Pretty good actually, just made a character sheet for a close friend. The only thing I'm scared about is scheduling.
I'm in a group where they are experienced roleplayers so while I know I'll have a good time, it also means that having to work around other games they have is annoying.
Pretty well. I currently have two games with two groups with some overlap, and we played with one group on Thursday and will play with another one on Sunday. Thanks for asking, OP. What about you?
>Star Wars RPG
The person running it canceled the session 0. Probably for the best since all my character concepts (which I thought were pretty flexible) were getting rejected and the GM had already given us an outline where the campaign would heavily include his donut steel space elf species. >Wargaming
Playing a ton of 3e Space Hulk and Battletech lately. I can’t quite make it to gaming often enough to the local BT campaign to be my own faction but I’m being allowed to control small portions of other peoples forces during games which I though was really nice of them.
I’m not TTRPGing but friends with a DM who is constantly bouncing ideas off me since I’m not one of his players. It’s fun to help build scenarios and things
>me: hey want to play tomorrow night? >friend1: yeah sure! I'm down. I can only play till 10 pm though. >friend2: I'm open to play. >friend3: I'm down. >friends 4-8: crickets >me: okay what time works best for everyone? >crickets. >me: 10 am start time work? >crickets. >wait a few hours. >me: so what time works for everyone? >crickets. >wait until evening. >me: who's all coming over to play? >crickets. >11am the next day while I'm busy doing something else. >friend1: Hey when are we playing? >friend2: anon never specified a time so.... >friend3: I didn't even look at my phone until now >:p >friend1: Anon, what time we playing? >friend2: I'm out. It's too late for me now, I got stuff I'm doing. People should really specify a time.... >friend3: turns their phone off again.
Every frickin time. It's like trying to herd cats and pull their teeth.
I have a group of buds I play board games with regularly, but no TTRPGS or hyperadvanced wargames like 40k or whatever. The most advanced games I've played with them so far is Catan and Root. They do really like Root though, so that's a good sign ||Digital Marauder expansion when DireWolf||
Just fine. We had one failed game in the mix recently that I GMed, but we're on an extended campaign of MYZ and having a good time. Plus board games and the like in the mix.
Made a fire under my friends ass when he told me he didnt make a character yet after two months (and regular reminders) for the campaign I would run for him because he was busy "eating, sleeping, playing games"
When I told him I wasnt exactly amused he just ghosted me for a few weeks (after hanging out daily) without much explanation
After I reached out to him to get back on talking terms I told him I didnt appreciate him going silent either and he went off on me calling me autistic and so on
We cut contact
>Game 1
Last session one of the players said something that prompted a heated argument with the DM's bf about Baldur's Gate 3 having too many gays in ideal situations while portraying straights as incompetent and abusive degenerates. The DM and his bf broke up and we haven't played in 3 months 🙁 >Game 2
It's ok, if inconsistent. I just spent the entirety of yesterday filling up a map, statting 3 sidekicks, doing dozens of tokens, getting music, etc. Should be enough for a few weeks of sessions.
>too many gays in ideal situations while portraying straights as incompetent and abusive degenerates
Wasn't really my takeaway, given that the most prominent gays are A.) a couple trapped apart in a lightless nightmare realm, and B.) a literal devil so narcissistic that he keeps a live-in incubus who looks exactly like him.
I wouldn't know mate, never played it. Though I did hear the complaints about not being able to go too far without party members wanting to frick you and the bear sex thing. The thing with the devil sounds like it could be a fun encounter tho.
The sexcraze was a bit of a bug, which has been fixed. Most of the companions are still pretty horny but that's video games for ya.
And the bear sex makes sense. Humans would absolutely use their powers during sex. If you are not into it just tell the druid to frick off. Politely or aggressively.
>notes written on a VTT map
One of the best GM practices I've seen that uses VTTs effectively. I am ashamed it took me as long as it did to start doing that as well.
Our fourth arrived about four hours ago, and we just finished our grocery shopping. He and my husband are currently preparing some banana bread to go in the oven while I put the finishing touches on the session and our fourth takes a nap. Session 33 tonight, and I'm excited to see how they deal with some of the things I have planned for them.
>let girlfriend join my long term group >have to drive 30 minutes extra to pick her up >group spends like a half hour ordering food >dicks around offtopic during game >I'm so burned out from wagecucking my GMing is what it used to be >entire group are SJWs and upset each other constantly >one player will do insane nerd rage if his character is gonna die >girlfriend gets upset by autists and I have to tell autist friends to shut the frick up >still have amazingly good roleplay memories with them from the past ten years, as good as any of the other half dozen groups I've been part of.
>one friend was dodging every online session, with another group the last half year >the others b***h and moan about not playing any games >offer to try and DM something other than Dnd, pretty much anything but not Dnd. >everyone besides the first friend that gives no answer hardheartedly agrees, then proceed to procrastinate making even a character concept >tell them to get together and help them make characters >half of them are 1 or 2 hours late and barely get anything done, mostly spend time talking and chilling >friend that dodged all the old sessions arrives with his gf after hearing from our other friends that we were gonna meet >he still hasnt said if he is playing but i consider him a lost cause and dont even try with him >character creating obviously gets derailed >i say frick it and set a time for the first session 3 weeks later >spent said time converting a couple of modules from dnd, happily getting my teeth into the system >occasionally remind them that they should get their characters done >game week comes and nobody has done anything > offer a last chance meet 2 days before the session to fix any character creation issues >i get handwaved away. nobody has anything ready >i simply cancel the session and say that its ok if you dont wanna play. just say it >i hear countless excuses but of course we dont play >several months pass by. >rpg get occasionally mentioned but nobody makes any move towards organising a game
yeah, we aint gonna play anything anytime soon and frankly i dont even care anymore
My wife and I have been backpacking through South America for most of Jan. The campaign she GMs obviously wasn't going ahead and it would've been pretty hard to work around our characters absence in the second campaign, the GM for that group has been forced to pick up a bunch of overtime recently so I think he was glad to have an excuse to pause the game anyway.
I know the Sunday group has been doing one-shots or board games in our absence. That's what we usually do between campaigns or on weeks where more than one person can't make it.
Excited to get back into it now though. Got sessions planned for Thursday and Sunday next week.
We paused my wife's campaign right at one hell of a cliffhanger so I can't wait to see how it pans out.
Pretty great actually. Started gaming with this bunch about 6 months ago. Aside from the friend who invited me to the group they all came across as your typical D&D normies, but they're all pretty chill people and they've been receptive to trying out alternate systems; for our next campaign I'll be running Vampire: the Masquerade for the group.
My extended gaming group has three potential DMs. One just got a sort of second job as a pastor and barely has time for anything. I just started a new job six months ago that involves regular travel. The third just had a stroke and is bedridden.
I am currently looking into figuring out a VTT just so we can keep people involved since if nothing else it eliminates players needing to travel and I could DM from a hotel room after work hours on weeks I'm visiting a job site. Until now, our group has been in person all the time.
Well enough, we've been meeting for five years and I recently managed to negotiate meeting every week instead of twice a month. Having a few power scaling issues, but we don't have a ton of combat so it's not that big of a deal
Put a party together, put a group chat together, everyone said they were excited. I asked about scheduling and once I chose a date to start playing, everyone stopped responding.
After a few weeks of trolling FB groups, Discords, and game forums, I've got a server of 69 noice players who all play the skirmish shit I like and a ton of stuff I've never heard of. I have to do some minor cat-herding now and again, and the bulk of the players just lurk, but we've got a core of about 8-12 good dudes for semi-monthly games. I dropped a line for a meetup this afternoon late last night, and there's a handful of us getting together in an hour. It took work, but it was worth it.
the usual
one player engaged but kind of autistic
one player really engaged but reticent
one player disengaged
one player super-engaged and fricking the GM
>Player 2 just seriously injured himself which changed his work schedule so it doesn't really mesh anymore. >Player 3 is Player 2's gf. >Just player 1 and me now.
Well frick.
I have session 1 of my first online campaign this Tuesday. I’m excited, if also a bit nervous. I’ve been playing for almost a decade, but it’s always been in person. Not sure if I’m gonna like online games. Session zero was fun though so we’ll see.
Then I have my two in-person campaigns on the 9th and the 10th. Friday my Eldritch Knight will gain 5th level and learn the consequences of that demon he released last week. Saturday I’ll run my game I’ve been GMing for two years for my pals.
So overall, better than ever, really. I’ve never played so much in my life.
A player just dropped, but that's not the main problem. One of the players made a character who's super emotionally fragile and just falls to pieces at any kind of stress, which has slowed down the pace of basically every session or scene she's involved in. Every attempt to help the character just results in her indecisively not doing anything, and it's infuriating because of how much time it wastes every single session in a campaign of otherwise normal adult adventurers.
Sure, here are a couple. >Party is a lawful good priestess, an butthole sorcerer with no patience for bullshit, an undead guy on a mission to find an ancient artifact, an Italian mafioso who wants to knock and replace the don, a robot, and the shuddering, pale teenage girl who wants to deny that she's a magical being and pretend to be normal. She can't string together two sentences to magic people (like us) without taking a full minute to slowly quaver them out, so over time, everyone learns to avoid talking to her to avoid slowing down the sessions >Also, the player took a magical shapeshifting lesbian pirate as a roommate, has a talking bird, glows whenever she uses magic, and inadvertently summons evil spider fairies whenever she's around (she's also arachnophobic) >Saying the words "spider" or "fairy" makes her flip out instantly. This is not a mechanical thing, it's purely RP
>1. She accidentally summons a spider fairy when we murder an evil sorcerer. We drive it off, but later are discussing the event, and someone says the words "spider fairy," and she goes comatose and we have to spend 30 minutes dealing with her instead of planning our attack against evil sorcerers
>2. We murder an evil sorcerer, whose name is actually Sorcerer Mengele, who's killed shitloads of innocent people, including the priestess' parents. And like yes, we absolutely murdered the shit out of him and had an argument about who gets to finish him off, but she's like "wow that was brutal, I'm going to go comatose for a while," forcing the priestess (who just avenged her parents' death) to console her
>3. She asks for help investing a spiderweb. She thinks it's magical, but isn't sure, so she fetches the sorcerer, who uses a spell, says "no, it's not," and leaves. Then she complains that no one helped her with the spiderweb. Like yes, I can tell that she REALLY meant "investigate this for me," but she'll never say anything directly
>4. Priestess asks if she can help her find her parents' ghosts so she can say goodbye, she says no because she doesn't like ghosts
>5. Whenever the player wants to do something magical, she RPs it as the character using her abilities without realizing it and then denying it. This means in practice that she never asks permission first, such as when she cursed a magical artifact before the sorcerer had time to examine it, pissing him off because that changes its properties. But because she has to RP every magic thing, while everyone else just says "I use magic thing," even when she does basic shit, it takes twenty times longer than everyone else
>6. By this point, everyone has given up on her except the priestess' player, who I think feels compelled to keep helping because she's supposed to be a lawful good compassionate type. Sorcerer in particular avoids dealing with her. So the girl mentions that she's hanging out in the corner of a room looking concerned, so the priestess goes over to ask her because the other PCs won't deal with her directly anymore. She tries to help her and says "it's okay to be a magic person," then spends the night with her to make sure she's not going to flip out again from nightmares or whatever, and this does not improve their relationship at all. She still characterizes the priestess as "abrasive" and "bloodthirsty" because she absolutely killed the shit out of the sorcerer who killed her parents
>7. Group is planning how to assault a compound full of evil sorcerers who summon fairies. Character asks why she's not part of the plan, pointing out that she has many useful social abilities to create distractions in a crowd or convince people to give up. Priestess says "If you want to be involved in the plan to attack evil sorcerers, then we have a reasonable expectation that you will comport yourself like a reliable adult, which you do not do. Besides which, we can't dance around using the word 'fairy' when we're planning how to attack sorcerers who summon fairies." She flips out when we say the word and starts shuddering, forcing us to deal with her shit again, so we foist her on an NPC and continue the planning session.
This isn't exactly a story, but whenever we don't pause the session to help with her emotions, she then RPs as the talking bird I mentioned, who flies around to talk to us in her place, offering advice of dubious usefulness and "subtly" suggesting to us that its master needs help. But whenever the priestess tries to help her, she just retreats into herself and won't be helped. Even though the ability says it has human intelligence, she RPs it as being only a talking bird, so whenever we ask it to do anything more complicated than "fly around and count how many enemies there are," she effectively refuses to do it.
>4. Priestess asks if she can help her find her parents' ghosts so she can say goodbye, she says no because she doesn't like ghosts
>5. Whenever the player wants to do something magical, she RPs it as the character using her abilities without realizing it and then denying it. This means in practice that she never asks permission first, such as when she cursed a magical artifact before the sorcerer had time to examine it, pissing him off because that changes its properties. But because she has to RP every magic thing, while everyone else just says "I use magic thing," even when she does basic shit, it takes twenty times longer than everyone else
>6. By this point, everyone has given up on her except the priestess' player, who I think feels compelled to keep helping because she's supposed to be a lawful good compassionate type. Sorcerer in particular avoids dealing with her. So the girl mentions that she's hanging out in the corner of a room looking concerned, so the priestess goes over to ask her because the other PCs won't deal with her directly anymore. She tries to help her and says "it's okay to be a magic person," then spends the night with her to make sure she's not going to flip out again from nightmares or whatever, and this does not improve their relationship at all. She still characterizes the priestess as "abrasive" and "bloodthirsty" because she absolutely killed the shit out of the sorcerer who killed her parents
2/3
>7. Group is planning how to assault a compound full of evil sorcerers who summon fairies. Character asks why she's not part of the plan, pointing out that she has many useful social abilities to create distractions in a crowd or convince people to give up. Priestess says "If you want to be involved in the plan to attack evil sorcerers, then we have a reasonable expectation that you will comport yourself like a reliable adult, which you do not do. Besides which, we can't dance around using the word 'fairy' when we're planning how to attack sorcerers who summon fairies." She flips out when we say the word and starts shuddering, forcing us to deal with her shit again, so we foist her on an NPC and continue the planning session.
This isn't exactly a story, but whenever we don't pause the session to help with her emotions, she then RPs as the talking bird I mentioned, who flies around to talk to us in her place, offering advice of dubious usefulness and "subtly" suggesting to us that its master needs help. But whenever the priestess tries to help her, she just retreats into herself and won't be helped. Even though the ability says it has human intelligence, she RPs it as being only a talking bird, so whenever we ask it to do anything more complicated than "fly around and count how many enemies there are," she effectively refuses to do it.
Sounds like someone has MCitis. Have a car magically teleport out of her butthole and crush her character. Let her role a new one and give her a copy of some tween romance book staring sad pants magical girl to get that shit out of her system.
Mentally unstable as in "starts breaking down crying and can't function" which is already how the person lives in real life. They probably rp it because it's all they know. Roleplaying a fun psycho is fine.
>Every attempt to help the character just results in her indecisively not doing anything, and it's infuriating because of how much time it wastes every single session in a campaign of otherwise normal adult adventurers.
If the player is going to slog down the game because "that's what the character would do" simply respond with a "that's what OUR characters would do" move: abandon the mentally unstable character to some npc caretaker forcing the player in rolling a new character if wants to keep playing with you.
Definitely going to be leaving it soon. The DM is too spineless to check one of the players, who has gotten the same module the DM is using and is using it to cheat constantly. That guy is just generally obnoxious to be around, picking fights and pushing boundaries in weirdly middle school games of one-upmanship. Plus he's the worst kind of rules lawyer, the kind that doesn't know the rules as well as he thinks he does.
One of the players is an edgy furry but he's also new to the hobby and is trying to get along and cooperate with people in playing the game and telling a story. If he was the worst player in the group, it would still be fine to show up every week. I might poach the last guy when I leave the game because he's just there to have a good time. Ganker would like him and his Male Human Fighter except that he's Black. The DM is also pretty level-headed most of the time and has good pacing which is a rare skill, but this problem player has already chased off two people and the DM won't do anything about it. That's non-negotiable in my experience.
>module
Running modules is in and of itself is a huge red flag and a sign you should leave the group. Fricking IMAGINE being such an uncreative golem that you can't come up with your own adventure. Pathetic.
2024 is the fifth year I completely gave up on rpg gaming. Witj the time and resources I wasted in trying to elevate unga bunga morons on one side, and getting treated like a moron myself by university soft hands frickboys because I look like a cavemonster on the other I have to say it was absolutely the right decision to prevent misanthropy to completely devour my ass whole.
I can't deal with nu-gamurz. It's not even LGBT or stuff like that, the people I've met in the hobby in the last 15 years are like, I don't know, secondary nerds. Frick them
Group 1 is great. I like them so much I broke my "never again" vow and am running Exalted for the first time in a decade. Also, everyone is a GM, we rotate campaigns every few months.
Group 2 can't decide if it sucks or it rules. The current DM is flaky as hell, but when I run games the players tend to pick up the idiot ball. Thankfully, the party chemistry and banter always leave me laughing.
Group 3 is in limbo, and seems to need me to GM something for them or else it will just be one-shots and vidya.
Group 4 broke my heart when it fell apart, but I'm actively trying to save the two best players. Maybe this week I'll convince them to try again
Fricking amazingly, 6 hour sesh every Sunday, 3 years strong with only 4 cancellations for holidays, characters have incredible stakes in the world, immaculate RP, visceral combat, gutwrenching arcs and developments, and a DM with 2 homebrew campaigns under his belt who writes pages of lore for e v e r y t h i n g
Going really fricking solid. We're at the point where we might be able to wrap up the current game in 1-2 months and everyone is really hype about the next campaign I got cooked up. Everyone has been shooting character ideas and concepts back and forth. Might be able to get our flaky but fun friend to join in, buuuut I don't think he'll stick around for too long.
i've been mostly bumping around various groups made up of different slices of irl friends and their friends as a player and gm. unfortunately, they have different levels of commitment to the hobby, so it tends to be miserable when some make it a priority and others treat it like a casual hang where focus/attendance is ephemeral
i decided to reach outside my friends and join a group of randos who seemed dedicated, and it's been amazing so far. i always knew just because people are your friends doesn't mean that they're good ttrpg friends, but it took a long time to build up the courage to branch out. glad i did though
>new 5e game starting up this Thursday >PF2e game just had That Guy drop out (although I do wish it hadn't been over heavy life shit)
Fine I guess. I wish I wasn't stuck with d20 systems but I guess it'll just have to be that way until I can find time to run my own game.
>as player
PF2e. It's fun i guess, mainly because i'm taking the whole thing with levity, the GM is kinda green but tries, the other guys are either kind of stiff, destructive (but in a fun way without exaggeration or impairing the game, the guy has just a great sense of humor and prefers combat over talking) and kind of cringy (as in play-acting too much without being good at).
>as gm
I'm running a 3.5e sandbox-leaning game that is getting out of hand: it started as a short adventure for 3 players i decided to run for a 3.5gay pal of mine (while i do have experience in running 3.5 it's not my favourite game to pick for gming) and now got into a fullblown campaign with 5 players... I guess the guys are really enjoying it beyond my expectations. Players are fine, although one is kind of b***hy (as in he's not very proactive and need more than often a lot of handholding for not slipping into "it's what my character would do" kind of behaviour, fortunately i know the guy well and i easily anticipate his moods), a couple are not much interested in builds and shit and greatly enjoy the rp part and finally the last two are buildhomosexuals gimmick character players but are mature enough to keep their sysfrickery shenanigans at bay for the sake of table fun.
>new 5e game starting up this Thursday >PF2e game just had That Guy drop out (although I do wish it hadn't been over heavy life shit)
Fine I guess. I wish I wasn't stuck with d20 systems but I guess it'll just have to be that way until I can find time to run my own game.
Yeah. There's not a single design decision in this system that I really agree with but I like how the GM actually runs things and I like the party. It helps the GM is houseruling out the ass for stuff like setting-specific weapons and equipment.
We stopped. 3 of the 5 people weren't having fun. It was my first time being a player in a while. I didn't know what critical roll was before these two. The two that were enjoying themselves played and ran the game in a very ridgged way. If it wasn't in the app or a book it didn't exist. They played off thier phones, we 3 used paper. Everything felt like a bad videogame. npcs didn't really exist. we would interact with people and get a synopsis of the info they had. I've never felt so railroaded before. I would deliberately address something only for it not to matter as the scenario called for said thing to occur.
We called it after the player of these two rolled a new character, threatened the group; twice. Then ran off... it was an incredibly painful session.
On a positive, I understand other anons better now.
>We called it after the player of these two rolled a new character, threatened the group; twice. Then ran off... it was an incredibly painful session.
I don’t even understand this… you mean to say, this player’s character died, he rolled a new one, was antagonistic to the group, died, roll a new one, was antagonistic to the group, and then ran away?
It sounds like the other “person having fun” here was the GM, so was it just a case of this GM playing favorites with this idiot and letting him hog the spotlight?
>7. Group is planning how to assault a compound full of evil sorcerers who summon fairies. Character asks why she's not part of the plan, pointing out that she has many useful social abilities to create distractions in a crowd or convince people to give up. Priestess says "If you want to be involved in the plan to attack evil sorcerers, then we have a reasonable expectation that you will comport yourself like a reliable adult, which you do not do. Besides which, we can't dance around using the word 'fairy' when we're planning how to attack sorcerers who summon fairies." She flips out when we say the word and starts shuddering, forcing us to deal with her shit again, so we foist her on an NPC and continue the planning session.
This isn't exactly a story, but whenever we don't pause the session to help with her emotions, she then RPs as the talking bird I mentioned, who flies around to talk to us in her place, offering advice of dubious usefulness and "subtly" suggesting to us that its master needs help. But whenever the priestess tries to help her, she just retreats into herself and won't be helped. Even though the ability says it has human intelligence, she RPs it as being only a talking bird, so whenever we ask it to do anything more complicated than "fly around and count how many enemies there are," she effectively refuses to do it.
It sounds to me like this problem is solving itself, really. This player clearly wants to be the center of attention and places RPing her trauma at the top of her to-do list, way above everyone else’s fun. So she’s naturally isolated herself from the rest of the group, who want to actually play the game and RP according to situations that crop up, rather than just be a predetermined sad sack who doesn’t want to develop or change. She’ll eventually get frustrated at her lack of limelight, and either change or (more likely) quit.
I think he has something mentally wrong with him. The GM and him are friends? I think? They consume similar media and have similar taste (consumer general, new dice every few weeks, MTG box sets weekly, Internet media etc)
His last character completed its arc, and went home at level 7 or so. His new character got put in a position to introduce us to him. We got captured by him and his temporary npc gang. Made the group prove we weren't the enemy by doing a battle (dumb but whatever) The following "day" he has a special mechanic he gave his character. He rolled a d6, landed a 6. Became a hostile mute who drew his sword on someone, when asking if he was alright. So his character just left, and we let him. It felt like a scripted character found itself in real life. His character was the hook that got us back into the plot of the module. He handled it very badly.
It honestly built my confidence as a DM. As I thought of like 10 things that could have literally forced us to work together. But again, if it isn't or wasn't in a book or on a app we couldn't do it.
When we went off module we wandered around the various canonical places in 5e... lore? Again, it felt so stale and bland I only really played as long as I did because I had been forever DMing for ten years.
I tend to just be nice and play games as long as people are having fun. Idk if the DM and him knew something we didn't. I just wanted to play pretend and have fun.
He built characters for combat well. And the DM clearly put thought into each session. But role-playing and everything else that made this a pen and paper RPG felt hollowed out. Like we were trying to replicate a videogame.
Broke up years ago due to work/life committments personality and game edition clashes. We meet occasiionally for meals out now, but that's it. Life changes anon. Accept it.
>Group 1
4 teenagers. Barely know their rules or play somewhat tactically, but they love roleplaying and are friends with eachother, so it balances out. We play almost every 2 weeks. >Group 2
4 middle-aged guys. Doing an introductory scenario for PF2e. One of them I suspect has a porn addiction and he's characters sometimes say stupid shit, but hes allright for now. Another is a regular GM, but I'm noticing how he gets way excited and starts talking about other stuff than the game. Other 2 are cool. Trying to play at'least twice a month. >Group 3
4 boomers who mainly play board- and miniature games, one of them is a larper. Teaching PF2 for them as well and they seemed to really like it. Also went through the dungeon twice as fast as group 2. We gather once a month. >Group 4
6 players ranging from teens to about 35. I played most of their first RPG games and was planning to run
5e's Waterdeep Heist for them since I just finished it for another group. But man, these are the most passive players I've yet to meet. Did they have a shitty experience before or why does it take 30 minutes to go inside a warehouse? Haven't yet scheduled another session for this group since I am kinda unmotivated to run for them.
Pretty good actually, just made a character sheet for a close friend. The only thing I'm scared about is scheduling.
I'm in a group where they are experienced roleplayers so while I know I'll have a good time, it also means that having to work around other games they have is annoying.
Pretty well. I currently have two games with two groups with some overlap, and we played with one group on Thursday and will play with another one on Sunday. Thanks for asking, OP. What about you?
Haven't played with them for just about a year, soon. Just waiting for their current fricking game to end and for another GM to take over.
So I guess the answer is "it's not".
>three players
>already scheduling issues when the game started
>one is now sick
It's not dead, but nothing is happening either.
>Star Wars RPG
The person running it canceled the session 0. Probably for the best since all my character concepts (which I thought were pretty flexible) were getting rejected and the GM had already given us an outline where the campaign would heavily include his donut steel space elf species.
>Wargaming
Playing a ton of 3e Space Hulk and Battletech lately. I can’t quite make it to gaming often enough to the local BT campaign to be my own faction but I’m being allowed to control small portions of other peoples forces during games which I though was really nice of them.
I have ten to fourteen people coming over today.
I’m not TTRPGing but friends with a DM who is constantly bouncing ideas off me since I’m not one of his players. It’s fun to help build scenarios and things
I am looking forward to continiue to GM our campaign after the long pause due to my illness.
>me: hey want to play tomorrow night?
>friend1: yeah sure! I'm down. I can only play till 10 pm though.
>friend2: I'm open to play.
>friend3: I'm down.
>friends 4-8: crickets
>me: okay what time works best for everyone?
>crickets.
>me: 10 am start time work?
>crickets.
>wait a few hours.
>me: so what time works for everyone?
>crickets.
>wait until evening.
>me: who's all coming over to play?
>crickets.
>11am the next day while I'm busy doing something else.
>friend1: Hey when are we playing?
>friend2: anon never specified a time so....
>friend3: I didn't even look at my phone until now >:p
>friend1: Anon, what time we playing?
>friend2: I'm out. It's too late for me now, I got stuff I'm doing. People should really specify a time....
>friend3: turns their phone off again.
Every frickin time. It's like trying to herd cats and pull their teeth.
Take command. Tell them what time game is. They're the players and youre gm because you have capacity to take initiative
Next time just say next session is on [date], react with an [emote] if you can come or [other emote] if you cant.
>:) if you can come 8==D O: if you can't
I have a group of buds I play board games with regularly, but no TTRPGS or hyperadvanced wargames like 40k or whatever. The most advanced games I've played with them so far is Catan and Root. They do really like Root though, so that's a good sign ||Digital Marauder expansion when DireWolf||
Just fine. We had one failed game in the mix recently that I GMed, but we're on an extended campaign of MYZ and having a good time. Plus board games and the like in the mix.
Made a fire under my friends ass when he told me he didnt make a character yet after two months (and regular reminders) for the campaign I would run for him because he was busy "eating, sleeping, playing games"
When I told him I wasnt exactly amused he just ghosted me for a few weeks (after hanging out daily) without much explanation
After I reached out to him to get back on talking terms I told him I didnt appreciate him going silent either and he went off on me calling me autistic and so on
We cut contact
>Game 1
Last session one of the players said something that prompted a heated argument with the DM's bf about Baldur's Gate 3 having too many gays in ideal situations while portraying straights as incompetent and abusive degenerates. The DM and his bf broke up and we haven't played in 3 months 🙁
>Game 2
It's ok, if inconsistent. I just spent the entirety of yesterday filling up a map, statting 3 sidekicks, doing dozens of tokens, getting music, etc. Should be enough for a few weeks of sessions.
>too many gays in ideal situations while portraying straights as incompetent and abusive degenerates
Wasn't really my takeaway, given that the most prominent gays are A.) a couple trapped apart in a lightless nightmare realm, and B.) a literal devil so narcissistic that he keeps a live-in incubus who looks exactly like him.
I wouldn't know mate, never played it. Though I did hear the complaints about not being able to go too far without party members wanting to frick you and the bear sex thing. The thing with the devil sounds like it could be a fun encounter tho.
Hey anon, what’s this gif from?
A commercial for D&D Beyond.
The sexcraze was a bit of a bug, which has been fixed. Most of the companions are still pretty horny but that's video games for ya.
And the bear sex makes sense. Humans would absolutely use their powers during sex. If you are not into it just tell the druid to frick off. Politely or aggressively.
>notes written on a VTT map
One of the best GM practices I've seen that uses VTTs effectively. I am ashamed it took me as long as it did to start doing that as well.
Our fourth arrived about four hours ago, and we just finished our grocery shopping. He and my husband are currently preparing some banana bread to go in the oven while I put the finishing touches on the session and our fourth takes a nap. Session 33 tonight, and I'm excited to see how they deal with some of the things I have planned for them.
>let girlfriend join my long term group
>have to drive 30 minutes extra to pick her up
>group spends like a half hour ordering food
>dicks around offtopic during game
>I'm so burned out from wagecucking my GMing is what it used to be
>entire group are SJWs and upset each other constantly
>one player will do insane nerd rage if his character is gonna die
>girlfriend gets upset by autists and I have to tell autist friends to shut the frick up
>still have amazingly good roleplay memories with them from the past ten years, as good as any of the other half dozen groups I've been part of.
Paused. I’m thinking about letting it die unless someone else does something. We have a non binary, and a troon.
>one friend was dodging every online session, with another group the last half year
>the others b***h and moan about not playing any games
>offer to try and DM something other than Dnd, pretty much anything but not Dnd.
>everyone besides the first friend that gives no answer hardheartedly agrees, then proceed to procrastinate making even a character concept
>tell them to get together and help them make characters
>half of them are 1 or 2 hours late and barely get anything done, mostly spend time talking and chilling
>friend that dodged all the old sessions arrives with his gf after hearing from our other friends that we were gonna meet
>he still hasnt said if he is playing but i consider him a lost cause and dont even try with him
>character creating obviously gets derailed
>i say frick it and set a time for the first session 3 weeks later
>spent said time converting a couple of modules from dnd, happily getting my teeth into the system
>occasionally remind them that they should get their characters done
>game week comes and nobody has done anything
> offer a last chance meet 2 days before the session to fix any character creation issues
>i get handwaved away. nobody has anything ready
>i simply cancel the session and say that its ok if you dont wanna play. just say it
>i hear countless excuses but of course we dont play
>several months pass by.
>rpg get occasionally mentioned but nobody makes any move towards organising a game
yeah, we aint gonna play anything anytime soon and frankly i dont even care anymore
I don't have one, but I wish I did. What's the best way to start one?
Both on hiatus since mid-December.
My wife and I have been backpacking through South America for most of Jan. The campaign she GMs obviously wasn't going ahead and it would've been pretty hard to work around our characters absence in the second campaign, the GM for that group has been forced to pick up a bunch of overtime recently so I think he was glad to have an excuse to pause the game anyway.
I know the Sunday group has been doing one-shots or board games in our absence. That's what we usually do between campaigns or on weeks where more than one person can't make it.
Excited to get back into it now though. Got sessions planned for Thursday and Sunday next week.
We paused my wife's campaign right at one hell of a cliffhanger so I can't wait to see how it pans out.
Pretty great actually. Started gaming with this bunch about 6 months ago. Aside from the friend who invited me to the group they all came across as your typical D&D normies, but they're all pretty chill people and they've been receptive to trying out alternate systems; for our next campaign I'll be running Vampire: the Masquerade for the group.
I'm introducing another group of people to Nechronica next week.
Not great. Getting old sucks.
My extended gaming group has three potential DMs. One just got a sort of second job as a pastor and barely has time for anything. I just started a new job six months ago that involves regular travel. The third just had a stroke and is bedridden.
I am currently looking into figuring out a VTT just so we can keep people involved since if nothing else it eliminates players needing to travel and I could DM from a hotel room after work hours on weeks I'm visiting a job site. Until now, our group has been in person all the time.
Shit sucks.
Well enough, we've been meeting for five years and I recently managed to negotiate meeting every week instead of twice a month. Having a few power scaling issues, but we don't have a ton of combat so it's not that big of a deal
Put a party together, put a group chat together, everyone said they were excited. I asked about scheduling and once I chose a date to start playing, everyone stopped responding.
After a few weeks of trolling FB groups, Discords, and game forums, I've got a server of 69 noice players who all play the skirmish shit I like and a ton of stuff I've never heard of. I have to do some minor cat-herding now and again, and the bulk of the players just lurk, but we've got a core of about 8-12 good dudes for semi-monthly games. I dropped a line for a meetup this afternoon late last night, and there's a handful of us getting together in an hour. It took work, but it was worth it.
Just helped a friend finishing her character sheet for a naval campaign we've been planning for a while. Gonna start playing this week.
Meanwhile I'm slowly but surely gathering material for my next campaign, the group I'm GMing for is currently preoccupied so I've got a lot of time.
the usual
one player engaged but kind of autistic
one player really engaged but reticent
one player disengaged
one player super-engaged and fricking the GM
>Player 2 just seriously injured himself which changed his work schedule so it doesn't really mesh anymore.
>Player 3 is Player 2's gf.
>Just player 1 and me now.
Well frick.
I have a really strong Battletech group. Also plays Titanicus and Epic occasionally.
No RPG group but wouldnt have the patience right now anyway.
I have session 1 of my first online campaign this Tuesday. I’m excited, if also a bit nervous. I’ve been playing for almost a decade, but it’s always been in person. Not sure if I’m gonna like online games. Session zero was fun though so we’ll see.
Then I have my two in-person campaigns on the 9th and the 10th. Friday my Eldritch Knight will gain 5th level and learn the consequences of that demon he released last week. Saturday I’ll run my game I’ve been GMing for two years for my pals.
So overall, better than ever, really. I’ve never played so much in my life.
Dying slowly but surely
It aint bad. Meet a dude that does 3D prints and invited me to a group, most of them are Army/Air Force or retired.
Played my first game of Kill Team, I was ass at it but we had a good time, going to paint some Kasrkins for next time.
A player just dropped, but that's not the main problem. One of the players made a character who's super emotionally fragile and just falls to pieces at any kind of stress, which has slowed down the pace of basically every session or scene she's involved in. Every attempt to help the character just results in her indecisively not doing anything, and it's infuriating because of how much time it wastes every single session in a campaign of otherwise normal adult adventurers.
This sounds unbearable for you, and potentially hilarious to us. Can we get some stories, anon?
Sure, here are a couple.
>Party is a lawful good priestess, an butthole sorcerer with no patience for bullshit, an undead guy on a mission to find an ancient artifact, an Italian mafioso who wants to knock and replace the don, a robot, and the shuddering, pale teenage girl who wants to deny that she's a magical being and pretend to be normal. She can't string together two sentences to magic people (like us) without taking a full minute to slowly quaver them out, so over time, everyone learns to avoid talking to her to avoid slowing down the sessions
>Also, the player took a magical shapeshifting lesbian pirate as a roommate, has a talking bird, glows whenever she uses magic, and inadvertently summons evil spider fairies whenever she's around (she's also arachnophobic)
>Saying the words "spider" or "fairy" makes her flip out instantly. This is not a mechanical thing, it's purely RP
>1. She accidentally summons a spider fairy when we murder an evil sorcerer. We drive it off, but later are discussing the event, and someone says the words "spider fairy," and she goes comatose and we have to spend 30 minutes dealing with her instead of planning our attack against evil sorcerers
>2. We murder an evil sorcerer, whose name is actually Sorcerer Mengele, who's killed shitloads of innocent people, including the priestess' parents. And like yes, we absolutely murdered the shit out of him and had an argument about who gets to finish him off, but she's like "wow that was brutal, I'm going to go comatose for a while," forcing the priestess (who just avenged her parents' death) to console her
>3. She asks for help investing a spiderweb. She thinks it's magical, but isn't sure, so she fetches the sorcerer, who uses a spell, says "no, it's not," and leaves. Then she complains that no one helped her with the spiderweb. Like yes, I can tell that she REALLY meant "investigate this for me," but she'll never say anything directly
1/3
>4. Priestess asks if she can help her find her parents' ghosts so she can say goodbye, she says no because she doesn't like ghosts
>5. Whenever the player wants to do something magical, she RPs it as the character using her abilities without realizing it and then denying it. This means in practice that she never asks permission first, such as when she cursed a magical artifact before the sorcerer had time to examine it, pissing him off because that changes its properties. But because she has to RP every magic thing, while everyone else just says "I use magic thing," even when she does basic shit, it takes twenty times longer than everyone else
>6. By this point, everyone has given up on her except the priestess' player, who I think feels compelled to keep helping because she's supposed to be a lawful good compassionate type. Sorcerer in particular avoids dealing with her. So the girl mentions that she's hanging out in the corner of a room looking concerned, so the priestess goes over to ask her because the other PCs won't deal with her directly anymore. She tries to help her and says "it's okay to be a magic person," then spends the night with her to make sure she's not going to flip out again from nightmares or whatever, and this does not improve their relationship at all. She still characterizes the priestess as "abrasive" and "bloodthirsty" because she absolutely killed the shit out of the sorcerer who killed her parents
2/3
>7. Group is planning how to assault a compound full of evil sorcerers who summon fairies. Character asks why she's not part of the plan, pointing out that she has many useful social abilities to create distractions in a crowd or convince people to give up. Priestess says "If you want to be involved in the plan to attack evil sorcerers, then we have a reasonable expectation that you will comport yourself like a reliable adult, which you do not do. Besides which, we can't dance around using the word 'fairy' when we're planning how to attack sorcerers who summon fairies." She flips out when we say the word and starts shuddering, forcing us to deal with her shit again, so we foist her on an NPC and continue the planning session.
This isn't exactly a story, but whenever we don't pause the session to help with her emotions, she then RPs as the talking bird I mentioned, who flies around to talk to us in her place, offering advice of dubious usefulness and "subtly" suggesting to us that its master needs help. But whenever the priestess tries to help her, she just retreats into herself and won't be helped. Even though the ability says it has human intelligence, she RPs it as being only a talking bird, so whenever we ask it to do anything more complicated than "fly around and count how many enemies there are," she effectively refuses to do it.
Sounds like someone has MCitis. Have a car magically teleport out of her butthole and crush her character. Let her role a new one and give her a copy of some tween romance book staring sad pants magical girl to get that shit out of her system.
>Choosing to roleplay as a mentally unstable mess
Why.
Why not? That sounds like 90% of my characters. Not a sane person between them.
Mentally unstable as in "starts breaking down crying and can't function" which is already how the person lives in real life. They probably rp it because it's all they know. Roleplaying a fun psycho is fine.
>Every attempt to help the character just results in her indecisively not doing anything, and it's infuriating because of how much time it wastes every single session in a campaign of otherwise normal adult adventurers.
If the player is going to slog down the game because "that's what the character would do" simply respond with a "that's what OUR characters would do" move: abandon the mentally unstable character to some npc caretaker forcing the player in rolling a new character if wants to keep playing with you.
Definitely going to be leaving it soon. The DM is too spineless to check one of the players, who has gotten the same module the DM is using and is using it to cheat constantly. That guy is just generally obnoxious to be around, picking fights and pushing boundaries in weirdly middle school games of one-upmanship. Plus he's the worst kind of rules lawyer, the kind that doesn't know the rules as well as he thinks he does.
One of the players is an edgy furry but he's also new to the hobby and is trying to get along and cooperate with people in playing the game and telling a story. If he was the worst player in the group, it would still be fine to show up every week. I might poach the last guy when I leave the game because he's just there to have a good time. Ganker would like him and his Male Human Fighter except that he's Black. The DM is also pretty level-headed most of the time and has good pacing which is a rare skill, but this problem player has already chased off two people and the DM won't do anything about it. That's non-negotiable in my experience.
>module
Running modules is in and of itself is a huge red flag and a sign you should leave the group. Fricking IMAGINE being such an uncreative golem that you can't come up with your own adventure. Pathetic.
I don't entirely disagree with you but I try not to give up on people with just one red flag.
Modules is a fun way to try out gming styles and planning contradictory to what you normally do.
2024 is the fifth year I completely gave up on rpg gaming. Witj the time and resources I wasted in trying to elevate unga bunga morons on one side, and getting treated like a moron myself by university soft hands frickboys because I look like a cavemonster on the other I have to say it was absolutely the right decision to prevent misanthropy to completely devour my ass whole.
I can't deal with nu-gamurz. It's not even LGBT or stuff like that, the people I've met in the hobby in the last 15 years are like, I don't know, secondary nerds. Frick them
I'm sorry anon.
Nonexistent. Always wanted to play but I hate most other people that are into this kind of stuff.
They already stopped asking when the next session is. Its not like we'll be all available anyway, so why bother?
Group 1 is great. I like them so much I broke my "never again" vow and am running Exalted for the first time in a decade. Also, everyone is a GM, we rotate campaigns every few months.
Group 2 can't decide if it sucks or it rules. The current DM is flaky as hell, but when I run games the players tend to pick up the idiot ball. Thankfully, the party chemistry and banter always leave me laughing.
Group 3 is in limbo, and seems to need me to GM something for them or else it will just be one-shots and vidya.
Group 4 broke my heart when it fell apart, but I'm actively trying to save the two best players. Maybe this week I'll convince them to try again
Fricking amazingly, 6 hour sesh every Sunday, 3 years strong with only 4 cancellations for holidays, characters have incredible stakes in the world, immaculate RP, visceral combat, gutwrenching arcs and developments, and a DM with 2 homebrew campaigns under his belt who writes pages of lore for e v e r y t h i n g
Im in fricking heaven anons
Going really fricking solid. We're at the point where we might be able to wrap up the current game in 1-2 months and everyone is really hype about the next campaign I got cooked up. Everyone has been shooting character ideas and concepts back and forth. Might be able to get our flaky but fun friend to join in, buuuut I don't think he'll stick around for too long.
i've been mostly bumping around various groups made up of different slices of irl friends and their friends as a player and gm. unfortunately, they have different levels of commitment to the hobby, so it tends to be miserable when some make it a priority and others treat it like a casual hang where focus/attendance is ephemeral
i decided to reach outside my friends and join a group of randos who seemed dedicated, and it's been amazing so far. i always knew just because people are your friends doesn't mean that they're good ttrpg friends, but it took a long time to build up the courage to branch out. glad i did though
Dead for almost 2 years now.
>new 5e game starting up this Thursday
>PF2e game just had That Guy drop out (although I do wish it hadn't been over heavy life shit)
Fine I guess. I wish I wasn't stuck with d20 systems but I guess it'll just have to be that way until I can find time to run my own game.
>as player
PF2e. It's fun i guess, mainly because i'm taking the whole thing with levity, the GM is kinda green but tries, the other guys are either kind of stiff, destructive (but in a fun way without exaggeration or impairing the game, the guy has just a great sense of humor and prefers combat over talking) and kind of cringy (as in play-acting too much without being good at).
>as gm
I'm running a 3.5e sandbox-leaning game that is getting out of hand: it started as a short adventure for 3 players i decided to run for a 3.5gay pal of mine (while i do have experience in running 3.5 it's not my favourite game to pick for gming) and now got into a fullblown campaign with 5 players... I guess the guys are really enjoying it beyond my expectations. Players are fine, although one is kind of b***hy (as in he's not very proactive and need more than often a lot of handholding for not slipping into "it's what my character would do" kind of behaviour, fortunately i know the guy well and i easily anticipate his moods), a couple are not much interested in builds and shit and greatly enjoy the rp part and finally the last two are buildhomosexuals gimmick character players but are mature enough to keep their sysfrickery shenanigans at bay for the sake of table fun.
>PF2e
Oof.
Yeah. There's not a single design decision in this system that I really agree with but I like how the GM actually runs things and I like the party. It helps the GM is houseruling out the ass for stuff like setting-specific weapons and equipment.
We stopped. 3 of the 5 people weren't having fun. It was my first time being a player in a while. I didn't know what critical roll was before these two. The two that were enjoying themselves played and ran the game in a very ridgged way. If it wasn't in the app or a book it didn't exist. They played off thier phones, we 3 used paper. Everything felt like a bad videogame. npcs didn't really exist. we would interact with people and get a synopsis of the info they had. I've never felt so railroaded before. I would deliberately address something only for it not to matter as the scenario called for said thing to occur.
We called it after the player of these two rolled a new character, threatened the group; twice. Then ran off... it was an incredibly painful session.
On a positive, I understand other anons better now.
>We called it after the player of these two rolled a new character, threatened the group; twice. Then ran off... it was an incredibly painful session.
I don’t even understand this… you mean to say, this player’s character died, he rolled a new one, was antagonistic to the group, died, roll a new one, was antagonistic to the group, and then ran away?
It sounds like the other “person having fun” here was the GM, so was it just a case of this GM playing favorites with this idiot and letting him hog the spotlight?
It sounds to me like this problem is solving itself, really. This player clearly wants to be the center of attention and places RPing her trauma at the top of her to-do list, way above everyone else’s fun. So she’s naturally isolated herself from the rest of the group, who want to actually play the game and RP according to situations that crop up, rather than just be a predetermined sad sack who doesn’t want to develop or change. She’ll eventually get frustrated at her lack of limelight, and either change or (more likely) quit.
I think he has something mentally wrong with him. The GM and him are friends? I think? They consume similar media and have similar taste (consumer general, new dice every few weeks, MTG box sets weekly, Internet media etc)
His last character completed its arc, and went home at level 7 or so. His new character got put in a position to introduce us to him. We got captured by him and his temporary npc gang. Made the group prove we weren't the enemy by doing a battle (dumb but whatever) The following "day" he has a special mechanic he gave his character. He rolled a d6, landed a 6. Became a hostile mute who drew his sword on someone, when asking if he was alright. So his character just left, and we let him. It felt like a scripted character found itself in real life. His character was the hook that got us back into the plot of the module. He handled it very badly.
It honestly built my confidence as a DM. As I thought of like 10 things that could have literally forced us to work together. But again, if it isn't or wasn't in a book or on a app we couldn't do it.
When we went off module we wandered around the various canonical places in 5e... lore? Again, it felt so stale and bland I only really played as long as I did because I had been forever DMing for ten years.
I tend to just be nice and play games as long as people are having fun. Idk if the DM and him knew something we didn't. I just wanted to play pretend and have fun.
He built characters for combat well. And the DM clearly put thought into each session. But role-playing and everything else that made this a pen and paper RPG felt hollowed out. Like we were trying to replicate a videogame.
Broke up years ago due to work/life committments personality and game edition clashes. We meet occasiionally for meals out now, but that's it. Life changes anon. Accept it.
>Group 1
4 teenagers. Barely know their rules or play somewhat tactically, but they love roleplaying and are friends with eachother, so it balances out. We play almost every 2 weeks.
>Group 2
4 middle-aged guys. Doing an introductory scenario for PF2e. One of them I suspect has a porn addiction and he's characters sometimes say stupid shit, but hes allright for now. Another is a regular GM, but I'm noticing how he gets way excited and starts talking about other stuff than the game. Other 2 are cool. Trying to play at'least twice a month.
>Group 3
4 boomers who mainly play board- and miniature games, one of them is a larper. Teaching PF2 for them as well and they seemed to really like it. Also went through the dungeon twice as fast as group 2. We gather once a month.
>Group 4
6 players ranging from teens to about 35. I played most of their first RPG games and was planning to run
5e's Waterdeep Heist for them since I just finished it for another group. But man, these are the most passive players I've yet to meet. Did they have a shitty experience before or why does it take 30 minutes to go inside a warehouse? Haven't yet scheduled another session for this group since I am kinda unmotivated to run for them.