Pens and Papers

[Toe]

My group played our first game last weekend. It kinda sucked. Our DM was lost, and kept getting confused.

[Sousa]

To be fair, my most recent game never so much felt like a team of buddies as a team of people who worked together because of circumstances. But that was mostly Mick's fault.

[KONGO]

To be fair, my most recent game never so much felt like a team of buddies as a team of people who worked together because of circumstances. But that was mostly Mick's fault.

Yeah, exactly.

Anyway, I think camaraderie is not really of paramount importance, nor should it really be your fault if they don't become friends. If they want to be friends, they should just... be friends.

[Ruki]

To be fair, my most recent game never so much felt like a team of buddies as a team of people who worked together because of circumstances. But that was mostly Mick's fault.

Yeah, exactly.

Anyway, I think camaraderie is not really of paramount importance, nor should it really be your fault if they don't become friends. If they want to be friends, they should just... be friends.

That's also what I said to her. There is only so much I can do as a DM, to become closer/friends, that is mostly on them as players. She tends to take games too seriously, basically sees the players as characters in a book. Trying to get her out of that mindset.

[Sousa]

If she keeps insisting that they're characters in a book, just tell her that the book is Hamlet and it ends the same way. That ought to shut her up.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

Well currently I am playing a chaotic neutral Witch in pathfinder. I am the groups healer.

I am more lazy than chaotic, preferring to buff the others than to dirty my own hands. When they ask me for healing I get smug knowing they depend on me for my magic.

So really I am not friends so much as being vindicated at all times by my own perceived superiority. In fact, it is only when I have the chance to further my own arcane powers do they ever really have a problem with me.

I was reading an evil spellbook that tried to teach me but turn me evil. I resisted not due to the idea of being evil, but more that something tried to get me to be evil without my permission. Something that I couldn't have without admitting that there was a more powerful arcane force in the world than I.

So far it's been fun.

[OctoberRaven]

I'm doing play by post as a CN Rogue in 3.5e D&D... as the lone non-spellcaster in a group (the others are a cleric, a druid, a wizard, and a sorcerer, so we've called ourselves Team Magic Plus Rogue).

Our first exploit has ended up with us accidentally burning down half of a city. Well, "accidentally" in that we only intended to destroy a magically-powered gang's source of power.

Good news is, the residential area was spared, so we're just horrible arsonists and not horrible mass murderers.

And we also learned that latern oil apparently burns hotter than thermite or something because damn.

[Ruki]

Just got back from character creation with the two new characters (a kobold barbarian and a draconic bloodline elvish sorcerer)...guess what? Neutral or chaotic neutral. Why doesn't anybody want to be good anymore? Good people are fun too!

[OctoberRaven]

Just got back from character creation with the two new characters (a kobold barbarian and a draconic bloodline elvish sorcerer)...guess what? Neutral or chaotic neutral. Why doesn't anybody want to be good anymore? Good people are fun too!

Some people are just born with a heart full of neutrality.

[thatblindgeye]

I've only played as three characters so far, but I don't think any of them were 'neutral'. My main is a Dwarf Avenger (formerly an Invoker, which I had trouble getting into, but with a loss of two players, thankfully, and the fact we had a second Controller already I changed), who worships Levistus. I try to play her as someone who won't just fuck with the group and has the "they'll be useful in helping me get where I want" train of thought to avoid too much PvP stuff happening, but she will gladly kill anyone before asking questions or if it was an order from her deity. Having been raised by people who adopted her and having run away from them at a younger age, her views on people, the world, and how to act aren't exactly 'refined' I guess is the term. Her main goal is to kill her parents for trying to sacrifice her as a baby in the name of some other evil deity (Asmodeus maybe; can't remember) or something, and Levistus prevents it from happening. Probably goes against the history of the deities, but it was my first backstory for a character ever.

My second character was a Professional Earthbender in an Avatar campaign we did, and that was more of a character for entertainment more than anything else, as I just played him off as an over the top wrestler. He would switch between being good and evil due to one of the features of the paragon path being that you decide if you're a heel or face after extended rests. And right now I'm playing a Hacker in a Shadowrun campaign, and I'm not really sure what he is. I REALLY want to play my Swordmage, because he would be a Good aligned character who will refuse to outright kill anyone (even baddies), and instead try to teach them to earn redemption to free themselves of the evil inside them. Or something along those lines.

I'm actually going to be taking another stab at being a DM at some point for an Avatar campaign of my own. Finally settling on major plot points for the three parts I want to try and do. My main concern is our main DM, because he is horrible as a player. It seems like he never plays in character, but in the "well I as a player know this thing so this should be done," and tries way too hard to make his character be the 'star' of the group. Far too often do we make jokes about what our character would do in a situation, and every time he will speak up by going "No no, it would be more like MY character would do this awesome thing, and then your character would do this less awesome thing." And if he isn't able to 'be amazing' and kill tons of enemies in a battle or be the focus of attention he just kind of buggers off and complains that he didn't get to kill anything. Which sucks, because he does a decent to good job as a DM. It's just when he becomes a player where he can get really annoying.

The first time I tried being a DM was with the Gardmore Abbey campaign, and I ran it way too much like a videogame where I gave the players a bunch of quests to collect and sent them on their way, tried to make NPC's stick to how they were written even if a character succeeded on a Diplomacy check or something. I'm hoping with the Avatar campaign, without having to have everything planned out in a book, that it will allow me to do a better job. Just trying to keep the main plots of the three parts relatively open, that way I COULD change things dependent on what the players actually end up doing.

Edited April 27, 2013 by Vitamin E

[GhostMachine]

Personally, for alignment, I prefer Neutral Good. I absolutely hate playing with Lawful Good characters, because they're too righteous and wishy-washy. Plus if you want to do anything sneaky, you have to do it behind their backs.

The problem with Chaotics is that a lot of people play them as frickin' anarchists.

[OctoberRaven]

I pretty much just play whatever my character idea I feel like, which could be anything from a tried-and-true trope knightly paladin to a CE necromancer who thinks his dead wife is still alive (just very sick) and talking to him (but only him, of course, she's very shy), and virtually anything in between.

[GhostMachine]

I never play Lawful Good. Ever.

My two longest lasting characters are:

A Neutral Good Ranger/Rogue that I first created in 2nd Edition and converted to 3rd. (I haven't played D&D since 3rd) His species enemy is Vampires, and he mainly uses the Rogue abilities to invade crypts and other places the undead might hide.....though he's not above backstabbing anyone living who is in league with the undead. He hates vampires because both of his parents were turned when he was a child and he was raised by his uncle.

A Chaotic Good Necromancer who uses his abilities to investigate murders and control undead to either force them to fight each other or to leave people alone. He was a 2nd Edition character I converted to 3rd also, but I only ran him one time during 3rd. (I get bored running single class characters and didn't want to give him another class)

[EWB's Best Poster.]

I once played a lawful good dwarven rogue.

He used his abilities to spot were thieves may break in and try to prevent crime.

[Sousa]

I tend toward Neutral Good or Lawful Neutral, but I did have a fun time playing a Lawful Good paladin with a very involved personal code of honor that he refused to violate (the rogue hated his guts--also, I don't recommend playing like this if it means wrecking everyone else's fun).

The furthest I've ever drifted from this (aside from an evil campaign where I was a Lawful Evil blackguard fish-dude with an infinite supply of ascots) was a Chaotic Neutral druid. The main villain of the campaign was a big-time Lawful Evil conqueror type, and while she wasn't much for crusading, she wasn't going to let some despot despoil her homeland. She wasn't so much an anarchist as much as she was someone who grew up in a totemistic barbarian tribe and was taught that the spirit of nature was wild and unpredictable, so she rejected civilized life and didn't care about railing against "The Establishment" until The Establishment showed up and started murdering her clan. It was a fun character to play and I ended up exporting her to my own campaign world as a prominent NPC.

[KONGO]

I tend towards Lawful Neutral, Neutral Good, and Chaotic Good. My chaotic good types tend to be hearty, crude, jovial types who generally seek their own fortunes but help people out whenever they come across them in trouble.

[GhostMachine]

I once played a lawful good dwarven rogue.

He used his abilities to spot were thieves may break in and try to prevent crime.

Damn. i was going to ask if he picks people's pockets to put money in them......

[KONGO]

Version 1 of my Daj Haakar setting guide.

This is basically a non-magic setting, the city itself heavily based on an Arabic/Middle Eastern feel. There's a lot not in here, it's not really meant to make the setting playable for someone who's not me, more just a resource for my players. But I put a good deal of work into it and dressed it up some, so hopefully you guys will have some fun reading it.

[Ruki]

Yup, I lost control of the table last night....I need to learn to flex my GM muscles. Sousa and other DM's, how do I do this without coming off as a dick? Issues: people getting way off track, being loud/talking over me, and worries of a person more charismatic than me coming in an manipulating the players (and myself).

Adding 2 new players when I was only two sessions into DMing seems to have been a mistake.

[EWB's Best Poster.]

Charisma makes someone a leader. That's good for a group.

You aren't the leader. You're the ruler. You don't offer suggestions you lay down what is or isn't. The leader should be organizing plans of action and the ruler says what works and doesn't once those plans are enacted.

Start next session saying last one was a little chaotic, and there were people talking over others. Including you, which is a bad idea because if you say something you intend to say it once. They want to not listen they miss out.

They just all got together. Its going to happen everyone's trying to find their place. If it continues just make them realize your voice should be the only one heard when you choose to speak or the game can't progress.