Pet peeves of D&D gaming

[Mystery Man]

• When I forget about a cool affect of a creature, like a cold, true seeing, invis etc. After combat when I look at what I forgot I could have done its like losing a winning lottery ticket or something.
• Forgetting or glossing over important descriptive details, I'm horrible at remembering names. this is why I've started writing everything down, names, rooms, dialog everything.
• The word "uber"
• Get your freaking character sheets updated before you get to my house. Some people want to play!

 

[Arnwyn]

My pet peeves:

- players who constantly complain, but refuse to DM because "it's too much work".
- players who always want to play a completely strange and inappropriate creature/class that doesn't fit the campaign.
- players who don't use the resources available to them.
- players who don't bother to learn their character's abilities, much less the rules.

Things that I do that are annoying:
- tell the players what they missed after they finished an adventure
- look at a monster just after the encounter has begun, and mutter to myself "Hmmm. I didn't know it could do that."
- make just as many (or more) jokes as the players do during the game

 

[milotha]

GMs who think that the only way a female PC or NPC character can socially interact or problem solve is by seduction, flirtation, and playing coy. I've got news for you - Get over it. Grow up and get a more mature attitude. Sexism may exist in the real world, but this doesn't make it fun to role play.

 

[Dark Jezter]

people who don't show up is my #1.

That's my number one pet peeve as well. A couple of months ago, I booted a player out of my campaign because he was absent half the time, and when he did show up, he was almost always late.

 

[Wormwood]

Upon further reflection, I only have two D&D Pet Peeves:

1. Players.
2. The DM.

Everything else rocks.

 

[Acid_crash]

-Players who don't know what their character can do and expect the GM to explain everything to them whenever they want to do something.
-Players who have no clue what to roll when the GM tells them to make a Reflex check, or Initiative check, or attack roll.
-Players who think they are good roleplayers but constantly use the excuse, "I'm a Rogue and that's why I can do what I do."
-Players who use the Alignment as an excuse to do anything, "I'm Chaotic Neutral so I can kill that person if I want to because I don't follow any laws." (this pisses me off, whether or not I'm a player or a GM).
-GM's who don't offer any description of the scene. "You all walk into a bar. What do you do?" (Come on, that's just pathetic. Describe for me the bar.)
-GM's who play favorites.
-GM's who enforce rules and not understand what they are enforcing.
-GM's who think they are Gods and can railroad the group how they want.
-Players and GMs who don't communicate anything.

And I'm sure I can come up with a whole slew of pet peeves...it just makes me wonder why some players play the game in the first place when they obviously dont' care enough about what they are doing.

 

[DragonLancer]

I'll add another to my list:

Players who don't buy a copy of the PHB. Or who insist on using a printed copy of the SRD. Just buy the damn book for pete's sake!

 

[Gundark]

A lot of the things that people have mentioned would annoy me. There are lots of ones that others have mentioned .

From Terwox:
# DM's who play favorites, give certain PCs tons of special powers, while wantonly killing everyone else (man, I despise that.)

# People who think D&D sucks and that they can write a better system. This is pretty common among people I know... and they're all wrong. (see this a lot of thison these and other d20 boards)

From Zappo
Players who, when faced with something strange but not terribly important, assume that the DM either made a mistake or is deliberately fudging, instead of going out and investigate.

From Chupacabre
2) Players who don't know basic info about their feats, spells, or other abilities and have to look it up over and over.

From Force User
~I've griped at players because they were late to the session, or showed up without dice, or pencils or a character sheet. (I h8 it when players do this)

From William Ronald
* DMs who have no sense of campaign balance, and will have characters of greatly varying power in the same party -- and power being the only thing that truly matters in his game. (Santa Claus DMs)

* DMs who seem to center everything in the campaign on their pet NPCs.

* DMs who railroad characters. (story-line Nazis)
From Herpes Cineplex
* When the GM just sits there and says "So what do you do?", as though the entire game world has absolutely nothing interesting happening in it that should be called to our attention. Encouraging PCs to pursue their own goals and be proactive is fine, I'm just irritated when a GM doesn't bother to prepare anything or come up with any non-PC-directed plot, preferring to give the players the "Fine, your characters can just sit there until they decide what to do" routine instead. For god's sake, if you're going to run a game, run a game. (I had a DM like this, this was soooo irritating, what’s more he thought he was God’s gift to DMing)

* I'm overly "helpful" with other players, piping up with suggestions without being asked to. It's particularly bad when someone is playing a social character but seems to be fumbling an in-character conversation, and I'm trying really hard to stop doing it.

From Panthanas
I'm surprised no one mentioned meta-gaming. It annoys me to no end when players use knowledge their characters wouldn't have a clue about.

And now from me


*Cheating…whether it is with initiative or stats (I rolled those, honest!), I can’t stand dishonesty.
* Counting….players are like we’ve done about 75 points of damage. This guy should be dropping soon.
* I’ve got a player that her dice always falls of the table about 80% of the time. She insists of rolling right near the table edge (cause anywhere else is bad luck). It is sooooo irritating.
* DM competition, one DM we had was super competitive and would put down the other behind his back and try to turn the group against the other DM. This caused a split in our group and some friendships lost.
* Whining….period….h8 it

And stuff that I do that’s annoying
• I DM a lot so I have to be careful when I play that I don’t take over and try to be the Player/ DM (Oh that’s not right, the spot DC should be….)

 

[DragonLancer]

• Games being on hold/cancelled because 1 specific person didn't attend a game session (I can understand not having enough people there to play/run, but not stopping a game because a single person didn't show). Even worse when said person has a bad habit of not showing up for games, even though he/she said so (see a previous bulleted item for that gripe/peeve).

I once ran a short-lived Star Wars game (D6 system), and had one player who went off on one because we continued play one session when he couldn't make it. He insisted that the game should not take place when he isn't there to play his character. Needless to say, after that he wasn't invited back.

 

[Beretta]

As an aside: the best weapon for damage is actually the falchion in the hands of a fighter specialized in it and with improved critical. Ignore the 2d4 base damage, it's all about the 2-handed damage bonus and 15/x2 threat range.

Not true - I've done the math. The best weapon is the Greatsword, followed by the Greataxe, then the Falchion.

As a matter of fact, the falchion only becomes sightly better than the greataxe when the wielder's Strength is 30.


Back on topic, as pet peeves:

Players that have to calculate their attack bonus *every round*.

Players that cheat their dice rolls and try to roll again if they think you weren't looking (that's when peripheral vision comes in very handy).

Players that wait until their turn to decide what they're going to do in their action, and then spend a while struggling to decide (they had the rest of the round while 5 other players had their turn to at least boil the options down to one or two choices).

Players that, having played the game fortnightly for two years, still attempt to move and make a full-attack action.

There are more, but the ones I mentioned would have to be at the top of my list.