>I'm told this is going to be a highly lethal game and not to be surprised if PCs die easily.
Okay, my character's name is John Smith. He grew up as a peasant on a farm. He was trained to fight in the militia. Boom, character done. I've been told more than once I'm an butthole for doing this, and even once outright rejected from a game.
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Yes, you are. There are plenty of ways to do quick-fast character concept creation without coming off as a huge b***h clearly phoning it in as a protest. Roll some fricking tables.
Not a protest, just laziness at this point. I've been bitten more than once by bothering to put any effort into a character background and, surprise surprise, they died. Even if the game offers random background tables, I can't be arsed to spend the time rolling on shit that I've discovered NOBODY ELSE AT THE TABLE IS GOING TO GIVE A FRICK ABOUT - NOT EVEN THE DM.
That sounds a lot like a protest against your perceived mistreatment at the hands of, what, multiple tables? And they all do these high lethality campaigns? You're either very unlucky, or your attitude is the constant.
>That sounds a lot like a protest against your perceived mistreatment at the hands of, what, multiple tables?
I can assure you it's laziness but if you know me better than I do then maybe I should value your opinion more than I actually do right now.
>And they all do these high lethality campaigns?
No, due to my IRL job I can't be part of a IRL group consistently that insists on physically playing at a table. So I'm stupid enough to go looking for games online.
Laziness would be a random name. You choose a generic name. Big difference.
You're not just not putting effort in, you're loudly announcing that you didn't.
>it's not a protest
>it's a temper tantrum
Okay maybe you're not an butthole, just a toddler.
Shit, you might be right. I should just grow up and stop playing these elaborate games of pretend entirely.
>"My character is a farmhand turned militia. I want to discover who he is as we play."
>"I am too lazy to think about my character if he might die. No, you can't make me."
You should definitely grow up, and if you can't do that you should definitely stop playing RPGs and stop contaminating the pool with your attitude. Do you not feel embarrassed when you write this shit for others to see?
No I feel second-hand embarrassment for people like you.
>I know you are but what am I!
Wow you really are a toddler
If you don't want to use your imagination then yes, you should stop playing imagination games.
I think you'd be a little surprised how little imagination gets used in these supposed games of imagination.
Anon high lethality games are fun to invest a good character into BECAUSE there are actual stakes and you won't just get jerked off by the GM. Doing something heroic knowing that you might actually die for it is fricking exhilarating.
>play in OSR campaign
>GM absolutely doesn't frick around
>facing a custom monster whose signature attack is vacuuming everything into its mouth
>he drags you in by X squares and upon contact you just fricking die
>previously it ate a fricking horse and spat out the bones
>we fight it trying to keep out of vacuum range
>am a massive guy with a zweihander who can't do shit
>one of the PCs is KO and the beast starts inhaling everything in range, swallowing goblin corpses and weapons
>next turn it's gonna swallow the downed PC
>OK frick it I charge the motherfricker
>are you sure you wanna do that
>I'm gonna ride the whirlwind bruh
>frickin' A
>jump straight at the thing, roll a crit and impale its head with the zweihander
>absolutely fricking metal
>sick move goes down in history
felt so good
Your argument and story are absolutely legit but if I were in your shoes I would have felt just as exhilarated with humble old peasant John as I would with whatever your character's name was and whatever his length of backstory was.
No you wouldn't because your character is shit while mine is cool as frick. I have played meat grinder dungeon-crawl games and went with John Doe the dirt farmer, it's not nearly as satisfying.
But I assume you're just gonna reply with more bait 'cause you don't play games. You're just lame man
>mine is cool as frick
Name and describe the character who killed the vacuum monster with the zweihander, please.
you don't seem to be interested in anything people tell you
None of you are "gamblers". The payoff comes from risking the character you are invested in, it adds weight to the choice, because you ARE sacrificing something you care about to save a friend, or kill a monster. It adds immersion to the game. Its not a playstyle for everyone though, and there is nothing wrong with building an attachment to a surviving game piece ether.
However, gamblers are the type of player I prefer in games I run and play in, because they accept loss significantly better, are more immersed in the story, build real bonds with the other people at the table and their characters, and as they play more become far more tactically competent in the system than non-gamblers due to constantly riding the edge for the best possible odds. They arn't as afraid to looks silly, involve themselves in the setting more, act rather than react generally. I fricking love you goofy bastards, keep on playing my dudes
Your definition of "gambler" seems to be "someone who is shit at dealing probabilities and loses everything to the house"
My definition of "gambler" is "someone who is good at dealing with probabilities and tries to game the house".
Therefore, if I run a lethal game, I am not surprised if a player shows up with a blank slate as their character sheet: because they're putting low investment on a gamble that has a low chance, but high ceiling of return.
That's just good gambling strategy, who am I to judge them.
You mechanical outlook lacks the "role playing" part of a role playing game, as the role you play is shallow. Thus, IMO, you are only playing half of what you should be in my view, you are JUST playing a game, not a RPG. You are less. If you think that is better that the alternatives, that is your taste, but I, personally, don't share it, and I hope for both our sakes we never have to play together. My experience with your type are people who screw over their party members, run from perilous fights, are quiet at the table, resist making decisions, and flake sessions, communication, and downtime. You may not be like that, but I rather not take the chance personally. Enjoy your games
And then during a random encounter (because you rolled for one as you were hexcrawling) your badass gets hit by a 2 HD spider who has a poison attack. You roll a 2 on your PD save and your character dies. Cool.
Also your argument falls flat because you're not addressing the question. The argument was that there's no point in coming up with a backstory for your character if it's a high lethality game, at least in the earlier levels.
>your argument falls flat because you're not addressing the question. The argument was that there's no point in coming up with a backstory for your character if it's a high lethality game
My argument is that without the threat of dying there's no excitement. In the greentext I knew that if I didn't land a hit my character would've died. In handholdy games my excitement wanes as soon as I see that the GM pulls his punches even when players are straight up doing dumb shit.
Of course it seems more intuitive to reserve your special snowflake character for the campaign where you are guaranteed you won't die, my point is that this is wrong and it won't pay off unless you're the kind of guy who enjoys playing in godmode.
You do realize that it's not binary, right, moron? You can absolutely have a high-stakes game with the players not being instakilled because they have a flat 5% chance of dying every time they make an attack/saving throw?
This guy knows what's good. If he dies, he dies. Without the threat of dying to shitty spider bites, the cool shit isn't worth.
Nothing about your backstop made that LE EPIC!!! moment memorable.
It would have been LE EPIC!!!! if John Smith was the character with his same back story.
What you do in game is infinitely more important that whatever jerk off session back blow you make up before the game to make your character.
I'd give a shit if the lethality of the game came from actual skill challenge, rather than from random chance.
For example, in old school d&d, if your level 1 PC has 1HD (1d8) , and the level 1 enemy hits with 1d8, and you're both wearing leather armor, both of you have a 25% chance of dying instantly from a single attack.
Compare this with BRP, where starting hp averages out at 12, but never grows with your level, so you are not likely to be 1 shot at low levels, but at higher levels the game still stays lethal, balanced out with player skill and PC power, and the lethality kicks in AFTER the player has already invested in his character.
If the game is designed in such a way that the outcome is heavily determined by random chance, don't be surprised when players adopt a low cost, frequent attempt style strategy of "throw PCs at the wall until they stick".
It's just a smarter way to play.
skill issue
I mean, if you're playing old-school D&D, your mistake in that scenario would be even getting into regular, "fair" combat in the first place. We say "Combat as War" in the OSR for a reason.
Meh, I've found that "combat as war" most often devolves into looney tunes slapstick hijinks, because it's hard for DMs to gauge how much they should reward "clever" & "out of the box" actions with no mechanical guidance at all, and they tend to err on the side of rewarding such hijinks too much, as to not discourage further "clever play".
The game devolves into freeform storytelling at this point.
"spill a flask of oil on the floor before the pit trap, yell obscenities at the orcs, and hide behind the corner"
"wow good job, the orcs slip on the oil and fall into the pit trap"
I prefer good old, well defined, explicit, mechanical, tactical minigame combat.
I dunno, that sounds cool to me, taking advantage of the orcs being easily angered and not too bright.
But hey, different games for different preferences.
This, even though my experience has been the complete opposite. I unabashedly prefer the other end of the spectrum of "combat as war", which I'm surprised you didn't mention: "Combat as sport." There's nothing wrong with that. But then, I actually played sports when I was young in school and respect the excitement that can come from two supposedly evenly-matched teams.
Anyway, you mention GMs rewarding their players too much, whereas my experience has been that all my GMs have outright PENALIZED and PUNISHED any kind of idea a player can come up with if they can find the slightest possible flaw in it. So that "Combat as war" ends up with the deck eternally stacked against the PCs and their deaths are always a matter of time.
Which is why I'm not afraid, for both our respective sakes and experiences, to say that yes, I favor the "Combat as sport" approach to encounter building because it makes for an interesting tactical wargame, in the very least. Whereas "Combat as war", where the odds are always stacked in one way or another, just becomes a boring exercise in dice-rolling towards an inevitable result.
>The game devolves into freeform storytelling at this point.
>"spill a flask of oil on the floor before the pit trap, yell obscenities at the orcs, and hide behind the corner"
>"wow good job, the orcs slip on the oil and fall into the pit trap"
The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.
t. Gygax
Combat in OSR should be resolved with as few dice rolled as possible, because 1v1s are fricking deadly. The example you posted is actually a stellar example of players overcoming the obstacle. What do you mean freeform shit, though? Like the gm could easily have the orcs roll saving throws to avoid slipping or whatever. Then they take 1d6 falling damage. That's not the point though. I really don't see what's wrong with what you said. What the frick is not well defined or tactical here? I can tell you haven't spent much time in dungeons bro.
Because as a player I can't make judgements on whether something will work or not, especially when it comes to NPC behavior. It's up to the DM.
Which means I'm not playing a game any more, I'm just giving the DM storytelling prompts.
Because the point of a game is to make decisions based on rules and the information given in a situation.
The skill them becomes in guessing the DM's mind, rather than any kind of consistent behavior on part of the npcs or the game world.
Depending on the DM, depending on the DM's mood, the exact same action either rewards the players, or punishes them, or results in a roll or doesn't, etc.
If you don't trust your DM, you should find another one. The whole tabletop hobby is entirely dependent on trusting your DM to be fair and honest.
All of the various attempts to fix this over the decades by piling on different kinds of rules are futile, because a malicious DM is not hampered by any amount of rules.
Once you learn to trust your DM, the game gets far better.
I trust my DM, I just disagree with him on matters of causality.
If you trust your GM you trust that the way he presents the world he created is accurate to itself. That no matter what the orc decides to do, that if this world was real that is what the orc would have done. If you don't agree with that then you do not trust your GM. If there is not a clear, objective, criticism to make. Such as "The orc should not see me for it has no eyes." Then your opinion as to whether X or Y would happen is insubstantial.
>It's just a smarter way to play.
Smartest way to play is to have your characters not be moronic and bumrush every obstacles and adversary dicks and swords swinging.
then why the frick do you play with them
NO ONE GIVES A FRICK ABOUT IT BECAUSE YOU'VE NOT EVEN MADE AN NPC, YOU'VE MADE A JOKE.
THE VAST MAJORITY OF POPULAR SYSTEMS HAVE ROLL TABLES TO AID YOU IN DEVELOPING BACKSTORIES OR CHARACTER TRAITS, IT'S SUPER FRICKING EASY.
IF YOU CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO MAKE AN INTERESTING CHARACTER, NO ONE WILL TAKE INTEREST, AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT.
>THE VAST MAJORITY OF POPULAR SYSTEMS HAVE ROLL TABLES TO AID YOU IN DEVELOPING BACKSTORIES OR CHARACTER TRAITS, IT'S SUPER FRICKING EASY.
Except even when those tables are rolled on, nobody else gives a frick about the result. Not even the GM.
Fpbp
Samegay
fpbp
fpbp
Or just don’t play gay meatgrinder games
Yes, you probably are unrelated to the character you made. Anyway that seems a fine bg if you're willing to expand it during game as the opportunity arises, but you probably won't because you're an butthole.
>but you probably won't because you're an butthole.
Actually, one of my John's actually managed to survive to the end of the game (which only lasted 3 months admittedly). After he got a level or two I wrote an additional paragraph about his family and siblings. The DM killed them all, of course, before the game died off.
>3 months admittedly). After he got a level or two I wrote an additional paragraph about his family and siblings. >The DM killed them all
Shit like this is what makes me create Farmers Macfarmers that joined the militia or became hunters to pay off drinking debts, or X race thug for hire that want money if humans are banned, some DMs have a fricking fetish to use any family, love interest or mentor figure in your back story as soppy drama that it's impossible to care at this point
Glad your average Joe made it to the end though, it's always satisfying when it happens
This. Like we've never seen the average JRPG peaceful village from the early game and what happens to it.
Bitch, I just wanna raid a dungeon.
>Bitch, I just wanna raid a dungeon
Sometimes a heist or stakeout is fine too, but I get you brother, the characters are a vehicle for us to play a game.
I'm really glad I'm not alone in this
You don't need an entire family history but you need more than "His name is John and he's a soldier." You're boring and you're not putting in the effort everyone else is. I bet you're probably not even paying attention on other's turns.
>I bet you're probably not even paying attention on other's turns
That's hard to do when you are sharing a table, also considering most people frick off to do their own thing while two players are having a scene it feels metagamey if you know something that happened while your character was offscreen of their turn doing scouting or roleplaying asking the locals for intel
I always try to maintain ignorance on my characters for stuff you weren't supposed to know and that requires you to pay attention to other players
The problem is that whenever you invest in making a big story the DMs try to make you an underdog with a sob story as if your parents dying or your mentor turning evil wasn't overdone already, worst case I had was the one time I played a wicked nobleman with a soft spot for his niece he took care for after his sister was assassinated for political reasons, guess who the DM tried to cause drama with, one dead niece later I was left without motivation for my character to improve all because the DM needed to establish his fetish for dead family members, bloody hell it's even worse when your parents become plot points or a lost lover becomes railguards for the plot railroad express
>one dead niece later I was left without motivation for my character to improve all because the DM needed to establish his fetish for dead family members
That sounds even worse because I assume he made it difficult to just ressurect her.
Yeah, it was that kind of campaign
>I bet you're probably not even paying attention on other's turns.
My cousin had a bad habit of going into solo adventures, and my DMs had the bad habit to indulge it. Of course I have better things to do.
>you're not putting in the effort everyone else is.
I'd say you don't know my party and how we only bother with backgrounds for lulz, but I kinda agree because they usually bother with a name. I'm not a creative guy, I'm a strategy guy.
>you probably are unrelated to the character you made
Yes? I've never heard of anyone porting their family members into elf games as character bases.
Yes. Put more effort in, or don't join games that make you want not to put effort in.
Character creation in of itself is enough of an effort. I just don't feel like wasting time on shit nobody else at the table won't give a flying frick about. Because let's face it: In highly lethal games RARELY does anybody ever stop to ask the other PC: "Where do you come from and what was your life like?" People only care about how good you kill monsters.
At minimum, you need to look at the game's setting and create a character that would fit in that world.
Your proposal would be instantly rejected in Paranoia, for example. There is no peasant militia or farms in Alpha Complex.
>Your proposal would be instantly rejected in Paranoia, for example. There is no peasant militia or farms in Alpha Complex.
You are exactly the kind of nerd that got the shit knocked out of him in school for this level of autism. And I always liked having nerds like you around because the bullies would focus on you first and not pay any attention to me.
I'd reject you too. Less than one paragraph of backstory is a red flag.
>He grew up as a peasant on a farm. He was trained to fight in the militia.
Okay, need a complete paragraph. Uh, add on this: He has an older brother who is going to inherit the farm and a sister who is going to be married off, so John decided to become an adventurer to make his own fortune. Three sentences is a paragraph. Boom, done.
Not him but that's perfectly fine, there's enough meat to work with as the game progresses. Not every background has to be some grandeur shit or a conflict ridden ones. Johnn story tells me more than you think about his character and his future game actions will compliment these informations expanding them. As long as you're willing to embrace it and answer to questions genuinely you're fine.
I love you, Anon. Yes, I'm actually enough of a roleplayer to roleplay humble old John to the hilt as a peasant who only knew of life on the farm suddenly in over his head due to what a life of adventuring brings him (provided he even lives for that long). It's just that, as I said earlier, if you tell me John is very likely to die early in the game my laziness kicks in. If he actually manages to live, I might put more effort into his background.
Peasants don't have the requisite experience to become level 1 player characters. A level 1 fighter has about 3 years (1d6), minimum, of professional training and experience with combat. A peasant who was merely a member of his local militia would be level 0, unless his village is constantly threatened, either way your character physically cannot become a level 1 class without years of doing constant training that separate him massively from simple farmers and village people.
Starting age is a suggestion, it's not a rule, but even if it were a rule it wouldn't mean that you need 1-6 years of non-peasant training, it would just mean that the starting age for fighters was 1 year older than for rogues and sorcerers. You're just making shit up. Some people join the militia and get spear proficiency, some people join the militia and learn nothing, some people join the militia and become 1st-level fighters because they're naturally talented.
I wouldn't let you name your character "John Smith" but it's perfectly fine to start as an uninteresting farmboy. Backstory is optional and ultimately unimportant, but when you name your character "John Smith" it seems like you're pre-emptively b***hing about PC death.
You're just wrong about that, the time added by starting age is explicitly related to training time, it isn't that only older people are interested in being wizards, it's that in order to BE a wizard you have to spend time training and studying. Level 1 fighters are massively better at combat than level 0 warriors or similar NPC classes. They're not only innately more powerful, they're also much more versatile. You can house rule as you like but it is not an optional rule that classed characters require considerable investments of time and effort to even reach 1st level.
>in order to BE a wizard you have to spend time training and studying
This is pure fluff. Extremely simple to imagine a game where this is not true.
Of course you can rewrite the rules however you like, and whatever, but OP is talking about how much he hates old school hexcrawls which very much DO rely on things like this to inform the types of characters who partake in dungeon exploration.
Moreover, I despise this generic sludge-y take on fantasy settings, like there are people in the world who are just mild mannered little bumpkins who go into the tombs of mad sorcerer kings to steal their relics because they're... just kind of mercenary? No fricking way, dungeons are a death sentence for MOST level 1 characters; meaning TRAINED and EXPERIENCED motherfrickers who might actually stand a chance against a gang of goblins or a giant spider. It is just nonsensical that some humble farmer without any particular aptitude for combat would go and try to do that, without also inviting some compelling factor, like "my daughter has been cursed by a dark wizard" or "my village passed me a sacred duty" that OP is deliberately trying to avoid because he's a salty little b***h.
Post the game you're talking about along with a page number for the rule that you're referencing. I don't think that the rule exists, I think it's one of those strong headcanons that come out of your own personal way of synthesizing rules and flavor text. No edition of D&D has ever said "You can't take a fighter level until you've attended 1-6 years of fighter college and militia training doesn't count". Peasant-with-militia-training is a classic background for a D&D fighter.
First of all, Black person, not a single specific game was ever mentioned so you insisting this is "in the rules" is laughably moronic.
Yeah, good enough, gives GM something to work with, next-of-kin to get kidnapped or murdered for plot hook is usually all you need.
Thank you, Anon. I love you.
4 sentences is a paragraph. Frick you lazy zoomers
I'd accept it. I don't give one solitary shit about player's backstories, and in my experience the other players don't care either. If there's anything interesting about your character, we can go into during play, and they'll develop naturally at the table.
No character appearing at my table is required to have been unusual or interesting before they decided to risk their lives gambling on adventure. As long as the players and I have fun, that's all that matters.
Thank you for your honesty, Anon. I love you.
To be fair i only played the first one so i wouldn't know.
Wait, there's NWN2?
No. It was just a proof of concept obsidian shat out that thankfully failed to find a publisher.
It had better graphics and worse gameplay, and released in an unplayable buggy state. I heard they eventually fixed it with patches, but by then I had moved on, and never went back to try it again.
Nah man thats fine. The problem is 99% of people who say "the game will be lethal" are lying pussies who will pull punches constantly. b***hing you out is the only way to save face when you present a character who CAN be killed
>The problem is 99% of people who say "the game will be lethal" are lying pussies who will pull punches constantly.
I must have rotten luck because most of the people who say they are running lethal games mean it. Frankly, if I ran into the people who pull their punches, I might be motivated to write more paragraphs about John's background once I got the feeling he might actually be able to stick around for a little while.
Yes, obviously. The fact that you don't realise this only makes you more of an butthole.
Go into this thread thinking that OP is reasonable. Leave the thread thinking OP's a prick. I don't want OP or NWN2 players in my game, this is an Infinity Engine household.
>Go into this thread thinking that OP is reasonable
How? The problem isn't even the lack of detail but the obvious disdain shown for the game and fellow players. It says, "I don't actually want to play so you should be grateful I even turned up". That's what makes him an butthole. And no amount of writing extra character background will fix it.
>"I don't actually want to play so you should be grateful I even turned up"
The funniest part about this observation is that, yes, if the game wasn't hard-up to recruit players they wouldn't have extended the invite to me in the first place. C'est la vie. Maybe they should think twice about how they actually intend on running the game versus what might inspire players to stick around.
>Yes, they SHOULD have been happy I showed up.
You're just proving my point, butthole.
I know this and I'm glad it pisses you off to realize people like me are in your hobby. I still feel justified in my behavior, though.
>I still lack self-awareness
I can tell.
okay yeah you’re definitely the butthole here.
Rule of thumb: don't put more time into character creation than the life expectancy if the character (in minutes played). You are absolutely fine op. DMs who expect you to have a full character with unique backstory and relevant NPCs only to go through one every session can eat a bag of dicks
This isn't even 5 minutes worth of effort. The character isn't going to die in the first 5 minutes of the game.
>He hasn't died in character creation
Classic Traveller is the good shit.
I would say that you should make up a fantasy name instead. John Smith is very obviously low-effort. If you called him, I dunno, "Raugr the Red" or some shit like that, I would be perfectly okay with it.
Thank you Anon, maybe if I just changed the name to something more palatable for fantasy, it would be an easier pill to swallow. You actually have a good point.
This is pretty much it - you're being called an butthole because that's how the name comes off. The background is completely fine; the use of a modern-sounding name with no clear relation to the background makes the package come off as a passive-aggressive criticism. Even "John the Smith" with a background of "was a smith for the local militia" would be more palatable.
>no one notices boomer game stuff
no one cares, grandpa. Go with the times
>MAINCHAR FROM THE NWN2 OC
I don't even know what the frick that means.
>Am I the butthole?
Probably.
Didn't read the post btw.
Name your character Dudero Sillipus and you won't get called an butthole.
It's that simple.
I would not accept this backstory, but I don't run "high lethality games" in d&d.
You would've been expected to fill out a party backstory form with the other players, like all the other players, giving you some concrete goals, worldviews, ties to the other party members, a hometown, a culture, a religion, and an optional organizational membership (Harpers, a church, etc).
I'm not accepting a novella either though, just fill out the form with the other players, make characters who care about eachother, and care about the campaign premise you signed up for.
"Would not accept this backstory" means "you would have been filtered weeks before session 1, and the game delayed to look for someone to replace you, if it didn't have enough players", in case that's not clear.
That's not what self awareness or its lack means, no.
And it doesn't sound like you're having fun at all.
Run games for players like you and there's really nothing to do here, because the issue is you unable to cope with loss, even when told beforehand about it. You want to win, not to play.
Think about it, what are the other possibilities?
If the game is not high lethality, you will develop the character, background, make it grow, but if it dies you'll get mad, and the loss will be worse the longer the game goes on, because making a new character means going through all that again. And if they can't die, where are the stakes? where's the risk? Death doesn't need to be around every corner but it should be a common threat in a combat focused system.
If the game is high lethality, knowing it can easily die kills your interest before the game start, so why play anyway? you're telling the GM you do not care about the game.
The point I'm trying to get through is that your reaction towards the game's conditions is a kid's tantrum rather than taking it to your side, making it your own way. So the game is high lethality? playa round that. Make characters that are daredevils, or buttholes that deserve to die. Make several characetrs all from a family of goblins, make characters that are each of a different class or subclass, I dunno. There's a lot of ways to make it fun, there's an entire subgenre of videogames designed around the unavoidable loss you'll suffer (dwarf fortress, Rimworld, some roguelikes, etc).
What fascinates me is how in the player's eyes, the GM seems to be immune to this. They are constantly making new NPCs, juggling several characters and having the "loser's" side all the time but it's no problem, yet ask a player to make more than one character due higher lethality and suddenly the game is not worth anymore because "my efforts feel worthless".
>What fascinates me is how in the player's eyes, the GM seems to be immune to this
Good point, it's not uncommon to hear about the GMs who build up a gnarly foe only for it to be dropped quickly and unceremoniously because of a logistical weakness. Sure, it's a reward to the players for their knowledge of the system, but only a short-term one, whereas an ongoing back and forth, building of stakes, and mounting reasons to hate this guy can culminate in a far more cathartic climax.
Because a) Death can happen but it's usually as a result of poor decisions, not just dumb luck, and b) there are failure states that aren't death.
> They are constantly making new NPCs, juggling several characters and having the "loser's" side all the time but it's no problem
Part of it is certainly design intent. It's a bit like cooking, you know it's going to be consumed, but as long as it is enjoyed or gets to do its thing, that's fine. At least, that's how I view it. Meanwhile, a PC is the only ball in the game for the player while the GM has the overall plot, the world, and things of that nature to be attached to more than an individual NPC.
Been reading this thread for lolz. You are wrong in your first paragraph. He just wants to PLAY he clearly doesn't care about winning. He puts in zero effort on back story because the character is just the means to the end- playing in a TTRPG. Nothing in what he posted or has since written who make any sane person think otherwise.
I'm not reading the rest of your homosexual psycho analysis if you frick it all up from the jump
OP posted a wojak so he's clearly a massive tool with an obsession with winning.
If he just wanted to play he wouldn't have made this thread you moronic homosexual
There's an obvious difference between not overly investing into a character who might not live very long, and intentionally making the most bland thing possible as an obvious display of passive aggressive b***hiness. You are clearly doing the latter.
Not in the slightest. What makes a character interesting is not where they're from but who they are. One of my favorite characters ever had a similar background - he was former colonial militia, now a deputy marshal of a backwater nowhere town. What made him interesting were his personality quirks (quietly religious, odd taste in New Age music for a good ol boy, never swears, chews nicotine gum because hes been 'quitting smoking' for like 5 years now) and the way he bounced off the rest of the group (most of whom had much more colorful pasts). You're only the butthole if the idea simply does not fit the setting or you make no effort to play this character as a person beyond rolling dice.
I AM JOHN SMITH
That can vome off as a sort if passive aggressive tantrum, basically.
That said, were I the DM,, and had we had even one positive interaction besides that, I'd give you the benefit of the doubt and not interpret your actions in the worst possible way .
So kind of, to answer your question.
Literally nothing wrong with it as a base concept, but if you're doing it just to be a passive-aggressive little b***h and carry that into the game itself, you're very much going to be deservedly booted.
In the defense of everyone, it was so fricking bad it hurts. I'm still mad over how fricking bad that game was. It's extra frustrating because it is also the beginning of Mask of the Betrayer, so you have the worst campaign in the worst game paired with what is probably one of the best CRPG campaigns ever made.
If this story is as fake as it seems I think it probably says a lot that OP would create a story wherein he acts like a passive-aggressive homosexual in order to passive-aggressively complain about a style of game he dislikes
Yes you are a gaint butthole.
The dm tells you befire character gen that this game is going to be rough so you can build appropriately and not be blindsided.
Your response is to cry and b***h that you've been asked to swim without floaties followed by internally making a no effort character.
Why should a dm who has spend a good amount of time and effort making a game include a player who refused to spend more that 12 seconds making a character. What do YOU bring to the table? Why should they invite your lazy ass to the next game?
If you don't like this type of game WHY ARE YOU PLAYING IT?
I've run and played many games like this b/c it can be a fun change. And here is a secret, you can use 1 character is numerous games. My shadowrun character that I really like has been used at 5 times (different dms and games).
I really hope this is a shit post and you aren't actually doing this
>come up with stupid gimmick character
>enjoy it for a couple sessions
>come up with new gimmick
>stat it out onto a new sheet
>old character dies
>whip out new sheet
>cycle repeats forever
>>come up with stupid gimmick character
it for a couple sessions
>>come up with new gimmick
>>stat it out onto a new sheet
>>old character just won't die because GM is a pussy
>>come up with stupid gimmick character
it for a couple sessions
>>come up with new gimmick
>>stat it out onto a new sheet
>>old character just won't die because GM is a pussy
talk to the GM about retiring the character.
to finish up whatever arc he had planned so you can roll a new character
just ask the GM to second character to alternate with.
>planned character arc
This board is filled with nogames and gays
That because you're not putting up any effort in your charter. And if people are calling you an butthole over it, it might because they were expecting you to put effort into your background for rp.
If you still want to the John Smith I suggest you add more to him.
>I am Johnes Smith, 5th son of the Smith family.
>My family are but humble farmers, but I always wanted more in life then tilling the fields.
>I joined the local militia to mostly get away from the field work, but my instructor inspired me to travel outside my little provenience with tales of his exploits.
>I'm not coming back to home until I bring back fame and glory to the Smith name! And adventuring can't be that hard right?
I like how OP just fricked off.
Schoolday.
GM asked in the negative by saying "OP, you are a fricking c**t if you don't bring me more of a background, your current background is insufficient." Since this is a repeat thing we can assume the GM asked in the positive the first time around, before OP got passive aggressive.
Yeah, that's how it works, the DM expects effort from the players for the effort they put into making the campaign themselves. High lethality doesn't mean make a character who's got less personality than a graffitied wall it means make a character where them dying isn't going to tear you up on the inside or otherwise build a character with contingencies, so you don't need to deal with that. Most DM's will even happily except a character with as plain of a backstory as that if you're making it clear your trying to make someone who's existence was plain before the campaign and easy way to do that is rather than generic farmlandia ask the DM about local farmland so you and the DM can point to where your character was from on the map.
That's the risk of running a high-lethality game. Unless the GM has some reward mechanism in place for deeper characters, this sort of thing WILL happen.
>I've been told more than once I'm an butthole for doing this
Everyone else must be the problem
being a nobody peasant is 100% fine
but if you can't come up with a generic fantasy name in under 10 seconds, that's a pretty major red flag
>am I an butthole
No. If the GM was looking for more exhaustive background they should ask.
Anyone who advertises/runs "highly lethal games" and expects anything other than bland statblocks is the butthole.
There's zero point to making an interesting character if the GM is just going to jerk themselves off and throw unwinnable encounters at you to TPK the party because they have no control IRL and need to find it in TTRPGs.
Skill issue, i'm gming a 3.5e game and right now the paty (five 2nd-3th level pc with just one full caster, a 2nd lev sorcerer) is planning in capturing alive (for plot reasons they could easily avoided but the chose to stick with for future gains) a fricking bulette (a CR 7 monster) and they're dead serious knowing in detail all the potential risks (they are veteran players). Try to be less moronic and think around problems.
>PCs with different levels
Red flag 1
>3.5
Red flag 2
>"veteran players"
Red flag 3, you're out.
>Try to be less moronic and think around problems.
That has nothing to do with lethality. Again, the kind of game you (claim) to be running is for losers who have no control over their real life so they pretend to have power as a GM by fricking over their players with unbalanced encounters. I run games for my friends so I don't treat them like dogshit.
Keep digging homosexual, you're making more and more apparent how fricking divorced you're from an actual game with actual thinking people, it's pitiful.
Nogaems
But I had just gotten command of my own ship!
>3th
>I AM MAKING LE EPIC GAMER REFERENCE
Yeah frick off back to plebbit. You're not clever. You're boring.
This is one major reason why I solo game.
I don't have to worry about tertiary shit like "backstory".
>This is one major reason why I solo game.
Solo games don't count, you're a nogames. Also, an unlikable homosexual who has antisocial personality disorder.
>I don't have to worry about tertiary shit like "backstory".
It's called making a character, not a statblock. The RP in RPG. If you don't want that, go play vidya.
A structure of rules with decisions based on player skill and luck is still a game, regardless of whether or not it makes you mad.
The "RP" in RPG is never addressed by the "G", nor by the GM to any consistent measure, so it isn't a part of the game.
My games are more of a game than whatever creative writing/theater kid bullshit you're doing, so stay mad.
>The "RP" in RPG is never addressed by the "G", nor by the GM to any consistent measure, so it isn't a part of the game.
RP means making decisions as if the presented scenario is real. The G is there to facilitate what attributes this scenario has and what methods are there to resolve them. The GM is the core mechanic of the RPG, solidifying the RP first by creating and running the world were the scenario takes place and being able to adjudicate practically an endless variation of player actions within and without the naturally constricted methods of the G.
t. ntyart
Don't respond to posts you're incapable of reading.
Name doesn’t make sense for the culture, nor does the idea of a peasant militia. Please look at the name generation document to start with, and we’ll figure out a different background that would justify the level of military training under discussion.
>I'm told this is going to be a highly lethal game and not to be surprised if PCs die easily.
This automatically tells you that GM is a homosexual and you are either going to be subjected to his shitty Dark Souls rip-off or some moronic adversarial "GM vs players" game where you futilely struggle against an omnipotent force that decides where the monsters spawn. He likely wants a complex backstory so he can murder every single NPC in it and is frustrated you won't give him the satisfaction of destroying something you put some level effort into.
Unironically, I’ve found high-lethality combat can be made enjoyable for the whole table if you include something like Tenra Bansho Zero’s dead box. People are far more comfortable with a game over if it doesn’t mean the game is actually over.
>He grew up as a peasant on a farm. He was trained to fight in the militia
This is fine, you lot are gays
On the one hand, I get not feeling invested if you've been burnt about it. But on the other, I dunno, if you're going to be a baby about it you could just ask ChatGPT to make you a paragraph of text for a backstory, couldn't you?
>play roleplaying game
>refuse to roleplay
You are purposefully not making an actual character, and everyone can tell. It takes all of several minutes to make up some Fantasy character with a bit more identity and motivation beyond "I'm just here to play a game of dice". Here, I'll do it. My character's name is John Smith. He grew up in a decent sized village called Greenwell and he's a blacksmith's son, hence the name how do you even miss something this obvious?. He was levied to fight in his lord's war and returned home to discover his father having passed from fever and his uncle having taken over the smithy. The uncle wasn't evil or anything, and continued his apprenticeship, but there's no way he'll inherit the shop now. He has set out on adventure, leveraging his meager skills as a soldier, to gather enough wealth to be able to start his own smithy.
If you are incapable or unwilling to do something like this, people are right to boot you out of their games.
>backstory is roleplaying
No, that's creative writing. If it doesn't happen at the table, it's not roleplaying, Kevin!
People are right to refuse you from their tables.
You don't run a table, Kevin, because nobody likes you.
This guy's right, but there's also no need for any reason to go delving other than "my character is desperate, has nothing and no-one, and doesn't want to starve."
>Delving
You never specified it was a beer and pretzels dungeon crawler for loot.
That's hardly the only way to play d&d. Frankly, if I want a dungeon crawling boardgame, I would just play heroquest or gloomhaven. But really, I probably just play NWN or Dungeon Keeper or Gauntlet instead.
>you never specified it was a beer and pretzels dungeon crawler
What the frick are you on about? First off YOU are the one who complained ABOUT "high lethality games", and second, dungeon crawling doesn't have to be "beer and pretzels" (fricking hate this moronic euphemism by and for fat consoomer pig-grogs). If you want to make a low effort backstory, do that, but do it in a way that doesn't deny the verisimilitude of the game for others. Want to play a peasant? Justify why the frick a peasant is willing to risk being plugged full of poisoned arrows and/or digested by a living ooze, or even to suffer some fate worse than death. It doesn't have to be a noble motivation, it could be sheer desperation, but that is a vitally fricking important thing to know about when roleplaying this character.
OP doesn't seem to understand that "peasant" isn't a personality trait. It just tells you the character's job. Nothing really about their personality, especially since it's a fairly common job. Hell, it doesn't even say what he did for a living. He grew up on a farm, but what was he doing? Planting? Taking care of animals? Selling the produce to locals? It's just zero effort.
>Reeeeeeee! You're OP!
Oh. No I thought you were OP. I'm
And I just came back to the thread.
This from the b***h who freely admits he's forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel online, and even getting rejected there because he's such a homosexual.
>everyone is OP
gay
I think you and OP are right in your own ways.
High lethality/meatgrinder games feel like one of those situations where you can use a quantum ogre.
>Hey my name is John smith and im a farmer
>Assure your GM there is a bigger backstory behind it
IF your character gets merked in the first room of the first dungeon
>Hey my name is Adam East and im a farmer
>keep the backstory you haven't revealed yet in your pocket, and use it
IF you survive this first dungeon
>So, Adam, why go adventuring?
>"Well I wanted to be a blacksmith, but things didn't quite work out this way, and you?"
That way you don't have to cookup 10 original donut steel until one even gets the chance to see the light of day, and you get to organically reveal some backstory.
Good post, but I don't think OP is completely in the wrong. Look at some of the unhinged shit in this thread. Still, having some actual depth of backstory like this gives more to bounce off in game and is still not more than a few minutes of thought. He could also just prepare a few archetypes and CTRL-F them to fit whatever his new game is.
I think you might be overestimating how much of a background you need and so you're doing way too little out of spite. Here was the character I made the last time I played D&D, it's really not that much.
Draconic bloodline sorcerer. Awakened to his powers and developed some patches of scaly skin. Never knew his dad, suspects that's where his draconic ancestry came from. Set out on a journey to see the world, never felt at home anywhere and wanted to find a place for himself. Joined a thieving/smuggling ship that masqueraded as traveling sailors, knows about trade, sailing, and thievery as a result.
Just gives some simple details about the way the character looks, acts, and some backstory and plot hooks.
>I think you might be overestimating how much of a background you need and so you're doing way too little out of spite.
100% accurate and it comes off as completely petulant.
your rather obviously doing it out of spite, so yea you’re an ass OP and it’s absolutely a good thing to kick asses
Depends what everyone else was making. You come off as kind of boring.
You know what's really sad is this is super easy to fix in like 12 seconds.
>my character's name is John Smith. He grew up as a peasant on a farm as the eldest of 5 siblings. He was trained to fight in the militia after his father died of illness and takes dangerous jobs to support his family.
So what difference that much makes?
It makes zero difference.
I bet you say “I wonder if that’s what my character would do” while in the middle of a game
that's really good how about adding something like
>he was unable to pick up a trade or find an apprenticeship so...
>3 likes
>3 dislikes
>3 relationships in the world
>1 goal or aspiration
IT REALLY IS THAT EASY AND IT TAKES ALL OF 5 MINUTES
>When I get home I'm gonna marry my sweethear...*GAK!*
The idea isn't to develop a complex character but at least one who might have something back home worth not dying for so when they do die it's at least a little compelling.
No, it really isn't. The point of character development really doesn't have any strong relationship to the death of the character. For example, if your character has a girl back home looking to marry, that will affect a variety of his choices. What will he do if someone tries to flirt with him? Would he be willing to seduce someone in order to get what he needs? What kind of life is he looking to provide her? Do they want to live in a specific place, to a specific standard of living? How would he feel about injuries? Might he be a handsome man that is scared of losing teeth or getting a nasty scar, afraid his lover might leave him over it?
You're looking at everything about the character as not mattering because they might die. Obviously you will not care about any of it, and that's why if that is your attitude you should probably just not play a game where there's a chance of your character dying, since you're clearly not interested in doing so.
Hey I agree with you, I'm just saying a little goes a long way is all. It only takes one extra sentence to turn a nameless mook soldier into someone with a life.
Oh okay, I just thought you were OP. My bad.
Or the player could just make it up on the spot that he has a sweetheart back home and then carry that forward into further sessions. There’s no reason they have to decide that during character creation.
It becomes harder to make up backstory as the game progresses and you have to reconcile your character's actions with their life and personality. I find it simpler and more fun to decide who the character is ahead of time, as that makes it easier to remember their personality and choose what they would do accordingly.
Is the 3 likes etc. from somewhere in particular?
No, just from being a GM. Its highly effective, time efficient to make, and gives your GM hooks to tie your character into the world or have the world interact with your character.
>when half the thread is quoting a deleted post
but why?
OP is cool and did nothing wrong. John Smith sounds like a true bro and I'd rather have him at the table than your donut steel with commissioned art.
No, you're not the butthole. Just someone not worth playing with.
You're more of a pussy than an butthole
I want to run a game with a bunch of PC’s like that. Save the BG3 tier story where you are fricking Mystra or otherwise the main character for the the theatre kids. Nogames can’t understand the concept of a character whose story is told through the game and not some contrived ‘character arc’ you expect your dm to put you through.
I was generous to the OP mainly because I respect this point of view, but to be fair, the way OP describes things it really sounds like he's going out of his way to say "Okay fine I'm not putting in effort". And a person with that attitude isn't great to have at the table. It's not that I think it's strictly necessary for players to put a lot of effort into backstory, it's that I'd be worried about whether or not this player was going to put in effort at the table.
The answer is yes, I only read the subject of your post btw
I mean when you boil it down, if you're at a point where you have to ask if you're being an butthole, chances are pretty good you probably are.
highly lethal games where you’re constantly rolling new characters are gay as frick anyway. May as well half ass character creation if the DM is going to half ass controlling the flow of the game
>DM
>"controlling the flow of the game"
>by not killing players
ewwww, absolutely disgusting
Great character OP. Ignore these homosexuals.
No, personally.
If he lasts long enough you can get to develop him in real time!
>No, personally.
>If he lasts long enough you can get to develop him in real time!
Please give me 5 pages of backstory for your 0xp character.
>people STILL engaging with a blatant troll
/tg/ really is the easiest board to bait
They really are. I'm old enough to still remember the old 4th edition D&D kerfuffle. I remember a thread where all the OP did was post a picture of the cover of 4th edition D&D, and the only text he posted was "hurp derp". Maximum replies to obligated thread death.
It's at least a goddamn question compared to all the generals and the coomer bait threads out there
I'm reporting you for this post.
Just kidding, I'm not. I've been warned and banned enough times in modern /tg/ to realize overzealous moderation is partially to blame for the current state of /tg/.
Greatly appreciated, anon.
If you want to bait /tg/, you just bring up something that we already want to talk about, then we'll do our thing and thank you for your circus.
When people actively try not to get trolled it just turns everything into a post-ironic hellscape. Look at the other boards and tell me I'm wrong.
Whether a person is a troll of sincere; it is still a mental exercise to respond to them and their ever-changing arguments. Arguing with people is fun. How do you not get this?
It's a pretty entertaining one, he merely posted the concept of the main character from an officially licensed D&D game, and people are flipping their shit about how it's totally unacceptable and it's proof that he's attacking his DM and the other players, and other histrionic shit.
Yes. If you don't care for those kinds of games, then just don't join them.
>name is smith
>his family is actually farmers
You're a flaming c**t and you should have a nice day.
Farming in this world is called smithing because all of the crops are made of metal and everyone’s a robot
I think it's beautiful, man.
For me, it's "my character is an 18 year old who finished fantasy high school, his parents are making him get a job & he doesn't wanna work at fantasy McDonald's."
So you're a fighter then? Okay you're good, you can go play video games while the other players write out their pages of background. We should be starting in a half hour or so.
Cool. See you then!
You're a bit of an butthole for using the literal bare minimum for an English male name, but it's not a kick-able offense. I can at least put in the effort to name him Theo Danson and say that he's adventuring because he heard tale that his grandpa Dan killed an ogre in single combat before retiring and this could be his opportunity to be cool. Now he's got unique motive that makes you want him to succeed against deadly odds, even if there's little likelihood that he'll be able to do so without resorting to OSR coward tactics that prioritize living to fight another day. Just enough that it shows you're engaged with the story beyond a life counter of Marios.
No, you're fine. No one cares about homosexual backstories anyway. You're there to game not engage in pointless literature sessions.
I think this thread demonstrates that some people really DO care about homosexual backstories, a LOT. In several cases, way too much.
Yes, they're called homosexuals.
"Theater kids" is more specific and means more or less the same.
You're not the butthole; the other people just suck. Frick them. If I was at your gaming table, and the other players gave you shit for your perfectly acceptable character concept -- a concept which will be filled out in the fullness of time, organically, like characters are supposed to evolve in ongoing stories, through group participation in the imaginary pretend game you're all playing together for FUN -- I would fricking dump their Mountain Dew Big Gulp cups all over their character sheets, and be like:
>"Huh, I guess EVERYBODY'S gonna have to roll up better characters, now! I'll go first: my name's Buck and I like to Frick; this here (You) is my twin brother -- Chuck -- and, well, I'll bet that Y'AWLLLL can imagine what CHUCK likes to do... HE SNEEDS! SNEED! SNEED, MOTHERFRICKERS, GET ON THE FLOOR AND SNEED!"
before drawing my 9mm Hi-Point and firing a few rounds into the air for dramatic effect before tossing it like a hot potato to the GM so he gets his fat cheesepowdered fingerprints all over it (I'm wearing gloves btw), so, yeah, frick those people, join my group, it's a based group, it's just us, mein neggar, jus (You) & I, oh yeah, the Dynamic Duo! Get at me with a saving throw against 9mm RIGHT FRICKING NOW (as the GM suddenly points my Hi-Point at you).
What do you do?
>we're playing the game right now
Holy shit /tg/ is fricking terrible
Every backstory I have ever heard at either the table or on this board has been dogshit if it wasn’t: “I’m Paul the Gaul, and I like to go on adventures” or “I am Lawrence of the noble house of Phlorence. My father has sent me out into the world to learn of life and its complexities”
No one gives a shit about your boring 3 page backstory. I don’t want to hear the entirety of it when we first start playing, but if I’m not going to hear all of it at the start, then why even bother writing it to begin with. Just improvise and create your backstory over time. That way the other players have more of a chance of being involved, and it makes it easier for the GM to accomodate because you can base it around shit you experience while playing.
It’s a role playing GAME. We’re there to play, not help with writing your YA fantasy novel.
You c**ts are so embarrassing.
My backstories are rarely any longer than 200 words and you can get pretty interesting stuff that way. I have also never presented a fricking backstory in written format, I have always talked about the character with the GM and the formally written shit came afterwards. I have literally never seen morons who present pages of backstory even in the most autistic lore-heavy games I played. I have actually never seen a bob the farmer either even in hardcore dungeon crawls, people played simple stuff that had some character like a moronic viking or something like that. It's almost instinctive to try to add some character into the shit you're playing even if you can't RP for shit. You people who think it's either "bob the farmer" or 200 pages of fanfiction are fricking moronic nogames
>thinks his 1 sentence meme gives a GM reasonable hooks to pull your character into the world they're supposedly from
>calls others nogames
Obviously a 5 page backstory is too much, but your 1 or 2 gay rhyming sentences aren't enough.
i think that should basically be the default in these types of games. Elaborate backgrounds are for legacy characters in your dynasty I think. But I like to OSR style.
obviously also look for ways to grow your character or look for development or something tho
A significant portion of the high-lethality crowd is there purely to circlejer about how much they're better than the DnD crowd.
They aren't upset because you quickly made a low effort character, they mostly create their own with random tables, the problem is that you're ruining their circlejerk.
>Am I the butthole?
You didn't immediately grasp the (intentionally) unwritten rules, so yes.
Welcome to society.
If you think it's difficult to spend 60 seconds coming up with a character idea then you have down syndrome
You should at least come up with a concept that you can flesh out should they survive, or flesh them out as the character survives more sessions
It's like you can't delay gratification
If you want to seem more "heroic" while being equally lazy, just say he is a landless noble, the eighth son of the daughter of a lord, who has practically no inheritance left for him but his noble family name and the little he did inherit afforded him the opportunity to study.
i like this one too. i was thinking OP could say he's like a peasant from a simple agricultural village, and has like a dozen brothers and sisters, most of whom are alive.
just say where specifically the farm is so your character has at least some tie to the world and you're good, imo. it's on the sparser end of what you should do but backstory is not that important.
your character's story should be what happens during the game, not what you wrote up beforehand.
Your two frickups with taking the path of quick character creation are:
>John Smith
The name is very often used as a standin for an absolute rando in the United States. If you change the first name to Johan and the surname to a rotating array of <Name>son (ex. Jamesson, Anderson, etc), then you don't get this factor.
>He grew up as a peasant on a farm. He was trained to fight in the militia.
With quick character creation, you don't just do lore. You instead use "He is <Personality Trait> because <Event>" and "He has a <Distinguishing Character Feature> because of <Event>". Maybe even throw in a nickname or title (ex. Can borrow the French one of Martel that translates to English as "the Hammer" as really basic flavoring of where they are from) that they don't like to talk about.
Literally 1 sentence of personality, 1 of a part of their look that makes them standout, and 1 nickname and you'll probably have a more distinct character than people who frick around with paragraph after paragraph.
For example:
>Johan Jamesson is a very pious man of the God of Alcohol because he was raised by a monastery. He has some old burns on his cheek because of an accident he had brewing beer. He has the nickname "Lager" because he constantly experiments with making new types of beer and is good at it.
All I needed was those three sentences and you know exactly what the frick this guy is like.
You dodged a bullet, probably a party of cucks.
Similar but different
>I'm told this is going to be a highly lethal game and not to be surprised if PCs die easily
>build a character around oppressive survivability, cheap exploiting weaknesses with cheap shots, and low risk tolerance strategy
>"anon your character and the way you play is disgusting"
As analogies go DM was surprised I brought a gun to a gun fight
>As analogies go DM was surprised I brought a gun to a gun fight
Holy shit, this! This right here. I've noticed this attitude here in a lot of games. The DM just straight up says he's going to make a dangerous game with high PC mortality. But it's absolutely VERBOTTEN for a player to then min-max and powergame the mechanics of the system to have a chance of overcoming that. They expect to still play "for fun and roleplaying" by picking the "fluffiest" options for characters that suit a character backstory more than, you know, solving whatever dangerous problems might arrive during the game. It's like the DMs and fans of this game ultimately want a "slasher" movie where the DM is the director and script writer, and the players willingly play the hapless victims.
I think for some gms it's genuinely just a misunderstanding of what determines the winner of a fight or battle. If a game wants Star Wars style run around passed missing bullets and duel the bad guy with a sword I'm all for it. But the second I hear "you will need to fight hard to survive" just means more storm troopers or bigger guns, nothing about holding angles or never letting them get a shot off etc. Much less trading blows with checks less about surviving the dragonfire damage, more about never even letting the dragon close enough to breath on you at all. For gms not specifically looking to just torture players I think this gap in mindset can be part of it
He wasn't surprised, he was upset you ruined his power fantasy.
Antagonistic DMs are massive homosexuals.
OP is obviously an idiot who doesn't listen, but there's somethign to be said about players/gms demanding front-loaded background-heavy characters and then doing frick all with it. Dunno which is worse, though, when players come in with a novella or when gm demand one.
I'd be OK with John Smith, the dirt farmer militiaman or whatever more than some lengthy super-badass who spends 20 minutes talking in circles like Hideo Kojima about how much they accomplished. You're lvl 1, dipshit! You killed an ork, didn't shit your pants while running away from two of his buddies.
I'd also be OK with a gm who doesn't want a crystalized, elaborate personality and background for a character that's gonna spend its short life sifting through shit in whatever hot sewer-dungeon combo scribbled onto graph paper.
There's a happy medium between a super-lazy butthole and wannabe writers. Find it.
Honestly, if someone tells me it's going to be lethal with PCs dying easily, I tend to assume it's an old-school dungeon crawl full of traps and highly-corrosive green slime, and nobody in the party needs backstories beyond "Decided they wanted to be a mercenary or treasure hunter when they grew up, did exactly that, and heard there was treasure here."
So no, I don't think you're an butthole.
This. Why would I do more than a paragraph of backstory for a character that's 90% likely going to die in a probably hilarious way by floor 2.
What if I told you that my game will have high difficulty fights, and you shouldn't be surprised if your character is defeated easily, but your character will not die unless you explicitly allow it to happen? Would you make the exact same kind of character as in your OP from that information?
No.
well, they tell you they're an butthole because they want you to put emotional investment into your character so when they innevitablyu kill him and have his corpse raped relentlessly he'kl be able to feed his black, soulless heart with your anguish and despair.
When this happens, get your great-grand-dad's Coachgun and pick up the unmarked box of shells with a cross drawn on it and shoot that monster in the face. the shells are loaded with silver-coated lead slugs. that oughta kill it.
>When this happens, get your great-grand-dad's Coachgun and pick up the unmarked box of shells with a cross drawn on it and shoot that monster in the face. the shells are loaded with silver-coated lead slugs. that oughta kill it.
Except, in those kind of games, it often doesn't. They end up just as dead and the corpse raped just as hard as their ancestor.
He said to shoot the DM
OH! Well, shit, that's ONE way to solve a problem in a game you don't like... 😀
I was talking irl. what is you going on about?
Jesus Christ!
huh, no, that's not where the DM is going to end up. straight to hell.
Jesus frowns at TPKs
>Kill them. For the Lord knows who are His.
-Arnaud Amalric
Nah, it's fine if it's an actual old school impartial-referee DM type thing, where it's just where the chips fell.
The reason the hypothetical DM is going to hell is that he is only using that "old-school lethal game!" as a cover for the fact that he's actually a sadistic "killer DM" who gets off on killing beloved characters because it causes his friends pain. That's why he wants players to put some emotional investment into the characters up front, before he TPKs them.
>John Smith
Literally the whitest fricking name imaginable, holy shit
Is there something wrong with being white in 2024? I'm sorry, I'm old enough to have played AD&D. I don't keep up on modern racial interactions. I just go with what Martin Luther King Jr. said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
is that a problem for you, Demetrius Jamal Brown?
Kevin Blackburn, ima find yo white ass an burn it black, on god
That's why in my lethal games, playets don't make characters, they roll on a generator.
The fun comes from trying to get those wacky rando losers to survive as long as possible.
you know, that's not a terrible idea. its a great way to dissociate the player from the character. though mind you, should said randolive long enough and overcome a significant challenge or two, they could earna retirement and become part the the background NPCs that help the randos. like Lenny the Evocation Wizard managed to survive and defeat an encounter with a Clay Golem while most of the party were felled by the golem, that's a significant hallmark to "promote" him to something like a sage for the new batch of randos who can advise them on their journey, identify items or teach them a few things he's learned.
>I've been told more than once I'm an butthole for doing this, and even once outright rejected from a game.
No you haven't.
If your GM/DM/Whateverfrick has told you their running a high lethality game, THE angels-bells-from-heaven green flag is seeing-
>my character's name is John Smith. He grew up as a peasant on a farm. He was trained to fight in the militia.
on the sheet. It's the thing they want most in the world out of anything from a character for a high lethality game, because the last thing they want is a character who's too precious to die.
Agreed. I don't ask for background until they reach level 2, they may as well not have a name. I authorize my players to re-use the character sheet to gain time, they'll just modify a few things like the race and change the name. One if my player like to have a rooster instead, so he'll just take the new sheet and here comes Christoph, a Traladaran merchant who learned à few spells from his journeys through Ylaruam and has gambling debts with the Iron Ring.
Another player favorite character was Elrik the 3rd, son of Elrik the 2nd, distant cousin of Elrik the 1st. When he died, his twin brother immediately arrived to avenge his death. Each of them inheriting the stuff of his ancestors.
It'D&D, don't make it some kind of Runequest immersive experience.
No, you're not. I and the other 3 anons itt who can read know that.
Depends on the intent and how you play. if you want to establish more of the character once you actually begin to play and just did the bare essentials that should be fine I am not going to assume anything about how you acted but if the GM wants a bit more than that that oblige them and expand a bit. Generators can stoke creativity if needed. If you don't want a lethal game then leave the group.
A new level nothing character doesn't need more than that and a new level nothing meatgrinder character is wasted if it has more than that.
Grim Jim agrees with the OP:
I've become convinced that any player mortally offended that anyone would submit a character whose background consists of only one paragraph (regardless if it's a "meatgrinder" campaign or not) is just a failed writer of some sort. Or whose life accomplishments are so little that they become so offended anyone would ever put in less than 110% into their fantasy life of make-believe.