GM gripes about players..

The bard in my 5E game is going to use bagpipes.

In the very first room, there's a sleeping ogre in the next room over. Basically, the bagpipes may cause the entire party to wipe in the first room.

I need to gripe about that one player from a pick-up game of Shadowrun at a con.

The deal goes so: we're supposed to play a short Shadowrun adventure. I wind up in a pick-up group of TEN people, and a GM. And there's THIS guy. he's played Shadowrun before, and a lot of it. So he's attempting powergaming in a simplified, minimum-dice mechanic that pretty much doesn't allow anyone to munchkin the shit out of their characters. Worse yet, his plans are contrived and confrontational. To him, a plan involving a helicopter, a rocket launcher, grappling hooks and summoned air spirits in the middle of the fucking Manhattan is "simple". His idea of dealing with a major fixer is to kidnap her... well, until he tried assensing her, because when he saw implants AND magic at six he realized that he'd be completely fucked before even finishing the sentence "Is it just me, or does this rag smell of chloroform".

Also, the fixer put a hit on some random schmuck, and it was us who had to do it. After the munchkin rattled out a series of idiotic and outlandish ideas like house invasion involving butchering everyone inside, spontaneous combustion involving a fire spirit and some stuff that was just as dumb, I suggested a car accident. Then we narrowed it from T-boning the schmuck's car with a remotely controlled dump truck to sabotaging the schmuck's ride and having it crash into something. I drove the technomancer and the rigger ("the daisies", as in "...and I'll be driving the daisies") close to the target, technomancer made a backdoor for the rigger, the rigger sent the target crashing into oncoming traffic, the GM didn't even roll. Now that's a simple plan.

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

Holy fucking christ my game last night was a damn fiasco.

Okay, I pitched my game as an urban campaign. One of my players brings an illusion/shapeshifting-focused Psychic, aimed at being a manipulator. One of the first encounters in the city proper is the group getting rather brutally mugged. The players then call it, as several of them have to unexpectedly leave; this leaves me rather upset, because they were literally halfway through what I had planned. The session ends with them in the WORST possible position, with their stuff robbed and some with missing and broken fingers. We had been playing longer than they had been in the city.

Now, aforementioned player is fuming, and want to unleash vindictive hell upon the responsible gang. Kill them, kill their family, for messing with him. I tell him that no, he can't do that because that is fucking evil, and I will be having none of that in my game. He then tells me he wants to hit up stores with petty theft to get money to spend, which I ask 'why are you playing Pathfinder then?'.

Long story short, guy doesn't seem to get that playing an untrustworthy violent and vindictive anarchist might not be the best choice for a pathfinder game run by, lets face it, a rookie GM. I'd rather run a tight ship than leave players floundering while I fumble for something.

Me and my friend's collaborative webcomic: Forged Men

So, this is a gripe about a few of my players:

I have a Power Gamer who tries his hardest not to be a power gamer and manages to do it all by accident. Which is honestly more annoying than anything else I've dealt with, because at least with Power Gamers it shows from the start. This guy? His characters are "meh" at first, then after a level up, or feat they suddenly become out of control monsters.

Player 2: He's The Loonie and comes up with the dumbest character concepts, or will use flaws in combinations that make the character laughable. Example: He had a Weretiger Monk who had the "Too Cute" flaw, which gave him negatives on Intimidate and Disguise. He would ''always' bring it up whenever in a social situation happened, despite said flaw doing nothing but the intimidate and Disguise penalties.

Player 3 (our other DM): Control Freak and a Rules Lawyer. LOVELY combination there.

Honestly, the worst thing that ever happened with my players though: They eventually found out that someone put a hit on their group in one campaign. They expected to be set upon by hired thugs, not an Assassin who's a Sniper. So they eventually get to a bandit camp, and because none of them had the ability to passively perceive the assassin in the tree (he was 30 feet up, but his outfit wasn't even blending into the tree). This lead to Loonie's Monk getting Death Attacked and killed. All of the players flipped on me when they figured out I had used the actual Assassin Prestige Class after having the person who told them "Someone has hired assassins to kill you.".

Yes, really.

Another one from a different set of players:

I had a player get incredibly irate when I informed him that his Cavalier (my groups usually combine 3.5 and Pathfinder) couldn't be part of the Cavalry in one nation's army of my world. This was after I explained, MULTIPLE TIMES, that said country was incredibly mountainous and rocky and lacked horse-based cavalry (they used Pegasus and Wyverns). Not sure if this is worse, but when he said I was just making that up to mess with him, the other five players pointed out no, I did explain that country's cavalry and army in-depth when he asked to play a Cavalier and how they didn't have Horseback Cavalry. -Head Desk-

edited 9th Mar '16 1:29:56 PM by BlackSunNocturne

We've been playing The One Ring in a continuous campaign for about a year now. One of my players still has no understanding of how some of the basic game mechanics work, like when you add your damage bonus in combat or how the encumbrance rules work. Okay, so the encumbrance rules are kind of unique to this game, but dude, we've been playing just about every week for more than a year now! Where have you been?

I just don't understand the player who comes to the table, pulls out his phone or tablet and plays games on it without making any effort to engage in what is happening in the game at the table except when he has to roll some dice.

Yet he keeps coming back week after week.

In any case, I've decided that as long as the other players don't complain too much I'll let him keep doing it, since he seems to be having fun.

I'd honestly just use this rule when it comes to players like that:

No electronic devices except for calculators at the table.

Well, for my one in-person game (a Pathfinder game), I'm a tad more liberal. In part because we periodically have one person who has to Skype in (which person, interestingly, rotates), and in part because only three of us own the physical copies of the books; everyone else either has the PDF versions or just relies on the PRD for the rules. At that game, I haven't needed to vocalize or enforce it, but outside of emergency scenarios, electronic device usage is restricted to Skype (when needed) and rules look-up. It works pretty well for us.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

We have tried that. It doesn't work when some of the players only have .pdfs of the rule book or only have an electronic version of their character sheet.

They can't print out their character sheets? Laaaaaaaaaaaazy

And the on the pdfs thing: The in-person groups I've had usually only has the DM with their laptop with all the rules and shit on pdfs. It works usually well.

edited 11th Mar '16 1:45:48 PM by BlackSunNocturne

Not laaaazzzyy - cheap. Or not possessing a printer at all.

RE only the DM having the rules - doesn't that mean you have to stop everything while you look up a rule, instead of having the players do it while you move on with the action? And what happens at the end of the session when everyone buys up their skills or levels and they all need a book?

edited 11th Mar '16 1:59:18 PM by Bense

@Bense:

A couple of suggestions: 1. Have players share a few computers. There's a social contract thing here. I've found that, in a similar situation, having players "double up" on computers, displaying two character sheets on the same computer (originally caused by a lack of outlets), kept wandering minds at a minimum. 2. Alternatively, you can have the rules as the DM, and have one trusted player have access as well. 3. Per end of session level ups: They can take their character sheets home with them (or you could email, etc. them as they don't have the physical sheets), and access them there. Or, if the level up isn't strictly at the end of the session, you could have them bring their laptops etc. and just turn them off during the game. When a level up happens, you can relax the rule for 10-15 minutes, or however long your level ups take.

Nihil assumpseris, sed omnia resolvere!

FFS, have a couple of clean character sheets on hand for decency's sake if anything... Last time, I had to print the sheets for my players, as they didn't have a printer.

"what the complete, unabridged, 4k ultra HD fuck with bonus features" - Mark Von Lewis

TFW only one of your players shows up for character creation day.

Yeah, one of the others literally COULDN'T be there, and the other doesn't drive, but...

And even then, the one who showed up didn't have the pdfs I sent him as his laptop storage was full (how does that even happen).

And a gripe about myself, I'm stupid for thinking the character folio was the character sheet.

But hey, first time D Ming, am I right?

Personal tip: the first time, you'll have way more fun doing a smallish adventure where you just stumble along and discover the rules together with the players and generally try things to discover what works and what doesn't than if you try to immediately start your Super Magnus Opus.

(I'm not implying that's what you were doing, just a random advice that popped in my head when I saw you are a new DM :P )

edited 17th Mar '16 9:06:54 AM by Cozzer

Oh don't worry, that's what I'm planning.

I'm gonna be jury rigging "creatures" and enemies from other stuff.

Mainly thugs, but I'll be having a couple other enemies that I might have to use a character sheet on. I'm planning on having the mini-campaign be one of intrigue, rather than combat.

So far I have a halfling investigator and a half-elf (drow) swashbuckler for player characters.

No one in the group showed up, AGAIN.

Gah, I hate everything.

Real Life has to take precedence sometimes. Just wait until your group are all married and have kids. Finding game time then can be really tough.

Hell, the whole married-with-kids thing is why I specifically set up a biweekly game just for parents. We all understand when one of us has to remote or we have to reschedule due to personal issues. It's much less stressful when everyone at the table understands the pressures because you're going through them too.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Well, I'm not directly angry with my players, but after setting my whole game up they were too confused by the rules (not entirely their fault, perhaps), and half of them quit. *sigh*

"Any campaign world where an orc samurai can leap off a landcruiser to fight a herd of Bulbasaurs will always have my vote of confidence"

I've had a lot of That Guy players and D Ms but here is one of them.

Case 1: Void

Problems:

They were generally disrespectful with them essentially treating me like a dumbass even though the flat-out admitted that they barely skimmed the PHB while I own and re-read all of the sourcebooks because I need to make my own settings for my games for 5e. And then there's the fact that they essentially acted like a bratty teenage daughter and fuck I literally have no idea why I tolerated that and didn't sass the hell out of them.

How it resolved itself:

They played one session where they rode my ass for the entirety of it. They decided that they didn't want to play in my game and I'm so grateful.

You gotta start somewhere.

I've generally been very lucky as a GM, with players who know me and want to work together to create fun story-heavy adventures. There have been some hiccups, some misunderstandings, even a few arguments, but we've managed to work together through it. One of the few exceptions was a player who wasn't entirely on the same page as the rest of us, as he believed that he had to be an abrasive asshole as a roleplayer, which turned out to be what he genuinely is as a person.

Long story short: I found out that he joined our game less out of actual interest for the hobby and more because he wanted to have an excuse to be closer to one of my female players. I already mentioned he was abrasive, which can be partly explained with that he didn't get the relatively light-hearted tone of the story, but wanted to be an edgelord. We were playing a homebrew inspired by superhero-comics of the 1970's, so I told him about the genre conventions and the direction I was going for, as well as how the others wanted to play the game. That didn't really work and he kept wanting to make the game darker and edgier, unfortunately at the expense of the other players. This applied especially to the female player I mentioned, who was not interested in him IRL, so he started to take his frustrations out on her character even more harshly than on the others. No surprise that this guy was never invited back to our game.

This is a light gripe, mostly I want to ask if there's anything I can or should do.

I have a player who, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of, doesn't "get" one of their most important class features. In this case, a Warlock doesn't understand Eldritch Invocations and other than their starting one, has consistently "forgotten" to add more when leveling up. Even that starting one "Book of Ancient Secrets", he has to the best of my recollection never used to cast a Ritual spell.

I've messaged him, I've set aside start time on a session to show him what they are and where they could go on their character sheet. But week after week, he never bothers to get them. Which is odd, he grasps the spell casting and picks out spells when he levels up, but for some reason he is happy to have 75% of his character done. I don't want to single him out, and aside from being a generally passive in terms of RP (I throw way more interactions at him than he interacts with the world) he's a good player and participates constructively in combat.

Should I just let him be? Have another Warlock with powerful invocations show up to basically make him (the player) go "oh shit, I want to do that!", or have another player coach him? Something else?

You should talk to him like an adult and see what his deal is.

If he doesn't get his character still, get him a guide. There are a ton of guides on the internet. Here's one for Warlocks: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?485736-Selling-your-Soul-at-a-Premium-The-Warlock-s-Guide-to-Power

But yeah, you socialize and talk with him and you try to help him with whatever shit that he needs. Unless he's going to throw that good will in your face and then you need to find another player.

You gotta start somewhere.