Chebucto Regional Softball Club

Some other games use other terms. Like wod uses "storyteller". GM is the generic term

Oh, I personally agree. I want my players engaged and adding flavor to the world. If I didn't, I'd be better off writing a book. But I used to be more of a "you're having fun wrong" jerk in my youth, so I make extra effort now to be clear that something might not be for _me_, it's okay if you're all having harmless fun with it. ( I still struggle when people tell me about their game of modern day vampires doing political intrigue run in D&D 5e instead of Vampire, but we all have our foibles. )

I discovered a couple years ago that some players *hate* being given any creative control over the setting. They're extremely passive and want to be told a story. that's a valid way to play, but very alien to me. When I had a wizard character mention his wizard school I let him color in a lot of details. I'd intervene if it was badly breaking established canon (eg: we said it's in a remote desert and now you want it to be in a coastal city), but generally it's great.

Interesting, but I can't imagine writing out that much of the game's truth ahead of time. I'm always leaving things undefined so I can slot in a good idea (from me or the players).

Some games ask the players to define the stakes and goals when a conflict starts. This can help keep players on track. Like, the players are on a journey through the mountains, and as they pass through a tunnel they encounter a giant spider. The default mode is "fight the spider to the death!". But if you ask the players again "what is your goal here?" they might remember it's "get through the mountains", not "kill everything we meet." Now they might focus on how to get past it safely. If the DM rewards players for advancing their goals instead of just murder, that can also encourage non-murder behavior.

I still have the onyx path WoD 2e books, and I enjoy them. I find it confusing that there several variations of "World of Darkness"

In one of my old groups, I'd usually verify the player and I understood each other , and they understood the likely consequences. Like, "You can shoot her, but remember this is her club, with her friends , and she's a vampire so she probably won't die. But if you want to roll, it's at -4 from her Celerity you've seen her use." One player was always like "you never let me do anything!" I was like you _can_ do it, but I don't want you to be surprised and mad if there are consequences. Another player, by contrast, would listen to me clarify what was likely to happen, and be like "cool bro let's do it.". We still talk about the time his character jumped out a 20 story window to save his friend's girlfriend. Great player. Took a lot of damage, as warned, but lived.

Yeah, I mostly play Fate or nWoD. But a lot of people are really emotionally invested in D&D, so sometimes I think of ways to try to trick them into playing something different while they think they're still playing D&D.

I bet some obsessive nerd has converted DND to point buy (like wod, gurps, etc) instead of class and level based. You get XP for stuff, and you can spend that as you like on all the stuff you'd get from leveling. Follow the recommended route and get a standard looking fighter. Or go crazy and buy nothing but hit dice. Or make a glass cannon by buying all the sneak attack dice and second attack (in case you miss) and nothing else. Or, per this meme, buy superiority dice and maneuvers, and then also buy extended crit from champion. It would be a mess. I think part of why dnd is popular is its comparably small decision space. There's just not a lot of room to fuck up your character

This is pretty good advice. I've sort of stumbled into it a few times. Sometimes I'd be like "ok so here's the room. Blah blah blah details. What're you doing?" Andy will be like "I'm gonna check out that detail" I'll get like "cool. You all see Andy head over to that detail. Good?" And sort of pause there for a beat to see if anyone wants to interrupt or preempt. I think the linked article is a generally better method as it's more complete, but I think mine is a little faster. Especially if you have a couple passive players.

I made a rogue bird-guy (aarakroka?) that built for strength. I really wanted to pick someone up with grapple and fly them off a cliff, but i never pulled it off.

Oh I've seen this joke before, slightly better, but now I don't know which was the original. It was like Bard: I cast vicious mockery Dm: cool. What do you say to him? Bard: "You're none of your best friends' best friend" Dm: ... Other players: ... Bard: So do I roll damage or...? Dm: No... No, he's dead.

One of the bars by me has a DND group in the back. There's a "community center" also near me that lets people hang out in the basement, and there are rpg groups that meet there

dangit i was going to make the same pun. well done.

My old pandemic D&D group was the best. They cared about everything. But I remember specifically one time they arrived at a large party. I was describing the scene- large tables set with food, small groups of people mingling, and off in the corner you see a man talking to a woman, her back is against the wall and he's got his arm on the wall so he's kind of trapping her there. She looks uncomfortable. The players all beelined to those two to rescue the NPC from the guy. Oh, Pretty Paul. They hated him so much. Such a good villain. (Started as a riff on Handsome Jack, and it worked so well. One of the players wrote a song about how much they hated Paul)

Order of the Stick is so good, and has such surprising emotional depth for a stick figure comic about D&D. Just be aware that the updates are intermittent.

I remember once my players spent like 15 minutes discussing how to get across a 10 foot long puddle of water in a cave. Eventually I had to remind them that 10' isn't _that_ far, and you can RAW jump your strength score in feet with a running start. They didn't need to build a bridge or cut into the walls. They could also just go into the water, but I understand not wanting to submerge yourself in cave water when you don't know what's down there.

I think they said because she was a mutant, the clone lab won't work on her. All the other party members are humans. But like she's a mutant the whole time, and it only comes up when she plot-dies. (This is from memory, so I might be wrong.) It's a good game if you like old timey jrpgs. The dungeons are full on mazes.

Phantasy Star 2 has a named NPC die and it has a weird excuse why you can't revive her at the clone labs, even though you could just fine up to that point. Also when everyone else was like "omg no character has died in an RPG before" youth me was sitting there like "is phantasy star a joke to you?"

As the title says, moderation is key. If the game is just "whatever is the most convincing right now" then I'm going to be annoyed that I sat down to play D&D/fate/gurps/whatever, and we're mostly playing improv. It's important to set expectations in or before session 0. If I was looking to join a game, and the GM was like "We're all about the rule of cool", I'd probably ask for some examples. If it's like "we let the [D&D 5e] wizard cast as many spell as he wants" then I'm not joining, because that's going to fuck up the game balance. On the other hand if it's like "we don't really care about carry weight unless it's extreme", that's fine. Stuff in the middle, like "one time we let them use create water in the bad guy's lungs to drown him!" can go either way, but I'm usually not a fan. Mostly if I ask myself "if this works, why doesn't the whole setting revolve around it?" and don't have a good answer, I won't enjoy it. Like, if everyone could do lethal damage with a cantrip, or if the "peasant railgun" worked like the joke, or "we let the real life chemical engineer make napalm and mustard gas as a 1st level rogue for massive damage", then that probably isn't for me.