Tabletop Games Thread

[Five_X]

awkward af story incoming, avert your eyes if you don't want to cringe at teenage drama









The DM's girlfriend was an unfortunate target of thirst, in this particular case from a 16 year old (she was 19 or so, I think?) who had at least the benefit of being 6'5'' and an attempt at a beard making him look slightly older; in one earlier instance, he "accidentally" spanked her with his foam sword (not an awful euphemism, thankfully) during a LARP, so things escalating had something of a precedent. Unfortunately.

One time in the summer we were doing a 12-to-12 D&D session, going on to midnight. At some point in the night when no one else was around he apparently confessed his feelings for her and told her, word for word, that she needed a "strong lover" unlike her boyfriend, the DM. He later said that being a bad drunk ran in his family because he was German, but everyone knew he'd been downing nothing but Coke the whole day. For some reason he never ended up showing up to any more LARPs or D&D sessions with us ever again. I'm pretty sure it was the DM who just kicked him out of the group, but it was a smart idea for the guy to get out anyhow because the girlfriend's older brother was in the same group.

[Zurvan]

ah, to be young and stupid

[black1blade]

That is pretty cringy although we did have a bit of relationship drama in my D&D group. It sucked and was annoying.

[Lace]

I didn't know being bad drunks was a German thing

[Saiga]

Holy hell, that's incredibly cringey Five. Why are stories of hitting on the DM's girlfriend so common? People confuse me.

@MAC I think I may disagree with you on the rules lawyering. It could just be because I only play 5E, whose rules are quite easy to understand and follow, but I think the DM shouldn't get into a situation where they need to change the rules for the hell of it. I think it's a big problem if you go against the rules in a way that your players couldn't prepare for, or disallow them doing something their character is INTENDED to do. That can just be bad DMing. I know there are cases of obvious abuse, but I think a DM should be able to defend any decision they make, even if their word is absolute.

My group often has rule debates between players and the DM, and I think it's healthy.

[mAc Chaos]

If the DM is OK with it, that's a different story. Every group tends to only follow some of these rules. At my own table, we often have some OOC banter, but I reel it back in eventually. I also am pretty open about figuring out rules, because I was learning how to play the game as I was running it. So there were a lot of times I just didn't know the rule and would ask if anyone knew, etc.

It's just that if you want to know the goal to shoot for, this is it. Or if you're going to be new and want to put your best foot forward, or are playing with a group where you aren't sure what to expect, then it helps to do things properly.

What you're describing isn't "rules lawyering" though.

Let me give you an example. I had some players when I first played that would constantly point out when a monster was different than in the monster manual. "Goblins don't have X AC! They're supposed to only have +4 attack!" That sort of thing. First of all, that's metagaming. But second it's trying to use the rules to corral the GM into running the game a certain way.

The fact is that the creatures in the Monster Manual are just templates. Every single goblin in the world isn't following that, just like every single human in the world doesn't have the same stats.

Basically they treat it like a board game where there's no flexibility for the GM to make any judgments and has to execute the game like a computer running an algorithm.

In 5e, you have less of that because the game by design leaves a lot of rules up in the air explicitly for the GM to decide. For instance, there's no rule about whether sleeping while weighed down by all your armor and gear interferes with your rest or not. In previous games, there were rules for that. The absence of rules doesn't mean you don't get tired -- it just means it's a blank left for the GM to fill in. They can add something if they want or leave it as is. Same with rules about what happens if you don't sleep; there are none, but you can choose to apply Exhaustion on your own. A rules lawyer would say there's nothing stated about sleeping in the rulebook, so there should be no rules about it, even if it leads to absurd situations where never sleeping has no penalty. It's treated like a legal contract or the rules for a competitive game where everything has to be ironclad and bulletproof.

The other variant is someone who only cares about the rules when it benefits them and always tries to use it as a weapon that way.

Either way it's annoying because it interrupts the flow of the game and kills the mood and leaves the people not involved just waiting for it to end.

The solution to that is to just debate and defend it AFTER the game.

[Five_X]

I didn't know being bad drunks was a German thing

Heroes never drink.

Holy hell, that's incredibly cringey Five. Why are stories of hitting on the DM's girlfriend so common? People confuse me.

Something something socially awkward nerds

[mAc Chaos]

its not a game of D&D without social drama

[Arashi_Leonhart]

My group's D&D sessions are about 70% shit and 30% actual gaming.

that is when we're not overcomplicating for three hours how to get over a wall the DM never intended to be an obstacle of any importance

[Five_X]

The 5th law of D&D is that if the DM designs something to be incredibly simple, the players will agonise over it like nothing else.

[mAc Chaos]

I love how opening doors is always a trainwreck in D&D.

I thought it was just a roll20 meme but then it happened offline too...

[Arashi_Leonhart]

Well, opening doors is never a problem for us. Our rogue just checks and does stuff, risk be damned.

It's pretty funny to know a rogue that has had lock jaw and violent nausea in the same session.

[Saiga]

heh, I guess I shouldn't be too worried that our sessions have quite a lot of friction then?

And MaC, I get a better idea of what you're saying now. I definitely think a DM doesn't really need to follow the rules for their monsters, NPCs, effects and stuff - and I have run into an issue where players were clearly expecting something like that, such as wanting to know what spell was being used by an NPC when I wasn't using anything from the books.

But an example of what I thought were the players being right to bring up the rules was cases where class abilities are ignored or shot down because it's not what the DM wants. The story about the cart from a couple of months back was like that - we had been kind of railroading into that situation, and several of us had abilities that would allow us to resolve the problem but were shotdown by the DM despite us wanting to use our abilities exactly how the rules allow it (like my ability to shove/move heavy objects, or the long jump rules) because it wasn't creative enough to suit the DM. He demanded that we come up with a clever solution to the problem, took away any abilities that would help, actually had no idea HOW we could solve the problem, and then blamed us for failing and saying he should have TPK'd us. We had to argue very hard just to be able to use the rules as written to let us do more than fall in a hole and die.

edit: Or we've had some DMs shoot down entire class features after a player picked them because it didn't sound reasonable to them. They've effectively just nerfed the class, that's not something you should just freely do without consideration or fair warning.

[black1blade]

I definitely believe in keeping the rules of the game fairly firmly in place however when something comes up that isn't covered by the rules, the DM should just make as fair as possible ruling on the fly then think about it after the game and see if it could have been handled differently. Messing with class abilities is ridiculous though. Like it's fine just saying you can only use classes in the core books or my world doesn't have teiflings so don't play one ect. Also instead of trying to take away abilities that can solve a problem, the DM should just make the challenges harder so that players HAVE to be smart to beat a problem. I've stopped actually thinking of ways players can get around problems and just let them come up with things so I can be surprised and have fun alongside them.

- - - Updated - - -

Also I am also one to advocate using monsters and modules close to how written especially because I run pretty lethal campaigns so the players need to be able to make educated decisions about which monsters to engage with. While the players are currently having a relatively easy time with the hill giant fort, I don't want to change the scenario by adding in more monsters. I'll try play them a bit smarter with each successive raid but they can't throw rocks and the players have got rid of most of the stone giants. This means they can pretty safely attack the fort in a tight formation next session and not have to worry about the wizard being crushed by a single thrown rock. You could argue that it makes no sense that hill giants can't throw rocks but the players made a smart tactical decision based on that information so I see no reason why I should punish them for it. Even if the hill giant fort isn't very challenging, they still have 5 giant strongholds ahead which get progressively harder, at a much faster rate than the players are going to be levelling. All those giants can also throw rocks and hit and run tactics wont be as easy to pull off due to them being mostly underground ect.

[Trubo]

The 5th law of D&D is that if the DM designs something to be incredibly simple, the players will agonise over it like nothing else.

I dunno, seems to be for me that the start of a new campaign means that it has a 50% chance of everyone dying because lol crits and bad initiative rolls. Most recent example is when a pack of normal kobolds crit knocked out the GM's guiding character, the two people that went into melee to help the NPC Warrior, and the NPC warrior, all before anyone got to do anything. Highest initiative roll was mine at 12 or something, and I was the only person without a bonus to initiative.

[mAc Chaos]

Oh, I didn't know you played. What edition? What's your game like?

And the DM just outlawing basic stuff left and right is just bad DMing, yeah. (Well, unless that's the point of the game.) But that doesn't mean the DM shouldn't have authority. It just means that DM should git gud.

A lot of the rules litigating comes down to not trusting the DM. They try to use the rules as a shield to protect themselves from bad DMing. But no rule will save you from a bad DM. A DM is like a benevolent dictator; it's up to them to run things best for everyone, but a few laws aren't going to stop a dictator.

If the DM wants to be a dick then nothing's going to stop that. All the rules in the world won't save you when he drops d1000 wolves on you while you're asleep.

If that's how it is, then you just shouldn't play with that DM in the first place. You should only play with DMs you can trust enough to follow.

[Saiga]

@black1blade That sounds reasonable to me, however the whole "don't think of a solution, let players find it" thing can backfire unless you're going to be lenient about them trying weird things. Because sometimes you might come up with a situation they actually can't solve. Just flat out impossible with all the abilities they have available. That's when being a strict DM is just going to be no fun for anyone.

@Trubo the earlier levels are insanely deadly due to spike damage, my last session with level one characters had a CR1 monster hit 18 damage (thankfully) on an NPC, and that wasn't even a crit. I think I'd only use them as a tutorial for new players, because you have very little options to choose from and get confused by. I think level 3 is the real starting point for characters, as that lets you incorporate sub-class choices into your backstory and start playing as the archetype you intended.

@mAc Oh I totally agree you can't stop a bad DM, and I know DM's NEED to have that authority. They just also need to think about the ramifications of actually using it.

With this player/DM, that's not really possible unless I just stop playing. This is the only group I have, and I have some good friends in it, including my best friend. I want to continue gaming with them, but we're not going to stick to one DM - even though I'm now the permanent DM for the current campaign, we've already got two players running modules back to back after this, and so we'll always have a rotation of DMs between campaigns. He is really pushy about getting another chance to DM, and is already unhappy about having to wait for the others until he gets another turn. So I can't exactly avoid his DMing if I want to stick with the group, even if I know at least one other player doesn't want him to DM either (there was a former player who also didn't want that, but he just quit).

It actually came up pretty recently - that evil campaign mini-adventure we got to do because our Wizard is in bloody Canada finished because THAT DM (our Rogue) just went to America. I mentioned to the group I had the next one-shot ready, as I said back when the Wizard originally left, and this guy (our Bard) said that he had assumed he was DMing the next one and I can't just take that position. I explained I had already prepared for it, and had told people in advance when he had not said anything about DMing. He argued that he made it clear he wanted to DM again, and he really wants to do so, and it's unfair when I will be DMing soon anyway. This happened when the other players left, and I checked timetables to find our Wizard was back only a week before our Rogue so I contacted him to see if he'd even WANT to do a session on the first week he gets back. He was up for it, I told the group that I and the Bard had plans for a session, he accused me of deciding I was the DM again and trying to hijack things. He kept arguing that I was being unfair to him not allowing him to DM - I maybe should have backed down, but I was annoyed to set aside a scenario I'd already written and didn't like how demanding he was being. Our Wizard said we should present our ideas and vote on them, the Rogue said flip a coin instead so there's no bad blood. I didn't really want it to come to that and thought if he see my side of it, it wasn't worth pursuing and I'd just let him have it, but our Wizard said he actually had family stuff on and we'd just wait for the Rogue to get back for the main campaign and both of us could use our one-shots later.

That kind of got vent-y, but my point is, this is not a situation I can really avoid if I'm staying with the group. He's going to continue DMing through oneshots, and once both modules are done he wants to run an ongoing, no-planned-ending campaign (which seems unfair when he asked to cut others' campaigns short).

[Trubo]

Anyone have an online game that's in need of a player? Could use something to do beyond reading trashy LNs.

[Saiga]

I've been wanting to start an online game to try the medium, so I'd be up to start something if we can get timezones to match.

Would also like to one day try out this homebrew system http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...-Skills-Skills

[black1blade]

I don't actually have any 5e books but I am potentially interested. One big problem I have with 5e is how emphasized the ability scores are. The idea that a level 1 figher with 18 str is way better at hitting their foes than a much higher level fighter with 10 str is silly. However yeah there are problems with removing ability scores like making everyone more versatile.