D&D/Pathfinder rant

[Gilhelmi]

All I want is to be in a group that is laid back and not always dicks to one another.

If I hear one more rape joke, I am walking out. (I am not typing the full story of that, pisses me off too much. I walked out of that group)
If the DM/GM does not start corralling the group to stop talking (about non-game stuff) and get things started semi-on-time, I am walking out.
If you agree to come on Saturdays to play, COME. The 3rd and 4th groups only had me and the GM show up regularly. 2 people is not enough to do these RPGs

On to stories. Players are DM/GM, TY, D, M, J, TJ, F, E, and Me

Last week, we started a new campaign, with new characters and players.
Before the first fight, E stole from TY. They were bickering, for fun in-game (not real-life fighting, just in game). Problem, they were spending a lot of time and really annoying everyone else. After the quest (town is being attacked but they wanted to keep arguing), they resumed were still in-game arguing, the rest of us collected the quest reward, not giving either of them any . DM talked about not allowing anymore stealing from players (though he was only talk, as I found out next week).

Afterwards, the group went on to start the next quest. We followed the tracks to a cave and ventured inside with our torches, coming to a fork in the cave. 1/3 the group went down the the path with the tracks (because dah), 1/3 of the group went down the path without tracks that lead to a dead end, and the other 1/3 waited to see which group to follow. But that is a minor complaint, I understand fully exploring a cave. Anyway, the 2/3rds of the group that did not follow us had to catch up (after complaining there was nothing down there).

But this week was much worse.

D just joined the group this week, but did not have a character sheet ready. Why he did not make one in the 3 hours he was in the store before hand is beyond me.

The DM was waiting on the group to get ready, but they were ready just talking among themselves about random stuff. We were suppose to start at 9, be done by 11 (DM and D curfew). We started at 10 (finally).

We (finally) picked up at the cave (down the right path) and entered the main room. Everyone put away their light source, except for F because "I will not be told what to do". Thanks, now the Goblins have seen us ruining the element of surprise. I suspect she may be playing an evil or chaotic character, so she may have just been trying to stay "in character", F was knocked out in the first round of fighting. Next time listen to the suggestion of the group.

It was a good fight, but the only only one with healing spell had to use his daily limit. We went down the path to find D's character (who was just being introduced) locked in a cage, beaten, and stabbed. The DM kept trying to get us to use a healing spell, WE USED THEM ALL IN THE FIGHT. So finally, we got D patch up but DM made us carry him because we could not heal him. While freeing D, M sneaked out of the room, found his gear and stole his gold. Why am I annoyed by this in-game thing? Because M is always an a**h*** to D. He just started a new campaign, now has no way to pay for an inn or food. I mean seriously, RPing is good and all, but sometimes not always being an a**h*** is better for the group. Why the DM allowed a player to be screwed like that (so early in the game) is also beyond me. (No Meta gaming, so D's character did not know what happened to the money, only reason we found out was when I accused the DM of being an a**h***, I am still right)

So after E and myself gave D some gold to sleep and eat (E is evil, but could not carry anymore gold because his pouch was full and trying to pretend to not be evil.). We finished for the evening, I was exhausted (RL exhausted from having to listen to these people for 2 hours). During the fight, half the group was not paying attention. The "Lawful Good" pissing me off by joking about putting a "whore mark" on Ds forehead (again, I have low tolerance for rape jokes). F was just being a plain a**, M was being himself by always finding a way to piss people off (*stupid whiny voice*you guys should have been paying attention instead of focusing on helping someone who could not walk on his own ). And DM needs to show more initiative and keep the group on track, finish writing his quests before the game, and not letting players pick on other players.

That ends my rants (for now).

Next week, I am hoping to get into the 6th different group in 5 months. A guy I know from work (who is laid back), a GM I played with before (a really good GM, well organized and laid back), and a couple other people. They are getting ready to try out D&D 5.0 and wanting to start by 6 so we are not up as late and use Skype for people who can not make it (hopefully, all these things will mean a group that will be there that will not drive me to the Asylum. AND NO RAPE JOKES. I know I am going on about this, but there is a story related to D&D I will not post. I swear to God, one more and I will never play up there again.)

I love RPing, I get into it. But seriously, RPing does not give you the excuse to be a jacka**. Be evil, fine (I really do not care), just stop trying to ruin other peoples fun.

[KhirasHY]

I've only had to deal with this one two occasions. In one, we were playing a game of Talon (a gaming system our roommate invented, which is very fun btw), and one of the guys there was continually making threats against the other party members, trying to strongarm them in-game. We were all getting sick of it...and then, he finally tried to do it to my character. My character was a wizard type, and I had been role playing the character as one who was distinctly unhinged. Think Luna Lovegood meets Jack the Ripper. He was not a good person, but had a generally cheerful way of approaching things until something was a threat, then he would do terrible things to it. This led to some hilariously awkward moments for the party (I "accidentally" burned down a tavern when a bar wench surprised me by spilling a beer on me, but I also spent one entire fight picking flowers instead of fighting. The party learned to make sure that enemy arrows ended up being fired near me after that), but I figured it was the perfect excuse.

Asshole threatened my unstable wizard, then made the mistake of grabbing him by his robe. So I nuked him. I didn't mean to roll a triple crit (rare, almost impossible thing in that game system, but possible nonetheless) but that's sure what happened. Then I looted his corpse and merrily suggested we move along to the party. Asshole complained, but everyone including the GM was already pissed at him, so we just ignored him.

The second time it happened was my own fault. My party killed me. I rolled a Bard though, so it's more or less required. In fairness, we always joke that any Bard will be immediately murdered in our games. It's just one of the rules.

[EricKei]

In my old group, we had a merry tradition of burning down any taverns any given adventure started in. This did not discourage the GM from having us start in taverns; rather, it encouraged him

As for that group, Gil -- good job getting out of there, it sounds quite toxic. Keeping a lid on "character" behavior is the GM's job, especially if it disrupts the game for the players. Huge group, too (then again, I prefer small-party games -- been many years, tho). No GM should ever allow stealing from a party member, unless it's either a story thing, or a one-time occurrence that is quickly found out and dealt with in-character, once and for all. If this means that the thief has to roll up a new toon the next week, too bad for him.

In the last group I ran with, we had one player -- the GF of one of the players, who always "just happened" to "randomly" roll up maximum possible stats whenever her BF was running a game, or was trusted to watch her roll , and here characters tended to be self-centered, "all-about-me," toxic little shits -- which reflected her IRL personality quite well. She HATED the rare occasions when she was not effectively in control of the party/the best at every possible thing, and in charge no matter what -- she was the type who would play a healer and charge the party for healing spells, demanding payment in the middle of fights. This person was ultimately the reason I left that group, leaving behind (what I thought were) some good friends as an an eventual result of that.

On a side note -- We tried Big Eyes Small Mouth one time, and I ended up running an insane samurai-type character (a blood knight/death-seeker type, but insane -- as in, "talks to swords and takes their advice" insane; as for looks -- big bulky samurai in blood red armor with Doc Brown's head and hair)...The girl I referred to was really frustrated, simply because this was a character she could not push around or dominate. This pissed her off to no end, and even her BF encouraged me. She even went so far as to bring in a printout of the Bushido Code at one point, and convinced the GM to set up a lose-lose situation to use against me, basically just to be a dick. Aside from that incident - which was the end of our BESM experiment - it was the most fun I ever had running in that group, bar none ^_^

[Jay 2K Winger]

she was the type who would play a healer and charge the party for healing spells, demanding payment in the middle of fights.

So you played with Nabiki Tendo?

Man, that sucks.

[EricKei]

Pretty much...just without any redeeming qualities such as a desire to roleplay.

[Sapphire Silk]

The Evil Overlord (Evil Empryss's hubs and our GM) makes players suffer the consequences of their own actions.

If you're a dick, it WILL come back to you, bank on it. However, that does not mean a character can't be a total asshole . . . if he can pull it off in such a way that the consequences go onto someone else or you can evade them, then go for it!

EE is actually quite successful at this (though her characters are USUALLY good people); I suck at it. So I don't often play morally ambiguous characters.

So Asshole would have been welcome to be an asshole . . . if he was up to playing the role.

But we've kicked more than one player out of our group for generalized asshattery. Heck, I kicked my ex-husband out of a different group I was running at the time, because he would not stop trying to claim another player's ideas as his own. I'd been working very hard with that player to get her to come out of her shell, finally succeeded, she had some brilliant ideas for how her character was going to approach problems, and ex-hubs kept trying to take them over and have his character run them. He kept doing it even when I explained what I was trying to do with the player, how I didn't want him to do it, and he needed to back off.

It was really pissing off the other players, and the one player went right back into her shell. Damn it. Ex-hubs had to go find another game.

[KhirasHY]

she was the type who would play a healer and charge the party for healing spells, demanding payment in the middle of fights.

I did play a mercenary character once in a space game, but I wasn't quite that bad. I had a specific contract worked out with one member of the party, so I was only obliged to follow his orders, and his character was a super-rich noble with below average intelligence, which was fun for me. Think of my character as someone like Cadd Bane from the Clone Wars series, but I was on the side of the good guys. To quote my character, "Your moral ambiguity is not important for me. You paid me to follow an order. If you didn't want it followed, you should've given a better order."

Part of my contract specifically stated that I could ignore stupid or suicidal orders, so I was able to be autonomous at times, but my employer had a bad habit of yelling out panic orders like "KILL THEM ALL" during a fight. One member of the party was continually taking captives, and they all kept mysteriously dying when he wasn't looking. Quite a few "tried to escape" and had to be gunned down, for the protection of the party you understand!

In the end, my character ended up swimming in cash, I had killed off every one of my rivals and enemies, and framed over a dozen nobles who offended me during the campaign for a series of murders, thefts, and acts of terrorism that I secretly partook in while the party was busy (to kill my rivals/enemies, I had to plant a lot of bombs). None of the in-game characters ever learned just how much that character was doing behind their backs, but he was fun to me ;D

Incidentally, my employer suddenly rose to a position of prominence through the campaign, mostly because almost every single person who was HIS rival managed to piss me off by talking down to me, and hence ended up being framed as a result. Don't toy with a mercenary.

[EricKei]

Had she been playing a merc, I would have understood runnig a tab or something like that, sure ^_^ She did this with healers in general. Yes, even if they were supposedly Lawful and/or Good. She got the most abusive when it was her BF's turn to run a game.

[gremcint]

So I've really only gamed on a regular basis with one group that rotated people in and out and we've had some morons, like one guy who just randomly screw with everyone for no reaosn and wanted to change characters every week. I stopped hanging out with the two main members of the group though because it was getting really weird. The main issue boiled down to romance in game. I'd never had an interest in roleplaying that and had said so on several occasions but that didn't stop the gm from introducing characters tailor made for mine to date and keep hinting at it. Then there was the other guy who had a character run a brothel that kept sending my character coupons as a joke.

Eventually I told them to leave me the fuck alone about it and they finally took the hint but they started having their characters do it between them and after one session where they would not stop making comments about their characters doing it I left, wrote them an email and have not gone back.

There were other issues too where there was a great deal of mood policing and I finally realized this friendship was over.

[Sapphire Silk]

Romances drive character stories. You don't have to get all mushy mushy to have a relationship with the GM. You don't even have to spend much in game time on it; just make the NPC a Lois Lane type that gets Superman into shit and leave it at that.

The Evil Overlord created a love interest for one of my characters from a villain's minion. She had a thing for bad boys. He got her into all kinds of trouble . . . but also sometimes gave her valuable intel that helped her solve crimes. It was a lot of fun, and there was no sappiness to it, and the sex was the "fade to black" kind of sex.

[gremcint]

I never said no romance in game, I said I'm not interested in having my character date or hookup. Sorry while it can drive stories there are plenty of other stories to do and it made me uncomfortable. If it had just been off to the side or something fine, or even just one part of the game but after sitting through a session where there was some sort of innuendo or outright asking the other character for sex every five minutes or so I just couldn't do it anymore, it was getting too weird.

And like I said I was being mocked for not participating in it.

[AccountingDrone]

And people wonder why once I discovered computer RPGs I never went back to having to deal with passels of jackasses ... I can log in, kill shit, loot shit and not have to deal with dickheads. MMORPGs are even better - I log into my server, there is always something happening, either I can solo around, do my boss list, or find a PUG for a dungeon crawl. Someone pisses me off, I put them on my ignore list. If I am playing EVE Online and someone pisses me off, I kill them. They still piss me off, I kill them and then I POD them.

[Tama]

I wanted to do a D&D thing. So bad.

But we got a moron in the group who insisted on bullying an inn manager and SCREWING a white dragon into making her an ally.

Yeahhh....no.

[KuariKaydrith]

Finding a good rp group can be difficult sometimes. It's a large part of why I haven't really bothered trying to find one after a move across the country. I did try a couple groups here, but they all seemed to fall to pieces...and I hate gaming with min-maxers or idiots. So I stick to MMORPGs these days.

[Ellain]

I got pretty lucky with my gaming group. They're good people, and very patient with my concentration issues. We rotate who the DM is, and what system we play. The group does tend to lose focus a lot- several members like to debate politics and religion, and someone decided to start horrible conversations whenever our food gets delivered, trying to get a reaction from the poor drivers. SMH. I tip them well in apology.

My best moment in this group happened while I was playing a very acrobatic young rogue. We needed to get through a door blocked by an enemy that no one could get a hit on. I got a running start, launched myself through the upper corner of the door he was blocking, and back-stabbed him.