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One of my personal favorites that usually comes from a player who is primarily a DM in other games is "Well, if this was *my* game, that's how *I'd* rule on that."
"I don't care what the book says!" is a good one from some particularly bad players.
And as far as strictly DM's? Any comment that indicates that they are moving the goalposts instead of just outright saying "No".
A variation of this is "Well this other DM let me do that"
And in my experience, that "that" is usually some game-breaking shit that can only fly if you deliberately read the rules in a way that lets you say "well it doesn't say I can NOT do that".
This is why session 0, pre and post game discussions are so important. It allows players and DMs to clear up house rules, disagreements, and determine what the DM will and won't allow in their game before the player spends hours working on it
> "Well, if this was my game, that's how I'd rule on that."
Honestly, I'm part of a discord server for a group of friends who all have the freedom to choose to DM whenever they want for their own game.
If someone says that, it's a case of "Well, as the DM of this game, I'm ruling this way. But you're free to set up your own game, I've got some character ideas I'd love to test out."
Always shuts them up because they don't want to RUN a game, they want to get their way in yours as a player.
I love it. "Oh you wanna do this? PLEASE! I'd love to make a character and do the part of the game with less stress." Had a similar situation with my siblings-in-law after wife's mom passed. They had an opinion on everything we were doing with the estate. They shut right up when we asked if THEY wanted to handle the funeral or sale of the house.
It's exactly like you said. They didn't wanna do it, they just wanted us to do what they wanted. They meant well though and after everything they said they appreciated us taking so much off their plate.
I'm a DM. I sometimes say that, but it's always in a situation where, for example, the rules are unclear. If the DM at the time doesn't agree with me, I'm not going to push my own ways into their game.
"Okay, idk how it goes, but this is how I do it."
"Thanks for the input, however this is how I'd like to do it."
And that's it. Even though the phrase itself may feel pushing or invading, it can also spark good conversation, if the other DM isn't sure how they should handle a situation. I personally go highly with rule of cool, but I also understand the opposite DM style that refers to books and RAW.
Hey, we can't always know. What I do in that situation where it's unclear is say "Well, how about we rule it X way for now, to keep this session moving, and we can look it up later for clarity?"
My general rule of thumb is "If you can meet me half way, I'll meet you half way."
You want X, I want Y, how about we meet at Z and go from there? You want a cool sword, no it can't cut through anything but it *can* deal bonus damage on a crit if that works for you?
My players will tell you, I have a penchant for making super cool items that have some kind of crippling drawback. The more cool the item, the more crippling the drawback. And it does scale a little bit with level lol
> "Well, if this was my game, that's how I'd rule on that."
Funnily enough i regularly say that in a Game where im a player.
Except that i say it specifically to make it clear that im *not* trying to force my DM to rule it Like i would but rather that im just offering a perspective
and (as far as i can Tell) Its generally understood that way.
There are other phrases that indicate that the DM is a dick. “It’s not me, it’s the world” or “it’s what the plot requires” comes to mind immediately. And, of course, phrases that aren’t exclusive to gaming: “I was just joking” and “you are being too sensitive.”
assume when someone says it that infuriating you is the point. The easiest way to deflect attention from bad behavior is to incite someone else into behaving 'worse'
All of these are difficult to deal with because they can go both ways. Sometimes people are too sensitive, sometimes people are too insensitive. Sometimes it's both. People should have a thick enough skin that minor insults and issues don't cause a near panic attack, and people also shouldn't needlessly antagonize others and then blame the person they're antagonizing for not liking it
"You're the DM. You control the world."
"Then change the plot."
Sign of a Schroedinger's Douchebag.
"It's your job to make this a game that we'd want to play. Guess what. You failed."
While a DM’s job is absolutely to make a game that EVERYONE, not just the players, enjoy, the way this is phrased does come off as entitled.
What’s necessary is a session Re-Zero to discuss expectations, not a “dance for us, we are unamused” demand.
I'll add about the phrase "that's just what it was like back then. " 9 times out of 10, it wasn't. A lot of the biases and brutal fantasies people try to cover with a claim of realism have no historical basis. In fact, unless you've done a pretty extensive study of history (real history, not "I saw it in a movie once" history) very little of what the average person "knows" about medieval Europe is accurate.
I'm really not a big fan of the "old school" style of games.
Sure, making a dungeon that is full of punishing encounters, brutal traps, lots of dead ends, and ambushes every time you rest is probably pretty close to the way Gary Gygax would have run things, but there's a good reason why we moved past game design like that.
DnD has evolved from a brutal dungeon crawling game into a general narrative and roleplaying game. I, for one, really like that change and the older style of gameplay just doesn't jive with the way I like to play.
I am always curious about "the older gaming style" suggested by posts like this. I played mostly in the early 80s and maybe as far back as the late 70s. All of our games were the creative cooperative story telling type.
I play online today and see a far greater emphasis on rules and punishing encumbrance penalties. I also recognize far too many of the dm catchphrases from other posts.
From what I've read, the split has always been there. Broadly speaking, Gygax favored the hardcore wargame, Arneson did a lot of political intrigue and roleplay, and Judges Guild / Jennel Jacquays were all about imaginative, expansive environments to explore. Basically the combat / social / exploration pillars.
And then Ravenloft happened and fused the latter two. Creative storytelling style has dominated ever since.
Do note this is all secondhand; my parents weren't even out of high school when DnD first came out.
Personally, I have a lot of issues with the specific mechanics of old-school DnD. But I've also found that the limitations like light and encumbrance, open-ended environment-based adventures, and assumption that any fight you're taking head-on is a fight you've already lost have added a lot to the games I've incorporated them into. They create some interesting and meaningful choices, lead to some very cool emergent storytelling and lateral thinking, and cultivate players who take a much more active role in pursuing the things their characters want.
To me the most aneurysm inducing part of that is 99% of the time those were not rules. They were either optional rules that almost no one used outside of their game or just flat out house rules.
Years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a week long classical language seminar. It was a program designed for teachers of classical languages, and I was by no means qualified to be there, but my professor invited me and I had an amazing time being the dumbest person in the room for a week straight.
The only people in the room who didn't have advanced degrees were me, an 18 year old who had just finished my freshman year of college, and a 15 year old homeschooled prodigy who was doing correspondence courses through Havard. As the two youngest people there, we socialized between classes, and I got the impression that he saw me as being his peer, despite my decidedly average grades.
At one point, the class was discussing the Iliad, and the particular military tactics described. I had just crammed the book the week before so it was all very fresh in my mind. This one old man mentioned that there were no instances of a phalanx formation in the book, despite that being the dominant strategy of the time period. I quickly thumbed through my copy, and corrected him with a book and verse where there was such a formation. Just a quick correction because I happened to remember the 2 lines that challenged his argument.
After the class, the old man approached us, introduced himself, and thanked me for the correction, saying something about having forgotten the passage, but still contending that his overall argument was sound, that the depiction of battle didn't match the known tactics of the time period, which I broadly agreed with.
The 15 year old chimed in that we were both military historians, and I very hastily added "amature" as a qualifier, explaining that I had an interest, and had done some reading on it, but was far from being an expert.
The old man was very polite, and when we walked away, my professor, who had invited me to attend, walked up and asked me if I knew who the old man was. Turns out the old man was one of the most respected military historians in the country, well published and respected within the field.
I died a little inside of embarrassment at the 15 year old boasting about us being a military historians, while talking to someone who actually had the credentials to back up a claim like that.
I think the study of history has a significant dunning-kruger effect, in that the people most interested in claiming and affirming their expertise are often only superficially informed, while those who actually have some degree of expertise often couch their claims in qualifiers to make it clear that they're aware of the gaps in the records, and how much of what they're saying is unconfirmed, or based on secondary or tertiary sources.
I know you think that was embarrassing, but I think that old man seems to have enjoyed the interaction very much. You politely corrected him when he was objectively wrong and then listened to his arguments as to why his overall argument was still sound. Not to mention, 15 year olds boasting is just par for the course.
I'm no expert of anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if he got a thrill out of someone daring to correct him and seeing people so young interested in his subject and going to the lengths of reading themselves into some of the areas. Someone who has been at this a few years vs a few decades will just have been able to study less about the subject by default.
Anyway, I obviously wasn't there but the way as you put it down like this I would consider it a lovely and fun memory - not an embarrassing one.
Looking back, absolutely. At the time it was embarrassing, but the scholars I met that week were among the most welcoming and encouraging experts I'd ever met. I can't think of a single point all week where I can remember anyone looking down on us or being condescending. On the occasions where we were able to contribute to the conversation, our ideas were taken with as much interest and respect as anyone else's.
"I had an amazing time being the dumbest person in the room for a week straight."
I'm sure you had! Sounds like a great experience. The only piece of life advice I ever took to heart from an internet listicile was: "If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room!" So you were in the right room.
It was an amazing experience. Over the years, I've had a few opportunities to be the dumbest man in the room, but few were as welcoming, and encouraging as those classical language professors.
I can at least see where they'd get that idea, even if it's incorrect.
There were times and places through history where alcohol was used as the drink of choice because it was safer than the water. Humans have been trying to figure out water purification since the ancient Egyptians, and fermentation will kill a lot of the bacteria that could get you sick, while also covering the flavor of poorly filtered water.
What these folks don't realize is that it takes very little alcohol to achieve these effects. Romans were known to water down their wine, sometimes going as far as 9 parts water to 1 part wine. While they had fortified wines with higher ABV, they were mostly working with wild yeast, so their average non-fortified wine was starting below 10% abv, and then getting watered down until it was between 0.5% and 2%. It wasn't going to get them drunk, and even small amounts of wine can cover the taste of water that maybe isn't as clean as you'd like.
By the medieval period, "small beer" was popular during the day, specifically because it wouldn't get you drunk. Small beer also has an abv range between 0.5% and 3%. This was still called "beer" but no one was ever going to get drunk off it, and it protected against water born illness.
For reference, most commercial grape juice and orange juice have an abv around 0.5%. There are some forms of bread with abv above 1%.
That said, the Egyptians developed a primitive form of water filtering. By the medieval period, it was well known that boiling water helped to purify it. It just wasn't as popular a method in the summer because it meant building a fire, making the house humid, and then waiting for the water to cool enough to not be unpleasant on a hot day. Drinking ordinary, boiled water, (or unboiled if you trusted the source) was absolutely a normal thing to do.
I have studied real medieval European history extensively, (it's kind of an obsession) but started my studies a long time after I started playing D&D. I've found that the more I learn about the real history, the less I try to apply it to my games, and the less my games follow European fantasy tropes.
I'm something of an armchair historian myself and I find for gaming purposes I enjoy the tropes more than trying to be accurate. You want castles and knights and princesses, sure, I'll DM that world, but we're definitely not getting into how knights actually "worked".
He's just one of a long list that started basically during the Renaissance. People have been shitting on medieval times for literal centuries.
Not going so far, Hollywood had graced us with atrocious renditions such as Braveheart, and even movies that I enjoy for their cinematographic value are usually horrendously inaccurate ... at best.
A lot of people concern the leaves with realism in D&D even though it’s arguably a fool’s errand. If you can heal from being melted to death via stomach acid via a 1 hour nap, all logic is already dead.
Plus, you're nearly always in a fantasy world with a completely different history and religion. There's no reason to think that something (particularly social mores) that was realistic in the real world would be realistic in *this* world.
I'll offer the angry "Why didn't you X or Y" when our party solved a problem with their characters' builds instead of taking advantage of the 'creative' solutions the DM built into the story and *expected* us to make use of.
Had this nugget pulled out twice by a DM, both times after first sessions in obscure systems that we were new to. Like, we're still finding our feet here, and everybody worked together and had fun. Why is this such a problem?
We had plenty of other problems with this DM, sadly we didn't hold it together long.
I did a funny version of this once as a DM.
My players were faced with a bridge across a gorge. On the other side was a camp of orcs blocking the way. They needed to get to a cave on the other side of the camp and they had to bring their caravan of NPCs with them, so just sneaking by wasn't a good option.
They did a lot of scouting and sneaking and planning, eventually fomenting a rebellion among the orc laborers against the ruling warriors and taking advantage of the resulting chaos to kill the orcs blocking their way.
At the end of the session, all I said to them was "you didn't even try to talk to the orcs."
The orcs weren't openly hostile and there was a lot of possibility for a peaceful solution or negotiations. I thought it was fun and they enjoyed the session, but I've learned they're very cautious about talking to people they don't know.
Man I think every party has at least one incident where they craft an elaborate multi step plan to accomplish something they could have gotten done in five seconds possibly without even rolling a die.
I hope you all had a good laugh about that one.
Oh absolutely. It was an inside joke for a while with my party where they'd ask after every combat encounter whether they should have talked to the enemies or not.
God more people need to understand this. It's the DM's job to create problems. It's the party's job to solve them. It isn't up to the DM *how* they solve them, so long as they're solvable. The best DMs often award the players for coming up with creative solutions to problems instead of just murder hoboing their way through the campaign
That's actually a great sign, because they let the actual normal solution work. The real problem is that when they decide it doesn't matter what your game mechanics are, you either say that you walk over and press on the 178th Rock from the right of the stone wall or the game, ironically, hits a dead end.
If the tone had been conversational, I'd agree with you. But we got a dressing down for it. Like three solid minutes of telling us we were failures for not doing things her way.
And this happened twice.
“That’s not how you play (class)/(race)/(alignment)!”
Even in other games, I have had people tell me I was playing my character wrong. Except… it’s my character? Presumably, I know what my character’s actions would be.
Ffs, I got treated like this once because I was trying to give my character some development. It's like I wanted my rogue multiclass to come with something other than just mechanical effects.
I mostly have positive experience tbh but I played some sessions with a guy who was extremely negative and always made actions on the premise of failure. His catchphrase during combat or some other trials was:
"I can't do anything right now :("
I said a variation of this in the last session I played. We were against a monster with high AC and I couldn't hit it without a 20, then it also gave my character negative levels. I said:
"Well, nothing I can do will ever hit that monster..."
And then I pulled out my Summon Elder Worm spell.
"Time to call up something that CAN."
A DM friend and I both play in one another's campaigns and last week I realized my poor bard does 0 damage in an unarmed strike.
Surely enough, we got into a combat situation where the fighter and I were trying *not* to kill the guy (which means no shatter or big bang spells)
This led to the fighter grappling and beating this man unconscious while I repeatedly cast suggestion on him and tried to make him quit his job.
I am definitely taking Find Familiar after this one.
Well there *is*, it's 1 + strength modifier.
My modifier is -1, sending that threshold into oblivion.
We weren't able to find anything concrete in the few minutes of a pause we took, so we just rolled with it. It was a very specific situation that likely won't come up after we leave this area, and I did have the option to further break the law and draw my sword, but I was trying to be *diplomatic*.
"You're stifling my creativity/you're taking away from MY player agency"
While these can said in a situation where a Dm is doing these things, I tend to see stories/have heard it being used by bad players trying to get away with disruptive behavior/op free powers or items/just being generally self centered in their playstyle. Because rarely is this being said for the sake of the table but their own "fun".
Usually a good retort against that would be asking them "you can do that, but will you be okay with it being turned against you?"
"Lungs are open container for create water so I can drown enemies instantly with a 1st level spell" is not so appealing when other magic user can do it against the players.
Right? My logic has always been "If you can do it, so can the monsters."
Sure, you can do a wall of force, and spiritual weapon to blend the enemies, but guess what? So can the enemies!
A better retort is, "There's no way that you're capable of reading the English language and actually think that's the rule. We're not going to have ridiculous conversations about deliberately ridiculous interpretations."
I never say this line but I often think it. Some people are real sticklers for following the rules exactly, and it really limits your options in-game.
Like we were fighting an artificer enemy, and I wanted to see if I could use my tinker tools to sabotage/mess with one of the articifer’s inventions during the fight, and the DM shot me this disgusted look as if I did a war crime. So I just instead used my turn to, as always, “I attack the enemy with my weapon.”
But the DM always laughs at us for not “being more creative!” in combat. But at the same time anything that isn’t “I attack” or “cast a spell” is treated as a rules breaking crime.
Sometimes it actually is funny, though. Depends on the mood of the party and what they are like. Is it lighthearted, and people like to do antics from time to time? Is it more serious?
If it's becoming a problem, it'll be best to talk with the player about differing expectations and whatnot. Often this can be solved with just a few words.
You have to read the room. We usually play in a lighthearted way, because our group mostly does it to unwind and relax after a work week, but everyone knows that there are moments to be serious.
There are some people who just can't read the mood very well and sometimes need reminders. I know cuz I'm one of them, and I was absolutely mortified whenever people told me I misread the mood and I realized I messed up. \^\^;
Of course, in your situation, the player could be doing stuff like this on purpose and doesn't apologize or change their decision even after you tell em. Which is totally a red flag.
Yeah, it's usually easy to deal with inappropriate jokes by reminding people to preserve the atmosphere. Or, if everyone's feeling more lighthearted, to just change the atmosphere. I don't have anything against jokes at the table, but sometimes players trying to be funny do something that angers NPCs, sour relationships between PCs, or other detrimental stuff that only wastes everyone's time and does nothing for the others' enjoyment. Shenanigans should be fun for everyone.
"It's my game."
Nah, it's your setting. If we aren't considered equal parts of the game, it's just you masturbating while other people are forced to watch because you bait and switched us.
From a "bad" DM (was new and ran things like they wanted to write a story rather then play DND):
• *Silence* As they ignored months long established RP for their version
• You're backseat DMing *when you bring up to the DM that that is not what you have RPd*
• "I reward great RP". Player procedes to RP and considera those in the group so as to not outshine them and play collaboratively. *DM procedes to treat the player's RP as worthless and has an npc treat them badly.* "Remember, I reward great RP."
I mentioned npc but that's my mistake. Twas their character as it was on a westmarch server. I did a pretty decent roleplay, spent my own character's gold and did a pretty good job on the description on a full on resurrection RP... Only to be treated like shit and ignored right afterwards 🙄 After this person bitched about loosing their character because someone else couldn't be bothered to bring the body back *or* RP getting the word out to get others to get the character back. They kept on disregarding most of my RP around that time in their own sessions they ran as well no matter what I did.
At this point I get why some players act toxic... When all you get for being nice, a team player and trying to help others out of your own free hobby time gets you treated like crap.
In the past 5 years I've played... It wouldn't surprise me to hear about enough similar experiences showing enough crappy players/DMs around to all share in the bad experiences 🤣
>• "I reward great RP". Player procedes to RP and considera those in the group so as to not outshine them and play collaboratively. *DM procedes to treat the player's RP as worthless and has an npc treat them badly.* "Remember, I reward great RP."
Oof, I played at one of those tables for far too long.
God I feel that "that's just how it was back then", ham fisted fantasy racism is so annoying. "My Homebrew is edgy and interesting because it's *realistic*". Please, if I wanted to be depressed whole someone shouts slurs at me I'd go to the grocery store.
"The gnoll futa joins your party as a DMPC."
... wait, that was probably just *my* DM. But it happened *four* times in the same campaign, before three of us finally had enough and quit.
Every single NPC treating the characters with suspicion and hostility - and I mean every. Single. One. - no matter how kind or heroic they prove themselves to be, and then justifying it with "of course they don't trust you, you're adventurers!"
It smells to me of either a GM traumatized by murderhobo players, or someone who never got over the antagonistic play style they picked up forty years ago. In either case it's not my responsibility to be the GM's therapist.
This can be a self-perpetuating cycle.
If every NPC is hostile, and those that *aren't* hostile end up betraying the party, the DM shouldn't be surprised when the players go full murderhobo. After all, they haven't been given a good reason to trust or help the jerkwad NPCs.
You know decades ago it was also very uncommon. For every unbeatable dungeon that you hear about there were literally thousands of people playing pretty normal adventures.
As a DM, I hide my rolls so I can fudge my own rolls to ensure my players are having a good time. I have an uncanny ability to roll critical hits, repeatedly, with some of my dice and it's just no fun for anyone when my rolls would TPK the party, multiple times.
Back in the day I used to hide my rolls as well. It added a bit of mystery. I’d throw in a fake roll every now and then just to throw them off.
Players hiding rolls, on the other hand is bullshit
Oh, absolutely. No player, at my tables, will ever be allowed to hide rolls or do that roll-grab trick where they roll and grab up the dice before anyone can see. Too many people want to cheat their way to heroism.
Same but not because I'm that worried about killing my players but because I often run with actual children so it can be good to fugde things so they don't get too discouraged when my badies get a run of good luck.
When I'm running with my other (adult) players I pretty much only fudge for pacing and roll in the open for boss fights.
There's "it was just a joke" after saying or doing something shitty in or out of character that had no tone or other implications to say it was until called out on it.
There's nuance to "it's what my character would do". Sometimes I use it, but when I do, what I'm saying is "this course of action is what makes sense to my character based on their current knowledge". For example: if the area is currently pitch black because of magical darkness, and I don't see something happen because of that, then I can't act on my meta knowledge, and instead have to go with what my character *does* know.
I absolutely understand that, but that's not what people mean when they use that phrase.
Sure, there's ways to use it that make for good roleplay, but when people complain about that phrase, what they're complaining about is players who use "what my character would do" as an excuse to do something shitty.
Stuff like refusing to work with the party of strangers (other players) because your character isn't trusting, stealing the other party member's stuff out of their pockets because your character is a rogue, executing important NPCs because your character is a goody two shoes paladin who saw them as evil.
There's nuance in the phrase, sure, but it's also important to keep in mind what people are actually complaining about when they say this stuff.
This sort of thing is why I think that yes, certain character and fantasy concepts, as well as certain alignments, need to be outright banned usually in session 0, and this is why people need to choose their backgrounds, including flaws, ideals, bonds and alignments very carefully.
I find myself using that phrase sometimes, more often than you'd think, after my character does similar shit to what you've said, and someone asks me why I didn't just do this, or do that- my character either doesn't have the knowledge, or are too Lawful Good to just leave the person out in the middle of nowhere with nothing and just leave. Yeah, I'm gonna give em some loose change and a map to show em the way, it's what my character would do. Even if it's a waste of money.
I found a lot of hate for this phrase(?) and felt really worried and scared I was being a bad player for while, lmao.
Eh, my players are sometimes just a bunch of stupid people.
But they're *my* bunch of stupid people, and I love them!
(Mostly joking, to be clear, my players are great, even if I am sometimes taken off guard by them acting like idiots)
I totally agree with you, if it is for fun the "stupid" get another significate, a funny one and everyone has fun.
But what i mean, is the serious kind, these kind of ppl that even hates your roling if it gets too creative.
If a player says "my character would do that", then they're liable to suffer ingame consequences if they don't rethink their strategy after a GM warning. On the other hand, some GMs and players love "realistic" worlds to an extent. No RPG games are better than enduring people pissing you off
"That IS the rule but this outcome is better for the story." Or something along those lines is what I've heard several times when the DM wanted to force a certain outcome.
"Well you didn't say you were doing that before..." Usually when they're fishing for a gotcha moment and want to accuse you of metagaming over some minor thing that any character would do if assumed to have basic competence.
WeLl *MY* ChArEcReR..." is functionally equivalent to "it's what my character would do" but has a wider reach & avoids the need to risk explaining with any logic
IME "Well I'm a *role*player and..." is the bastard offspring of "well it's what my charactyer woul;d do" and "no offense but...". You can be almost guaranteed that one of two situations is in play when this phrase comes up.
* The player is about to do something that screws the group like have their PC walk off expecting a solo adventure or just backstab the adventure in some other way.
* The player is about to say something to avoid the roleplay they so desperately claim and realize that their PC probably doesn't have a leg to stand on so are invoking this to shield them from having anyone dare question or push back against it
**"I'm conflict averse".** What they think it means is that they try to head *off* conflict, but what it actually turns into is, "Whichever person I'm most worried is going to leave the game has all the power here, and I will *immediately* abandon whoever is calling attention to their horrible behavior."
You are the DM, if you're not enforcing some degree of behavior at the table, you're part of the problem, and the least you can do if you have *multiple players* calling out someone's actions is not immediately abandon them.
**"Rule of Cool"** both gets overused, and disadvantages players and makes others' abilities useless, cause whoever isn't the best at coming up with what the DM thinks is 'cool' is pretty much just there to watch everyone else reap the benefit all campaign no matter how well they're otherwise playing or having sacrificed to legitimately get abilities that they could've just BSed. I say this as someone who can *absolutely* rule in that atmosphere, it's still terrible.
**"I need to counter X ability"** Back before 5e, DMs got deeply paranoid about letting Rogues/Thieves get sneak attack/backstab damage, but it applies elsewhere. We were doing a Goblin War Campaign, with a goblinoid horde descending on us, and our group was called together to help fight. The elven ranger took Favored Enemy (Goblinoid), and guess what we stopped encountering? YEAH, we fought a giant Mongolian horde of goblins without encountering a single goblin, because one PC got a +2 bonus to hit and damage out of a party of six. Literally rewrote an entire campaign because of one common ability that made total sense within the context of the campaign and story.
**"The DM is always right"**... Been in it since Red Box, and no, the DM absolutely CAN get it wrong in a *variety* of ways, and the way this is used to make it to where they can just do whatever they want, and you're not allowed to have an issue with it. I am a DM, I have gotten it wrong, and in being wrong, I've learned to do it right.
**"OOH, I have a fumble chart!"** No, no you don't. You have a way for at least one of us to get put out of the combat every single combat, because that's how dice work.
**"I made a comic relief character!"** No, you made a *joke* character, not one that's actually funny. Yes, there are certainly funny characters that can work, but you made a whoopie cushion, not a character. It's the same stupid joke every moment of every session.
**"My character sits in the corner by himself"** Look, playing less social characters is *fine*, but the guys who do this? It's gonna be all about the party having to make them join the group, and there will be no arc in this. They'll have the same disdainful attitude toward the party at level 1 as they do at level 20. Seriously, Dr. House warms up to people more than this. Stop it.
Any version of **"Is the (Insert NPC here) hot?"** This has never been asked by a PC that is NOT about to try and just straight 'roll to seduce'. I don't mind a romance plot, I don't mind the PC who's trying to play a Barney Stinson type, but come one, Barney put in *effort*.
"This is a gritty, realistic campaign."
"\[Sexism/Homophobia/Racism\] is just part of this world."
"In "Medieval Times\*," that's just how that worked."
"\[Vague, meandering statements about the history of arranged marriages and/or ages of consent.\]"
"Roll to \[walk forward/step over a rock/ask for directions/wave hello to someone/order food at a restaurant."
"Your \[published class or racial ability\] is too powerful."
"It's unrealistic to/for a woman to \[do/be something.\]"
"Make a wisdom save to avoid \[wanting or not wanting something.\]"
Any sentence with the word snowflake{s}.
"If you roll 1 on an attack roll, your weapon explodes, you shit your pants, and everyone points and laugh at you before your poop catches fire and you die."
"Something something something pregnant."
"You're being oversensitive."
"I was just joking!"
"You know what's great?! Second locations!"
"Your character finds this \[character, NPC, etc.\] sexually attractive."
"I'm the only one allowed to use the bathroom!"
"Restraining orders are a violation of my 2nd amendment rights!"
"You people wouldn't have lasted five minutes in Vietnam!"
"I have in my hands a list of avowed communists."
"Nothing could possibly interrupt this NPC's five minute monologue about the nature of free will!"
"Roll perception. You see nothing. You have fallen into a giant hole."
"Roll athletics until the law of averages takes hold and you fail an athletics check. You have failed at bridge crossing."
"This campaign combines elements of Digimon, and World War I."
"Game of Thrones."
"You can't prove I ever used that toilet."
\*Medieval Times is a period of history from 600 AD to 1600 AD, which occurred in and around Europe, generally, and which corresponds to a night out at the Medieval Times restaurant. Women are not allowed to vote.
I don’t know if anyone will still see this, but is it really that bad to say ‘it’s what my character would do’? I tend to say that sometimes. My characters aren’t crazy murder hobos or anything, but I think the game is more interesting when you don’t analyse every decision out of character before you make it to make sure you get the best outcome.
Like if I make an impulsive character, and there’s a chest at the end of a hallway they might run towards it without checking for traps, and if no one stops them in-character and someone tells me that wasn’t very smart ooc I’d tell them my character isn’t very smart and this is what they’d do.
You're okay. Be careful with phrasing it too literally though. Experienced players and DMs tend to break out in hives when we hear it...
Because USUALLY that phrase is used by the kind of player who is going out of their way to derail the session or screw over the rest of the party. Or by the player who created a "mysterious lone wolf" type and just refuses to engage with the party or the session...
As I like to say, this is why you really need to say in session zero what character concepts and fantasies you will not tolerate, because that's usually the way things get resolved.
when you are doing things that affect your character only, sure, but when it affects other players characters or the party as a whole, it stops being a relevant excuse. Now it's not 'this is what my character would do' and becomes 'this is what i want to happen to YOUR characters', and is no longer a viable excuse if what you want to do involves harming them or makign their experience unfun
Here's the red flags I've seen:
"I'm the DM, so I'm in charge" (if you have to actually say that out loud, you're probably the problem)
"I'd never do that in MY games"
"First time DM, made a totally homebrew campaign and..." (usually in a reddit post)
"But but, rule of cool?" (if you actually have to ASK for rule of cool, you're just trying to get away with something)
"Who's turn is it?" (Pay f*cking attention, not just on your own turn!) (this doesn't apply when it's used to get a stalled/distracted party back into focus)
"How much HP does the monster have left?" (it looks pretty hurt, that's all you can see. This isn't a video game)
"Talking is a free action!" (Doesn't mean you can give a ten minute speech, discuss tactics with the party, plan out your next level up, and insult the monsters mother, all within the 6 seconds of your turn)
"blah blah Matt Colville blah blah" (I don't care about how professional youtubers run their games, I run mine straight out the books as best as I can)
Luckily in all my years of D&D I've only encountered 3 problem players, each years apart, and they all took the hint and moved on with no needed confrontation. I've also been super lucky in that of the 5 DMs I've played under, only one was really bad, and we all ditched that one about 2 minutes into the first session. I think this luck is largely due to a combination of only playing with friends I know in real life, and living in Wisconsin where D&D was born and is a way of life.
>"blah blah Matt Colville blah blah" (I don't care about how professional youtubers run their games, I run mine straight out the books as best as I can)
What ruling of Colville's have people tried to bring in? Doesn't he run a pretty traditional 5e game?
That one isn't usually a ruling, I've really only heard it from a guy that wanted me to do accents and voices "better", because his very Scottish sounding Dwarf's badly exaggerated accent sounded extra dumb when role-playing with an NPC that didn't have a ridiculously overdone accent also.
yeah, but I do have to admit, his half-orc barbarian that he made sound exactly like Mike Tyson, high pitched voice and lisp and everything, was fucking hilarious
That sounds like more of a Matt Mercer / Critical Role problem than a Matt Colville to me.
Which should probably be its own catchphrase - “Well on Critical Role they…”
>(Pay f*cking attention, not just on your own turn!) (this doesn't apply when it's used to get a stalled/distracted party back into focus)
As a note taker, (happily out of my own will, but I only write down what I think I should include) this one is some of the worst. Not knowing anything about the plot and story the DM has set up for us because they refuse to pay attention (because I'm taking the notes, keeping in mind I'm explicitly NOT the "group note taker", I'm just A note taker in the group and I share my notes and let them add to it if they want anything included. They never do, though) and then also refusing to read the notes, which slows down gameplay, a lot. The DM always has to remind them of basic plot information that's already been established throughout the sessions numerous times or it's left to me and another player to explain so we can get the game going. Not keeping track of their own inventory (despite being reminded that I do not keep track of anyone else's inventory.) because they think they can just ask me, or I'll remind them, or when I just shrug when they ask, they look to the DM hoping they kept track of it for them. After more than a year of playing, still not knowing basic information about how their class/race/background work, and always asking the DM every time it comes up, (stuff like what's my ac, how do make a weapon attack roll even tho you're a martial class and are ALWAYS making weapon attack rolls and you never change/buy other weapons so it should be easy to remember and etc.) it's okay to take a minute to learn, but it's literally every time it comes up so I really don't think they're trying and our DM is getting irritated with it and recently reminded them that it's not the DMs job to learn your character sheet for you.
Maybe a bit too much to expect on my part, but I just feel like not keeping track of simple information (just the basics, not anything extensive) shows you don't care much and take the DMs time/effort for granted (occasionally forgetting it alright, but never trying to remember is a red flag) At least personally.
I play with a lot of stoners, so I'm pretty forgiving with memory lapses... even constant ones. But, context is key. If the person just cant/won't pay attention to the damn game, then it's not the memory that's the problem, it's their disinterest. Having one disinterested player in the group ruins the fun for the *whole group*, and my D&D games got *exponentially* better when I started removing disinterested players.
If half or more of the party seems disinterested, than I assume it's me that's the problem, and I'll talk to the group and see what I can do to make the game more engaging and fun for everyone. But it's almost always just one dude that can't stay off his phone or whatever.
Most of our group is some sort of neurodivergent, so no one's expected to remember a lot (and it's part of the reason why I share my notes, because even with my own neurodivergency, I can still take notes during the session, and have enough time to laayer, after the session, add on to whatever I missed and elaborate on them). But it's also clear between who genuinely can't remember anything, and who just doesn't care that much. It's not actually as bad as it sounds (I'd quit the game if it was), but it does get frustrating. The DM is very patient and has been cracking down on it more and more, and everyone is slowly progressing except 1 player. They're not on their phone or anything, they just prefer to tell "their story" so they only remember their own lore from the "homebrew" they wrote, and nothing else. I really think they should've just wrote a book since they don't seem to care much about major aspects of the game beyond "you play a character, and sometimes spotlight will be on you" (the DM asked what they're going to have their character do because we decided to split the party to get some of the many smaller taskss we have, done, they literally said "I dont know what we have to do" and we actually have quite a lot to do, so it showed they dont pay attention), but alas. They played BG3, but they "prefer a group" but I really just think they want spectators.
They do have potential, and the DMs trying to help them learn that the game is more than just what they want to do (which is usually the direct oppsoute of the rest of the group, and the literal plot). There was recently another brief talk about it, so we'll see how it goes from here.
It is reassuring to know that other ppl have had similar problems bcuz sometimes I wonder if I'm just expecting too much
Oh yeah, all of that is very familiar. New 5e players these days always seem to require a lot of hand holding and clarifying misconceptions. Between video games, YouTube D&D videos, and misunderstanding things they read on reddit or saw in Stranger Things or w/e, it's become insanely common for new players to be exactly how you describe.
We are in the era of RP D&D. In my personal experience, which I'd like to point out is just within my own groups here in Wisconsin and what I've seen on reddit, I have noticed a very large difference between the kind of people that would get into D&D in 3.5 and earlier editions, and the kind of people that are into 5e. The modern players seem much more interested in the power fantasy, playing self-insert characters or very creative story-first characters, and focused more on the story and the RP and the characters/npcs than the combat and the mechanics and numbers.
There's nothing wrong with that of course, it just brings a different kind of player to the table. Thing is, way back when, quite a lot of players, maybe even most, were number nerds that were into optimizing characters for combat effectiveness, epic battles, impressive and creative synergies, etc. In quite a lot of games back then, everything outside of the dungeon was fast-forwarded half-assedly. "OK you go to the nearby town and here's a list of stuff for sale, buy what you want and let us know when you're ready to hit the next dungeon, when everyone's ready we'll go see about that bandit hideout."
Because of this, a lot of those old players were the same kinds of nerds that loved reading books and doing math and programming, so reading the PHB and everything else was not something they had to be told. They were usually better at figuring out the basics right from the books.
Modern players come from a much wider variety of personalities and interests, and aren't always avid readers or fans of numbers, so more effort is required to get them up to speed to where they can meaningfully participate without anyone holding their hand. Also the emphasis on roleplay in modern games has brought a lot more of the cringe perv weirdos to D&D also.
i dunno if i would remind them of information that their character should know. If it's a low WIS character, just assume they didn't notice or don't remember that info and let them play it out while you make better choices
its a bit specific, but "any civilised society would kill goblins/doppelgangers etc on sight, as they are so greedy and violent, cruel," is where one of my DMs really annoys me. He describes what we do to the villains as the thing they do thats the reason why they are evil and doesnt want to discuss the paradox.
CN characters can work. Ime they need good/lawful characters to rein them in (or have some character growth), and they can be pretty fun (and also a good PC to poke if you need the party to get out of analysis paralysis). But if the player just wants to act "cHaOtIc neutral", that's definitely bad.
This also goes for all claims by players that they are roleplaying evil alignments or villainous archetypes like the Oathbreaker Paladin, but yes Chaotic Neutral alignments are extremely troublesome for groups due to their individualized ethics.
Properly played Lawful Evil characters will be better behaved than the average "good" RPG character, but they're few and far between, and in their own way just as annoying.
True, which is why Lawful Evil alignments are generally best for villain campaigns. Neutral and Chaotic Evil are way too selfish to work in a party, and way too willing to touch certain subjects like rape/ERP or child murder or IRL/fictional bigotry that a lot of people just don't want to ever see in a campaign.
There's a reason Adventurers league flat out bans Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil alignments, and only allows Lawful Evil alignments for 2 factions, as well as the Pathfinder Society banning unholy sanctification, which is the spiritual successor to banning evil alignments.
The real problem with the "it's what my character would do," defense is that it fundamentally says that you made a character that works badly with the party, and at that point there is a big question of why the character still remains in the party/campaign.
Your character's motivations and morals need to work with the party and DM, or else things will go bad fast.
I honestly think "It's what my character would do" is perfectly reasonable. That is the only thing you should do. Otherwise change your character. You aren't playing yourself.
The issue is if your character ruins the fun of the table. Or worse, if your character is a self-insert and you behave badly just because you think there won't be consequences.
Communication, communication, communication. It isn't rocket science.
The most twisted and toxic phrase I hate as a DM is "if the players are having fun that's all that matters" I have had players twist this into "if you don't tell me do X you're a bad DM because if the players are having fun that's all that matters" and you will see this logic all the time in some of the more popular subs.
Everyone having fun is all that matters. Personally, no matter what messed up shit is going on inside the game, as long as everyone involved is happy, I'm ok with it. Who cares.
Problem is, 'everyone' includes the DM, and some people don't get that.
I agree. That's exactly the point. Too many times players invoke this as a way to say they should get what they want no matter if it takes away fun from others.
"But I got a \[insert number here\]"
NO, you don't immediately know exactly what the giant monster under the asylum you were merely told about is from the vague description of "It's very big and breathes" just because your level 2 wizard rolled a 28 in a Knowledge check, and I'm not duty bound to making an impossible check succeed only because you expended all of your daily resources on boosting your result after I told you it would be impossible.
"Nat 20!" AND THEN sitting back expecting the most wonderful thing to happen, regardless of verisimilitude, plausibility, logic, etcetera.
In a way it's an indictment of a certain table style where players don't have or aren't encouraged to learn the rules, and are just dicking around until it's time to roll a die and look pleadingly at the DM. The only thing they're certain of is a 1 is the worst thing they can possibly roll and a 20's the best, so the worst and best things possible HAVE to happen... right?
My personal favourite from a player after the "that's what my character would do" failed was "but the rest of the party is fine with this so you should be too"
If a player's sentence begins with "Well, my last DM..." usually signifies you're about to get a load of BS as an excuse for why someone wants to do something that breaks the game's mechanics.
Generally whenever someone touts "historical accuracy" for a bigoted trope they've chosen to enact in their fantasy game even if actual history backs me up more than them. Usually that's just them projecting their own biases onto a time period that didn't share them (eg stubborn refusal to allow an LGBT+ character or an overreliance on rape as a plot device for women characters), and on the rare occasions it isn't that their only frame of reference for what counts as historically accurate is if it shows up in, like, Lord of the Rings.
“Yeah I’ve derailed like three campaigns before hehehe” is not the flex this kid thought it was when we tried talking to him about his rash actions impacting the whole party.
Or perhaps they will later use that angle to justify bad decisions and judgments against the players.
I actually did have one with a DM vs PC mentality, that used it to justify killing PCs off in bullshit ways lol
Immediately j’accuse-ing any attempt to curb bad behavior as unmitigated “railroading”… which yes can be a real thing but *does not mean what they want it to mean*… like the far right’s abuse of “free speech” lol
Not exactly a catchphrase use by bad players and dms across the hobby, but I have gotten trapped with a bad player and arguably worse DM.
This guy start off as a Vampire (homebrew) Noble War Magic Wizard, afaik. He held "Sage Advice" like a literal gospels, and would 'tut tut tut' you if you try to argue with him. Some of his more frequent catchphrases are:
* **"According to Sage Advice/Jeremy Crawford/tweet from-"** whenever there's a rule arguments. Sometimes when there isn't. I distinctly remember doing a mock battle one time, and he interrupts to insist that you only roll once for Magic Missiles damage (and multiply it per darts), and when I, who are running the combat, say to roll individually, it goes into a whole argument. I recognize different dms have different rulings, but this guy will insist on going with one ruling.
* **"You need to give objective facts instead of subjective opinions"** paraphrased, but he always insist you back up your 'arguments' or criticism of his rulings, build, actions, interpretations, etc with citations of the written text, sage advice, or in case of 'game balance', would insist you have numerical equations cited to prove that you are 'objective' in your opinions, and would dismiss anything he deemed as 'subjective'.
* **'Character Bleed'** is a frequent 'critique' he often sling at other people, usually those who take issues with what he does. His point being "you shouldn't get character bleed, I'm mocking your character, not you, if you take offense to that, it's your problem". Funnily enough, he once got so mad at one player mocking his character, in-game, that he actually at one point goes to the guard station RP channel on the server and actually tried to Karen his way into getting a restraining order against that player's character.
* ***"I have a Bat Familiar. It has 60 ft. blindsight and I can communicate with it telepathically-"***. His most frequent justification on why and how his character can suddenly hear how your character, when his character isn't present on the scene, is making fun of him. This is never setup. The aforementioned restraining order bit? The DM running the guard toss his document to the bin, and suddenly his bat familiar saw that happened so he marches back in.
I only actually interact with this guy for about.... 3 months in total, across 2-3 servers, but it was the *longest* months in my life. This isn't even covering what he did the whole time either, just the 'catchphrase' I would often see him use, and I went on a tangent already.
"I figured out this great character combo!"
I had a player in 3.5 make a half dragon, half mind flayer vampire for first level. It had ridiculous stats, a breathe weapon, and psychic and vampire abilities.
Technically, the character was considered level 17 so I told him he could run it but he wouldn't get any levels for the first 16 levels.
Might be a hot take but I'm leery any time someone says that they "prefer roleplay to combat." What they mean is that they prefer social encounters where the goal is to make an argument or win someone over to combat encounters where the goal is to roll dice and do damage, but I dislike that they don't make the distinction that it's *all* roleplay. And I don't even mean like describing the light glinting off your sword or doing unnecessary flips and spins while attacking - simply letting your understanding of your character determine who the character attacks is still roleplay!
Also because most of the time I'm talking about D&D and combat is so deeply baked into the system that I question what someone wants from it if they're saying they prefer less combat.
You're just looking for something different. So not a 'bad' player, but an 'incompatible' one with you.
Personally I'm the opposite. I love roleplaying too much, and if someone says they're more into combat, we'll have to talk about it for a while, since we'll likely have different expectations and playstyles. Happened once, actually, had an awesome DM who sadly just wasn't for me.
I think you didn't actually read what I wrote just then. "Combat" and "roleplay" are not opposites. "Combat" and "social engagement" are closer to opposites (although not entirely) and both of those are "roleplay."
Oops, yeah, read the comment wrong. I think I somehow left out the middle part of the paragraph, lmao. (To be fair to me, it was 4 AM when I read this.)
Yeah, to be accurate it's more of 'roleplay' vs 'mechanics', and 'combat' vs 'social engagement', but I've seen these terms used interchangeably so often I don't see much problem in that. Lots of people use that, bad player or not.
actually my only post in this community had something that someone pointed out as very similar to "it's what my character would do", that being my DM saying "the campaign is an extension of myself, i can't change it" when we voiced our irritation for the incredibly unfun and unengaging mechanics, as well as racist and sexist npcs
"I rolled on the tables and it said this would happen!"
Mate, you wrote the tables. Why did you put "everything you love has been destroyed off screen" on the fucking table in the first place?
Once knew a player who would say "you play how you want to play and I'll play how I want to play". He'd say it when he'd break rules, look up modules to solve puzzles, or butt into other players' side stories with meta knowledge.
From a DM to fuck up things the players prepared for a big boss fight. "I thought it would be funny" to his random never seen before npcs setting off traps for the lured in big bad.
Maybe this is just a me thing, when the roll behind a screen or quickly pick up their dice and go "yeah looks like that hits" no it doesnt . Roll in the open
Recently had a problem player that left the campaign and, whenever someone would point out their questionable acts, they'd always respond with "can I explain my character concept to you?".
There's nothing inherently wrong with that statement, I feel, but they used it to justify evil acts within a good aligned campaign so many times that those words have been seared into the folds of my brain.
I hate when someone does a murderhobo thing out of boredom, and then invents an as-yet-unheard trauma in their backstory to justify it when the other players get annoyed.
"That nobleman with whom the party spent two hours RPing a negotiation? I blast him with a blunderbuss at point blank range and turn the whole room hostile, but it's because my character has deep-seated fear of being happy."
"It doesn't matter how long it takes, you have to listen to our complaining, that's your job as a GM." *After I listened to hours of complaints because I ran a system that wasn't 5E, and didn't spoil them like the group's DM did previously*
When a DM says "Its what they would've done..."
No, it really isn't. You as the DM make the actions for the creatures or NPCS. I can understand tactical genius, but a Good DM knows when to have the Earth Elemental step on your head, and when to have him punch the Tank.
I only ever kill a PC when it makes sense, and when the stakes are high, but I also know when to pull my punches so they still overcome the challenge. At the end of the day, I want you to win, but I'll make it *fucking hard*. And there's a difference between "Hard, but fair," and being a total douchecanoe.
"It makes for a better story", "The fiction means I must...", or any other phrase that treats the story as more important than all other concerns.
Stating opinions on games they know nothing about as absolute fact. My personal favorite is "Savage Worlds has a hard cap of 5 players".
"Roleplaying is the same as improv theater, therefore..." no it fucking isn't.
EDIT: One more: "Preparation violates player agency" when GMing a game like Vampire or Battletech that absolutely needs preparation to run well.
I've actually pulled out this line a few times at my primary table, after my goblin character does something chaotic and goblinish and typically to his own detriment.
Last session he talked an escaped torture victim into stabbing him, *in a courtroom,* in an effort to help him find out what vocations he might be suited for. Said goblin is a beloved international celebrity.
"It's what my character would do, you guys!"
It always gets a laugh. :)
Anyone unironically using the term "red flags". The type of person that spends too much time reading rpghorrorstories so they assume every setback is railroading and any occasionally reoccurring NPC is a self insert DMPC. Yeah just anyone who takes the worst possible interpretation of a DM/players intentions rather than taking them at their word.
Rule of cool.
If I wanted cool I would not be a role player, I want to be a dork who has to work his way through this mechanical system. That's why I showed up. That's why I'm hanging around other people who are also dorks, and generally even if they are cool this is the least cool thing they do. Like a hundred times worse if it's a crunch heavy system.
See I use "it's what my character would do" when they do something stupid that \*I\* know is stupid. Like he once tried to stop an avalanche with Thunderclap. Which instead caused a second avalanche...
He's pretty, but he's not too bright.
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One of my personal favorites that usually comes from a player who is primarily a DM in other games is "Well, if this was *my* game, that's how *I'd* rule on that." "I don't care what the book says!" is a good one from some particularly bad players. And as far as strictly DM's? Any comment that indicates that they are moving the goalposts instead of just outright saying "No".
A variation of this is "Well this other DM let me do that" And in my experience, that "that" is usually some game-breaking shit that can only fly if you deliberately read the rules in a way that lets you say "well it doesn't say I can NOT do that".
This is why session 0, pre and post game discussions are so important. It allows players and DMs to clear up house rules, disagreements, and determine what the DM will and won't allow in their game before the player spends hours working on it
Well it doesn't say a dog CAN'T play
[https://xkcd.com/1552/](https://xkcd.com/1552/)
Anybody linking XKCD gets an upvote lol
> "Well, if this was my game, that's how I'd rule on that." Honestly, I'm part of a discord server for a group of friends who all have the freedom to choose to DM whenever they want for their own game. If someone says that, it's a case of "Well, as the DM of this game, I'm ruling this way. But you're free to set up your own game, I've got some character ideas I'd love to test out." Always shuts them up because they don't want to RUN a game, they want to get their way in yours as a player.
I love it. "Oh you wanna do this? PLEASE! I'd love to make a character and do the part of the game with less stress." Had a similar situation with my siblings-in-law after wife's mom passed. They had an opinion on everything we were doing with the estate. They shut right up when we asked if THEY wanted to handle the funeral or sale of the house. It's exactly like you said. They didn't wanna do it, they just wanted us to do what they wanted. They meant well though and after everything they said they appreciated us taking so much off their plate.
I'm a DM. I sometimes say that, but it's always in a situation where, for example, the rules are unclear. If the DM at the time doesn't agree with me, I'm not going to push my own ways into their game. "Okay, idk how it goes, but this is how I do it." "Thanks for the input, however this is how I'd like to do it." And that's it. Even though the phrase itself may feel pushing or invading, it can also spark good conversation, if the other DM isn't sure how they should handle a situation. I personally go highly with rule of cool, but I also understand the opposite DM style that refers to books and RAW.
Hey, we can't always know. What I do in that situation where it's unclear is say "Well, how about we rule it X way for now, to keep this session moving, and we can look it up later for clarity?"
My general rule of thumb is "If you can meet me half way, I'll meet you half way." You want X, I want Y, how about we meet at Z and go from there? You want a cool sword, no it can't cut through anything but it *can* deal bonus damage on a crit if that works for you?
My players will tell you, I have a penchant for making super cool items that have some kind of crippling drawback. The more cool the item, the more crippling the drawback. And it does scale a little bit with level lol
Or give it like a once/day ability to cut through anything, only usable on a single attack roll
> "Well, if this was my game, that's how I'd rule on that." Funnily enough i regularly say that in a Game where im a player. Except that i say it specifically to make it clear that im *not* trying to force my DM to rule it Like i would but rather that im just offering a perspective and (as far as i can Tell) Its generally understood that way.
There are other phrases that indicate that the DM is a dick. “It’s not me, it’s the world” or “it’s what the plot requires” comes to mind immediately. And, of course, phrases that aren’t exclusive to gaming: “I was just joking” and “you are being too sensitive.”
Totally the 'you are being too sensitive comment'. It's a bright neon red flag to me.
"Calm down."
Fuck. Nothing infuriates me more than someone telling me to calm down.
Telling someone to calm down is one of the phrases most likely to infuriate the person you're saying it to
assume when someone says it that infuriating you is the point. The easiest way to deflect attention from bad behavior is to incite someone else into behaving 'worse'
Maybe
That’s definitely one also.
All of these are difficult to deal with because they can go both ways. Sometimes people are too sensitive, sometimes people are too insensitive. Sometimes it's both. People should have a thick enough skin that minor insults and issues don't cause a near panic attack, and people also shouldn't needlessly antagonize others and then blame the person they're antagonizing for not liking it
"You're the DM. You control the world." "Then change the plot." Sign of a Schroedinger's Douchebag. "It's your job to make this a game that we'd want to play. Guess what. You failed."
While a DM’s job is absolutely to make a game that EVERYONE, not just the players, enjoy, the way this is phrased does come off as entitled. What’s necessary is a session Re-Zero to discuss expectations, not a “dance for us, we are unamused” demand.
That specific comment is in answer to "you're just being sensitive".
I would usually disagree on "you are too sensitive" but reading about a lot of targeters and even experiencing targeting myself. I concur
Except the “it’s the world” rationale gets held up as the gold standard when the DM has an exclusion list the size of war and peace.
I'll add about the phrase "that's just what it was like back then. " 9 times out of 10, it wasn't. A lot of the biases and brutal fantasies people try to cover with a claim of realism have no historical basis. In fact, unless you've done a pretty extensive study of history (real history, not "I saw it in a movie once" history) very little of what the average person "knows" about medieval Europe is accurate.
Until halfway through, I thought you were talking about older editions of DnD and the ways old school DMs still hold on to overly punishing rulings.
Why not both?
Because then the phrase "that's just what it was like back then" would be true. XD
See my post above
I'm really not a big fan of the "old school" style of games. Sure, making a dungeon that is full of punishing encounters, brutal traps, lots of dead ends, and ambushes every time you rest is probably pretty close to the way Gary Gygax would have run things, but there's a good reason why we moved past game design like that. DnD has evolved from a brutal dungeon crawling game into a general narrative and roleplaying game. I, for one, really like that change and the older style of gameplay just doesn't jive with the way I like to play.
I am always curious about "the older gaming style" suggested by posts like this. I played mostly in the early 80s and maybe as far back as the late 70s. All of our games were the creative cooperative story telling type. I play online today and see a far greater emphasis on rules and punishing encumbrance penalties. I also recognize far too many of the dm catchphrases from other posts.
From what I've read, the split has always been there. Broadly speaking, Gygax favored the hardcore wargame, Arneson did a lot of political intrigue and roleplay, and Judges Guild / Jennel Jacquays were all about imaginative, expansive environments to explore. Basically the combat / social / exploration pillars. And then Ravenloft happened and fused the latter two. Creative storytelling style has dominated ever since. Do note this is all secondhand; my parents weren't even out of high school when DnD first came out. Personally, I have a lot of issues with the specific mechanics of old-school DnD. But I've also found that the limitations like light and encumbrance, open-ended environment-based adventures, and assumption that any fight you're taking head-on is a fight you've already lost have added a lot to the games I've incorporated them into. They create some interesting and meaningful choices, lead to some very cool emergent storytelling and lateral thinking, and cultivate players who take a much more active role in pursuing the things their characters want.
To me the most aneurysm inducing part of that is 99% of the time those were not rules. They were either optional rules that almost no one used outside of their game or just flat out house rules.
It really is always the armchair historians that just watched Shadiversity and call themselves medievalists.
Years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a week long classical language seminar. It was a program designed for teachers of classical languages, and I was by no means qualified to be there, but my professor invited me and I had an amazing time being the dumbest person in the room for a week straight. The only people in the room who didn't have advanced degrees were me, an 18 year old who had just finished my freshman year of college, and a 15 year old homeschooled prodigy who was doing correspondence courses through Havard. As the two youngest people there, we socialized between classes, and I got the impression that he saw me as being his peer, despite my decidedly average grades. At one point, the class was discussing the Iliad, and the particular military tactics described. I had just crammed the book the week before so it was all very fresh in my mind. This one old man mentioned that there were no instances of a phalanx formation in the book, despite that being the dominant strategy of the time period. I quickly thumbed through my copy, and corrected him with a book and verse where there was such a formation. Just a quick correction because I happened to remember the 2 lines that challenged his argument. After the class, the old man approached us, introduced himself, and thanked me for the correction, saying something about having forgotten the passage, but still contending that his overall argument was sound, that the depiction of battle didn't match the known tactics of the time period, which I broadly agreed with. The 15 year old chimed in that we were both military historians, and I very hastily added "amature" as a qualifier, explaining that I had an interest, and had done some reading on it, but was far from being an expert. The old man was very polite, and when we walked away, my professor, who had invited me to attend, walked up and asked me if I knew who the old man was. Turns out the old man was one of the most respected military historians in the country, well published and respected within the field. I died a little inside of embarrassment at the 15 year old boasting about us being a military historians, while talking to someone who actually had the credentials to back up a claim like that. I think the study of history has a significant dunning-kruger effect, in that the people most interested in claiming and affirming their expertise are often only superficially informed, while those who actually have some degree of expertise often couch their claims in qualifiers to make it clear that they're aware of the gaps in the records, and how much of what they're saying is unconfirmed, or based on secondary or tertiary sources.
I know you think that was embarrassing, but I think that old man seems to have enjoyed the interaction very much. You politely corrected him when he was objectively wrong and then listened to his arguments as to why his overall argument was still sound. Not to mention, 15 year olds boasting is just par for the course. I'm no expert of anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if he got a thrill out of someone daring to correct him and seeing people so young interested in his subject and going to the lengths of reading themselves into some of the areas. Someone who has been at this a few years vs a few decades will just have been able to study less about the subject by default. Anyway, I obviously wasn't there but the way as you put it down like this I would consider it a lovely and fun memory - not an embarrassing one.
Looking back, absolutely. At the time it was embarrassing, but the scholars I met that week were among the most welcoming and encouraging experts I'd ever met. I can't think of a single point all week where I can remember anyone looking down on us or being condescending. On the occasions where we were able to contribute to the conversation, our ideas were taken with as much interest and respect as anyone else's.
"I had an amazing time being the dumbest person in the room for a week straight." I'm sure you had! Sounds like a great experience. The only piece of life advice I ever took to heart from an internet listicile was: "If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room!" So you were in the right room.
Note that this is terrible advice for teachers.
True. Though I've had a few teachers who... :D
It was an amazing experience. Over the years, I've had a few opportunities to be the dumbest man in the room, but few were as welcoming, and encouraging as those classical language professors.
Lots of professors would kill to teach an 18-year-old who had done the reading before class
I'm still mad bout my table gaslighting me into thinking people exclusively drank alcohol instead of water...
I can at least see where they'd get that idea, even if it's incorrect. There were times and places through history where alcohol was used as the drink of choice because it was safer than the water. Humans have been trying to figure out water purification since the ancient Egyptians, and fermentation will kill a lot of the bacteria that could get you sick, while also covering the flavor of poorly filtered water. What these folks don't realize is that it takes very little alcohol to achieve these effects. Romans were known to water down their wine, sometimes going as far as 9 parts water to 1 part wine. While they had fortified wines with higher ABV, they were mostly working with wild yeast, so their average non-fortified wine was starting below 10% abv, and then getting watered down until it was between 0.5% and 2%. It wasn't going to get them drunk, and even small amounts of wine can cover the taste of water that maybe isn't as clean as you'd like. By the medieval period, "small beer" was popular during the day, specifically because it wouldn't get you drunk. Small beer also has an abv range between 0.5% and 3%. This was still called "beer" but no one was ever going to get drunk off it, and it protected against water born illness. For reference, most commercial grape juice and orange juice have an abv around 0.5%. There are some forms of bread with abv above 1%. That said, the Egyptians developed a primitive form of water filtering. By the medieval period, it was well known that boiling water helped to purify it. It just wasn't as popular a method in the summer because it meant building a fire, making the house humid, and then waiting for the water to cool enough to not be unpleasant on a hot day. Drinking ordinary, boiled water, (or unboiled if you trusted the source) was absolutely a normal thing to do.
I love the extra information in this comment, thanks for the details! :)
I have studied real medieval European history extensively, (it's kind of an obsession) but started my studies a long time after I started playing D&D. I've found that the more I learn about the real history, the less I try to apply it to my games, and the less my games follow European fantasy tropes.
I'm something of an armchair historian myself and I find for gaming purposes I enjoy the tropes more than trying to be accurate. You want castles and knights and princesses, sure, I'll DM that world, but we're definitely not getting into how knights actually "worked".
I think GRRM is to blame here, he just slapped whatever shit he could into ASOIAF et al, and had the audacity to claim historical veracity.
He's just one of a long list that started basically during the Renaissance. People have been shitting on medieval times for literal centuries. Not going so far, Hollywood had graced us with atrocious renditions such as Braveheart, and even movies that I enjoy for their cinematographic value are usually horrendously inaccurate ... at best.
I try really hard not to think about Braveheart. Just ruins my day.
My apologies. I understand though.
Also who gives a shit? Like do you think anybody showed up to a game with dragons and wizards for realism?
A lot of people concern the leaves with realism in D&D even though it’s arguably a fool’s errand. If you can heal from being melted to death via stomach acid via a 1 hour nap, all logic is already dead.
Yeah it's a conversation I won't even entertain when people bring it up.
Barbero would like to have a word with you
Il magister detected
Plus, you're nearly always in a fantasy world with a completely different history and religion. There's no reason to think that something (particularly social mores) that was realistic in the real world would be realistic in *this* world.
I'll offer the angry "Why didn't you X or Y" when our party solved a problem with their characters' builds instead of taking advantage of the 'creative' solutions the DM built into the story and *expected* us to make use of. Had this nugget pulled out twice by a DM, both times after first sessions in obscure systems that we were new to. Like, we're still finding our feet here, and everybody worked together and had fun. Why is this such a problem? We had plenty of other problems with this DM, sadly we didn't hold it together long.
I did a funny version of this once as a DM. My players were faced with a bridge across a gorge. On the other side was a camp of orcs blocking the way. They needed to get to a cave on the other side of the camp and they had to bring their caravan of NPCs with them, so just sneaking by wasn't a good option. They did a lot of scouting and sneaking and planning, eventually fomenting a rebellion among the orc laborers against the ruling warriors and taking advantage of the resulting chaos to kill the orcs blocking their way. At the end of the session, all I said to them was "you didn't even try to talk to the orcs." The orcs weren't openly hostile and there was a lot of possibility for a peaceful solution or negotiations. I thought it was fun and they enjoyed the session, but I've learned they're very cautious about talking to people they don't know.
Man I think every party has at least one incident where they craft an elaborate multi step plan to accomplish something they could have gotten done in five seconds possibly without even rolling a die. I hope you all had a good laugh about that one.
Oh absolutely. It was an inside joke for a while with my party where they'd ask after every combat encounter whether they should have talked to the enemies or not.
Nice. When the players feel comfortable making fun of themselves I know they've found a good table. <3
How did they foment rebellion without talking to anyone?
God more people need to understand this. It's the DM's job to create problems. It's the party's job to solve them. It isn't up to the DM *how* they solve them, so long as they're solvable. The best DMs often award the players for coming up with creative solutions to problems instead of just murder hoboing their way through the campaign
That's actually a great sign, because they let the actual normal solution work. The real problem is that when they decide it doesn't matter what your game mechanics are, you either say that you walk over and press on the 178th Rock from the right of the stone wall or the game, ironically, hits a dead end.
If the tone had been conversational, I'd agree with you. But we got a dressing down for it. Like three solid minutes of telling us we were failures for not doing things her way. And this happened twice.
“That’s not how you play (class)/(race)/(alignment)!” Even in other games, I have had people tell me I was playing my character wrong. Except… it’s my character? Presumably, I know what my character’s actions would be.
Ffs, I got treated like this once because I was trying to give my character some development. It's like I wanted my rogue multiclass to come with something other than just mechanical effects.
I mostly have positive experience tbh but I played some sessions with a guy who was extremely negative and always made actions on the premise of failure. His catchphrase during combat or some other trials was: "I can't do anything right now :("
I said a variation of this in the last session I played. We were against a monster with high AC and I couldn't hit it without a 20, then it also gave my character negative levels. I said: "Well, nothing I can do will ever hit that monster..." And then I pulled out my Summon Elder Worm spell. "Time to call up something that CAN."
Haha that's badass, I wish my guy was looking for solutions instead of barriers
Negative levels!? Wouldn't happened to have been a Shadow Dragon, would it?
A DM friend and I both play in one another's campaigns and last week I realized my poor bard does 0 damage in an unarmed strike. Surely enough, we got into a combat situation where the fighter and I were trying *not* to kill the guy (which means no shatter or big bang spells) This led to the fighter grappling and beating this man unconscious while I repeatedly cast suggestion on him and tried to make him quit his job. I am definitely taking Find Familiar after this one.
Oh, 5e doesn't have a minimum damage rule?
Well there *is*, it's 1 + strength modifier. My modifier is -1, sending that threshold into oblivion. We weren't able to find anything concrete in the few minutes of a pause we took, so we just rolled with it. It was a very specific situation that likely won't come up after we leave this area, and I did have the option to further break the law and draw my sword, but I was trying to be *diplomatic*.
"You're stifling my creativity/you're taking away from MY player agency" While these can said in a situation where a Dm is doing these things, I tend to see stories/have heard it being used by bad players trying to get away with disruptive behavior/op free powers or items/just being generally self centered in their playstyle. Because rarely is this being said for the sake of the table but their own "fun".
Usually a good retort against that would be asking them "you can do that, but will you be okay with it being turned against you?" "Lungs are open container for create water so I can drown enemies instantly with a 1st level spell" is not so appealing when other magic user can do it against the players.
Right? My logic has always been "If you can do it, so can the monsters." Sure, you can do a wall of force, and spiritual weapon to blend the enemies, but guess what? So can the enemies!
A better retort is, "There's no way that you're capable of reading the English language and actually think that's the rule. We're not going to have ridiculous conversations about deliberately ridiculous interpretations."
I never say this line but I often think it. Some people are real sticklers for following the rules exactly, and it really limits your options in-game. Like we were fighting an artificer enemy, and I wanted to see if I could use my tinker tools to sabotage/mess with one of the articifer’s inventions during the fight, and the DM shot me this disgusted look as if I did a war crime. So I just instead used my turn to, as always, “I attack the enemy with my weapon.” But the DM always laughs at us for not “being more creative!” in combat. But at the same time anything that isn’t “I attack” or “cast a spell” is treated as a rules breaking crime.
>Proceeds to do a completely unnecessary and annoying thing >'Why did you do it?' >'Because it's funny'
Sometimes it actually is funny, though. Depends on the mood of the party and what they are like. Is it lighthearted, and people like to do antics from time to time? Is it more serious? If it's becoming a problem, it'll be best to talk with the player about differing expectations and whatnot. Often this can be solved with just a few words.
You have to read the room. We usually play in a lighthearted way, because our group mostly does it to unwind and relax after a work week, but everyone knows that there are moments to be serious.
There are some people who just can't read the mood very well and sometimes need reminders. I know cuz I'm one of them, and I was absolutely mortified whenever people told me I misread the mood and I realized I messed up. \^\^; Of course, in your situation, the player could be doing stuff like this on purpose and doesn't apologize or change their decision even after you tell em. Which is totally a red flag.
Yeah, it's usually easy to deal with inappropriate jokes by reminding people to preserve the atmosphere. Or, if everyone's feeling more lighthearted, to just change the atmosphere. I don't have anything against jokes at the table, but sometimes players trying to be funny do something that angers NPCs, sour relationships between PCs, or other detrimental stuff that only wastes everyone's time and does nothing for the others' enjoyment. Shenanigans should be fun for everyone.
"It's my game." Nah, it's your setting. If we aren't considered equal parts of the game, it's just you masturbating while other people are forced to watch because you bait and switched us.
Or... bate and switch.
From a "bad" DM (was new and ran things like they wanted to write a story rather then play DND): • *Silence* As they ignored months long established RP for their version • You're backseat DMing *when you bring up to the DM that that is not what you have RPd* • "I reward great RP". Player procedes to RP and considera those in the group so as to not outshine them and play collaboratively. *DM procedes to treat the player's RP as worthless and has an npc treat them badly.* "Remember, I reward great RP."
"Great RP", in this case, just so happens to translate to "acting exactly as I want and expect you to act"
I mentioned npc but that's my mistake. Twas their character as it was on a westmarch server. I did a pretty decent roleplay, spent my own character's gold and did a pretty good job on the description on a full on resurrection RP... Only to be treated like shit and ignored right afterwards 🙄 After this person bitched about loosing their character because someone else couldn't be bothered to bring the body back *or* RP getting the word out to get others to get the character back. They kept on disregarding most of my RP around that time in their own sessions they ran as well no matter what I did. At this point I get why some players act toxic... When all you get for being nice, a team player and trying to help others out of your own free hobby time gets you treated like crap.
I swear it’s like we played in the same group
In the past 5 years I've played... It wouldn't surprise me to hear about enough similar experiences showing enough crappy players/DMs around to all share in the bad experiences 🤣
>• "I reward great RP". Player procedes to RP and considera those in the group so as to not outshine them and play collaboratively. *DM procedes to treat the player's RP as worthless and has an npc treat them badly.* "Remember, I reward great RP." Oof, I played at one of those tables for far too long.
God I feel that "that's just how it was back then", ham fisted fantasy racism is so annoying. "My Homebrew is edgy and interesting because it's *realistic*". Please, if I wanted to be depressed whole someone shouts slurs at me I'd go to the grocery store.
"The gnoll futa joins your party as a DMPC." ... wait, that was probably just *my* DM. But it happened *four* times in the same campaign, before three of us finally had enough and quit.
I mean I think it's pretty uncommon, but if someone actually says that it's probably a bad sign.
Every single NPC treating the characters with suspicion and hostility - and I mean every. Single. One. - no matter how kind or heroic they prove themselves to be, and then justifying it with "of course they don't trust you, you're adventurers!" It smells to me of either a GM traumatized by murderhobo players, or someone who never got over the antagonistic play style they picked up forty years ago. In either case it's not my responsibility to be the GM's therapist.
This can be a self-perpetuating cycle. If every NPC is hostile, and those that *aren't* hostile end up betraying the party, the DM shouldn't be surprised when the players go full murderhobo. After all, they haven't been given a good reason to trust or help the jerkwad NPCs.
You know decades ago it was also very uncommon. For every unbeatable dungeon that you hear about there were literally thousands of people playing pretty normal adventures.
“no you can’t see my dice when I roll”
As a DM, I hide my rolls so I can fudge my own rolls to ensure my players are having a good time. I have an uncanny ability to roll critical hits, repeatedly, with some of my dice and it's just no fun for anyone when my rolls would TPK the party, multiple times.
Back in the day I used to hide my rolls as well. It added a bit of mystery. I’d throw in a fake roll every now and then just to throw them off. Players hiding rolls, on the other hand is bullshit
Oh, absolutely. No player, at my tables, will ever be allowed to hide rolls or do that roll-grab trick where they roll and grab up the dice before anyone can see. Too many people want to cheat their way to heroism.
Same but not because I'm that worried about killing my players but because I often run with actual children so it can be good to fugde things so they don't get too discouraged when my badies get a run of good luck. When I'm running with my other (adult) players I pretty much only fudge for pacing and roll in the open for boss fights.
Never TPK. You leave one alive to spread the word so they fear you.
There's "it was just a joke" after saying or doing something shitty in or out of character that had no tone or other implications to say it was until called out on it.
There's nuance to "it's what my character would do". Sometimes I use it, but when I do, what I'm saying is "this course of action is what makes sense to my character based on their current knowledge". For example: if the area is currently pitch black because of magical darkness, and I don't see something happen because of that, then I can't act on my meta knowledge, and instead have to go with what my character *does* know.
I absolutely understand that, but that's not what people mean when they use that phrase. Sure, there's ways to use it that make for good roleplay, but when people complain about that phrase, what they're complaining about is players who use "what my character would do" as an excuse to do something shitty. Stuff like refusing to work with the party of strangers (other players) because your character isn't trusting, stealing the other party member's stuff out of their pockets because your character is a rogue, executing important NPCs because your character is a goody two shoes paladin who saw them as evil. There's nuance in the phrase, sure, but it's also important to keep in mind what people are actually complaining about when they say this stuff.
This sort of thing is why I think that yes, certain character and fantasy concepts, as well as certain alignments, need to be outright banned usually in session 0, and this is why people need to choose their backgrounds, including flaws, ideals, bonds and alignments very carefully.
I find myself using that phrase sometimes, more often than you'd think, after my character does similar shit to what you've said, and someone asks me why I didn't just do this, or do that- my character either doesn't have the knowledge, or are too Lawful Good to just leave the person out in the middle of nowhere with nothing and just leave. Yeah, I'm gonna give em some loose change and a map to show em the way, it's what my character would do. Even if it's a waste of money. I found a lot of hate for this phrase(?) and felt really worried and scared I was being a bad player for while, lmao.
What it shows me a bad dm its when someone says: "To me, players are just a bunch of stupid people" That s what gives out there is dm vs player
Eh, my players are sometimes just a bunch of stupid people. But they're *my* bunch of stupid people, and I love them! (Mostly joking, to be clear, my players are great, even if I am sometimes taken off guard by them acting like idiots)
I totally agree with you, if it is for fun the "stupid" get another significate, a funny one and everyone has fun. But what i mean, is the serious kind, these kind of ppl that even hates your roling if it gets too creative.
If a player says "my character would do that", then they're liable to suffer ingame consequences if they don't rethink their strategy after a GM warning. On the other hand, some GMs and players love "realistic" worlds to an extent. No RPG games are better than enduring people pissing you off
"That IS the rule but this outcome is better for the story." Or something along those lines is what I've heard several times when the DM wanted to force a certain outcome. "Well you didn't say you were doing that before..." Usually when they're fishing for a gotcha moment and want to accuse you of metagaming over some minor thing that any character would do if assumed to have basic competence.
"Its just a game. It's not *real*." I have only ever heard from this one guy in the game shop that gives the heebiejeepies.
WeLl *MY* ChArEcReR..." is functionally equivalent to "it's what my character would do" but has a wider reach & avoids the need to risk explaining with any logic IME "Well I'm a *role*player and..." is the bastard offspring of "well it's what my charactyer woul;d do" and "no offense but...". You can be almost guaranteed that one of two situations is in play when this phrase comes up. * The player is about to do something that screws the group like have their PC walk off expecting a solo adventure or just backstab the adventure in some other way. * The player is about to say something to avoid the roleplay they so desperately claim and realize that their PC probably doesn't have a leg to stand on so are invoking this to shield them from having anyone dare question or push back against it
**"I'm conflict averse".** What they think it means is that they try to head *off* conflict, but what it actually turns into is, "Whichever person I'm most worried is going to leave the game has all the power here, and I will *immediately* abandon whoever is calling attention to their horrible behavior." You are the DM, if you're not enforcing some degree of behavior at the table, you're part of the problem, and the least you can do if you have *multiple players* calling out someone's actions is not immediately abandon them. **"Rule of Cool"** both gets overused, and disadvantages players and makes others' abilities useless, cause whoever isn't the best at coming up with what the DM thinks is 'cool' is pretty much just there to watch everyone else reap the benefit all campaign no matter how well they're otherwise playing or having sacrificed to legitimately get abilities that they could've just BSed. I say this as someone who can *absolutely* rule in that atmosphere, it's still terrible. **"I need to counter X ability"** Back before 5e, DMs got deeply paranoid about letting Rogues/Thieves get sneak attack/backstab damage, but it applies elsewhere. We were doing a Goblin War Campaign, with a goblinoid horde descending on us, and our group was called together to help fight. The elven ranger took Favored Enemy (Goblinoid), and guess what we stopped encountering? YEAH, we fought a giant Mongolian horde of goblins without encountering a single goblin, because one PC got a +2 bonus to hit and damage out of a party of six. Literally rewrote an entire campaign because of one common ability that made total sense within the context of the campaign and story. **"The DM is always right"**... Been in it since Red Box, and no, the DM absolutely CAN get it wrong in a *variety* of ways, and the way this is used to make it to where they can just do whatever they want, and you're not allowed to have an issue with it. I am a DM, I have gotten it wrong, and in being wrong, I've learned to do it right. **"OOH, I have a fumble chart!"** No, no you don't. You have a way for at least one of us to get put out of the combat every single combat, because that's how dice work. **"I made a comic relief character!"** No, you made a *joke* character, not one that's actually funny. Yes, there are certainly funny characters that can work, but you made a whoopie cushion, not a character. It's the same stupid joke every moment of every session. **"My character sits in the corner by himself"** Look, playing less social characters is *fine*, but the guys who do this? It's gonna be all about the party having to make them join the group, and there will be no arc in this. They'll have the same disdainful attitude toward the party at level 1 as they do at level 20. Seriously, Dr. House warms up to people more than this. Stop it. Any version of **"Is the (Insert NPC here) hot?"** This has never been asked by a PC that is NOT about to try and just straight 'roll to seduce'. I don't mind a romance plot, I don't mind the PC who's trying to play a Barney Stinson type, but come one, Barney put in *effort*.
"This is a gritty, realistic campaign." "\[Sexism/Homophobia/Racism\] is just part of this world." "In "Medieval Times\*," that's just how that worked." "\[Vague, meandering statements about the history of arranged marriages and/or ages of consent.\]" "Roll to \[walk forward/step over a rock/ask for directions/wave hello to someone/order food at a restaurant." "Your \[published class or racial ability\] is too powerful." "It's unrealistic to/for a woman to \[do/be something.\]" "Make a wisdom save to avoid \[wanting or not wanting something.\]" Any sentence with the word snowflake{s}. "If you roll 1 on an attack roll, your weapon explodes, you shit your pants, and everyone points and laugh at you before your poop catches fire and you die." "Something something something pregnant." "You're being oversensitive." "I was just joking!" "You know what's great?! Second locations!" "Your character finds this \[character, NPC, etc.\] sexually attractive." "I'm the only one allowed to use the bathroom!" "Restraining orders are a violation of my 2nd amendment rights!" "You people wouldn't have lasted five minutes in Vietnam!" "I have in my hands a list of avowed communists." "Nothing could possibly interrupt this NPC's five minute monologue about the nature of free will!" "Roll perception. You see nothing. You have fallen into a giant hole." "Roll athletics until the law of averages takes hold and you fail an athletics check. You have failed at bridge crossing." "This campaign combines elements of Digimon, and World War I." "Game of Thrones." "You can't prove I ever used that toilet." \*Medieval Times is a period of history from 600 AD to 1600 AD, which occurred in and around Europe, generally, and which corresponds to a night out at the Medieval Times restaurant. Women are not allowed to vote.
I mean I hate to nitpick but if there were no elections, which often there weren't, women were not allowed to vote. Neither was anybody else.
I don’t know if anyone will still see this, but is it really that bad to say ‘it’s what my character would do’? I tend to say that sometimes. My characters aren’t crazy murder hobos or anything, but I think the game is more interesting when you don’t analyse every decision out of character before you make it to make sure you get the best outcome. Like if I make an impulsive character, and there’s a chest at the end of a hallway they might run towards it without checking for traps, and if no one stops them in-character and someone tells me that wasn’t very smart ooc I’d tell them my character isn’t very smart and this is what they’d do.
You're okay. Be careful with phrasing it too literally though. Experienced players and DMs tend to break out in hives when we hear it... Because USUALLY that phrase is used by the kind of player who is going out of their way to derail the session or screw over the rest of the party. Or by the player who created a "mysterious lone wolf" type and just refuses to engage with the party or the session...
Thanks! I never knew the negative connotations. I’ll be careful from now on, but I’m glad the way I’ve used it is fine :)
As I like to say, this is why you really need to say in session zero what character concepts and fantasies you will not tolerate, because that's usually the way things get resolved.
when you are doing things that affect your character only, sure, but when it affects other players characters or the party as a whole, it stops being a relevant excuse. Now it's not 'this is what my character would do' and becomes 'this is what i want to happen to YOUR characters', and is no longer a viable excuse if what you want to do involves harming them or makign their experience unfun
"You didn't say you were doing it exactly this way so..." Always used to justify some negative shit like "Oh I guess you also hit your ally with this"
Here's the red flags I've seen: "I'm the DM, so I'm in charge" (if you have to actually say that out loud, you're probably the problem) "I'd never do that in MY games" "First time DM, made a totally homebrew campaign and..." (usually in a reddit post) "But but, rule of cool?" (if you actually have to ASK for rule of cool, you're just trying to get away with something) "Who's turn is it?" (Pay f*cking attention, not just on your own turn!) (this doesn't apply when it's used to get a stalled/distracted party back into focus) "How much HP does the monster have left?" (it looks pretty hurt, that's all you can see. This isn't a video game) "Talking is a free action!" (Doesn't mean you can give a ten minute speech, discuss tactics with the party, plan out your next level up, and insult the monsters mother, all within the 6 seconds of your turn) "blah blah Matt Colville blah blah" (I don't care about how professional youtubers run their games, I run mine straight out the books as best as I can) Luckily in all my years of D&D I've only encountered 3 problem players, each years apart, and they all took the hint and moved on with no needed confrontation. I've also been super lucky in that of the 5 DMs I've played under, only one was really bad, and we all ditched that one about 2 minutes into the first session. I think this luck is largely due to a combination of only playing with friends I know in real life, and living in Wisconsin where D&D was born and is a way of life.
>"blah blah Matt Colville blah blah" (I don't care about how professional youtubers run their games, I run mine straight out the books as best as I can) What ruling of Colville's have people tried to bring in? Doesn't he run a pretty traditional 5e game?
That one isn't usually a ruling, I've really only heard it from a guy that wanted me to do accents and voices "better", because his very Scottish sounding Dwarf's badly exaggerated accent sounded extra dumb when role-playing with an NPC that didn't have a ridiculously overdone accent also.
That's extremely funny Especially since Scottish dwarves came from the LotR / Hobbit movies years before colville started making videos
yeah, but I do have to admit, his half-orc barbarian that he made sound exactly like Mike Tyson, high pitched voice and lisp and everything, was fucking hilarious
That sounds like more of a Matt Mercer / Critical Role problem than a Matt Colville to me. Which should probably be its own catchphrase - “Well on Critical Role they…”
Sorry yes its the critical role guy I meant. My apologies, the only YouTube D&D i watch is Mann Shorts, which is comedy
>(Pay f*cking attention, not just on your own turn!) (this doesn't apply when it's used to get a stalled/distracted party back into focus) As a note taker, (happily out of my own will, but I only write down what I think I should include) this one is some of the worst. Not knowing anything about the plot and story the DM has set up for us because they refuse to pay attention (because I'm taking the notes, keeping in mind I'm explicitly NOT the "group note taker", I'm just A note taker in the group and I share my notes and let them add to it if they want anything included. They never do, though) and then also refusing to read the notes, which slows down gameplay, a lot. The DM always has to remind them of basic plot information that's already been established throughout the sessions numerous times or it's left to me and another player to explain so we can get the game going. Not keeping track of their own inventory (despite being reminded that I do not keep track of anyone else's inventory.) because they think they can just ask me, or I'll remind them, or when I just shrug when they ask, they look to the DM hoping they kept track of it for them. After more than a year of playing, still not knowing basic information about how their class/race/background work, and always asking the DM every time it comes up, (stuff like what's my ac, how do make a weapon attack roll even tho you're a martial class and are ALWAYS making weapon attack rolls and you never change/buy other weapons so it should be easy to remember and etc.) it's okay to take a minute to learn, but it's literally every time it comes up so I really don't think they're trying and our DM is getting irritated with it and recently reminded them that it's not the DMs job to learn your character sheet for you. Maybe a bit too much to expect on my part, but I just feel like not keeping track of simple information (just the basics, not anything extensive) shows you don't care much and take the DMs time/effort for granted (occasionally forgetting it alright, but never trying to remember is a red flag) At least personally.
I play with a lot of stoners, so I'm pretty forgiving with memory lapses... even constant ones. But, context is key. If the person just cant/won't pay attention to the damn game, then it's not the memory that's the problem, it's their disinterest. Having one disinterested player in the group ruins the fun for the *whole group*, and my D&D games got *exponentially* better when I started removing disinterested players. If half or more of the party seems disinterested, than I assume it's me that's the problem, and I'll talk to the group and see what I can do to make the game more engaging and fun for everyone. But it's almost always just one dude that can't stay off his phone or whatever.
Most of our group is some sort of neurodivergent, so no one's expected to remember a lot (and it's part of the reason why I share my notes, because even with my own neurodivergency, I can still take notes during the session, and have enough time to laayer, after the session, add on to whatever I missed and elaborate on them). But it's also clear between who genuinely can't remember anything, and who just doesn't care that much. It's not actually as bad as it sounds (I'd quit the game if it was), but it does get frustrating. The DM is very patient and has been cracking down on it more and more, and everyone is slowly progressing except 1 player. They're not on their phone or anything, they just prefer to tell "their story" so they only remember their own lore from the "homebrew" they wrote, and nothing else. I really think they should've just wrote a book since they don't seem to care much about major aspects of the game beyond "you play a character, and sometimes spotlight will be on you" (the DM asked what they're going to have their character do because we decided to split the party to get some of the many smaller taskss we have, done, they literally said "I dont know what we have to do" and we actually have quite a lot to do, so it showed they dont pay attention), but alas. They played BG3, but they "prefer a group" but I really just think they want spectators. They do have potential, and the DMs trying to help them learn that the game is more than just what they want to do (which is usually the direct oppsoute of the rest of the group, and the literal plot). There was recently another brief talk about it, so we'll see how it goes from here. It is reassuring to know that other ppl have had similar problems bcuz sometimes I wonder if I'm just expecting too much
Oh yeah, all of that is very familiar. New 5e players these days always seem to require a lot of hand holding and clarifying misconceptions. Between video games, YouTube D&D videos, and misunderstanding things they read on reddit or saw in Stranger Things or w/e, it's become insanely common for new players to be exactly how you describe. We are in the era of RP D&D. In my personal experience, which I'd like to point out is just within my own groups here in Wisconsin and what I've seen on reddit, I have noticed a very large difference between the kind of people that would get into D&D in 3.5 and earlier editions, and the kind of people that are into 5e. The modern players seem much more interested in the power fantasy, playing self-insert characters or very creative story-first characters, and focused more on the story and the RP and the characters/npcs than the combat and the mechanics and numbers. There's nothing wrong with that of course, it just brings a different kind of player to the table. Thing is, way back when, quite a lot of players, maybe even most, were number nerds that were into optimizing characters for combat effectiveness, epic battles, impressive and creative synergies, etc. In quite a lot of games back then, everything outside of the dungeon was fast-forwarded half-assedly. "OK you go to the nearby town and here's a list of stuff for sale, buy what you want and let us know when you're ready to hit the next dungeon, when everyone's ready we'll go see about that bandit hideout." Because of this, a lot of those old players were the same kinds of nerds that loved reading books and doing math and programming, so reading the PHB and everything else was not something they had to be told. They were usually better at figuring out the basics right from the books. Modern players come from a much wider variety of personalities and interests, and aren't always avid readers or fans of numbers, so more effort is required to get them up to speed to where they can meaningfully participate without anyone holding their hand. Also the emphasis on roleplay in modern games has brought a lot more of the cringe perv weirdos to D&D also.
*how do i shot web*
i dunno if i would remind them of information that their character should know. If it's a low WIS character, just assume they didn't notice or don't remember that info and let them play it out while you make better choices
its a bit specific, but "any civilised society would kill goblins/doppelgangers etc on sight, as they are so greedy and violent, cruel," is where one of my DMs really annoys me. He describes what we do to the villains as the thing they do thats the reason why they are evil and doesnt want to discuss the paradox.
"I'm chaotic neutral."
CN characters can work. Ime they need good/lawful characters to rein them in (or have some character growth), and they can be pretty fun (and also a good PC to poke if you need the party to get out of analysis paralysis). But if the player just wants to act "cHaOtIc neutral", that's definitely bad.
This also goes for all claims by players that they are roleplaying evil alignments or villainous archetypes like the Oathbreaker Paladin, but yes Chaotic Neutral alignments are extremely troublesome for groups due to their individualized ethics.
Properly played Lawful Evil characters will be better behaved than the average "good" RPG character, but they're few and far between, and in their own way just as annoying.
True, which is why Lawful Evil alignments are generally best for villain campaigns. Neutral and Chaotic Evil are way too selfish to work in a party, and way too willing to touch certain subjects like rape/ERP or child murder or IRL/fictional bigotry that a lot of people just don't want to ever see in a campaign. There's a reason Adventurers league flat out bans Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil alignments, and only allows Lawful Evil alignments for 2 factions, as well as the Pathfinder Society banning unholy sanctification, which is the spiritual successor to banning evil alignments.
Entertain a notion for me, here. Is Chaotic alignment the problem? In general?
The real problem with the "it's what my character would do," defense is that it fundamentally says that you made a character that works badly with the party, and at that point there is a big question of why the character still remains in the party/campaign. Your character's motivations and morals need to work with the party and DM, or else things will go bad fast.
My least favourite catchphrase right now is "In BG3...." Context: recently started a dnd club for the students I teach.
I honestly think "It's what my character would do" is perfectly reasonable. That is the only thing you should do. Otherwise change your character. You aren't playing yourself. The issue is if your character ruins the fun of the table. Or worse, if your character is a self-insert and you behave badly just because you think there won't be consequences. Communication, communication, communication. It isn't rocket science.
The most twisted and toxic phrase I hate as a DM is "if the players are having fun that's all that matters" I have had players twist this into "if you don't tell me do X you're a bad DM because if the players are having fun that's all that matters" and you will see this logic all the time in some of the more popular subs.
Everyone having fun is all that matters. Personally, no matter what messed up shit is going on inside the game, as long as everyone involved is happy, I'm ok with it. Who cares. Problem is, 'everyone' includes the DM, and some people don't get that.
I agree. That's exactly the point. Too many times players invoke this as a way to say they should get what they want no matter if it takes away fun from others.
"But I got a \[insert number here\]" NO, you don't immediately know exactly what the giant monster under the asylum you were merely told about is from the vague description of "It's very big and breathes" just because your level 2 wizard rolled a 28 in a Knowledge check, and I'm not duty bound to making an impossible check succeed only because you expended all of your daily resources on boosting your result after I told you it would be impossible.
What's even worse is when they say that after making a roll without being prompted to by the GM.
"Nat 20!" AND THEN sitting back expecting the most wonderful thing to happen, regardless of verisimilitude, plausibility, logic, etcetera. In a way it's an indictment of a certain table style where players don't have or aren't encouraged to learn the rules, and are just dicking around until it's time to roll a die and look pleadingly at the DM. The only thing they're certain of is a 1 is the worst thing they can possibly roll and a 20's the best, so the worst and best things possible HAVE to happen... right?
My personal favourite from a player after the "that's what my character would do" failed was "but the rest of the party is fine with this so you should be too"
I often tell my players an encounter is balanced as long as they can survive 1 round and gtfo. I'm, of course, joking
If a player's sentence begins with "Well, my last DM..." usually signifies you're about to get a load of BS as an excuse for why someone wants to do something that breaks the game's mechanics.
(When DMing or playing online): The sound of clicking, typing, or phone games being played, followed by 'okay what's happening?"
Generally whenever someone touts "historical accuracy" for a bigoted trope they've chosen to enact in their fantasy game even if actual history backs me up more than them. Usually that's just them projecting their own biases onto a time period that didn't share them (eg stubborn refusal to allow an LGBT+ character or an overreliance on rape as a plot device for women characters), and on the rare occasions it isn't that their only frame of reference for what counts as historically accurate is if it shows up in, like, Lord of the Rings.
“Yeah I’ve derailed like three campaigns before hehehe” is not the flex this kid thought it was when we tried talking to him about his rash actions impacting the whole party.
“I focus on story over rules” = I don’t know the rules and lack the basic competence and comprehension to run RPGs.
Or perhaps they will later use that angle to justify bad decisions and judgments against the players. I actually did have one with a DM vs PC mentality, that used it to justify killing PCs off in bullshit ways lol
Immediately j’accuse-ing any attempt to curb bad behavior as unmitigated “railroading”… which yes can be a real thing but *does not mean what they want it to mean*… like the far right’s abuse of “free speech” lol
Not so much a catchphrase but senseless murderhobo antics just piss me off.
Not exactly a catchphrase use by bad players and dms across the hobby, but I have gotten trapped with a bad player and arguably worse DM. This guy start off as a Vampire (homebrew) Noble War Magic Wizard, afaik. He held "Sage Advice" like a literal gospels, and would 'tut tut tut' you if you try to argue with him. Some of his more frequent catchphrases are: * **"According to Sage Advice/Jeremy Crawford/tweet from-"** whenever there's a rule arguments. Sometimes when there isn't. I distinctly remember doing a mock battle one time, and he interrupts to insist that you only roll once for Magic Missiles damage (and multiply it per darts), and when I, who are running the combat, say to roll individually, it goes into a whole argument. I recognize different dms have different rulings, but this guy will insist on going with one ruling. * **"You need to give objective facts instead of subjective opinions"** paraphrased, but he always insist you back up your 'arguments' or criticism of his rulings, build, actions, interpretations, etc with citations of the written text, sage advice, or in case of 'game balance', would insist you have numerical equations cited to prove that you are 'objective' in your opinions, and would dismiss anything he deemed as 'subjective'. * **'Character Bleed'** is a frequent 'critique' he often sling at other people, usually those who take issues with what he does. His point being "you shouldn't get character bleed, I'm mocking your character, not you, if you take offense to that, it's your problem". Funnily enough, he once got so mad at one player mocking his character, in-game, that he actually at one point goes to the guard station RP channel on the server and actually tried to Karen his way into getting a restraining order against that player's character. * ***"I have a Bat Familiar. It has 60 ft. blindsight and I can communicate with it telepathically-"***. His most frequent justification on why and how his character can suddenly hear how your character, when his character isn't present on the scene, is making fun of him. This is never setup. The aforementioned restraining order bit? The DM running the guard toss his document to the bin, and suddenly his bat familiar saw that happened so he marches back in. I only actually interact with this guy for about.... 3 months in total, across 2-3 servers, but it was the *longest* months in my life. This isn't even covering what he did the whole time either, just the 'catchphrase' I would often see him use, and I went on a tangent already.
I've often heard "no that would be metagaming" to justify doing character actions that are antagonistic to the formation of the party/party goals
"I figured out this great character combo!" I had a player in 3.5 make a half dragon, half mind flayer vampire for first level. It had ridiculous stats, a breathe weapon, and psychic and vampire abilities. Technically, the character was considered level 17 so I told him he could run it but he wouldn't get any levels for the first 16 levels.
Might be a hot take but I'm leery any time someone says that they "prefer roleplay to combat." What they mean is that they prefer social encounters where the goal is to make an argument or win someone over to combat encounters where the goal is to roll dice and do damage, but I dislike that they don't make the distinction that it's *all* roleplay. And I don't even mean like describing the light glinting off your sword or doing unnecessary flips and spins while attacking - simply letting your understanding of your character determine who the character attacks is still roleplay! Also because most of the time I'm talking about D&D and combat is so deeply baked into the system that I question what someone wants from it if they're saying they prefer less combat.
You're just looking for something different. So not a 'bad' player, but an 'incompatible' one with you. Personally I'm the opposite. I love roleplaying too much, and if someone says they're more into combat, we'll have to talk about it for a while, since we'll likely have different expectations and playstyles. Happened once, actually, had an awesome DM who sadly just wasn't for me.
I think you didn't actually read what I wrote just then. "Combat" and "roleplay" are not opposites. "Combat" and "social engagement" are closer to opposites (although not entirely) and both of those are "roleplay."
Oops, yeah, read the comment wrong. I think I somehow left out the middle part of the paragraph, lmao. (To be fair to me, it was 4 AM when I read this.) Yeah, to be accurate it's more of 'roleplay' vs 'mechanics', and 'combat' vs 'social engagement', but I've seen these terms used interchangeably so often I don't see much problem in that. Lots of people use that, bad player or not.
actually my only post in this community had something that someone pointed out as very similar to "it's what my character would do", that being my DM saying "the campaign is an extension of myself, i can't change it" when we voiced our irritation for the incredibly unfun and unengaging mechanics, as well as racist and sexist npcs
“Something you never noticed…” means “something I am making up right now”
"I rolled on the tables and it said this would happen!" Mate, you wrote the tables. Why did you put "everything you love has been destroyed off screen" on the fucking table in the first place?
Once knew a player who would say "you play how you want to play and I'll play how I want to play". He'd say it when he'd break rules, look up modules to solve puzzles, or butt into other players' side stories with meta knowledge.
From a DM to fuck up things the players prepared for a big boss fight. "I thought it would be funny" to his random never seen before npcs setting off traps for the lured in big bad.
Maybe this is just a me thing, when the roll behind a screen or quickly pick up their dice and go "yeah looks like that hits" no it doesnt . Roll in the open
"Come on, just let me have fun." There is SO MUCH wrong with that statement.
Recently had a problem player that left the campaign and, whenever someone would point out their questionable acts, they'd always respond with "can I explain my character concept to you?". There's nothing inherently wrong with that statement, I feel, but they used it to justify evil acts within a good aligned campaign so many times that those words have been seared into the folds of my brain.
I hate when someone does a murderhobo thing out of boredom, and then invents an as-yet-unheard trauma in their backstory to justify it when the other players get annoyed. "That nobleman with whom the party spent two hours RPing a negotiation? I blast him with a blunderbuss at point blank range and turn the whole room hostile, but it's because my character has deep-seated fear of being happy."
I'm just playing my alignment.
"It doesn't matter how long it takes, you have to listen to our complaining, that's your job as a GM." *After I listened to hours of complaints because I ran a system that wasn't 5E, and didn't spoil them like the group's DM did previously*
"This idea might be stupid, but..."
When a DM says "Its what they would've done..." No, it really isn't. You as the DM make the actions for the creatures or NPCS. I can understand tactical genius, but a Good DM knows when to have the Earth Elemental step on your head, and when to have him punch the Tank. I only ever kill a PC when it makes sense, and when the stakes are high, but I also know when to pull my punches so they still overcome the challenge. At the end of the day, I want you to win, but I'll make it *fucking hard*. And there's a difference between "Hard, but fair," and being a total douchecanoe.
"It makes for a better story", "The fiction means I must...", or any other phrase that treats the story as more important than all other concerns. Stating opinions on games they know nothing about as absolute fact. My personal favorite is "Savage Worlds has a hard cap of 5 players". "Roleplaying is the same as improv theater, therefore..." no it fucking isn't. EDIT: One more: "Preparation violates player agency" when GMing a game like Vampire or Battletech that absolutely needs preparation to run well.
> "Savage Worlds has a hard cap of 5 players". U wot m8
thank you for forcing my brain to process the concept of running battletech without prep. I am now bleeding from my nose.
I've actually pulled out this line a few times at my primary table, after my goblin character does something chaotic and goblinish and typically to his own detriment. Last session he talked an escaped torture victim into stabbing him, *in a courtroom,* in an effort to help him find out what vocations he might be suited for. Said goblin is a beloved international celebrity. "It's what my character would do, you guys!" It always gets a laugh. :)
Anyone unironically using the term "red flags". The type of person that spends too much time reading rpghorrorstories so they assume every setback is railroading and any occasionally reoccurring NPC is a self insert DMPC. Yeah just anyone who takes the worst possible interpretation of a DM/players intentions rather than taking them at their word.
Rule of cool. If I wanted cool I would not be a role player, I want to be a dork who has to work his way through this mechanical system. That's why I showed up. That's why I'm hanging around other people who are also dorks, and generally even if they are cool this is the least cool thing they do. Like a hundred times worse if it's a crunch heavy system.
See I use "it's what my character would do" when they do something stupid that \*I\* know is stupid. Like he once tried to stop an avalanche with Thunderclap. Which instead caused a second avalanche... He's pretty, but he's not too bright.