Does anybody have actual fun with tabletop roleplaying games?

I am a big fan of board games. I like board games, and most of the time when people play them they either forget about it afterward or make a few comments about who was lucky and who was skillful.
Tabletop RPGs are this weird sexless S&M thing where it's just DMs talking about how they taught their players a lesson and players talking about how harsh their DM was.
People are also constantly talking about how players go out of their way to not show up. I am aware of no other hobby that gets a tenth as much "everybody said they were busy" as tabletop RPGs do.
I've joined some TTRPG people before, most of them spend so much time eating chinese food and watching Archer on Netflix that they never get around to TTRPG. I've successfully gotten into D&D games three times and they were all unspeakably boring.
Does anybody have fun with D&D? I've seen a lot of people signaling how much of a nerd they are by talking about playing it, but I have never seen anybody having any amount of fun with the game.

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Find people who actually give a shit and commit rather than flakey zoomer homosexuals.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      people who commit are usually obsessed with stats and podcasters who talk about how to do things "the right way"
      Which usually turns the game into a "roll dice: result; roll dice: result" thing
      what is fun about that?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        >obsessed with stats
        Don't play 3.PF. That's where the buildhomosexuals run rampant.
        >podcasters who talk about how to do things "the right way"
        Stop hanging out with podcasters, because this is a non-problem unless you look for it.
        >Which usually turns the game into a "roll dice: result; roll dice: result" thing
        Yes, that's the game part of RPG. It's no different from a board game, why does it bother you?
        >what is fun about that?
        The stuff that happens when dice aren't being rolled.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        OP you sound like you don't even want to like them, you just came here to moan and complain about fake scenarios you made up in your head like a woman.

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I still have fun with TTRPGs and if you find a not-shit group you'll have fun too. That said, I've started feeling like the effort required to run them might outweigh the fun of them. Playing in person lost its appeal to me and playing online requires a lot of legwork to make your game not-shit and lazy.

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Yeah I usually do
    Even in ones where people aren't having that good of a time I still do

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Unfortunately the venn diagram of 'people who want to play TTRPGs' and 'people who would be good at TTRPGs' has a very small intersection
    Being good at these games requires decent verbal intelligence and solid social skills, both of which are uncommon among spergs with ridiculous power fantasies

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >spergs with ridiculous power fantasies
      I've never run into that problem.
      I usually get spergs who roll with the punches but build very basic characters with one gimmick who just do everything based on that

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    No.
    Stay where you are if you're playing board games and having fun. I've spend... 14 years trying to convince myself that I'm enjoying TTRPGs. I don't. Never did. I always just wanted to play board games and if not for covid, not only I wouldn't have a chance, but I would probably still kept forcing myself into playing TTRPGs, with the "maybe next campaign will finally click" sunk-cost fallacy going.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >14 years trying to convince myself that I'm enjoying TTRPGs
      wait, really?
      I've always expected this was the case. And this anonymous forum post that could have very easily been me making something up and then replying to myself proves my theory true

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >limitless adventure with friends
    >not fun
    seems like a "you" problem

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >limitless adventure
      no DM has ever allowed that what the frick are you talking about?

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Confines are not the same as limitations, nogames

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          care to extrapolate?

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Confines are part of the social contract between GM and player. the GM gives you a world, then lets you loose in it. If you want to be pedantic obviously limitless is an exaggeration, but near-limitless covers it very well.

            And that's just if you want an open world game, if you want something more focused TTRPGs can do that too.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        I'm having fun. My players are having fun. Never really have much with D&D, but y'know how it goes.

        I mean, what's your idea of 'limitless adventure?' Not that other anon, but the game has confines because the game world is established and there are rules about what your character can and can't do. Aside from that, I'm here to arbitrate, not tell you what you're not allowed to do. Unless you start off on some zany lolsorandom shit or creepy kink forcing, then you're not allowed to play in my game, but I mean, largely beyond that you're good.

        I still have fun with TTRPGs and if you find a not-shit group you'll have fun too. That said, I've started feeling like the effort required to run them might outweigh the fun of them. Playing in person lost its appeal to me and playing online requires a lot of legwork to make your game not-shit and lazy.

        >GMing too much effort.
        Relinquish more control to procedures. Get less shit players.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >Relinquish more control to procedure
          WHAT IS FUN ABOUT THAT
          SORRY TO YELL BUT MY KEYBOARD BUSTED

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            It gives you more random elements to play off of. You're not reading from a script, you're rolling dice to see how npcs that aren't important enough to have full in your head react and running off it instead of wasting effort doing full improv.
            Also different systems can help. Some are way more prep-heavy than others.

            I'm not this anon [...]
            but the original anon you're replying to. Good players require MORE effort. So many online games just have the GM mumbling to himself while the players stare at a blank VTT background with no music or visuals, and unless they're extremely easily amused and/or awful players, they'll get bored and leave. To make a good online game you need music, handouts, maps, a level of roleplaying skill, and a group that reciprocates it, otherwise people will get bored, distracted, and eventually leave.

            I've got some good groups over the years and found some good GMs, and it's always the same. Running a good game is fun, but it requires hours upon hours of prepwork. Especially if you're a perfectionist and/or OCD, you can spend hours making a single battlemap.

            Just counter to my experience, honestly. Good players are giving me hooks to work with. They're drawing their own damned maps, doing most of the heavy roleplay, handling the book keeping and maybe some of their related NPCs
            >Music, handouts, fancy VTT maps
            Nice but superflous. Anyone who demands this shit can frick right off. I can and have spent hours making a nice battlemap, sure. I've also just thrown shit on a blank page or scribbled something in paint because I have no idea where all the fights are going to take place. Good players are understanding of this. If you decide you want to lay an ambush in the old church up the hill I didn't think you had any reason to go to until five minutes ago, you get a box on graph paper.
            Good players are here to play the fricking game, not ooh and ahh at your stunning multimedia ~Experience~

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              >Good players are here to play the fricking game, not ooh and ahh at your stunning multimedia ~Experience~
              I'm going to try to take this to heart. For real, thank you for this post.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                I'm glad Anon. I was being a bit vitriolic there, but the advice was genuine. One of my own GM's has similar OCD/Perfectionism problems, and we got to the point of begging him to just draw something in paint so we could get on with the game when hisprep fell through.
                And personally if someone tries to play music at me through a VTT I just turn it off. I find it obnoxious, but ymmv.

                The best way to keep players from being distracted online, in my experience, isn't snazzy visuals, they'll have hours to look at it, it's just playing games that move faster, and being firm about people spending too much time on their turns.

                I've had players who another GM let waffle for a half hour in 5e take their turn in under a minute in GURPS when the expectation they were on a the spot when their turn comes up as made clear. And the only time any of us walked out of a game, it was over turns lasting hours at a go because of things like that. If you're worried about player engagement, that's where I'd put my focus, but that's just my personal experiences.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                Come to think of it, I think the main times I've been distracted or disinterested as a player is combat taking too long. I've had a few times I've been bored when there's no engagement, but visuals wouldn't have helped there. They were instances where GMs were just not trying or weren't at all into it themselves.

                >One of my own GM's has similar OCD/Perfectionism problems
                It can be rough, but I'm glad you guys gave him a chance and (presumably) have kept doing so. It's a shitty feeling when you think your players are gonna dip out if you're not "aweing" them with your maps and stuff.

              • 2 years ago
                Anonymous

                >It can be rough, but I'm glad you guys gave him a chance and (presumably) have kept doing so.
                He's taking a break for his own mental health right now, but yeah, we're eager to have him back. I'm hoping to run a game and have him as a player soon so he can enjoy the game without the same kind of pressure.
                And I've certainly been there myself. Not so much with the maps so much as "This encounter is lame, this NPC bit is stupid," etc. Eventually I just learned to let it go. If I'm really not sure, I just ask if this blows and we should skip it, and otherwise trust that my players are adults who are capable of telling me they're not having fun and what should be done about it.

                And yeah, it's definitely overlong turns that kill games for me. I've run a combat recently that got a little out of control and lasted through two entire sessions, but as long as the turns keep moving snappily, everyone stays onboard.
                That's kinda why I've stuck with GURPS honestly. Everyone gets on it for the one second, single action turns, but it does generally mean your turn will be back in a few minutes. (In smaller groups with better players, in less than one,) instead of waiting for Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum to figure out what they're fricking doing with their action, surge action, haste, bonus action and move.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          I'm not this anon

          >Relinquish more control to procedure
          WHAT IS FUN ABOUT THAT
          SORRY TO YELL BUT MY KEYBOARD BUSTED

          but the original anon you're replying to. Good players require MORE effort. So many online games just have the GM mumbling to himself while the players stare at a blank VTT background with no music or visuals, and unless they're extremely easily amused and/or awful players, they'll get bored and leave. To make a good online game you need music, handouts, maps, a level of roleplaying skill, and a group that reciprocates it, otherwise people will get bored, distracted, and eventually leave.

          I've got some good groups over the years and found some good GMs, and it's always the same. Running a good game is fun, but it requires hours upon hours of prepwork. Especially if you're a perfectionist and/or OCD, you can spend hours making a single battlemap.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >Ruining a good game is fun, but it requires hours upon hours of prepwork.
            WHAT

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >To make a good online game you need music, handouts, maps, a level of roleplaying skill, and a group that reciprocates it, otherwise people will get bored, distracted, and eventually leave.

            Good Christ, maybe it's because the youngest person in my tabletop group is 32 but that sounds like a miserable amount of effort for very little payoff. Maybe I'm a rare case but my group has been meeting regularly every other Saturday around my dining room table for the last 5 years so I have to imagine their is at least some fun involved. Though the earlier comment about spending some sessions sitting around talking and not actually playing can be very true in pur groups case.

            • 2 years ago
              Anonymous

              In my experience less effort from RL games is needed because of both tech limitations and lower expectations. In-person RPGs generally don't aim to be "immersive" and it's hard to make them immersive even if they try. Plus people are gonna be prone to doing other shit, talking, reading something else, on their phone/laptop, etc.

              In VTTs I think there's a higher expectation overall since pretty much every VTT option gives you a visual medium, visual handout capabilities, music, etc., so there's no tech restrictions. Not being able to see each other in person also usually makes for stronger roleplay since no one's embarrassed about getting into character and doing voices and shit. The downside is that while RL tabletop distractions are bad, VTT distractions are a nightmare. If you stop being interested in the game you can frick off to a dozen different websites and do a million other things, only poking in when you hear your name called for initiative. It sucks and it isn't fair to GMs, but I feel like virtual play basically demands you put heavy effort on keeping your players invested, including visually, because otherwise you'll lose them quick.

              I'm OCD, so maybe it's just my own anxiety talking though.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Yes, most people on /tg/ would be way happier playing gloomhaven or a wargame, but d&d is bigger

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    You sound like a dick, stay away from our hobby.

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    In my experience of playing D&D 5e, I only ever had fun because I was surrounded by my friends and joking around with them; D&D made no contribution, and often times it was actually very boring despite the DMs attempts to spice things up.
    However, I have lots of fun on game design when I'm on a roll, and enjoy playing my combat-based solo games, because I'm a weirdo who enjoys engaging combat.

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    have you tried not playing dnd?
    the company gets infinitely better when you stop playing The Containment Game

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Not OP, but

      No.
      Stay where you are if you're playing board games and having fun. I've spend... 14 years trying to convince myself that I'm enjoying TTRPGs. I don't. Never did. I always just wanted to play board games and if not for covid, not only I wouldn't have a chance, but I would probably still kept forcing myself into playing TTRPGs, with the "maybe next campaign will finally click" sunk-cost fallacy going.

      instead
      I've played DnD grand total of once, when in 2009 my then-current group was playing one-shots through various systems to play-test them. Game was shit and we never returned to it. But something tells me that one-off stint had nothing to do with the fact I never really enjoyed TTRPGs or myself while playing them over all those fricking years.

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I've unironically had more fun with 40k than any RPG, and 40k is shit

  11. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I assume this is bait but I feel compelled to respond
    >Tabletop RPGs are this weird sexless S&M thing where it's just DMs talking about how they taught their players a lesson and players talking about how harsh their DM was.
    maybe if you experience it through "rpg horror stories" on youtube or whatever
    >People are also constantly talking about how players go out of their way to not show up. I am aware of no other hobby that gets a tenth as much "everybody said they were busy" as tabletop RPGs do.
    again, rpg horror stories. dedicated groups either make time or manage to contact each other well ahead of start time.
    >I've joined some TTRPG people before, most of them spend so much time eating chinese food and watching Archer on Netflix that they never get around to TTRPG. I've successfully gotten into D&D games three times and they were all unspeakably boring.
    sounds like you've had a lot of shitty people around and that sucks
    >Does anybody have fun with D&D? I've seen a lot of people signaling how much of a nerd they are by talking about playing it, but I have never seen anybody having any amount of fun with the game.
    yes but D&D - and all RPGs - require investment on the part of the GM and players to make good
    it is, ultimately, helpful rules for playing make believe with your friends
    and if you can't see why that's fun, you lost part of yourself somewhere along the way anon
    perhaps you still think other things are more fun and that's fine, but it's not hard to see why people like playing make believe with their friends just with actual rules, challenge, and story

  12. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    sounds like your groups have been shit. or, possibly, tabletop isn't for you

    >Does anybody have fun with D&D?
    if you mean 5e/recent editions, it can happen, *if* (and only if) i'm with a good group that i enjoy spending time with. i do not abstractly or concretely enjoy nu-d&d, and i will not run it unless it is with the bare minimum amount of prep and effort. i guess that seems to be enough for my players when i'm with the right set of people, but i haven't tried 5e in a couple of years.

  13. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    I like to play a lot of Japanese TTRPGs or use a lot of ideas and concepts from them. Stuff like maintaining more defined scenes to keep things moving. They're generally designed around shorter campaigns as well instead of DnDs multiyear epics.

  14. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >Tabletop RPGs are this weird sexless S&M thing where it's just DMs talking about how they taught their players a lesson and players talking about how harsh their DM was.
    That's only the autist control freaks, now that normalgays play RPGs you can have fun with well adjusted people

  15. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    TTRPGs are fun if you play them like games instead of larpy fetish plays.

  16. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Here's the thing: most people who have steady consistent playgroups with players who give a frick and have fun together usually don't go on a japanese tea ceremony imageboard to b***h about how much they hate their groups

    >t. Happily plays every week and DMs twice a month

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      this.
      most people telling horror stories on here either don't even play the game or play with randoms online which is probably worse than not playing at all.
      At its best, you play with your IRL friends regularly and go on an adventure together and all have similar if not the same expectations (which you ofc communicated before because you're not a fricking loser autist). That's how most irl groups enjoy it.

  17. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >sexless
    ?

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