Thread 96761413

To start what makes a player, DM, or PC good in the first place?

How can one improve making a character, playing their character, and DMing a campaign?

Were there any examples of really good players/DMs you knew?

>Asking 4channers what makes a player good
Slide thread or stupid?

>>96761413 (OP)
Step 1) Actually read your books
Step 2) Hey! Get back here and read your fucking books.
Step 3) Actually show up consistently willing and eager to play.
Step 4) Show said eagerness by listening when the GM and others are speaking, ask questions, engage with the fiction, and do what you can to keep the game moving along smoothly
>Step 5) Continue repeating steps 3 and 4 until the game is done.

>>96761769
Corollary to 4) When you listen to another player and they're trying to do a thing _back their play._ Hang back for an action so they can cast that spell. Ask their character why they're being broody and mysterious. Fall for their clearly set up one liner. Tell them not to steal from the dead, then turn your back.
Take a little trouble, make their day.

>>96761413 (OP)
>player
Pay attention
Know the mechanics of your character
Accept failure
Enjoy sharing the spotlight
Leave rules debates for after the session
Communicate clearly
>GM
Read books to learn to describe the scene
Learn the rules, be open to ask your players for help
Learn to improvise
Remember your players cannot read your mind
Handle expectations
Pay attention to what the group actually wants from the adventure
Don't fall in love with your ideas, be open to change, learn to let it go
Set boundaries
>Character
It should have goals compatible with the game
You should be able to create motivations to keep them in the adventure
Should be fun for you to play, for the group to engage with and for the GM to interact with
Is good to form bonds with other character before or during the session
Make it clear and distinctive. And yes. Bob the Fighter is clear and distinctive albeit a little overused, try to give them some unique flavor so the other players can remember who you are clearly
Unpronounceable names are no fun, if you have one prepare to have a nickname
Your character is not you, let him fail, let him lose and make mistakes, sometimes that is the fun option

>>96761769
>>96761828
Very good advice. Also, interact with your group outside of game day. Even if you all start as randies, getting to know each other helps a lot. Just don't get romantic.

>>96761413 (OP)
>What makes a good player?
Being proactive, communicating clearly, understanding the group, having DM'd extensively before, don't flake, don't harsh the vibe.
>What makes a good DM
All of the above, also having played extensively before, having read the rules, and have an even stronger understanding of your group.

That's it, really. If you know what the group likes and aren't a human dumpster fire, the rest is easy.

>>96762806
How does that work if the campaign I'm playing is all online?

>>96762887
Set up a group chat.

>>96762902
This is the correct answer. Ignore what any fucksticks say about discord mods, groomercord and the like. That only applies to large open servers.

>>96761828
This is a good one especially. I used to give My players shit when there were exchanges like:

>IC1: "Hey, you used MY gold to buy that sword?"
>IC2: "Well, yeah. We couldn't find you but you left your purse in your room, and we needed that sword to kill Gormtash - a fight which you weren't there for anyway."
>OOC1: "I punch him."
>OOC2: "NUH UH! YOU HAVE TO ROLL TO HIT MY AC! YOU HAVE TO ROLL TO HIT FIRST"

Just shut the fuck up nigga. Unless he's actually trying to kill you, it doesn't really matter. He punches you. You take 0 damage. Get over it. It's fun.

>>96762616
>Your character is not you, let him fail, let him lose and make mistakes, sometimes that is the fun option
I like the implication that "you" never fails, loses, or makes mistakes. I'm so great and awesome and cool at everything, I need a fantasy game just to pretend to experience failure and hardship. I play games to escape from the reality where I'm always winning all the time. We have to call it "fantasy" because in reality, I always nail everything I try.

I know what you actually mean I'm just breaking your balls

>>96762616
>Player
I'd say that's pretty good, but I'd add "Just have fucking fun, and try not to have that fun at another player's expense.
>GM
I'd add "Just be loose with it, an uptight GM makes everyone uncomfortable."

>>96761828
Commit to the bit. It makes all the difference in the world.

as a gm dont design overly antagonistic anti player worlds
im not talking about mean npcs but about random buildings having no windows no chimneys and just 1 door behind which you can find 2503 traps

>>96761413 (OP)
Three simple things.
First off. READ YOUR BOOKS!
Second, ask your DM and/or PCs what people are wanting in the campaign.
and Last but not least. Pay attention and take notes. If you keeps asking what's going on every time everytime it's not combat and all. People won't want to play with you as much outside of the basic dungeon crawl and all.

>>96765141
>Second, ask your DM and/or PCs what people are wanting in the campaign.
Building on this, fucking THINK about what you want in a campaign and VERBALIZE it. I keep asking my players what they want, get no answer, and then they leave because the campaign wasn't what they wanted.

There is only one correct answer. Show up to the game on time, on schedule, on a regular basis. This applies to both players and gms. Nothing tears a group down faster than attending only when you feel like it, or when its convenient to you.

It pauses some/all of the plot, it keeps things from flowing smoothly, it forces time spent to catch people up or fill them in on details, and it shows disrespect toward everyone else's time and energy when they show up in good faith and (You) do not.

I get it, real life happens. But flaking out is worse than never joining the group at all.

>>96761413 (OP)
>how to improve
You can start with killing yourself over starting a false thread that you don't plan to engage with in any way, just filling the catalog
>n-no, this is real
Nigger please. At least change the fucking format.

Make recaps after each session with what happened, preferably on a map so you can summarize what happened last week or the week before last if you miss a session.
Don't plan too far ahead, instead, use breaks between session to set up scenarios like this: https://www.latorra.org/2012/05/15/a-16-hp-dragon/ with custom maps, tokens, and mechanics BASED ON what has happened in the campaign so far. This allows you to utilize your creativity over time to keep the campaign interesting and makes the world feel alive.
Get good at a whiteboarding program like Excalidraw if you're doing remote gaming because it'll be the best DM screen you ever had.
Get good at an image editing program such as Krita, Photoshop, Gimp, or even 3D programs like Blender to make Maps/Materials you can print out(3D printing as well) and give to players. A "here there be dragons"-style map gives the party a great foundation for thinking about where to go and what locations have what without being too prescriptive and giving players a physical ring you resin printed and painted instead of just describing it can take the campaign to a whole new level.
Speed-paints and contrast paints are very useful for getting models to a tabletop standard in a fraction of the time acrylics will take you. Dry-brushing can also be great for speedpainting as well for results that can look up to the level of acrylics if the model doesn't have too many fine, irregular details.
When voice acting characters, practice by listening to movies or plays and parroting the character, then write down five or ten lines that character would say and try to replicate the voice with those lines. Additionally, hydrate an hour before the campaign and warm up your voice like a singer would.
Don't worry about making original voices for everyone. just keep a bag of verbal ticks like slurring or Mhhmming in different tones after speaking to throw in and it'll distinguish the character.

Show up on time, ready to play.

>>96761413 (OP)
Do not, please for the love of fucking Cthulhu, do NOT interrupt me when I am mid-sentence trying to describe the fucking room or situation. I am going to describe everything but you gotta give me 5 fucking seconds to do so.

I know this shit is a sign of enthusiasm (I guess), but god damn it's annoying and stressful when players interrupt to ask questions when I am mid-sentence. It also blows my mind that I can be either listening to another player's question or be in the middle of answering a question, when someone else just starts talking (loudly) and asking their question. This shit isn't even /tg/ related, in normal conversations this would also be overwhelmingly rude and weird.

Just fucking show up, try to have fun, contribute, ask questions, laugh when bad stuff happens, roll with it. Don't argue all the goddamn time, and if you do think something is wrong or you deserve a +2 or whatever, then PHRASE IT AS A GODDAMN FUCKING QUESTION INSTEAD OF ARGUING LIKE YOU'RE IN A POLITICAL DEBATE. I'm not here to fuck you in the ass, I'm willing to listen and accomodate, but just be cool about it for fucks sake.

>>96762616
>Character
>It should have goals compatible with the game
THIS! THIS! THIS! THIS! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
WHY CANT PEOPLE GET THIS!?

Players need to shut the fuck up, read the rules and understand their character. They need to know what they want to do on a turn and how to do it.

Voila

>>96762930
>Ignore what any fucksticks say about Discord mods, groomercord and the like.
You shouldn't have to worry about that because if you're on this site you shouldn't be playing a game with kids anyway, & you shouldn't be able to get groomed yourself because you should also be an adult with a decently functioning brain.

>>96769647
It sounds like you have a related story to share

>>96769742
NTA but I do so I'll go

>party full of pirates in Not!Caribbean
>Chuck dies after wandering into the jungles by himself
>other PCs pick up a side quest to kill some swamp beast
>Chuck makes a new character - a lizardfolk who lives in the swamp area the PCs were now travelling to
>PCs find Chuck & The Reptiles have already slaughtered the beast
>Chuck notices PCs - Benedict has arrived with The Grung Gang and Finn is hiding in the trees
>Chuck makes the first move against The Grung Gang and combat begins
>Finn, from the tree, sees this and sends arrows at Chuck but misses
>Benedict (the grung) draws his flintlock and shoots Chuck
>The Grung Gang starts fighting Chuck & The Reptiles as the scene devolves into chaos
>Finn shoots a few more arrows at Chuck while a gold grung hypnotizes the lizards
>One of The Reptiles knocks out Benedict
>Chuck is hypnotized
>Finn sends the last arrow at Chuck that finally takes him down
>The Grung Gang defeats what remains of The Reptiles
>Chuck makes a new character as Benedict and Finn reunite and celebrate their victory

Later on when we asked him about it, he said he thought everybody had given up on being pirates since they spent all of last session in the city. When he saw they were going to the swamp, he thought it was gonna turn into a wilderness survival campaign, so he made a character according to that idea. He admitted it was a very short-sighted choice at the time.

>>96769983
Fun. I have a friend coming down from uni for a month so he'll be filling in as twist antagonist of the couple sessions he'll be in. Similar vibes to
>Roll PC
>Get shot

>>96769742
Yes. Yes I fucking do.
>Be inexperienced DM who wants to play with friends
>Run an evil campaign (3.5e, forgotten realms)
>Campaign revolves around an Evil Lord using the party to stage a false flag in order to expand his domain
>Thoroughly explain to players that the goal is to be scheming, backstabbing liars, using subterfuge and guile to achieve their goal
>Outright murderhobo behavior would result in the plot being uncovered and put the whole quest to a risk
>Almost every player comes up with a decent character that fits (A rogue pretending to be a priest, a glowie gestapo type, a merc who will do anything for good pay, a charming, spellcasting, lying hoe)
>All are fine except that guy
>That guy wants to play a vampire
>"Bro you cannot play a vampire. Campaign starts at level 4, vampire template is lvl8"
>That guy begs and squeals
>Decide to allow him since he is an experienced players and I dig up a vampire spawn for him to play as his class
>That is not enough for That guy. The also wants a chariot with two servant to transport him during the day
>The party goes out to help him and they collectively larp as a diplomatic delegation so his character can stay in the chariot during the day

1/2

>>96770241

>Campaign starts
>Plan is to be sublte, remember?
>Mr Vampire's first interaction is to start challenging all city guards to a fight who dare question the party about a suspicious delegation
>The same city guards that are working for the evil lord that wants to employ the party
>Every time a character wants to do something, Mr Vampire tries to do it better
>Mr Vampire measures his dick to everyone in the party, disrupting every conversation so he can show power to others, jeopardizing every out-of-combat interaction
>Mr Vampire actively tries to shame every party member he successfully rolls higher than in combat
>Mr Vampire's goal is to undermine the evil lord so he can come out on top
>Mr Vampire impales on a stick every enemy they defeat in order to "leave a message"
>Mr Vampire steals other "party member's flame" from awesome moments
>Wastes spells, risks attacks of opportunity, fucks up every party's plan during combat in order to be the star who triggers the mcguffin, last hits big guy, loots all the loot etc...
>During night, Mr Vampire goes out while the party sleeps to "scout"
>"I want to explore the whole forest around the castle, sneak into every villager's home, loot the two city guards that looked sideways at me, steal the king's daughters favorite kitten..."
>every fucking night he wants to turn into a single player session
And this is just ingame stuff he tried to do. OOC he always treated the table as it's 1v5 with me as DM being his biggest enemy that he needs to con and eventually defeat. This frustrated everyone at the table. He also always tried to swindle me by feeding me false info on the rules but the one other player who is also experienced helped me catch him cheating. My campaign fell apart fast because nobody wanted to play. I later gathered a different group of people, ran the thing again and successfully (and happily) finished it after 2 years.

2/2

>>96770072
That could be fun, it's a different idea to the sort of thing that's happening here though - it's a character that's deliberately meant to go against the party and has a story reason for doing so and it's been planned with the DM.

In Chuck's case, he made a character that was a swamp-dwelling lizardman in a campaign he knew was about pirates where all the other characters were pirates and it was reasonably expected that your character, at a minimum, would be a pirate or open to becoming one.

>>96770241
>>96770310
Goddamn, what made y'all put up with him for so long?

>>96770310
>I later gathered a different group of people, ran the thing again and successfully (and happily) finished it after 2 years.
Well done, that's a happy ending if I've ever seen one. Fuck that guy.

>>96770310
Oh...I forgot
We rotated who is DMing after each campaign and we tried a couple of different things until the table fell apart because of him and two more rulefags constantly bickering over miniscule stuff. He also tried to run VtM campaign for us and that was a special kind of disaster. He also ran one before mine and that fell apart too.

Because of him I have a permanent vampire PC ban on all of my games until I learn to play VtM. Any vampire that appears in game must collect plasma through chugging cum first, blood second. I also have permanent ban on Thieflings but that's just a filter for 5e freaks

>>96770322
>Goddamn, what made y'all put up with him for so long?
We played IRL. He is a fren from martial arts club. He is a very stubborn guy and very hard to talk to but is very principled and can be very reliable when push comes to shove.
>>96770339
Yup. It's incredible how much a single player can ruin an experience of a game for the whole table.

>>96770382
Good friend, bad player is always a devastating combo.

>>96770382
>I also have a permanent ban on Thieflings but that's just a filter for 5e freaks
Based

>We played IRL
I see. My group had a guy like that for a while - everytime we kicked him out he'd be gone for a bit until we were ready to give him another chance but he never really changed. He was an insufferable asshole as a player and a person, but he was one of the most loyal willing-to-die-for-you friends you could ever meet. Eventually we kicked him out of playing for good, but we still talked on friendly terms up until he raped a kid.

>>96770636
Jesus, that took a hard left at the end.

>>96770694
What's more, we used to joke about him being a pedophile all the time because of some of the shit he said/did. Some highlights:

During a raid in a viking campaign, he said verbatim "I look for any underage girls". I shut that down immediately and we all gave him shit for it, and he tried to say he didn't want her for sex, but just as one of the general slaves they were taking anyway, and her being younger meant she'd live longer and thus be more useful. Still, the fact he specifically said "underage girl" when something like "young woman" would've worked just as effectively for what he allegedly wanted...

He once seriously, unironically, not even half-jokingly asked us "If she's 15 but really mature for her age, is it okay?" when he was 19.

When I was 19 (he's also My age) there was a friend of mine who was 15. Somehow he got her on Snapchat, and asked her if she'd ever date an older guy. Ironically, she did have a habit of dating literal pedophiles who were 20+, but it's weird that he would even have asked in the first place.

There was one day Me, My brother, and him were having dinner with a mutual (female) friend of ours who was 15 at the time (different to the above, and we were 18-19), and he would not fucking stop hitting on her despite how much we were calling him out and giving him shit for it. I refused to drive him home afterwards because of it, because I didn't want her to have to sit in the car with him and listen to his shit. She later told Me he offered to have a threesome with her and her boyfriend.

Honestly our fault for not realizing how bad it was sooner, I guess we just didn't expect him to ever actually act on it, but even then we really should've drawn a line with this stuff.

>>96765991
>Building on this, fucking THINK about what you want in a campaign and VERBALIZE it.
This is something I've seen veteran players fail to do. If you're not having fun and not enjoying the game, you've gotta talk to your GM and figure out what can be done about that. If what you've been doing for years isn't fun and isn't making the game better, you've got to change your approach (this goes for players and GMs). It doesn't have to be a confrontation and it doesn't have to be group action where you pull all the other players aside and make them agree with you that the game is bad and you need complain together like a union serving a formal dispute to the boss.

The easiest way to do this without making it a big deal is to simply state what you liked and disliked at the end of the game
>I liked when you let me use that ability in a different way
>We probably could have spent less time haggling with that NPC
>I thought that puzzle was really neat
>I felt like you could have communicated where we were supposed to go a little more clearly

>>96770563
Yeah he will never play at my table again even though I somewhat respect the guy.
>>96770636
>we still talked on friendly terms up until he raped a kid.
What the fuck.
>>96771075
>When I was 19 (he's also My age) there was a friend of mine who was 15. Somehow he got her on Snapchat, and asked her if she'd ever date an older guy. Ironically, she did have a habit of dating literal pedophiles who were 20+, but it's weird that he would even have asked in the first place.
Pedos and dumbass jailbaits have a radar for each other.

>>96772787
>Pedos and dumbass jailbaits have a radar for each other
I'd believe it, considering she blocked Me when I told her she needed to stop dating pedophiles.

>>96773501
Are you guys americans by any chance?

>>96777587
Canadian. The age of consent here is 16, but sometimes the law is gay and retarded.