1001 things that annoy you at the gaming table


3.5/d20/OGL

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1) Player's that play computer games during the session

2) Player's have their cell phones constantly ringing

3) Player's littering the table with snacks wrappings, soda cans and other garbage

4)Player's that won't sit still

5)Player's picking up their dice before the DM can see the result

6) Cheating (see also 5)

7)Player's having to leave for an errand mid-game

8)Player's reading comics during the session

9)Player's acting totally out of character and/or alignment for the majority of the session

10) Player's refusing to move their miniatures during combat

11) Player's refusing to accept item cards because he likes to write down his loot the old fashioned way

12)Player's arriving late

13) Player's not showing or canceling in the last minute

14) Player's frantically reading the monster manuals during combat to see how tough their opponents are

15) Player showing up with a friend you have never met insisting on letting her/him play

16) Player's suddenly deciding to change character after ten levels

17) Player's chatting with wife/parent/girlfriend/boyfriend during the session

18) Player's throwing dice/miniatures/erasers/pencils/stuff around

19) Player's needs to borrow your books

20) Player's having their characters on their laptops

21) Player's constantly trying to do stuff not covered by the rules

22) Player's trying to bend the rules to their favor

23) DM's that stalls the game by getting obsessed with useless details

24) DM's that comes totally unprepared

25) DM PC's

26) Rules lawyers

27) Player's and DM's that plays to win

28) Player's that has to play the most obscure and exotic races/classes/concepts he can find

29) Player's that can't play a character that fits the setting

30)Player's that refuse or fails to work as a team

31) Player's must have a character that has to be better than the other characters of the group. (and must point out how his character can beat everyone else in single combat)

32) Drunk players

33) Player/DM brings girlfriend/Boyfriend to watch

34) TPK

35) Unorthodox dice (strange shape, won't stop rolling, can't see numbers, unusually large or tiny)

36) Player refers to his character in the third person

37) Player's that talks about non-game related stuff during the session

38) Player's that fall asleep during the game

39) Indecisive players'

40) Player's that has to go to the bathroom every five minutes

41) DM changing or adding rules without informing the players' first


That's only 41. False advertising! ;)

Liberty's Edge

42)you finally get your game together, and all the players together, and all these babes come over and want to party.

Liberty's Edge

I've only ever had problems with 7 and 13; when the players are actually there, they generally play fairly well.

42 . . . oops! Make that 43) Players who take over for other, absent players, then make major alignment-shifting decisions with the character.


44) Players talking about their WoW character builds/instances/raids when their characters are not immediately engaged in a conversation/combat with an NPC/monster is my newest gripe.

Honestly, I've never had a player search through the Monster Manual for stats on a monster they are currently engaging, though. Most of them metagame from memorization. :P (Seriously, how are you going to just "know" that a tanar'ri is immune to electricity?)

Players who show up late used to be one of my big ones, but I just use the time the tardy player shows up to give the other players a break, and fill in Mr. Late-Pants.

A player doing something like reading or playing some other video game is usually a cue that I'm "too" engaged with another player, so I have adapted with that hurdle.

As for players with characters on laptops, let me tell you...I once (past tense) had a player who put his characters on Excel files, requiring scrolling and on multiple pages. No prob, I didn't have to deal with it. Fast forward to later in the campaign when I offered the players a chance to make an old character into an enemy they would fight in a coliseum. Everyone else provided me with stats, abilities, and round-by-round tactics on a single piece of paper or note card (especially hard since they were 17th-level characters); my Excel player left his in an Excel file, printable only onto a total of seventeen pages, mostly of useless dead space. (His coliseum character was also not a character he had played, but a goofy dual-caster/psionic mess, who I happily saw killed in round one.)

Hopefully all the previous annoyances by the OP are not all going on at once, otherwise I'd find a new group or have a sit-down.

Liberty's Edge

43)People who take the "git the dungeonmaster drunk" thing too far and try to take his kidney out for black market sale.


Heathansson wrote:
43)People who take the "git the dungeonmaster drunk" thing too far and try to take his kidney out for black market sale.

You too?!

Liberty's Edge

45) Describing this......three paragraph deal, then asking somebody what they want to do, and they say, "do what now?"


Heathansson wrote:
42)you finally get your game together, and all the players together, and all these babes come over and want to party.

I hear that. Yeah, that does really suck. And then there's all that gratuitous orgying you're subsequently expected to participate in or you look like a poor host. I'm like, "Step off, collect your bras and let me get back to my gaming, b@$ches. I wanted this evening to be fun!"


Heathansson wrote:
43)People who take the "git the dungeonmaster drunk" thing too far and try to take his kidney out for black market sale.

Dude, that happened to me. My blood tastes like root beer ever since I lost that particular gut.

I was like, "Ha ha... very funny. I pass out when I try and pee now."

Liberty's Edge

46)The dude that goes "I attack the darkness!" every time. And throwing away the entire drow-based module you just bought, only realizing that you coulda made all the drow derro, and how funny it would be to have a bald bearded derro chick in drow Xena/bondage gear at the end of it all, but you can't cos you threw the module away in rancor over Mr. "I'm gonna attack the darkness!" *snort* "Get it?"

Liberty's Edge

The Jade wrote:
Heathansson wrote:
43)People who take the "git the dungeonmaster drunk" thing too far and try to take his kidney out for black market sale.

Dude, that happened to me. My blood tastes like root beer ever since I lost that particular gut.

I was like, "Ha ha... very funny. I pass out when I try and pee now."

mmmmm......frothy hematuria for the win.

Liberty's Edge

I think the numbering is off, so I'm fairly sure mine's 48 . . .

48) when the group pulls off a raid perfectly with nearly no injuries, even defeating the most powerful enemy in one round, then pause and decide to fight an optional encounter with two boars. And nearly die.


Heathansson wrote:
The Jade wrote:
Heathansson wrote:
43)People who take the "git the dungeonmaster drunk" thing too far and try to take his kidney out for black market sale.

Dude, that happened to me. My blood tastes like root beer ever since I lost that particular gut.

I was like, "Ha ha... very funny. I pass out when I try and pee now."

mmmmm......frothy hematuria for the win.

Absolutely. You know I have to blow the head of foam off the toilet each time before flushing. I'll admit it's a downright bother is what it is.

Liberty's Edge

Insert Neat Username Here wrote:

I think the numbering is off, so I'm fairly sure mine's 48 . . .

48) when the group pulls off a raid perfectly with nearly no injuries, even defeating the most powerful enemy in one round, then pause and decide to fight an optional encounter with two boars. And nearly die.

Don't mess with pigs, man. They'll jack your world up.

Liberty's Edge

50)You come up with this pulse-pounding monologue to describe the horrid terra incognito the group is approaching...be it haunted house, dungeon of the lich lord or whatever and some smartass goes, "whuppty f#$#. I'm trembling in my boots."

Liberty's Edge

51) Hearing my DM say for the fifth time that evening:"No, you can't do that!" without giving me any further explanation why...

Liberty's Edge

52)The player that rolls a d20, snatches up the die, and says, "oh, cool! Critical!!!"

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

53) The GM who is starting a brand new campaign, makes you all sweat bullets to get the characters evenly balanced out, and on the first day a player you didn't know was joining shows up with a pimped out character because he beat the GM in a game of bowling and won a bet -- so got a much better stated and outfitted character than the rest! (True story, and still surprised the campaign lasted three sessions before we all bailed ;p )


Gamer Girrl wrote:
53) The GM who is starting a brand new campaign, makes you all sweat bullets to get the characters evenly balanced out, and on the first day a player you didn't know was joining shows up with a pimped out character because he beat the GM in a game of bowling and won a bet -- so got a much better stated and outfitted character than the rest! (True story, and still surprised the campaign lasted three sessions before we all bailed ;p )

...UCH!

Liberty's Edge

Gamer Girrl wrote:
53) The GM who is starting a brand new campaign, makes you all sweat bullets to get the characters evenly balanced out, and on the first day a player you didn't know was joining shows up with a pimped out character because he beat the GM in a game of bowling and won a bet -- so got a much better stated and outfitted character than the rest! (True story, and still surprised the campaign lasted three sessions before we all bailed ;p )

Yeah, I hear you! Happened to me two times, one time that player with the pimped pc was the DMs wife, while we others all had to take agriculture as a skill, because of the campaign background. I hate it when such things happen!


Mortagon wrote:

2) Player's have their cell phones constantly ringing

8)Player's reading comics during the session

15) Player showing up with a friend you have never met insisting on letting her/him play

23) DM's that stalls the game by getting obsessed with useless details

28) Player's that has to play the most obscure and exotic races/classes/concepts he can find

These sum up my grievences pretty much.
  • I know a player who's cell phone goes off every 10 mins but he's the same guy who used to get angry about it when it was someone else.
  • I have a newer player who reads comics if he isn't the in the current spotlight instead of paying attention (we've sinced talked about it),
  • I have a general rule about bringing random people to my home and I don't take random people to other people's homes, its just common courtesy.
  • m stalling bit, I have a friend who was playing under a DM who wants his world to be "completely logical" and he apparently charts out everything so much that they set down to play and spent an hour playing NPCs who were guarding their boat. Afterwards he collected his stuff and declared the game done so he could "think of what would logically happen next" and thus ended their session with no xp, or anything. Same guy spent 3 hours the session before rolling up magic items available in the town and describing them even though they were 10k gold higher than the party could afford. sigh.
  • the last one annoys me because they either want to play a wierd race even though no one else can and won't take no (they badger you) or they do it for a sense of breaking the rules and getting an advantage.

Now my addition is more of an anecdote than actual number, the first 4e D&D game day I volunteered at the local flgs to run a game. We waited almost 2 hours to get the last 2 people and when we did we finally started. In the first 5 mins an npc shadow appears with a cryptic warning and before I get past "I bring a warning..." the wizard's player declares his intent to magic missile it. I basically explain why thats dumb and he wants to anyway. Now I make the rookie mistake of being hands off and let him do as he pleases. Ends in a TPK and the game days experience is basically ruined for the whole group because of one guy who says "its just a one shot, so what?". Now from this I have 2 to add to the list:

54: Players eho dont care how their actions affect the game or party
55: Dms who don't stop the insanity when they see it, and let one player dominate or ruin a game. (my bad :P)

Liberty's Edge

Gamer Girrl wrote:
53) The GM who is starting a brand new campaign, makes you all sweat bullets to get the characters evenly balanced out, and on the first day a player you didn't know was joining shows up with a pimped out character because he beat the GM in a game of bowling and won a bet -- so got a much better stated and outfitted character than the rest! (True story, and still surprised the campaign lasted three sessions before we all bailed ;p )

That's when it's nice to have a bard; do the "brave brave brave brave Sir Robin" bit to the guy until he chops his own leg off to balance things out.


the only way to not violate rules 1 through 41 is to play with yourself.

56) players and dms that feel that their game experiece has to be some sort of perfect experience, adjudicated percisely by rules and regulations.

Scarab Sages

57) player who plays WoW during the game.

58) player who suggests the group should be playing WoW instead of the current rpg, even if we're playing something else besides 4e.

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32

Heathansson wrote:
Gamer Girrl wrote:
53) The GM who is starting a brand new campaign, makes you all sweat bullets to get the characters evenly balanced out, and on the first day a player you didn't know was joining shows up with a pimped out character because he beat the GM in a game of bowling and won a bet -- so got a much better stated and outfitted character than the rest! (True story, and still surprised the campaign lasted three sessions before we all bailed ;p )
That's when it's nice to have a bard; do the "brave brave brave brave Sir Robin" bit to the guy until he chops his own leg off to balance things out.

We were playing White Wolf's Werewolf, so not really sure how I could have done that :) But it would have felt GOOD!


Ubermench wrote:

57) player who plays WoW during the game.

58) player who suggests the group should be playing WoW instead of the current rpg, even if we're playing something else besides 4e.

Amen, brother. Sorry, had to chime in for this again, as this one still chides me. Although my group doesn't actually halt gameplay to play WoW, they spend a lot of time lately talking on and on and on about it, in and out of the "dungeon". WoW's fine as a video game, and as close in many ways to D&D in video game form as there is without the D&D stamp on it, but D&D aside, I'm done with every other conversation with my buds becoming about builds, guilds, and quests. It's like they're whispering "join us, join us"...

(Ahem...sorry for the OT.)

Scarab Sages

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Maps Subscriber

59) Player that wait til their turn to decide what they want to do, especially if they are the spellcaster and they have just had all the time that the other PCs took to have their turn to decide and research their action.

Dark Archive

60) The DM whose girlfriend upsets every session when things don't go her way, runs off into her room, and has the DM coaxing her out for the next hour.

seriously, thats how my first AoW game ended.

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

61) Players (GMs for other sessions) who cannot stop GMing.

Oh, that was me, wasn't it.

Dark Archive

62)People trying to get out of a TPK by yelling, in character, "HEY, KOOL-AID!". It won't work. Don't even try.

Liberty's Edge

Lord Fyre wrote:

61) Players (GMs for other sessions) who cannot stop GMing.

Oh, that was me, wasn't it.

I think I may have been guilty of a tad of this today, must remember to apologize to Silverhair...

#63: "Crallen, you see the dragon rear up, breathe deeply of the sulfuric air, and let loose a billowing cloud of fiery death on the Haddon. What do you do?...Crallen?, Crallen?....JEREMY!"

*looking up from the TV Guide in his lap "Huh? What's going on? Which scrabble piece am I again?"

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Heathansson wrote:
42)you finally get your game together, and all the players together, and all these babes come over and want to party.

You might have had to deal with the reverse problem ...

"You finally get all these babes together and want to party ... and they break out some copies of the Pathfinder Beta RPG and want to roll up some characters and game."

So, Heathansson, quit yer b%#chin'

Perhapse the "EverQuest", "Darth Maul", and "Sandman" t-shirts that the girls were wearing might have been a tip off.


sanwah68 wrote:
59) Player that wait til their turn to decide what they want to do, especially if they are the spellcaster and they have just had all the time that the other PCs took to have their turn to decide and research their action.

59 a) ...especially if the PC has a particularly versatile spell/power that requires him to make decisions. "Now let me see...what should I make an illusion of..." [...zzzzz...]


64) When the players interact with the population (and buildings) of a city like it was a dungeon crawl.
65) When players insist on cracking jokes at someone with little mercy or sense of humour while captured by said person.


66) When you are in the middle of the monologue for the encounter or introduction to the adventure as an NPC gives out vital details and then players aren't listen and ask you to repeat what you said?

67) Texting during the game (Almost if not more annoying than the phone ringing).

Sczarni

Runfer wrote:


67) Texting during the game (Almost if not more annoying than the phone ringing).

If I had to choose between someone texting and someone talking on the phone, I would definatly go with texting... of course I require anyone who cannot multi-task to turn off phones and put them and their car keys into a wicker basket by my door. (or we play in a basement of a brick building, where there isn't any cell service)


• GM or Players who have to tell me how absolutely bad ass their last character was complete with level and line by line inventory.


Players who even though they have played for a number of sessions, don't seem to realize that those skill points they divvied out into SKILLS might actually be used for those things!

DMs that also don't give players a chance to use skills (I have been guilty of this, especially early on as a DM).

RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Ubermench wrote:
58) player who suggests the group should be playing WoW instead of the current rpg, even if we're playing something else besides 4e.

You know. We really should be playing W.o.W.. :P


People getting worked up (including me) :D


I won't state mine as new numerical entries, since most have been covered, but I had the following, all in the same game... All in the same session...

x)Players cell phone going off every 5 minutes

x)Other players checking phone/texting every other 5 minutes

x)Wife's friends want to come over too, and want to check out this whole "gaming thing"... Suddenly I am contending not only with my players but an entire audience...An interacting audience at that.

x)Extended audience feels the needs to talk over DM to other players whose turn it is.

x)When asking what the players next move is, the reaction is typically "huh?"

x)During his turn, player constantly gets up and leaves room to answer cell phone.

x)Player tells me (the DM) "can we hurry this up?"

And the icing on the cake, actually in game:

x)Player using broken-overpowered character pins my BBEG for the entirety of combat, then just tosses him out of a 30-story window when he gets bored. Granted, the broken character is the fault of my own ignorance, but that was just mean. Talk about a mood killer.

At that point, I was almost ready to just toss my books and declare the campaign dead.

The Exchange

Players not fuelling the DM with coffee. Regularly.

The player that repeatedly questions whether he can make a Reflex save to stop taking damage from a melee attack. And complaining about the answer.

Wizards that fireball too close to the party.

People who believe that the dice are against them. Dice roll randomly. My players often come over if my d20 is hot and high and touch the dice, they believe that it will roll worse after that.

Liberty's Edge

Players showing up later and later to the game session.

Start time has slowly creeped from 6:00 pm to almost 8:00 pm, as the players keep showing up "whenever."

It's my own fault. I am an easy-going person, and I made a point of saying that we're gaming for fun - it's not a job or a chore.

It just sucks that an hour or more of game time is wasted every week because no one is punctual anymore.


Cuchulainn wrote:
It just sucks that an hour or more of game time is wasted every week because no one is punctual anymore.

Being ex-military, I feel your pain.


This was one of the reasons I left a game night thta I had gone to for years. Originally, we started at 6pm, and went to around 11pm. Over time, it crept up to 7pm-11, still not so bad. Before I left, we werent getting started until close to 9pm, and even wrapping up around 10:30. Considering we had 7 people playing, gaming night consisted of each player getting about 2 turns in the course of the adventure. Yeah. Fun stuff. I had a lot of other personal schedule issues as to why I left, but the shrinkage of gaming time certainly helped my decision.


Jandrem wrote:

I won't state mine as new numerical entries, since most have been covered, but I had the following, all in the same game... All in the same session...

x)Players cell phone going off every 5 minutes

x)Other players checking phone/texting every other 5 minutes

x)Wife's friends want to come over too, and want to check out this whole "gaming thing"... Suddenly I am contending not only with my players but an entire audience...An interacting audience at that.

x)Extended audience feels the needs to talk over DM to other players whose turn it is.

x)When asking what the players next move is, the reaction is typically "huh?"

x)During his turn, player constantly gets up and leaves room to answer cell phone.

x)Player tells me (the DM) "can we hurry this up?"

And the icing on the cake, actually in game:

x)Player using broken-overpowered character pins my BBEG for the entirety of combat, then just tosses him out of a 30-story window when he gets bored. Granted, the broken character is the fault of my own ignorance, but that was just mean. Talk about a mood killer.

At that point, I was almost ready to just toss my books and declare the campaign dead.

Hrm ... I probably would have gone ahead and euthanized that campaign, keeping the books. 'Cept for the grapple-meister, whom would have gotten 'owned' by a shapeshifting behir in short order...

Liberty's Edge

GMs who read boxed text and forbid you from interrupting them and then state that it is surprise round time, even though you wanted to take a few preventive actions during the boxed text scene (ie, look around, sense motive, prepare weapons ...)

More generally, GMs who rule that "if you did not say it, then you did not do it" but do not give you enough time to speak.

Players that have their PC go his separate way from the group without telling anyone about it and justifying it by saying that nobody wanted to listen to his character's plan. Interestingly enough, it is always the same player ...

GMs that refuse to intervene when a conflict between players (not PCs) gets game-threatening.

Liberty's Edge

Some of the other annoyances I've run into over the years:

The rogue player who wants me to assume that he is always checking for traps while moving silently and hiding in shadows - no matter what the circumstances.

The rogue player who believes that every town (no matter how small) has a Thieves' Guild, and that he has the right to seek it out and join it. If I, as the DM, have not fleshed out the town with a Thieves' Guild that he can seek out in join, then I'm not a very good DM - regardless of whether or not it makes sense in the context of the campaign.

The rogue player who believes he should be able to buy deadly poisons at any corner store in any town, and that local law-enforcers wouldn't have a problem with it.

The wizard player who throws fireballs and lightning bolts in the middle of a crowded street, killing and maiming innocent civilians, and then whining that I am being an unfair DM when the local lord has him arrested.

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