Ish. Dont shit where you eat. Its risky to play with coworkers, but really dangerous to play with your boss. I highly advise everyone NOT to do it

First citation is free I dont care

Hahaha, raises, nice

Takes notes…

A classic

Since everything that ever happens is always the DMs doing, then yeah every single death is the DMs fault per default.

Now, lets pretend that were talking about a decent DM that isnt trying to actively kill their players, is giving them a good amount of info, but is still playing with death possible and dangers that wont be steamrolled.

From this point, for you, when is it the DMs fault and when is it the player’s fault ?

And the next question is, when would it be appropriate to say the famous saying without it being a DMs crutch to cover “their” “mistakes” ?

The only type of roleplaying I see happening in a bathroom isnt the kind you would draw if Im not mistaken XD

It’s a popular and well known phrase, but it needs to be acknowledged that it’s a crutch to make up for DMing mistakes that are in danger of killing a PC

You say that like if players always did good and reasonable actions even with every piece of knowledge in their hands

Ha ! Nah. When we asked why so few of them, he said that it was because it took too much time and he didnt had enough to do it.

Which, either its a lie, or he is doing it wrong. Because the thing that makes time in session go by a lot with few preps is combat. I could design you 3 combats that would last a session faster than any other type of content designed to last as long.

No matter what, I like combat, I like it a lot. And this turned me off a shitton.

They say that if it goes for over 3 hours see a life cleric immediatly

This hurts me so bad. One time, we went about 7 sessions without a single fight. Then I went last in the initiative. And then the DM forgot for a few seconds that I was there since the other players wiped the floor and only one was left and he accidently closed the session before my turn

But wont they know that too ?

I thank you for your advice. I dropped out, as I’m not particularly close to the DM or the group.

Funny enough, except for 1 player everyone has been a player at my table before for several months. It felt kinda weird to be amongst ex-players at the table. So it’s not like I wanted to stay at all costs. Plus I had a few… unspoken differents with the DM. Not big and bad things, but some things that we never talked about before I became a player at his table.

What do you think of my concept ? About gagging ?

Another good example that made me had my jaw dropped for real was the time that we had a new player (nice!) intro into a tavern (classic) but then the DM bulldozered over the introduction and sent us straight to our objective before we had time to say anything more than Hi. I felt gagged as never before that time.

Plus for me as a DM, players talking to each other in character is GOLD. It’s precious. It’s fun. It explores their characters and bond them together tightly more than quests or NPCs ever could. Plus it saves your preps for next session as time goes by. So for me, going over that and taking it away is like watching a DMPC doing all of the saving. It’s a no-no squared.

Yesterday, I had a bad session, and I wish to have a second opinion.

There is railroading, a concept that you talked a lot about, and I wish to present to your wisdom this new concept that I will call : gagging.

Gagging is when a DM… talks to much. Maybe it’s describing every single action and consequence, maybe it’s overdescripting areas and people, maybe it’s not letting the players talk enough when it’s their time, it’s something in between these 3 and more.

Every player know not to interrupt the DM. So that also means that as the DM, you might want to consider if what you are saying matters enough, interests the players, is required or not, and if your players are receptive to it to some degree.

I think it’s a bigger problem whenever a DM is following a module… badly. By badly, I mean they want to convey everything the module tells them to convey, but they also try to put their spin on it, making them talk more hesitantly, slower, with more pauses. If they would just read the descriptions aloud, it would be smoother and faster. If it were their creation, they probably could give details and descriptions easier since it’s theirs. But when DMs try to go in between and don’t prepare enough, it makes every description a crawl that you stop listening to midpoint because you know it won’t really matter enough to force yourself to listen to it.

The main point of gagging as a concept to me is not so much to force players down a specific path without their input, as railroading is more or less that but with nuances, but more a way to keep the players from talking and inputing their choices, dialog or interactions into the game.

Since DMs have the mike when they talk, and since interrupting them is taboo (which I fully agree with), it then becomes very important to weight what they say and how they say it in a way that don’t turn players off.

And yes, yesterday I had what I would call a gagging DM. It wasn’t the first session with them, but probably the last, as I lost complete interest in the campaign. Not only because of the gagging of course. But it fucking sucks for me to leave a campaign in which I had some amount of fun, but not enough to stick around.

Huh. Okay. I missed that joke sorry with the title. But yeah, thank you, I know what railroading is.

But… what is railroading here ?

Did it worked ?

Indeed. I often do that kind of trick, just to keep them on their toes :)

Art by @ahdok of course. I am talented but not in drawing anything remotely fun to watch :)

Ah, reincarnate ! Should have led with this. A classic case of rerolling your character for a second go at life :)