I finally did it, /tg/. I overcame my crippling social anxiety and joined a group. And I hate it.
GM writes boring campaigns, and everything feels so played out and generic. I'm forcing myself to keep going in hopes that my brain will run some kind of coping subroutine until I'm having fun, but I really don't see it happening. It's just so bland.

The important thing is you tried it.

>>95924776 (OP)
It takes time to acclimate. Consider this practice.
Just don't feel like you need to stay in shitsville forever. Once you have your sea legs you can look for other groups that fit you better - but at first it's all about learning how to manage the social aspects.

Find pleasure in other people's pleasure.
When I play with bad players and boring GMs, I switch focus entirely to just being helpful and positive and doing my best so that everyone else has a good time.

That way, I can retain that sense of superiority while also not ruining anyone else's fun. Sure, I'm not being honest, but honesty is for people you actually care about, and everyone else is just a toy to see how long you can fool them into thinking you care about them.

>>95924796
>social aspects
I'm cheating a bit because I know these people from work, so it's not like I had to go through the extra steps of going into a store and asking around.
Also it's worth mentioning that this isn't my first experience. I played one Pathfinder game years ago but found it incredibly boring. Some years later, my pastor invited me to a Dungeon World group he'd made where we played a campaign set in the Book of Judges. The latter was honestly really well-made, and my pastor was a surprisingly good GM. The issue there was the players: godmodding autists & retards who wanted to play vikings and druids in the late bronze age Levant.

>>95924830
Why the fuck do you keep joining groups if you hate the hobby? Fuck off to /v/.

>>95924925
Because I want to like it. I see a bunch of stuff that looks fun and a bunch of people having fun, and I want to experience it too.

>>95925038
If I can ask, which part appeals to you, and which part(s) do you find boring? Is it a matter of the people you're playing with not meeting your standards? Is it just what goes into playing a game (waiting for your turn, roleplaying, turn based combat etc)?

>GM writes boring campaigns
if you're playing for the story you should know that good stories come from overcoming (even if clumsily) the adversities that the GM throws at you, that's also what bonds the group
writing a good plot is difficult and rare and often results in a railroad, so if you want only that you better read a book

think about your little character story arc if you're into that kind of thing and talk about it with GM, don't expect to just show up and be entertained

you can tell GM about some existing module if you knew one with good plot, and say you'd love to try it sometime

you can also try a more direct approach and give him feedback about what aspects of his campaigns you like less than you want to and why

>>95925048
>which part appeals to you
Playing through a narrative and encountering emergent elements that you'd never see in anything programmed.
The cooperative element, distinct again from video games because it requires creativity and not just greater numbers of players doing more attacks.
The creativity in general.
The wider range of options for characters.
>which part(s) do you find boring?
It really comes down to the players and how they use or don't use the tools offered by the game.
For instance, in the Pathfinder group, all they did was move through the dungeon and kill things in a methodical manner. People barely spoke other than talking about how to handle encounters.
In this current group, the campaign is a fetch quest and not even a glorified one. There are 5 pieces of a sword and 5 cities. We go to city 1, solve local problem A, fight 2-3 things, get sword piece. It's padded by some light RP.
>waiting for your turn, roleplaying, turn based combat etc
All of that's fine. The only thing I personally need to work on is my own comfort level with RP'ing IRL.

>>95925106
>overcoming (even if clumsily) the adversities that the GM throws at you
I think this may be the problem. We really don't have much to overcome. The most-challenging parts have been finding who to ask about the next lead.

>>95925114
All of that is understandable. What I recommend in your situation is to stick with it, and really try to hit it off with the group. Maybe the game itself isn't all that, but even in a beer and pretzels game, you can at least unwind and make friends and all that gay shit.

Then, when you feel confident enough, you should at least try GMing. I was a pretty nerdy kid, but running games for my friends these 7ish years actually helped me a ton, and I really enjoy it. You get to entertain your friends, hopefully flex your creative muscles, and I personally treat the PCs like characters in a soap opera I tune into every week. (It helps to be a fan of the main cast, so vetting your players and pointing them in the right direction for the vibe you want is a must).

Even if you mainly want to play, people who have at least GMed a little always make the best players desu.

>>95925175
>you should at least try GMing
I was thinking the same thing, really. A lot of the time during sessions, I find myself thinking about how lazy the writing is and what I'd do different.

I commend you for doing what 99% of /th/ would never do, OP. That said, unless the other players are also bring unbearable or annoying, I would give it a few sessions. Fetch quests are indeed boring as sin for most people, but they can also be good for just testing the waters on if a gaming group is going to stay together. I’d suggest putting together some constructive criticism if things don’t pick up closer to the end of the quest, but if the worst so far is that it’s dull and the GM isn’t being very creative, you might at least have a chance to work with your group to better tune the game to something more to your liking

>>95924776 (OP)
>>95925114
Frankly, this does seem like a taste issue. Your tastes do not mesh with the people you are playing with. Strangely enough, I might recommend trying to GM yourself. Picking up a group and doing management of them might give some appreciation of your other GMs, or you might end up creating a group that actually matches what you want to play.

Like my friend group started with PF, switched to Rogue Trader for a number of years, and now have problems trying to get any more campaigns than the 4 active weekly campaigns we currently have.

>>95924776 (OP)
Narrative games suck a fat dick. Always have and always will.

>>95925253
The weird thing is that this GM has been GM'ing for decades. I don't get how someone can be that bland for this long. Don't you naturally get better with practice?
>>95926067
I'll need to read up on GM'ing. I've always loved writing and world building, but I'm guessing these can be very distinct.

>>95926289
The issue with GMing is how you manage the fact that 3 - 5 other individuals are interacting with what you produce, rather than simply being passive readers. You can't get really do a super-detailed flow-chart of situation to situation, because your players will inevitably pick something you haven't planned for. Rather, its best to have an idea of general principles that come with a situation, and keep your notes on mechanical details and machinations of the cast of the campaign.
Writing helps you figure out what your major NPCs are doing and what their goals are, world building helps you figure out what the minor NPCs might do or want, as well as all the 'where's, 'who's, 'how's, 'what's, and 'why's.

>>95926325
>because your players will inevitably pick something you haven't planned for

Not if they're railroaded, which good GM's know to do over muh sandbox bullshit.

>>95924776 (OP)
Good Job, now learn how to rotate people around you until you find the group you actually like playing.

>>95924776 (OP)
have you considered running yourself?

>>95925138
Jesus christ are you me? This seems to be every fucking session and I'm on the verge of bailing.

I mean, you're a participant in the game too. You have to make an interesting character, interact with the group, take risks, etc. It's not like some TV show or something where you just sit back and wait to be entertained. If you're coming in expecting it to be just like Critical Role you're going to be disappointed.

Games are fun when you have a number of converging factors like chemistry with the other players, nostalgia, that one adventure that went off in unexpected directions, etc.

I think of it like going on a hiking trip. Sure, staying home, ordering pizza, and watching porn would have given you an instant shot of dopamine. Sure, there will be unfun parts of the trip like bug bites and sore muscles. But seeing that waterfall in person, telling ghost stories around the campfire, making smores with your bros, swimming in that lake. Those things will create a deeper sense of satisfaction and lifelong memories.

>>95924776 (OP)
The fun part of ttrpgs is the playing of them with your friends. Keep at it, anon.

Social skills are called that because they're SKILLS. You have to practice them to develop them. 99.99% of people with "social anxiety" simply lack social skills. You need to develop them before performing them will be fun to you. Of course you have anxiety about it. If someone dropped me on a stage in front of a packed audience with a violin and told me to play a concerto, my anxiety would be crippling too, because I dunno how to play the fucking violin. But if I learned how to do it well, it would be exciting and amazing. Social skills are skills. Practice them and you'll start to get something out of it.

>>95926289
>Don't you naturally get better with practice?
Not exactly. You get better with effort put into practice. If he GMs exactly as his group wants it he has no reason to change his style or try new things.

>>95924776 (OP)
An easy "cheat" to not have a boring backdrop to the campaing is basing it off of an existing setting and leaning into the more interesting aspects of the setting, that way you don't even have to think too hard.

>>95924776 (OP)
He fell for the meme!

>>95926289
> Don't you naturally get better with practice?
Really depends. If he’s been with that same group for years, he might just have attuned himself to their level of effort, but some people are also just naturally straightforward and/or boring. Especially if they’ve fallen into a rut. It’s why you give constructive feedback first before you bail, see if they can’t adjust. Like don’t get me wrong, if you decide it isn’t working out then it’s best to bow out with grace to find a better group, but the GM being a dullard or not putting in enough effort is at least a problem that can be fixed. At least, when you have a GM that’s willing to listen.

>>95929821
>filename
Why's it look like she's about to get choked?

>>95925138
>>95926955
That happened to me in the last game one of my players ran. Everyone was so goddamned bored by the end that we desperately rushed towards anything that might be mistaken for action.
Also that reminds me of the time one of my DMs had an entire session where an NPC just looked up stuff in a library while the players dicked around trying to find ANYTHING to do. That NPC wouldn't even tell us what he was reading. To this day I still don't know what he was going for with that one.

>>95926955
>>95933297
Did you guys have people start quitting on you too? Every time we try to set up our next session, 2-3 make excuses for why they can't show up.

>>95924830
>players: godmodding
How the fuck do you godmod as a player? If a player oversteps the bounds of his own narrative control, then the GM is supposed to shut that shit down immediately. The only one who's supposed to godmod is the GM, because it's his job. (Although, one time I did have a new player, a friend of a friend, complain that I was "putting a shit taste in his mouth" for "godmodding" because I had an NPC talk to his PC without his permission. God, never have I ever met a more miserable sack of shit.)

>>95924819
>honesty is for people you actually care about, and everyone else is just a toy to see how long you can fool them into thinking you care about them.
Spoken like a guy that tortured small animals when he was little.

>>95925114
That’s the problem. You keep expecting these thing to be professional grade like a video game. These are the most mild of amateurs. It is like you have been taking twenty hits of meth every day and then cutting back to two cups of tea. Emergent story telling is HARD and RARE and take years for a group to get to the point that they are comfortable with each other and confident enough to really dig into harder parts of coming up with good RP.

Best you can do is say this is what you are excited about with your group and then try to embody it yourself for like the next year and see if anyone else is into it. Real life is slow. You don’t just level up and move on to the next story arc like this is an episode of solo leveling.

>>95926210
Oh look this person has a personal preference and has only his limited personal experiences to draw from


Get in line asshole

>>95924776 (OP)
Sounds like you're disappointed it's not a video game with hundreds of writers and designers and whatever else, masterfully crafted over a decade to subvert your expectations and hold your attention for 20 hours at most, and you're faced with the realization that not only the game "developer" is just some guy, you're also expected to actively contribute to what happens in it and not just sit at the table and wait to be entertained.

Just stop. It will be better for you and everyone else involved.

>>95924776 (OP)
If it's not working out, leave the group and GM your own campaign filled with all the stuff you consider cool and fun.