D&D 5E DMs, what are the most baffling and/or pointless questions your players ask?

[Greenstone.Walker]

I might describe a fully stocked bookcase, and one of them will be like, "I pull a book from the shelf, what is its title?"

Surely it should be "The Lusty Argonian Maid"?

 

[MNblockhead]

Here's one:

The party encounters a door.
Player: "What sort of door-handle is it?"

I have been asked this question at least 10 times in the past year, and I have no idea why. It never seems to make the slightest difference in what they do.

Next time, I think I'll say, "an octopus," and see what happens.

Seems like a great opportunity as a DM.

I know that since a DM cannot plan every little detail that it can be stressful or annoying sometimes when you get questions like this. But, I think it is a good thing your players are asking these questions. It demonstrates that they are invested in the game.

They may be asking because it helps with their immersion, just give a description that fits the setting and, like any other description, include more senses than sight. Not only to help immerse them in the game but also to have them keep their guard up. The DM says the handle was cold to the touch? Is the room cold? The DM says that you pull the iron handle to open the door, it wobbles as you grab it. Oh oh! Could it be a trap.

I like to describe some characters or symbols engraved or stamped in things, which are just maker's marks, but players may feel inclined to figure out the "meaning" of the marks.

If players are dragging the came to a slow slog, you can use your words to make the mundane nature of something obvious. And, of course, having some timed danger to keep them moving helps.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I might describe a fully stocked bookcase, and one of them will be like, "I pull a book from the shelf, what is its title?"

"I don't know, what IS it's title?"

Lots of people seem normal at the surface level, but you still get a gut feeling that there's more than meets the eye. Personally I think the DM should roll insight behind the screen and tell the player the resulting insight gained.

I tend to get players to roll insight any time I think that an NPC has something ulterior. Most of the time it's pretty innocent, which means me asking for a roll doesn't immediately set my players thumbs prickling. Successful rolls either further an investigation or simply build up the NPC's character.

 

[Slit518]

I'm DMing a game. The Druid usually shape shifts into a dire wolf. This time, the druid is shape shifted into a giant spider.

She misses several attacks in a row. I say, "Guess you weren't... Hungry Like the Wolf." Everyone laughs and I queue up Hungry Like the Wolf on YouTube on my phone and proceed to play it and many of us sing along. (Note: I had recently been going through songs from the early '80s and had listened to this song a dozen+ times in the last week. I knew the lyrics inside and out).

I'm singing along to the song and other players are talking to me. Or something. "What's its AC? Do I hit? Can I move over here?" Why are they asking me questions? I have an awesome '80s song to sing!!!

"What? Oh, yeah. You hit it. It's dead. I smell like I sound. I'm lost and I'm found. And I'm hungry like the wolf." You just can't beat lyrics that make no sense like that.

Red Hot Chili Peppers does a good job of having lyrics that make no sense in a lot of their songs, and yet their songs are awesome.

 

[Lanefan]

My group asks a few silly things but mostly they are the opposite and don't ask enough questions. They are mostly new players but we are on about our 12th session and I feel they should have a better idea of what to ask and why. I have addressed this with them more than a few times outside gameplay but they still want to run through closed doors without checking first. In the last session they ran from one battle into another room without checking straight into a boss battle. I even asked them "so you just want to run into that room without checking" to which I received a chorus of replies "YES!". You would think the Player Death from the prior week for doing the same thing would curb such enthusiasm.

Never curb that enthusiasm!

Let 'em keep charging headlong, iut's what makes the game fun!

Lan-"and I assume you mean character death, not player death"-efan

 

[jrowland]

"What are we doing here (in the dungeon, in town, in the woods, on a ship, etc)?"

I actually want to run "To Slay a Dragon" from ENPublishing just to point to the title every time that question is asked.

 

[GameOgre]

Is it ok if I cut open this giant rat and search it for gems or anything else that might be inside?


This said probably for the hundredth time despite me saying"frankly, no it is not. It's not ok man, I mean your character can indeed do it but why you always do this every time even though you never find anything and I just flat out tell you "man I am not DMing Diablo, you will not find gold or potions or treasure inside living creatures" and every single time you look at me blankly and say"ok I got you,but I can look right?".

Once after like 20 beers he let me in on his secret. He thinks I'm trying to out fox him. I'm waiting for him to stop searching and then I will let him and everyone else know they missed out on the one ring or something because he didn't bother to check it.

We just laughed and laughed for the rest of the night.

He still asks me this at least once a game.

 

[discosoc]

"How big is the room?" literally seconds after I just described it. It's like some people just zone out during the descriptions and can't imagine anything beyond a set number of squares. It's gotten so bad that I now have to figure out ways of describing things without stating measurements. So instead of saying the room is 20 feet wide and twice as long, I have to do something like "it's about as big as this room, but twice as long."

It's amazing because a lot of these guys come from Warhammer type games, but apparently they can't measure beyond inches.

 

[Mistwell]

Questions which are not pointless or baffling, but which I rare have the answer to right away:

"Which way does the door open?"
"How high is the ceiling?"
"What's the ground surface like?"

 

[Chaosmancer]

"Should I do x?"

I have players who ask me for advice on what to do. I just answer by telling them that they can try anything they like, and it's up to them if they think they should or not.

Oh god, this reminds me.

I’ve got one player in particular, generally decent player, no longer new at the game.

About every other week he’ll ask things like “What will happen if I ask the Captain about the Goblins?” “What will happen if I break this glowing rock?” “What happens if I attack this guy?”

It makes me want to throttle him. You don’t get to know the exact consequences of your actions before you do them. You’ve got no idea what the glowing rock is, so you have no idea what breaking it will do. You’ve never even talked to the Captain before, you don’t know if he is in a Goblin conspiracy or if there even is a conspiracy to be involved in. I’m not going to play fortune-teller with you and layout the entire path of the game for you to look through and choose.



This brings me to a second player, my sister’s ex-boyfriend who is forever cemented in my mind as the worst. Simply the worst.

During one session when they camped outside the Ogre’s cave (after attacking the ogres outside the cave, driving them in but not pursuing them and fighting further) they were ambushed by said ogres (truly a shocking turn of events) during the night.

He then demanded to know how I would run the ogre’s darkvision. Would I move them directly towards his character if he was outside of their darkvision, or move them in a general direction and then correct their course once they spotted him. This was a 20 minute real time conversation as he insisted on pumping me for the intimate details of how such a system works when compared to his video gaming experience.

He then proceeded to spend the entire fight directly next to the ogres, never moving out of melee range with them.


Truly, I despised that guy, and not just because he was horrible to my sister. He was just such a pain and a tool. I still remember him saying that to “truly understand him” I had to understand the Dark Souls gaming series… I wish I was joking about this guy, I truly, truly do.