How I imagined the first story going down Fighter: "I walk away because I don't want to be railroaded." DM: "...Okay, so the fighter leaves the party and walks off into the sunset to follow their dreams. What do the rest of you do?" Fighter: "Wait--"
@@lspuria8440 be fair. We have no idea what the plan was, or what plan the DM forced the players to use. With all this verbal diarrhea they gloss over any details like that
@@cthulhupthagn5771 i dont think that dm was forcing them to do anything to be fair. I honestly do agree that i think the npc's didnt think it would work and didnt want to risk it. Also i think it said that the dm eventually accepted one or a few of their plans and so they were able to decide on that plan or one of those plans
This happened to me once. I was frank that there's literally nothing out there. And I meant it. There was nothing. I kept reminding the players, over and over, where the action was and what was threatening them (they pissed off a cult). They insisted on trying to leave. I told them in order to survive outside, where there was literally nothing, they would have about X days of food and water, and then have to make saves to not die. They REALLY didn't want to deal with the cult...or, one specific player didn't.
And then me, a dragonborn paladin with a hammer who got so damn drunk the rest of the party had to knock me unconscious in a tavern. I actually drew this.
"why did you fight the boss is was obviously leading up to?" "what were we supposed to do? you had a timer on us" "well maybe if you hadn't told the queen she was going to get murdered you'd be fine!" ...what? how he hell do you expect someone to find out about an assassination plot and NOT instantly go notify the person that's planned to be assassinated
MinerTurtle 45 - It’s like she was “testing” them to see if they’re smart enough to avoid a railroad or not. Lord help anyone that ends up in a relationship with her.
@@JaelinBezel That makes it so much worse... but it is a good explanation. I mean something is very clearly missing, he made them care about the city, he got them to attack the BBEG, He gave them a goal and they worked on it then something happened in the brain of the DM... and now that was a bad thing to do despite that being the goal. It is like the DM thought the destruction of the town would be viewed as good by the players or that the players want the queen to be killed
@@n0etic_f0x It's likely not just a story set in the DM's book world, but the story in the DM's book. It likely would have made sense had the players followed exactly the path of the DM's story's main character but obviously that's a ridiculous ask.
I hate it when Dms do things with your character when your not there. I quit an old group once because the Gm decided my character got drunk when I was gone and then insta killed me when I got back because he gave me a bunch of negative effects from the bad decisions I never made.
The only time I ever find it acceptable for a GM to take command of a late or otherwise missing player character is to essentially use them for their most basic combat role. Essentially, turn them into an NPC damage/tank/healbot so that the party's fight dynamic doesn't change. They don't get to participate in any non-combat stuff unless it would make the most sense for them to do so, such as tracking something if the character is a Ranger.
I had a player who had to afk for an hour, so i asked him what he wanted his character to do in the mean time, he said "just have my character sleep, and if someone jostles him, he just says "justice" in his sleep." And so when another player stumbles across him(and had no idea what the first player's special instruction was), he proceeded to poke him and make him say "justice" repeatedly for like 20 minutes. Then soon after, he ties the sleeping character up to an rv as a door alarm, since even the slightest touch would get him to say "justice". It then became a running joke that if the first character is ever poked, he has to say "justice" instantly.
Here's my advice for dealing with toxic people like this: Do not engage. If time and time again, they're incapable of civility, cause problems and make you worse, stop wasting time on them. You only have one life to live; don't waste it with them.
I found it more usefull to just talk to them. Its better if you first ask the other players if they have a problem with that player. Do not direct them, just ask them openli and then explain your situation. Maybe they have similar problems, maybe its only you. Then talk to hem/her and be clear about what is wrong. If its willing to change then great, if not then kick them out of the game (if you are the DM) or ask the group for an answer on what to do (if you are a player).
Yeah, I mean... I can not blame the GM. I am fairly sure it is the Warrior's fault... almost exclusively... let us see how they run a game. Yeah, it is them... only them. The magic wipe drains your tools as here electricity and manna are basically the same power source. There I took 7 seconds and solved the first problem, also... that mech... what? What is happening? If you don't want them to beat it have it destroy the city before they get to it. That... is so basic. If the city is going to be fired on by a Mech or a Dragon or an army it is not time to take a nap.
I feel like this could be a good thing. I have created a world for a book I am writing, and I've always thought it could be cool to run a campaign in it at some point. As long as you are adult enough to accept that the story you have in mind for the book wont be the story that happens in the campaign. It wouldn't be a problem for me, because I have filled the world with tons of extra side stories and mysteries to explore to add flavor to the world. My book wont do much more than mention them, so to let the party explore them in full could be fun. It seems like the DM in this case though had a set story in mind and was not in any way prepared to deviate from it.
@@PinataFreaks yeah im a writer but never played dnd but using it as basic lore or as a layout ex: politics, religion, etc doesnt seem like that bad of an idea... but yeah definitely dont push the: but thats not what is supposed to happen in my book. Basically inspiration for world building seems good
@@adabethsimpson2326 You can use the same starting point as the book (I think railroading your players is ok for the introduction), and the same big bad. But everything between those two is not your story, it's the players' story. If they want to join the big bad and bring an end to the world they can do that. If they get bored and kill of a character that's important to the story, then well I just have to deal with it. I think it could be interesting to see what effect they have on the world and how it differs from how my book characters affect it.
@@polyliker8065 If she cared for the people with her, she would react the right way with words like this. If not, then.. her loss. Cuz really.. if someone acts like a bitch towards me, i'll quickly see that as "You're not much of a loss"
I'm just confused how a party can be contacted by a foreign prince, learn about the assassination attempt, investigate, find a giant mech, and warn the queen in just an hour. It takes my party hours just to leave a tavern.
Clearly a doomsday timer without further explanation helps move the action along and get the party do whatever they can imagine needs to be done in terms of heroics to avert some unknown threat. I suppose you could just have the moment the timer expires be closing time for the local shops, or even the start of Happy Hour at the tavern, but only if you don't intend to use such a timer ever again.
What kind of DM makes a giant mech, tells the party about said mech and that it's owned by the antagonist of the day, and doesn't expect their players to either fight it or hijack it? One of the few things a DM can rely on the players to do is to fight or befriend their giant enemies.
If I was GMing this adventure, I'd have them fight the mech until they dealt a damage threshold. Then the Prince tries to fire the laser at the city, but it malfunctions because the party damaged it just the right way. The Prince panics at the setback and flees with the mech. Queen rewards the party for saving the city and gives them clues as to the Prince's evil plan and/or motives. Same result, but the players' actions mattered and gave them incentive for a rematch with the doomsday mech in the future. Will the Prince have suped up the mech with better armor and more deadly weapons by then? Yes. Will he have captured Tech Aliens and force them to do all that under penalty of death? Probably. Will he have tested them out on innocent civilians? Maybe. Unless you the PCs can stop him.
@@generalledger3353 that's one option Another option is to make the mechs stat bloc actually reflect when they should be fighting it and either tpk or force the players to flee
@@V2ULTRAKill That's the same scenario that the story's GM put the party in, but with a harsher result. With a city's destruction on the line, you'd be hard pressed to get most parties to flee. What's the incentive? What is going to convince the party, especially one with a paladin, that the city and everyone in it is an acceptable loss?
From the story descrption they seem similar to the faunus from RWBY, so basically people with random animal parts. Paladin just picked that race and chose cat.
"I was not prepared for you to fight the Mech!" Me: *literally writes an encounter for every combat-ready NPC the party COULD attack and that would fight back* Wait? Not prepared?
I was running an adventure module which takes place in a cave. There was a large lake of acid (the twist is that at some point they had entered a giant worm or land-shark and this was its stomach). Instead of retreating and going down the intended path, the Gnome Transmutation-Wizard used the Transmutation ability to turn small chunks of the acid into antacid. Since then, my preparation borders that fine line between being "General story events on Page XX" levels of not-technically-prepared and "If players use SKILL OR TOOL, what happens?" over-prepared.
@@onijester56 - I know it's a year late, but I REALLY want to know what happened there lol... Did the Wurm get indigestion and throw them all up? Or did its stomach improve and start to digest all of them?... that is really funny, I have to know.
That is silly, it brings to mind old DMing advice: “If you put it in game, be ready for the party to attack it. It might be a chair, it might be a starving child, it might be a God’s avatar; there will be someone, at some point, that will attack it.”
@@CrizzyEyes Yeah but then the exuse is just worded weirdly. I said i write them all, not that i intend for them to attack them at that point. I usually have them written and strongly advice them through storytelling that it's a bad idea, and if they presist and TPK on the encounter and then complain i say "I told you that YOU'RE not prepared for this" "I wasn't prepared for you to fight" sounds more like the DM threw up a quick stat-block for the Mech because they didn't have one and ended up making it too weak or powerful.
Fighter sounds like a typical narcissist. Not sure if they were honestly crushing on OP or just some warped attempt at manipulation. Also, they were totally lying at the end.
@@gavinziozios1431 basically when she was trying to justify her actions to the players as DM at the end of the second story she was totally bullshitting. She eithier didn't have a plan or the players didn't react the way she wanted and she made up lies so she could say it was the players fault.
1st story: _In a way_ the Fighter was correct. If she had a dumb plan that she wanted to implement, it's usually not a good idea to have NPCs barge in and go full GMPC (or, as I call them, GiMP Characters) on her (at least that's the general sense I gathered from that); better to just let the PCs fail (or let the others sneak off and do their thing in a hope of success). 2nd story: Yeah, she straight up pulled a "so let my book be written, so let it be done" move, which is worse than using GMPCs. These are usually the same kind of morons who worship canon at the sake of actual fun! Her book is gonna suck: "The -Jaeger- fires its laser, but -Metroplex- already had a shield up and the laser bounced off of it, hitting -Skywarp- and destroying it. But not before -Skywarp- gave -Johnny Five- a big kiss on his EDITED CONTENT NSFW and then CENSOR BAR and finally JESUS WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS AUTHOR. The end...?"
@@commandercaptain4664 from what OP told the other players were engaging on the plan too, and also thought hers to be unrealistic. So to me it just seemed like she was mad it didn't go her way, especially because it wasn't just a in character thing (it'd make a lot of sense if it was!)
@@commandercaptain4664 It doesn't seem like the DM just shut her down with NPC's. Everyone was trying to come up with plans together and multiple plans were discarded. It makes sense from a roleplay perspective as well. Having brainless NPC's that let players do whatever they want can completely break immersion.
This is an advise for everyone that is runing a campaign: Records the sessions, not the video, just the audio its fine. If you hear the game from an outsider view you will get some things you didnt before because your mind was bussy whit other stuff. It specially helps wen you have a problematic player and you didnt even noticed. I found out about my own mistakes listening to the recordings. And heared something intresting, almost every time i said something "that player" contradicted me or corrected me on something, and after a wile, my voice and my tone changed, like i was triying to not disturb that player. And wen i realized that i finally got why my head hurt so much after some games...
@@PankoBreadcrumbs emm what? I dont get wat you are triying to say. If you are refering to an error on my writing i must tell you this is my second lenguaje. Yo hablo español y realmente cometo muchos errores a la hora de escribir en ingles.
@@Gaston-Melchiori Lol I'm sorry, I didn't realize English was a secondary language. There was a misspelled word that ended up being funny slang in English is all.
20:40 -How did the prince OF THE CITY didn't know of the force field? -How does the heroes who come from the city or at least would know of the world's type of defenses (especially some sort of artificer) didn't know the mech was doomed? See people; as Shadiveristy said; world building. Or else its plot hole time. That person is not a good writer at all.
Something that I've noticed is that almost every time someone says "Your not being considerate to my feelings" that person has usually also stopped considering the other person's feelings and thoughts and generally the situation won't resolve until someone acts like the bigger person or people are given time to cool off.
it can also be a red flag for people who always expect their feelings to be catered to above anyone else's, and are distraught that they're not being cut that extra slack
It's a fine line between that and someone being genuinely hurt for legitimate issues. The only answer is to pay close attention and hold some hard rules.
"Stop acting like a toddler otherwise he's going to lose a friend." I don't think you're a good enough friend at this point for anyone to care about losing.
I see these stories and realize how insanely fortunate I was to have the GMs I've had. Our DM ran a homebrew world campaign he'd been building for close to 15 years at the time complete with legacy contributions from other circles of players in the same game world with other campaigns he ran, previously or concurrently. He was a history and art history major working on a master's, a photographer, writer, and an excellent story teller with a laid-back, educational attitude and a whole arsenal of voices and characterizations. I would put him up against Mercer on any day of the week, and didn't realize how good either of them were until I met The Crab Council and heard the minutes. I feel bad for the folks whose only contact with this amazing institution of gaming culture is second-hand empowerment of a confused DM's internal realities. This game has so much for everyone and that kind of behavior strips the experience down to rolling dice and bitter concession.
Any time I hear "let's do my homebrew I've been working on for years" now, it sounds like instant dread, because amateur writers have no idea how to separate worldbuilding from plot. Rarely, you get someone who had some kind of education or actual practice at writing and they can.
This Fighter/DM shouldn't be told "just write a book then," she should be told "put on a stage performance or make a movie with actors who'll play the roles of the characters in your story exactly as directed" because it sounds like that's what she wanted all along. "No, you're not supposed to warn the queen or fight the mech right now, because that's not what the main characters in my story would do at the moment."
God, I really hate when people who aren't at fault at all in a story, but blame themselves for some part of it like them not "reacting the perfect way to diffuse the situation" leaves them at fault. Like, the DM could voiced his concerns sooner but that's it. Nobody else is even partly at fault here so please don't be ashamed to dump all the blame where ot belongs.
This is what often happens in toxic or abusive relationships: The party facing the toxicity or abuse can end up blaming themselves for it. Why? That's what the manipulation does; Many people cannot help but feel that way. It's hard to blame someone you're friends with if you care about them a lot, even when they're hurting you.
EXACTLY! Like, this is the mentality that lets people get abused and taken advantage of. I do understand, especially when it's somebody you really don't want to put that blame on. But it's so important to exhonerate yourself from that blame and guilt when it doesn't belong to you.
@@doctordonutdude I just think it's important to know that it's hard to "exonerate yourself." It's a complicated situation for the victim. It can ironically sound like victim blaming to say "stop blaming yourself and end the relationship."
My first ever experience with DND was ruined for me because turns out my group all hated me for being a year ahead of them in school and busy. I got given out to for saying i wasn't comfortable with a joke they were making about me and for then getting upset when they kept going. I was then told they all had a discussion and wanted me to go. I had spent ages making a discord server for us to all use and they pressured by into handing it all over and leaving which at that point I did because I was so hurt. I thought and still think maybe I was in the wrong for being busy or for getting upset. I tried explaining the mental health issues i was having and was shut down which hurt because the entire group were in the LGBTQ+ community and all had some issues with depression themselves. It took my friend seeing the text messages I was sent from my DM for me to at least partially accept it isn't my bad I was upset for jokes I made clear I wasn't ok with.
Not exactly, she had a certain (wrong)idea about how the players would react when faced with the situation(probably because that’s how things go in her original story) and tried to railroad them with that, so she actually royally failed in railroading them for the ironic reason that she didn’t really understand them(as people and players). Also: the thing with with the not-artificer losing their non-existent spells is probably a matter of pride: she forgot that detail about the character, but didn’t want to admit it and have to retcon the scene
I like the way I run my campaign. There's several storylines in every town and city. And while the group decides where to go and what to do in one city, the other storylines progress how they would without the group there to help or hinder stuff. So when the group wonders the mystery of why a small shop is closed indefinitely, they might never know the owner or their struggle to stay afloat with a big business mogul sabotaging their business. I hate railroading, so that's why I let the world work itself out and the group has the ability to change fate wherever they go However, the Fighter here had some obvious bad manners. All campaigns are somewhat railroaded. If they weren't, the DM wouldn't have any notes behind their screen and would be an improv god
Do stat blocks count as notes? 'Cause that's usually the only kind of material I have written down. The rest is just worldbuilding and what you described in the first part of your post. There are powerful NPC with agendas, stuff happens, players interject or don't. I'll definitely take being called an improv demigod instead of unorganized, tho.
That's a good way to do it, although if you have many NPCs that can get kinda crazy D:. What I did while DMing was separating the story into individual chapters, and wait until a chapter was almost over to start the next. That way the next chapter would be based totally on the outcome of the previous one. The point of railroading is that the DM has to railroad the players into some of the plot points he prepared, basically present obstacles to the players, the way the problems are dealt with and the outcome has to be entirely up to the players.
OH! I came across something like that in the 'Pound of flesh' module for Mothership. It's a really cracking way to get players to realise 'oh shit, stuff is happening with our without us, so we really should go about sorting things out'. I ended up calling them ticking threads, cause they tick down if the players don't pick them up.
That sounds like a lot of work. Seriously, respect to you for both being willing to put in so much work and, more importantly, being willing to watch so much of your work going to waste. If I were to devise a compelling story line about a small shop owner being driven out of business by a sabotaging rival, and the players passed it by, I couldn't help but dust it off two towns later, tweak it enough to feel fresh, and then see if the player characters might be interested in helping a maiden who runs a bakery when they weren't interested in the old man running the dry goods store. But I suppose from my perspective a TT:RPG campaign doesn't really have replay value. This isn't Fallout: New Vegas, where you can derive great satisfaction from wondering why a store got shuttered on your first run, then on a second play through you go in, talk to the store owner, and discover a quest line you previously missed. You're in a D&D campaign, it's going to be 500+ hours, if you're doing it well, and by that campaign's epic conclusion you're going to be ready for something completely new.
As others have pointed out, I’m confused as to what the DM in the second story actually *wanted* the players to do. There was an assassination they weren’t supposed to try and stop, and mech they weren’t supposed to try and fight. So... what were they “supposed” to do?
She had no idea either. This was a chapter from her book and she had no idea how to fit players' actions into it, only how to punish them for taking actions that weren't in her unread story.
My guess is that her entire plan fell apart when they learned of the Assassination and warned the Queen. They weren't ever supposed to find out about it or be able to warn the Queen in time, but because such things are out of a DMs control at times, she underprepared for the possibility and just made up that timer, and railroaded them into a fight they knew they can't win. But when they decided to fight the thing instead of running she was at her wits end again and decided to try and make them lose the battle, which they kinda did but only because she BS'ed about the Gun-Arm and the Artificer's Gadgets.
Nothing. Just listen to her read the book she's writting, be at awe, give praise, and have zero interaction with. This is no different then DMs who make DMNPCs that exist to be amazing at everything the players are trying and failing (coincidentally) to do and be applauded for making PCs useless.
"We were entirely unnecessary" Aye, that feels bad I do sometimes the "your actions ruined everything" because sadism (and edgy dark settings where hope is bad you know), but I never blame the players out of game when they fall for my tricks. That's a dick move.
Totally agree, Player actions should always have an effect on the world, be it good or bad...I, do tend to let players hoist themselves by their own petards if they rush in without a plan and luck isn't with them. That DM should just write a book, they clearly don't want people ruining their story.
The “your actions ruined everything” trope really only works in D&D if they’re given a chance to fix it, if you ask me, but if it works for your group, cool. Least youre not a dick about it
It works if there are investigation options to learn the true nature of things. But in this case nothing made sence and it was clearly terribly thought out.
My first group had us infiltrate a Bandit hideout and most of us were first time players that kind of treated it like a text and speech based Dungeon from a Video Game. We tried being sneaky, solve puzzles and when we were attacked we just killed everything on sight, even if it tried to flee. *BAD* mistake. Our DM was using this entire campaign to train us to be good players and not murder hobos, to teach us that this ain't one of our "Go in, kill everything" RPGs. We encountered a group of Bandits who immediantly attacked, the DM emphasized on the Bandit in the back seeming nervous. We ignored it since he also said he was a young man no older than 18, we just decided dude was just scared of a fight, but his fault for joining bandits that kill people and sell people as slaves. We killed his friends and he started to run, 3 of us (Paladin, Ranger and me (Sorcerer) started attacking and cornered him, then killed him. (Paladin mostly because she was written to slowly learn that not everything is black and white and it was early so she just decided: Bandits = Bad = Kill, Ranger because his friends tried to r*pe her earlier in the Campaign (It was okay for everyone in the Game to have that as a possibility as long as you have input about if it happens to your character) and me because i've seen a woman and her daughter being hold captive.) We informed the Major of the slaughter that went down and how we saved the Woman and her Daughter from the Bandits (they told us the location of a Family Heirloom to gather up later), Major sent some people to investigate and the next day half the town seemed really pissed at us. When we later confronted the Major about the treatment we suddenly had gotten he revealed: "One of the Bandits you killed was my youngest son. He didn't want to be with them but they forced him, i couldn't do anything, i'm sure he just tried to get away when you slaughtered everyone there, but it seems you gave chase and killed him. I will not imprison you for it, he had it coming eventually, but i want you to leave the Town for now. Get out of here and don't come back until a few months passed. I... need time." (We weren't kicked out of town forever since it was an important town we had to eventually revisit later. But we learned to not kill everything that seems to be evil.) That Event also was where our DM split the group as we were 8 people and the Campaign was written for a group of 3-4 PCs, so he had to constantly try adjust it so we had a challenge. The other Group remained a bit on the murder Hobo side of things while my group actually was TOO diplomatic at times xD
@@MikayaAkyo Man, that's rough. Your party had good reasons to kill the fleeing bandit (plus as far as you knew, they could be heading for reinforcememts). I think the GM's mistake here, though the premise was interesting, not having the son break down when cornered with "Please! Mercy! I never wanted to be here, I hate these people. I am basically a prisoner. I want to go home!" Surely a scared young man would do that when swords are brandished at him by adventurers thinking he is one of these bandits he doesn't even like. Heck he could literally fall to his knees and sob if he is just scared and no fighter! He could then prove himself by showing the party where the keys were and freeing the captives, perhaps showing the group where extra captives were that the party didn't know of. If he was cut down after that outburst and him maybe saying he's the mayor's son (perhaps a hint earlier that he's missing) then consequences may have been more fair.
Even if you're running a campaign based in a world you created for a story, let the players change that story for the campaign. It can actually help you make better characters to have them be in situations you never thought about them being in. Heck, take prominent characters from your story and play them in other people's campaigns, fit them into a different setting and allow them to change drastically, it's fun stuff. My players once found some big holes in the logic of major faction leaders of my world, allowing me to go back and write something more solid. Many characters of mine that were somewhat flat became quite fleshed out by being in other people's stories for a time.
Yep, pretty much what I'm doing! Been lots of fun, and I've also had quite a few opportunities to better my characters, especially who would be the protagonist if the players weren't. It can work pretty well as long as you don't force your players to follow your story, but let them make their own story in your world.
I started watching a group of pen and paper players and their dm always makes up the stories. They are always completely made up by him he writes a scriptwriter events that will happen in the world at certain times and if the players are there to witness them they will see them and if not well they still happen but the players didn’t knew that they happened just like real life. They also stream their play sessions live on twitch and the chat can vote on random encounters that will happen at some point and the dm then needs to implement them in his story. This group is so good and you can see that they are all very experienced in working with tv and stuff. ( they once had their own tv show but that show was canceled and so they started their TH-cam Chanel and twitch Chanel and made that their new tv platform.) So it can work having a pre written story doesn’t mean it needs to be bad it depends on the dm if he is willing to let the characters do stuff he hadn’t planned and if he is able to improvise.
In my opinion, I'd rather transform my campaign into a novel (with my players' permission, because not my characters to just mess around with), not the other way around, but if I was running a campaign in a setting I created for a story, I wouldn't try to take the players through the events that my story was supposed to follow. The players aren't my characters, so I wouldn't expect them to just do what I would write my own characters would do, and therefore wouldn't expect them to follow the plot I originally set. That seems to be the problem in a lot of these cases. A DM who says "I'm using a world I'm writing a novel with" often ends up being the horror story DM who then railroads the PCs into the exact string of activities the characters in their text follow, even if it's not what the PCs want/would do. They don't bother making a separate adventure for their players to encounter, but try to force them into the narrow confines of a story already told. This is how *not* to use your novel setting for D&D.
Why do all the worst DMs featured on this channel do the creepy, forced romance thing? “You meet this character and they like you, you’re in a relationship with them now.” “What? Uh, I’d rather not. I’d at least like to be able to choose for myself if I like them first.” “No, you have to be with them, elsewise I will expressly punish you for not doing so.” God help the people these DMs hypothetically end up with IRL if this is their perception of romance
"So she (Fighter) asks for the Druid and I to pass along a message to the DM to 'stop acting like a toddler otherwise he's going to lose a friend.'" I _so_ would've just done this: "@Fighter, stop acting like a toddler, or you're going to lose a friend. Oopsy, wrong @, silly me."
Sounds like the problem is that the fighter's player is a narcissist. The narcissist player did not care about any of them, and as such was never their friend.
I can see where fighter-dm was going and wanted with the mech fight, I think. Build all these connections between the party and the city, and then out pops a big ol’ fuck-you robot handled by the Prince that destroys the city and takes over the kingdom. The rest of the story is then the party building up and preparing to fight the Prince and his fuck-you robot. How they mishandled it so much, I don’t know
Me: well crab, I sure wish there were another crit crab video that I haven't watched yet. Crit Crab: I have surfaced from the watery heavens to deliver unto my watery subjects a new crit crab video for each and every one of you. Me: Huh
The fighter reminds me SO MUCH of a friend I had who acted a lot like that in our games. Constantly arguing with whoever was DMing over things that nobody else took issue with (often things that didn't even involve her character). Insisting that the DM was trying to force us/her character into something. Even in games where we were kind of being railroaded the things she thought she was being forced into were... not it. Like, basically her character suffering any consequences for her actions was seen as her being forced into something.
Good luck with that. Don't get demoralized if it doesn't go good the first time. Pretty much everyone in my party has a story about a party wipe happening in their first campaigns, including me lol.
@@theeshyguy thanks! I am in the worldbuilding part, and taking it very slow cause I want a lot of lore and intricate things I can use if needed. Its more of something to have ready when I'll have actual time to dm
@@theeshyguy yeah, my second campaign was an informal one, and the DM left, and we were all newbies, and for some reason it came upon me to DM. Drow imprisonment and the entire party being eaten by the kraken ensues.
As a DM I jokingly complain about how "my party always derails my campaign!!" and blah blah blah. But in reality I'm pretty upfront with players about how it's their world just as much as it is mine. Yes, I have plans for each session, and the world I have built will keep on turning no matter what they choose to do, so there are always natural consequences to actions they choose or refuse to make, but I really enjoy that and they seem to as well. Though, most of the time when they "derail" the campaign they really just circumvent a bunch of danger and just kick my ass, but I rejoice with them in their triumphs. Plus, when they mess around with crazy options that I don't expect or consider, it keeps me on my toes and the most fun and memorable moments in a campaign happen in those situations.
19:34 sums it up perfectly. I had the same kind of fight but less nonsense. My players knocked the arm off, I ASKED which one they were targeting and confirmed with them. They won that fight. My players might be a bunch of newbies but they're no dummies lol
As someone who is actually writing a series of books that feature an alternate universe comparable (but not the same) to our own, that second story aggravates me to an extreme. It sounded like she had quite the interesting world, but her style of DMing ruined it for everyone involved. I had to compare it a bit to what I've been doing with a friend of mine. She's currently reading my stories and loves the universe I created, so asked me if we could have roleplay sessions within it with one of her own characters. I happily obliged and basically became a "DM" of sorts, though there is little fighting, no dice, and just generally roleplaying and creating a story within said world. I explain the scenes, give voice to all characters but hers of course, and I allow her to react to situations or create situations herself. She's having fun while I'm using it as a chance to world build (and our sessions have been extremely useful for me). Listening to that DM get angry that people were trying to enjoy the world she created and tell them off for reacting to the situations she gave them annoys me greatly. This could've been a chance to grow her creation and show it off to her friends and get their input. Instead she destroyed that chance. That first story was horrible, but for me the second one hit closer.
yeppp. Trying to retell the exact same story the dm is writing rather than just having an adventure set in the same universe with some of the same characters... Recipe for disaster.
@@Romanticoutlaw Exactly. In order to make sure we didn't interrupt the actual story I wrote, our RP is set in the "past" as well. She gets to meet a few of her favorite characters while they're younger, but is given her own missions in the world so there's no "interference" between them. They go on their set path in life while she cheers them on and does the same with her own path. While there are certain world events set in stone already, there's more than enough leeway for her to create her own story in that universe, with me being able to add to my overall world building. Thanks to this, she's actually influenced the main story a tiny bit (Thanks to her one character has a stylish goatee now and another was gifted a special dagger). I happily recommend doing this for any aspiring writer with a creative friend.
I sometimes use the unstoppable boss at early levels to make the party have a goal for later one. But I make it clear that this is a cut scene and that they can't do anything about it. And my players are usually smart enough to realize that if an 18 on the dice don't hit you should retreated.
Yeah, I am a bit confused as to what the DM was thinking they should or would do? I can see having a robot destroy parts of the city and then get beaten off if the Dm wanted to set the evil prince up as a long term BBEG for the party to take on again when they are higher level, but the DM complaining about it seems to just confuse me. Hearing the story that is where I thought it was going when the DM said they were all stunned automatically. Dunno.
Both parts in this video? Heard this story before, my recent problems was with a group that didn't try to include me in character talks aside from the DM and the party rogue a couple times. Was kicked from the group cause "they didn't like how I RP", I'm new to DnD and it was my first campaign how am I supposed to know how to RP with the group dynamic? Still friends with them and the DM at least let me sit in for 1 more session to wrap up my character's story and he got a happy ending so that was nice. Currently in a different campaign playing a completely different character, it's been fun, but IRL tends to cancel sessions such as DM doing college homework and sometimes another player be working. Hoping to continue the campaign soon
Did they at least tell you what exactly it was they did not like about how you RP? If they didn't, it's probably not such a great loss anyway. Success with your new group.
Not really and they don't seem to want to talk about it which is kinda irritating. I don't see the need to walk on eggshells around people, I can take any criticism bluntly. But at least the DM let my guy have one last hurrah and a happy ending. Other campaign is currently going slowly cause that DM is in college and it's been difficult for him to have a free day. Might try to find a second group to keep my D&D craving satisfied while I wait for my current DM deal with life. It's a fun campaign and I want it to keep going, but the "sorry can't today" is getting to me. Don't think he's lying cause he has a friend that lives locally to confirm the DM is busy with school or personal life stuff. Hopefully the campaign can continue soon, especially since I'm having fun with my new character
Ahh, see, thinking that playing in the DM's novel would be good was OP's first mistake. Little did they know, they were only there to enact the exact plot the DM had planned. Silly character, did you think you got to have agency?
Eh. I can see that working well IF... IF, you're not using the book's plot. If you're just using the universe, that works well. It can even be a great way to road test your worldbuilding, because the players will pick and prod at every hole for you. But you should never ever expect to use the actual plot of the book as your campaign.
One of my favorite DM stories has to be when I DMed for a group of 10 players. We had a tabaxi that broke Mach 7, a couple druids, a couple bards, a drider, a beeftank, and a few others. The beeftank (dwarf fighter) and our wizard (a gnome illusion con artist) had a combo where the gnome would hide in the dwarf's rucksack and perform Dragon Fire on the dwarf. I was running a campaign where they were opening tombs full of undead and imprisoned gods, who had been imprisoned during an Egyptian espue time. Yep, mummies. And lots of fire.
It's a good movie. One time I was at the Mart of Walls, looking through their movie bins and I recommended the Iron Giant to an older couple shopping for gifts for their grandkids. I told them it was an "animation classic" and they decided to take it.
Same. I hadn’t seen anything involving that movie in years, saw the thumbnail and immediately clicked it not knowing what the video was. Happy to know it was a Crit Crab video but I was interested nonetheless lol
I played a situation almost exactly like this. It's soooooo frustrating, particularly when the fighter character was killed and nearly tore the group apart with her saltiness
Fighter is extremely toxic. I had to deal with a player like this and I know that these types of people want everything to go their way all the time and think it's everyone else's fault if things don't go their way.
"Im writing a novel based on this homebrew." You know it makes you wonder exactly what kind of red flag would be enough to give you serious concern if THATS not enough...
One of the best things for a DM to do is just to put up a list of bullet points they would like the players to hit and decide when to throw the bullet point down to keep things going. It's fine if your game has a story and backstory, but it should mostly act as a set dressing for the players to interact with. A DM/GM that is going to moan and whine about player decisions someone who would probably be better off just writing how they want things to play out as a personal story. There are a few different kinds of terrible DMs, but I think I've managed to identify the 5 worst of them. You have the "You're supposed to do what I say when I tell you that you can do something" DM, which is what most people think when you say someone is bad DM; the "You're not playing the race and/or class I want you to play so I'm going to punish you with the game itself by making everything x times harder" DM, I actually played with one of these DMs and mentioned a general overview of my experience with them in the CritCrab subreddit under a tagline about something that probably needs to be discussed; the "yes, I want to please you all the time so you're allowed to make rolls and I'll usually say you passed if it's anything outside of combat" DM, most people don't think these DMs are too bad but they are actually some of the worst; the "No, I'm not looking at your rolls if it doesn't involve my plans for the game, so even if you roll a Nat 20 to do something random I'll still say you fail without looking up from my notes" DM, and I'm sure some of you can think of a case where you dealt with this kind of DM; and the "I have no plan whatsoever, I'm literally making it all up as I go along and winging it and hoping things aren't too clunky" DM, and this last one can be a good DM because sometimes players come rolling up with characters that are technically fit the setting but you weren't anticipating those sorts of character so you have to revamp most of your notes as the game is starting and during the game (especially if the game is intended to be a one-shot) but this usually applies to DMs that are just to lazy or not on top of things enough to properly plan in advance.
"The reason for this is that she was writing a book..." Oh god no, I can already see where this is going... If a DM ever tells you, I'm writing a book set in this world, thats not even a red flag, its a black flag.
There are certain occasions where that can work. I'm writing my own book based in my D&D world except instead of railroading the party, I'm basing the book on whatever they choose to do. In a way the entire party is writing it. But it can definitely be a red flag a lot of the time.
@@diddydragon yeah that’s true. I mean I never played any pen and paper but I can see where someone having a book that they are basing their story of can lead to a very railroaded adventure.
I have ideas for a setting that I may use for a couple stories. But they won't be the basis for any game I'd run in said setting.They'd jsut be...part of the world or certan characters' backstory and nothing directly involving the hypothetical players.
You know, the funny thing is, the DM in the second story could have really easily salvaged the whole thing. Simple: the party fought the mech, which bought the town just enough time to bring up their defense system, thereby saving the town. This way, their efforts weren't in vain, but the difficulty of the fight is still justified. The idea wouldn't be to win, just to stall. BOOM! Easy! Players are happy cause they get to be heroes, and DM is happy because things go the way she wanted them to.
Actually writing a book about a dnd campaign sounds awesome. Once the campaign is finished and you have the consent of your players/DM, of course. And I could also see using a book your writing work, as long as you're only using the universe and not the plot (let's be honest what dnd group ever follows the plot through?) It could help you discover plot holes you didn't know existed and help flesh out characters. What that DM did was no, no on every level.
The last statement of the video rings especially true for me. I haven't done many DnD sessions, and never finished a campaign, but I will never forget my very first session ever (a homebrew horror campaign), where the players (me and a friend) were presented with a puzzle, and I completely broke it by just shattering the glass case protecting both our objective and a monster we would've had to fight, and killing said monster with NAT 20 rolls. Our DM was pretty mad at me for it but we had a good laugh, even though said DM hadn't at all planned for us to get much further than the puzzle, and ended up improvising the rest of the session (which was about 4 hours)
So the prince of this kingdom, who lives in this city, builds a giant robot as an assassination weapon with a laser that is fully unable to penetrate the defenses of the city and will actually get one-shot by that same laser when it is reflected off of the defenses. I'm sorry did they misspell suicide as assassination?
I swear I heard a longer version of the context story on your channel before, same fighter who ended things, shared unwanted videos, dm'd a bad campaign, and something about jailbreak.
Ps: the reason for the leader things is a lore reason. Our group grow up (npcs join the guild) and we were in need of someone to be the face of the group
They did do glory stories for a while. Like the dragon who was explained friendship or The wholesome necromancer one. Hey, I personally include the pun one there too. So who knows, maybe there'll be a glory story on it eventually. I'd sure like to see it happen, see what someone could do with it without getting creepy/Weird for once
This reminds me of when I ran a one-shot and spent most of the session building up the area and things in it only to spring a chimera onto 3 level 1 characters with no armor and no weapons. They were able to use what they knew about the area to trap the chimera and kill it in almost a segmented boss fight. All the power and control was theirs and they loved it.
The person sounds just like a friend I had she’d message me all the time as soon as I woke, she played dnd a few once or twice and she said she was so experienced, She wanted everything to go her way, and she also wanted the spotlight.
The best game I ever played in was literally the guy saying "Hey you guys wanna be characters in my comic world?" Always run D&D games in your fanfics. It gives you a world and a lore to work in. Because not everything will be hyper focused on RP, it will feel more like the world exists outside of just the party. It will feel more full. This is what you want in a game.
@@TailsClock playing a game in someones fanfic/novel means you have no choices because every event in the story was meticulously planned by the dm who will throw a tantrum if you do anything even remotely unexpected or "offscript". Sounds like your dm let you actually play d&d so he was Inspired by a fanfic, not running one.
@@The_Sharktocrab playing the story told in the novel/fanfic yeah, don't do that, but it's totally fine to play a disconnected story within the same world. Friend of mine is in a campaign taking place in his DM's novel's world, but taking place some time in the future as to not directly effect the story of the books. Another example of a cool way it could be done, habe another story going on at the same time as your novel/fanfic, taking place somewhere away from the main character's plotline in an ongoing story, let the campaign influence the books somewhat, and certain events in the books influence the campaign.
Conceptually, unwinnable encounters at the current level aren't the *worst* idea in the world. My DM has managed to pull them off before and they still felt satisfying. We were once hit with a really tanky golem with explosive fists and who knows how many hit points, but it didn't actually care about wiping the party as long as it got what it wanted out of us. After I went down, it even actively hoped I would live because I was so much fun. The second story's big encounter could have worked, it's just the weirdo behind the screen.
First AD&D game I was ever in the party left town on the high road on our way to adventure. The DM had a special encounter table that had every monster in the MM1, MM2, and Fiend Folio in it. So we were jumped on the start of our level 1 journey by an ancient Red Dragon. The party scattered and released the spare horses hoping maybie someone would get away. The DM got mad we hadnt charged the dragon and used it to hunt us all down. Showing off excellently how none of us could dent it.
Depends on just how furry we're getting. I've seen........ art.... where the solution is clothing like pregnancy clothes that support built into the pants. If we are dealing with Kemomimi then cow girl means just an anime girl with cow ears, horns, and lactates from her regular breasts.
Love this channel, I've been watching these to learn how to be an effective DM and what to look out for. I'm still a long ways off to being a DM, still feel like I have a lot of learning to do, and I'm hoping to run my first campaign in the future.
The first story is either extremely toxic (god i hate this word.) friendship or it's just FULL of tsundere energy. Either way I feel bad for the DM as I just recently had the same situation Cleric was in.
I can Emit a had brushed my toes in the water of railroading and felt guilty but I'm glad my players saw this and helped me make a better solution that made them feel great,culminating in them drowning a paralyzed vampire
That second story sounds straight out of Final Fantasy just with more animal races. The tech aliens are basically the Garliands and the mech portion is also very similar to a major event in FF9 where a city is about to be destroyed but some type of mechanical device saves it. It could just be coincidental though.
17:00 i side with the writer mostly but in this one instance i side with the dm as i consider artificers to still be spellcaster despite the cool descriptions. also you lost your spell slots at level 1 so between a paliden and a wizard that's like 3
Even when you SPECIFICALLY dictate that a character doesn’t use magic, at all? That makes no sense lol It hints at a lack of creativity and consideration The DM could’ve easily made it make sense with ANY amount of effort. They just didn’t care An EMP would’ve been perfect. Semi-magical means of replicating tech would’ve also worked. I’m sure there are any number of ideas that WOULD make sense But taking away spell slots from someone that doesn’t have them is dumb... it makes no sense. It’s inconsistent with the campaign up to that point
Fell asleep to a playlist of yours and woke up to discover that I knew about you a long time ago thanks to that Assassin Revenge story. This makes me happy, like super happy, so enjoy a sub you Crucial Crustacean! x 3
It doesn’t matter how you flavor your artificer/wizard, you need to still acknowledge your “spells” as magic mechanically. You shouldn’t get a free pass from counterspell and dispel magic just because you say so imo. Unless the DM is also letting tech aliens avoid, but I also call malarkey. It’s a part of game balance, otherwise you should give the other players some bonus.
I don't know what the rules of that homebrew were, but I imagine if you're running 'anti-counter' alternatives to magic, the caveat would be that they run out of ammo and you would need to restock in an actual workshop with cost requirements instead of just taking a long rest.
Based on OP's description, the FighterDM had explicitly told her the aliens' tech was expressly not magic. So if her own tech was based off the aliens', then it tracks that her tech would also not be magical. Either way, this was clearly a miscommunication/misunderstanding between player and DM expectations. And... seems to be the only part where FighterDM is not clearly the one at fault.
Yeah you both have fair points. If it is a more integral part of the setting, then hopefully it has limitations. Shame it wasn’t handled well regardless.
Yeah, I feel you on that playing a character that dislikes practically everyone needs to be done right. It can be hard, especially when everyone else just thinks the character isn’t going to grow at all. I played one, the DM liked him so much that he brought that character back as an npc for another group he was running and from what he told me they liked him a lot. So i guess I did something right with that character.
![[LIVE] BABYMONSTER(베이비몬스터) - DRIP | 두시탈출 컬투쇼](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/UG05pxLGwzc/mqdefault.jpg)
How I imagined the first story going down
Fighter: "I walk away because I don't want to be railroaded."
DM: "...Okay, so the fighter leaves the party and walks off into the sunset to follow their dreams. What do the rest of you do?"
Fighter: "Wait--"
I wish that the DM was like:
Ok Fighter. We will do your plan.... aaand 10 guards all start attacking just the Fighter .
@@lspuria8440 be fair. We have no idea what the plan was, or what plan the DM forced the players to use.
With all this verbal diarrhea they gloss over any details like that
@@cthulhupthagn5771 i dont think that dm was forcing them to do anything to be fair. I honestly do agree that i think the npc's didnt think it would work and didnt want to risk it. Also i think it said that the dm eventually accepted one or a few of their plans and so they were able to decide on that plan or one of those plans
This happened to me once. I was frank that there's literally nothing out there.
And I meant it. There was nothing. I kept reminding the players, over and over, where the action was and what was threatening them (they pissed off a cult).
They insisted on trying to leave. I told them in order to survive outside, where there was literally nothing, they would have about X days of food and water, and then have to make saves to not die.
They REALLY didn't want to deal with the cult...or, one specific player didn't.
@@kyuven if there was nothing then it sounds like the cultists won already
You have players like this, and then you have my party, who were trying to jump 30 feet up to a hole in the ceiling for about 10 minutes
Meanwhile I have a grung player who jumped so high with the spell 'Jump' he nearly killed himself
@@rlancs20 and speaking of grungs you have my friend who once grabbed a poisonous one and tried to wear it as a hat.
why does it feel like I was in your party, since I was in a party who did that exact thing
am I the only one who found out recently that 1 story is 14ft? I always pictured 30ft. as 3 stories instead of 2 lmao
And then me, a dragonborn paladin with a hammer who got so damn drunk the rest of the party had to knock me unconscious in a tavern. I actually drew this.
"why did you fight the boss is was obviously leading up to?"
"what were we supposed to do? you had a timer on us"
"well maybe if you hadn't told the queen she was going to get murdered you'd be fine!"
...what? how he hell do you expect someone to find out about an assassination plot and NOT instantly go notify the person that's planned to be assassinated
MinerTurtle 45 - It’s like she was “testing” them to see if they’re smart enough to avoid a railroad or not. Lord help anyone that ends up in a relationship with her.
"You are supposed to let the queen get murdered that way she dies!"
Why do we want the queen to die?
"She is about to get murdered!"
I know!
Maybe she was projecting on them and expected them to act like her as a player???
@@JaelinBezel That makes it so much worse... but it is a good explanation.
I mean something is very clearly missing, he made them care about the city, he got them to attack the BBEG, He gave them a goal and they worked on it then something happened in the brain of the DM... and now that was a bad thing to do despite that being the goal.
It is like the DM thought the destruction of the town would be viewed as good by the players or that the players want the queen to be killed
@@n0etic_f0x It's likely not just a story set in the DM's book world, but the story in the DM's book. It likely would have made sense had the players followed exactly the path of the DM's story's main character but obviously that's a ridiculous ask.
RUN. Run from the DM in the second story. You're not PCs, you're props in someone else's story.
The DM in the second story was the Fighter from the first story, so she left herself. No need to run anymore.
Seems like this dude was trying to recreate Code Geass or something
I hate it when Dms do things with your character when your not there. I quit an old group once because the Gm decided my character got drunk when I was gone and then insta killed me when I got back because he gave me a bunch of negative effects from the bad decisions I never made.
Your character deserved to die since you don't know the difference between "your" and "you're".
@@thefracturedbutwhole5475 mind you’re manners
@@thefracturedbutwhole5475 I blame my text too speach.
The only time I ever find it acceptable for a GM to take command of a late or otherwise missing player character is to essentially use them for their most basic combat role. Essentially, turn them into an NPC damage/tank/healbot so that the party's fight dynamic doesn't change. They don't get to participate in any non-combat stuff unless it would make the most sense for them to do so, such as tracking something if the character is a Ranger.
I had a player who had to afk for an hour, so i asked him what he wanted his character to do in the mean time, he said "just have my character sleep, and if someone jostles him, he just says "justice" in his sleep." And so when another player stumbles across him(and had no idea what the first player's special instruction was), he proceeded to poke him and make him say "justice" repeatedly for like 20 minutes. Then soon after, he ties the sleeping character up to an rv as a door alarm, since even the slightest touch would get him to say "justice". It then became a running joke that if the first character is ever poked, he has to say "justice" instantly.
Here's my advice for dealing with toxic people like this: Do not engage. If time and time again, they're incapable of civility, cause problems and make you worse, stop wasting time on them. You only have one life to live; don't waste it with them.
My opinion of how to deal with these kinds of player: “Get your shit together or else we won’t play with youl
I found it more usefull to just talk to them. Its better if you first ask the other players if they have a problem with that player. Do not direct them, just ask them openli and then explain your situation.
Maybe they have similar problems, maybe its only you. Then talk to hem/her and be clear about what is wrong. If its willing to change then great, if not then kick them out of the game (if you are the DM) or ask the group for an answer on what to do (if you are a player).
Yeah, I mean... I can not blame the GM. I am fairly sure it is the Warrior's fault... almost exclusively... let us see how they run a game. Yeah, it is them... only them. The magic wipe drains your tools as here electricity and manna are basically the same power source. There I took 7 seconds and solved the first problem, also... that mech... what? What is happening?
If you don't want them to beat it have it destroy the city before they get to it. That... is so basic. If the city is going to be fired on by a Mech or a Dragon or an army it is not time to take a nap.
if i have one life to live time to waste their time
But that's especially infuriating when having to deal with.... ahem... a whole lot of problematic toxic people.
As soon as I heard “homebrew world she’s writing a book for” I was like oh. Oh no.
loolol
Yeeeaaaahhh. She's...um...what's the word I'm looking for?
Oh! That's right. A bbî†ch.
I feel like this could be a good thing. I have created a world for a book I am writing, and I've always thought it could be cool to run a campaign in it at some point.
As long as you are adult enough to accept that the story you have in mind for the book wont be the story that happens in the campaign.
It wouldn't be a problem for me, because I have filled the world with tons of extra side stories and mysteries to explore to add flavor to the world. My book wont do much more than mention them, so to let the party explore them in full could be fun.
It seems like the DM in this case though had a set story in mind and was not in any way prepared to deviate from it.
@@PinataFreaks yeah im a writer but never played dnd but using it as basic lore or as a layout ex: politics, religion, etc doesnt seem like that bad of an idea... but yeah definitely dont push the: but thats not what is supposed to happen in my book. Basically inspiration for world building seems good
@@adabethsimpson2326 You can use the same starting point as the book (I think railroading your players is ok for the introduction), and the same big bad. But everything between those two is not your story, it's the players' story. If they want to join the big bad and bring an end to the world they can do that. If they get bored and kill of a character that's important to the story, then well I just have to deal with it.
I think it could be interesting to see what effect they have on the world and how it differs from how my book characters affect it.
I would have been more than happy to turn fighter's words against her: "stop acting like a toddler, otherwise you are going to lose 3 friends."
I'd be like "losing you as a 'friend' is not much of a loss thb"
@@polyliker8065 If she cared for the people with her, she would react the right way with words like this. If not, then.. her loss. Cuz really.. if someone acts like a bitch towards me, i'll quickly see that as "You're not much of a loss"
- Fighter tries to romance the OP
- Fighter tries to force a romance onto the OP in the other campaign
Hmmmmmm, sus
Yes takanuva
That proves it.
I love these stories. Helps me know how to run my own games and talk about issues without splitting the group up
This story sounds like another Karen getting triggered for not being treated like her wannabe Queen opinion matters.
That is the way to look at difficult situations. Learn.
Exactly I agree
For a second, I thought you meant that the videos would help you RUIN the game and SPLIT UP your group. Would be comedically messed up, Lol
You mean how NOT to run your own games. Lmao
I'm just confused how a party can be contacted by a foreign prince, learn about the assassination attempt, investigate, find a giant mech, and warn the queen in just an hour. It takes my party hours just to leave a tavern.
Clearly a doomsday timer without further explanation helps move the action along and get the party do whatever they can imagine needs to be done in terms of heroics to avert some unknown threat.
I suppose you could just have the moment the timer expires be closing time for the local shops, or even the start of Happy Hour at the tavern, but only if you don't intend to use such a timer ever again.
"Wait aren't we like level 1?"
Made me burst out wheezing like a madman lmao
What kind of DM makes a giant mech, tells the party about said mech and that it's owned by the antagonist of the day, and doesn't expect their players to either fight it or hijack it? One of the few things a DM can rely on the players to do is to fight or befriend their giant enemies.
"We're gonna steal that big-ass gunmen!" -Kamina
@@JaelinBezel just who the hell do you think i am
If I was GMing this adventure, I'd have them fight the mech until they dealt a damage threshold. Then the Prince tries to fire the laser at the city, but it malfunctions because the party damaged it just the right way. The Prince panics at the setback and flees with the mech. Queen rewards the party for saving the city and gives them clues as to the Prince's evil plan and/or motives. Same result, but the players' actions mattered and gave them incentive for a rematch with the doomsday mech in the future. Will the Prince have suped up the mech with better armor and more deadly weapons by then? Yes. Will he have captured Tech Aliens and force them to do all that under penalty of death? Probably. Will he have tested them out on innocent civilians? Maybe. Unless you the PCs can stop him.
@@generalledger3353 that's one option
Another option is to make the mechs stat bloc actually reflect when they should be fighting it and either tpk or force the players to flee
@@V2ULTRAKill That's the same scenario that the story's GM put the party in, but with a harsher result. With a city's destruction on the line, you'd be hard pressed to get most parties to flee. What's the incentive? What is going to convince the party, especially one with a paladin, that the city and everyone in it is an acceptable loss?
I don't know why you need a homebrew class specially called "cat girl" when Tabaxi and Leonin exist lmao
From the story descrption they seem similar to the faunus from RWBY, so basically people with random animal parts. Paladin just picked that race and chose cat.
@@rafabuda0 just... Reflavour it lmao
When you want to be more anime and less furry...
Did they change "race" to "class" in new editions?
Because they want to have cat traits without being called a furry
"I was not prepared for you to fight the Mech!"
Me: *literally writes an encounter for every combat-ready NPC the party COULD attack and that would fight back* Wait? Not prepared?
I was running an adventure module which takes place in a cave. There was a large lake of acid (the twist is that at some point they had entered a giant worm or land-shark and this was its stomach). Instead of retreating and going down the intended path, the Gnome Transmutation-Wizard used the Transmutation ability to turn small chunks of the acid into antacid.
Since then, my preparation borders that fine line between being "General story events on Page XX" levels of not-technically-prepared and "If players use SKILL OR TOOL, what happens?" over-prepared.
@@onijester56 - I know it's a year late, but I REALLY want to know what happened there lol... Did the Wurm get indigestion and throw them all up? Or did its stomach improve and start to digest all of them?... that is really funny, I have to know.
That is silly, it brings to mind old DMing advice: “If you put it in game, be ready for the party to attack it. It might be a chair, it might be a starving child, it might be a God’s avatar; there will be someone, at some point, that will attack it.”
The DM probably wrote the encounter, intending for them to attack it later. This is overpreparation but some people are guilty of it.
@@CrizzyEyes Yeah but then the exuse is just worded weirdly.
I said i write them all, not that i intend for them to attack them at that point. I usually have them written and strongly advice them through storytelling that it's a bad idea, and if they presist and TPK on the encounter and then complain i say "I told you that YOU'RE not prepared for this"
"I wasn't prepared for you to fight" sounds more like the DM threw up a quick stat-block for the Mech because they didn't have one and ended up making it too weak or powerful.
Fighter sounds like a typical narcissist. Not sure if they were honestly crushing on OP or just some warped attempt at manipulation. Also, they were totally lying at the end.
I feel like I know what you mean, but can you clarify what you mean by they were definitely lying at the end?
@@gavinziozios1431 basically when she was trying to justify her actions to the players as DM at the end of the second story she was totally bullshitting. She eithier didn't have a plan or the players didn't react the way she wanted and she made up lies so she could say it was the players fault.
1st story: _In a way_ the Fighter was correct. If she had a dumb plan that she wanted to implement, it's usually not a good idea to have NPCs barge in and go full GMPC (or, as I call them, GiMP Characters) on her (at least that's the general sense I gathered from that); better to just let the PCs fail (or let the others sneak off and do their thing in a hope of success).
2nd story: Yeah, she straight up pulled a "so let my book be written, so let it be done" move, which is worse than using GMPCs. These are usually the same kind of morons who worship canon at the sake of actual fun! Her book is gonna suck: "The -Jaeger- fires its laser, but -Metroplex- already had a shield up and the laser bounced off of it, hitting -Skywarp- and destroying it. But not before -Skywarp- gave -Johnny Five- a big kiss on his EDITED CONTENT NSFW and then CENSOR BAR and finally JESUS WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS AUTHOR. The end...?"
@@commandercaptain4664 from what OP told the other players were engaging on the plan too, and also thought hers to be unrealistic. So to me it just seemed like she was mad it didn't go her way, especially because it wasn't just a in character thing (it'd make a lot of sense if it was!)
@@commandercaptain4664 It doesn't seem like the DM just shut her down with NPC's. Everyone was trying to come up with plans together and multiple plans were discarded. It makes sense from a roleplay perspective as well. Having brainless NPC's that let players do whatever they want can completely break immersion.
"Didn't your other campaign have a forced romance?"
"Probably a coincidence"
"Naive (Probably still true)"
I think that was a joke.
Yeah, that was pretty obvious sarcasm.
@@PhantomRing If so, I owe apologies lol.
@@PhantomRing Didn't seem like it, why would they point a joke out and not comment on it?
dodged a bullet not gonna lie
This is an advise for everyone that is runing a campaign:
Records the sessions, not the video, just the audio its fine. If you hear the game from an outsider view you will get some things you didnt before because your mind was bussy whit other stuff.
It specially helps wen you have a problematic player and you didnt even noticed.
I found out about my own mistakes listening to the recordings. And heared something intresting, almost every time i said something "that player" contradicted me or corrected me on something, and after a wile, my voice and my tone changed, like i was triying to not disturb that player.
And wen i realized that i finally got why my head hurt so much after some games...
I'm sorry my mind was *WHAT*
@@PankoBreadcrumbs emm what? I dont get wat you are triying to say. If you are refering to an error on my writing i must tell you this is my second lenguaje.
Yo hablo español y realmente cometo muchos errores a la hora de escribir en ingles.
@@Gaston-Melchiori
Hablo inglés pero cometo muchos errores al hablar español
@@Gaston-Melchiori Kudos my guy, for what it’s worth your English is pretty fantastic. It’s not easy learning a second language
@@Gaston-Melchiori Lol I'm sorry, I didn't realize English was a secondary language. There was a misspelled word that ended up being funny slang in English is all.
20:40 -How did the prince OF THE CITY didn't know of the force field?
-How does the heroes who come from the city or at least would know of the world's type of defenses (especially some sort of artificer) didn't know the mech was doomed?
See people; as Shadiveristy said; world building. Or else its plot hole time. That person is not a good writer at all.
Something that I've noticed is that almost every time someone says "Your not being considerate to my feelings" that person has usually also stopped considering the other person's feelings and thoughts and generally the situation won't resolve until someone acts like the bigger person or people are given time to cool off.
it can also be a red flag for people who always expect their feelings to be catered to above anyone else's, and are distraught that they're not being cut that extra slack
It's a fine line between that and someone being genuinely hurt for legitimate issues. The only answer is to pay close attention and hold some hard rules.
Nah
"Stop acting like a toddler otherwise he's going to lose a friend."
I don't think you're a good enough friend at this point for anyone to care about losing.
“How dare you fight the boss I made you fight!”
Hmm yes. The floor is made of floor.
Mmmm.... yes...
@Ryen fair enough
Or more accurately: "How dare the floor be made of floor!?!"
@@firewolfandrewb good point
@@doomchap7614 how can people die when they are killed??
I see these stories and realize how insanely fortunate I was to have the GMs I've had. Our DM ran a homebrew world campaign he'd been building for close to 15 years at the time complete with legacy contributions from other circles of players in the same game world with other campaigns he ran, previously or concurrently. He was a history and art history major working on a master's, a photographer, writer, and an excellent story teller with a laid-back, educational attitude and a whole arsenal of voices and characterizations. I would put him up against Mercer on any day of the week, and didn't realize how good either of them were until I met The Crab Council and heard the minutes.
I feel bad for the folks whose only contact with this amazing institution of gaming culture is second-hand empowerment of a confused DM's internal realities. This game has so much for everyone and that kind of behavior strips the experience down to rolling dice and bitter concession.
Any time I hear "let's do my homebrew I've been working on for years" now, it sounds like instant dread, because amateur writers have no idea how to separate worldbuilding from plot. Rarely, you get someone who had some kind of education or actual practice at writing and they can.
This Fighter/DM shouldn't be told "just write a book then," she should be told "put on a stage performance or make a movie with actors who'll play the roles of the characters in your story exactly as directed" because it sounds like that's what she wanted all along. "No, you're not supposed to warn the queen or fight the mech right now, because that's not what the main characters in my story would do at the moment."
God, I really hate when people who aren't at fault at all in a story, but blame themselves for some part of it like them not "reacting the perfect way to diffuse the situation" leaves them at fault. Like, the DM could voiced his concerns sooner but that's it. Nobody else is even partly at fault here so please don't be ashamed to dump all the blame where ot belongs.
This is what often happens in toxic or abusive relationships: The party facing the toxicity or abuse can end up blaming themselves for it. Why? That's what the manipulation does; Many people cannot help but feel that way. It's hard to blame someone you're friends with if you care about them a lot, even when they're hurting you.
EXACTLY! Like, this is the mentality that lets people get abused and taken advantage of. I do understand, especially when it's somebody you really don't want to put that blame on. But it's so important to exhonerate yourself from that blame and guilt when it doesn't belong to you.
It makes me so mad! I know that for someone inside it can be hard to discern, but looking from the outside it is just blatantly obvious
@@doctordonutdude I just think it's important to know that it's hard to "exonerate yourself." It's a complicated situation for the victim. It can ironically sound like victim blaming to say "stop blaming yourself and end the relationship."
My first ever experience with DND was ruined for me because turns out my group all hated me for being a year ahead of them in school and busy. I got given out to for saying i wasn't comfortable with a joke they were making about me and for then getting upset when they kept going. I was then told they all had a discussion and wanted me to go. I had spent ages making a discord server for us to all use and they pressured by into handing it all over and leaving which at that point I did because I was so hurt. I thought and still think maybe I was in the wrong for being busy or for getting upset. I tried explaining the mental health issues i was having and was shut down which hurt because the entire group were in the LGBTQ+ community and all had some issues with depression themselves. It took my friend seeing the text messages I was sent from my DM for me to at least partially accept it isn't my bad I was upset for jokes I made clear I wasn't ok with.
"Small-breasted cow girl" sounds like a contradiction in terms.
That description is complete and udder nonsense.
Lol?
You get one chuckle
Guarantee that that dm coincidentally has small boobs
@@iododendron3416, how dairy to come up with such terrible puns?
Lord Critcrab - do Humanoids walk sideways in your perception?
NOW THIS IS A REAL QUESTION!
Now this is a question the world may never learn the answer to 😔
@@avis199 Not unless somehoe a crab gains intelligence and the ability to speak or telepathy, or maybe a person develops animal telepathy.
Do crabs think that fish fly?
@@alex9x9 They do. Swimming IS flying in the water.
These are well written; they don't include unnecessary exposition or waffle, they focus on the points. Gg, OP.
Ah, the DM in the second story is "writing a book." That always ends really well.
She got mad that railroading them went exactly as planned...? My, how the turn tables.
Not exactly, she had a certain (wrong)idea about how the players would react when faced with the situation(probably because that’s how things go in her original story) and tried to railroad them with that, so she actually royally failed in railroading them for the ironic reason that she didn’t really understand them(as people and players). Also: the thing with with the not-artificer losing their non-existent spells is probably a matter of pride: she forgot that detail about the character, but didn’t want to admit it and have to retcon the scene
I like the way I run my campaign. There's several storylines in every town and city. And while the group decides where to go and what to do in one city, the other storylines progress how they would without the group there to help or hinder stuff. So when the group wonders the mystery of why a small shop is closed indefinitely, they might never know the owner or their struggle to stay afloat with a big business mogul sabotaging their business. I hate railroading, so that's why I let the world work itself out and the group has the ability to change fate wherever they go
However, the Fighter here had some obvious bad manners. All campaigns are somewhat railroaded. If they weren't, the DM wouldn't have any notes behind their screen and would be an improv god
Do stat blocks count as notes? 'Cause that's usually the only kind of material I have written down. The rest is just worldbuilding and what you described in the first part of your post. There are powerful NPC with agendas, stuff happens, players interject or don't.
I'll definitely take being called an improv demigod instead of unorganized, tho.
That's a good way to do it, although if you have many NPCs that can get kinda crazy D:.
What I did while DMing was separating the story into individual chapters, and wait until a chapter was almost over to start the next. That way the next chapter would be based totally on the outcome of the previous one.
The point of railroading is that the DM has to railroad the players into some of the plot points he prepared, basically present obstacles to the players, the way the problems are dealt with and the outcome has to be entirely up to the players.
Not gonna lie, your campaign sounds pretty sweet.
OH! I came across something like that in the 'Pound of flesh' module for Mothership. It's a really cracking way to get players to realise 'oh shit, stuff is happening with our without us, so we really should go about sorting things out'.
I ended up calling them ticking threads, cause they tick down if the players don't pick them up.
That sounds like a lot of work. Seriously, respect to you for both being willing to put in so much work and, more importantly, being willing to watch so much of your work going to waste.
If I were to devise a compelling story line about a small shop owner being driven out of business by a sabotaging rival, and the players passed it by, I couldn't help but dust it off two towns later, tweak it enough to feel fresh, and then see if the player characters might be interested in helping a maiden who runs a bakery when they weren't interested in the old man running the dry goods store.
But I suppose from my perspective a TT:RPG campaign doesn't really have replay value. This isn't Fallout: New Vegas, where you can derive great satisfaction from wondering why a store got shuttered on your first run, then on a second play through you go in, talk to the store owner, and discover a quest line you previously missed. You're in a D&D campaign, it's going to be 500+ hours, if you're doing it well, and by that campaign's epic conclusion you're going to be ready for something completely new.
As others have pointed out, I’m confused as to what the DM in the second story actually *wanted* the players to do. There was an assassination they weren’t supposed to try and stop, and mech they weren’t supposed to try and fight. So... what were they “supposed” to do?
She had no idea either. This was a chapter from her book and she had no idea how to fit players' actions into it, only how to punish them for taking actions that weren't in her unread story.
My guess is that her entire plan fell apart when they learned of the Assassination and warned the Queen. They weren't ever supposed to find out about it or be able to warn the Queen in time, but because such things are out of a DMs control at times, she underprepared for the possibility and just made up that timer, and railroaded them into a fight they knew they can't win. But when they decided to fight the thing instead of running she was at her wits end again and decided to try and make them lose the battle, which they kinda did but only because she BS'ed about the Gun-Arm and the Artificer's Gadgets.
@@MikayaAkyo OP specifically said they gave the paladin the quest to stop the assassination. Multiple times.
Nothing. Just listen to her read the book she's writting, be at awe, give praise, and have zero interaction with.
This is no different then DMs who make DMNPCs that exist to be amazing at everything the players are trying and failing (coincidentally) to do and be applauded for making PCs useless.
Romance the cow girl, obviously.
"We were entirely unnecessary" Aye, that feels bad
I do sometimes the "your actions ruined everything" because sadism (and edgy dark settings where hope is bad you know), but I never blame the players out of game when they fall for my tricks.
That's a dick move.
Totally agree, Player actions should always have an effect on the world, be it good or bad...I, do tend to let players hoist themselves by their own petards if they rush in without a plan and luck isn't with them.
That DM should just write a book, they clearly don't want people ruining their story.
The “your actions ruined everything” trope really only works in D&D if they’re given a chance to fix it, if you ask me, but if it works for your group, cool. Least youre not a dick about it
It works if there are investigation options to learn the true nature of things. But in this case nothing made sence and it was clearly terribly thought out.
My first group had us infiltrate a Bandit hideout and most of us were first time players that kind of treated it like a text and speech based Dungeon from a Video Game.
We tried being sneaky, solve puzzles and when we were attacked we just killed everything on sight, even if it tried to flee.
*BAD* mistake. Our DM was using this entire campaign to train us to be good players and not murder hobos, to teach us that this ain't one of our "Go in, kill everything" RPGs.
We encountered a group of Bandits who immediantly attacked, the DM emphasized on the Bandit in the back seeming nervous. We ignored it since he also said he was a young man no older than 18, we just decided dude was just scared of a fight, but his fault for joining bandits that kill people and sell people as slaves.
We killed his friends and he started to run, 3 of us (Paladin, Ranger and me (Sorcerer) started attacking and cornered him, then killed him. (Paladin mostly because she was written to slowly learn that not everything is black and white and it was early so she just decided: Bandits = Bad = Kill, Ranger because his friends tried to r*pe her earlier in the Campaign (It was okay for everyone in the Game to have that as a possibility as long as you have input about if it happens to your character) and me because i've seen a woman and her daughter being hold captive.)
We informed the Major of the slaughter that went down and how we saved the Woman and her Daughter from the Bandits (they told us the location of a Family Heirloom to gather up later), Major sent some people to investigate and the next day half the town seemed really pissed at us.
When we later confronted the Major about the treatment we suddenly had gotten he revealed:
"One of the Bandits you killed was my youngest son. He didn't want to be with them but they forced him, i couldn't do anything, i'm sure he just tried to get away when you slaughtered everyone there, but it seems you gave chase and killed him. I will not imprison you for it, he had it coming eventually, but i want you to leave the Town for now. Get out of here and don't come back until a few months passed. I... need time."
(We weren't kicked out of town forever since it was an important town we had to eventually revisit later. But we learned to not kill everything that seems to be evil.)
That Event also was where our DM split the group as we were 8 people and the Campaign was written for a group of 3-4 PCs, so he had to constantly try adjust it so we had a challenge.
The other Group remained a bit on the murder Hobo side of things while my group actually was TOO diplomatic at times xD
@@MikayaAkyo Man, that's rough. Your party had good reasons to kill the fleeing bandit (plus as far as you knew, they could be heading for reinforcememts). I think the GM's mistake here, though the premise was interesting, not having the son break down when cornered with "Please! Mercy! I never wanted to be here, I hate these people. I am basically a prisoner. I want to go home!" Surely a scared young man would do that when swords are brandished at him by adventurers thinking he is one of these bandits he doesn't even like. Heck he could literally fall to his knees and sob if he is just scared and no fighter! He could then prove himself by showing the party where the keys were and freeing the captives, perhaps showing the group where extra captives were that the party didn't know of. If he was cut down after that outburst and him maybe saying he's the mayor's son (perhaps a hint earlier that he's missing) then consequences may have been more fair.
Even if you're running a campaign based in a world you created for a story, let the players change that story for the campaign. It can actually help you make better characters to have them be in situations you never thought about them being in. Heck, take prominent characters from your story and play them in other people's campaigns, fit them into a different setting and allow them to change drastically, it's fun stuff.
My players once found some big holes in the logic of major faction leaders of my world, allowing me to go back and write something more solid. Many characters of mine that were somewhat flat became quite fleshed out by being in other people's stories for a time.
Yep, pretty much what I'm doing! Been lots of fun, and I've also had quite a few opportunities to better my characters, especially who would be the protagonist if the players weren't. It can work pretty well as long as you don't force your players to follow your story, but let them make their own story in your world.
I started watching a group of pen and paper players and their dm always makes up the stories. They are always completely made up by him he writes a scriptwriter events that will happen in the world at certain times and if the players are there to witness them they will see them and if not well they still happen but the players didn’t knew that they happened just like real life.
They also stream their play sessions live on twitch and the chat can vote on random encounters that will happen at some point and the dm then needs to implement them in his story.
This group is so good and you can see that they are all very experienced in working with tv and stuff. ( they once had their own tv show but that show was canceled and so they started their TH-cam Chanel and twitch Chanel and made that their new tv platform.)
So it can work having a pre written story doesn’t mean it needs to be bad it depends on the dm if he is willing to let the characters do stuff he hadn’t planned and if he is able to improvise.
In my opinion, I'd rather transform my campaign into a novel (with my players' permission, because not my characters to just mess around with), not the other way around, but if I was running a campaign in a setting I created for a story, I wouldn't try to take the players through the events that my story was supposed to follow. The players aren't my characters, so I wouldn't expect them to just do what I would write my own characters would do, and therefore wouldn't expect them to follow the plot I originally set.
That seems to be the problem in a lot of these cases. A DM who says "I'm using a world I'm writing a novel with" often ends up being the horror story DM who then railroads the PCs into the exact string of activities the characters in their text follow, even if it's not what the PCs want/would do. They don't bother making a separate adventure for their players to encounter, but try to force them into the narrow confines of a story already told. This is how *not* to use your novel setting for D&D.
or hell, just use the setting, not the, yknow, plot of the book
Why do all the worst DMs featured on this channel do the creepy, forced romance thing?
“You meet this character and they like you, you’re in a relationship with them now.”
“What? Uh, I’d rather not. I’d at least like to be able to choose for myself if I like them first.”
“No, you have to be with them, elsewise I will expressly punish you for not doing so.”
God help the people these DMs hypothetically end up with IRL if this is their perception of romance
Answer to your question is that simple: They can't romance IRL because they don't know what it entails and don't have the necessary qualities.
"So she (Fighter) asks for the Druid and I to pass along a message to the DM to 'stop acting like a toddler otherwise he's going to lose a friend.'"
I _so_ would've just done this:
"@Fighter, stop acting like a toddler, or you're going to lose a friend.
Oopsy, wrong @, silly me."
Conflict in character can be good for the story. When it's a result of conflict out of character, it sucks like this.
Sounds like the problem is that the fighter's player is a narcissist.
The narcissist player did not care about any of them, and as such was never their friend.
I can see where fighter-dm was going and wanted with the mech fight, I think. Build all these connections between the party and the city, and then out pops a big ol’ fuck-you robot handled by the Prince that destroys the city and takes over the kingdom. The rest of the story is then the party building up and preparing to fight the Prince and his fuck-you robot.
How they mishandled it so much, I don’t know
Me: well crab, I sure wish there were another crit crab video that I haven't watched yet.
Crit Crab: I have surfaced from the watery heavens to deliver unto my watery subjects a new crit crab video for each and every one of you.
Me: Huh
I- I am speechless-
Beautiful
The fighter reminds me SO MUCH of a friend I had who acted a lot like that in our games. Constantly arguing with whoever was DMing over things that nobody else took issue with (often things that didn't even involve her character). Insisting that the DM was trying to force us/her character into something. Even in games where we were kind of being railroaded the things she thought she was being forced into were... not it. Like, basically her character suffering any consequences for her actions was seen as her being forced into something.
It sounds like the OP is non-confrontational.
My advice for the OP is, It is ok to say no.
“Not my circus, not my monkey” is going in my list of phrases
Me: is a relatively new player
Also me: is going to homebrew and dm a full campaign
Watch these videos and take notes on what NOT to do.
@@zachmanf.7479 I do, thankfully I have enough common sense to understand what is fun and what isn't. I take inspiration on what not to do generally😂
Good luck with that. Don't get demoralized if it doesn't go good the first time. Pretty much everyone in my party has a story about a party wipe happening in their first campaigns, including me lol.
@@theeshyguy thanks! I am in the worldbuilding part, and taking it very slow cause I want a lot of lore and intricate things I can use if needed. Its more of something to have ready when I'll have actual time to dm
@@theeshyguy yeah, my second campaign was an informal one, and the DM left, and we were all newbies, and for some reason it came upon me to DM. Drow imprisonment and the entire party being eaten by the kraken ensues.
As a DM I jokingly complain about how "my party always derails my campaign!!" and blah blah blah. But in reality I'm pretty upfront with players about how it's their world just as much as it is mine. Yes, I have plans for each session, and the world I have built will keep on turning no matter what they choose to do, so there are always natural consequences to actions they choose or refuse to make, but I really enjoy that and they seem to as well. Though, most of the time when they "derail" the campaign they really just circumvent a bunch of danger and just kick my ass, but I rejoice with them in their triumphs. Plus, when they mess around with crazy options that I don't expect or consider, it keeps me on my toes and the most fun and memorable moments in a campaign happen in those situations.
The fighter is making me think of Puffinforest's video on rule lawyers because they fit the bill like a glove
19:34 sums it up perfectly. I had the same kind of fight but less nonsense. My players knocked the arm off, I ASKED which one they were targeting and confirmed with them. They won that fight. My players might be a bunch of newbies but they're no dummies lol
"Didn't your last campaign have a forced romance with the same person?"
OP- yes but that's probably a coincidence
OP naive anime protagonist confirmed
Where is the harem for this naive op? THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE CONDITIONS FOR BEING A ANIME PROTAGONIST
@@galuxius1861 I think this is a horror anime with a yandere villain.
@@Poldovico Oh no
Please post more long-form videos like this! I love listening to your videos in the background and the longer format is great
When the DM said "you lose your spell slots" the player should have said "What spell slots?"
As someone who is actually writing a series of books that feature an alternate universe comparable (but not the same) to our own, that second story aggravates me to an extreme. It sounded like she had quite the interesting world, but her style of DMing ruined it for everyone involved. I had to compare it a bit to what I've been doing with a friend of mine. She's currently reading my stories and loves the universe I created, so asked me if we could have roleplay sessions within it with one of her own characters. I happily obliged and basically became a "DM" of sorts, though there is little fighting, no dice, and just generally roleplaying and creating a story within said world. I explain the scenes, give voice to all characters but hers of course, and I allow her to react to situations or create situations herself. She's having fun while I'm using it as a chance to world build (and our sessions have been extremely useful for me).
Listening to that DM get angry that people were trying to enjoy the world she created and tell them off for reacting to the situations she gave them annoys me greatly. This could've been a chance to grow her creation and show it off to her friends and get their input. Instead she destroyed that chance. That first story was horrible, but for me the second one hit closer.
yeppp. Trying to retell the exact same story the dm is writing rather than just having an adventure set in the same universe with some of the same characters... Recipe for disaster.
@@Romanticoutlaw Exactly. In order to make sure we didn't interrupt the actual story I wrote, our RP is set in the "past" as well. She gets to meet a few of her favorite characters while they're younger, but is given her own missions in the world so there's no "interference" between them. They go on their set path in life while she cheers them on and does the same with her own path. While there are certain world events set in stone already, there's more than enough leeway for her to create her own story in that universe, with me being able to add to my overall world building. Thanks to this, she's actually influenced the main story a tiny bit (Thanks to her one character has a stylish goatee now and another was gifted a special dagger).
I happily recommend doing this for any aspiring writer with a creative friend.
I sometimes use the unstoppable boss at early levels to make the party have a goal for later one. But I make it clear that this is a cut scene and that they can't do anything about it.
And my players are usually smart enough to realize that if an 18 on the dice don't hit you should retreated.
lmao i cant believe this girls claim that shes writing a book. she couldnt even write fifty shades level fanfiction based on what im hearing lmao.
This. I have literally read AND written fanfictions that are better than this person's whole a-- book.
Yeah, I am a bit confused as to what the DM was thinking they should or would do? I can see having a robot destroy parts of the city and then get beaten off if the Dm wanted to set the evil prince up as a long term BBEG for the party to take on again when they are higher level, but the DM complaining about it seems to just confuse me. Hearing the story that is where I thought it was going when the DM said they were all stunned automatically. Dunno.
You heard of critcrab, now get ready for nat1lobster
Both parts in this video? Heard this story before, my recent problems was with a group that didn't try to include me in character talks aside from the DM and the party rogue a couple times. Was kicked from the group cause "they didn't like how I RP", I'm new to DnD and it was my first campaign how am I supposed to know how to RP with the group dynamic? Still friends with them and the DM at least let me sit in for 1 more session to wrap up my character's story and he got a happy ending so that was nice. Currently in a different campaign playing a completely different character, it's been fun, but IRL tends to cancel sessions such as DM doing college homework and sometimes another player be working. Hoping to continue the campaign soon
Did they at least tell you what exactly it was they did not like about how you RP? If they didn't, it's probably not such a great loss anyway. Success with your new group.
Not really and they don't seem to want to talk about it which is kinda irritating. I don't see the need to walk on eggshells around people, I can take any criticism bluntly. But at least the DM let my guy have one last hurrah and a happy ending. Other campaign is currently going slowly cause that DM is in college and it's been difficult for him to have a free day. Might try to find a second group to keep my D&D craving satisfied while I wait for my current DM deal with life. It's a fun campaign and I want it to keep going, but the "sorry can't today" is getting to me. Don't think he's lying cause he has a friend that lives locally to confirm the DM is busy with school or personal life stuff. Hopefully the campaign can continue soon, especially since I'm having fun with my new character
Ahh, see, thinking that playing in the DM's novel would be good was OP's first mistake. Little did they know, they were only there to enact the exact plot the DM had planned. Silly character, did you think you got to have agency?
Eh. I can see that working well IF... IF, you're not using the book's plot. If you're just using the universe, that works well. It can even be a great way to road test your worldbuilding, because the players will pick and prod at every hole for you. But you should never ever expect to use the actual plot of the book as your campaign.
One of my favorite DM stories has to be when I DMed for a group of 10 players. We had a tabaxi that broke Mach 7, a couple druids, a couple bards, a drider, a beeftank, and a few others. The beeftank (dwarf fighter) and our wizard (a gnome illusion con artist) had a combo where the gnome would hide in the dwarf's rucksack and perform Dragon Fire on the dwarf. I was running a campaign where they were opening tombs full of undead and imprisoned gods, who had been imprisoned during an Egyptian espue time. Yep, mummies. And lots of fire.
I am simple man. I see Iron Giant, I click.
That was my attraction as well
Welcome to downtown Coolsville.
Wait I thought this was a juicy Iron Giant lore timeline
It's a good movie. One time I was at the Mart of Walls, looking through their movie bins and I recommended the Iron Giant to an older couple shopping for gifts for their grandkids. I told them it was an "animation classic" and they decided to take it.
Same. I hadn’t seen anything involving that movie in years, saw the thumbnail and immediately clicked it not knowing what the video was. Happy to know it was a Crit Crab video but I was interested nonetheless lol
I played a situation almost exactly like this. It's soooooo frustrating, particularly when the fighter character was killed and nearly tore the group apart with her saltiness
Fighter is extremely toxic. I had to deal with a player like this and I know that these types of people want everything to go their way all the time and think it's everyone else's fault if things don't go their way.
17:20 The DM could have just said that OP's character just temporarily forgot how all her tech and tools worked.
First one had issues, but second one was cringe all over. I'd torch the bridge with that dm especially op.
"Im writing a novel based on this homebrew."
You know it makes you wonder exactly what kind of red flag would be enough to give you serious concern if THATS not enough...
this 100% sounds like a narsasistic personality disorder.
Dude I was just saying this when I saw your comment.
Absolutely, I agree 100%
with the first story it reminded me of the borderline disorder
I didn't think anything specific, but the entire time my mind screamed "UNADDRESSED MENTAL ILLNESSES"
Honestly this just sounds like poor social skills and a bit of impulse control. Narcissism is a whole lot worse.
One of the best things for a DM to do is just to put up a list of bullet points they would like the players to hit and decide when to throw the bullet point down to keep things going. It's fine if your game has a story and backstory, but it should mostly act as a set dressing for the players to interact with. A DM/GM that is going to moan and whine about player decisions someone who would probably be better off just writing how they want things to play out as a personal story.
There are a few different kinds of terrible DMs, but I think I've managed to identify the 5 worst of them. You have the "You're supposed to do what I say when I tell you that you can do something" DM, which is what most people think when you say someone is bad DM; the "You're not playing the race and/or class I want you to play so I'm going to punish you with the game itself by making everything x times harder" DM, I actually played with one of these DMs and mentioned a general overview of my experience with them in the CritCrab subreddit under a tagline about something that probably needs to be discussed; the "yes, I want to please you all the time so you're allowed to make rolls and I'll usually say you passed if it's anything outside of combat" DM, most people don't think these DMs are too bad but they are actually some of the worst; the "No, I'm not looking at your rolls if it doesn't involve my plans for the game, so even if you roll a Nat 20 to do something random I'll still say you fail without looking up from my notes" DM, and I'm sure some of you can think of a case where you dealt with this kind of DM; and the "I have no plan whatsoever, I'm literally making it all up as I go along and winging it and hoping things aren't too clunky" DM, and this last one can be a good DM because sometimes players come rolling up with characters that are technically fit the setting but you weren't anticipating those sorts of character so you have to revamp most of your notes as the game is starting and during the game (especially if the game is intended to be a one-shot) but this usually applies to DMs that are just to lazy or not on top of things enough to properly plan in advance.
This is gonna be a good one I can tell by the title
Edit : it was a good one
Fighter- you’re railroading!
Same fighter now a DM: this is how you should railroad
"The reason for this is that she was writing a book..."
Oh god no, I can already see where this is going...
If a DM ever tells you, I'm writing a book set in this world, thats not even a red flag, its a black flag.
There are certain occasions where that can work. I'm writing my own book based in my D&D world except instead of railroading the party, I'm basing the book on whatever they choose to do. In a way the entire party is writing it. But it can definitely be a red flag a lot of the time.
@@diddydragon yeah that’s true. I mean I never played any pen and paper but I can see where someone having a book that they are basing their story of can lead to a very railroaded adventure.
I have ideas for a setting that I may use for a couple stories. But they won't be the basis for any game I'd run in said setting.They'd jsut be...part of the world or certan characters' backstory and nothing directly involving the hypothetical players.
The 3 rules of DM'ing:
1. Don't railroad
2. Respect the players
3. Never expect your players to run... ever... at all!
You know, the funny thing is, the DM in the second story could have really easily salvaged the whole thing. Simple: the party fought the mech, which bought the town just enough time to bring up their defense system, thereby saving the town. This way, their efforts weren't in vain, but the difficulty of the fight is still justified. The idea wouldn't be to win, just to stall. BOOM! Easy! Players are happy cause they get to be heroes, and DM is happy because things go the way she wanted them to.
Actually writing a book about a dnd campaign sounds awesome. Once the campaign is finished and you have the consent of your players/DM, of course.
And I could also see using a book your writing work, as long as you're only using the universe and not the plot (let's be honest what dnd group ever follows the plot through?) It could help you discover plot holes you didn't know existed and help flesh out characters. What that DM did was no, no on every level.
imagine thinking you can be a player and dm at the same time.
Haha, yeah, imagine that...
Help
I can confirm having tried it, it's...Not easy
Nano machines son
I have a DMPC in the campaign I DM but he’s meant to be dedicated fully towards supporting the party rather than being an active hero
Imagine thinking you can beat Raiden
The last statement of the video rings especially true for me. I haven't done many DnD sessions, and never finished a campaign, but I will never forget my very first session ever (a homebrew horror campaign), where the players (me and a friend) were presented with a puzzle, and I completely broke it by just shattering the glass case protecting both our objective and a monster we would've had to fight, and killing said monster with NAT 20 rolls. Our DM was pretty mad at me for it but we had a good laugh, even though said DM hadn't at all planned for us to get much further than the puzzle, and ended up improvising the rest of the session (which was about 4 hours)
So the prince of this kingdom, who lives in this city, builds a giant robot as an assassination weapon with a laser that is fully unable to penetrate the defenses of the city and will actually get one-shot by that same laser when it is reflected off of the defenses.
I'm sorry did they misspell suicide as assassination?
as well as big, public loud coup as assassination
I think the Prince may be an idiot.
I swear I heard a longer version of the context story on your channel before, same fighter who ended things, shared unwanted videos, dm'd a bad campaign, and something about jailbreak.
Well im a player in a dnd group and somehow i manage to become the group leader by vote. I hope i can made through the expectations.
Ps: the reason for the leader things is a lore reason. Our group grow up (npcs join the guild) and we were in need of someone to be the face of the group
Man I was waiting for a new CritCrab upload! Good work my glorious Crab-lord.
Love the thumbnail being the iron giant
Thanks to your videos I've learned quite a lot about how to be a good DM and how to write good stories^^
For once, just ONCE: I'd like to hear a story about a campaign with anime elements not go to hell in a handbasket...
well you never will, because this channel is about the horror stories.
@@pphyjynx8217 shit you right
UWU
@@wolfclaw719 are you a furry btw
They did do glory stories for a while. Like the dragon who was explained friendship or The wholesome necromancer one. Hey, I personally include the pun one there too. So who knows, maybe there'll be a glory story on it eventually. I'd sure like to see it happen, see what someone could do with it without getting creepy/Weird for once
This reminds me of when I ran a one-shot and spent most of the session building up the area and things in it only to spring a chimera onto 3 level 1 characters with no armor and no weapons.
They were able to use what they knew about the area to trap the chimera and kill it in almost a segmented boss fight.
All the power and control was theirs and they loved it.
I tried seeing if I could recognize anyone from the discord
I couldn't
Shame
The person sounds just like a friend I had she’d message me all the time as soon as I woke, she played dnd a few once or twice and she said she was so experienced, She wanted everything to go her way, and she also wanted the spotlight.
Never try to run your fanfic as a d&d game
Why would you say something so bold yet controversial lol
The best game I ever played in was literally the guy saying "Hey you guys wanna be characters in my comic world?"
Always run D&D games in your fanfics. It gives you a world and a lore to work in. Because not everything will be hyper focused on RP, it will feel more like the world exists outside of just the party. It will feel more full. This is what you want in a game.
@@TailsClock playing a game in someones fanfic/novel means you have no choices because every event in the story was meticulously planned by the dm who will throw a tantrum if you do anything even remotely unexpected or "offscript". Sounds like your dm let you actually play d&d so he was Inspired by a fanfic, not running one.
@@The_Sharktocrab playing the story told in the novel/fanfic yeah, don't do that, but it's totally fine to play a disconnected story within the same world. Friend of mine is in a campaign taking place in his DM's novel's world, but taking place some time in the future as to not directly effect the story of the books. Another example of a cool way it could be done, habe another story going on at the same time as your novel/fanfic, taking place somewhere away from the main character's plotline in an ongoing story, let the campaign influence the books somewhat, and certain events in the books influence the campaign.
Conceptually, unwinnable encounters at the current level aren't the *worst* idea in the world. My DM has managed to pull them off before and they still felt satisfying. We were once hit with a really tanky golem with explosive fists and who knows how many hit points, but it didn't actually care about wiping the party as long as it got what it wanted out of us. After I went down, it even actively hoped I would live because I was so much fun. The second story's big encounter could have worked, it's just the weirdo behind the screen.
hell,just have the prince have other weapons on hand to use, or have other defences to keep pesky heroes off the mech
Great video, natural twenty crustacean.
First AD&D game I was ever in the party left town on the high road on our way to adventure. The DM had a special encounter table that had every monster in the MM1, MM2, and Fiend Folio in it. So we were jumped on the start of our level 1 journey by an ancient Red Dragon. The party scattered and released the spare horses hoping maybie someone would get away. The DM got mad we hadnt charged the dragon and used it to hunt us all down. Showing off excellently how none of us could dent it.
So do cow-girls need special brassieres to support their chest-udders, or????
Edit: EMP = Electro-Magical Pulse
Depends on just how furry we're getting. I've seen........ art.... where the solution is clothing like pregnancy clothes that support built into the pants. If we are dealing with Kemomimi then cow girl means just an anime girl with cow ears, horns, and lactates from her regular breasts.
Love this channel, I've been watching these to learn how to be an effective DM and what to look out for. I'm still a long ways off to being a DM, still feel like I have a lot of learning to do, and I'm hoping to run my first campaign in the future.
The first story is either extremely toxic (god i hate this word.) friendship or it's just FULL of tsundere energy. Either way I feel bad for the DM as I just recently had the same situation Cleric was in.
Hey. Just found this channel, and honestly, I'm hooked. You're like the RSlash of D&D stories. I'll definitely be checking out more and subscribing!
I can Emit a had brushed my toes in the water of railroading and felt guilty but I'm glad my players saw this and helped me make a better solution that made them feel great,culminating in them drowning a paralyzed vampire
That second story sounds straight out of Final Fantasy just with more animal races. The tech aliens are basically the Garliands and the mech portion is also very similar to a major event in FF9 where a city is about to be destroyed but some type of mechanical device saves it. It could just be coincidental though.
17:00 i side with the writer mostly but in this one instance i side with the dm as i consider artificers to still be spellcaster despite the cool descriptions. also you lost your spell slots at level 1 so between a paliden and a wizard that's like 3
Even when you SPECIFICALLY dictate that a character doesn’t use magic, at all? That makes no sense lol
It hints at a lack of creativity and consideration
The DM could’ve easily made it make sense with ANY amount of effort. They just didn’t care
An EMP would’ve been perfect. Semi-magical means of replicating tech would’ve also worked. I’m sure there are any number of ideas that WOULD make sense
But taking away spell slots from someone that doesn’t have them is dumb... it makes no sense. It’s inconsistent with the campaign up to that point
Fell asleep to a playlist of yours and woke up to discover that I knew about you a long time ago thanks to that Assassin Revenge story. This makes me happy, like super happy, so enjoy a sub you Crucial Crustacean! x 3
It doesn’t matter how you flavor your artificer/wizard, you need to still acknowledge your “spells” as magic mechanically. You shouldn’t get a free pass from counterspell and dispel magic just because you say so imo. Unless the DM is also letting tech aliens avoid, but I also call malarkey. It’s a part of game balance, otherwise you should give the other players some bonus.
I don't know what the rules of that homebrew were, but I imagine if you're running 'anti-counter' alternatives to magic, the caveat would be that they run out of ammo and you would need to restock in an actual workshop with cost requirements instead of just taking a long rest.
Based on OP's description, the FighterDM had explicitly told her the aliens' tech was expressly not magic. So if her own tech was based off the aliens', then it tracks that her tech would also not be magical.
Either way, this was clearly a miscommunication/misunderstanding between player and DM expectations. And... seems to be the only part where FighterDM is not clearly the one at fault.
Yeah you both have fair points. If it is a more integral part of the setting, then hopefully it has limitations. Shame it wasn’t handled well regardless.
Yeah, I feel you on that playing a character that dislikes practically everyone needs to be done right. It can be hard, especially when everyone else just thinks the character isn’t going to grow at all. I played one, the DM liked him so much that he brought that character back as an npc for another group he was running and from what he told me they liked him a lot. So i guess I did something right with that character.
Obviously the Fighter/Dm was
S urely
H elping
I nferior
T eammates
with her antics
I
Eat
Cookies
Regularly
@@Welcometohaileyshardware i e c r??
As the OG DM/Shifter Wizard in these games... 😂😂😂 this was great to hear read. Earned my sub for sure