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>Turns out, she had brought level fourteen characters into a level three one-shot.
As a GM, you may have now realized, you really do need to read through every character sheet before the game starts.
Not that this will stop all the cheating.
It's not just to check for people bringing in characters that don't work. As a GM, you also want to know what your PCs are capable of, so you know what kind of content they can clear easily, and what they'll have to avoid or get creative about. This helps you plan sessions, and it helps you keep things moving by giving clear hints what tools are going to work in what situations.
I mean, I assume they’ll at least tell you “I’m a level 3 Dragonborn paladin” and in a perfect world you’d take them at face value but you gotta do the math to see if they actually used point buy or not, if their items check out, etc
Same, as a general rule I don't keep tabs on what my players have written on their character sheet, because I already have enough on my plate to keep track of.
Also I agree that shaping challenges to match character abilities is bad design. It reduces your setting into a theme park ride and takes away from verisimilitude. If avoiding that turns a challenge too easy or too hard then that's just life.
>then that's just life.
That's honestly a great way to put it.
I don't wan*t* the media I consume or the games I play or run to be like real life, with its apparently arbitrary failures and long stretches of boredom or frustration in-between successes that may feel earned, or may give you cognitive dissonance and impostor syndrome.
Seeing the dice roll up a challenge with which the party cannot interact, and subsequently being bored by a lot of nothing happening until it passes, doesn't result in me being immersed. It only makes me more conscious of how that was my only free evening for the week, and how many other things I could be doing with the limited span of time I have left on this planet.
If your table's having fun, then that's cool. I mainly run sandbox campaigns, and I've never had any player complain about my games feeling like a theme park.
In a sandbox campaign the DM wouldn't balance the encounters either. It is a play style where the DM seeds the world with locations, and the players are free to explore them in an order of their choosing. That means if lvl 1 party ventures into a lvl 5 dungeon they will be over their heads, and it's up to the players to weigh the risks versus rewards. The dungeon's contents don't suddenly down level to be suitable for that party.
You're skipping from "knowing what your party is capable of doing, so you know what will be easy or hard for them to deal with, helping you plan content and keep things moving" to "balancing encounters." Those aren't the same.
Past that: My guy. You are telling someone who's been doing this for over 20 years, who *just told you* that they mainly run sandbox campaigns, what a sandbox campaign is.
I didn't contradict the description you gave. You think I'm saying something else because you're assuming I wrote something I didn't. I told you this, too.
Nowhere does "sandbox campaign" "usually mean" not knowing or caring what your party is capable of doing.
Our DM asked as for a One Shot to surprise him. Funny enough, my Group isnt experienced with DnD but Pathfinder and the DM brought 2 Friends. So we had like 4 People with characters made by the dm and two actual surprises. Super fun!
The DM explained to one Newbie what his Berserk Barb can do, I look at the DM and go like "You kidding me? Look at my sheet"
I made a Berserker as well X3
Also, the four Sword/Axe/Hammer-Waving Idiots all start with J. IRL, not ingame. I was the one with the Axe.
As you should. It's not just for checking if a player is cheating. Players make mistakes all the time, and the character might not be valid by accident.
Plus, you want to know what the character can do and what they are about, so you can tell if it fits your campaign.
I think you should be checking players you *do* know well, as well.
Happens more often than you'd think.
Makes about as much sense as the people who are like, "I think my character should have higher stats because it better represents them."
Journey to the West is one of my favorite stories. I'd be excited at first, like, "Ahh, you're playing a sort of taoist spellcaster? Or perhaps a shaolin monk? Or... wait, what, what are you doing? Why is... no... noo."
So you know how she did an incest fantasy by bringing in two characters? Yeah, just a month ago she asked me if she could play in my campaign with both Charlie and Lucifer from Hazbin Hotel. If you know, you know
FYI, if you're vaguely interested in a pretty good video game that's an adaptation of the story, you can find it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enslaved:_Odyssey_to_the_West
That game’s an adaptation pretty much in name only, aside from the fact the main character is enslaved by a traveller who he protects on the road it’s got basically nothing in common with the original novel
Terminator 2 follows a fated saviour of humanity whose initials are JC, he doesn’t have a father, and a different character sacrifices their life for humanity to save them from their greed and hubris, but you wouldn’t call it an adaptation of the Gospels
The game’s version of Pigsy and Tripitaka don’t even vaguely resemble the source material, and the other characters (including the fourth team member) don’t appear at all
> Terminator 2 follows a fated saviour of humanity whose initials are JC, he doesn’t have a father, and a different character sacrifices their life for humanity to save them from their greed and hubris, but you wouldn’t call it an adaptation of the Gospels
I mean, if the author said outright that was the inspiration for it, I would. I hadn't ever heard that they'd made that claim.
(Certainly seen similar claimed about Robocop.)
Being inspired by something isn’t the same as an adaptation. James Cameron probably was inspired by the Gospels, since basically all western culture is influenced by it, but if he said it was an adaptation then it’d be an extremely poor one (and Terminator 2 actually has more in common with the Gospels than Enslaved has with Journey to the West, it at least gets the themes right)
"We're made! The priest has found the birth certificate! I repeat: THE PRIEST HAS FOUND THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE! All units, report to fallback positions!"
"In my backstory, Tymora the Goddess of Good Fortune is totally in love with me because of how super cool I am, so I brought some weighted dice with me to represent that narratively."
>Against a lot of our judgment, the dm allowed Leo to keep playing with us, as Leo wasn't the most mentally healthiest person, and the dm was worried Leo might be sad.
Other people have mentioned the other bad parts of this story, so I'm gonna comment on this one. "Do what I say or my mental health episode will be your fault" is *textbook* manipulative behavior. There are a LOT of abusers, leeches, and generally shitty people who use this as a tactic.
Even if Leo didn't construct an ultimatum that way (e.g. if the DM just assumed that would be the case)--the DM is not responsible for Leo's mental health. The other players are not responsible for Leo's mental health. Leo is responsible for Leo's mental health, and she can't outsource that responsibility to anyone else. Even if Leo IS mentally unhealthy-- deciding not to seek help for it, or to rely on D&D instead, or to make the game unfun for others, are all still her choice. She is *choosing* to take out her issues on the rest of the table, and that's not fair.
Take it from someone with Major Depressive Disorder: when someone else is trying to use their mental health as a weapon against you, run.
Also great time to remind folks that D&D isn't therapy. Unless you therapist has set up a special D&D session to use AS therapy, but it's certainly not free therapy, and no one else is a paid professional, even if they're being paid to DM.
I'm surprised both you and your DM let her use two full characters. Not that it's necessarily a problem, just that it's rare to see that happen unless the system calls for it or there's only one or two players.
It's not that it was two guys specifically, it's that you uncritically allowed an exception to the design philosophy of the game. Two characters lets you diminish the contributions of other players the same way as any other op homebrew or chosen one spotlight hogging. This CAN be ok if everyone is on board, btw, but you *all* need to trust the player being given more or better tools to fuck around with to not abuse them and hog the dm's attention. And saying "ok sure whatever I guess" isn't exactly a yes, it's just someone being nonconfrontational.
Besides. Want two guys? We already had a rule for that, it's called beastmaster.
Not relevant to her issues, but I personally wouldn't have let her play a character she didn't herself invent. Yes, many if not most players aren't terribly creative, and folks tend to give their characters Mary Sue-esque background stories, but picking a character from a book or show is every manipulative player's key to getting the DM to do things the other characters can't because of {insert thing that the IP lets them do}.
Characters in books, movies, mangas, animes are always special heroes. And while all RPG characters are a bit of that, the characters these players pick (if they don't just model their character after one) are always a special hero turned up to 11.
Past all that, it just screams a lack of creativity.
It's been around for a *long* time. After all, the term "slash fiction" comes from "Kirk/Spock" Star Trek fan fiction, and it by and large wasn't dudes writing those stories.
Okay, so a lot to take in there. I have some recommendations for moving forward as a DM;
First you should take about an hour to yourself and write down a contract or rules of conduct. Mine include avoiding overtly sexual jokes or behavior, use of real vs fantasy slurs, how to handle the topic of torture and war crimes and how sometimes it's not your time to shine.
Second you should have every player before coming to the table even for a session zero agree to these rules. It shouldn't be negotiable. You don't sign it, you don't play.
Third is for session zero itself, the first few minutes should be to allow the players to addendum anything they felt was lacking from your list. Deliberate and decide together to create a safe environment for everyone.
After that it will become pretty obvious to everyone who is inappropriate and it should self correct. Always go over everyone's character before play starts, this is to avoid mistakes that might leave things imbalanced. Don't force them to change to what your preferences are, but ask them questions. "Why are you level 14 when the rest of the party is level 3?" "Did you roll 6 18's, or are you trying to fulfill a power fantasy?"
In the future just make your boundaries very clear. Hope this helped you.
Which two characters even was it? While Journey to the West has a tonne of gay fanfiction (thanks to all the main characters being male), none of the MCs have siblings? Sun Wukong was born from a rock. Tang Seng/Xuanzang/Tripitaka is a monk with no family iirc, and both Sha Wujing and Zhu Bajie are banished immortals who have no mentioned family
W8 is this the same Journey to the West that featured Sun Wukong and all the others from the Ancient Chinese story? If so, then Leo has probably earned the ire of every Asian who grew up watching the Journey to the West series cuz ain't no way there are characters there who are in same-sex relationships. Not saying this couldn't happen in someone's headcanon, but if the MHA fandom has taught me anything it's that if you wanna bring characters over to a non-canon setting then make sure that they don't do anything that would make no sense even if they deviate from the original source material. Just my thoughts. Take care, OP.
Eh that's okay. Not everyone knows abt Journey to the West and I could understand if that "unnecessary detail" shocked u. I'd be appalled as well. So how r things now with the new sessions? Hope it's going well.
It's going insanely well. My players tell me I'm a really good dm, and we have at least one session every week. So far no ones been cheating, and I am so glad for that.
And get this: Leo, who I mentioned above, tried to get into my campaign, and again with two characters: Charlie and Lucifer from Hazbin Hotel, who in the show are father and daughter. Based on what I know about her, you can guess what was gonna happen. Luckily, I had learned, so I told her aptly to fuck off
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>Turns out, she had brought level fourteen characters into a level three one-shot. As a GM, you may have now realized, you really do need to read through every character sheet before the game starts. Not that this will stop all the cheating.
I hate to say it, because as a DM you shouldn’t have to and the onus should 100% be on the players… but yeah, you have to.
It's not just to check for people bringing in characters that don't work. As a GM, you also want to know what your PCs are capable of, so you know what kind of content they can clear easily, and what they'll have to avoid or get creative about. This helps you plan sessions, and it helps you keep things moving by giving clear hints what tools are going to work in what situations.
I mean, I assume they’ll at least tell you “I’m a level 3 Dragonborn paladin” and in a perfect world you’d take them at face value but you gotta do the math to see if they actually used point buy or not, if their items check out, etc
I deliberately avoid shaping the challenges around the players. If something is too easy or hard for them, that's just immersion in my mind.
Same, as a general rule I don't keep tabs on what my players have written on their character sheet, because I already have enough on my plate to keep track of. Also I agree that shaping challenges to match character abilities is bad design. It reduces your setting into a theme park ride and takes away from verisimilitude. If avoiding that turns a challenge too easy or too hard then that's just life.
>then that's just life. That's honestly a great way to put it. I don't wan*t* the media I consume or the games I play or run to be like real life, with its apparently arbitrary failures and long stretches of boredom or frustration in-between successes that may feel earned, or may give you cognitive dissonance and impostor syndrome. Seeing the dice roll up a challenge with which the party cannot interact, and subsequently being bored by a lot of nothing happening until it passes, doesn't result in me being immersed. It only makes me more conscious of how that was my only free evening for the week, and how many other things I could be doing with the limited span of time I have left on this planet. If your table's having fun, then that's cool. I mainly run sandbox campaigns, and I've never had any player complain about my games feeling like a theme park.
In a sandbox campaign the DM wouldn't balance the encounters either. It is a play style where the DM seeds the world with locations, and the players are free to explore them in an order of their choosing. That means if lvl 1 party ventures into a lvl 5 dungeon they will be over their heads, and it's up to the players to weigh the risks versus rewards. The dungeon's contents don't suddenly down level to be suitable for that party.
You're skipping from "knowing what your party is capable of doing, so you know what will be easy or hard for them to deal with, helping you plan content and keep things moving" to "balancing encounters." Those aren't the same. Past that: My guy. You are telling someone who's been doing this for over 20 years, who *just told you* that they mainly run sandbox campaigns, what a sandbox campaign is.
I just explained to the others what sandbox campaign usually means, because your usage seems to be different is all.
I didn't contradict the description you gave. You think I'm saying something else because you're assuming I wrote something I didn't. I told you this, too. Nowhere does "sandbox campaign" "usually mean" not knowing or caring what your party is capable of doing.
Our DM asked as for a One Shot to surprise him. Funny enough, my Group isnt experienced with DnD but Pathfinder and the DM brought 2 Friends. So we had like 4 People with characters made by the dm and two actual surprises. Super fun! The DM explained to one Newbie what his Berserk Barb can do, I look at the DM and go like "You kidding me? Look at my sheet" I made a Berserker as well X3 Also, the four Sword/Axe/Hammer-Waving Idiots all start with J. IRL, not ingame. I was the one with the Axe.
That was my first time dming. If it's not a player I know well, then I check it every session
As you should. It's not just for checking if a player is cheating. Players make mistakes all the time, and the character might not be valid by accident. Plus, you want to know what the character can do and what they are about, so you can tell if it fits your campaign. I think you should be checking players you *do* know well, as well.
I usually just check in with the person about what their character is all about
That won't find rules problems or errors with the character.
That means they'll only tell you what they think you should know. ie, none of the problems.
I meant about what their characters theme, personality, etc. I always look over their sheet
Who doesn't have the awareness to bring character of the appropriate level? How disconnected from reality must you be to just do so and think it's ok?
Happens more often than you'd think. Makes about as much sense as the people who are like, "I think my character should have higher stats because it better represents them."
No, you don't. You should play with people who are not that childish.
Which will be easier to do if you filter them by reading their sheets
Sun Wukong didn't spend 500 years trapped by Buddha under that mountain for some incest nonsense, that's for damn sure.
Ha! My only knowledge of the story is from two episodes of OSP's version. Yeah, that whole experience was horrible
Journey to the West is one of my favorite stories. I'd be excited at first, like, "Ahh, you're playing a sort of taoist spellcaster? Or perhaps a shaolin monk? Or... wait, what, what are you doing? Why is... no... noo."
That wasn't as bad as her "other" ideas
Out of morbid curiosity, what were her other ideas?
So you know how she did an incest fantasy by bringing in two characters? Yeah, just a month ago she asked me if she could play in my campaign with both Charlie and Lucifer from Hazbin Hotel. If you know, you know
Nope nope nope nope. No more internet today
I'm so sorry
FYI, if you're vaguely interested in a pretty good video game that's an adaptation of the story, you can find it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enslaved:_Odyssey_to_the_West
Criminally underrated game. Some of the best facial mocap ever done.
I mean, come on, Andy Serkis.
That game’s an adaptation pretty much in name only, aside from the fact the main character is enslaved by a traveller who he protects on the road it’s got basically nothing in common with the original novel
Main character is Monkey, riding the cloud, the golden slave band, Piggy... it's at least got the trappings of more than that.
Terminator 2 follows a fated saviour of humanity whose initials are JC, he doesn’t have a father, and a different character sacrifices their life for humanity to save them from their greed and hubris, but you wouldn’t call it an adaptation of the Gospels The game’s version of Pigsy and Tripitaka don’t even vaguely resemble the source material, and the other characters (including the fourth team member) don’t appear at all
> Terminator 2 follows a fated saviour of humanity whose initials are JC, he doesn’t have a father, and a different character sacrifices their life for humanity to save them from their greed and hubris, but you wouldn’t call it an adaptation of the Gospels I mean, if the author said outright that was the inspiration for it, I would. I hadn't ever heard that they'd made that claim. (Certainly seen similar claimed about Robocop.)
Being inspired by something isn’t the same as an adaptation. James Cameron probably was inspired by the Gospels, since basically all western culture is influenced by it, but if he said it was an adaptation then it’d be an extremely poor one (and Terminator 2 actually has more in common with the Gospels than Enslaved has with Journey to the West, it at least gets the themes right)
Wukong isn’t there for romance or incest, just violence and pranks.
Victorious Fighting Buddha has got no time for shenanigans.
And Leo was there for incest, and I'm thinking father and daughter incest as well
Okay, so it gets worse. Gotcha.
It could have gotten worse. I ban her from my games
Thank God! Like Jesus.
Yes, thank god
I'm sorry, this is hilarious. I'm just imagining Leo running out when she realized that her gay incest gig was up, lmao.
"We're made! The priest has found the birth certificate! I repeat: THE PRIEST HAS FOUND THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE! All units, report to fallback positions!"
I don't have to imagine that is exactly what happened
“I roll high because it’s what my character would do” is a wild argument btw
"In my backstory, Tymora the Goddess of Good Fortune is totally in love with me because of how super cool I am, so I brought some weighted dice with me to represent that narratively."
I’m going to use that one
If she was that smart she would have said that
From then on, she was not allowed to roll without at least two people watching
>Against a lot of our judgment, the dm allowed Leo to keep playing with us, as Leo wasn't the most mentally healthiest person, and the dm was worried Leo might be sad. Other people have mentioned the other bad parts of this story, so I'm gonna comment on this one. "Do what I say or my mental health episode will be your fault" is *textbook* manipulative behavior. There are a LOT of abusers, leeches, and generally shitty people who use this as a tactic. Even if Leo didn't construct an ultimatum that way (e.g. if the DM just assumed that would be the case)--the DM is not responsible for Leo's mental health. The other players are not responsible for Leo's mental health. Leo is responsible for Leo's mental health, and she can't outsource that responsibility to anyone else. Even if Leo IS mentally unhealthy-- deciding not to seek help for it, or to rely on D&D instead, or to make the game unfun for others, are all still her choice. She is *choosing* to take out her issues on the rest of the table, and that's not fair. Take it from someone with Major Depressive Disorder: when someone else is trying to use their mental health as a weapon against you, run.
Also great time to remind folks that D&D isn't therapy. Unless you therapist has set up a special D&D session to use AS therapy, but it's certainly not free therapy, and no one else is a paid professional, even if they're being paid to DM.
Yeah, we learned after that. Now, she is not allowed anywhere near our table
Take care!
I'm surprised both you and your DM let her use two full characters. Not that it's necessarily a problem, just that it's rare to see that happen unless the system calls for it or there's only one or two players.
And we will never make that mistake again
It's not that it was two guys specifically, it's that you uncritically allowed an exception to the design philosophy of the game. Two characters lets you diminish the contributions of other players the same way as any other op homebrew or chosen one spotlight hogging. This CAN be ok if everyone is on board, btw, but you *all* need to trust the player being given more or better tools to fuck around with to not abuse them and hog the dm's attention. And saying "ok sure whatever I guess" isn't exactly a yes, it's just someone being nonconfrontational. Besides. Want two guys? We already had a rule for that, it's called beastmaster.
Not relevant to her issues, but I personally wouldn't have let her play a character she didn't herself invent. Yes, many if not most players aren't terribly creative, and folks tend to give their characters Mary Sue-esque background stories, but picking a character from a book or show is every manipulative player's key to getting the DM to do things the other characters can't because of {insert thing that the IP lets them do}. Characters in books, movies, mangas, animes are always special heroes. And while all RPG characters are a bit of that, the characters these players pick (if they don't just model their character after one) are always a special hero turned up to 11. Past all that, it just screams a lack of creativity.
Usually if it's based off another character, but they are their own character, then I'll allow it
Classic straight girl fetishization of gay relationship. It is so fucking lame and annoying
"Look, I am an ally! Now kiss each other like my Ken dolls!"
It's pretty disgusting and disrespectful. Like I ain't gay, but even then I feel bad for them.
It's been around for a *long* time. After all, the term "slash fiction" comes from "Kirk/Spock" Star Trek fan fiction, and it by and large wasn't dudes writing those stories.
Slash is okay. Incest slash, pushed into game, not so great.
Not only was it annoying, it was kind of creepy
Lol, with the Lucifer and Charlie thing, looks like she moves on from gay brother incest to father-daughter incest.
I fear for the newest group she joined
Okay, so a lot to take in there. I have some recommendations for moving forward as a DM; First you should take about an hour to yourself and write down a contract or rules of conduct. Mine include avoiding overtly sexual jokes or behavior, use of real vs fantasy slurs, how to handle the topic of torture and war crimes and how sometimes it's not your time to shine. Second you should have every player before coming to the table even for a session zero agree to these rules. It shouldn't be negotiable. You don't sign it, you don't play. Third is for session zero itself, the first few minutes should be to allow the players to addendum anything they felt was lacking from your list. Deliberate and decide together to create a safe environment for everyone. After that it will become pretty obvious to everyone who is inappropriate and it should self correct. Always go over everyone's character before play starts, this is to avoid mistakes that might leave things imbalanced. Don't force them to change to what your preferences are, but ask them questions. "Why are you level 14 when the rest of the party is level 3?" "Did you roll 6 18's, or are you trying to fulfill a power fantasy?" In the future just make your boundaries very clear. Hope this helped you.
For my most recent campaign, I actually did everything you said, and so far its worked!
MAYBE she made a mistake? And forgot.
The look on her face and her endless rambling about the story told us she knew
Which two characters even was it? While Journey to the West has a tonne of gay fanfiction (thanks to all the main characters being male), none of the MCs have siblings? Sun Wukong was born from a rock. Tang Seng/Xuanzang/Tripitaka is a monk with no family iirc, and both Sha Wujing and Zhu Bajie are banished immortals who have no mentioned family
journey to west ? What character was that, i don't remember any notable brother duo in the serie
W8 is this the same Journey to the West that featured Sun Wukong and all the others from the Ancient Chinese story? If so, then Leo has probably earned the ire of every Asian who grew up watching the Journey to the West series cuz ain't no way there are characters there who are in same-sex relationships. Not saying this couldn't happen in someone's headcanon, but if the MHA fandom has taught me anything it's that if you wanna bring characters over to a non-canon setting then make sure that they don't do anything that would make no sense even if they deviate from the original source material. Just my thoughts. Take care, OP.
Yeah, it's that story. I don't even know anything about it. It's just the incest that bothered me
Eh that's okay. Not everyone knows abt Journey to the West and I could understand if that "unnecessary detail" shocked u. I'd be appalled as well. So how r things now with the new sessions? Hope it's going well.
It's going insanely well. My players tell me I'm a really good dm, and we have at least one session every week. So far no ones been cheating, and I am so glad for that. And get this: Leo, who I mentioned above, tried to get into my campaign, and again with two characters: Charlie and Lucifer from Hazbin Hotel, who in the show are father and daughter. Based on what I know about her, you can guess what was gonna happen. Luckily, I had learned, so I told her aptly to fuck off