Pet peeves of D&D gaming

My pet peeves, followed by the bad this I do


my peeves, all of which happen in my game and wont stop happening, grrrr:


Rolling the die before you declare your action. Often used so you can claim you were just absent mindedly rolling if you get something bad and ths discard it, while keeping the good rolls.


Out of Character Chattter.
OCC that is louder than the DM currently talking.
Falling in to OCC whenever a scene doesn't directly involve you.
Indulging in OCC all combat round and then not knwing what's going on or what your character is going do when your own round comes up.

Not knowing how your own spells work.
Not knowing how your spells work and not looking them up untill its your turn in initiative.

Never involving the NPCs in conversation except to gain tactical info, IE treating them life info-dumps and plot points not living people.

Players who consistently rely upon the other players to understand their own character sheet.

Characters with all the personality of a monopoly game piece.

Character's whose backstory consists of "I am that other PC's brother. I am from the same place and had the same experiences." and nothing else.

Stupid fu.cking joke names. God, I hate that.

Players who bug you to give their character clearly broken or overpowered abilities, spells, or items, often ones they just made up off the top of their head.

People who, once you've begun to play d&d, find them selves unable to talk about anything but d&d for any length of time while in your presence.

Games where you show up and it takes forever for people to actually get started.

People who get to high or drunk to function. I, personally, rather enjoy a joint and some beers while gaming, especially when amongst close friends. But if you can't get high with out falling asleep or drink beer without getting real drunk you just shouldn't do it at all.

DMs who when told a player's disatisfaction with the game or with some plot point reply with a variation of "Too Bad, I'm the DM".

Campaigns where every bad guy is motivated by their desire to A) take the loot from our corpses, or B) commit constant random acts of horrible evil, or C) because they were hired by someone with motivation A or B. The only exception is people who used to be motivated by one of these but after surving a combat wit hthe party have devoted their lives to following us around and randomly attacking us. Every enemy that survives a combat with the party wil become similarly obsessed.


Things I do but shouldn't:

Gripe, snipe, and bitch at people. Which is never pleasant for me or them.

Flipping Downtime. Already poorly organized masses of npcs, mosnter stats, and campaign notes get mixed around during play requiring sometimes lengthy sessions of lipping through papers looking for that one errant page.

Character Favoritism. Some characters are really very interesting and enjoyable to have on the party. Others are seemingly mute cyphers with stats for personality. I try not to care but I think often my personal bias shines through.

Trading favors. One of my players is also the DM of another campaign I'm a player in. Sometimes we will agree that, for instance, if I slip in a charisma or wisdom boosting item for his paladin my game he will slip in a strength or constitution boosting item for my barbarian in his game. I know, it's so wrong.

Delight in player casualties. I don't go out of my way to kill characters, no more than that job of DM demands, but when it does happen I often can't help but act gleeful about.And sometimes I even cackle.
 

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Emirikol said:
What do you hate?

jh



...

People who refer to women who play RPGS as gamer "gurls". The word girl is spelled G I R L.

People who whine.

Moving on...

There isn't really much I can think of that is a real pet peeve. The only thing that springs to mind is some of the players I game with take a REALLY long time in combat. Some of the guys I game with do things that are unpleasant like belching loudly during the game, etc. But I don't think that is directly related to gaming.
 


Djeta Thernadier said:
People who refer to women who play RPGS as gamer "gurls". The word girl is spelled G I R L.

it is a play on the fact that many male gamers have never played with a real girl/woman/lady

most are playing online (url) ... with 46 year old inmates named Gus portraying themselves as 14 year old anime powder puff gurls.

just like gaymer is short for ....
 

Hmm... Pet Peeves of Gamers

Hmm... let me think. Here are a few things that bug me a little about some gamers:

0. Players that try to play every aspect of the game (try to be diplomat, spell caster, power fighter, scout, translator, trader, cleric, etc.)
1. Sidetracking into irrelevant conversation during the game.
2. Players who get jealous of others characters.
3. Players who "intend" to do something but don't mention it until something bad happens - and then expect the DM to allow their unmentioned intentions. (We all really need to learn how to play with our mistakes... these are characters, not gods... they are imperfect just like us.)
4. I hate that everyone just gets up in the middle of something. We need to start scheduling actual breaks.
5. People that get annoyed with the DM - it is his/her game, his/her rules, and if you don't like that fact you didn't have to join to begin with. Please respect other people's stories. They spent lots of time putting whatever crazy ideas they have together so at least be adult enough to respect the DM or leave the game.
6. Players that take a certain alignment for a benefit/class, then act the way thay want to and then try to justify it as being appropriate.
 

* Lycanthropic PCs. Particularly werecats of any type. More particularly werecat monks.

* DM-PCs

* Chaotic Neutral being played as Daffy-Duck crazy.

* Spontaneous PrC aquisition. Wow, neat trick - where'd you learn it? Middle of the hoary wilderness and the monk suddenly sprouts magic tattoos out of nowhere. The rogue suddenly realizes.. hey wait, I can hide in plain sight now! Uh.. no.
 

Herpes Cineplex said:
You at least seem to be doing the smart thing, which is recognizing when the PCs aren't going to be proactive and immediately taking steps to nudge them along. Me, I like it when a GM nudges me, especially if it's by having something happen or pointing my character towards something interesting.

I don't like the idea of forcing the PCs to do anything (unless it's a direct consequence of their actions), because I know a lot of players hate that, especially if they feel they have no control over it. I give them options, but they have to be the ones to take the lead, and I prod them along when things get slow. Luckily, I've had players who seem to understand that and start taking the lead when things slow down.
 

ThoughtBubble said:
People who don't play to the game type. You know the guy who, in an over the top action game is trying to convince the party to find out if CAPTIAN EVIL THE OVERLORD OF DOOM is really evil by not destroying the megasuper weapon and talking to him instead. Or the guy who, when he finds out the game is a set of military operations wants to play a pacifist expert who's opposed to the war.

Even worse when said person defends himself by saying "I'm role-playing," which for some reason he thinks will make it all better. It's one thing to play a character that will be challenging; it's something entirely different when you make a character that's little more than a pain in the ass for everyone else at the table.
 

Joke names have been mentioned several times. My peeve is that the names I come up with (as DM) always become joke names. The players invariably make some bad pun or coin a goofy nickname for every significant NPC and a lot of place names. I can actually see the players trying to come up with something funny every time I introduce a new NPC or location. Once or twice was funny, but every single time?

:mad: :mad: :mad:
 

Zappo said:
  • 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.

That one is high on my list.

Perfect example: Party is in a large throne room. Rogue touches the throne and spells trigger casting the entire room into darkness and opening pit traps and activating animated enemies with reach weapons that don't require light to find their targets.

Player gets really mad that he isn't hitting a target within his 5 foot reach, but keeps getting pegged by enemies. Instead of moving to counter things or casting spells, or anything else, the party feels their way to a wall, puts their backs to the wall and proceed to slowly die at spearpoint. The other players realized something was up and didn't complain since they realized they failed to do anything other than let their characters commit suicide, but the one player raised a fuss trying to say I had been doing something outside the rules and that "the combat system doesn't work that way, you're being stupid".

(Just for info - party was 5th level, enemies were 6 skeletons with spears. Party was almost full up on resources. They heard stone on stone and suspected the pit traps were there so they didn't want to chance the center of the room. They could have at least backed along the wall in one direction while fighting defensively until they found the door, or done a number of other more potent things.)
 

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