GM doesn't allow alcohol and gets mad when you drink their milk.Then i am a horrible GM. I don't allow alcohol at all, and if you so much as open my fridge without permission, you're out.
I also ban smoking inside of my place.
Yeah, that sounds like I would do it, too. If you ask me, I have no problem with sharing something to drink. But taking stuff from the fridge without asking? That would push a lot of my stress buttons at once.
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...when a DM, who's character suffered some PVP death in another game, tells the group that he won't run his game for a while, because 'something will happen' to our characters.
Yeah.
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I think if a DM ever tried to have my character raped, I would have to leave immediately and never return. That is not a casual or trivial subject for some of us. It isn't a matter of not being mature, it's a matter of not wanting certain triggers pulled. Ever.
Sign you are playing with a bad GM? This guy is the GM.
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Railroading
GM: An explorer has hired you to locate some islands. You're on a ship heading for...
Me: No I'm not. I'm in the city getting equipment and supplies. Why exactly did I agree on this?
GM: The explorer has payed you to...
Me: Really, how much did he pay me? I think I'm gonna renegotiate, the explorer was a little bit stingy. At least I can get all the supplies I need.
GM: You're on the boat when you sail right into a storm and a wave sweeps you all overboard...
Me: What, we don't get a Balance/Reflex/Profession (Sailing) check?
GM: You wash up on the shore...
Me: Yeah, I've had it with your f-ing choo-choo. Farewell!
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Railroading
GM: An explorer has hired you to locate some islands. You're on a ship heading for...
Me: No I'm not. I'm in the city getting equipment and supplies. Why exactly did I agree on this?
GM: The explorer has payed you to...
Me: Really, how much did he pay me? I think I'm gonna renegotiate, the explorer was a little bit stingy. At least I can get all the supplies I need.
GM: You're on the boat when you sail right into a storm and a wave sweeps you all overboard...
Me: What, we don't get a Balance/Reflex/Profession (Sailing) check?
GM: You wash up on the shore...
Me: Yeah, I've had it with your f-ing choo-choo. Farewell!
OTOH, if you pull a "my character wouldn't do that" on me, I would simply say, "What the hell is your character doing in my game then?" Railroading is one thing. Being a douche is another.
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I don't get the COMPLETE FREEDOM crowd. Why the heck you need a GM if you just wanna do whatever?
I'm a big fan of logical consequences.
I think it is very important everyone has a lot of built in motivations to stay together as a party in the creation phase, along with buy in for the first part of the campaign.
After that, everything follows the logical consequences of what the players decide to do.
Players don't want to take the first job? You didn't do a good job as a GM making sure they made characters that would be motivated to take the first job.
Players don't want to take the 2nd job? You need to makes sure as a GM there was a reason they should have taken it, and then let the plot follow to conclusion.
If Frodo doesn't want to take the ring to Mordor, that is fine. It just becomes a very different book about Hobbits trying to survive and start a resistance...
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I think if a DM ever tried to have my character raped, I would have to leave immediately and never return. That is not a casual or trivial subject for some of us. It isn't a matter of not being mature, it's a matter of not wanting certain triggers pulled. Ever.
My instance was more about having a PC partake in it (with a NPC who had already endured similar before), but yeah, the reverse is also horrid.
I'm lucky, I've never had a bad GM. The worst I've gotten is a GM who puts very little effort in, and a somewhat adversarial GM who seemed to get grumpy when players won fights and challenges (both far from horrible).
I FEAR finding myself in the player seat the day we have a rape- happy GM, or one who seems to love getting female players pregnant against their will (which apparently also seems to be common). That would probably be the worst experience I could have with a GM.
But since I'm paranoid, I usually refuse to play unless I know the group and GM, and instead jump for the GM chair. And when I play with strangers, I usually make male characters anyways.
On SO's: I actually find I'm harder on my spouse when we play together, because I expect him to hold an example for the rest of the group. "Really? You thought it would "be cool to be a monkey person"? Yeah, try again." On the same token, I'm hard on him when he GMs for me, too "oh, so you're just going to let me do that without any rolls? Isn't that cheating?".
Although I couldn't imagine not playing with him. Pathfinder is something we enjoy together, and if someone insisted "no significant others" at our table due to their own bad experiences, they probably wouldn't be playing with us anymore.
I think if a DM ever tried to have my character raped, I would have to leave immediately and never return. That is not a casual or trivial subject for some of us. It isn't a matter of not being mature, it's a matter of not wanting certain triggers pulled. Ever.
Yeah, it's just not worth it. The closest we ever got to allowing anything like that was considering running an all male party through an abyssal dungeon, with a filthy male sex demon boss at the end.
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"Okay, everyone, now roll for penis and/or breast size."
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I am a big fan of the sandbox style of play. In fact I built my entire campaign world around that concept. Players can go anywhere they want to.
Within reason. It generally is not a positive gaming experience when the GM is scrambling to work out the next step every time the players make a decision. And no matter how big your world is, a determined bunch of players will find the edge of your prepared materials.
So a little bit of railroading is not bad, as long as it is in line with what the PCs want to do. To me one of the keys to being a good GM is that the railroading is gentle, logical and appreciated by byt players since it keeps the game going smoothly.
When it comes to sexual content, our group almost never has any in the games. Every now and then there will be an off-screen encounter with a barmaid or something, but that is usually a quick comment and then moving on. I've never yet, as the GM, described a naked NPC, nor have I ever had my PCs role play any sexual activity. Maybe I'm just an old fogey though.
"Okay, everyone, now roll for penis and/or breast size."It might be worse if you took out the /or.
Idea came from here.
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GM doesn't allow alcohol and gets mad when you drink their milk.Then i am a horrible GM. I don't allow alcohol at all, and if you so much as open my fridge without permission, you're out.
I also ban smoking inside of my place.
As for playing favorites with SOs. I don't see why people do it. Also, if my girlfriend is irrational enough to bear a grudge because her character suffered in a game of pretend where dice determine outcomes, i would honestly start wondering what am i doing with such a person.
ha-ha the milk is an old joke around these parts. Not sure if you are a horrible GM for enacting prohibition, but as a homebrewer me and mine like to partake in our wares often :)
I've been incredibly fortunate in my gaming career to not have any bad GMs. I've had some average ones, some that were less than inspiring, but none that were just out and out malicious or depraved as we've seen above.
The 'bad' GMs that stand out for me I've seen when we played at the recreation center many years ago as well as the student union in one of my passes through college: the Weak GM.
The Weak GM lets the players run the game and only puts up a token resistance. He OKs everything they want, does wonderful things like collapsing the roof on a dragon so the players can kill it easily and gain massive XP and treasure. They are not so much the leader of the table and decider in the game, but a rubber stamp for excess.
Some of this is due to weak personalities put up against stronger ones in their players. Some of it is threats ("Man, if my character dies you are walking home!"), bullying, rules lawyering and so forth.
I've been asked to come help a few of these guys, and their players are seldom pleased with the results as my GMing style doesn't give them the sort of thrill that they were getting from their weak GM. Monsters fight with tactics and intelligence instead of just wandering around waiting to die, for instance, and their every whim isn't granted post-haste.
Of course, we could start a thread on bad players and how they run off folks, but I think we've had a few dozen of those by now (having seen the milk thread get referenced.)
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Oh, one of our players brews beer with his friends, and he often brings us samples of the beer to the game. So, we sit down, drink the beer and have a nice chat. Then we put the bottles away and start playing.
I've had too much bad experiences with alcohol and pot in and outside of gaming, that I am very leery towards it in any capacity. I know that may not be fair, but its a rule at my table. I may relax it if there is a special occasion, for a quick sip of something strong, but generally, we drink juices and soda at the game.
As for milk. I've had "friends" clean out my fridge on several occasions, thus, it is forbidden territory now.
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Railroading
GM: An explorer has hired you to locate some islands. You're on a ship heading for...
Me: No I'm not. I'm in the city getting equipment and supplies. Why exactly did I agree on this?
GM: The explorer has payed you to...
Me: Really, how much did he pay me? I think I'm gonna renegotiate, the explorer was a little bit stingy. At least I can get all the supplies I need.
GM: You're on the boat when you sail right into a storm and a wave sweeps you all overboard...
Me: What, we don't get a Balance/Reflex/Profession (Sailing) check?
GM: You wash up on the shore...
Me: Yeah, I've had it with your f-ing choo-choo. Farewell!
bad player. The GM has to start you somewhere to give the players context and direction. You did, by your example, nothing but attempts to derail his 'railroad', making what was probably a couple minutes of a starting encounter into a ridiculous farce ending with a rage quit. I'm not prescient, but I would think there were several deep sighs of relief when you left.
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I wouldn't say bad player unless the GM started the campaign as "You are going to be playing people who are hired by explorers to locate things"
Which is a perfectly fine base concept for the start of a campaign. I'm currently playing in a "You are hired mercenaries working in Absalom" group which was made specifically so the GM wouldn't have to have the complicated motivations in the beginning of the game and could let the players develop relationships organically through play that would be used for later plot lines.
Players feeling like they have to go along is a sign the GM hasn't creating a story that motivates the characters they made.
Which is why I am so adamant that a GM be able to veto characters before the game starts, since the GM is going to have to create motivations for these characters to do things and interact with the world.
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So a little bit of railroading is not bad, as long as it is in line with what the PCs want to do. To me one of the keys to being a good GM is that the railroading is gentle, logical and appreciated by players since it keeps the game going smoothly.
No! Everyone rides the choo-choo or no one is going anywhere! Now get on and stop ruining the perfect vision of my story! Eaugh!
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"Okay, everyone, now roll for penis and/or breast size."
Way back in high school (maybe even junior high) I was working on assembling random tables to help make NPCs. I was apparently lacking in descriptive characters and figured something like that might help (I sorely misunderstood).
So my in progress tables had over 50 different tables, all things with me trying to compile lists. Hairstyles was a weird one. Boy the internet would've helped then.
So one of the tables was breast size. And I came to the conclusion I actually didn't know how breasts were measured at the time. So I figured I would have to do some research. But no readily available internet at the time and a lack of female friends I felt comfortable asking such a question to kept my options to a minimum with one resource. My mother. I decided I'd rather just scrap the tables.
Oddly enough, I don't really recall how I learned what the sizes meant now.
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Railroading
GM: An explorer has hired you to locate some islands. You're on a ship heading for...
Me: No I'm not. I'm in the city getting equipment and supplies. Why exactly did I agree on this?
GM: The explorer has payed you to...
Me: Really, how much did he pay me? I think I'm gonna renegotiate, the explorer was a little bit stingy. At least I can get all the supplies I need.
GM: You're on the boat when you sail right into a storm and a wave sweeps you all overboard...
Me: What, we don't get a Balance/Reflex/Profession (Sailing) check?
GM: You wash up on the shore...
Me: Yeah, I've had it with your f-ing choo-choo. Farewell!
I thought you were joking at first. Assuming you're not: Yeah, that's not railroading, that's giving you something to walk on.
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Interesting.
pres man said in another thread it wasn't the GM's responsibility to provide motivation, and I thought that was ridiculous.
But now it seems several people on the other side of the argument seem to have what I would describe as very little expectation for the GM to actually make sense with regards to why players are doing things.
I would call what was described as lazy GMing, yet it seems others who have GM problems have no issues with that.
That might explain a lot.
Yeah, that's not railroading, that's giving you something to walk on.
GM: An explorer has hired you to locate some islands. You're on a ship heading for...
The player comes off worse than the GM there, but it could certainly be done better than in the above dialogue.
If you say 'you're on a boat' then the player is going to expect to be able to control their character's actions in conjunction with normal game rules.Better: Before character creation, you tell them that the story starts with being washed up on a shore of an unknown island. The situation with the boat is told as back-story in the past tense.
Or you start with the explorer hiring them and get their consent. If they say, "I refuse to do it for such a small amount of money," then you can say, "That's your right, but you won't be doing any adventuring this gaming session unless you agree."
Basically, try to avoid telling anyone what their character thinks or does (unless they've failed a Will save).
For motivation, you can decide on the theme of the adventure first and then the players have to make characters to fit that theme, or the players can make the characters and the GM can try to make an adventure to motivate them.
If neither the player nor the GM are willing to compromise, you've got problems.
I don't know if there is a '"right" way to negotiate the creation of backstory between the GM's contribution and the player's contribution. I do believe it's a partnership though. I also think that it is nearly impossible to come up with a description of the process that won't be challenged by someone as being too much, or too little GM involvement. In some ways it is a matter of individual history and personal preference.
Being a bad DM is when you haven't realized that compromise actually means the players always get their way.
Yeah, we should never let them have what they want. Players are jerks and just get in the way of your vision. Why do they have to come with personalities and needs and dreams and opinions? They just need to leave that baggage at the door.
In other news, wasn't this thread about signs of a bad GM? I mean, I know that's subjective, but it looks like that was lost some time ago.
Whatever happened to paladin threads? At least when we argued over those the Church approved.
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My very worst gaming experience was playing under a 0-authority GM.
This guy, while a very nice person, was ABSOLUTELY opposed to any sort of conflict between him and any of the players. One of the players (who was their usual GM) took huge advantage of this so that our adventure quickly turned to "his way or the highway". Up to forcing a player to leave, after a single session of play, by escalating the threats to raping and killing her PC (through email exchanges with the whole group in copy). And at no point did the GM act to stop this from going further by simply using some authority.
I left as soon as I read the whole story.
Of course, the main fault resided with the jerk player (and usual GM of that group), but I was also angry at my GM friend for not having imposed peace at his table and letting his game devolve into this.
Isn't that the start of Serpent's Skull? Though I think that started with "You wake up, washed up on shore" and then let you figure out how you got there in flashbacks. Probably a better approach.
Sorta kinda? You're on a boat from <Insert location from Campaign Traits here> for <Insert reason here>.
At dinner, someone poisons all of you. You get a Fort save, and if you fail (which is likely, it's something like a DC 20), you fall unconscious and are Sickened for a while after you wake up.
While you're unconscious (or even if you're not, it's not like one guy can run a whole passenger ship by himself...) the ship crashes and you all wake up on the beach.
As you make your way around the island, you'll likely figure out why and how the ship crashed.
Whatever happened to paladin threads? At least when we argued over those the Church approved.
Hey! You leave me out of this.
Isn't that the start of Serpent's Skull? Though I think that started with "You wake up, washed up on shore" and then let you figure out how you got there in flashbacks. Probably a better approach.Sorta kinda? You're on a boat from <Insert location from Campaign Traits here> for <Insert reason here>.
At dinner, someone poisons all of you. You get a Fort save, and if you fail (which is likely, it's something like a DC 20), you fall unconscious and are Sickened for a while after you wake up.
While you're unconscious (or even if you're not, it's not like one guy can run a whole passenger ship by himself...) the ship crashes and you all wake up on the beach.
As you make your way around the island, you'll likely figure out why and how the ship crashed.
Serpents Skull
it kinda handwaves the following
you get drugged/poisoned (no save, immunity doesn't apply here)
you get shipwrecked
you have to search for a predetermined series of survivors, found a community and clear a means to survive the wilderness
some stuff happens in sargava and and within the shackles
Ah. GM must have changed it slightly. I remember our Sorcerer got a Nat 20 and passed the save, so flailed around for a minute before the ship crashed and he was the only one not sickened in the fight afterwards (3 and a half hour fight with crabs...GMs first game running, and all of our first game playing. Yeah...).
I don't remember ever HAVING to search for survivors, there were just bonuses for getting them out alive and keeping them happy.
Ah. GM must have changed it slightly. I remember our Sorcerer got a Nat 20 and passed the save, so flailed around for a minute before the ship crashed and he was the only one not sickened in the fight afterwards (3 and a half hour fight with crabs...GMs first game running, and all of our first game playing. Yeah...).
I don't remember ever HAVING to search for survivors, there were just bonuses for getting them out alive and keeping them happy.
i remember being forced to search for survivors
it was a requirement for bringing in replacement PCs
essentially, we had caches of survivors filled with replacement PCs
we had to ration our deaths
i got around that by using the locals.
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If you need a replacement PC just look for closets. There are survivors hiding in those that look conveniently like the guy you just lost.
Anyways, how much railroading that is depends on the game. One that's a sandbox and you suddenly have a crashed ship might be a bit off, but one where your promised an adventure like that might be a good hook.