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Probably the most entertaining post I've read in a long time! Well said!

As a player, my biggest red flag is "We take our sessions very serious. This is not a game to our group." I have heard this a few times. Scares me every time it gets spoken. I guess they never got the G in RPG means game.

Hah! I've been kicked for playing STO. We were playing Shadowrun every other week and this was the third session in a row (yes six weeks) of the rest of the group shopping/planning. The whole game had been like that. We were actually playing Mallrun.

I've also been kicked for having a family emergency and having to cancel, as a GM.

I've played with at least half-a-dozen groups that died because the GM moved out of state after a couple of sessions.

I've also played with a couple of groups, one of them great, for over a decade, before I moved out of state.

GM red flag - if the GM's entire group is his/her family, oh, and now you.

For GM #2, it depends... when going from one game system to another especially, there should be a period of adjustment allowed. It's still a game, after all, no reason to go all hard-core over it. I've played in a few D&D 5th edition games and still I don't know everything due to how different it is from the editions I'm used to, as well as from other systems.

For Player #1, that's usually a new GM... I help them out when I can. Otherwise, well, there's no way to memorize an entire rule-book for most systems prior to running the first few games. They're just trying to do things right. Again, it's a game...

For Player #5, that depends on the situation... I have no room in my life for petty tyrants, to include full-of-themselves GMs; so if Rule Zero is used in a way to continue the FUN of a game in a given instance, sure... otherwise, it's probably better the person write their own system rather than run someone else's. As a long-time GM, I actually award XP to someone who properly calls me on an incorrect ruling (something left over from running the old Marvel rpg).

I'm this kind of GM - so I will never likely appeal to you. However they're are times when the story brings players together and drives them apart to make a better story! This should never deter you from playing your character your way. It is the GM's job to move the story forward regardless. I do have a strong line in place for pressing the story too. But the press should be an opportunity for player characters to be tested. At any time the player characters can walk away. For the detriment of the story or their own characters development. If that turns you off, maybe that is a personal reflection and you need to look at your character in a new way.

Alignment, mental toughness, and how the character would react. Not you your self, but the character.

Holy cow.... I don't even know how that's possible. At least a coin flip would give better odds than the random whim of a GM!

Present a situation
Player responds
Determine effect of said response
update situation
Player responds
Determine effect of said response
update situation
player responds
determine effect of sai....

1st one definately

2nd one... I've maid them work and the weaker player enjoyed it more than the munchkins who still had fun.

You ask about power level and what the group needs (I've played a LOT of clerics for lop-sided groups), and the GM says, "Don't worry about it. I can handle everything."
Then you show up at the game and it your RPA, two cosmic-knights, and an titan juicer. No mage, no psi, no one who can pick a lock or hack an electric door panel.

But that system would render my dice collection powerless. Unacceptable! UNACCEPTABLE, I SAY!

The Chronicles of Amber game, based on the books by Roger Zelazny, is dice-less. If your strength is higher than your opponent, you win a strength contest, etc. It takes a more story-driven group and a GM devoted to building an inclusive story.

If the system's mechanics are built that way, then that's cool. On a somewhat similar (but sort of not) note, do any of you remember the D&D-ish fantasy paperback books from the early 80's that told a story based on your decisions? For example, if the story took you to a fork in the road, you could follow the path to the mouth of the ice cave (go to page 86) or you could continue to the forest (go to page 134). If you went to the ice cave, you fall down a crevice and die, but if you go to the forest, you live to make another decision, like enter a cottage (go to page 44) or explore the nearby mine (go to page 95). It was pretty fun reading for a kid with no gaming group... probably the next best thing. I've been trying to find those books for my kids but have not had any luck.

Yes! The ones that I had were of the fantasy adventure genre. Thanks, Prysus!

TSR made a few too where there was a hero and a villain book and they interacted together.

Edit:
Here found it https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/463 ... le-arcania

They also had ones more like CYOA books called endless quest books made by there education department https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_Quest

What never you can then use them as caltrops so you can evade your GM as he tries to strangle you for running his story off the rails or blowing up the whole sandbox.

Some of those books required dice. "If you roll a 10 or higher go to page 34. If you roll a 9 or lower, go to page 112." Page 112 would be the one you were sent to when you died.

IIRC the 1 on 1 did but it used a chart to further randomize the result and suggested an alternate of both parties choosing a number (and without looking at the chart or memorizing it would be hard to remember the coordinates for a successful "roll") again making it diceless

However I wasn't giving an example of priceless just saying that there were D&D CYOA books.

"We don't need to hack the door panel, one of us will simply knock it out of the wall."
I've seen that happen, too.

To me telling a player what they should make (which is the same as telling them what the team needs) is akin to min maxing. Unless it is established before hand that the characters are a team or were assembled for a given reason it is unlikely that 4 random people in a pub or other obligatory adventure starting point are going to be able to fit all needed positions in a team.

A guy walks into a tavern and asks if there are any adventurerers. Two mages and a thief offer their services. The guy says "Not without a tank" and walks out. All three look at each other confused, finally the rogue says "whats he think this is Rifts?"

To me part of the point of an RPG is for the players to learn each other's strengths and weaknesses and overcome the group's discrepancies.

I actually meant me asking what the team needs.



Out of everything in the game, this is on the low side of soaking up "suspension of disbelief" resources.

These are only published in the U.K. - Look for Fighting Fantasy books.
Ian Livingston is one of the authors to those books... There are others but the ones with Ian Livingston were my favorites.

Quick Amazon search turned up a pile of them.

I just ordered 2 boxed sets of the Choose Your Own Adventure books, plus EVERY TMNT book Palladium ever published. Ugh.... Curse you Amazon app for being so user-friendly and such a pleasure to navigate on my mobile device!

I've found it is far more interesting a game when the team has to figure out how to overcome deficits and have no idea what each other are capable of. Heck to make things interesting in a convention game I was running I made on of the player an assassin who's Mark was one of the players. That player knew he had a hit on him and knew it was someone in the group.

Both devices increased the amount of interplayer interaction and in the case of the con allowed me to run a game with 15 players that everyone kept coming back to, by the end the group had grown to 20 as people joined in after spectating.
In the case of the no foreknowledge of abilities... it has increased player teamwork, synergy and communication.

Also the inclusion of the randomeer item table has made four players phobic of it and one addicted to it.

I would say that there is some of both to be honest.

A party should be learing to deal with the others strengths and weaknesses and such yes.
But on the flip side a party needs to have everything in it that it needs to succeed.
While yes, a random group of people might not have what is needed to succeed, setting up the party for failure is not entertaining. Its just griefing.
So on some level the group should make sure that they have what they need to succeed. And yes, that means that if the GM is planning an adventure that has a lot of traps that will require a specific skill set to deal with then he is obligated to inform the players that someone with skills of that nature would be a good idea. Because otherwise he is basically once again setting them up to fail, and that is because the GM can use anything when setting up their scenario and make it so that anything in the game will be required... while the party is far more limited on what they can bring and be ready for. Thus setting the group up against something they have no way of dealing with is just a sadistic GM out to prove that they are more powerful than their puny players... and that sort of crap has no place at a proper gaming table.
Now... if the group knows that 'Well, I am planning on some sneaky stuff in the burbs" and they all choose to make alien powerhouses dripping with magic and psychic power...that's on them.
But letting them roll up an elf ley line walker, a wolfen burster, and a grackltooth and THEN springing that the group will be starting in the Burbs is dirty pool.

The inverse can also be a bummer. You show up with your godling, and the rest of the group consists of a rogue scholar, a city rat, and saloon bum.

In 28 years of GMing the same Rifts campaign, I've run 23 different players and their many characters with many variations, usually in groups of 4 or 5. Never once did they come up short because they didn't have x, y or z. They always adapted and overcame.

With two cosmos knights and a titan juicer that likely would be the answer.

With Two CKs and a Titan Juicer I am envisioning it more as
"The door is locked"
"Yeah, but this wall isnt..."

I envision more,
"The door is locked"
"Yeah, but this wall isnt..."
"Just hold this... [hands over door and threshold]. We'll be back in a minute... Don't forget to keep an eye on the door

Ah, you have played with my group? Skills <<<< Moar Dakka


James??

-STS

Nope.

....ummm....so my herbalist/shapeshifting godling who likes to pretend he is a weakling and occasionally doses random people with a beserker potion (Hey, he's from the norse pantheon) to allow them to perform incredible acts beyond mortal might (he may have used more than just one beserker potion...) while playing the "I'm just a hermit from the woods" card...well...I think he'd do better with the second group, honestly.

So ya, my idea of a fun time with a godling is pulling a merlin...but showing up to any game with one expectation and being told no they're doing the exact opposite sucks. I mean if your told to bring your best, your heavy hitter, the big man, and then you go get your 15th lvl hydra (don't we all wish...) and then you find out everyone else is pulling out like lvl 3 city rats...well there are bigger problems than I realized when setting up this example. Much bigger problems.

Having run games like this I have to agree with you.
I ran a game (called Tellas) where the players were all "big guns" every PC was expected to be over-the-top powerful. I mean like Anime Protag levels...(I had everyone roll up a character using any race or class but they got to ADD on all the perks and bonuses of being a Demi-God on top of that... so you could make a Demi-God Dragon or a Demi-God Nightbane or Demi-God Kildred).
The twist of course was that I was making a world where many of the big issues looked on the surface like it was time to Summon Bigger Fish (i.e. why the pantheons were sending in the divinities) but instead they needed finesse and tact.
.
.
.
Some of the players made characters of awesome might who could lay waste to entire armies on their own... and some of the charaters were basically a minor low power mundane with a bit of demi-god fluff.
It ended up working out in an interesting way with the team dividing responsibilities and stuff...
But the game ended up in flames and tears and I'm sure that if I had let people know ahead of time more about it, then the individual characters would have been better able to mesh and work together as a group.

#1: When joining a group and they have been playing same characters for months, and when asked what their characters look like, and they have to look at their character sheet or actually hav e no idea.

#2: DM world map has every city exactly one days travel from each other , because DM doesn't like wilderness encounters.

#3: Players complain when they want experience and DM tosses them random monster for no reason other them to kill it to level up.

Had all three happen with same group in college. Roommate and I eventually exited game, as it was more Roll-Playing than Roleplaying. Later found out that one of players actually had melt down and threw a tantrum when his ridiculously over powered character was killed by his own poor decisions.

Same player played Vampire Dark Ages - Had such a 'selective memory' that rest of group started keeping journals, to point out his 'errors'. Also discovered he was fudging all of his dice rolls, so someone always sat beside him and watched his dice rolls and signaled GM actual dice results. Player never caught on that we knew he was cheating and always thought opponents were much more powerful than they actually were.

Native English speakers are excluded if, provided they neither have a relevant disability nor are struggling with technology, they have chosen to unironically forgo the grammar and spelling expected of schoolchildren. If your age is in double decimal digits and you're confused about basic homophones, that is a Problem outside the purview of leisure activities.

Hate speech gets someone immediately booted.

Proselytizing is treated similarly to unwanted advances or attempts to pressure another to take intoxicants; three strikes and you're out.

Players with military/law enforcement experience are suspect, but not dismissed out of hand.

Fishmalks are highly discouraged outside of TOON.

Define hate speech.
What do you consider to be proselytizing? For instance, if the GM makes some absurd remark on some religion other than what they practice and gets corrected for his/ her ignorance, I'd call that fair dues.
Why are people with military or law enforcement experience suspect? Because we know what the hell we're talking about?!

You're not alone in wondering what this person is taking about. It's jibberish. It's like he looked up a bunch of 50 cent words in the dictonary and tried unsuccessfully to coherently string them together. The comment about players with military/LE experience are suspect.... what?? Since when does a player's occupation matter? And what is a Fishmalk in reference to this thread? Nonsense. It's all nonsense.

In case Voight-Kampff has vastly improved, I'll clearly state that I am not a search engine. I will say that it has generally been my experience, irrespective of multifarious legal definitions, that those most uncomfortable applying Stewart's threshold to hate speech are those wanting to skirt it. I'm also glad that I took the time to revisit this military history documentary.

What I'm suggesting isn't so much gibberish as common courtesy. At the game table don't butcher the language, be offensive, impose personal beliefs, inflict perceived expertise, or act randomly for personal amusement.

Great, you know how to make a post with a link in it. Now would you care to enlighten us as to what you meant when you wrote "Players with military/law enforcement experience are suspect?"

I believe that was the "inflict perceived experience" part.

I concur. That is silly, of course, because if actually being a member of the military is considered "perceived experience" of things in the military, then I guess nothing counts as actual experience. "Don't confuse me with the facts!"

Well said.




Well said.
Also, a LOT of people have differing views on hate speech, and I'm still waiting to have the whole forcing of religious views explained... do you mean, Christians saying the other gods aren't gods, or Wiccans saying the Christian god doesn't exist, or what?
Also, are we talking about in-character uses of hate speech, or out of character?
To wit, a CS Colonel might say "D-bee scum" or somesuch, which is hate speech.

Which nation's military is it that trains psychic dog people to fight wizards and demons, again? Or failing that, piloting giant robots and shooting laser pistols?

At the gaming table, I've found the main situations where Dunning–Kruger is a problem are when participants apply a universality to their personal experience. Whether it be arguing how a plasma rifle works in a particular video game should have bearing on anything outside that game, or thinking a military stint necessarily grants insight into vastly different fictional organizations facing forces outside human history, it's a bias that slows down gameplay and proves an irritant to other players.

In that this thread is about behavior at the game table, and I've been pretty explicit in referring to the table, and characters aren't at that table, one might rightly assume I'm referring to player behavior.

Most definitions of hate speech interact with the notion of protected classes, and since fictional species aren't part of one, a player is unable to engage in hate speech against such. While I'm sure there's someone out there clutching their pearls about respectful treatment of make believe beings, it isn't me. A human supremacist muttering about the d-bee menace is in keeping with the setting.

Since other sapient species in fiction often serve as a proxy for addressing real-world issues, though, there is some subjectivity to the matter. A simple example would be if a player is clearly substituting a fictional species for a human ethnicity, so as to either pull a George Lucas and rely on tired stereotypes, or to run around killing Larmacs making innuendos about how they're lazy. Another example, which I brought up in another thread is the treatment of "Gypsies" in Rifts. The NGR discriminates against a large number of non-citizen residents, referring to them as such. As a generalized group, they come from multiple species, and one might assume a variety of ethnic groups, even though it isn't made expressly clear. Many traditionally itinerant peoples of Europe don't, or only sometimes fall under the umbrella slur gypsy. The usage of the term in Rifts could be part of an examination of the effects post-post-apocalyptic cultural drift can have on assimilation across multiple marginalized populations. For one, the non-Romani Yenish people, many of whom currently live in the parts of Germany that came through the Cataclysm well off, are often lumped in as a form of Gypsy. NGR relocation efforts may or may not be sensitive to the distinction, and the conflict between pressures to remain culturally distinct or blend within both in- and fellow outgroups can be an engaging look at the region. Alternatively, the word gypsy in Rifts can be an excuse to repeat stereotypes at the table that are based on hack writing. The former might be out of place in a straightforward game about Jaeger pilots fighting gargoyles, but the latter is always in poor taste and to be discouraged at the game table.

I'm not going to define the word proselytize for you. Attempts to witness during gaming are like MLM solicitation; it's not just unwelcome in the moment, it's a red flag in general.

Ohhh! I know this one! A Fishmalk is a crazy for the sake of being crazy character. One that's just an utter loon and has no bearing or motivation other than 'wooo hooo hooo! I'm goofy!"

So I got it right when I said it was nonsense!

A funny thing about clocks is that while a broken one is correct twice a day, ones in reverse can be briefly correct more often, depending on how regressive they are.