D&D 5E REALLY REALLY BAD DM ADVICE

[Jfdlsjfd]

Reward the players who spent time detailing their background, most notably friends and family, and make them part of story by killing them offstage and burning the city they live in. You can have them taken hostage, too, as players will love that. If they don't and complain, don't worry: third time the charm.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

• Split up the party as often as you can and for as long as you can.
• Most of your plots should be based on the minutiae of the cultural background of your homebrew campaign. Your players will catch up.
• Playing pop music during the game makes the whole thing much more fun for everyone.

 

[Oofta]

Force everyone to write up detailed family history with parents, siblings and friends. Enforce a strict no orphan rule. Every session is based on kidnapping, killing or maiming (not necessarily in that order) an NPC on that list until you run out. Then miraculously start raising some of them from the dead so you can continue the campaign.

Have exciting house rules like a D6 with a different body part on each side. Every time a monster crits, that body part is removed. Throw mobs of monsters every encounter and enjoy the fun as limbs go flying.

Also throw in a house rule that every time a PC rolls a 1 they fumble no matter their level or how many attacks they have. Your fumble chart options only include: break weapon, throw weapon away (preferably into lava or over a cliff), critically hit an ally. Always roll your dice behind a screen so monsters never ever fumble.

 

[zztong]

5. Never use game aids like miniatures or graphs. The Orc is always simultaneously within range and not within range.

(My favorite.) Orcs are very much like electrons. They don't have a location so much as an orbit.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

(My favorite.) Orcs are very much like electrons. They don't have a location so much as an orbit.

Indeed. If you know their initiative, you can't know their position, said Heisenberg.

 

[Undrave]

Advertise a horror based D&D game. When the players get there let them know there will be no combat, no spells, home brew classes such as "athlete" and "scholar". Oh, and it's going to be set in modern times, there is no magic and you have your own skill based resolution system.

Too soon?

I feel like I missed a story here.

 

[Oofta]

I feel like I missed a story here.

There was another thread which was a bit ... misleading in what he was asking for initially. It's the How do you do horror when running D&D? I feel for the guy - he really, really hates D&D but can't find players for a horror campaign.

But if he advertises for players he gets no response, he thinks he would get players if he advertised a D&D game. So he wanted to advertise a D&D game that has no combat ever. Eventually it came out that he would also throw out pretty much all the rules from D&D. No leveling, custom classes (athlete, scholar and so on) and so on.

Again, I feel for the guy. It also seems like he's not playing D&D in any recognizable way, shape or form.

 

[Undrave]

There was another thread which was a bit ... misleading in what he was asking for initially. It's the How do you do horror when running D&D? I feel for the guy - he really, really hates D&D but can't find players for a horror campaign.

But if he advertises for players he gets no response, he thinks he would get players if he advertised a D&D game. So he wanted to advertise a D&D game that has no combat ever. Eventually it came out that he would also throw out pretty much all the rules from D&D. No leveling, custom classes (athlete, scholar and so on) and so on.

Again, I feel for the guy. It also seems like he's not playing D&D in any recognizable way, shape or form.

Ouch...

 

[prabe]

Ouch...

"Ouch" about sums it up. If he disliked D&D less, he might be able to find people to play with and introduce them to other games (which ... cool--broader experience seems like an overall good). Trying the bait-and-switch-esque stuff he was talking about doesn't seem likely to end well for anyone, and will probably turn the D&D players off of other games.

 

[Oofta]

"Ouch" about sums it up. If he disliked D&D less, he might be able to find people to play with and introduce them to other games (which ... cool--broader experience seems like an overall good). Trying the bait-and-switch-esque stuff he was talking about doesn't seem likely to end well for anyone, and will probably turn the D&D players off of other games.

To be fair he claims that he doesn't want to do a bait-and-switch. That he's going to be up front about what he's doing. But the more he explained, the less and less relationship to D&D his game was going to have. If I were in his shoes I'd advertise something like "Looking for a horror campaign alternative to D&D?".

It's more that he pivoted from running a horror campaign in D&D to running something that threw out practically all of the rules.