Sorry, i make it a habit of ignoring rules lawyers. Precisely because they are rules lawyers. Now if they were to speak up only when needed, that would have been awesome.
I mostly don't bother unless the DM or other player all be like "wait how does this work again?" If someone knows then don't disregard that and you know they know, don't waste 10 min of game time on it.
True wisdom comes from knowing that you know nothing - Bill S. Preston, Esquire & "Ted" Theodore Logan
Can't argue with Bill and Ted.
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This is a completely ridiculous peeve, but I find it endlessly annoying when I have an exciting (at least to me) plan of action worked out that is foiled by bad dice rolls or other players' choices.
It's a natural hazard of playing any RPG, I know, but that doesn't prevent me from feeling painfully thwarted every time. ;)
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One of my pet peeves concerns two of my players. They are the absolute kings of over thinking things. Fortunately, we run a pretty laid back game with players who've been together 2 decades or more, but one adventure where it took over an hour to decide on a plan of action to see what was on the other side of the door prompted me to have it opened by NPC they were planning on surprising. He got the drop on them because they weren't ready and darn near wiped the floor with them. They still haven't learned.
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The MMO mentality when it comes to loot distribution in a party in a home game.
You guys are a team working together. Barring death and retirement, you will always be together. It behooves you then to ensure the survival of not only yourself, but your party members. You would think then that magic items would be distributed either where they are best used or needed most. Because to benefit one is to benefit all.
Instead I get players passive aggressively arguing that because one player 'won' a piece of magical treasure from a previous pool of loot in the dungeon, that player is now not allowed to get anything until everyone else in the group had gotten something. Even though say, it was an Int boosting item taken by the only Int based caster int the group, and the next item is save boosting item, and said caster also has the worst saves.
Another pet peeve is how magical loot is expected by players. Unless it's some uber weapon or stat boosting item, they refuse to collect it, no matter how valuable it might be to them in cash. I may lose a player over this decision, but they've got enough gold stashed away they can start buying and having their stuff crafted. I'm through building treasure hoards where cool stuff, even valuable stuff, is ignored.
Another pet peeve is how magical loot is expected by players. Unless it's some uber weapon or stat boosting item, they refuse to collect it, no matter how valuable it might be to them in cash.
Wait... what?
Another pet peeve is how magical loot is expected by players. Unless it's some uber weapon or stat boosting item, they refuse to collect it, no matter how valuable it might be to them in cash.Wait... what?
I guess I mean they seem to take magic items for granted. When I get the chance to be a player, I'm the kind of player who plays for the XP; I couldn't care less for wagonloads of gold or +5 holy vorpal god-cleaver. Some treasure can be just cool for the "gee whiz, look at this" factor, but not for these guys. I've been with them for nearly 30 years, and this peeve is really starting to wear on me, especially creatively.
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Dms who insist that even at level 10 or higher. That players still act like first level noobs. If you think that were just casually going to walk into a room without looking for traps or expecting at least a attack by second or third level guess again. Experience has to count for something. As well common sense. If rooms 1-10 had traps then it's a pretty safe bet that 11-20 will also have traps.
As for items we still collect any kind of item. Yet at the same time I'm not going to fault a player for wanting a better item. I mean if I have a chance to get a top of the line sports car over what I have I'm going to take the better car. I might keep a +1 weapon in reserve but only one. At a certain level it simply loses it's coolness factor imo.
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I guess I mean they seem to take magic items for granted. When I get the chance to be a player, I'm the kind of player who plays for the XP; I couldn't care less for wagonloads of gold or +5 holy vorpal god-cleaver. Some treasure can be just cool for the "gee whiz, look at this" factor, but not for these guys. I've been with them for nearly 30 years, and this peeve is really starting to wear on me, especially creatively.Another pet peeve is how magical loot is expected by players. Unless it's some uber weapon or stat boosting item, they refuse to collect it, no matter how valuable it might be to them in cash.Wait... what?
Actually my peeve is when a GM still uses XP.
Another pet peeve is how magical loot is expected by players. Unless it's some uber weapon or stat boosting item, they refuse to collect it, no matter how valuable it might be to them in cash. I may lose a player over this decision, but they've got enough gold stashed away they can start buying and having their stuff crafted. I'm through building treasure hoards where cool stuff, even valuable stuff, is ignored.
The MMO mentality when it comes to loot distribution in a party in a home game.
You guys are a team working together. Barring death and retirement, you will always be together. It behooves you then to ensure the survival of not only yourself, but your party members. You would think then that magic items would be distributed either where they are best used or needed most. Because to benefit one is to benefit all.
Instead I get players passive aggressively arguing that because one player 'won' a piece of magical treasure from a previous pool of loot in the dungeon, that player is now not allowed to get anything until everyone else in the group had gotten something. Even though say, it was an Int boosting item taken by the only Int based caster int the group, and the next item is save boosting item, and said caster also has the worst saves.
So glad I decided to just ditch magical loot completely.
I'm on the verge of doing this, unless it has a direct bearing on the adventure being played out, such as being the goal of the quest or something similar. Just stuffing rooms with magic loot is grinding my gears...wait...that's a different thread...
So glad I decided to just ditch magical loot completely.
I'm not close to this yet as a GM, but this situation is happening in another group in which I am a player. I have never had this way of seeing loot happen in any group I've played in before except with this one. The GM (who has a GMNPC) and the GM's boyfriend are pretty much the ones causing it, both are big MMO players and former WoW raiders. Its really disheartening and is just causing some bad feelings among the other players.
Pet peeves...
Players who constantly retrain classes on their character. I can understand starting a character and not feeling the class, and changing once or maybe twice because you shouldn't be stuck as something you don't enjoy. But when you change your character class so often that in any given point in time I have no idea what your character is capable or even who they are anymore, there is a bit of a problem especially when trying to RP with you. Had a GMNPC do this about 5 times over the course of Emerald Spire.
Players who feel the need to make OOC personal attacks on a character to that characters player at the table. I once played a Ratfok, and one player at the table couldn't shut up about how filthy, vile, and disgusting they thought my character was because I was a giant rat. They gave me the cold shoulder in RP too.
Players who feel the need to make OOC personal attacks on a character to that characters player at the table. I once played a Ratfok, and one player at the table couldn't shut up about how filthy, vile, and disgusting they thought my character was because I was a giant rat. They gave me the cold shoulder in RP too.
Which touches on a pet peeve of mine.
It's frustrating when you have folks who are IC 100 percent of the time at the table -- I used to be one of those, I grew up some with the guidance of some polite fellow gamers. But what is *worse* than that is the folks that seem to be IC roleplaying and then suddenly go "Oh, that's just table talk" when they say something stupid that gets the party in trouble, even though the other parts of the conversation were apparently IC. Destroys any sense of continuity.
Players who feel the need to make OOC personal attacks on a character to that characters player at the table. I once played a Ratfok, and one player at the table couldn't shut up about how filthy, vile, and disgusting they thought my character was because I was a giant rat. They gave me the cold shoulder in RP too.Which touches on a pet peeve of mine.
It's frustrating when you have folks who are IC 100 percent of the time at the table -- I used to be one of those, I grew up some with the guidance of some polite fellow gamers. But what is *worse* than that is the folks that seem to be IC roleplaying and then suddenly go "Oh, that's just table talk" when they say something stupid that gets the party in trouble, even though the other parts of the conversation were apparently IC. Destroys any sense of continuity.
We get around the IC/OOC confusion by "moosing". I have no idea where the term came from, it was already in use when I joined the group a few years ago... basically, hand open, thumb to temple with fingers spread and pointed up, likes vaguely like one side of a moose's antlers. The justification being that "moose can't roleplay", so anything you say while a moose means it's out of character. No it doesn't make any sense, but it does seem to work for us.
Unfortunately it recently got more complicated due to a campaign I'm playing in using the God Machine Chronicles update to the WoD rules... the campaign is called Heavy Meta, and we're playing as average people (who have had some minor exposure to the supernatural that they explain away) who play roleplaying games, with about a 30/70 split to gameplay (30% of time spent playing as the normal characters, 70% as them playing in games within the game), so in order to account for the fact that we have two levels of in character conversation to worry about now, we now use the "half-moose" (standard hand signal explained before) to represent IC table talk for the normal characters, and "full-moose" (both hands up) for when we're doing actual OOC talk at our table. It gets a little confusing at times.
Players who feel the need to make OOC personal attacks on a character to that characters player at the table. I once played a Ratfok, and one player at the table couldn't shut up about how filthy, vile, and disgusting they thought my character was because I was a giant rat. They gave me the cold shoulder in RP too.Which touches on a pet peeve of mine.
It's frustrating when you have folks who are IC 100 percent of the time at the table -- I used to be one of those, I grew up some with the guidance of some polite fellow gamers. But what is *worse* than that is the folks that seem to be IC roleplaying and then suddenly go "Oh, that's just table talk" when they say something stupid that gets the party in trouble, even though the other parts of the conversation were apparently IC. Destroys any sense of continuity.
We get around the IC/OOC confusion by "moosing". I have no idea where the term came from, it was already in use when I joined the group a few years ago... basically, hand open, thumb to temple with fingers spread and pointed up, likes vaguely like one side of a moose's antlers. The justification being that "moose can't roleplay", so anything you say while a moose means it's out of character. No it doesn't make any sense, but it does seem to work for us.
Unfortunately it recently got more complicated due to a campaign I'm playing in using the God Machine Chronicles update to the WoD rules... the campaign is called Heavy Meta, and we're playing as average people (who have had some minor exposure to the supernatural that they explain away) who play roleplaying games, with about a 30/70 split to gameplay (30% of time spent playing as the normal characters, 70% as them playing in games within the game), so in order to account for the fact that we have two levels of in character conversation to worry about now, we now use the "half-moose" (standard hand signal explained before) to represent IC table talk for the normal...
Hey, the first group I was ever in used to do that!
You haven't ever lived in Florida, have you? I wonder if I played with you once. I was a kender in a Dragonlance game with those folks...
Wait, never mind...You said it was already in play when you joined. Well, maybe I used to know your friends, heh.
We get around the IC/OOC confusion by "moosing". I have no idea where the term came from, it was already in use when I joined the group a few years ago... basically, hand open, thumb to temple with fingers spread and pointed up, likes vaguely like one side of a moose's antlers. The justification being that "moose can't roleplay", so anything you say while a moose means it's out of character. No it doesn't make any sense, but it does seem to work for us.
Unfortunately it recently got more complicated due to a campaign I'm playing in using the God Machine Chronicles update to the WoD rules... the campaign is called Heavy Meta, and we're playing as average people (who have had some minor exposure to the supernatural that they explain away) who play roleplaying games, with about a 30/70 split to gameplay (30% of time spent playing as the normal characters, 70% as them playing in games within the game), so in order to account for the fact that we have two levels of in character conversation to worry about now, we now use the "half-moose" (standard hand signal explained before) to represent IC table talk for the normal characters, and "full-moose" (both hands up) for when we're doing actual OOC talk at our table. It gets a little confusing at times.
Hey, the first group I was ever in used to do that!
You haven't ever lived in Florida, have you? I wonder if I played with you once. I was a kender in a Dragonlance game with those folks...
No such luck sorry mate, I'm an Aussie country boy. Lived here all my life, and never been to the mainland states. The rest of the group are all local too. Cool to hear that it's used elsewhere though. I was never sure if these guys came up with it, or found it somewhere.
So... Moussing?
When players use the game as a way to ICly grief other players, when they would never do so out of game. Players who simply do not have good chemistry as soon as they are at the table. For instance. I had a pair of players who were good friends IRL, but player A seemed to have an obsession with messing with the character of player B exclusively in every game and situation. This would cause player B to get irritated, and feel targeted. Eventually this back and forth behavior would escalate into either PVP or IRL fits of anger. Now the two no longer speak to each other as a result.
When a single player only ever plays murderhobos of the consistently homicidal variety, and tries to explain it as, "I worship Pharasma, shes True Neutral so she doesn't care what I do!" Especially if said player constantly brags about their gory adventures in graphic unpleasant detail. I don't really want to know about how you and your previous group drugged a tribe of peaceful ogres, slaughtered them, cut off their faces, and stitched them together into a cover for your "Face Wagon." As your new GM, this does not inspire my confidence in you.
So glad I decided to just ditch magical loot completely.I'm on the verge of doing this, unless it has a direct bearing on the adventure being played out, such as being the goal of the quest or something similar. Just stuffing rooms with magic loot is grinding my gears...wait...that's a different thread...
It wasn't even all that hard. In my case, the specific problem was that looting and large cash payments don't make sense for a lot of PCs in my setting (Government employment is the default in several nations, including my favorite one. Government agents aren't supposed to be focusing on looting treasure hordes, and they aren't rich people.). So, I needed to get the effects of magic items (they are important to game balance, after all) without the monetary aspect. I did figure it out. I refluffed Dreamscarred Press Psionics into rune magic. Runes are super flavorful for making magic items, but magic items need power. In fact, making a magic item isn't all that hard. It's powering it that causes an issue. Having to recharge an item every single day just isn't feasible. So rune mages figured out a way to tap into the mana of the item's wielder (even a Fighter has mana) to keep it charged. How much mana you have determines how much magic gear you can carry and how powerful it can be, and your character level determines mana. Actually getting magic items isn't difficult or expensive, but you have to have enough mana to actually use the thing. This is actually quite fitting of campaign setting lore, considering the fact that the campaign setting is in the middle of a magical industrial revolution fueled by Alchemists. The process of fueling magic items with the wielder's energy was discovered recently and is contributing to the magical industrial revolution quite a bit.
So... Moussing?
Heh, I see what you did there.
... Damn it. Now I want chocolate mousse.
moosingHuh, I might have to try that, with one extra provision:
If someone brings chocolate mousse to the table, then everyone is so distracted by the desert that they all drop to the roleplaying capabilities of a moose. Therefore, eating chocolate mousse has the same effect as moosing.
:D
We get distracted enough as is... adding dessert to the table probably would just mean we never get anything done :P finger food is the most we can manage.
Thank goodness you don't call it reindeering...
I'd hate to think we've set up a community where we dont let reindeer play any reindeer games...
Rudolph with your nose so bright... wont you light my slay tonight?
Then all the players loved him, and they shouted out with glee
Slaying by noselight is so much fun
we'll even cut him in on our xp!
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Magic items should be the icing on the cake, not the main entree. I know this game relies on a steady stream of them to fight higher level monsters and I haven't put a houserule in place to eliminate the "big 6" so I get why players jones for these things. Sometimes it gets to be too much. If one of my players is a DPR-focused melee fighter and I hand him a single magic melee weapon, there is no reason they have to whine about not having "a backup magic weapon, a magic ranged weapon, and energy damage contributing as well."
Besides, I'm a GM but I'm also human. I like challenging my players in combat but I'm NOT a killer GM. If the avg damage of the party all totaled is only about 80 HP due to mid level and low amounts of magic, I'm not going to throw in 200 HP worth of monster and then sit there and laugh. I want my players to have a good time and will build encounters they can handle based on their average abilities at hand. Trust in your GM, players.
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I think a big problem is that having no or few magic items heavily penalizes the fighter and only vaguely annoys the wizard. But those guys never have a good day. :P
I think a big problem is that having no or few magic items heavily penalizes the fighter and only vaguely annoys the wizard. But those guys never have a good day. :P
I hear this occasionally, but then the guy that always runs a wizard says the exact opposite.
This is why i'm such a big fan of heroes unlimited with ninjas and superspies.. there's practically no magic weapons or magic items... There are so few things that require them to be harmed.
Players who feel the need to make OOC personal attacks on a character to that characters player at the table. I once played a Ratfok, and one player at the table couldn't shut up about how filthy, vile, and disgusting they thought my character was because I was a giant rat. They gave me the cold shoulder in RP too.Which touches on a pet peeve of mine.
It's frustrating when you have folks who are IC 100 percent of the time at the table -- I used to be one of those, I grew up some with the guidance of some polite fellow gamers. But what is *worse* than that is the folks that seem to be IC roleplaying and then suddenly go "Oh, that's just table talk" when they say something stupid that gets the party in trouble, even though the other parts of the conversation were apparently IC. Destroys any sense of continuity.
One of my previous GM's got annoyed by this and said if you said it without noting that you were going to speak as you(not the character) that it now happens in the gameworld. They tried to get away with it too many times.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Magic items should be the icing on the cake, not the main entree. I know this game relies on a steady stream of them to fight higher level monsters and I haven't put a houserule in place to eliminate the "big 6" so I get why players jones for these things.
I know suggestions are kind of off-topic, but maybe this will help:
For the most part you can just replace gp costs with XP costs, with a little bit of case-by-case refiguring on certain effects. Boom, now the math still works but your treasure gets to be treasure again. Just remember to keep this "XP" pool separate from regular XP (or whatever method you use for leveling).
Players who bring crap beer like Natty ice or keystone to the gaming session. Tired of that sh!@.
Mine is players who bring me beer full stop. I buy my own beer, because I never know what I'm going to want until I'm in the bottle shop. I will accept good quality chocolate milk though :P
Sadly, thinking about this earlier today gave me a craving for it, and I went looking for my favourite one, the Big M Real Kakao Double Choc. Turns out they don't sell it anymore. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement.
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Players who bring crap beer like Natty ice or keystone to the gaming session. Tired of that sh!@.Mine is players who bring me beer full stop. I buy my own beer, because I never know what I'm going to want until I'm in the bottle shop. I will accept good quality chocolate milk though :P
Sadly, thinking about this earlier today gave me a craving for it, and I went looking for my favourite one, the Big M Real Kakao Double Choc. Turns out they don't sell it anymore. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement.
Chocolate milk is delicious. Sorry to hear about your loss.
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Mine are people who bring a bottle of hard liquor and expect me to just sit and watch as they polish at least half of it. Not in my game you don't.
I don't mind a player having an occasional stiff drink or two, damn, we had some awesome scotch the other day when a friend came back from Scotland. But getting drunk? Not allowed.
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I'm really not interested in your new car, or the court case your brother is mired in, or the fact your kids' grades are falling. If the only reason you come to game is to vent or boast, take it to a bar. Gaming time is for gaming.
I tend to game with friends, so I do care about what's going on in their lives. I agree though, that game time should be spent gaming, but it is difficult sometimes when you only get to see certain people, certain friends, once a week for "X" amount of time...
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I'm really not interested in your new car, or the court case your brother is mired in, or the fact your kids' grades are falling. If the only reason you come to game is to vent or boast, take it to a bar. Gaming time is for gaming.I tend to game with friends, so I do care about what's going on in their lives. I agree though, that game time should be spent gaming, but it is difficult sometimes when you only get to see certain people, certain friends, once a week for "X" amount of time...
That is why I allocate about 45 minutes to an hour every session to BS. We talk laugh and stuff and then we game with no interruptions.
3. Another peeve (apparently I'm not alone in this) is munchkins. Of all ages, gaming experience and sizes. I love the additional customization provided by 3e and Pathfinder, but I hate the fact that a lot of it can be easily abused by "roleplayers" with a "concept" that happens to throw the party's combat balance off with enhanced criticals, iterative attacks, damage increases, etc.
One thing I have picked up on is the power level of a group or GM so I am not "that guy". Some people never pick up on it.
I also try to not be "that guy" in the other direction so that I need to be carried by the party. Some never pick up on this either.
I think the GM is partly to blame for this also at times, if he does not do anything to stop it.
I am not saying that either version of "that guy" is playing the game wrong, but he may be wrong for that group.
This is more than a peeve. It caused me to give away all my Pathfinder books and stop playing that version of the game altogether because I can't deal with the arguments any more.
The same thing happened to me, more or less. I have stopped playing Pathfinder due to the players who could be described as munchkins/power gamers/extreme over-optimizers. If it was just a single occurrance, then I could shrug it off. But it is every single group I have had the displeasure in playing with since Dec 2012, and I have played with about 50 people during that time. Only 1 group of 6 other people haven't fallen into that list, but 6/50 isn't enough to save it.
I love Pathfinder, but I hate a large swath of the people who play it. I would love to play it again, and be able to try out the ACG classes (stopped playing before I could), but I won't take the chance of playing with more people like previous. It's just not worth the headache.
So yeah, that's one of my big peeves. I guess my experiences starting out have colored my desires into a seeming unattainable shade, and this makes me sad. Oh well, my work schedule doesn't really lend itself to playing anymore anyway. :(
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3. Another peeve (apparently I'm not alone in this) is munchkins. Of all ages, gaming experience and sizes. I love the additional customization provided by 3e and Pathfinder, but I hate the fact that a lot of it can be easily abused by "roleplayers" with a "concept" that happens to throw the party's combat balance off with enhanced criticals, iterative attacks, damage increases, etc.
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First, I dislike the usual results when someone uses a poorly defined emotion laden term like “munchkin” in these types of discussions. Most everyone agree the term is a pejorative or has a negative connotation. Beyond that, almost everyone appears to have a different definition of the term. I have heard many different things used as the definition for munchkin. Exs: cheater, one trick pony, lack of RP, combat focused, optimizes more than me, goal is to ‘win’ over the other players, goal is to beat the GM, only joy in the game is building powerful characters, only goal is the biggest +X, belittles other players, class dips, uses many sources of material, doesn’t have a RP gimp, uses obscure rules, builds around a rules corner case, more powerful than the pre-gen examples, doesn’t speak in voice, etc…
Second, from the other statements, I suspect you are complaining about the people whose characters are too powerful. Whatever that subjective definition is. Many people would call that optimizing. I personally think the power level of the character (either from the optimization or class design) is only a problem if it is significantly higher or lower than the rest of the party.
If the whole group is very powerful, I as GM can just up the difficulties of the encounters. If the whole group is not very powerful, I as GM can just lower the difficulties of the encounters. (I admit, I am not perfect at this. I do think I’m getting better though.)
If one player puts a lot more effort into optimizing his character than the rest of the group, it is often very difficult for the GM to challenge that person without decimating the others. The party can end up feeling like the support staff for the real hero. Most people don’t enjoy that type of game.
If one player has a very poorly optimized character in relation to the rest of the party, he can end up feeling like the tag-along younger brother that Mom made the older boys take with them. Most people don’t enjoy that type of game.
Third, sometimes I have been able to do something about differing power levels without gutting the group.
If one player is very poor at optimizing, often I as GM or another player can help him build a character that has the concept capabilities that he wants and is still within the same ballpark of power as the rest of the group. However, some people refuse this kind of assistance.
If one player is very good at optimizing, I as GM can sometimes re-direct them to work with the rest of the group. A few folks I have been able to challenge. “Try to pick a normally weak concept and see if you can make it work. Like the character Sticks from the Jhereg books.” Or I have occasionally had them make a specific concept for plot reasons. “I can do it as an NPC if I really have to, but then there may be some of the game with you guys not doing as much while the NPC is center stage. It would work a lot better if it was a PC. Can you run a really sneaky thief caster. Something along the lines of rogue/sorc/arcane trickster.” Then I make sure to write a fair amount of center stage time into the plot for that spell sneak. Again, this doesn’t always work. Some people just won’t cooperate and have to be more powerful than anyone else at the table.