Miles O'Brien

If that’s what you took away from my comments, have fun I guess.

I told him the game focuses on the group and if he’s not part of the group then he won’t be playing, and since that first game he has participated, with few issues popping up.

I probably could have been clearer before we even got to the table that if you aren’t playing with the group then you aren’t playing, rather than just expect them to stick with a group on their first game.

I told him multiple times that if he was going to try and do his own thing, he won’t be participating with the group, and the group is the entire focus of the game.

I suppose I could have made it more explicit that he could join the group or he could leave the game.

I should add that that was many games ago, and he has since begun participating, although he often tries to go his own way and threatens to leave the group constantly, but so far he hasn’t actually tried leaving the group unless it was agreed upon for strategy reasons. (they split up inside a crypt in the most horror movie fashion possible)

let people roll to see if something happens

Oh god so many DMs in the past have done this, and I just roll my eyes every time.

Like I’m okay if you want to roll your own dice behind the screen to see if we get attacked overnight, but that should be the only kind of “roll to see what happens” going on.

I really need to do some kind of team building exercise before a game, something that they’ll want to do, but requires teamwork, just to demonstrate the point that they need to work together.

When my first character did the whole “I’m gonna be all by myself because I’m a lone wolf” thing, the DM let me go off and the totally unexpected happened and my character got into a scuffle he wasn’t prepared for, but a group sure would have been.

I absolutely used to be that “my character is a quiet rogue-ish type that definitely wasn’t modeled after Aragorn when he was introduced at the Prancing Pony mixed with Robin hood” who always “had to be convinced” to join, and nobody ever called me out for it. I honestly wish they had because that’s annoying as fuck and you miss out on playing an actually fully developed character.

Nowadays I tend to be less tactful that you are, but essentially tell people the same thing, or literally beat their characters over the head with ambushes.

I started running games for my wife and her niblings, and the oldest boy is getting into that “I’m such a rebel” phase where they think they’re bad ass for taking slightly longer to do a chore than needed and say “no” the first time you ask them to do something.

He thought it was hilarious to have a character that refused to join the rest of the group, so I said “okay, you can stay at the inn if you want” and then proceeded to intentionally ignore anything he was saying or doing, leaving him out of rolls, and never addressing him.

He’s 12 and started literally crying to his mother about how we’re all being mean to him. Apparently “he had the opportunity to participate and chose not to” wasn’t a good enough response to his mother. I stand by my choice. Although my wife managed to convince me to let him “rejoin” at the next town/session.

He doesn’t pull that shit anymore though, when he’s playing he’s playing or he gets shut out again.

Genuine question to anyone reading: does that make me a bad DM? If so, suggestions on how to handle it?

I’m a big fan of “you all wake up in loincloths sitting in a wagon, hands bound” and as long as someone at the table can roll higher than a 1, they can break free.

Or something attacks them while they’re all in a tavern

Basically I’m a fan of “you could ignore having your shit kicked in, but will you?” since so many players would stop at nothing.

Fallout NV had the right idea. “Where’s that little fucker who shot me in the head?!”

birth bath

Uhhhhhh you should probably at least drain out the placenta fluid…

My favorite group I have ever DMd for was at a convention, it was 2am, and nobody had ever met before except the two couples in the mix of 9. I just ran part of a campaign I was working on for a different group.

I barely had to interact with them for RP stuff unless it was to drive the plot, or play a character they convinced to join them.

It was great seeing a large muscular guy dressed like a Dwarven blacksmith role play a halfling, and the smallest person there was playing as a half-orc barbarian from the plains of icewind dale.

And of course since it was a convention, and some of them had LARP gear with them, a friendly competitive sword fight broke out during a rest and instead of rolling, they just went ahead and used foam swords and stepped away from the tables. And borrowed dialogue from the princess bride.

Most groups definitely prefer combat, and to be honest so do I unless I’m running the game. Maybe I just haven’t played with the right group or character, or more likely I just suck at it. Either way…

I think everyone has “that one group” they wish they could play with forever and never have scheduling conflicts…

At least you all can get your family to use it.

I can’t even get my spouse to use it unless she thinks what we are talking about might be illegal where we are (it usually isn’t)

I’ve tried convincing family to use it, but all that happens is I just never hear from them until I see them in person or they call me.

They don’t even feel the need to back up their Amazon Kindle collection before they get cutoff from it… Thousands of dollars wasted if they ever lose access to the account.

Weird, I just had a bunch of mls tell me just the other day that a comment I made was strawmanning a hypothetical tankie telling me I’m wrong.

And here we see yet another ml strawmanning.

Super Weird.

All I see is a bunch of people saying this is dystopia nightmare shit, and so far the only person I’ve seen do anything other than call it what it is is the ml comparing this to China.

Surveillance states are bad anywhere, you won’t get many people arguing that city wide government facial recognition is a good thing.

Shhhhhhhhhhh

If I don’t know my master plan, then THEY certainly don’t either!

Also I do intentionally leave some things a bit more vague, with ideas of what I want to do, but I’m hoping the players will start theorizing amongst themselves so I can incorporate their stuff into the game.

It gives them a nice sense of accomplishment to have “predicted” something, and I think they feel more engaged in the campaign.

Or maybe I’m just a bad DM…

Lmao this guy thinks hard work is what makes people rich instead of massive amounts of exploitation in an inherently exploitative economic system…

You heard it here folks, you shouldn’t question something unless you are directly affected by it.

I’m hoping for hamster-sized dragon.

Not all of us can live on Hysperia.

Okay but like… If I only have a pile like… A foot tall…

Will the dragon be hamster sized, Chihuahua sized, great Pyrenees size, or bear size?

Cause depending on the answer, I have some saving to do…

“tech enthusiast” vs “IT guy” in a nutshell.

Tech enthusiast: a little privacy breach is okay, as a treat for the headphones I already paid them money for. It’s not their fault their app wants to know these things. It’s mostly all good.

IT guy: shoot it 417 times after you uninstall it to make sure it’s truly no longer on your phone.

Side story: I forgot my good earbuds at home one day and decided I didn’t want to hear tools all day, so I bought a new pair at the store I was working at that day. 2 minutes later I’m at the counter again to return them because they wanted me to download an app and wouldn’t pair without it. Bought a $1 pack of earplugs instead.

I like to throw it at them, then sprint away to see if I can make it outside before I get smacked. It’s about 50/50.

Pick up that can