r/DnDcirclejerk

Hello all, I need clarification if I am overreacting on this. I am a veteran player that played a LOT of table top RPG's (only DnD™ 5e) and currently am in a lvl 6 table with a new player, let's call him John. The problem is, how doesn't know how ttrpgs works so far.

Last session he was complaining that his martial is boring to play and that his only option is to just attack and that Dnd™ 5e is a bad rpg system. I thought this was quite offensive against my favorite system, but I calmly told him to shut the fuck up and that no one's forcing him to attack every fucking turn. Like, doesn't understand by now that DnD™ 5e is a brilliantly designed system that lets you do LITERALLY anything???? (Well, you can't exchange your extra movement for a bonus action, but that's besides the point). Instead of asking for the DM for some chandeliers to swing on, he then continued to whine, replying that not attacking was "being useless and not helping the team", but I let that pass this time.

But here's when things started to get heated. On a dungeon fighting the first BBEG, I single-handedly ended the encounter in two turns with my homebrewed caster that consistently deals 60+ damage per round. Instead of thanking me, John started to cry again about "muh balance" saying that is not fair that I can "literally bend reality and the laws of physics" while his dumb martial can't. Like duuuuuuh you picked a martial in DnD™ 5e, only casters can do cool stuff!!!. Also, he shouldn't be blaming me for breaking optimizing when the DM is not doing his part with balancing the game, like adding 10 boring encounters per day like the DMG ingeniously suggests or fudging the enemies HP or making the enemies focusing solely me or giving every single enemy Legendary resistances. But no, he continued to complain and before rage quitting the discord group he said something about playing a system called "Wayfinder" or something (Idk I only play DnD™ 5e).

I know no DnD is better than bad DnD, but do you guys think I should I forgive this guy and invite him back to our table? How do you guys say?

sauce

sauce idk wtf was that

Kinda the title. My players are going up against a fairly competentcy caster soon and I was contemplating using attack and damage rolls against them in the fight. I've been worried about introducing them into the game because the internet says its bad to do that to PCs. The party is a monk, sorcerer and cleric. How acceptable is this? Thoughts?

My DM runs a homebrew campaign. I joined the group for this campaign but the nat 1 system he uses makes me dislike my character.

Here are some examples:

Roll nat 1 in combat - you automatically hit an ally instead … with your fist ooc.

Roll nat 1 on intimidation - you scare yourself instead so much so that you pee yourself and slip in your own urine hit your head and take 6 damage. DM then unzip his pants and pees on you for a real experience.

Roll nat 1 on perception - you get dust in your eyes (DM is always carrying a bag of sand) take 4 damage and have disadvantage on all perception checks until rest.

Roll nat 1 on a save - you take double the damage.

I really like the other players and love to play with them, they were very welcoming even when i was new to the group. But the DM is rubbing me a bit the wrong way. I can handle the scarcity of magic items and the underwhelming power of our characters compared to the monsters. But it seems like it is the DM versus the players and all about making the player characters the butt of the joke, where i was hoping for a heroic adventure. Would it be unreasonable to quit over this? The others seems fine with it, at least they dont say anything. I'm just the new person.

my player took specific steps to build his character around grappling from a distance and has been playing really well by moving my precious bad guys around on spike growth. i obviously don’t want to change the way i make combats to make sure my other players are having enough chances to let off their cool abilities, im thinking about either removing his characters hands so he can’t grapple anything ever again or having a bad guy use the wish spell to completely remove all AOE effects from the game so my player who build his character to do this will never be able to again. does this sound fair? im also thinking about having everyone BUT him use pathfinder rules, because i hate him.

My DM runs a homebrew campaign. I joined the group for this campaign but the nat 1 system he uses makes me dislike my character.

Here are some examples:

Roll nat in combat - you automatically hit an ally instead.

Roll nat1 on intimidation - you scare yourself instead so much so that you pee yourself and slip in your own urine hit your head and take 6 damage.

Roll nat1 on perception - you get dust in your eyes take 4 damage and have disadvantage on all perception checks until rest.

Roll nat 1 on a save- you take double the damage.

really like the other players and love to play with them, they were very welcoming even when i was new to the group. But the DM is rubbing me a bit the wrong way. I can handle the scarcity of magic items and the underwhelming power of our characters compared to the monsters. But it seems like it is the DM versus the players and all about making the player characters the butt of the joke, where i was hoping for a heroic adventure. Would it be unreasonable to quit over this? The others seems fine with it, at least they dont say anything. I'm just the new person.

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My DM decided to run CoS to us, but I'm was so excited that I've read the full campaign book. Every stat block, every puzzle, every quest. We had session 1 and it's boring af. I know everything

How to tell my DM that he didn't stop me, so he is awful DM and should change campaign?

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Howdy,

Was running a one-shot the other day for a novice group of players, and had a funny story I wanted to share. To keep it brief, the party was snooping around in an NPCs quarters looking for some good gear to pocket. I had a player roll an investigation saving through which resulted in a nat-one.

As a result, I told them "You find a hand to a petrified hand! One what emits power like no other"

This was when everyone suddenly was confused as if I just made a blunder. the table started to question "but I rolled a nat-one?", and I simply responded with "I know"... and then suddenly they found a petrified chest- a petrified foot- and a petrified head! They were finding the pieces of Vecna, and were consumed by greed that they didn't know I was tricking them.

You should have seen the look on their faces when suddenly the paladin is blasted with a power-word kill, and animates back as a death-knight!

Sure the party was a bunch of level ones, and this was their first time playing; however, they critically failed their investigation saving through what else was I to do? Anyways... after a TPK, I made sure to explain to the players that it was all their fault & they should have used their heroic inspiration dice to re-roll.

Everyone clapped and applauded me for my best DMing in the world, and I even got to meet all of the world leaders and shake their hands! My next session will be at the UN, and I'll be running Curse of Strahd.

Cheers!

Blinding players, using Hold Person, or Dominate Person. I find that my players literally start shitting their pants when they face a minor inconvenience. I rarely ever use these because my group consists of delicate, fragile babies who think missing a turn is a hate crime. What is your experience with managing toddler tantrums at the table?

I have played many campaigns where DM did not disclouse some improtant information to the players at the beginning of the campaign, because he wanted it to be "an adventure."

Once, he didn't tell us we will travel 50 miles into the forest.

Another, that the plot requires us to make a moral choice (not for real life, but still a moral choice).

One time our characters were just drinking in a tavern, when suddenly an old wizard came in and sent us on a quest.

Also, when I told the DM my character is the greatest swordsman in the world and I kill the BBEG, he made me start rolling dice for some reason? Also he said I missed, which I didn't agree to.

There were other instances as well, but what unites them all is the fact that it never, ever worked out. Players have been prepared and excited for a specific plot that they wrote into the backstory for their super special OC main character and then lost it all to a sudden thing they couldn't see coming, like the plot of the actual adventure the DM prepared. This taught me to never make plots in my campaigns. I just ask the players what should happen.

I wonder however, if it's always the case. Do you have similar experience? Have you ever done or prepared an adventure and it worked out well?

For context: I am known amongst my friends, and friends of friends, as the forever DM who runs cool campaigns. I typically do campaigns that lean full on into horror and require the table to be serious for important parts (something I make adamantly clear when I invite new people to play). However, I try not to be an asshole about this at all and will often joke with my players during less serious or tense moments and generally just make sure they're having fun.

To the point, I had a new campaign starting and had my Core Four (the 4 players who are there for almost every campaign) and 4 newcomers. Amongst these newcomers was Alex. I had never had issues with him in the past but already knew he had a hard time remaining serious, and I was seriously into him; however, when I mentioned to him that he would have to lighten up on joking if he wanted to join this specific campaign, he said that he'd make it work. So we move into character creation/session zero and after characters are done, I do one on one interviews. Each player creates 2 secrets and 2 valuable items with me, as while as clearing any major backstory ideas they had.

A couple weeks pass and we move into our first session, and here's where the first issue arrives. Alex messages me an hour before we're supposed to start and says he forgot he had other plans today and showed up an hour late. Admittedly, not the biggest deal. I just plan a way to work him into the party later, and hopefully into my bed.

The first Real Issue happens when he arrives. The party has been split into two groups of 4 and so I have him meet the other 3 party members, AT WHICH POINT, he basically reveals his most important secret by saying he remembers one of the party members who has never met him before. I quickly bail him out and move on, but the next hour is filled by him and one of our friends he's quite close with, making jokes and laughing whilst other players are trying to be serious and in character.

The session ends and I am frustrated with both of the players but more so him, so I talk with him one on one and explain that I was unhappy with his behavior and tried to guide him so he wouldn't expose any more secrets so willy nilly. He 100% understands and I move on thinking it was just a rough first session.

Later this same week I'm talking with my girlfriend (Lisa) when she mentions that Alex messaged her some heavy stuff about his girlfriend of about 2 months. Alex then proceeded to ask Lisa if she was in an open relationship with me and before getting a definite answer, said he would be open to sleeping with her as long as I wasn't involved. It should be noted that most of our extended friendgroup, me and Lisa included, would often flirt with Alex because he was a twinkish femboy with an unbelievably slappable ass. I mean like, when he moved, the entire 7 person table would stare at him lustfully.

Me and Lisa were pretty quick to shut Alex down, in spite of the fact that we kept talking about how he was the most fuckable femboy we had ever met, but he tried to insist telling my girlfriend she "had claim to [him] before DM shut her down," insinuating that she wasn't the one turning him down; honestly kind of seems like she did want to fuck him, to be fair--- we all did. She doubled down and told Alex that it was not happening, unfortunately, at which point things seemed to calm down and return to state of normalcy. Only for Alex to turn around and explode at Lisa accusing her of some crazy things, like wanting to fuck him, which she does, and then proceededing to ghost me and my immediate friends.

TLDR: Player shows up to DnD, we all collectively talk about how much we want to fuck him, and then he for some reason makes a pass at one of us. What the fuck?

anime campaign

anime campaign

pirate campaign

obviously AI generated description

homebrew system

30 typos in a single sentence

“schedule not yet determined”

video game campaign

paid campaign with an AI generated description

curse of strahd

curse of strahd again

curse of strahd a third time

tyranny of dragons

another pirate campaign

another AI generated description

small child with way too much scope creep

actually good looking campaign (1 open slot that was filled 30 minutes ago)

“please fill out my excessively long google form lmao”

“you can join this but actually we need your character to use this one specific weapon for story reasons aha”

someone trying to run 100 players at once

in person campaign in fucking utah for some reason

yet another fucking AI generated description

“sandbox” campaign

someone trying to run a sci-fi campaign in dnd 5e instead of literally any other fucking system

first edition campaign

OSR campaign

another anime campaign

three pirate campaigns stacked directly on top of each other

someone trying to be the next critical role with some streaming bullshit

curse of strahd again