How much will you yield your preferences in order to actually play a traditional game and have a group in the first place?
What are the absolutely non-negotiable things for you?
My closest friends play the modern game while I'm desperate to get anything else tried.

>>95882867 (OP)
>What are the absolutely non-negotiable things for you?
If DM's sense of humor feels just too fucking stupid, I'll leave.
Too bad there's no way to know until after playing.

Not an inch.

I don't have fun if the other players are too jokey and have NO fun if the dm is too jokey. At that point I'd rather just hang out and joek around watching youtube videos of retards trying to cook or making gay sonic animations

>>95882867 (OP)
>gritty, low magic racist game about interparty romance

>>95882921
That just sounds like the average racist group desu.
It is also gay (as we've mentioned before, they are very racist).

>>95882867 (OP)
>would you like to play a game with winning and losing conditions, or would you like to do romance larp?

What the actual fuck kind of question is that? Why does the latter exist? No, of course the latter isn't valid, why does this exist? Who the hell is playing games where where there's zero stakes and people are constantly pausing the game to have gay neckbeard sex?

>>95882929
>zero stakes
>t. never been in a relationship

>>95882929
Roll for AIDS after that gay neckbeard sex.

do they mean intraparty

>>95882929
the second one also has winning and losing conditions

>>95882956
Like getting AIDs?

>>95882928

>>95882956
>tfw you end up the cuck in your coffeeshop romance fantasy game

>>95883001
Correct.
I don't want your cringe ass lovely dovey shit I want to brutally attempt to murder my love interest and he has to be into it, I don't want to half assed fight, sex is about domination and I am not a bitch (bottom), we'll sword fight and then stab each other that way it is only gay for one of us.

>>95882867 (OP)
I usually get to have both. My tastes are very different from most of my friends, I find high fantasy with everyone being a speshul freak race and some kind of unexplained magic user boring. But they still join the games I run, which are more on the gritty side, and we have a great time. Hell, I'm usually the system variety hour, and they're always willing to learn whatever dogshit game I wanna try that year, which is cool.

And recently I'm joining in on some of their typical 5e games too. Is it my first choice? Not at all, but anything's fun with the homies.

>>95882867 (OP)
>>95882929
The rule is

Grimdark campaigns: Always become goofy satire like Dungeon Crawl Classics and Warhammer 40k, no one really cares if their character dies and no one remembers each others names. The 'realistic grit' is just counting arrows and eating biscuits that the GM never audits. After a few session of eating biscuits in the forest the party decides to try to have the most hilarious deaths as possible whenever they get bored with their character, which is always

Sparklebright campaigns: Ones that start as goofy games with furries and anime elves are always most drama filled and intense. They have played the same character for half a decade, they have families, flying castles, airships with novella sized backstories and a persona
Players will have funeral for dead NPCs that have bloodlines from previous campaigns; if a character they like dies the party vows vengeance then goes to hell to get their soul back from not-Satan in the most Doom-like scry and fry you could imagine where they act out the Long Night of the Soul as they try to redeem them through a blood sacrifice to not-Jesus to resurrect their friend as the gates of hell are opened once more

>>95882867 (OP)
I'm pretty flexible when it comes to the tone, I'm drawn more to humour and levity, but if the mood's serious, I can respect it. I get hehe funny out of my system by doodling the gags and quips outside of session time.
My non-negotiable is simple: I'm not going to play D&D. Fortunately this hasn't been a problem, because the groups I've found are willing to play a lot of other systems.

>>95883103
Oh yeah, as for non-negotiables, no magical realm shit. I can't imagine sitting down with my friends and playing into someone's jerkoff fantasy. One guy I know included some moth monster girl rape pregnancy thing in his game, and I couldn't want any less to do with that shit.

So, anything's fun with the homies, but with a big asterisk. Keep your porn to yourselves niggas.

>>95882867 (OP)
Non-negotiable:
>no random IRL memes integrated into the game in half-assed fashion just because the DM or a player saw something they thought was funny that week
>no gay baby X card BS; if you're unhappy about something then address it like an adult
>no D&D ever again
I softened up on this last one so I could play again after being perma-DM for years, and not only do I believe it was a mistake but so does the rest of the table who got used to the other games I ran, current DM included.
>no eating full-ass meals during the session at the table; light snacks are fine, but nothing major that will detract from playing the game
>no outside of the table drama being dragged into the game
Those are most of the hard rules. There are several soft rules and thin-ice things I can trust some but not everyone with.

>>95882929
You fool, the romance option has like a 65% chance to fail and then dissolve the entire group(aka the ultimate lose condition)

>>95882937
"Feeling sad" is lame and gay next to stopping dark wizard necromancers from conquering the world

>>95882867 (OP)
>My closest friends play the modern game
your firends with people that use X cards and safety tools in RP?

how exactly do you maintain a friendship with people who are so weak, unlikely to help you in a fight or coming race war? are you a gay race communist or childhood friends and you went to 4chan and they went to tumbler?

picrel what a party of murderhobos should be

>>95883530
>Only possible negative outcome in a high fantasy and romance oriented campaign "feeling sad"
you lack imagination

>>95882867 (OP)
>How much will you yield your preferences
None whatsoever.

>>95882867 (OP)
I'd have to get on with the other players.
Hence I play solo and don't have to compromise on anything.

>>95882867 (OP)
>character death and in game racism
>intergroup romance and safety tools
The faggot that made this hasn't played any RPGs and is clearly speaking entirely from the perspective of someone who is passively absorbing RPG discourse from twitter and probably bluesky now.

>>95883566
critical role watcher from the wu flu era probably.
but the market for content geared toward that crowd, IE never play but enthralled with the idea they could have as much fun as the people on the show (scripted, paid actors with a desire to make safe drama).
Its like the marvel movie-ionization of rpg's
it takes the history of comics and commercialization is pasted over it.
same with rpg's but because the ip is less controlled and you cant sue some one for making a whole comic real about dragons and dwarfs there is more near dnd like content vs fake wolverines out there.

>>95883110
You experience those things in that manner because you and your friends are a bunch of rancid bumboy theatre kids. Normal, sane, straight human males play games that include the full spectrum of emotional experience in the context of a serious world without requiring an endless stream of tension-popping MCUquips, freakshit races, or sickening furry ERP to distract them.

>>95882867 (OP)
I haven't played TTRPGs in at least 7 or 8 years. What the fuck is a safety tool?

>>95882867 (OP)
Two of my players live in a house that I pay the mortgage on. I yield on nothing.

>>95883689
Sounds pretty cucked to me, bro. You're paying their mortgage just to have a TTRPG to play? That's just sad.

>>95883684
Remember how in the past there would always be that one weird as fuck guy that nobody liked but put up with due to lack of players in every group? Basically they developed techniques to screen those particular people so nobody has to deal with them.

>>95882867 (OP)
Me and the lads pop off at the local tavern and drink our asses off for 4 hours, setting is whatever the fuck I want (Gritty, dark ttrpg for the most part), because im DM, we play DnD 5.E because its the only set of rules i know when shitfaced and they haphazardly know how to play, banger time tbqh

>>95882867 (OP)
I would genuinely just rather not play than play a game I dislike. As a rule I've learned to avoid SWADE because its a boring and dull system and I've yet to play in a DnD/PF game where either the GM or half the players weren't insufferable to some degree, so I've turned down all those games I've been invited to since I got out of high school.
FFG 40K games and A Time of War have been good, though. Still waiting on a VtM game that has been promised for like six years.

>>95883710
>just to have a TTRPG to play?
No, that just incidentally happens to be the case. I'm paying the mortgage because I live there, too, but that's less relevant to the fact that they're under my power.

>>95883817
Chuu2-kun...

>>95882867 (OP)
My preferences are so specific amd unyielding that I'm forced to play solo for anything approaching a satisfying experience. Any gaming I do with other people is instrumental for the purpose of maintaining social ties.

>>95883825
>implying a chuu2 GM is a bad thing

>>95882867 (OP)
Minus the safety tools the bottom one is ideal for me

>>95883141
>no magical realm shit
I have been absent from this board for so long that I read this as "no magical realism shit" and I was wondering why you would have such a strong aversion to the genre.
Now I kinda want to play a game in it.

>>95883680
But does he have fun?

>>95883110
>Sparklebright
I think I'm going to kill myself preemptively in case this is a term people actually use.

>>95882867 (OP)
>How much will you yield your preferences in order to actually play a traditional game and have a group in the first place?
I run open table twice per week.
Any group that forms or shows up has to play the game I'm running.
No lasting relations, no consequences, everything is one shot, you don't like, you don't come for the next one, I don't like you, you aren't allowed for the next one.
It's the perfect arrangement

>>95882929
That's not the question they are asking, but thanks for telling us all you're a retard regardless

>>95883081
Coping about being a faggot is honestly gayer than just fucking men.

>>95882867 (OP)
Anyone who describes their games as "gritty" is an insufferable faggot.

>>95882867 (OP)

Non-negotiable for RPGs:
>In-person. I'm not listening to a bunch of retards shouting over each other on their shitty mics. I want to share snacks and hear dice rattle across the table.
>No one actively resisting the call to adventure, refusing to fast-forward through long uneventful travel sequences, trying to get a private adventure by going solo, constantly asking the GM to repeat themselves etc. Come on, we're all busy adults with other things going on.
>At least one woman. They're always a moderating/calming effect on groups and solve problems in unexpected ways. All male groups get too rowdy and play weird power games with each other.
>Isn't a game I've played 500 times before. More power to you if you're new to DnD and still find fighting orcs and counting gold fun, but I'm more into horror, politics, cyberpunk etc these days.

>>95882867 (OP)
I don't, because I've cultivated a group of nerds who want the same kind of game experience that I do for the past 15 years, and we know what we're about.
We lean towards highly narrated, text only online play (originally over IRC, now over discord) with a focus on roleplay and high player agency where investigations and interesting choices in weird situations has priority over combat, but when combat DOES happen we lean toward it being nice and crunchy. It started as an AdEva group back in the day, and it stuck around moving onto other systems and such over time.

>>95882867 (OP)
I can roll with any tone for a group, so long as the setting meets my standards. That does, however, *usually* mean I don't sit well with extremes on the political spectrum, because my standards largely revolve around the setting needing to make enough sense that I can reasonably understand how my character is supposed to function in it, and the people of the setting that I am interacting with need to not be fundamentally stupid.
You get too far in either the grimdark direction or the pastel sjw direction and you lose all ability to take the world and its inhabitants seriously because they stop acting like people and instead act like forced exaggerations that are predictable in their lane and totally break down if you ever take them off-script. On the grimdark side of things this usually takes the form of "Okay, but have you tried solving your problems by not being fucking morons who actively choose the most miserable option every chance you get?" and on the sjw side its "I'm not saying that rape/slavery/whatever is good or anything, or even that I want it to come up in the campaign per say, but what do you mean it's *never happened* in the setting's world? Do they even know what those things are, then? Do they still have words for them even if no one has ever done it before? Don't look at me like that Trevor I'm just trying to figured out how this world you are proposing works."

>>95885158
You haven't played since 1981

>>95885158
Sublimely-crafted bait.

>>95882867 (OP)
I don't think that the concept of role playing games having "safety tools" is valid at all, things that are not dangerous cannot have "safety tools".

This shitty proxy-pol shit is gay as fuck, and OP's comic trying to reinforce it while saying "both sides are okay" is disgusting.

>>95883537
>furry in the party
>coming race war

We’ll have to put you down, I’m afraid

>>95884367
Yeah. That's the fucking point.
You all made being a faggot normal so we gotta cope like this.

>>95882867 (OP)
my demands are simple
>no more than 2 sessions in a row without combat
>no more than 2 combats in a row without party/villain repartee
>if your idea of a compelling combat encounter is random bullshit animal attacks I will pull a leg off the table and beat you to death with it

>>95886120
"safety tools" is fag-speak for "things that help get everyone on the same page so you don't end up with a Glorfumple the Friendly Goblin and Goblin Slayer in the same party".
it's not a coincidence that the only such "safety tool" that hasn't had a demonstrably negative effect on the experience at the table AND in the discourse is the one that has a passing resemblance to the GURPS campaign planning sheet.

>>95883684
BDSM bullshit they've tried to inject into the hobby. X-cards, to dictate the flow of the game and no you aren't supposed to ask what's wrong. Checklists to make sure what kinks, oops I mean tropes you want to or don't want to see.

Bunch of faggy bullshit.

>>95882867 (OP)
People are going to have general preferences, but I think anyone who plants a flag and refuses to move at all is a total mongoloid.
I like playing all kinds of games. Every time a campaign finishes, I take it for granted that my group will play something different next time.
Getting fucking OBSESSIVE about one specific game, or one specific vibe, is irrational and autistic. I would even go as far as saying that it's the most apparent, yet under-noticed red flag that ensures a given player will be an insufferable fag on the table. It signals an extremely closed mind, which means that they're absolutely the type of person who is going to get cunty and hostile at the first hint of pushback or other ways of doing things.

>>95882867 (OP)
Why can't I play the bottom without safety tools or other SJW shit?

>>95886725
>Why can't I play the bottom without safety tools

>>95886561
I had a player with certified arachnophobia once, I wish safety tools were a thing back then, it would made the freak-out entirely avoidable.

>>95882867 (OP)
My only standing rule is that I'm not going to be in an ERP game. Otherwise it's mostly just gauging how I vibe with the rest of the party.
I could probably be convinced to do something on the side with specific players in my current group but I'm keeping that shit away from the table proper.

>>95886855
I don't think we should coddle people who never outgrew their childhood fear of tiny harmless little bugs.

>>95883684
Faggy BDSM coded "Lines and veils" and safewords and "X Cards"

>>95882867 (OP)
I'm down for almost anything as long as the GM and some of the other players are people I've known for a long enough while that I can naturally vibe with. Gaming with total strangers is like running across a minefield.
Everyone I know is sick and tired of D&D. Although, our preferences have diverged in wildly different directions. Some of us prefer gamey systems like D&D4E/PF2E/MCDMRPG (all of which I utterly loathe). Some of us like rule-lite RPGs powered by Fate, Apocalypse World, Blade in the Dark, etc., which I don't mind, but none of these feel like I'm actually playing a game. I like crunchy customizable systems like GURPS and Hero, but these are the least popular systems in my current group, so even when I offer to run, I only have one or two players turning up.
I'm half-lucky half-unfortunate to have one GM who's willing to try running a different system almost every other week, but is allergic to game mechanics, so we never really get to seriously engage with the meat of any system we try.

>>95882867 (OP)
What a well balanced view.
To each their own.

>How much will you yield your preferences in order to actually play a traditional game and have a group in the first place?
Tough call. I haven't actually had to compromise, but I imagine people are in that scenario.

>What are the absolutely non-negotiable things for you?
Geeze man, a LOT of things can be negotiated. Like, if I was banging a chick the chick that brought me to the table, I'd play along with whatever crazy bullshit they came up with if her tits were nice enough. It's a pretty major time-sink though. It'd get annoying so I'd probably try subverting the table for fun on the side. But if the game is shit, you can just treat it like an excuse to be social and hang out. I've been in some "game-lite" games which are still an okay night.

>>95884367
Toxic yaoi is the purest form of love, Anon. Not my fault you're too much of a FAGGOT to see it.

>>95886947
very true. i sent someone a picture of a house centipede once and he went into a full-blown category 5 freakout because of it. same guy also had a clitty leakage meltdown over me sending him the part in TWD where negan makes fun of a fat woman for saying she's starving because i thought it was funny. at a certain point you gotta realize that having these childish fucking "phobias" and "triggers" as a grown ass man is just a symptom of terminal mental instability, and a warning sign to cut ties asap

>>95887804
It’s not even mental instability in a lot of cases, it’s a method of social control.

>>95883724
That's a fucking hilarious notion, because I've only ever seen safety tools brought up by exactly the type of people you want to screen out of your game

>>95886855
When I was 17 I was banging one of the players in my Call of Cthulhu campaign, and I learned she has a fear of moths (a moth woke her up while we were in bed and she started screaming and crying until I killed it).
When I found out I turned the whole campaign into the party foiling Migo plans and I made them look like giant moths.

It was fucking hilarious. She stuck with the campaign too, a real trooper, hyperventilating the whole way.

>>95888326
It only ever has been about social control. Anyone stable enough to live outside of a group home can tell you directly about things they don't want in the game.

>>95888498
>Anyone stable enough to live outside of a group home can tell you directly about things they don't want in the game.
false, but only because lots of fairly unstable people can still end up living somewhat normal lives.

>>95882867 (OP)
>How much will you yield your preferences in order to actually play a traditional game and have a group in the first place?
A lot. I'll play pretty much anything these days - I am not picky. Not to mention I play mostly online so I have flawless a b s o l u t e flexibility to play with shit people wouldn't dare to bring up at the table.

>>95888610
No. If you are literally unable to bring yourself to directly say what you aren't comfortable with in a TTRPG then you have no business playing them. I'm bug-fuck nuts by the way, not in a way that keeps me from playing TTRPGs, but in a way that does keep me from doing other social things and I would never even dream of pulling shit like an x-card to get my way in those situations. I literally cannot think of a single reason for that shit besides "hahahaha I can totally control what other people do in their game under pain of being made to look intolerant".

>>95888736
>No. If you are literally unable to bring yourself to directly say what you aren't comfortable with in a TTRPG then you have no business playing them.
I agree but that wasn't the point of the post.
The point is that there's a lot of crazy people out there who don't even seem obviously insane at first.
Yeah they shouldn't be enabled and I wouldn't want to play games with them, but sometimes it's hard to filter.

>>95886718
>OBSESSIVE about one specific game, or one specific vibe, is irrational and autistic
True. I know a fellow who I tried to work with organizing RP events. He always had to shoehorn airsoft (of all things) into LARPs, because that was his autistic obsession. While I and many others moved on and tried different hobbies, this fella still talks of nothing but airsoft.
Well the lesson here is that open-minded people are better GMs and players. Those who are stuck with what they love the most never evolve or try to improve themselves.

>>95882867 (OP)
I run the first type of game for the second type of people, and so far everyone has had a good time even despite the couple of character deaths we've had. The players are okay with running my rules and my world because in turn I make an effort to make it fun and exciting for the players.

>>95883110
You and the other theatre kids in your group are going to die when OSRIC 3.0 becomes mainstream, anon.