People Who Ruin Your Desire to Play

[icyshadowlord]

I'm still playing D&D, though now I have to put up with playing Pathfinder because the people around me are too stupid to realize that PF is worse than 3.5e, and instead cover their ears whenever I explain to them WHY PF is worse (or why 3.5e and Tome are better). Thankfully one of the players has taken the hint, but there's four more who'd need to fucking learn by now.

Edited a few things.

[Rawbeard]

If you use Tome to explain why 3.5 is better, you shouldn't be suprised people get their panties twisted. Most players seem to hyperventilate the moment you try to leave the player's handbook...

There is one particular type of person that ruins my desire to play. I will explain in a little example...

Me: Ok guys, I can't really decide what to play, here are the options I came down to. What do you guys think would fit in with the group?

Guy: Those are not covered by the GM's guidelines.

Me: Thanks for your very constructive criticism, that helped a lot. Also I asked the GM first, he's ok with it if you guys are.

GM: Yeah, I'm fine with it.

Guy: Yeah, you have to stick to guidelines, it's really bad if you don't, also we already made good characters with them, no reason to change anything.

Me: What the fuck is fuck with fuck?!

Now guess what kind of people I LOVE to game with.

[icyshadowlord]

If you use Tome to explain why 3.5 is better, you shouldn't be suprised people get their panties twisted. Most players seem to hyperventilate the moment you try to leave the player's handbook...

I have enough brain cells intact to know that isn't a good idea.

When I can, I try to explain...

1. Why 3.5e is better than Pathfinder.

2. Why Tome is even better than 3.5e.

...and I usually only do the former, sparing the latter for rare moments.

[ishy]

Huh for me it is the opposite.
I hate that guy who when for example the DM tells you that it is a core only game, comes to the table with a strongheart halfling, shadowcaster with 50 homebrew fixes. Because he called the DM 50 times to ask if any of his 20 character concepts (none of which ever actually stick to the campaign rules) were allowed.

[Rawbeard]

Yeah, kinda assumed you wouldn't be stupid like that, I just felt snarky. Might be related to Guy.

Why is 3.5 better anyway? Never cared enough, since nobody seems to be playing any of them anyway. At least I can't find a group. Got severeal 4e groups though... yeah. Don't say anything, I know. It's fun as long as I don't think too hard about it. Or rather at all.

@ishy Sue me. I get sick of playing diffrently sized humans, so I usually ask to play something that was oddly colored, maybe with a lumpy forehead, so I can at least pretend to be in a bad TOS episode. If you tell me to play an elf, dwarf, or whatever, I'm going to burn your collection of grey/brown cover based shooters, you boring fuckwit.

[ishy]

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not telling you to play x. I'm saying that I hate it when everyone creates their characters according to what was stated. And then at the table you find out that one person plays with a total different ruleset.

Which I guess is not actually the opposite of what you said, so Ï was kind of wrong in my previous post.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Let's not forget the DM who accepted your character, who you asked if they wanted you to change anything, and they said no, and they immediately attempt to kill off your character because they really didn't like what you had. Seriously that kind of DM can go and eat a dick.

Story of my life.

Then there's my former DM, who has always made sure every NPC in existence treats all my characters like shit regardless of race, class or alignment as well as occasionally making me take damage for traps that I already spotted and other bullshit. To top that all off, he doubled the hostility when I had the audacity to ask him if I can play something like a holstaur paladin instead of the typical boring human paladin.

If I met him again, I'd probably beat the shit outta him with a verbal crowbar. I'm tired of seeing how everyone else is having fun playing D&D when my first experiences with the game usually fill me with more rage than joy, with the exception of that one campaign where Koumei was the MC. Thankfully my current group is fine aside from lacking proper RP skills.

Had to edit this a few times for added content and coherency.

I feel your pain. My first group bullied me until I finally cried one day (keep in mind I was 13 at the time). It was when the party (in game) had stripped my wizard naked, threw me into a makeshift boxing ring with the fighter, kept making me make saving throws every time I did something that wasn't "stand there and let the fighter pound me in the face and beg for mercy", and when I tried to get up and leave (IRL) I was shoved back down into the couch. Also, I had to poop so bad it was painful because I specifically wasn't allowed to poop in the bathroom (the DM would literally barge in after me to make sure I didn't because I wasn't allowed to poop in there. You'd think I shit all over the goddamn place judging by the way he acted and looking back I wish I would have. I would have smeared my shit on the ceiling just to prove a point.)

I left and started my own game. With blackjack and hookers.

The DM in question is now a youth minister. The fighter that bullied me in-game the worst (although everyone bullied me in game, he seemed to get a boner from it) is in jail for slapping some bitch around last I heard.

EDIT: The game was bad all over. The DM ignored me every time my action wasn't "cast Fireball". I was between 5-10 levels behind everyone (started at 1st when everyone else was 6th, by the time I levt I was 9th and everyone was 19th, keep in mind this was 1E), I was told by the party constantly that I sucked but never got to have any creatve control over my character (every choice I made was overruled by the DM, and it was almost always inferior to the choices his DMPC wizard who had all 18's and automatic max HP's did). I learned that if I did the opposite of what those clowns did, I would be a better DM than the national average.

[hogarth]

I don't like:
- Players who get off on causing trouble for the rest of the party just for grins.
- Players who like to bully the GM (e.g. whining until the GM adopts your favourite house rule).
- Players who like to bully other players (e.g. rudely telling someone else they're playing the game wrong).

[SlyJohnny]

My quota of bad Scottish/dwarven accents has been filled for this lifetime and I can stand no more.

Are you american? I swear this is an american thing. The number of Americans I've met who are utterly convinced they can pull off a completely flawless British accent is just weird.

[fbmf]

Dustin.

That's why I haven't gamed with him in a decade or so.

Game On,
fbmf

[flare22]

people who's solution to everything is spam more cannon fodder at it. im fine with people using summons and undead or followers as long as its sparingly but it gets really annoying really fast when someone has an at will summon or something similar that they use for everything

need traps disarmed/found send the cannon fodder ahead
in a battle spam cannon fodder
need a scout send cannon fodder
party hassling you for your blatant disregard of your henchmens lives
replace party with cannon fodder

its not a morale thing i just think people who can get that much cannon fodder have no good reason to be adventurers in the first place its just not an adventure without the personal risk after all.

[icyshadowlord]

So you get pissed at people playing smart instead of trying to be suicidal? It's usually the squishy wizard who uses summons in the first place, and he's SUPPOSED to be as far away from the front lines as possible either way.

[OgreBattle]

Unhygienic, slovenly people. Smelly people.

"Chaotic Evil" players

[darkmaster]

So you get pissed at people playing smart instead of trying to be suicidal? It's usually the squishy wizard who uses summons in the first place, and he's SUPPOSED to be as far away from the front lines as possible either way.

Pretty sure it's less "summon planetara to fight for you." and more, "summon Planetars to set off traps in a dungeon instead of having the party rouge search for them." Or more likely, "build a character around having hundreds of tiny men to throw at a problem until it goes away."

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Wasn't that how Robilar solved the Tomb of Horrors?

[icyshadowlord]

So you get pissed at people playing smart instead of trying to be suicidal? It's usually the squishy wizard who uses summons in the first place, and he's SUPPOSED to be as far away from the front lines as possible either way.

Pretty sure it's less "summon planetara to fight for you." and more, "summon Planetars to set off traps in a dungeon instead of having the party rogue search for them." Or more likely, "build a character around having hundreds of tiny men to throw at a problem until it goes away."

I'd rather let the expendable summoned creatures solve the problem rather than put a member of my team at risk. Unless my character was evil and/or didn't like the rogue to begin with...

[violence in the media]

I understand flare22's annoyance, but only applied to when the "good" "heroes" use the civilians and peasantry they've elected to "save" and "protect" for that end.

I once played a game session that devolved into an alignment morality argument when a Paladin of Heironeous (iirc) sent a 13 year old POW we liberated over a barricade first in order to soak up readied attacks from hobgoblin soldiers, just so he and the rest of us wouldn't eat the attacks on our turns.

[Avoraciopoctules]

What if the Good PCs are offered a plot hook, and their response is "I hire some adventurers to take care of it. This town's economy won't fix itself!"?

[violence in the media]

What if the Good PCs are offered a plot hook, and their response is "I hire some adventurers to take care of it. This town's economy won't fix itself!"?

I've done something similar, albeit in a different game from the one mentioned above. We weren't dodging an adventure, per se, but there were multiple time-sensitive things going on and we just paid a group of lower level NPCs to go take care of one of the lower level situations for us. The MC handled it pretty well, though the actual success/failure of the other group was just MTP + some dice rolls.

[squirrelloid]

What if the Good PCs are offered a plot hook, and their response is "I hire some adventurers to take care of it. This town's economy won't fix itself!"?

It's a question of how much agency the DM is willing to allow players. There's nothing wrong with hiring other adventurers just like there's nothing wrong with paying a sage for information rather than having the knowledge yourself. At some point the PCs need to be more than cannons that NPCs point at problems and fire, and then the real game becomes about how the PCs manipulate the resources at their disposal to solve problems. That may involve personally stabbing people in the face, but it may also involve persuading the clerics of Pelor that Hextor's temple really needs some face stabbing right now, or otherwise convincing groups to do things you want, wittingly or not.

I was in a campaign once that convinced an NPC group of adventurers to 'take a mission for us', and we used them as decoys to draw attention and resources.

[nockermensch]

What if the Good PCs are offered a plot hook, and their response is "I hire some adventurers to take care of it. This town's economy won't fix itself!"?

If your PCs have the resources to pay for another party, then it's not a level appropriate plot hook

[Avoraciopoctules]

I must confess that I did pull the "send some adventurers to deal with it" solution in one game, and that about spelled the end of the campaign. The MC wasn't sure what direction to take things, and we started a different game. Thankfully, everyone's gotten a lot better with the Logistics and Dragons component of things since then.

One option I find kind of appealing in such a case is giving the players the opportunity to take control of their subcontractors for the mission, giving them the chance to experience a low-level adventure if they want, while their main PCs do strategic-scale stuff in the background.

[RadiantPhoenix]

What if the Good PCs are offered a plot hook, and their response is "I hire some adventurers to take care of it. This town's economy won't fix itself!"?

Then that's an excuse for the DM to pull out some character sheets and say, "okay, you're playing those characters now, because I don't have anything else planned."

[Avoraciopoctules]

What a fascinating suggestion!

[Wiseman]

Several instances.

Once had a player who was a ruthless munchkin, and always played characters who's personality was basically "I hate everyone and my default reaction to anyone interacting with me is attack"

Another character was horribly disruptive to the game, complaining every time something didn't go his way. Eventually when the party did something he didn't like, he mind-controlled them.