anyway; If your wife('s character?) doesn't want to play with the other people('s characters?), why is she playing? If she doesn't care about the other players having a good time, why does she want to GM?
And thats what started the fight. Last campaign me played she had a character who had a single goal: To get her kingdom back, when the game's natural course took them through the kingdom, and the other players took time to help her, at the end she was like "Oh sweet, peace I'm out!" and made a new character. That at least made some sense, being she was a queen now. And she gave the party some resources that could be spared to help them out at least.
This time I asked her "If your character was done, why not just leave?" and she said it was because she couldn't think of another character with a goal. I suggested that most people aren't so singularly minded, they might have a goal but after they achieve it they can have new goals! They can evolve and move on.
I think she likes actually playing, but not the role playing part.
Hmm I think I have a problem in my group with a player. This is the third game I've run shes played in and its the third character in a row who is: Always wearing black, hates everyone, has a specific goal in mind and doesn't care about anything at all about that. We got in an actual argument about this last night, I told her if she was bored (since shes always on her phone) she doesn't have to play. She said she just plays characters like her and her characters don't give a fuck about stopping a thing or getting to know people in the group. Like she said she honestly doesn't know why her character is still here helping the rest of the group stop the BBEG from destroying the world because she already got what she wanted.
My argument was that, I dunno, I feel like thats not playing the game? Thats coming up with a reason to not interact with anything, and even if your aloof or don't care most people at least care about themselves, and if something kills everyone, they tend to be part of everyone, so at least self preservation could be a motivated, and if she wanted to make a new character she could have said something. She said I'm just mad at her for not "Playing the game how I like to play it". I don't think I am, I think my reasons are valid. If every character doesn't want to even talk to others...its not very much of a character in the game?
Also she wants to DM next, and its her first time so I'm trying to help her this is where it gets...more complicated
She wants the campaign to revolve around a creature that has kidnapped and devoured every child in a city. Not a small town, a huge city.So one creature has somehow eaten thousands of kids without being caught. And there is nothing the character can do it stop it or save ANY children. They are all already dead, for reasons. I told her this sounds less like an entire campaign and more the start of one, and tracking down the creature could be a few sessions worth of content...and also that maybe let the characters have at least a chance to save SOME of the kids because spending hours tracking a thing down only to find they didn't, and couldn't, make any kind of difference is kind of demoralizing. Her response was "Well maybe for you, but not everyone wants to be a hero who saves people" and yeah sure, but whos all excited by dead kids? Also one of our players wives just had her third miscarriage and two others have a baby under 1, so I feel like this is in poor taste. I feel like she just started with "Creature eating kids" and worked backwards, and some of the details shes already set up, like crime scene sketches the characters can steal from the guard captain or witness testimonies are very detailed and gruesome. I told her in general it might not land well and her response was "Thats a person problem for them, not me" and I am...really shocked.
In 16 years playing RPGs I have never run across issues like this and am totally unsure what to do.
Kick her ass out of the group?
Oh yeah, its uh, my wife
This is the most amazing buried lede
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GrogMy sword is only steelin a useful shape.Registered Userregular
I have a sudden hankering to play a barbarian who is also educated. Like, they have CHOSEN to live outside of society, because they studied history and found nothing worth the hassle.
Hmm I think I have a problem in my group with a player. This is the third game I've run shes played in and its the third character in a row who is: Always wearing black, hates everyone, has a specific goal in mind and doesn't care about anything at all about that. We got in an actual argument about this last night, I told her if she was bored (since shes always on her phone) she doesn't have to play. She said she just plays characters like her and her characters don't give a fuck about stopping a thing or getting to know people in the group. Like she said she honestly doesn't know why her character is still here helping the rest of the group stop the BBEG from destroying the world because she already got what she wanted.
My argument was that, I dunno, I feel like thats not playing the game? Thats coming up with a reason to not interact with anything, and even if your aloof or don't care most people at least care about themselves, and if something kills everyone, they tend to be part of everyone, so at least self preservation could be a motivated, and if she wanted to make a new character she could have said something. She said I'm just mad at her for not "Playing the game how I like to play it". I don't think I am, I think my reasons are valid. If every character doesn't want to even talk to others...its not very much of a character in the game?
Also she wants to DM next, and its her first time so I'm trying to help her this is where it gets...more complicated
She wants the campaign to revolve around a creature that has kidnapped and devoured every child in a city. Not a small town, a huge city.So one creature has somehow eaten thousands of kids without being caught. And there is nothing the character can do it stop it or save ANY children. They are all already dead, for reasons. I told her this sounds less like an entire campaign and more the start of one, and tracking down the creature could be a few sessions worth of content...and also that maybe let the characters have at least a chance to save SOME of the kids because spending hours tracking a thing down only to find they didn't, and couldn't, make any kind of difference is kind of demoralizing. Her response was "Well maybe for you, but not everyone wants to be a hero who saves people" and yeah sure, but whos all excited by dead kids? Also one of our players wives just had her third miscarriage and two others have a baby under 1, so I feel like this is in poor taste. I feel like she just started with "Creature eating kids" and worked backwards, and some of the details shes already set up, like crime scene sketches the characters can steal from the guard captain or witness testimonies are very detailed and gruesome. I told her in general it might not land well and her response was "Thats a person problem for them, not me" and I am...really shocked.
In 16 years playing RPGs I have never run across issues like this and am totally unsure what to do.
Kick her ass out of the group?
Oh yeah, its uh, my wife
This is the most amazing buried lede
That's what she said?
altpost look what a husband and wife do behind closed doors is nobody's business
I have a sudden hankering to play a barbarian who is also educated. Like, they have CHOSEN to live outside of society, because they studied history and found nothing worth the hassle.
So like Thoreau, but without his mom doing his laundry and making his meals?
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MsAnthropyThe Lady of Pain Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the Rhythm, Breaks the RhythmThe City of FlowersRegistered Userregular
Posts
So my High Elf Farmer (still fancier than everyone except other High Elves) Fighter took the heat poison after the Party foolishly angered a green dragon. She jumped off a staircase and grabbed it's tail. Eventually it shook her off and she fell 60 feet with 4 HP.
I critted my death save twice, so I'd pop back up with 1 life and be like "HEY JERK, STILL NOT DEAD", until it finally got me unconscious and couped my gras and Bud Light died.
I'm gonna make a Boy Detective now, Rogue with Investigation and Insight and such, and a hand crossbow. Milo Beansmith, the best detective in Phandalin.
It really sounds like you may need a session 0.5, where you lay out some clearer ground rules. In my games, I'm always clear from that outset that:
1. You are heroes, and heroes are made, not born. You are fighting for something, what is up to you, at least partially, but you are fighting for something
2. You are a team. The players are taking time out of their lives to play this game together, it is not fair - borderline insulting - to not play together.
3+ Stuff about tone and off limits topics and everything else.
It doesn’t sound like anyone there is in the mind-frame to play a heroic high fantasy journey. Something set in one place with in-built allowance to be shitheads sounds about right.
Mad props if you're having fun and the rest of them are enjoying it, but there's nothing wrong with taking a break and just hanging out socially
(This is advice that had to be forcefully applied to me recently, so I understand if you think it doesn't apply)
This might be a good idea going forward. Though I would argue its possible to be a shithead in D&D and still follow a narrative. The mechanics of Powered by the Apocalypse might be simpler for them to get too.
At this point I'm riding it out, were like 5 session from the finishline and I've never been or run a campaign that actually finishes before.
I'm sorry it's happening!
For her campaign idea though, my first thought was that something was stealing the children from their dreams, via the astral plane or something. It happens to children and not adults because children are more open to dreams, whereas adults are jaded and less open. They're being stolen away so their imaginative dream energies can be used to power an inter-planal rift through which to invade the material plane. They have to go this route because powerful wards by powerful wizards have been erected eons ago to prevent large scale transport between the planes to stop such an invasion.
It's a neat story seed she has, but it sounds like she wants to write her own story, and TTRPG is a cooperative storytelling environment, no one person gets sole control. I've played in games where the DM wanted help writing a book idea they had by using the party to do some of the writing. It was never fun for anybody. She should just write it herself, she'll be happier than if the players keep ruining her story.
I actually really like the idea! Its just the hard, hard detailed focus on the gruesome child murders.
I think there's some good stuff in there too. Maybe ask what it is she wants from the hard focus on irrevocably murdering children angle, and then ask her to compare and contrast that to how she thinks the other members will take it as a method of helping her see that it's not going to go well with this group? And that's fine, not every game is for every group.
I dunno man. The fact that it's your wife makes it stickier than usual.
I guess what I'm getting at is that you suggesting "It may be a bad idea to depict child-murder to someone who's had three miscarriages" and the reaction being "That's their problem, not mine" causes me a great deal of alarm and distress.
This is going to come off as rude, I suspect, but I'm going to ask anyway; If your wife('s character?) doesn't want to play with the other people('s characters?), why is she playing? If she doesn't care about the other players having a good time, why does she want to GM?
So you've got a rogue/assassin, a wizard, a barbarian, and a ranger.
I mean it sounds like you're all set tbh.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
His Rage was essentially him yelling, “THIS. WILL. NOT. DO!” and hitting people with a polo mallet as his monocle pops out
And thats what started the fight. Last campaign me played she had a character who had a single goal: To get her kingdom back, when the game's natural course took them through the kingdom, and the other players took time to help her, at the end she was like "Oh sweet, peace I'm out!" and made a new character. That at least made some sense, being she was a queen now. And she gave the party some resources that could be spared to help them out at least.
This time I asked her "If your character was done, why not just leave?" and she said it was because she couldn't think of another character with a goal. I suggested that most people aren't so singularly minded, they might have a goal but after they achieve it they can have new goals! They can evolve and move on.
I think she likes actually playing, but not the role playing part.
This is the most amazing buried lede
who is more angry than a disgraced academic?
That's what she said?
altpost look what a husband and wife do behind closed doors is nobody's business
Lawyer up, hit the gym, etc.
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
So like Thoreau, but without his mom doing his laundry and making his meals?
...about the dead kids?
"The only real politics I knew was that if a guy liked Hitler, I’d beat the stuffing out of him and that would be it." -- Jack Kirby
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/231654/scorpions-and-shujenga-tabletop-games-folded-1000-times/p1
Mistake?
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PSN: AbEntropy
This is also my approach to RPGs.