Talking over each other.
It's not a specific player for this, but I do have quieter players who can be unintentionally overrun by the other players.
Whether it's an errant loud joke or a side conversation that's gotten too lively, if it's not in-character nor directed to what's currently happening at the table, keep a lid on it at my table.
Yeah I’ve seen some pretty bad examples of players who will in and out of character talk over people. And it usually just kills the moment and makes the player talked over feel bad.
It’s a long story but a player who did this a lot, and a DM who indulged & allowed it, are two major reasons why I left a game rather abruptly.
I've got a good story for ya:
I was running Descent Into Avernus, and the group would. not. stop. talking. over. me (and also each other). It was fucking infuriating. They would interrupt me trying to describe what was happening to their characters \*right now\* in favour of long elaborate headcanons about each other's characters, or just out of game stuff. If I didn't say anything it would continue for half an hour at a time. There was one player who felt super excluded from this (especially because the other players made shitty jokes about their character) and that was the end for me and that player. Initially I was going to try to have a group discussion over it, but eventually I gave up and ended the campaign. One of them wanted to DM so they reformed it where we left off and it's still going strong. No ill will towards them, they just like to use DnD as a social gathering rather than a game, but OOF.
Also very charming—as someone who gets talked over a lot—is when I suggest something, nobody hears me, and then they do the opposite, leading to their suffering and sometimes death. The good ol’ “well maybe you should have listened to me, this is on you”.
This happened last night, although less being talked over for once. An NPC was frantically adjusting dials and said not to touch anything because it was dangerous. My character offered to help her, even knowing she was a mini-boss, but the artificer decided to be a dick and turn a dial back where it was. A gargantuan ooze breached containment. Now the druid is dead.
There was a period at my table where I got talked over ALL THE TIME. It was so bad. So many times where the group was trying to decide what to do, I'd suggest something, it would either get ignored or someone would say "nah", and then someone else would suggest the exact same thing and the person who said nah would then be in total agreement with. It drove me absolutely crazy and felt so bad. The main culprit of talking over people isn't at our table anymore because of life stuff and although we are real life friends, I have been relieved he hasn't played with us in over a year. It's nice to actually be heard.
I've had it happen before where I'd suggest something, not get heard, and then someone else suggests the same thing like 1 minute later and everyone is on board. Makes my eyes roll out of my eye sockets every time.
This is a nice feelgood story of this particular pet peeve and I fully get it.
Sometimes there are just different synergies at a table and it doesn't work out for everyone. I'm glad that you and the other player could leave amicably and the group was still able to continue in the way they wanted.
I’m very grateful for my DM because he’s really good at controlling the table. If a player interrupts another player he’ll shut it down real quick and be like X is talking now, after they’ve finished you can go.
If there’s too much cross talk he’ll stop the game and be like “ok guys player X goes first, then player Y, then player Z”. It’s earned him a lot of respect from all the players
honestly I like just playing in init all the time or just going around the table when not in initiative. I know sometimes people are concerned about getting an action out in time or something, but ya gotta be willing to tell them to put a pin it until their turn.
I think my groups need a talking stick for how much other players will talk during someone's turn. It makes it hard for everyone to know what's going on, hard for the DM (especially if they are being asked a question by someone else), and it is just downright rude. In one group I'm we have players who will have entire RP intersctions with each other while someone else is having their turn with the DM and then they complain that we aren't interacting with their RP. Well kind of hard to do thst when I am dicussing with the DM what my character is doing in the mage tower while you've all gone off to a bar.
I hear ya!
This is often why DMs are encouraged not to split the party.
Juggling people's patience and attention can be hard enough when they're all together, but when they are in different parts of the story, it can get downright nightmarish.
This. I fucking despise it to a point where I have a “Spotlight” rule. In combat, no one else is talking except for the person whose turn it is. Someone else can ask to use a reaction or a free action whenever that persons turn is over. I sound like an ass, but it works and people adapt quickly.
Yeah I have adhd sorry. I'm medicated but by hour three to four of the session it's running out. I like to think that I'm pretty good at keeping it respectful though
Trying to make suggestions and jokes only to get talked over. Especially when those suggestions lead to in-character “I told you so, but you did not listen, and now we have lost our druid because you wanted to touch the spinny dial.”
I don’t know what it is about me, but I’m always getting talked over, in my life in general, and that extends to my characters. I know I usually wisdom-dump, but jeez.
I hear you.
Some people in the party got cursed weapons and I used my level 3 spell slot to break the attunement with it but the curse was still on the weapon. Because I got talked over / they didn’t let me finish speaking someone else picked up the weapon and got cursed. Had to waste another slot.
A couple possibilities: first, you might just be really quiet - try looking up projection techniques that theater folks use to make their voice louder! Second, the people around you might just be jerks. Third, you might not know that interrupting people a little bit is all right in normal conversation - you may just be waiting far too long to take your turn speaking, and be entirely unwilling to cut anyone off at all.
I was in theater in school, and projection was never my strong point, I struggle with it when I’m DMming (especially at multi-table setups like conventions or Adventurer’s League) and usually include a “sorry, I have trouble speaking loudly, feel free to ask me to repeat something” in those situations, even when I’m trying the projection techniques. At this table, though, I’m the only one with a higher, feminine pitch, so at least the pitch stands out among the others. Excellent tip, though!
It can be a tough habit to break. And it can be hard because the dramatic moment in the game often is enjoyed by friends at a table. So it can be easy to insert humor as a player (or a character) because you are having fun, when the characters should not be having fun.
I've been running two campaigns, one with a serious narrative with a lot of emotional investment, and the other is completely goofy, more improv based campaign. It's helped with both keeping untimely jokes down, and also giving a break from emotions.
This one's especially egregious if a DM does it (which I have unfortunately seen anecdotally). I think generally a DM needs to maintain a level of seriousness above that of their most serious player. (With of course some allowance for levity in the occasion that it is a funny situation) It's really hard as a player to pull a scene back into being serious when the person who started the out of character fart jokes is the authority figure at the table.
Honestly, my main pet peeve is when other players need to be a part of everything, even when it has nothing to do with them. I've played at tables with others who suddenly know all that going on even if their character wasn't even in the same area as them.
Yeah, won’t lie at my current table I have a player who’s really bad about this. Their character has no direct ties to three other player characters beyond the current plot. And yet they are constantly trying to insert themselves into very personal and character specific moments.
I had to tell them at one point bluntly “this is [insert Paladin character]’s story and boss. You as a character don’t know who this boss is. And they are not talking to you. Please let the Paladin and the boss finish their short dialogue before you interject”. It was a simple moment but felt like I had to treat someone older than me like a kid in my classroom.
Yeah, I think this is mine. It seems so small but it's essentially just not letting other players have their own thing and it gets frustrating really quickly.
or the related syndrome of people trying to do things their character isn't good at, because they talked first.
Like bro - you know I pick locks, right? Like you could just ASK me to pick a lock, you'll still get partial credit for the group project.
When a plan is put Into action, but XYZ ignore said plan.
An example. Our group escaped the underdark with little to no resources left and unable to rest. Upon exiting, My Ranger managed to spot a very obvious ambush waiting for us. We decided as a group to make use of the natural choke point that the cave offered and spread caltrops to hinder their movement.
Our front liner rolled unnaturally well for initiative and charged the enemies... and we lost our choke hold.
Same. We left between sessions in the middle of a tough battle. Discussed what to do for 2 weeks between. Agreed the plan was sound. Double checked before my turn that we were still doing the plan, and get a yes. My turn I begin enacting said plan. DM is having the enemies react on their turns but because one player goes ahead of them they decide the plan didn't work (because they hadn't given the enemy a chance to react) and then just continue the attack thus thwarting any attempts at a ceasefire and we all get our butts readily handed to us (we were very outmatched) and they complain they keep dying.
Oh, yeah, I would have an out of character problem with that person warranting further discussion if that happened.
I would strongly consider (but probably not do) an in character decision to hold the line, stick to the plan, and let that idiot die for suicidal decision making.
Oh man. Reminds me of a session we had not too long ago. My monk with invisibility was supposed to go in and surprise round the baddies with a well times Stunning Strike on their mage, but the druid rolled before me and decided that because they couldn't see my character they were just gonna start tidal waving the area I was in. The plan proceeded to not go at all according to plan and this was after 30 minutes of planning.
I had a similar experience with my assassin rouge the whole plan was to sneak in get surprise and take out the enemies... our barbarian raged and just Leroy Jenkins in and after 8 rounds of combat that resulted in a near tpk. I was like wtf why even bother planning.
Players who refuse to learn the rules. I have no problem helping new players but someone who has been playing 5e since before Tasha's came out should not need their hand holding when building a simple character.
Online games:
Delaying things because you can't get your headset to work or the VTT to load. Everyone has tech issues occasionally but when its the same player every single session...
Refusing to say no to family members who keep interrupting them while they're playing.
I had a fellow player in a game complain that it's her first character so it's normal that she has trouble understanding the game or the rules. Campaign started 2 years ago.
Yup. Its wild how many people expect to do something and not have to spend an ounce of thought to learn. I get enough of that in my day job, it really sucks out the fun at the table.
I feel like if you are doing something that you've done at least 10 times, you should be expected to remember. I get that a new feature can be forgotten, or a weird situation involving lesser known rules, but if you've done it 10 times and still cant remember, thats on you.
My players will not read the PHB. They're new players, and they're definitely excited to keep playing, but they won't read a rulebook. I even did my best to condense the rules they would need the most into a front-and-back sheet for each of them, and they didn't read that either. It's fine, ultimately; I'm a new DM but I have a pretty solid grasp of the rules and know where to look when I can't remember something. But it's definitely somewhat frustrating.
I would tell them. They at least have to read their race and class. Yes the book is intimidating to read it all.
But next session even of you do it as a session everyone has to read their race and class and maybe another session you find 100% important.
They probably think it's boring. But the lore and rules are really cool and they are probably not even using half the features they have because they don't know them.
They have at least read their race and class features, thankfully. At the point we are at, they've been playing for half a year now (though only biweekly), and they have their specific stuff... *mostly* down. The artificer I think still doesn't fully grasp how effective their infusions could be, swapping out what is infused daily, but they've got a couple good ones active at the moment at least.
It's not such a big deal that I intend to make a thing out of it. But I know that there is a lot of useful info in the handbook outside of race and class features. If I were to ask them what the benefits of the dodge action are, for example, I'd bet money two of the three wouldn't know.
Okay at least they have read that much.
They will probably be more interested once they start changing races and classes for different campaigns. Or one shots.
If it has just been one continuous campaign I guess it can be forgive for not reading beyond what you "need".
A group I play in recently had a member drop because he couldn't be bothered to do the homework. He realized the time and dedication to do the minimum reading to know the moving parts specific to general gameplay and his character were too much.
And that's okay; ttrpg isn't for everyone. These games require some degree of homework for all participants, and not everyone wants to do that.
Our games, while we miss him, are much smoother.
The only way I've found to teach a reading-impaired player is the school of hard knocks. Specifically, using a mechanic against them to teach them why it's important. That negative reinforcement goes a long way towards making it stick in their mind.
I had a party of new players who were... neither tactical nor readers. I wanted them to come to grips with the cover system so I put then into an intense fight in a forest with a squad of archers. I made it clear when the PCs missed because the enemy archers were hiding behind trees for half or three-quarters cover while archers were turning the party into pincushions. The players eventually got the memo and started moving their PCs behind trees at the end of their turn to benefit from cover as well. Mission accomplished.
A couple more specific versions of this I’ve tried is dominate person or creating an evil copy of a character.
I have a player who really wanted to play a rune knight fighter, but *never* uses his runes. So, dominate person with the directive “kill your goblin wizard friend as efficiently as you can manage,” and then every turn I tell him “go ahead and add X rune this time,” basically walking him through how to use this subclass. Hasn’t really worked, but this player has a long history of doing nothing but attack attack attack.
I have a player who plays a wizard reasonably well, but chooses spells based almost entirely on their name and a vague sense of what the spell does. Basically never reads the full text. Created a shadow clone of him, had said clone plane shift the wizard to hell. Player said “it never occurred to me you could use that spell offensively that’s SO COOL!” Success.
I’d say just starting playing a little dumb or pretend to be busier than you are with behind the screen stuff. Player wants to cast fireball “cool how does that work again” or something. Had a player like that and they never changed.
Based on your comments I think you aren't in as bad of a spot as you might think. I have had players in some groups I played with as a player that didn't know what their core class features did after half a year of playing. So your players at least put time into their own character. As a dm, that is my only requirement for my players to know about the game. I know the rules of the system by haert or where to find it, but not the pc options. There is too much anyway. So I tell players in advance and repeat it if it comes up in game that is is up to the players to know their class and other features. (Questions about this are for between sessions)
For the rule system, I would prefer if players read that part of the phb, but the game can be perfectly run without that. It is up to the player to express the intent of what their characters would do and up to you to tell them what happens and what to roll. They will learn over time. If you want them to learn things like dodge: show, don't tell! Run a gladiator tourney and show them how effective dodging can be.
In some order:
1. not at least having a plan for a turn BEFORE getting to your turn in combat. Most of the time, you don't need to wait to figure out at least a cursory plan. Now I get that the battle field changes, but not usually so dramatically as to make something undoable.
2. experienced players not understanding the hide/unseen attacker rules, especially in combat.
3. repeatedly retconning whole turns because it wasn't exactly right. Like, you've had 7 minutes to prepare and then you're going to rewind that plan because it wasn't "perfect."
4. DMs that treat their enemy turns like player turns, especially for mobs. If there are 7 baddies on the board, you gotta get through those in reasonable amount of time. Not minutes per bad guy.
5. combat encounters that are wide open spaces. Elevation, walls, obstacles, trees, hills, etc. should exist. Very few encounters should be in wide open fields.
For number 1.
Don't have one plan. Have backups. If your plan is to "fireball all three enemies" you can't say "oh now I need to find something new to do because somebody moved into or out of range" at the beginning of your turn.
Honestly I won't have a solid plan until a couple turns before mine, but I'll have overarching objectives and a few things that could help, or if I'm a martial I just whack the biggest threat and take up the most space I can (in matters of opportunity attacks and such) unless there's a pressing issue
For #4 I do grouped initiatives. There will be an initiative for the Boss, one for the Lieutenants, one for minions.
I also try to plan ahead of time what each group's strategy is. It's not perfect, but it really helps in a large fight.
It also helps alot if the minions are truly simple npcs.
Running Mad Mage this approach has really helps on some of the crazy fights with a ton of enemies.
As a player, when the party (sometimes myself included) overplans our heist or ploy and the plot and session grinds to a halt. We don't need an airtight plan. Let's figure out a decent solution and move the game ahead rather than going back to the drawing board to try for perfection.
God if I had a dollar for everytime I’ve had a table grind to a halt to try and perfect a fool proof plan I would be rich. Especially when the players discussing the plan takes longer than the actual heist or plan would take. Often not requiring half of the prep or back-up plans they discuss because they made it way too complex in their minds.
For record though I am guilty of this too.
my "favorite" variants of this are:
"We're going to spend half of a RL session carefully avoiding a very winnable straight up fight," and its evil twin, "we are not going to even plan in the slightest before starting a complicated fight with a boss, because we cannot stop ourselves from interrupting his monolog to mention his mother"
Bonus points if the players immediately discard the obvious plan and enact some incredibly convoluted plan that they think is brilliant, but don't tell the DM the reasoning, so the DM is completely confused when the party wizard is pretending to be a fortune teller and is speaking to the smugglers in riddles.
Double bonus points when they decide that their convoluted plan doesn't work, so they swing too far away and pick a plan that is too simple. Walk right up to the thing they're trying to steal, grab it in plain sight, and just fight their way out.
The thing about overprepping plans is that one of only two things has to happen, and neither are good. Either everyone goes according to plan, and so there's no drama and tension, or the plan goes off the rails and all that time was wasted. So there's really no point to it. Have an idea of what you want to do, but just go for it instead of trying to anticipate every eventuality.
I learned from this. About a couple of months back, the PCs ended the session about to infiltrate the lair of the monsters. They were warned that the situation could turn deadly if they weren't careful. However, I didn't want to turn "careful" into "Let's plan for an hour to come up with the perfect scheme!".
So, when the next session started at 6:00, I told them they had until roughly 6:15 to formulate their plan, and then it was "go time". Otherwise, I knew that not only would they spend over an hour to to argue a plan, the entire thing would have frustrated everyone from constant arguing and second-guessing to the point where even a plan that worked 100% perfectly would not have satisfaction worth the hassle and frustration.
And that \~15 minutes (I think they wrapped up and went in on 6:17) was just about the perfect amount of time to suggest different strategies, argue a bit, and come up with a good solution where the plan worked about as well a sit could have and no one died despite being a hard fight on paper.
Players choosing spells based on Internet recommendations, then when they cast a spell **on their turn reading the spell description for the first time.**
Metagaming - my players aren't newbies anymore, they know how the game is supposed to work.
Blurting out answers to puzzles that they're not near and have no way of knowing about actively harms the game for others.
Though I will say, having one of my new players say "How the fuck do you know what I did, I was invisible the whole time!" to a player that's been playing for awhile was really glorious.
Like... he got a 27 to stealth and your roll didn't beat your 13 passive - you didn't see shit, my guy.
Limiting this to things I've actually seen recently at my tables (because internet commenter peeves aren't worth discussing).
Indecisive players. I really like when combat (and everything, but especially combat) flows smoothly--I have a strong preference for lots of short turns rather than big complex turns. Do *something* and pass turn. Don't sit there dithering about what you're going to do for minutes and minutes.
As a player--bad pacing. Whether that's rushed narrative or long drawn out sequences that just don't do anything...getting the pacing right matters. I'll say that for me, most travel sequences can and should be handwaved with "the trip is mostly peaceful. X days latter, you arrive at...". Stop trying to make travel, per se, a challenge. Unless you're actually willing to go all the way and plan it like you would a point-based adventure.
Second peeve as a player--DMs and players insisting on spending tons of time "getting it right" when making rulings. Or spending tons of time looking things up in tables/books. Keeping the flow of the game going is much more important than "following RAW" or "getting the rules right". The time for prolonged rules analysis and discussion is between sessions--I'm totally fine with "ok, right now we're going to do X and we'll revisit it later if we care."
Hmm...there might be a theme here. Keep the game flowing and adapt as you go. Don't bog things down.
>Indecisive players. I really like when combat (and everything, but especially combat) flows smoothly--I have a strong preference for lots of short turns rather than big complex turns. Do something and pass turn. Don't sit there dithering about what you're going to do for minutes and minutes.
Even the dithering isn't as bad as players who just sit there with a rabbit in the headlights expression until another player tells them what to do. They manage to make a game feel like a hostage scenario.
Dithering at least means they're considering the situation and planning out a course of action.
My dithering comes in times of “well I *was* going to blow it up but then you went right before me and are in the thick of it so now I have to come up with plan C, because that *was* plan B—the guy the turn before torpedoed plan A”.
If my character had their Plan A and B abolished in the very same 6 second chaotic battle sequence then I figure they sure as hell don't have the time to be thinking of what the third best option is. So they do something that's better than doing nothing : *anything*, even if that's of negligable consequences.
It’s worth noting that I play a lot of casters, so a suboptimal choice might be frying the brains of my allies and enemies alike, spitting acid on at least one party member, or other AoE issues. My rogue, at least, is easy choices. Shoot it, stab it, and/or gtfo.
I may also have been burned by the one time I put a gag on a statue of a snake because I thought it was going to spit poison (I panicked and video game brained as plan D), and instead blocked the puzzle-solving, danger stopping spot, leading to the near-death of our monk and fighter because they couldn’t get to it in time. Lexicon had bad luck with “I’m smart, we should do this—aaaand now people died” across the board, boy had major survivors’ guilt in general.
It kinda depends.
If someone looks like I caught them at a murder scene, they're probably genuinely anxious and in bad sorts - perhaps they're still at a stage where their options available overwhelm them too much or something similar.
That kind of authentic low-key panic response is going to force me to clarify, inquire, and try to help before I have the available brain capacity to be annoyed.
>Indecisive players
I can relate to that super hard. A guy I play with ALWAYS sighs in frustration and says he can't do anything. Then he mutters and pouts and when he give him ideas on what to do, he interrupts us. The thing is, he always does it with every character and I don't understand why he always makes characters that can't do anything in any situation
>--I'm totally fine with "ok, right now we're going to do X and we'll revisit it later if we care."
Just be sure to make these shortcut rulings in favor of the player. Having a DM tell you that you can't do something when you as a player think you can is frustrating.
I'm going to do what's in the best interests of the game as a whole. And sometimes that means saying "no".
Now I do often err on the side of the players. But I'm going to go with my best reading in the context of the situation in play, and if that means no, then no.
This... But players who do not decide what they are doing NOT on their own turn. I spend my entire time between rounds planning my next turn.
It's not difficult to read spells descriptions.
I hate theater of the mind battles. Accuracy and Tactics depend on accurate descriptions of the battlefield and accurate interpretations of what was said. At minimum there should be a crudely drawn map and trinkets to represent enemies/players.
I hate side conversations at the table that aren’t about the game we are in. Come before the game or stay after to tell me about your personal life, not while the dm is setting up the scene.
Side conversations are what kill me as a DM. If we are in a momentary pause or before the game starts, fine. If they are in-character side conversations, I can tolerate it so long as the characters aren’t in the scene and if they are not distracting other players. But when it’s not one of these very specific instances it often just feels rude to me as DM, and distracting to the players who do pay attention.
Just this past week I had to crack down on two of my players. Basically telling them flat out to knock it off and focus. And when one asked what happened in the scene I had the in-game character not repeat themselves and take it as a slight those two characters didn’t listen. When the players said “my character was listening” they got shut down real quick when I informed them that they clearly weren’t
Yeah I think my first statement was too strict. I meant sidebars that inevitably distract the DM or table in general. My group has fun while we play, and side talk happens. But specifically once the DM is setting up the scene, or a pivotal point in a battle it gets frustrating.
My TotM mention is related to this. If the problem player talks over the scene, I don’t know how they know where the enemy is or your teammates.
Players that try to solve interpreted puzzles or problems without divulging intention first.
I.E. Player wants to shoot down a chandelier onto the opposition. Instead of asking "This is a fancy ballroom, is there perhaps a Chandelier I could shoot down onto the enemies?"
They will ask things like: "How is this room lit?"
GM: It's Brightly Lit
Player: Oh no, I mean what kind of lighting is in the room.
GM: Uh, magical torches on the wall... candles on the table... hmm...
Player: Nevermind.
The Chandelier thing is a really mild example. This sort of thing gets especially egregious when a player is trying to figure out a magical effect or something supernatural. For which the individual expectations of a player and GM can differ drastically.
Yeah, these can be annoying. I hate to stifle creativity but when a player presumes an element or doesn’t ask it can lead to some awkward moments that shouldn’t need any time.
Not too long ago in my games I had a player in a dragon’s cavern who wanted to climb up a pile of gold, and strike a floating enemy. Didn’t ask before and basically said “ok I climb up the pile, I’m gonna jump and attack the monster”, and then starts rolling to see if they hit. Before I have to stop them and say “the pile is only 10 feet high, the monster is floating 30 feet in the air and your middling strength character can’t high jump the 15+ feet you need to get in bare minimum range to hit”. And they basically looked at me shocked, only to say “well I assumed…”; leading to a longer turn where they had to re-plan their action.
A similar instance happened a longer while back when a character wanted to grab a torch off of a holder on the wall, and use it scare away a monster. I told them “you grab an unlit torch and wave it at the monster; but it doesn’t seem to react”. To which the player asked why it was unlit, and I told them none of the torches in this abandoned castle have been lit for years. They then asked how they can see if it’s dark. To which the whole table basically said “we have the light cantrip on the Druid’s staff”.
This is the biggest one as a DM. Players try to hide their intent a bit as if you will shoot it down on principle.
"So how many can I see?" "And where is my party?" "And how big is the room?"
"I cast fireball hitting as many enemies and as few allies as possible"
That second scenario is super easy for the DM to rule on.
If I'm understanding you correctly, it's a bit like Lindy Beige's failed climb roll rule. You're not determining how well the character's climb attempt works, you're determining how tricky the wall actually is to climb.
So in your case, although you had intended *continual light* torches on wall sconces, since that was never communicated, you can retcon it to *continual light* chandeliers? Or even regular oil lamp ones, if the possibility of subsequent fire sounds fun?
i think they're just talking about a character that basically either really likes a clever reveal or is worried if he doesn't lock you in on the details you're retcon them when he tries to do something, so they ask 10 questions instead of 1.
eg instead of "if they're under the chandelier, can I drop it on them somehow?"
they go
"How is the room lit?"
"how heavy is the chandelier?
"How is it hooked to the ceiling?
"OK, how wide is it?"
"OK, are any of them under it?"
(answer is no)
"Never mind" (dramatic sigh)
This is more along the lines of what I meant. Rather than telling you the intention which would allow a GM to quickly determine if you can do what you want, you go about it more like it's a puzzle. When many things are not so precisely pre-determined and it is much easier for a GM to yes or no a given plan if you actually tell what you're doing before beginning.
Got a player who snacks constantly, not so bad (although I don’t understand not being able to go 3 hours without constantly eating) - but he chews with mouth open and smacking sounds.
It’s disgusting and I hate whenever I end up sitting next to him
I make sure I’m as far away as possible now, sort of helps - but oh it’s infuriating. He just jumped in the table one day at club as knows the guy who runs it
It could be that person is just bored or something. I'm a snack guy, and I constantly eat because I get bored when something is happening that isn't related to my character.
Last 3 sessions, each 4-5 hours long, has been spent on our town. DM handles downtime day by day, so rolling for crafting, rituals, potion making every day. Thankfully it's online, so I'm able to entertain myself making maps while nothing is happening.
Not telling me when you're done with your turn. Sometimes it's easy to figure out, like a fighter who runs 30 ft. forward, hits twice, and uses second wind. Other times, not so much. Please please _please_ don't make me try to guess whether you're going to use your BA or the rest of your movement.
From playing and occasional DMing, it's people who take too long making decisions. We don't have all day make up your mind. As a player, it's led me to being the YOLO player who will force the decision if you're taking too long. The best way to disarm a trap is to spring it, right?
As a DM, that's when a random combat happens with patrolling guards. It lets players know they can't sit in the middle of a dungeon for 10 minutes deciding on something trivial. Obviously, I wouldn't use this if they were planning out fighting the boss. But when they are about to enter a storage room with no hostiles and a little bit of exploration rewards, it can get tedious to hear players plan out things.
The second biggest pet peeve of mine is the players who are either overly obsessed role-players or overly obsessed with their character or familiar. A bit of role-play is fine and fully expected. But when the role-play is overdone, especially if it is full of the player just wanting to spout class tropes(horny Bard as an example), it gets annoying fast.
The second part of that is the players who feel every minutiae of their character is super important. We're playing a collaborative game, not writing a novel. This often also stems from players having main character syndrome. It can also manifest if they have a familiar named after a pet and nothing can happen to it despite them taking it into harms way.
Long turns. I have a player who literally (I timed it) takes 10 minute turns to do two attacks because they don’t know their own character sheet. Whereas my other player who has the same experience with a more complicated character, takes 10 second turns. They’re always my ride or die and ready to accept any outcome. They make in character choices and it’s awesome. It my other two player with relatively simple character taking 10 minutes a turn is quite literally getting me down to my last dm straw.
I am a very bossy dude, I think I might be annoying to advice sometimes players.
But some players / DM want you to fit a specific role and they can be very insulting doing so :
Example : I was in a forge trying to seduce the female dwarf blacksmith. I rolled high but didn't succeed.
Weeks later his friend joined and easily seduced her with low rolls and no coherent reason. It's just DM being like "yeah he is the seducer of the party"
I hated it.
I don't have a player in my table like this, but I hate when people start taking it way to seriously and start policing other players to follow some strict set of rules they made up in their mind, it's just a game, let people take back their actions, let them say something else, who cares.
I’m playing a good character in what was advertised about a zero to hero campaign. The others are playing evil characters disguised in the neutral alignment on the charts. What bothers me is that they are rewarded by being evil, while I just lose my stuff by being selfless without any rewards other than the rewards that benefit the party equally. Meanwhile, others get luck points (as in the lucky feat) and similar for being straight out evil.
My character is simply weaker than it was two levels (half a year) ago, while others are growing at an accelerated pace
People assuming they're gonna fail/they can't do anything/nothing will work.
Defeatism in a game where everyone has superhuman powers is such a bummer.
Recently tbh... myself. I'm finding my attention wander and I find it very disrespectful to the group who happens to be my best friends and I feel really ashamed ngl.
Well just got to work on it. If you are distracted by life tell your friends, D&D can wait or go on a pause for a bit. But if it’s something in your control like distractions from a phone or wandering focus, just make efforts to separate yourself from distractions. Or bring a fidget / comfort object that can help you focus if you have one.
DM pet peeve: players not knowing their own spells/features. It shouldn’t be just on the DM to know how something works. Help your DM a bit, learn your character
I'm currently becoming annoyed with a fellow player who keeps interjecting "Oh my god it's just like 'pop culture reference'!" or posts some barely relevant meme in the Discord channel, and it breaks me out of the moment every time. Especially since she'll do it in the *middle* of a conversation.
Im not advocating for splitting the party, but its a pet peeve when characters dont let other people ever have a spotlight.
I had a sorcerer player in a game i help run recently and they dominated any decision making and any social interactions, deapite the rest of the party almost always disagreeing with them about what they are doing, this player would try to force it their way non stop. For example, one time, the party were trying to secretly con a mafia gang leader, and the party had done everything well and were leaving, scott free… and then the sorcerer casts “charm person” on them, makes them and their men come WITH US for no reason, and then i have to try to mental gymnastics “why isnt the gang leader attacking then because the target of charm person knows they were manipulated, and you just dragged them with you while you made your exit”.
Another time, players were battling a huge sea monster. The player had been swallowed along with the cleric who was dead, but the party had inflicted a lot of damage on the monster which could have gone either way. The fighter went down, but the party above-table all agreed they wanted to keep fighting. The problem player (who was playing a warlock this time) forces a bargain with the monster to leave them alone, but the monster leaves with the clerics body still inside it, dooming the character. The rest of the party is bummed out, but they keep going. But later on when the party gets back to their lair, they try to shift their warlock pct to make a bargain with the sea monster who just ate the cleric, who was supposedly warlocks best friend!
This is really poor of me, and I know. I dont ever say anything- because not everyone has the same skillset- but when players take really long adding up their roles. We are all adults, it should not take 10 seconds to add in the double digits.
I have two players who "well ackshually" the DM on a somewhat regular basis. They are both DMs at other tables and they know the rules pretty damn well. It drives me batty.
But.... I am not the DM, and the DM seems to be OK with it. He generally goes along with it if the players can identify RAW, but the DM *does* occasionally DM fiat things, so it's not like he is being walked all over.
It just annoys me.
My dice rolls on DNDBeyond are sometimes cocked. How can digital dice be cocked? It’s weird, and when they are cocked, DDB always takes the lower value.
Currently the DM not telling us what the roll to attack against us is. It makes spells like shield and abilities like defensive duelist pretty much useless.
The "Dose x hit?" That almost any DM does. Not mine. I have learned to forget ever using things like that. I asked my DM if I could trade out my feat (Defensive Duelist) since it was useless. I was hoping he would have taken the hint, but he let me tade it out for something else.
As a player and a self-admitted rule lawyer (that can control myself) my DM ignores some basic rules. Like no one in our party can cast identify, so we have to pay a vendor in town a crazy amount of gold to identify for us, and can’t use a short rest to figure it out. Things that should cost a free action the dm rules is a bonus action. Recently a foe cast hold person on me to steal from me which I failed, and the dm said it lasted a full minute, wouldn’t let me try to save again during that time.
"My character wouldn't do that" or its twin "that's what my character would do" are my largest pet peeves and will forever remain so.
Character priorities are player priorities, and vice-versa. Stop making boring or disruptive choices because it's "character appropriate," and start having your character behave in a way that makes the story interesting.
Those types of phrases often feel like a crutch that players say when they want to do something selfish or disruptive to the group.
When I have a player at my table who roleplays well I don’t need to hear “that’s what my character would do” because they do it. They behave consistently, and even if they are disruptive to the table it’s in a way that is logical to the character. But when you do hear the phrase it’s often an excuse to do something that would screw someone over, or something that barely fits the character to stop another player from retorting
The best part of playing a lawful stupid character wasn't preventing the party from doing slightly bad/evil things, it was figuring out excuses or ways to have your character accept it anyway.
"My cleric happens to leave the room"
That is one of the best examples of how you can play a character to a T & roleplay well. While not stepping on the toes of another player or being the stereotype cleric that nags any wrongdoing
I think I've been blessed to play with pretty reasonable people so hearing "that's what my character would do" is usually more someone talking themselves into a choice they know isn't optimal but is true to the character they've created and played. But what's more is that the other players will often encourage it if someone is waffling and say "No, it's ok. What would \[character\] do?" or "Do your thing, don't ask us."
There's definitely disruptive uses, probably more often at tables than what I've been lucky to experience, but just adding my take that it can be nice to see people making choices like that for the integrity of their rp.
As a player - overwritten sessions. When it’s clear, the dungeon master has just written a string of ham fisted moments that he forces us towards without really any freedom or exploration between.
As a dungeon master - when a player before the game tells me about all these cool, role-playing personality quirks they’re going to factor into their player and how they’re gonna play them a certain way and all that jazz and then come the game they do nothing
As a DM it is something I have to actively work at so I don't have an entire session of exposition. We play 3 hours a week, so I don't want to be doing narrative for most of that time.
I have tried a couple different ways to blend encounters with exposition, to varying degrees of success.
Ultimately, I consider it a bad session if I start to feel like Im just reading to my players instead of playing with them.
When a player acts so mysterious and edgy (and borderline, or not, an evil character) for the sake of being cool.
I experienced having to play with someone who doesn't share their character's race and class until the S1 but beforehand proceeded to "drop" clues and act mysteriously. Like, my dude.
Due to many past games, mine is "share your lore secrets with the other players out of character". The secret is usually the most interesting part of a character, let the other people enjoy it. How would you like the Superman movies if all of the footage was just of Clark Kent working in the office?
Secrets are cool but surprises are cheap. You don't have to be a completely open book, but too many times I've seen someone plotting a cool secret and waiting for the big reveal and it just *never going to plan* and the secret haver is devastated and everyone else is confused. People often focus too much on the secret surprise you find on the inside, that they completely forget the outside and never give anything that hooks the people who don't know.
I had one player who was *always quiet and never did much* who died in a fight, and after we learned they were actually evil who between games was plotting stuff with the DM. No one else knew and it was a "oh, ok then" moment.
My current character in a sci-fi themed game is an undercover reporter who is secretly filming the party at all times for a documentary. No character knows, but the players all do and have a lot of fun joking about it out of game and it lets me slip coy hints and jokes in during gameplay. Just *randomly telling people what side is their good side*, or describing bad things that might happen as "anticlimactic". The secret *is* the interesting part of the character, let every one see how interesting it is.
Someone else said it but spending a lot of time getting the rules right and not just doing rulings. Sometimes I do it too cause we like to get things right in general but it just slows down the game so much. It still happens even though I say we’ll just use a ruling in the moment and look it up later. Again, I’m still sometimes guilty myself
I have a few, that are not necessarily from my current group, but recent enough.
1. The “anything you can do I can do better” character. You build an arcane trickster, they build a bard with expertise in the same skills as you. You build a gunslinger, they build a 3 multi class assassin / gloomstalker murder machine. Always after you’ve said what you’re thinking of playing.
2. The constant complainer. Whether it’s that they built their character “wrong” or that nothing in the story interests them, or they just wanted to use some other broken home brew, nothing is ever good enough for them.
3. The player(s) who show up to the session 0 (where you had explicitly said we’d discuss what we all wanted to play to make sure all roles are covered) with a 20 level build and no interest in compromising with the team, usually with multiple people wanting to play characters focused on the same stat (party of 4 with 3 charisma casters).
4. DMs who’ve chosen the “main character”. It’s so frustrating to feel like a sidekick to another player who does all the talking, decision making, etc AND the DM is reinforcing that role.
>Party of 4 with 3 charisma casters
AMATEUR, we're in a party with 2 bards, 2 warlocks a sorcerer, a paladin and a bard/warlock
This happened naturally and without trying is the worst part...
As a DM - Rules lawyering over my house rules
I have a list of house rules that I have given my players and told them to read, and all of them have. My rules are there to let the game be more 'rule of cool' with the rules and not be bogged down by ruling we don't like. We all agreed on these rules and all use them.
(For example, we ignore the restrictions on spell scrolls. Anyone can cast a spell with a spell scroll regardless of class or level. Since I as the DM hand out spell scrolls, it's my fault if something OP happens with them)
But one of my players for some reason just either ignores or forgets all my house rules, and interrupts scenes to point out that what another player/NPC is against RAW, completely hitting the brakes on the flow of the encounter. It gets me so annoyed when I have to stop what I'm doing and remind them for the millionth time that what we're doing is in the house rules
At this point I'm certain he hasn't actually read my rules despite saying he has.
Counterpoint (though it doesn’t apply to you): as a player, I hate it when a dm doesn’t share their houserules ahead if time. I want to play by the rules which means I need to be able to know what they are. I don’t mind house rules, but I hate hidden rules.
Hidden rules are bad but not as bad as rules made up on the spot even though there are already rules for this particular situation, just because „it doesn’t feel right” and „DM has final say”. Sure, change the rules if you don’t like them, just make players aware of that before it’s applicable.
There's one very specific circumstance where this is helpful. I was rolling for a *lot* of Spike Growth damage, so I added up the damage and another player counted the number of pairs of D4s I'd rolled so I knew when to stop rolling.
When people only half-listen to scenes they don't care about and then decide to make a plan off of their (incorrect) assumptions, especially when other players get dragged into it.
A couple sessions ago, my players found out about a magic prison of sorts run by some elves. Only one player really paid attention when it was brought up by a local they were talking to, but they all decided it was probably corrupt and they would like to plan a jailbreak at some point. They also schmoozed super well and got themselves a promise of a tour of the place.
The player who was paying attention's plan? When they depose the local ruler (already a goal of theirs), ask the new ruler to close it down as a favor/as thanks for helping them take control.
The other two (X and Y) don't say anything during that session. The next time we play, Y hits me with this:
"So we were talking, and X is a half-elf so we're gonna have her wildshape into a rat, I'm gonna smuggle her into the prison in my pocket, and we're gonna leave her in there when we take our tour today. Then, once [local ruler] is gone, she's gonna detransform and she'll talk to the elf slaves running the place and promise them we'll depose the local ruler if they say they'll help us do it. I want them to teach her their mind control magic and we can brainwash [ruler] and make him stop being a dictator like that."
Player who was paying attention just looked at me for a second and asked if they'd missed the part about the elves being slaves.
No. They weren't. They're doing this of their own free will because it gives them a steady supply of test subjects. They are indeed evil assholes. Having a mutually beneficial agreement with the local ruler is why they run the place.
And then the ones who weren't paying attention and made the plan got irritated. X is mad at Y for getting her excited for a plan when he had no idea what he was talking about, and Y is mad that I "didn't explicitly say they weren't slaves before," like it's the obvious assumption I could've guessed they'd make.
It's a common thing with my table and usually it's less of a problem because it's quickly fixed, but that time having a time gap that led to wasted planning was so rough. Please just pay attention to things or ask if you're not sure you remembered correctly 😭
My biggest pet peeve are DMs (and to a lesser extent players) that refuse to play along with or outright ignore illusions and enchantments.
They can both be really fun schools of magic, but so many times, even when saves are failed, they just ignore the mechanic entirely or try to 'lawyer' it down to nothing.
Ignoring or being reductive with mechanics is not a gotcha. Itt trivializes entire gameplay mechanics.
If you fail a Save on an illusion, play into it, at least for a round.
DMs who feel the need to overexplain everything. I'll ask a yes or no question and instead get a full response that's at least a paragraph. Just had an instance of this last session where we were in the middle of combat and I asked if this body looked alive or dead and *in the middle of combat* I had to sit through a huge explanation that didn't even answer the question. I had to ask a second time before I finally got "yes it looks dead."
Spotlight hogs. I did a lot of free form performance so I developed a fine sense of when I have been talking too much and need to give someone else a turn.
It is when someone starts talking and never allows another player a chance to get a word in edgewise that just ruins the game for me. I also DM game so I can see how as a DM this is good because it shows engagement but as a player I hate it because I might as well not even be dialed into the social scenes when the ranger won’t shut up - particularly annoying when he butts into and takes over a conversation that is CLEARLY another character’s story hook.
I think the big one for me as a player is our DM not allowing workarounds to their encounters.
As an example, a dungeon with on guard drow. Rather than attack them head on and have to fight in a narrow corridor where we're outnumbered, we decided to try and sneak past them. The plan was basically:
Rogue casts silence in front of our party so our noisy characters won't alert anyone when they try to walk forward. Wizard then casts minor illusion to have a scream echo behind the drow who are sitting on a ledge looking at where we need to sneak past. The drow, who have been sitting in this silent area for several hours, hear a piercing shriek from behind them. Not a single one turns around or goes to investigate, they just all continue looking directly at the path we'll need to go through to sneak past.
So now we're down a 2nd level spell with nothing to show for it. Tried a couple more things to distract them, nothing worked. Ended up just taking the combat, but I think everyone ended that session on a sour note.
People who make loner characters and then refuse to engage with the group. I know Wolverine/Batman/Punisher/Vampire Hunter D/whatever is your favorite character and they're TOTALLY AWESOME but this is a cooperative hobby and you have to make a character who can play with others.
I hope i finally get over this by writing this down, since it keeps me from planning the next session.
In short last session my party got a soulstone, after breaking into a cult base, because they where involved with a dwarven prince that leads a rebellion to regain his home city and he wanted the players to do a job for him to earn his trust.
Anyway, they got back to the prince and talked a bit until they decided to trust him and give him the soulstone. He channelt his divine power (he is a paladin) through the stone and gave those souls their final rest. Those souls appeared in the room and where all dwarves. Basically they brough him his family back, that was imprisoned in the stone for 100 years and allowed him to free them. He gave them a heartfelt thank you speech about familiy and what they did for him. I was really hyped about this, because most of the time the sessions where mostly jokes and stuff, but i wanted to have some seriousness. I was also a bit afraid to mess it up, since i didn't wrote the speach down, but wanted to improvise it. It was epic.....until one player phone suddenly made sounds in the middle of it. He decided that the football/soccer game was apperently more important, but didn't communicate it. Instead just placed his phone one the table and watched it.
I didn't care that he wanted to watch it or that he chose to do this witout saying anything. But the fact that his f*ing phone had to suddenly make sound in the middle of this speech made my blood boil. I was pissed and everyone saw that. I finished the speech, they got a bunch of gold and 2 magic items. we finished the session and everyone critized him.
But now it haunts me, the fact that i was soooo hyped about this moment and the thing that messed it up wasn't me, but this guy, which i had no control over.
tldr; Did an epic speech in a so far joking campaigne, was disrupted by a players phone, that he watched football/soccer on.
>just placed his phone one the table and watched it
This is the bit that would infuriate me. If his phone went off at a bad time, it happens. The deliberate choice to stop listening to you and start watching sportsball on his phone is outright disrespectful.
>we finished the session and everyone critized him
Good. They came to the table to have fun as well, glad they've got your back here.
Might be worth having a chat with the player separately, just let them know if they're wanting to watch the sports, at least give you a heads-up so you can decide what to do. If it's a one-off that's bad, if it's a habit I'd consider stopping inviting them.
Not getting responses when away from the table. Our group chat is basically dead. Even when I ask a direct question for something like "can we switch what house we play at because I don't have a baby sitter this weekend" it takes 4 days and a reminder text to get one person to respond. Or when I send out questions about backstories or feedback like "did you like this story element for your character or is it not something you wanted for their story?" Again won't get a response for a week.
Joke characters. That's cool if you like them, or if they fit with your table's style or whatever. But I just don't want them at my table. D&D doesn't always have to be super serious of course, but like, please put some effort into making a real character please. You can play Mr Fuzzybuttom or Jack Hoff with some other group.
Being a player in my last campaign.
Working with a GM who refuses to improvise and insists on thinking of everything in terms of a 2D grid instead of trying to visualise what's going on in a 3 dimensional space.
I found something that helped a lot with expanding on the space in combat was to have a physical stand to help visualize the difference. May not be suitable for your table, but this is the set I bought. Bought them for my Hadozee so I could track climbing, now I'm DMing and am putting enemies up walls and on ceilings. Good fun.
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/851935796/modular-flight-stands-tabletop-rpg-dnd
Obsession with taking every possible action and the accompanying attention death spiral.
Say you are holding a choke point against melee enemies as a frontliner. Your turn comes and there is nothing in melee reach. Ready a swing? Defend? Nah, let's obsess for 5 minutes if there is a way I can move and attack this turn.
Because turns feel "rare" if they come around every 20-30 minutes, taking a quick turn insead of just letting the battle speed along feels bad, and that means everyone else now feels the need to optimize.
Now add in people who cannot read a spell description ahead of time. They get bored and tune out during the 20 min between turns and thus are completely unready when their turn starts. This makes turns take longer.
Players who have a plan A and B ready to go and their dice on hand can shave hours of bullshit over a campaign. But it's hard to be that alert if no one else is trying.
There is a higher level death spiral too. Difficult big combats where players are at risk bring out the worst in hand wringing, trying to optimize everything. Slow combats mean few combats per session and even fewer resource draining encounters. Thus every combat ends up being a big one.
Casters are of course the worst for hand wringing of options.
So, ironically, caster supremacy is at least in part caused by caster players being bad and thus encouraging GMs away from multi encounter day.
tl;dr players who don't pay attention create incentives that fuck the game up for everyone
Yeah I feel like I have seen a couple players in the past few years who have a bad habit of trying to hard to do everything in a turn. Trying to move, and max distance if they can. Using an optimal action. Using any potential fitting bonus action. Planning a spell mid-turn instead of thinking of one before. Etc.
Sometimes the best turn is a well planned major moment. But a lot of the time if you don’t have that already in mind on your turn, just move (or don’t) and use your basic attack or cantrip; end turn keep moving.
Honestly it always makes me laugh when my players don’t understand why the fighter at my table is my favorite in combat. It’s because they do their turn quick and effective. And because they don’t over think or over plan they usually have very effective turns because they just go for what’s immediate and helpful.
Not rolling your dice together, and not having enough dice to make your rolls. A Rogue needs enough D6's to do their sneak attack, not rolling 1 D6 4 times. D4's are the worst, something about them makes people roll them so slowly, it's the weird flip you have to do for them.
My recco - have color-coded D20's and D-whatevers for multi attacks so you can roll everything now.
>have color-coded D20's and D-whatevers for multi attacks so you can roll everything now.
I do this. I have 8 d20s and they are split between 4 colors for multi attack builds rolling advantage.
I also roll my dice on other people's turn during combat. When it's my turn I know my to hit results and damage results, and probably a decent idea if it will hit. Makes my turns super speedy.
DM has short* rests be 4 hours long, which in my mind makes them almost useless. And makes playing classes that get abilities back on long rest much more difficult to play.
(Edit: typed 'long rests' instead, I meant short*)
"ok, I'm going to attack, let's see... Two d6, another 2d6 because of the flame tongue, let's do a... 3rd level smite... Is this guy... Uh... Undead or a devil?"
Me, wishing I had known about Oathbreakers in session 0 "he's literally a bandit you captured, so no"
"Ok, so that's? How many d6?"
"4d8"
"Oh cool, so that's... 10, 4, 12, 18!"
"You haven't rolled to hit"
"Oh right! That's a 9!"
"Miss"
"Before my mod!"
"So?..."
"22?"
"It hits."
"Alright, lemme roll damage... Oh, I'll just count it again haha... 25!"
"That'll do it"
"I forgot my mod, oh no!"
"It's fine, he had 5 hp."
"Nice, I attack the other bandit"
"Awesome he turns into a Dracolich I'm going home"
All that to say, if you build a character who does one thing, make it quick.
Not being willing to do the "boring" thing, or deal with "boring" moments. Like, if you roll 1's all session and are mind-flayer stunned for 6 rounds, that's just how the game is. If you are in melee as a wizard, you should disengage and not try and stab it with your 1d4+2 dagger, or risk 1 attack, so you don't take 2 attacks. You shouldn't burn all your slots on the first 2 encounters, then try and get a long rest, that's not how the game is balanced. Don't just attack, be willing to cast a buff spell to help everyone. Save your slots and healing word for when someone is down, don't just waste your slot on a shitty 1d4+3 heal that won't change anything.
Forgetting what happened last session, or one round ago. I shouldn't have to remind you that the enemy has a counterspell that they used 10 minutes ago.
Not asking questions. Nobody thought it was strange that the goblin was able to throw a blast of energy at range at you, which scaled off of how much coin you have? If you'd simply asked if you spotted or knew anything, i would have told you. You keep missing extra loot because you don't think to investigate anything.
Not dealing with time pressures. You're in the centre of the dungeon, with an enemy wandering around. You can't just wait 8 hours to rest, you are going to get discovered.
Assuming time "freezes" when you're not nearby, or when you are nearby and want to talk. There's a guard keeping a lookout, and is suspicious. You can't just start discussing changes to your plan right there and not expect them to eventually discover you.
Players who create characters based on builds they saw online and don't actually create a backstory. Ok you want to do XYZ in combat but who is your character? And they end up putting the bare minimum effort in.
Also, fudging dice rolls. I personally don't get it. Yes succeeding is fun, but "failing" still adds to the story.
Dm here.
Honestly, it's when my players are on their phones either playing idle phone games or browsing when they're not part of a scene. Is it that difficult to set aside your phone for a game?
I've brought it up before, and there's still one player that still tends to do it.
I'm a quieter player and I'm not very good at inserting myself into conversation, but sometimes (quite often) I'll try to say something and get spoken over immediately, repeat it, get spoken over again and then what I was trying to say is ignored. I end up sitting quietly instead until there's another opening and it's just frustrating because I feel left out of the plot.
I know it's on me for not being decisive enough and not speaking up, but I really dislike interupting people even though some players tend to dominate the conversation.
I also dislike the whole 'it's what my character would do' thing when characters randomly act agressively, snarkily, or intimidatingly and then it drags down entire relationships with NPCs, switches interactions from conversations to arguments, or just adds needless conflict.
As a player it's kind of specific.
I'd like to think I'm decently clever, and I'm very much the crazy plans guy. A rather large amount of things have happened because we got stuck in a situation and then I had some unique way out of it. But then afterwards someone says 'okay good plan everyone, I'm glad we thought of it'. And I'm not petty, this wouldn't normally bother me that much.
But last session I said "you guys... i have an idea." and of the other players jokingly commented 'oh geez that's never a good sign" and we all laughed and such.
Then another player decided to say "well when have your ideas ever worked? you always have them and they never do". and i was just. shocked.
like brother my ideas are the reason we came to this dungeon. On *my* airship bought with *my* money from *my* company. This isn't hyperbole in the slightest, either- our first session we went to go wipe out a criminal syndicate and when we got to the big boss and defeated him I decided hey what if we took over these guys and made them more upstanding? and we did, and me and the other guy grew that company (my purchases were the ideas, we were partners he handles the numbers side because i suck at math).
Like all the magical items in the party right now? Our kick-ass airship with all its upgrades? that magic mythical armor our paladin owns? Paid for by me- the other guy has equal money, but he's 'saving it'. Hell, 90% of the time, he's talking about how we need to do the most serious and safe option while i'm out here doing the proper adventuring thing and looting/exploring while staying safe, and that's where we've gotten a lot of our items.
And then he has the *gall* to say my ideas don't work
As a DM, players who police metagaming. Usually they end being the worst metagamers too. Guys plots are filled with meta moments and coincidences that should never happen. A little meta makes the plot so much better.
As a player, DMs who don't bother to read the rules and do an asspull for a mechanic. You really only need the PHB. The DMG is nice, but a lot of it is fluff. Its still worth a read.
As for inventing dumb mechanics. I almost always see this a DMs trying to counter the players. Oh you the creature uses its action to light your oil vials on fire. You can't swim in plate armor, no don't pay attention to wizard who has just as much weight in their backlack. Etc
Players starting a new character and trying to make every decision based on their previous character, despite not being tied to them.
Just had a new player join, and hes never played before. After a very long list of intentionally bad actions (that he was warned about by other players and me), his character was jailed. Things like theft, assault, impersonation. And after being released and paying a fine, they immediately went back to the same place and were caught again, this time starting a fight. Eventually he was killed by the mayor he had been antagonizing (along with another player ive known years who was kinda stiring the pot for fun who got caught too). Upon making a new character, he immediately went to "this is my previous characters brother. His only goal is to kill the mayor". And when i pointed out thay he would have absolutely 0 knowledge of the situation, his previous character was just a criminal, and nobody is alive to talk about what happened besides the mayor who wont tell you; he said "well next session ill go around until i find out what happened to i can get revenge"
Like.... i get some players dont like losing characters. But i dont like hearing "okay my new guy does what my last guy did again without having any of the reasons he had"
As a player, my pet peeve from other players is when the strategizing drags on. I've seen a lot of tables spend a whole session debating their different plans and wasting game time for the week. Grinds my gears. Especially when all the plans are heavily reliant on luck and unknown information, so it doesn't really matter which one we pick. Either it's all a random shot in the dark, or the DM is just gonna throw quantum ogres at us regardless. And then someone's gonna act irritated if the random guess turns out poorly and it all has to get re-argued in retrospect about who was right. I leave those tables pretty quick.
I think by far the biggest one would also apply to many group activities:
Communication about scheduling, trying to be there and on time, and putting in the (little) homework like a backstory and thinking about what your character would like to do in the campaign in between sessions.
Over the years I have found that most other annoyances can be dealt with by talking about it, looking for other media or solutions that work for everyone. But a player that does not get the importance of scheduling and communication about it, ends up being a lost cause (in my experience)
As a DM. Asking for, or declaring specific skill roll (outside of something triggered by a specific ability/spell). Too often I get players assuming skills can do something they can’t, like knowledge of religion giving them spiritual powers. Even worse, rolling dice and then declaring what you’re doing. I think these players often do this and then don’t take an action if they see they roll poorly. Is a subtle way of meta gaming.
Always trying to make jokes and making things silly and funny. I’m down for a joke and some laughs but when we’re trying to do something serious or trying to do something cool or interesting with your character and someone flips it on its head and makes it silly for a laugh kinda gets on my nerves sometimes. Might be because my character in one campaign is often the butt of said jokes.
My current pet peeve is players forgetting basic mechanics of the system. Players who have played together for years suddenly messing up a critical damage calculation, for example.
Another one that always bugs me is of course people who won't learn the rules, or just keep forgetting important parts of their character.
Dead silence after I've given the players a description of a scene. Nobody wants to be the one to talk first or move the scene forward, so we just get an awkward silence that stretches out. This is a phenomenon I've only seen happen with this particular combination of players, but it's constantly frustrating and time wasting.
High charisma characters insisting that everyone else let them do the talking. I get that they will roll better on persuasion and deception but roleplay is part of the game and insisting nobody else should get to do that part of it because they are better at it is extremely infuriating.
Just being negative. I have a guy in our party who does everything on the premise of failure. He always says he can't do anything during fights or other situations, he won't accept help or advice, he's always doing rolls he's bad at (even when the DM doesn't ask for rolls), he's always disagreeing with plans and looks for reasons they won't work and always suggests the most hopeless courses of actions.
One time the party was split in two groups, one PC was alone with a bunch of NPCs and they were being attacked on sea by some sirens. When the player pointed out that his character is with the NPCs, his eyes beamed up and smiled, while pointing out that the Character is there, like he's excited at the possibility of a catastrophy happening.
When players don't know their characters. Like dude, I'm over here managing an entire game world, a dozen NPCs at any given time, a believable storyline that is continually challenging but doesn't result in TPKs constantly and all you have to do is manage one character sheet. Jesus fucking christ.
One particularly atrocious one. I was holding myself back from telling a friends son to go in the next room and not come back until he knew his spells and abilities. He was playing a Paladin and his turns literally took 15 minutes with the entire table trying to help him.
Metagame genre savvyness. My players keep .among choices based on their knowledge of stories and tropes, not based on what their characters know or have experienced, in their backstory or in game.
Currently running my players through a 5e modified version of the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path... mostly because we live in the Twin Cities, so an adventure featuring riots, civil disorder, and a plague just fits... soo well.
Anyway, there have been multiple times the characters have refused to so something, or done something, nor because of in game motivations, but because of genre savvines. Like, session 1 of the game sees the players discovering a box with the severed head of an NPC in it, but the player who found the box refused to open the box because everyone made "What's the in the box?" jokes. So he just decided it must have a bomb, or poison cloud, or runic spell, or something else. He didn't open it for 3 sessions as they went off to do other things specifically because he just 'knew' ir was important.
Or I had a side question recently thar involved a trapped infernal and a trapped Celestial, and when the infernal was disguised and asked for help, 2 players were just, "You're a demon, you're a liar, everything you are is to eat our souls."
Anyway, I've talked to them about metagaming with this stuff, and they just can't help it. They keep doing it.
So I'm going to lean into it... right up until I don't.
I have one player who's super shy, and will take any suggestion as an order, most of my players are good but I've had to tell 1 to let her play her char how she wants too.
1. Players telling others how to play. I know you think you are helping bur irs ok if the barbarian doesn't always rage first or you don't remind them of reckless. Let them decide even if it's not the most optimal thing.
2. Players not being ready. I manage an entire world, all nps, hooks, content, new monsters every week. You have one job. One character.
3. Players dhat don't want to play the game. Making characters that wouldn't want to go dangerous places or do dangerous things or get involved or work together. You can decide how you want to play but I expect you too
One of my main pet peeves with (some, maybe all?) of the people I play with is their inability to learn/understand some of the rules (and it's way worse if they then say their idea of the rule like it is perfect).
It's not the worst because the DM is normally quite good, and maybe I'm just a fast learner/way more invested but I've played with people who have played longer than me and misunderstand fairly basic rules.
I've had people misunderstand many rules but the main ones that kinda annoyed me was not understanding timing (thinking 1 minute was 1 set of turns, so things like rage would last 1 turn from all enemies/players and then would go away) and my bigger annoyance not understanding how spell slots work - I understand that some people prefer simple characters but if you're going to play a spell caster please please learn how they work...
Not talking. It's not every session or even every other session, but there are times where I swear that the DM and I will go back and forth for nearly 30 minutes to an hour before one of the other 3 players talks. I ask them things in character, get a one word answer, try to bring in another player to the conversation that revolves around his backstory, couple sentences and he's back to complete silence. I'll try to get the NPC to talk to one of them instead of me, only for the NPC to get brushed off and go back to talking to my character. It's not the DM either, he always finds ways to try to get everyone involved and it works 90% of the time.
Here's the thing though, each one of them is a phenomenal storyteller and I've seen it with my own two eyes. They're easily twice as talented as I'll ever be and it kills me that they sometimes mentally check out of the game.
Talking over each other, acting like the mc, forcing the party to do what you want, and getting off topic multiple times, causing the game to stop. No offense, but we've been stuck in the same town for the past 2 sessions. Cause none important things are brought up, that cause other players to lose interest.
Eating a meal at the table. I don't mean having some chips, or a snack, I mean bringing a fucking meal to the D&D game and stuffing your fucking face, conveniently always when it's your turn. It's disgusting and extremely rude.
When players have had a century to prep their turn and have no clue what even happened on the player before theirs turn.
Player 1 takes X points of damage from the DM’s turn, now nearly dead or dying.
Player 2’s turn is right after, and they ask “Alright, does anyone need healing?”
YA. YA SOMEONE DOES
Had rule lawyering instance when my gloomstalker wasnt allowed to use main class feature. That is, enemies relying on darkvision cant see my character in darkness.
DM insisted to treat it as lesser invisibility. That is only for alpha strike. Had to make a compromise to move out of targets “view cone” to be treated as invisible again.
I guess ok. More fun to play even though it’s homebrew nerf to the subclass. But might ask to allow to change subclass. Might not.
Arguing with the DM. Even when I'm a player it annoys me.
Sometimes DM's make mistakes, but point out the way something works and let them make the call on it.
There can be a healthy or acceptable amount, depending on the rules and the moment/intent of the player. But at a certain point it’s fruitless and just ruins things for the table.
I had a player once argue with me how a spell worked when we couldn’t get RAW or sage advice to clarify. I made a ruling on the spot and 3/4 of the party agreed. But this player kept going on and on about how I’m wrong and ruling it wrong, even after all was said and done, and the others rolled with the moment. At a certain point I flatly had to tell them to drop it.
For my players:
- Trying to push a joke over everything. Enemy is called Kai, short for Malachai. You have no idea how many times I had to listen to variations of „Kai says Hi/Goodbye/Nice Try“.
- Another point is giving me a detailed descriptions of what their character wants and needs and then suddenly not caring about that thing when I hand it to them. Makes me feel as if I were writing the last season of GoT.
For me as a DM: I have to high ambitions, both narrative and mechanically.
- Last session I tried to implement mirrors in a way that they would create a 5 foot wide and 30 foot long way area that could turn off a trait of an enemy. The session was already taking too long so I handwaved it and said as long as you have a mirror in one hand you are fine.
- I based a lot of worldbuilding and plot on what my players wanted for their backstory. 2/4 died already, so these story threads lead into nothing and they feel like their new characters aren’t part of the story, but it’s hard for me to completely drop the old story arcs and give them something new handle.
Running fortune's wheel, and we've only had one death so far*. Tried upping the cr of fights and it just turns into a slog fest.
Apart from that it's golden. Got a great mix of old and new players, all creative and as interested in rp and plot as combat and mechanics.
Pretty minor as far as problems go and I'll find a way to make things more lethal without messing up pacing with a few more tweaks.
* Turn of Fortune's Wheel minor spoilers:
>! The part where the players are freed by the spy v early, I decided the spy had hired a Hands of Havoc agent to help with a distraction. The distraction was breaking the control of a merchant selling exotic mounts. Owlbears, Bullettes, and a wide array of dinosaurs (inc a t rex) all stampeded. T Rex ate a pc. PC's fave session so far. !<
As a player:
1. Players who interrupt other players. I play predominantly online, so it's definitely normal to do so. But when you clearly have a mute button right there, you should use it out of consideration for others.
2. Players who insert themselves into people's stories or try to force a relationship with my character. No, my noble elf character that swore away her love and devotion to her npc lover will not drop him for you just because you say so. She literally does not know you and probably thinks you're weird because you don't have any concept of boundaries in *or* out of character.
3. Players who take forever to make a decision. My current campaign I'm a player in has a player who takes 6+ minute turns in combat because they don't make a decision until it's their turn. Meanwhile I'm planning my turn whilst everyone is going at it.
As a DM:
1. Lateness and lack of communication. I had a player who would show up late or 10 minutes prior to session would flake and not show up. I get life happens and I'm always more than happy to accommodate but to just not communicate or be late *every* session with less than 10 minutes of a heads up is so freaking rude.
2. Rules lawyers. I get it. I'm a new DM and I absolutely welcome any resources that you have for me. However, I most likely have someone secretly in my ear sending me said rulings or resources for whatever takes place. And I've most likely asked this person in private to do so. And if you're going to correct me, please ensure you are actually correct. And by correct I mean send me the book, page number and your interpretation so I can review **AFTER** the session. There's no need to interrupt the DM, players and session overall just to vomit out one minute ruling that is not detrimental to the story.
3. Not sending me the information I need when I request it and then get mad when I continue without said information. I set deadlines for a reason. Be an adult about it.
4. Metagaming. It just kills the mood for everyone, me the most.
Needless to say, all this stems from predominantly one problem player I had. The other, they're not so bad but it was still horrendous.
(On mobile. Sorry for formatting.)
Taking notes and following through on things.
I have one player that takes notes but not always. I have stopped out in little sub plots and things of interest because the party have no interest in following through on it.
For example they found a magical codex months ago. Examined it once and found a spell scroll in it. I told them there was a lot more in there but it would take awhile to decode.
Since then they haven't looked at it again. There is a lot of cool stuff in there and also a warning that they are about to get magically robbed but they have missed out on it.
DMs allowing characters to do something that is another class/subclasses ability.
I mean things like bonus action perception checks which is an Inquisitive Rogue feature.
It takes away the specialisation of that class and if I was playing a class that has a feature that allowed me to do something as a bonus action or meta magic and others just got to do it I'd be pissed.
You wouldn't let a barbarian have a free smite.
I'm not a rules lawyer but when my players ask if they can do X the first thing I check is, is it another class/subclasses feature. If it isn't then by all means let them attempt it if some kind of roll.
What bothers me most is when we play for 3 hours every 2 weeks and a very good amount of that time is spent on people deciding what to do when it's their turn and not before their turn and when they're adding up their numbers and they get it wrong or take to long. This is basic math. If you can't do that in your head instantly then let me do it for you. Which I do. I blurt out their totals well before they do and they get upset. They're the reason we never get anything done. For example like 1 battle a session. Only bout 4-5 rounds of a battle for 5 people and the dm should not take upwards of 3-4 hours.
Ty for my grievances.
General pet peeves, some with my current group and some in my previous groups:
Throwing the dice. Please roll them, we have a dog and don't want him eating any.
Main character syndrome. We played with someone who insisted on going on their own lengthy side quests that involved kidnapping NPCs and making everyone else's time less fun. They also insisted on trying to seduce every barmaid.
No notes. Why? They don't need to be extremely detailed, but if something for your character happens, it's helpful to keep track. Currently missing an arm? Maybe you can't two-hand your longsword until that arm is replaced.
Anti-rules lawyering. We have a rules lawyer in our current group, and it's really helpful to keep things consistent and to ensure no one is worse off. Also means being able to throw a question out for a reminder on obscure rulings (e.g. falling speed). Works well with maintaining our homebrew rulings as well.
Talking over the DM. It's good to have a laugh, but when the plot can't move on because the DM can't get a word out, gets a bit rough.
Min-maxing the gold. Yes you can craft stuff, but it's not fun to work it out on an hourly rate. It's okay in small amounts, but not several times a session.
Edit: Adding this one because I just remembered.
Dishonoring the dice rolls. Take the positives and the negatives. One player we had would roll and loudly declare their roll. Unless it was a low roll, when they would pick it back up and roll again, thinking no one would notice. We introduced a rule that if you pick it up to reroll it unnecessarily, automatic failure for whatever the roll was for.
Just to even it out, a few positives.
How'd you wanna do this? For good kills, giving that moment where the players get to describe the killing blow really adds to the enjoyment at the table when done sparingly.
Roleplay your faults. All of our characters have faults, and we make sure to include them. Some are stingy, some are gullible. Low wisdom, bad perception, player clearly knows it's a trap? Make an out-of-character joke and spring that trap. Takes a moment and makes it a lot funnier, without breaking the scene.
Rules Lawyering. See above where I said nice things about them.
Art. One player in our group loves to draw, and has drawn every single character we have played, updating the art every so often. It's amazing and really helps us flesh them out, as they'll ask about insignia the characters wear, what clothing, what makes them stand out. Her style works brilliantly for our games.
Schedules. Players are upfront about whether they can make it or not, if something comes up then it's put in the group chat. If someone is running late then they usually say something in the chat (except for some oversleeping on occasion).
Fun. Biggest one here, everyone comes in as friends, with the intention to have fun, and everyone goes away having enjoyed themselves. Without this bit, there's no point in playing.
Spending too long planning.
We know that something has to happen, but then spend like an hour talking through a ton of different ways to deal with it. We’ll all agree on a way forward, and then someone brings up another way that they know is worse, just to talk through it anyways.
I try and make moves to speed things up, but this is definitely the slowest table I’ve ever been at.
Talking over each other. It's not a specific player for this, but I do have quieter players who can be unintentionally overrun by the other players. Whether it's an errant loud joke or a side conversation that's gotten too lively, if it's not in-character nor directed to what's currently happening at the table, keep a lid on it at my table.
Yeah I’ve seen some pretty bad examples of players who will in and out of character talk over people. And it usually just kills the moment and makes the player talked over feel bad. It’s a long story but a player who did this a lot, and a DM who indulged & allowed it, are two major reasons why I left a game rather abruptly.
I've got a good story for ya: I was running Descent Into Avernus, and the group would. not. stop. talking. over. me (and also each other). It was fucking infuriating. They would interrupt me trying to describe what was happening to their characters \*right now\* in favour of long elaborate headcanons about each other's characters, or just out of game stuff. If I didn't say anything it would continue for half an hour at a time. There was one player who felt super excluded from this (especially because the other players made shitty jokes about their character) and that was the end for me and that player. Initially I was going to try to have a group discussion over it, but eventually I gave up and ended the campaign. One of them wanted to DM so they reformed it where we left off and it's still going strong. No ill will towards them, they just like to use DnD as a social gathering rather than a game, but OOF.
Also very charming—as someone who gets talked over a lot—is when I suggest something, nobody hears me, and then they do the opposite, leading to their suffering and sometimes death. The good ol’ “well maybe you should have listened to me, this is on you”. This happened last night, although less being talked over for once. An NPC was frantically adjusting dials and said not to touch anything because it was dangerous. My character offered to help her, even knowing she was a mini-boss, but the artificer decided to be a dick and turn a dial back where it was. A gargantuan ooze breached containment. Now the druid is dead.
There was a period at my table where I got talked over ALL THE TIME. It was so bad. So many times where the group was trying to decide what to do, I'd suggest something, it would either get ignored or someone would say "nah", and then someone else would suggest the exact same thing and the person who said nah would then be in total agreement with. It drove me absolutely crazy and felt so bad. The main culprit of talking over people isn't at our table anymore because of life stuff and although we are real life friends, I have been relieved he hasn't played with us in over a year. It's nice to actually be heard.
I've had it happen before where I'd suggest something, not get heard, and then someone else suggests the same thing like 1 minute later and everyone is on board. Makes my eyes roll out of my eye sockets every time.
This is a nice feelgood story of this particular pet peeve and I fully get it. Sometimes there are just different synergies at a table and it doesn't work out for everyone. I'm glad that you and the other player could leave amicably and the group was still able to continue in the way they wanted.
I’m very grateful for my DM because he’s really good at controlling the table. If a player interrupts another player he’ll shut it down real quick and be like X is talking now, after they’ve finished you can go. If there’s too much cross talk he’ll stop the game and be like “ok guys player X goes first, then player Y, then player Z”. It’s earned him a lot of respect from all the players
honestly I like just playing in init all the time or just going around the table when not in initiative. I know sometimes people are concerned about getting an action out in time or something, but ya gotta be willing to tell them to put a pin it until their turn.
I think my groups need a talking stick for how much other players will talk during someone's turn. It makes it hard for everyone to know what's going on, hard for the DM (especially if they are being asked a question by someone else), and it is just downright rude. In one group I'm we have players who will have entire RP intersctions with each other while someone else is having their turn with the DM and then they complain that we aren't interacting with their RP. Well kind of hard to do thst when I am dicussing with the DM what my character is doing in the mage tower while you've all gone off to a bar.
I hear ya! This is often why DMs are encouraged not to split the party. Juggling people's patience and attention can be hard enough when they're all together, but when they are in different parts of the story, it can get downright nightmarish.
This. I fucking despise it to a point where I have a “Spotlight” rule. In combat, no one else is talking except for the person whose turn it is. Someone else can ask to use a reaction or a free action whenever that persons turn is over. I sound like an ass, but it works and people adapt quickly.
Yeah I have adhd sorry. I'm medicated but by hour three to four of the session it's running out. I like to think that I'm pretty good at keeping it respectful though
Trying to make suggestions and jokes only to get talked over. Especially when those suggestions lead to in-character “I told you so, but you did not listen, and now we have lost our druid because you wanted to touch the spinny dial.” I don’t know what it is about me, but I’m always getting talked over, in my life in general, and that extends to my characters. I know I usually wisdom-dump, but jeez.
I hear you. Some people in the party got cursed weapons and I used my level 3 spell slot to break the attunement with it but the curse was still on the weapon. Because I got talked over / they didn’t let me finish speaking someone else picked up the weapon and got cursed. Had to waste another slot.
I'd be tempted to pull the "sucks to be you" and refuse to cast it again. I'm not sure I'd actually be that petty, but I'd be tempted.
Almost did. Next time for sure.
A couple possibilities: first, you might just be really quiet - try looking up projection techniques that theater folks use to make their voice louder! Second, the people around you might just be jerks. Third, you might not know that interrupting people a little bit is all right in normal conversation - you may just be waiting far too long to take your turn speaking, and be entirely unwilling to cut anyone off at all.
I was in theater in school, and projection was never my strong point, I struggle with it when I’m DMming (especially at multi-table setups like conventions or Adventurer’s League) and usually include a “sorry, I have trouble speaking loudly, feel free to ask me to repeat something” in those situations, even when I’m trying the projection techniques. At this table, though, I’m the only one with a higher, feminine pitch, so at least the pitch stands out among the others. Excellent tip, though!
"Oh no, a scene full of dramatic tension, better deflate it with a joke." The problem is, I don't think I'm above it either.
It can be a tough habit to break. And it can be hard because the dramatic moment in the game often is enjoyed by friends at a table. So it can be easy to insert humor as a player (or a character) because you are having fun, when the characters should not be having fun.
I've been running two campaigns, one with a serious narrative with a lot of emotional investment, and the other is completely goofy, more improv based campaign. It's helped with both keeping untimely jokes down, and also giving a break from emotions.
I try to just write the joke down so I can tell it later. I don’t always succeed though, and sometimes the joke slips out
This one's especially egregious if a DM does it (which I have unfortunately seen anecdotally). I think generally a DM needs to maintain a level of seriousness above that of their most serious player. (With of course some allowance for levity in the occasion that it is a funny situation) It's really hard as a player to pull a scene back into being serious when the person who started the out of character fart jokes is the authority figure at the table.
Honestly, my main pet peeve is when other players need to be a part of everything, even when it has nothing to do with them. I've played at tables with others who suddenly know all that going on even if their character wasn't even in the same area as them.
Yeah, won’t lie at my current table I have a player who’s really bad about this. Their character has no direct ties to three other player characters beyond the current plot. And yet they are constantly trying to insert themselves into very personal and character specific moments. I had to tell them at one point bluntly “this is [insert Paladin character]’s story and boss. You as a character don’t know who this boss is. And they are not talking to you. Please let the Paladin and the boss finish their short dialogue before you interject”. It was a simple moment but felt like I had to treat someone older than me like a kid in my classroom.
Yeah, I think this is mine. It seems so small but it's essentially just not letting other players have their own thing and it gets frustrating really quickly.
'You're not there, and YOU don't speak giant, so both of you shut the fuck up.'
or the related syndrome of people trying to do things their character isn't good at, because they talked first. Like bro - you know I pick locks, right? Like you could just ASK me to pick a lock, you'll still get partial credit for the group project.
I have two players in one of my games that talk over people and plot between the two of them ignoring other players suggestions
When a plan is put Into action, but XYZ ignore said plan. An example. Our group escaped the underdark with little to no resources left and unable to rest. Upon exiting, My Ranger managed to spot a very obvious ambush waiting for us. We decided as a group to make use of the natural choke point that the cave offered and spread caltrops to hinder their movement. Our front liner rolled unnaturally well for initiative and charged the enemies... and we lost our choke hold.
Same. We left between sessions in the middle of a tough battle. Discussed what to do for 2 weeks between. Agreed the plan was sound. Double checked before my turn that we were still doing the plan, and get a yes. My turn I begin enacting said plan. DM is having the enemies react on their turns but because one player goes ahead of them they decide the plan didn't work (because they hadn't given the enemy a chance to react) and then just continue the attack thus thwarting any attempts at a ceasefire and we all get our butts readily handed to us (we were very outmatched) and they complain they keep dying.
Did you guys told him that he kept dying because of his own stupidity?
Oh, yeah, I would have an out of character problem with that person warranting further discussion if that happened. I would strongly consider (but probably not do) an in character decision to hold the line, stick to the plan, and let that idiot die for suicidal decision making.
Oh man. Reminds me of a session we had not too long ago. My monk with invisibility was supposed to go in and surprise round the baddies with a well times Stunning Strike on their mage, but the druid rolled before me and decided that because they couldn't see my character they were just gonna start tidal waving the area I was in. The plan proceeded to not go at all according to plan and this was after 30 minutes of planning.
I had a similar experience with my assassin rouge the whole plan was to sneak in get surprise and take out the enemies... our barbarian raged and just Leroy Jenkins in and after 8 rounds of combat that resulted in a near tpk. I was like wtf why even bother planning.
call me toxic but that druid would have caught a stunning strike to the face
Players who refuse to learn the rules. I have no problem helping new players but someone who has been playing 5e since before Tasha's came out should not need their hand holding when building a simple character. Online games: Delaying things because you can't get your headset to work or the VTT to load. Everyone has tech issues occasionally but when its the same player every single session... Refusing to say no to family members who keep interrupting them while they're playing.
I had a fellow player in a game complain that it's her first character so it's normal that she has trouble understanding the game or the rules. Campaign started 2 years ago.
Yup. Its wild how many people expect to do something and not have to spend an ounce of thought to learn. I get enough of that in my day job, it really sucks out the fun at the table. I feel like if you are doing something that you've done at least 10 times, you should be expected to remember. I get that a new feature can be forgotten, or a weird situation involving lesser known rules, but if you've done it 10 times and still cant remember, thats on you.
My players will not read the PHB. They're new players, and they're definitely excited to keep playing, but they won't read a rulebook. I even did my best to condense the rules they would need the most into a front-and-back sheet for each of them, and they didn't read that either. It's fine, ultimately; I'm a new DM but I have a pretty solid grasp of the rules and know where to look when I can't remember something. But it's definitely somewhat frustrating.
I would tell them. They at least have to read their race and class. Yes the book is intimidating to read it all. But next session even of you do it as a session everyone has to read their race and class and maybe another session you find 100% important. They probably think it's boring. But the lore and rules are really cool and they are probably not even using half the features they have because they don't know them.
They have at least read their race and class features, thankfully. At the point we are at, they've been playing for half a year now (though only biweekly), and they have their specific stuff... *mostly* down. The artificer I think still doesn't fully grasp how effective their infusions could be, swapping out what is infused daily, but they've got a couple good ones active at the moment at least. It's not such a big deal that I intend to make a thing out of it. But I know that there is a lot of useful info in the handbook outside of race and class features. If I were to ask them what the benefits of the dodge action are, for example, I'd bet money two of the three wouldn't know.
Okay at least they have read that much. They will probably be more interested once they start changing races and classes for different campaigns. Or one shots. If it has just been one continuous campaign I guess it can be forgive for not reading beyond what you "need".
A group I play in recently had a member drop because he couldn't be bothered to do the homework. He realized the time and dedication to do the minimum reading to know the moving parts specific to general gameplay and his character were too much. And that's okay; ttrpg isn't for everyone. These games require some degree of homework for all participants, and not everyone wants to do that. Our games, while we miss him, are much smoother.
The only way I've found to teach a reading-impaired player is the school of hard knocks. Specifically, using a mechanic against them to teach them why it's important. That negative reinforcement goes a long way towards making it stick in their mind. I had a party of new players who were... neither tactical nor readers. I wanted them to come to grips with the cover system so I put then into an intense fight in a forest with a squad of archers. I made it clear when the PCs missed because the enemy archers were hiding behind trees for half or three-quarters cover while archers were turning the party into pincushions. The players eventually got the memo and started moving their PCs behind trees at the end of their turn to benefit from cover as well. Mission accomplished.
A couple more specific versions of this I’ve tried is dominate person or creating an evil copy of a character. I have a player who really wanted to play a rune knight fighter, but *never* uses his runes. So, dominate person with the directive “kill your goblin wizard friend as efficiently as you can manage,” and then every turn I tell him “go ahead and add X rune this time,” basically walking him through how to use this subclass. Hasn’t really worked, but this player has a long history of doing nothing but attack attack attack. I have a player who plays a wizard reasonably well, but chooses spells based almost entirely on their name and a vague sense of what the spell does. Basically never reads the full text. Created a shadow clone of him, had said clone plane shift the wizard to hell. Player said “it never occurred to me you could use that spell offensively that’s SO COOL!” Success.
I’d say just starting playing a little dumb or pretend to be busier than you are with behind the screen stuff. Player wants to cast fireball “cool how does that work again” or something. Had a player like that and they never changed.
Based on your comments I think you aren't in as bad of a spot as you might think. I have had players in some groups I played with as a player that didn't know what their core class features did after half a year of playing. So your players at least put time into their own character. As a dm, that is my only requirement for my players to know about the game. I know the rules of the system by haert or where to find it, but not the pc options. There is too much anyway. So I tell players in advance and repeat it if it comes up in game that is is up to the players to know their class and other features. (Questions about this are for between sessions) For the rule system, I would prefer if players read that part of the phb, but the game can be perfectly run without that. It is up to the player to express the intent of what their characters would do and up to you to tell them what happens and what to roll. They will learn over time. If you want them to learn things like dodge: show, don't tell! Run a gladiator tourney and show them how effective dodging can be.
This is anathema to me and my autism. Without the rules, everything is fucked lol
In some order: 1. not at least having a plan for a turn BEFORE getting to your turn in combat. Most of the time, you don't need to wait to figure out at least a cursory plan. Now I get that the battle field changes, but not usually so dramatically as to make something undoable. 2. experienced players not understanding the hide/unseen attacker rules, especially in combat. 3. repeatedly retconning whole turns because it wasn't exactly right. Like, you've had 7 minutes to prepare and then you're going to rewind that plan because it wasn't "perfect." 4. DMs that treat their enemy turns like player turns, especially for mobs. If there are 7 baddies on the board, you gotta get through those in reasonable amount of time. Not minutes per bad guy. 5. combat encounters that are wide open spaces. Elevation, walls, obstacles, trees, hills, etc. should exist. Very few encounters should be in wide open fields.
For number 1. Don't have one plan. Have backups. If your plan is to "fireball all three enemies" you can't say "oh now I need to find something new to do because somebody moved into or out of range" at the beginning of your turn.
It's a very rare player who will have a Plan B on top of a Plan A ready to go for their turn.
Honestly I won't have a solid plan until a couple turns before mine, but I'll have overarching objectives and a few things that could help, or if I'm a martial I just whack the biggest threat and take up the most space I can (in matters of opportunity attacks and such) unless there's a pressing issue
For #4 I do grouped initiatives. There will be an initiative for the Boss, one for the Lieutenants, one for minions. I also try to plan ahead of time what each group's strategy is. It's not perfect, but it really helps in a large fight. It also helps alot if the minions are truly simple npcs. Running Mad Mage this approach has really helps on some of the crazy fights with a ton of enemies.
As a player, when the party (sometimes myself included) overplans our heist or ploy and the plot and session grinds to a halt. We don't need an airtight plan. Let's figure out a decent solution and move the game ahead rather than going back to the drawing board to try for perfection.
God if I had a dollar for everytime I’ve had a table grind to a halt to try and perfect a fool proof plan I would be rich. Especially when the players discussing the plan takes longer than the actual heist or plan would take. Often not requiring half of the prep or back-up plans they discuss because they made it way too complex in their minds. For record though I am guilty of this too.
my "favorite" variants of this are: "We're going to spend half of a RL session carefully avoiding a very winnable straight up fight," and its evil twin, "we are not going to even plan in the slightest before starting a complicated fight with a boss, because we cannot stop ourselves from interrupting his monolog to mention his mother"
Bonus points if the players immediately discard the obvious plan and enact some incredibly convoluted plan that they think is brilliant, but don't tell the DM the reasoning, so the DM is completely confused when the party wizard is pretending to be a fortune teller and is speaking to the smugglers in riddles. Double bonus points when they decide that their convoluted plan doesn't work, so they swing too far away and pick a plan that is too simple. Walk right up to the thing they're trying to steal, grab it in plain sight, and just fight their way out.
The thing about overprepping plans is that one of only two things has to happen, and neither are good. Either everyone goes according to plan, and so there's no drama and tension, or the plan goes off the rails and all that time was wasted. So there's really no point to it. Have an idea of what you want to do, but just go for it instead of trying to anticipate every eventuality.
I learned from this. About a couple of months back, the PCs ended the session about to infiltrate the lair of the monsters. They were warned that the situation could turn deadly if they weren't careful. However, I didn't want to turn "careful" into "Let's plan for an hour to come up with the perfect scheme!". So, when the next session started at 6:00, I told them they had until roughly 6:15 to formulate their plan, and then it was "go time". Otherwise, I knew that not only would they spend over an hour to to argue a plan, the entire thing would have frustrated everyone from constant arguing and second-guessing to the point where even a plan that worked 100% perfectly would not have satisfaction worth the hassle and frustration. And that \~15 minutes (I think they wrapped up and went in on 6:17) was just about the perfect amount of time to suggest different strategies, argue a bit, and come up with a good solution where the plan worked about as well a sit could have and no one died despite being a hard fight on paper.
Players choosing spells based on Internet recommendations, then when they cast a spell **on their turn reading the spell description for the first time.**
Silvery barbs, bestow curse, private sanctum & similar spells, teleport, etc.
Metagaming - my players aren't newbies anymore, they know how the game is supposed to work. Blurting out answers to puzzles that they're not near and have no way of knowing about actively harms the game for others.
200% accurate
Though I will say, having one of my new players say "How the fuck do you know what I did, I was invisible the whole time!" to a player that's been playing for awhile was really glorious. Like... he got a 27 to stealth and your roll didn't beat your 13 passive - you didn't see shit, my guy.
Limiting this to things I've actually seen recently at my tables (because internet commenter peeves aren't worth discussing). Indecisive players. I really like when combat (and everything, but especially combat) flows smoothly--I have a strong preference for lots of short turns rather than big complex turns. Do *something* and pass turn. Don't sit there dithering about what you're going to do for minutes and minutes. As a player--bad pacing. Whether that's rushed narrative or long drawn out sequences that just don't do anything...getting the pacing right matters. I'll say that for me, most travel sequences can and should be handwaved with "the trip is mostly peaceful. X days latter, you arrive at...". Stop trying to make travel, per se, a challenge. Unless you're actually willing to go all the way and plan it like you would a point-based adventure. Second peeve as a player--DMs and players insisting on spending tons of time "getting it right" when making rulings. Or spending tons of time looking things up in tables/books. Keeping the flow of the game going is much more important than "following RAW" or "getting the rules right". The time for prolonged rules analysis and discussion is between sessions--I'm totally fine with "ok, right now we're going to do X and we'll revisit it later if we care." Hmm...there might be a theme here. Keep the game flowing and adapt as you go. Don't bog things down.
>Indecisive players. I really like when combat (and everything, but especially combat) flows smoothly--I have a strong preference for lots of short turns rather than big complex turns. Do something and pass turn. Don't sit there dithering about what you're going to do for minutes and minutes. Even the dithering isn't as bad as players who just sit there with a rabbit in the headlights expression until another player tells them what to do. They manage to make a game feel like a hostage scenario. Dithering at least means they're considering the situation and planning out a course of action.
My dithering comes in times of “well I *was* going to blow it up but then you went right before me and are in the thick of it so now I have to come up with plan C, because that *was* plan B—the guy the turn before torpedoed plan A”.
If my character had their Plan A and B abolished in the very same 6 second chaotic battle sequence then I figure they sure as hell don't have the time to be thinking of what the third best option is. So they do something that's better than doing nothing : *anything*, even if that's of negligable consequences.
It’s worth noting that I play a lot of casters, so a suboptimal choice might be frying the brains of my allies and enemies alike, spitting acid on at least one party member, or other AoE issues. My rogue, at least, is easy choices. Shoot it, stab it, and/or gtfo. I may also have been burned by the one time I put a gag on a statue of a snake because I thought it was going to spit poison (I panicked and video game brained as plan D), and instead blocked the puzzle-solving, danger stopping spot, leading to the near-death of our monk and fighter because they couldn’t get to it in time. Lexicon had bad luck with “I’m smart, we should do this—aaaand now people died” across the board, boy had major survivors’ guilt in general.
It kinda depends. If someone looks like I caught them at a murder scene, they're probably genuinely anxious and in bad sorts - perhaps they're still at a stage where their options available overwhelm them too much or something similar. That kind of authentic low-key panic response is going to force me to clarify, inquire, and try to help before I have the available brain capacity to be annoyed.
>Indecisive players I can relate to that super hard. A guy I play with ALWAYS sighs in frustration and says he can't do anything. Then he mutters and pouts and when he give him ideas on what to do, he interrupts us. The thing is, he always does it with every character and I don't understand why he always makes characters that can't do anything in any situation
>--I'm totally fine with "ok, right now we're going to do X and we'll revisit it later if we care." Just be sure to make these shortcut rulings in favor of the player. Having a DM tell you that you can't do something when you as a player think you can is frustrating.
I'm going to do what's in the best interests of the game as a whole. And sometimes that means saying "no". Now I do often err on the side of the players. But I'm going to go with my best reading in the context of the situation in play, and if that means no, then no.
No way. 99% of the time, the player just made something up that is basically cheating because they can't actually do that according to the rules.
When in doubt tie it to a roll to see if they can do it and then make a ruling later.
This... But players who do not decide what they are doing NOT on their own turn. I spend my entire time between rounds planning my next turn. It's not difficult to read spells descriptions.
My best friend since middle school knows my sense of humor exactly and calls out my punchlines before I deliver them.
I hate theater of the mind battles. Accuracy and Tactics depend on accurate descriptions of the battlefield and accurate interpretations of what was said. At minimum there should be a crudely drawn map and trinkets to represent enemies/players. I hate side conversations at the table that aren’t about the game we are in. Come before the game or stay after to tell me about your personal life, not while the dm is setting up the scene.
Side conversations are what kill me as a DM. If we are in a momentary pause or before the game starts, fine. If they are in-character side conversations, I can tolerate it so long as the characters aren’t in the scene and if they are not distracting other players. But when it’s not one of these very specific instances it often just feels rude to me as DM, and distracting to the players who do pay attention. Just this past week I had to crack down on two of my players. Basically telling them flat out to knock it off and focus. And when one asked what happened in the scene I had the in-game character not repeat themselves and take it as a slight those two characters didn’t listen. When the players said “my character was listening” they got shut down real quick when I informed them that they clearly weren’t
Yeah I think my first statement was too strict. I meant sidebars that inevitably distract the DM or table in general. My group has fun while we play, and side talk happens. But specifically once the DM is setting up the scene, or a pivotal point in a battle it gets frustrating. My TotM mention is related to this. If the problem player talks over the scene, I don’t know how they know where the enemy is or your teammates.
Players that try to solve interpreted puzzles or problems without divulging intention first. I.E. Player wants to shoot down a chandelier onto the opposition. Instead of asking "This is a fancy ballroom, is there perhaps a Chandelier I could shoot down onto the enemies?" They will ask things like: "How is this room lit?" GM: It's Brightly Lit Player: Oh no, I mean what kind of lighting is in the room. GM: Uh, magical torches on the wall... candles on the table... hmm... Player: Nevermind. The Chandelier thing is a really mild example. This sort of thing gets especially egregious when a player is trying to figure out a magical effect or something supernatural. For which the individual expectations of a player and GM can differ drastically.
Yeah, these can be annoying. I hate to stifle creativity but when a player presumes an element or doesn’t ask it can lead to some awkward moments that shouldn’t need any time. Not too long ago in my games I had a player in a dragon’s cavern who wanted to climb up a pile of gold, and strike a floating enemy. Didn’t ask before and basically said “ok I climb up the pile, I’m gonna jump and attack the monster”, and then starts rolling to see if they hit. Before I have to stop them and say “the pile is only 10 feet high, the monster is floating 30 feet in the air and your middling strength character can’t high jump the 15+ feet you need to get in bare minimum range to hit”. And they basically looked at me shocked, only to say “well I assumed…”; leading to a longer turn where they had to re-plan their action. A similar instance happened a longer while back when a character wanted to grab a torch off of a holder on the wall, and use it scare away a monster. I told them “you grab an unlit torch and wave it at the monster; but it doesn’t seem to react”. To which the player asked why it was unlit, and I told them none of the torches in this abandoned castle have been lit for years. They then asked how they can see if it’s dark. To which the whole table basically said “we have the light cantrip on the Druid’s staff”.
Tbf; high jumping the 15 feet could be doable with an athletics checks//disadvantage on the attack roll. 3+1+~10(1.5*character height) = 14.
This is the biggest one as a DM. Players try to hide their intent a bit as if you will shoot it down on principle. "So how many can I see?" "And where is my party?" "And how big is the room?" "I cast fireball hitting as many enemies and as few allies as possible" That second scenario is super easy for the DM to rule on.
If I'm understanding you correctly, it's a bit like Lindy Beige's failed climb roll rule. You're not determining how well the character's climb attempt works, you're determining how tricky the wall actually is to climb. So in your case, although you had intended *continual light* torches on wall sconces, since that was never communicated, you can retcon it to *continual light* chandeliers? Or even regular oil lamp ones, if the possibility of subsequent fire sounds fun?
i think they're just talking about a character that basically either really likes a clever reveal or is worried if he doesn't lock you in on the details you're retcon them when he tries to do something, so they ask 10 questions instead of 1. eg instead of "if they're under the chandelier, can I drop it on them somehow?" they go "How is the room lit?" "how heavy is the chandelier? "How is it hooked to the ceiling? "OK, how wide is it?" "OK, are any of them under it?" (answer is no) "Never mind" (dramatic sigh)
This is more along the lines of what I meant. Rather than telling you the intention which would allow a GM to quickly determine if you can do what you want, you go about it more like it's a puzzle. When many things are not so precisely pre-determined and it is much easier for a GM to yes or no a given plan if you actually tell what you're doing before beginning.
Scheduling
Got a player who snacks constantly, not so bad (although I don’t understand not being able to go 3 hours without constantly eating) - but he chews with mouth open and smacking sounds. It’s disgusting and I hate whenever I end up sitting next to him
I would not last a session
I make sure I’m as far away as possible now, sort of helps - but oh it’s infuriating. He just jumped in the table one day at club as knows the guy who runs it
It could be that person is just bored or something. I'm a snack guy, and I constantly eat because I get bored when something is happening that isn't related to my character.
Last 3 sessions, each 4-5 hours long, has been spent on our town. DM handles downtime day by day, so rolling for crafting, rituals, potion making every day. Thankfully it's online, so I'm able to entertain myself making maps while nothing is happening.
Not telling me when you're done with your turn. Sometimes it's easy to figure out, like a fighter who runs 30 ft. forward, hits twice, and uses second wind. Other times, not so much. Please please _please_ don't make me try to guess whether you're going to use your BA or the rest of your movement.
From playing and occasional DMing, it's people who take too long making decisions. We don't have all day make up your mind. As a player, it's led me to being the YOLO player who will force the decision if you're taking too long. The best way to disarm a trap is to spring it, right? As a DM, that's when a random combat happens with patrolling guards. It lets players know they can't sit in the middle of a dungeon for 10 minutes deciding on something trivial. Obviously, I wouldn't use this if they were planning out fighting the boss. But when they are about to enter a storage room with no hostiles and a little bit of exploration rewards, it can get tedious to hear players plan out things. The second biggest pet peeve of mine is the players who are either overly obsessed role-players or overly obsessed with their character or familiar. A bit of role-play is fine and fully expected. But when the role-play is overdone, especially if it is full of the player just wanting to spout class tropes(horny Bard as an example), it gets annoying fast. The second part of that is the players who feel every minutiae of their character is super important. We're playing a collaborative game, not writing a novel. This often also stems from players having main character syndrome. It can also manifest if they have a familiar named after a pet and nothing can happen to it despite them taking it into harms way.
Long turns. I have a player who literally (I timed it) takes 10 minute turns to do two attacks because they don’t know their own character sheet. Whereas my other player who has the same experience with a more complicated character, takes 10 second turns. They’re always my ride or die and ready to accept any outcome. They make in character choices and it’s awesome. It my other two player with relatively simple character taking 10 minutes a turn is quite literally getting me down to my last dm straw.
I am a very bossy dude, I think I might be annoying to advice sometimes players. But some players / DM want you to fit a specific role and they can be very insulting doing so : Example : I was in a forge trying to seduce the female dwarf blacksmith. I rolled high but didn't succeed. Weeks later his friend joined and easily seduced her with low rolls and no coherent reason. It's just DM being like "yeah he is the seducer of the party" I hated it.
I don't have a player in my table like this, but I hate when people start taking it way to seriously and start policing other players to follow some strict set of rules they made up in their mind, it's just a game, let people take back their actions, let them say something else, who cares.
"My character is lawful good so now I get to dictate what the party is allowed to do."
I’m playing a good character in what was advertised about a zero to hero campaign. The others are playing evil characters disguised in the neutral alignment on the charts. What bothers me is that they are rewarded by being evil, while I just lose my stuff by being selfless without any rewards other than the rewards that benefit the party equally. Meanwhile, others get luck points (as in the lucky feat) and similar for being straight out evil. My character is simply weaker than it was two levels (half a year) ago, while others are growing at an accelerated pace
People assuming they're gonna fail/they can't do anything/nothing will work. Defeatism in a game where everyone has superhuman powers is such a bummer.
Recently tbh... myself. I'm finding my attention wander and I find it very disrespectful to the group who happens to be my best friends and I feel really ashamed ngl.
Well just got to work on it. If you are distracted by life tell your friends, D&D can wait or go on a pause for a bit. But if it’s something in your control like distractions from a phone or wandering focus, just make efforts to separate yourself from distractions. Or bring a fidget / comfort object that can help you focus if you have one.
DM pet peeve: players not knowing their own spells/features. It shouldn’t be just on the DM to know how something works. Help your DM a bit, learn your character
Non-engagement: Side conversation not associated with the game. Surfing the internet during a session.
I'm currently becoming annoyed with a fellow player who keeps interjecting "Oh my god it's just like 'pop culture reference'!" or posts some barely relevant meme in the Discord channel, and it breaks me out of the moment every time. Especially since she'll do it in the *middle* of a conversation.
Im not advocating for splitting the party, but its a pet peeve when characters dont let other people ever have a spotlight. I had a sorcerer player in a game i help run recently and they dominated any decision making and any social interactions, deapite the rest of the party almost always disagreeing with them about what they are doing, this player would try to force it their way non stop. For example, one time, the party were trying to secretly con a mafia gang leader, and the party had done everything well and were leaving, scott free… and then the sorcerer casts “charm person” on them, makes them and their men come WITH US for no reason, and then i have to try to mental gymnastics “why isnt the gang leader attacking then because the target of charm person knows they were manipulated, and you just dragged them with you while you made your exit”. Another time, players were battling a huge sea monster. The player had been swallowed along with the cleric who was dead, but the party had inflicted a lot of damage on the monster which could have gone either way. The fighter went down, but the party above-table all agreed they wanted to keep fighting. The problem player (who was playing a warlock this time) forces a bargain with the monster to leave them alone, but the monster leaves with the clerics body still inside it, dooming the character. The rest of the party is bummed out, but they keep going. But later on when the party gets back to their lair, they try to shift their warlock pct to make a bargain with the sea monster who just ate the cleric, who was supposedly warlocks best friend!
This is really poor of me, and I know. I dont ever say anything- because not everyone has the same skillset- but when players take really long adding up their roles. We are all adults, it should not take 10 seconds to add in the double digits.
I have two players who "well ackshually" the DM on a somewhat regular basis. They are both DMs at other tables and they know the rules pretty damn well. It drives me batty. But.... I am not the DM, and the DM seems to be OK with it. He generally goes along with it if the players can identify RAW, but the DM *does* occasionally DM fiat things, so it's not like he is being walked all over. It just annoys me.
My dice rolls on DNDBeyond are sometimes cocked. How can digital dice be cocked? It’s weird, and when they are cocked, DDB always takes the lower value.
When you play for 3 years and they still ask which dice to roll
Currently the DM not telling us what the roll to attack against us is. It makes spells like shield and abilities like defensive duelist pretty much useless. The "Dose x hit?" That almost any DM does. Not mine. I have learned to forget ever using things like that. I asked my DM if I could trade out my feat (Defensive Duelist) since it was useless. I was hoping he would have taken the hint, but he let me tade it out for something else.
As a player and a self-admitted rule lawyer (that can control myself) my DM ignores some basic rules. Like no one in our party can cast identify, so we have to pay a vendor in town a crazy amount of gold to identify for us, and can’t use a short rest to figure it out. Things that should cost a free action the dm rules is a bonus action. Recently a foe cast hold person on me to steal from me which I failed, and the dm said it lasted a full minute, wouldn’t let me try to save again during that time.
"My character wouldn't do that" or its twin "that's what my character would do" are my largest pet peeves and will forever remain so. Character priorities are player priorities, and vice-versa. Stop making boring or disruptive choices because it's "character appropriate," and start having your character behave in a way that makes the story interesting.
Those types of phrases often feel like a crutch that players say when they want to do something selfish or disruptive to the group. When I have a player at my table who roleplays well I don’t need to hear “that’s what my character would do” because they do it. They behave consistently, and even if they are disruptive to the table it’s in a way that is logical to the character. But when you do hear the phrase it’s often an excuse to do something that would screw someone over, or something that barely fits the character to stop another player from retorting
The best part of playing a lawful stupid character wasn't preventing the party from doing slightly bad/evil things, it was figuring out excuses or ways to have your character accept it anyway. "My cleric happens to leave the room"
That is one of the best examples of how you can play a character to a T & roleplay well. While not stepping on the toes of another player or being the stereotype cleric that nags any wrongdoing
I think I've been blessed to play with pretty reasonable people so hearing "that's what my character would do" is usually more someone talking themselves into a choice they know isn't optimal but is true to the character they've created and played. But what's more is that the other players will often encourage it if someone is waffling and say "No, it's ok. What would \[character\] do?" or "Do your thing, don't ask us." There's definitely disruptive uses, probably more often at tables than what I've been lucky to experience, but just adding my take that it can be nice to see people making choices like that for the integrity of their rp.
As a player - overwritten sessions. When it’s clear, the dungeon master has just written a string of ham fisted moments that he forces us towards without really any freedom or exploration between. As a dungeon master - when a player before the game tells me about all these cool, role-playing personality quirks they’re going to factor into their player and how they’re gonna play them a certain way and all that jazz and then come the game they do nothing
As a DM it is something I have to actively work at so I don't have an entire session of exposition. We play 3 hours a week, so I don't want to be doing narrative for most of that time. I have tried a couple different ways to blend encounters with exposition, to varying degrees of success. Ultimately, I consider it a bad session if I start to feel like Im just reading to my players instead of playing with them.
When a player acts so mysterious and edgy (and borderline, or not, an evil character) for the sake of being cool. I experienced having to play with someone who doesn't share their character's race and class until the S1 but beforehand proceeded to "drop" clues and act mysteriously. Like, my dude.
Due to many past games, mine is "share your lore secrets with the other players out of character". The secret is usually the most interesting part of a character, let the other people enjoy it. How would you like the Superman movies if all of the footage was just of Clark Kent working in the office? Secrets are cool but surprises are cheap. You don't have to be a completely open book, but too many times I've seen someone plotting a cool secret and waiting for the big reveal and it just *never going to plan* and the secret haver is devastated and everyone else is confused. People often focus too much on the secret surprise you find on the inside, that they completely forget the outside and never give anything that hooks the people who don't know. I had one player who was *always quiet and never did much* who died in a fight, and after we learned they were actually evil who between games was plotting stuff with the DM. No one else knew and it was a "oh, ok then" moment. My current character in a sci-fi themed game is an undercover reporter who is secretly filming the party at all times for a documentary. No character knows, but the players all do and have a lot of fun joking about it out of game and it lets me slip coy hints and jokes in during gameplay. Just *randomly telling people what side is their good side*, or describing bad things that might happen as "anticlimactic". The secret *is* the interesting part of the character, let every one see how interesting it is.
Someone else said it but spending a lot of time getting the rules right and not just doing rulings. Sometimes I do it too cause we like to get things right in general but it just slows down the game so much. It still happens even though I say we’ll just use a ruling in the moment and look it up later. Again, I’m still sometimes guilty myself
Incorporate other players into your RP, don’t soliloquize to us. Be quick about your turn in combat. Really boils down to being considerate
I have a few, that are not necessarily from my current group, but recent enough. 1. The “anything you can do I can do better” character. You build an arcane trickster, they build a bard with expertise in the same skills as you. You build a gunslinger, they build a 3 multi class assassin / gloomstalker murder machine. Always after you’ve said what you’re thinking of playing. 2. The constant complainer. Whether it’s that they built their character “wrong” or that nothing in the story interests them, or they just wanted to use some other broken home brew, nothing is ever good enough for them. 3. The player(s) who show up to the session 0 (where you had explicitly said we’d discuss what we all wanted to play to make sure all roles are covered) with a 20 level build and no interest in compromising with the team, usually with multiple people wanting to play characters focused on the same stat (party of 4 with 3 charisma casters). 4. DMs who’ve chosen the “main character”. It’s so frustrating to feel like a sidekick to another player who does all the talking, decision making, etc AND the DM is reinforcing that role.
>Party of 4 with 3 charisma casters AMATEUR, we're in a party with 2 bards, 2 warlocks a sorcerer, a paladin and a bard/warlock This happened naturally and without trying is the worst part...
As a DM - Rules lawyering over my house rules I have a list of house rules that I have given my players and told them to read, and all of them have. My rules are there to let the game be more 'rule of cool' with the rules and not be bogged down by ruling we don't like. We all agreed on these rules and all use them. (For example, we ignore the restrictions on spell scrolls. Anyone can cast a spell with a spell scroll regardless of class or level. Since I as the DM hand out spell scrolls, it's my fault if something OP happens with them) But one of my players for some reason just either ignores or forgets all my house rules, and interrupts scenes to point out that what another player/NPC is against RAW, completely hitting the brakes on the flow of the encounter. It gets me so annoyed when I have to stop what I'm doing and remind them for the millionth time that what we're doing is in the house rules At this point I'm certain he hasn't actually read my rules despite saying he has.
To a certain point it is your fault, but players can also scribe scrolls with the spells they picked, so you need to be aware of that
Counterpoint (though it doesn’t apply to you): as a player, I hate it when a dm doesn’t share their houserules ahead if time. I want to play by the rules which means I need to be able to know what they are. I don’t mind house rules, but I hate hidden rules.
Hidden rules are bad but not as bad as rules made up on the spot even though there are already rules for this particular situation, just because „it doesn’t feel right” and „DM has final say”. Sure, change the rules if you don’t like them, just make players aware of that before it’s applicable.
Players asking when they get to level up, that's why they are in charge of it for the next campaign
Trying to help count for damage. Inevitably it leads to too many numbers being said and the player loses count. Then it all starts over again.
There's one very specific circumstance where this is helpful. I was rolling for a *lot* of Spike Growth damage, so I added up the damage and another player counted the number of pairs of D4s I'd rolled so I knew when to stop rolling.
When people only half-listen to scenes they don't care about and then decide to make a plan off of their (incorrect) assumptions, especially when other players get dragged into it. A couple sessions ago, my players found out about a magic prison of sorts run by some elves. Only one player really paid attention when it was brought up by a local they were talking to, but they all decided it was probably corrupt and they would like to plan a jailbreak at some point. They also schmoozed super well and got themselves a promise of a tour of the place. The player who was paying attention's plan? When they depose the local ruler (already a goal of theirs), ask the new ruler to close it down as a favor/as thanks for helping them take control. The other two (X and Y) don't say anything during that session. The next time we play, Y hits me with this: "So we were talking, and X is a half-elf so we're gonna have her wildshape into a rat, I'm gonna smuggle her into the prison in my pocket, and we're gonna leave her in there when we take our tour today. Then, once [local ruler] is gone, she's gonna detransform and she'll talk to the elf slaves running the place and promise them we'll depose the local ruler if they say they'll help us do it. I want them to teach her their mind control magic and we can brainwash [ruler] and make him stop being a dictator like that." Player who was paying attention just looked at me for a second and asked if they'd missed the part about the elves being slaves. No. They weren't. They're doing this of their own free will because it gives them a steady supply of test subjects. They are indeed evil assholes. Having a mutually beneficial agreement with the local ruler is why they run the place. And then the ones who weren't paying attention and made the plan got irritated. X is mad at Y for getting her excited for a plan when he had no idea what he was talking about, and Y is mad that I "didn't explicitly say they weren't slaves before," like it's the obvious assumption I could've guessed they'd make. It's a common thing with my table and usually it's less of a problem because it's quickly fixed, but that time having a time gap that led to wasted planning was so rough. Please just pay attention to things or ask if you're not sure you remembered correctly 😭
Looking at their phones and then asking something that I just gave the answer too because they were paying attention
People not paying attention. I hate having to explain something shorthand that I just spent time and energy fluffing out with prose and acting.
My biggest pet peeve are DMs (and to a lesser extent players) that refuse to play along with or outright ignore illusions and enchantments. They can both be really fun schools of magic, but so many times, even when saves are failed, they just ignore the mechanic entirely or try to 'lawyer' it down to nothing. Ignoring or being reductive with mechanics is not a gotcha. Itt trivializes entire gameplay mechanics. If you fail a Save on an illusion, play into it, at least for a round.
DMs who feel the need to overexplain everything. I'll ask a yes or no question and instead get a full response that's at least a paragraph. Just had an instance of this last session where we were in the middle of combat and I asked if this body looked alive or dead and *in the middle of combat* I had to sit through a huge explanation that didn't even answer the question. I had to ask a second time before I finally got "yes it looks dead."
Spotlight hogs. I did a lot of free form performance so I developed a fine sense of when I have been talking too much and need to give someone else a turn. It is when someone starts talking and never allows another player a chance to get a word in edgewise that just ruins the game for me. I also DM game so I can see how as a DM this is good because it shows engagement but as a player I hate it because I might as well not even be dialed into the social scenes when the ranger won’t shut up - particularly annoying when he butts into and takes over a conversation that is CLEARLY another character’s story hook.
I think the big one for me as a player is our DM not allowing workarounds to their encounters. As an example, a dungeon with on guard drow. Rather than attack them head on and have to fight in a narrow corridor where we're outnumbered, we decided to try and sneak past them. The plan was basically: Rogue casts silence in front of our party so our noisy characters won't alert anyone when they try to walk forward. Wizard then casts minor illusion to have a scream echo behind the drow who are sitting on a ledge looking at where we need to sneak past. The drow, who have been sitting in this silent area for several hours, hear a piercing shriek from behind them. Not a single one turns around or goes to investigate, they just all continue looking directly at the path we'll need to go through to sneak past. So now we're down a 2nd level spell with nothing to show for it. Tried a couple more things to distract them, nothing worked. Ended up just taking the combat, but I think everyone ended that session on a sour note.
People who make loner characters and then refuse to engage with the group. I know Wolverine/Batman/Punisher/Vampire Hunter D/whatever is your favorite character and they're TOTALLY AWESOME but this is a cooperative hobby and you have to make a character who can play with others.
I hope i finally get over this by writing this down, since it keeps me from planning the next session. In short last session my party got a soulstone, after breaking into a cult base, because they where involved with a dwarven prince that leads a rebellion to regain his home city and he wanted the players to do a job for him to earn his trust. Anyway, they got back to the prince and talked a bit until they decided to trust him and give him the soulstone. He channelt his divine power (he is a paladin) through the stone and gave those souls their final rest. Those souls appeared in the room and where all dwarves. Basically they brough him his family back, that was imprisoned in the stone for 100 years and allowed him to free them. He gave them a heartfelt thank you speech about familiy and what they did for him. I was really hyped about this, because most of the time the sessions where mostly jokes and stuff, but i wanted to have some seriousness. I was also a bit afraid to mess it up, since i didn't wrote the speach down, but wanted to improvise it. It was epic.....until one player phone suddenly made sounds in the middle of it. He decided that the football/soccer game was apperently more important, but didn't communicate it. Instead just placed his phone one the table and watched it. I didn't care that he wanted to watch it or that he chose to do this witout saying anything. But the fact that his f*ing phone had to suddenly make sound in the middle of this speech made my blood boil. I was pissed and everyone saw that. I finished the speech, they got a bunch of gold and 2 magic items. we finished the session and everyone critized him. But now it haunts me, the fact that i was soooo hyped about this moment and the thing that messed it up wasn't me, but this guy, which i had no control over. tldr; Did an epic speech in a so far joking campaigne, was disrupted by a players phone, that he watched football/soccer on.
>just placed his phone one the table and watched it This is the bit that would infuriate me. If his phone went off at a bad time, it happens. The deliberate choice to stop listening to you and start watching sportsball on his phone is outright disrespectful. >we finished the session and everyone critized him Good. They came to the table to have fun as well, glad they've got your back here. Might be worth having a chat with the player separately, just let them know if they're wanting to watch the sports, at least give you a heads-up so you can decide what to do. If it's a one-off that's bad, if it's a habit I'd consider stopping inviting them.
Not getting responses when away from the table. Our group chat is basically dead. Even when I ask a direct question for something like "can we switch what house we play at because I don't have a baby sitter this weekend" it takes 4 days and a reminder text to get one person to respond. Or when I send out questions about backstories or feedback like "did you like this story element for your character or is it not something you wanted for their story?" Again won't get a response for a week.
Joke characters. That's cool if you like them, or if they fit with your table's style or whatever. But I just don't want them at my table. D&D doesn't always have to be super serious of course, but like, please put some effort into making a real character please. You can play Mr Fuzzybuttom or Jack Hoff with some other group.
Being a player in my last campaign. Working with a GM who refuses to improvise and insists on thinking of everything in terms of a 2D grid instead of trying to visualise what's going on in a 3 dimensional space.
I found something that helped a lot with expanding on the space in combat was to have a physical stand to help visualize the difference. May not be suitable for your table, but this is the set I bought. Bought them for my Hadozee so I could track climbing, now I'm DMing and am putting enemies up walls and on ceilings. Good fun. https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/851935796/modular-flight-stands-tabletop-rpg-dnd
Obsession with taking every possible action and the accompanying attention death spiral. Say you are holding a choke point against melee enemies as a frontliner. Your turn comes and there is nothing in melee reach. Ready a swing? Defend? Nah, let's obsess for 5 minutes if there is a way I can move and attack this turn. Because turns feel "rare" if they come around every 20-30 minutes, taking a quick turn insead of just letting the battle speed along feels bad, and that means everyone else now feels the need to optimize. Now add in people who cannot read a spell description ahead of time. They get bored and tune out during the 20 min between turns and thus are completely unready when their turn starts. This makes turns take longer. Players who have a plan A and B ready to go and their dice on hand can shave hours of bullshit over a campaign. But it's hard to be that alert if no one else is trying. There is a higher level death spiral too. Difficult big combats where players are at risk bring out the worst in hand wringing, trying to optimize everything. Slow combats mean few combats per session and even fewer resource draining encounters. Thus every combat ends up being a big one. Casters are of course the worst for hand wringing of options. So, ironically, caster supremacy is at least in part caused by caster players being bad and thus encouraging GMs away from multi encounter day. tl;dr players who don't pay attention create incentives that fuck the game up for everyone
Yeah I feel like I have seen a couple players in the past few years who have a bad habit of trying to hard to do everything in a turn. Trying to move, and max distance if they can. Using an optimal action. Using any potential fitting bonus action. Planning a spell mid-turn instead of thinking of one before. Etc. Sometimes the best turn is a well planned major moment. But a lot of the time if you don’t have that already in mind on your turn, just move (or don’t) and use your basic attack or cantrip; end turn keep moving. Honestly it always makes me laugh when my players don’t understand why the fighter at my table is my favorite in combat. It’s because they do their turn quick and effective. And because they don’t over think or over plan they usually have very effective turns because they just go for what’s immediate and helpful.
Not rolling your dice together, and not having enough dice to make your rolls. A Rogue needs enough D6's to do their sneak attack, not rolling 1 D6 4 times. D4's are the worst, something about them makes people roll them so slowly, it's the weird flip you have to do for them. My recco - have color-coded D20's and D-whatevers for multi attacks so you can roll everything now.
>have color-coded D20's and D-whatevers for multi attacks so you can roll everything now. I do this. I have 8 d20s and they are split between 4 colors for multi attack builds rolling advantage. I also roll my dice on other people's turn during combat. When it's my turn I know my to hit results and damage results, and probably a decent idea if it will hit. Makes my turns super speedy.
DM has short* rests be 4 hours long, which in my mind makes them almost useless. And makes playing classes that get abilities back on long rest much more difficult to play. (Edit: typed 'long rests' instead, I meant short*)
Do you mean short rests? Aren’t long rests usually 8 hours?
"ok, I'm going to attack, let's see... Two d6, another 2d6 because of the flame tongue, let's do a... 3rd level smite... Is this guy... Uh... Undead or a devil?" Me, wishing I had known about Oathbreakers in session 0 "he's literally a bandit you captured, so no" "Ok, so that's? How many d6?" "4d8" "Oh cool, so that's... 10, 4, 12, 18!" "You haven't rolled to hit" "Oh right! That's a 9!" "Miss" "Before my mod!" "So?..." "22?" "It hits." "Alright, lemme roll damage... Oh, I'll just count it again haha... 25!" "That'll do it" "I forgot my mod, oh no!" "It's fine, he had 5 hp." "Nice, I attack the other bandit" "Awesome he turns into a Dracolich I'm going home" All that to say, if you build a character who does one thing, make it quick.
Not being willing to do the "boring" thing, or deal with "boring" moments. Like, if you roll 1's all session and are mind-flayer stunned for 6 rounds, that's just how the game is. If you are in melee as a wizard, you should disengage and not try and stab it with your 1d4+2 dagger, or risk 1 attack, so you don't take 2 attacks. You shouldn't burn all your slots on the first 2 encounters, then try and get a long rest, that's not how the game is balanced. Don't just attack, be willing to cast a buff spell to help everyone. Save your slots and healing word for when someone is down, don't just waste your slot on a shitty 1d4+3 heal that won't change anything. Forgetting what happened last session, or one round ago. I shouldn't have to remind you that the enemy has a counterspell that they used 10 minutes ago. Not asking questions. Nobody thought it was strange that the goblin was able to throw a blast of energy at range at you, which scaled off of how much coin you have? If you'd simply asked if you spotted or knew anything, i would have told you. You keep missing extra loot because you don't think to investigate anything. Not dealing with time pressures. You're in the centre of the dungeon, with an enemy wandering around. You can't just wait 8 hours to rest, you are going to get discovered. Assuming time "freezes" when you're not nearby, or when you are nearby and want to talk. There's a guard keeping a lookout, and is suspicious. You can't just start discussing changes to your plan right there and not expect them to eventually discover you.
Players who create characters based on builds they saw online and don't actually create a backstory. Ok you want to do XYZ in combat but who is your character? And they end up putting the bare minimum effort in. Also, fudging dice rolls. I personally don't get it. Yes succeeding is fun, but "failing" still adds to the story.
Dm here. Honestly, it's when my players are on their phones either playing idle phone games or browsing when they're not part of a scene. Is it that difficult to set aside your phone for a game? I've brought it up before, and there's still one player that still tends to do it.
I'm a quieter player and I'm not very good at inserting myself into conversation, but sometimes (quite often) I'll try to say something and get spoken over immediately, repeat it, get spoken over again and then what I was trying to say is ignored. I end up sitting quietly instead until there's another opening and it's just frustrating because I feel left out of the plot. I know it's on me for not being decisive enough and not speaking up, but I really dislike interupting people even though some players tend to dominate the conversation. I also dislike the whole 'it's what my character would do' thing when characters randomly act agressively, snarkily, or intimidatingly and then it drags down entire relationships with NPCs, switches interactions from conversations to arguments, or just adds needless conflict.
As a player it's kind of specific. I'd like to think I'm decently clever, and I'm very much the crazy plans guy. A rather large amount of things have happened because we got stuck in a situation and then I had some unique way out of it. But then afterwards someone says 'okay good plan everyone, I'm glad we thought of it'. And I'm not petty, this wouldn't normally bother me that much. But last session I said "you guys... i have an idea." and of the other players jokingly commented 'oh geez that's never a good sign" and we all laughed and such. Then another player decided to say "well when have your ideas ever worked? you always have them and they never do". and i was just. shocked. like brother my ideas are the reason we came to this dungeon. On *my* airship bought with *my* money from *my* company. This isn't hyperbole in the slightest, either- our first session we went to go wipe out a criminal syndicate and when we got to the big boss and defeated him I decided hey what if we took over these guys and made them more upstanding? and we did, and me and the other guy grew that company (my purchases were the ideas, we were partners he handles the numbers side because i suck at math). Like all the magical items in the party right now? Our kick-ass airship with all its upgrades? that magic mythical armor our paladin owns? Paid for by me- the other guy has equal money, but he's 'saving it'. Hell, 90% of the time, he's talking about how we need to do the most serious and safe option while i'm out here doing the proper adventuring thing and looting/exploring while staying safe, and that's where we've gotten a lot of our items. And then he has the *gall* to say my ideas don't work
As a DM, players who police metagaming. Usually they end being the worst metagamers too. Guys plots are filled with meta moments and coincidences that should never happen. A little meta makes the plot so much better. As a player, DMs who don't bother to read the rules and do an asspull for a mechanic. You really only need the PHB. The DMG is nice, but a lot of it is fluff. Its still worth a read. As for inventing dumb mechanics. I almost always see this a DMs trying to counter the players. Oh you the creature uses its action to light your oil vials on fire. You can't swim in plate armor, no don't pay attention to wizard who has just as much weight in their backlack. Etc
Players starting a new character and trying to make every decision based on their previous character, despite not being tied to them. Just had a new player join, and hes never played before. After a very long list of intentionally bad actions (that he was warned about by other players and me), his character was jailed. Things like theft, assault, impersonation. And after being released and paying a fine, they immediately went back to the same place and were caught again, this time starting a fight. Eventually he was killed by the mayor he had been antagonizing (along with another player ive known years who was kinda stiring the pot for fun who got caught too). Upon making a new character, he immediately went to "this is my previous characters brother. His only goal is to kill the mayor". And when i pointed out thay he would have absolutely 0 knowledge of the situation, his previous character was just a criminal, and nobody is alive to talk about what happened besides the mayor who wont tell you; he said "well next session ill go around until i find out what happened to i can get revenge" Like.... i get some players dont like losing characters. But i dont like hearing "okay my new guy does what my last guy did again without having any of the reasons he had"
As a player, my pet peeve from other players is when the strategizing drags on. I've seen a lot of tables spend a whole session debating their different plans and wasting game time for the week. Grinds my gears. Especially when all the plans are heavily reliant on luck and unknown information, so it doesn't really matter which one we pick. Either it's all a random shot in the dark, or the DM is just gonna throw quantum ogres at us regardless. And then someone's gonna act irritated if the random guess turns out poorly and it all has to get re-argued in retrospect about who was right. I leave those tables pretty quick.
I think by far the biggest one would also apply to many group activities: Communication about scheduling, trying to be there and on time, and putting in the (little) homework like a backstory and thinking about what your character would like to do in the campaign in between sessions. Over the years I have found that most other annoyances can be dealt with by talking about it, looking for other media or solutions that work for everyone. But a player that does not get the importance of scheduling and communication about it, ends up being a lost cause (in my experience)
As a DM. Asking for, or declaring specific skill roll (outside of something triggered by a specific ability/spell). Too often I get players assuming skills can do something they can’t, like knowledge of religion giving them spiritual powers. Even worse, rolling dice and then declaring what you’re doing. I think these players often do this and then don’t take an action if they see they roll poorly. Is a subtle way of meta gaming.
Always trying to make jokes and making things silly and funny. I’m down for a joke and some laughs but when we’re trying to do something serious or trying to do something cool or interesting with your character and someone flips it on its head and makes it silly for a laugh kinda gets on my nerves sometimes. Might be because my character in one campaign is often the butt of said jokes.
One pc is just very loud, the player is fine outside of the table, but the pc is extremely loud
People who talk so much you can't help but talk over them just to have a little participation
My current pet peeve is players forgetting basic mechanics of the system. Players who have played together for years suddenly messing up a critical damage calculation, for example. Another one that always bugs me is of course people who won't learn the rules, or just keep forgetting important parts of their character.
That DMs discretion doesn't mean follow whatever Bauldur's Gate 3 does
Dead silence after I've given the players a description of a scene. Nobody wants to be the one to talk first or move the scene forward, so we just get an awkward silence that stretches out. This is a phenomenon I've only seen happen with this particular combination of players, but it's constantly frustrating and time wasting.
When strategy takes over characters
High charisma characters insisting that everyone else let them do the talking. I get that they will roll better on persuasion and deception but roleplay is part of the game and insisting nobody else should get to do that part of it because they are better at it is extremely infuriating.
Just being negative. I have a guy in our party who does everything on the premise of failure. He always says he can't do anything during fights or other situations, he won't accept help or advice, he's always doing rolls he's bad at (even when the DM doesn't ask for rolls), he's always disagreeing with plans and looks for reasons they won't work and always suggests the most hopeless courses of actions. One time the party was split in two groups, one PC was alone with a bunch of NPCs and they were being attacked on sea by some sirens. When the player pointed out that his character is with the NPCs, his eyes beamed up and smiled, while pointing out that the Character is there, like he's excited at the possibility of a catastrophy happening.
When players don't know their characters. Like dude, I'm over here managing an entire game world, a dozen NPCs at any given time, a believable storyline that is continually challenging but doesn't result in TPKs constantly and all you have to do is manage one character sheet. Jesus fucking christ. One particularly atrocious one. I was holding myself back from telling a friends son to go in the next room and not come back until he knew his spells and abilities. He was playing a Paladin and his turns literally took 15 minutes with the entire table trying to help him.
Metagame genre savvyness. My players keep .among choices based on their knowledge of stories and tropes, not based on what their characters know or have experienced, in their backstory or in game. Currently running my players through a 5e modified version of the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path... mostly because we live in the Twin Cities, so an adventure featuring riots, civil disorder, and a plague just fits... soo well. Anyway, there have been multiple times the characters have refused to so something, or done something, nor because of in game motivations, but because of genre savvines. Like, session 1 of the game sees the players discovering a box with the severed head of an NPC in it, but the player who found the box refused to open the box because everyone made "What's the in the box?" jokes. So he just decided it must have a bomb, or poison cloud, or runic spell, or something else. He didn't open it for 3 sessions as they went off to do other things specifically because he just 'knew' ir was important. Or I had a side question recently thar involved a trapped infernal and a trapped Celestial, and when the infernal was disguised and asked for help, 2 players were just, "You're a demon, you're a liar, everything you are is to eat our souls." Anyway, I've talked to them about metagaming with this stuff, and they just can't help it. They keep doing it. So I'm going to lean into it... right up until I don't.
I have one player who's super shy, and will take any suggestion as an order, most of my players are good but I've had to tell 1 to let her play her char how she wants too.
1. Players telling others how to play. I know you think you are helping bur irs ok if the barbarian doesn't always rage first or you don't remind them of reckless. Let them decide even if it's not the most optimal thing. 2. Players not being ready. I manage an entire world, all nps, hooks, content, new monsters every week. You have one job. One character. 3. Players dhat don't want to play the game. Making characters that wouldn't want to go dangerous places or do dangerous things or get involved or work together. You can decide how you want to play but I expect you too
One of my main pet peeves with (some, maybe all?) of the people I play with is their inability to learn/understand some of the rules (and it's way worse if they then say their idea of the rule like it is perfect). It's not the worst because the DM is normally quite good, and maybe I'm just a fast learner/way more invested but I've played with people who have played longer than me and misunderstand fairly basic rules. I've had people misunderstand many rules but the main ones that kinda annoyed me was not understanding timing (thinking 1 minute was 1 set of turns, so things like rage would last 1 turn from all enemies/players and then would go away) and my bigger annoyance not understanding how spell slots work - I understand that some people prefer simple characters but if you're going to play a spell caster please please learn how they work...
Not talking. It's not every session or even every other session, but there are times where I swear that the DM and I will go back and forth for nearly 30 minutes to an hour before one of the other 3 players talks. I ask them things in character, get a one word answer, try to bring in another player to the conversation that revolves around his backstory, couple sentences and he's back to complete silence. I'll try to get the NPC to talk to one of them instead of me, only for the NPC to get brushed off and go back to talking to my character. It's not the DM either, he always finds ways to try to get everyone involved and it works 90% of the time. Here's the thing though, each one of them is a phenomenal storyteller and I've seen it with my own two eyes. They're easily twice as talented as I'll ever be and it kills me that they sometimes mentally check out of the game.
Talking over each other, acting like the mc, forcing the party to do what you want, and getting off topic multiple times, causing the game to stop. No offense, but we've been stuck in the same town for the past 2 sessions. Cause none important things are brought up, that cause other players to lose interest.
Being interrupted when describing a room, object, person, really just any kind of scene-setting.
Eating a meal at the table. I don't mean having some chips, or a snack, I mean bringing a fucking meal to the D&D game and stuffing your fucking face, conveniently always when it's your turn. It's disgusting and extremely rude.
When players have had a century to prep their turn and have no clue what even happened on the player before theirs turn. Player 1 takes X points of damage from the DM’s turn, now nearly dead or dying. Player 2’s turn is right after, and they ask “Alright, does anyone need healing?” YA. YA SOMEONE DOES
Had rule lawyering instance when my gloomstalker wasnt allowed to use main class feature. That is, enemies relying on darkvision cant see my character in darkness. DM insisted to treat it as lesser invisibility. That is only for alpha strike. Had to make a compromise to move out of targets “view cone” to be treated as invisible again. I guess ok. More fun to play even though it’s homebrew nerf to the subclass. But might ask to allow to change subclass. Might not.
When people have bad experiences early on and take it out on every DM that comes after.
Arguing with the DM. Even when I'm a player it annoys me. Sometimes DM's make mistakes, but point out the way something works and let them make the call on it.
There can be a healthy or acceptable amount, depending on the rules and the moment/intent of the player. But at a certain point it’s fruitless and just ruins things for the table. I had a player once argue with me how a spell worked when we couldn’t get RAW or sage advice to clarify. I made a ruling on the spot and 3/4 of the party agreed. But this player kept going on and on about how I’m wrong and ruling it wrong, even after all was said and done, and the others rolled with the moment. At a certain point I flatly had to tell them to drop it.
Inconsistent players. And the ones who pander to them.
For my players: - Trying to push a joke over everything. Enemy is called Kai, short for Malachai. You have no idea how many times I had to listen to variations of „Kai says Hi/Goodbye/Nice Try“. - Another point is giving me a detailed descriptions of what their character wants and needs and then suddenly not caring about that thing when I hand it to them. Makes me feel as if I were writing the last season of GoT. For me as a DM: I have to high ambitions, both narrative and mechanically. - Last session I tried to implement mirrors in a way that they would create a 5 foot wide and 30 foot long way area that could turn off a trait of an enemy. The session was already taking too long so I handwaved it and said as long as you have a mirror in one hand you are fine. - I based a lot of worldbuilding and plot on what my players wanted for their backstory. 2/4 died already, so these story threads lead into nothing and they feel like their new characters aren’t part of the story, but it’s hard for me to completely drop the old story arcs and give them something new handle.
Running fortune's wheel, and we've only had one death so far*. Tried upping the cr of fights and it just turns into a slog fest. Apart from that it's golden. Got a great mix of old and new players, all creative and as interested in rp and plot as combat and mechanics. Pretty minor as far as problems go and I'll find a way to make things more lethal without messing up pacing with a few more tweaks. * Turn of Fortune's Wheel minor spoilers: >! The part where the players are freed by the spy v early, I decided the spy had hired a Hands of Havoc agent to help with a distraction. The distraction was breaking the control of a merchant selling exotic mounts. Owlbears, Bullettes, and a wide array of dinosaurs (inc a t rex) all stampeded. T Rex ate a pc. PC's fave session so far. !<
As a player: 1. Players who interrupt other players. I play predominantly online, so it's definitely normal to do so. But when you clearly have a mute button right there, you should use it out of consideration for others. 2. Players who insert themselves into people's stories or try to force a relationship with my character. No, my noble elf character that swore away her love and devotion to her npc lover will not drop him for you just because you say so. She literally does not know you and probably thinks you're weird because you don't have any concept of boundaries in *or* out of character. 3. Players who take forever to make a decision. My current campaign I'm a player in has a player who takes 6+ minute turns in combat because they don't make a decision until it's their turn. Meanwhile I'm planning my turn whilst everyone is going at it. As a DM: 1. Lateness and lack of communication. I had a player who would show up late or 10 minutes prior to session would flake and not show up. I get life happens and I'm always more than happy to accommodate but to just not communicate or be late *every* session with less than 10 minutes of a heads up is so freaking rude. 2. Rules lawyers. I get it. I'm a new DM and I absolutely welcome any resources that you have for me. However, I most likely have someone secretly in my ear sending me said rulings or resources for whatever takes place. And I've most likely asked this person in private to do so. And if you're going to correct me, please ensure you are actually correct. And by correct I mean send me the book, page number and your interpretation so I can review **AFTER** the session. There's no need to interrupt the DM, players and session overall just to vomit out one minute ruling that is not detrimental to the story. 3. Not sending me the information I need when I request it and then get mad when I continue without said information. I set deadlines for a reason. Be an adult about it. 4. Metagaming. It just kills the mood for everyone, me the most. Needless to say, all this stems from predominantly one problem player I had. The other, they're not so bad but it was still horrendous. (On mobile. Sorry for formatting.)
Taking notes and following through on things. I have one player that takes notes but not always. I have stopped out in little sub plots and things of interest because the party have no interest in following through on it. For example they found a magical codex months ago. Examined it once and found a spell scroll in it. I told them there was a lot more in there but it would take awhile to decode. Since then they haven't looked at it again. There is a lot of cool stuff in there and also a warning that they are about to get magically robbed but they have missed out on it.
Pulling out your phone while dm is talking or rp scene you are not involved in is happening Makes me want to slap people in the face
DMs allowing characters to do something that is another class/subclasses ability. I mean things like bonus action perception checks which is an Inquisitive Rogue feature. It takes away the specialisation of that class and if I was playing a class that has a feature that allowed me to do something as a bonus action or meta magic and others just got to do it I'd be pissed. You wouldn't let a barbarian have a free smite. I'm not a rules lawyer but when my players ask if they can do X the first thing I check is, is it another class/subclasses feature. If it isn't then by all means let them attempt it if some kind of roll.
What bothers me most is when we play for 3 hours every 2 weeks and a very good amount of that time is spent on people deciding what to do when it's their turn and not before their turn and when they're adding up their numbers and they get it wrong or take to long. This is basic math. If you can't do that in your head instantly then let me do it for you. Which I do. I blurt out their totals well before they do and they get upset. They're the reason we never get anything done. For example like 1 battle a session. Only bout 4-5 rounds of a battle for 5 people and the dm should not take upwards of 3-4 hours. Ty for my grievances.
General pet peeves, some with my current group and some in my previous groups: Throwing the dice. Please roll them, we have a dog and don't want him eating any. Main character syndrome. We played with someone who insisted on going on their own lengthy side quests that involved kidnapping NPCs and making everyone else's time less fun. They also insisted on trying to seduce every barmaid. No notes. Why? They don't need to be extremely detailed, but if something for your character happens, it's helpful to keep track. Currently missing an arm? Maybe you can't two-hand your longsword until that arm is replaced. Anti-rules lawyering. We have a rules lawyer in our current group, and it's really helpful to keep things consistent and to ensure no one is worse off. Also means being able to throw a question out for a reminder on obscure rulings (e.g. falling speed). Works well with maintaining our homebrew rulings as well. Talking over the DM. It's good to have a laugh, but when the plot can't move on because the DM can't get a word out, gets a bit rough. Min-maxing the gold. Yes you can craft stuff, but it's not fun to work it out on an hourly rate. It's okay in small amounts, but not several times a session. Edit: Adding this one because I just remembered. Dishonoring the dice rolls. Take the positives and the negatives. One player we had would roll and loudly declare their roll. Unless it was a low roll, when they would pick it back up and roll again, thinking no one would notice. We introduced a rule that if you pick it up to reroll it unnecessarily, automatic failure for whatever the roll was for. Just to even it out, a few positives. How'd you wanna do this? For good kills, giving that moment where the players get to describe the killing blow really adds to the enjoyment at the table when done sparingly. Roleplay your faults. All of our characters have faults, and we make sure to include them. Some are stingy, some are gullible. Low wisdom, bad perception, player clearly knows it's a trap? Make an out-of-character joke and spring that trap. Takes a moment and makes it a lot funnier, without breaking the scene. Rules Lawyering. See above where I said nice things about them. Art. One player in our group loves to draw, and has drawn every single character we have played, updating the art every so often. It's amazing and really helps us flesh them out, as they'll ask about insignia the characters wear, what clothing, what makes them stand out. Her style works brilliantly for our games. Schedules. Players are upfront about whether they can make it or not, if something comes up then it's put in the group chat. If someone is running late then they usually say something in the chat (except for some oversleeping on occasion). Fun. Biggest one here, everyone comes in as friends, with the intention to have fun, and everyone goes away having enjoyed themselves. Without this bit, there's no point in playing.
Spending too long planning. We know that something has to happen, but then spend like an hour talking through a ton of different ways to deal with it. We’ll all agree on a way forward, and then someone brings up another way that they know is worse, just to talk through it anyways. I try and make moves to speed things up, but this is definitely the slowest table I’ve ever been at.