D&D 5E BardTales- Woeful Table Tales + A Poll

[Ralif Redhammer]

Rules arguments are a pain...it's always someone trying to reinterpret the rules to their advantage, another form of Munchkinism.

I do loathe adventures where a single PC is the star, whether by DM design or by player action. Everyone should have their time to shine.

Rules arguments infuriate me as a player, especially when it's during a session.

But noting infuriated me more than wasting a night of RP which was promised to be "a well-thought out adventure with a DM who's known for his deep stories and plots" and presented with "a castle full of Death Knights because they're cool"... and only one character of the seven of us had a magic weapon. The Paladin. BY DM DESIGN.

In short, the adventure was centered around the Palaldin character. In shorter short, the Paladin DIED during one of the earliest fights, and the only, ONLY reason why ANY of us got out alive was because my old gaming buddy rolled a 2e Elven Bladesinger. *snerk*

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

let's see... dust off my way-back machine and see if I can summon up some memories of really wacky stuff.

There was one time when about 6 or 8 of my friends and I were playing Shadowrun. I was GM, everything was going smoothly, everyone was working well together and getting things done... and then one player says "I go shopping," and tries to make the rest of the session all about just his character, in an exchange that was something along the lines of:

Him: "I go shopping."
Me: "Alright, cool. What are you looking for?"
Him: "A pawn shop."
Me, confusedly: "...you want to buy..."
Him, cutting me off: "No, I'm going shopping at a pawn shop."
Me: "What are you planning on buying?"
Him, forcing the issue: "Have I found a pawn shop, or not?"
Me: "Yeah, sure... you get to a pawn shop called Murdok's, it's open even though it is the middle of the night, and looks pretty secure and well-stocked. What are you looking to buy?"
Him: "I go inside."

And so on, including me outright saying "No, stop it, no role-playing right now. What are you trying to have your character buy? This is Shadowrun, not Shopping-all-by-myself-like-a-goon-while-everyone-else-waits-run," and him getting bent out of shape that I was glossing over the boring details, which was ironic because...

Same guy, different game, and before the show-stopping shopping trip: The players were entirely in control of where they went and what they did when they got there, and could go on literally any kind of adventure they chose and I would put it together on the spot for them. The decision came down that this dude wanted his character to get a castle, so I presented some ideas of castles that maybe he could claim as his own. He chose the one seated in an island nation nearby with locals sending requests far and wide for someone to help them out because their good king had turned foul and monsters were plaguing their lands and lairing in the castle - so the adventure was all about exploring this castle, room by room, sorting out what the cause of the rumors was because the castle initially seemed entirely deserted when the party arrived.

And this player said, about 5 or so doors in "Ugh... I hate doors, it's so boring to do the step-by-step of see it, check for traps, listen, unlock, open and all that." to which I responded "No problem, man, if that stuff bores you we'll just skip from you picking what door to head through to me covering what happens next, assuming that you did all the little step-by-step standard procedures each time."

Of course, then he apparently got bored of waiting for me to tell him what his character sees after opening a door and decided to start interrupting me with "I kill it." every time I said some iteration of "You see..."
Which I answered with a, and I admit it was entirely petty of me to do so, demand of an attack and damage roll, which he obliged gladly until I got to the describing of the results of his attack: He opened a door, saw a desk covered in papers that might have provided some hint as to what was going on around the castle, and immediately destroyed them and it with one mighty blow of his (ridiculously powerful) keen icy, shocking, and flaming burst scythe +1.

Then there was a time I asked him for one of his just-opened pack of cigarettes because I had run out and wouldn't be getting more until the next day when I got paid, and he said "No, I've got to make this pack last me through the weekend," and another friend of ours that was present fished a quarter out of his pocket and said "Here, I'll buy one from you for a quarter," which was a deal he accepted and I got the cigarette I had asked for. The following day, I was met with proof that the one cigarette I'd asked for previously wasn't going to make the difference between that pack lasting him through the weekend either way. He showed up for a game session, and as he is walking in there are a few of us already sitting around getting ready, including that a friend and I were cracking open fresh cartons of cigarettes.

He asked our buddy "Hey, can I bum a smoke? I'm out." Our buddy responded "Oh, these aren't mine, Aaron bought them" which was true, but not really relevant since I had bought them for said buddy so there were his to do with as he pleased. So this guy looks to me and says, "Can I bum one?" and I say, "You got a quarter?"

He turned right around and left, didn't come back till the next week. I felt a little bad for it because I was just giving him a hard time for being so stingy (the group of us having had an established pattern of share and share-alike, including taking turns for one of us to take the other 6 out and treat them to a nice dinner, and that on more than one occasion each of the rest of us had given him our second to last cigarette, and then split the last one with him too), but he left so fast that I didn't get past holding back a laugh at his reaction to saying "I'm just <expletive deleted> with you, have a whole pack, dude," like I had planned on when the joke popped into my mind.

And, just so that I tell a tale that doesn't involve this one guy: Three of us (but I was the only one of three present for any of the above, if that matters at all) were hanging around waiting for other folks so we could go and do something I don't fully recall, probably was a parade day (Mardi Gras, New Orleans, all that [literal] jazz), and we decide to play some Shadowrun.

Got characters together pretty fast. I was playing an ork street samurai that typically paid the bills with P.I. work, and my buddy was playing that ork's big-dumb-troll stereotype friend. Our friend that was running this impromptu game (which was his idea, for the record) sets it up that we are a bit strapped for cash and don't really have anything on our plates yet, so we need to get out and do some legwork to find a paying gig. We do that, encountering some fun NPCs along the way (my favorite being the ganger that tried to mug us as we were heading to my car, but found himself out-bladed and out-chromed... only to later try to mug us downtown and be like "Uh... no... that was some other guy" because the GM had unintentionally described these two separate gangers the same way) and head back to the troll's apartment to plan how we are going to get the job we found done.

Then there is a knock at the door of the apartment, which my character answers because we did order some food and it could be the delivery guy. Nope, it's guys we've never seen before with shotguns and angry faces. So they both blast my character in the chest with the shotguns, which lays him out but managed not to actually kill him thanks to dermal plating, and proceed into the apartment... where they must have forgotten they had shotguns because the next hour of my life was sitting out of a 2-player game while the DM rolls out a fist fight between these 2 unnamed goons and a troll. They weren't even there to try and kill anybody, literally just to get our character's attention and deliver the message that some NPC I don't remember didn't want us doing whatever job we'd just been hired to do.

And they through my character out the window into a dumpster before they left (again, with their shotguns that must have only had the one shell each despite being described as pump-action, or maybe had some strange racist biometric safe-target system that won't let the trigger engage unless the barrel is pointed at an ork) because they didn't think I'd quite gotten the message yet.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

...it's always someone trying to reinterpret the rules to their advantage...

I've actually got a tale of a time when it wasn't!

One character was in a grapple with some monster. Another character steps up and blasts that monster with some kind of cone spell.

Then the argument starts. The player of the character in the grapple asked me if that cone would affect his character too, or if because the monster grappling him was large it could be aimed in a way to get the monster but not his character. I say I'm cool with it not affecting his character. The player of the character casting the spell insists that the two creatures are in the same space and it is impossible for his character to not get them both in the area of the spell.

The worst part of the argument, though, was that it wasn't actually a player arguing with me (I was the DM at the time), it was a player completely ignoring that I had weighed in on the argument and arguing with another player, who he kept saying "but you're not the DM, you don't get to decide that," to when that player would say anything along the lines of "The DM said you don't have to target my character to target this monster" (until I actually got fed up and raised my voice louder than his and told him to stop talking in the most attention grabbing and blunt manner I could muster, then repeated what I had already said more than 20 minutes prior as soon as he cracked a book to reference at the beginning of the game-derailing argument).

I doubt it would surprise anyone that the argument starting player in this tale has since been permanently banned from my table.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Heh! Ironically, at a recent con game of Shadowrun, two of the PCs had to sit out 75% of the adventure because they wanted to go shopping for some grenades, and the GM ruled that it took them hours to go shopping, while everyone else went on the adventure as planned. So pretty much they paid to do nothing for most of an entire adventure. One of the worst GMs I’ve seen in recent years; I stopped playing Shadowrun Missions at cons not long after that.

And so on, including me outright saying "No, stop it, no role-playing right now. What are you trying to have your character buy? This is Shadowrun, not Shopping-all-by-myself-like-a-goon-while-everyone-else-waits-run,"

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

Heh! Ironically, at a recent con game of Shadowrun, two of the PCs had to sit out 75% of the adventure because they wanted to go shopping for some grenades, and the GM ruled that it took them hours to go shopping, while everyone else went on the adventure as planned. So pretty much they paid to do nothing for most of an entire adventure. One of the worst GMs I’ve seen in recent years; I stopped playing Shadowrun Missions at cons not long after that.

...yeesh... further evidence supporting my theory that far too many folks that GM for captive audiences of strangers do so because no one with an informed choice in the matter would choose to sit at their table.

I haven't been involved in any sort of organized or in-store-so-you-can't-turn-players-away-unless-the-owner-decides-to-ban-them games for like a decade because of stuff like that (and because last time I was a GM for an organized play group, the other GMs got really angry with me because the players in the group decided they'd rather play at my table than theirs, and they took me inviting them to play characters too as an insult and tried to leverage the owner of the shop we played in to ban me... so I promised them they'd not see me around the shop anymore, and only shopped during the times that they had specifically said they'd not be available to run games at the shop, and started having the players that wanted to play with me as GM meet me at a park just down the road rather than in the shop).

 

[Unwise]

Heh! Ironically, at a recent con game of Shadowrun, two of the PCs had to sit out 75% of the adventure because they wanted to go shopping for some grenades, and the GM ruled that it took them hours to go shopping, while everyone else went on the adventure as planned. So pretty much they paid to do nothing for most of an entire adventure. One of the worst GMs I’ve seen in recent years; I stopped playing Shadowrun Missions at cons not long after that.

I don't know the particulars of course, but I don't see that necessarily being a problem with the GM myself. PC makes a Streetwise roll, does not do well, GM says "OK you know a guy that sells grenades but he is in the next city over, it would take you 3hrs to get there and back. Remember your crew only has 3hrs to save the hostages..."

If the PCs decide to go shopping rather than go on the adventure they are being paid for, that does not seem like a GM issue to me. Its like if a PC decides to go get drunk at the pub when they know the rest of the party is on an adventure. Goodness knows why players do this, but they do it far more than I would think.

I have had players try and bully the DM into changing the game around them before. Case in point, a player wants to forge a magical weapon, but it will take a month to gather the components and make it. Something to do in downtime right? The player did not want to wait another adventure for his new shiny toy though, started work on it right away and ignored the fact that they were in the middle of stopping a lich from rising.

The rest of the PCs go off on the adventure, player staying behind whines and complains so much that they turn around and come back and sit around doing downtime stuff while he forges his blade. The lich rises and as per his threats, wipes out all of the settlements in the eastern part of their kingdom and raises most inhabitants as undead, including the families of half the PCs. Queue PC in question complaining "but we never had a chance to stop it!".

 

[Eis]

reading threads like this I am always so thankful that I don't have to rely on gaming with strangers.....although sometimes I don't think it gets any stranger than my friends

 

[Tanaka Chris]

I've actually got a tale of a time when it wasn't!


One character was in a grapple with some monster. Another character steps up and blasts that monster with some kind of cone spell.


Then the argument starts. The player of the character in the grapple asked me if that cone would affect his character too, or if because the monster grappling him was large it could be aimed in a way to get the monster but not his character. I say I'm cool with it not affecting his character. The player of the character casting the spell insists that the two creatures are in the same space and it is impossible for his character to not get them both in the area of the spell.


The worst part of the argument, though, was that it wasn't actually a player arguing with me (I was the DM at the time), it was a player completely ignoring that I had weighed in on the argument and arguing with another player, who he kept saying "but you're not the DM, you don't get to decide that," to when that player would say anything along the lines of "The DM said you don't have to target my character to target this monster" (until I actually got fed up and raised my voice louder than his and told him to stop talking in the most attention grabbing and blunt manner I could muster, then repeated what I had already said more than 20 minutes prior as soon as he cracked a book to reference at the beginning of the game-derailing argument).


I doubt it would surprise anyone that the argument starting player in this tale has since been permanently banned from my table.

That's probably less of a
"I must hit him cause the rules say so" and more of a "I just want to smack my ally.... by "accident""

 

[Eltab]

Its like if a PC decides to go get drunk at the pub when they know the rest of the party is on an adventure.

My PotA group * is supposed to be staffing a tavern so the real owner can go take a 3-day weekend. The Fighter (whose player has serious pay-attention-deficit-disorder) is the bouncer but decides to get drunk. He got rather upset when I used _Message_ to tell the bartending PC to water his drinks down.
Just to be a jerk, I was encouraging our drunken bouncer to arm wrestle the chief goon we suspected of being in on the Evil Plot Du Jour. Had I succeeded, I was going to use my invisible _Mage Hand_ to tickle him (the PC) under the armpit - to make him twitch and lose the contest.

* My character just levelled up to Arcane Trickster and I want to explore the possibilities; maybe you can tell...