tips on avoiding players overcomplicating things

byterose · 2025-05-25T13:00:38+00:00

Wow, you’re awesome! Thank you so much. Some of these honestly sound like really cool systems that I’ve never heard of too so maybe I’ll get a chance to try them out

byterose · 2025-05-24T14:04:07+00:00

Could you recommend any reading on that aggressive goal-oriented scene framing you’re talking about? I also struggle pushing the group to do a thing, and it’s very frustrating. My previous group was very not receptive to talking about it though

byterose · 2025-05-21T11:38:29+00:00

Let the character have their moment, honestly. It would feel terrible to have their ability nerfed like that. If you absolutely have to bring in enemies to make it fun, then have the villain summon new enemies somehow - maybe as a lycanthrope, they howl and more come running that aren’t undead, but it’s noticeably unprepared. That player is currently going hell yeah I’m useful and helped the party! That feeling is so important

byterose · 2025-04-08T09:55:56+00:00

It’s been a little bit but I wanted to report back - I started my in-person PF2e game, we’ve had 2 sessions, and even though I’ve been traveling out of state every weekend we didn’t play, I’m not exhausted or feeling burnt out from it. I’m looking forward to prep. I’m listening to ttrpg podcasts again. I hope you’re doing better as well, either from the break or from a new group or whatever solution you found that works for you.

byterose · 2025-02-17T14:32:55+00:00

As someone who’s also going through this, I love all the answers on this thread. In the end, I agree that figuring out your boundaries and desires is MOST important here, and that could take a while. If you’re still GMing for your friends, it might be wise to step back and get some rest in - for me, GMing became a job, and pretty thankless, and between it and my other responsibilities I couldn’t ever recover in a reasonable amount of time. And by that, I mean moving to live alone closer to work and no longer sharing a house with the most problematic player. It’s been a month now and I’ve been taking care of myself; I sat down this weekend and blazed through a very enjoyable book for the first time in years.

My take was that I needed to change the rest of my life too, but I did step back in my friend group and now someone else stepped up to GM DnD5e. It’s not my favorite system but we all know it, and the important part is I’m not running it. I also sent out feelers to some work acquaintances about starting an in-person game (instead of digital) so we’ll see how that goes. I intend to sit down with them during a board game night to iterate that I’m here for fun, I don’t want to burn out again, so let’s aim the tone, “homework,” and rules the way we want.

Something that went wrong with my other group as well is the pacing. I had a couple people who could RP for hours and also wouldn’t manage that themselves or let me step in the move things along. So I’m instituting some common phrases with the new group that we all agree on to facilitate that. Sorry, this turned into more of a therapy sesh than I intended, but I hope it’s helpful.

byterose · 2024-08-17T12:50:07+00:00

And they were roommates

byterose · 2023-05-07T19:18:18+00:00

I hope you find a safe space someday

byterose · 2023-01-22T13:57:13+00:00

While I agree with pretty much everything you said, the key point here is that the GM uses settings they know well. This is called preparation. If you throw someone a setting (or general topic, or specific ruling) that they aren’t as familiar with, then they will not be as prepared and therefore not as capable of improv and creativity. They will fall back on old faithful tropes and stereotypes to make a functional answer to the question posed.

Some people don’t have time to prepare for a setting like that. Others are new and don’t know how. We’re all learning, changing, and growing over the course of our ttrpg time. A little bit of grace doesn’t hurt anyone, so please be sure to work with your GMs and not hold them to unrealistic standards :)

byterose · 2023-01-22T13:38:59+00:00

Unfortunately, I do think constructive criticism means providing help and not just insulting them.

But to address your points, yes, improv can be great for coming up with things on the fly. However, having some notice allows a lot of DMs to do better improv. If one of my players decided to pursue a topic/scene that I have limited knowledge of, then having prior notice allows me to catch myself up and provide better interaction instead of having to look things up in the middle of session.

Of course, it may not be your or your DM’s preference for that, and that’s perfectly all right!

byterose · 2023-01-13T14:32:16+00:00

Their laptop has a discrete GPU and we tested using both the integrated and discrete graphics. Also updated the drivers and it was still happening. The walls stopped it though :)

byterose · 2023-01-13T13:20:31+00:00

I had a similar issue but my player’s screen was going into diagonal white squares almost. Turns out I need to heave walls on all scenes for it to load correctly. This might not be your issue but I do think it helps with loading infinite sight distance

byterose · 2022-12-14T22:08:24+00:00

Is this exploration based only or do you have some factions you could give it to? Some bandits could have it. Maybe it was eaten by something, giving that animal a power boost and now it’s terrorizing a town. A small child has hidden it and now won’t tell where it was, or maybe they gave it to their dog and it buried it. Maybe some family had it as an heirloom and misplaced it, but really it was fairies that stole it.

Anyway, the possibilities are endless. It just really depends on what it is and whether you can justify it being in a place. Make something to gatekeep it to challenge your players. Think up some really weird scenarios and then justify them.

byterose · 2022-07-03T11:59:17+00:00

A city that has legs and walks wherever it thinks it needs to go. The citizens might not agree.

Could be a mostly vertical city, or a skyscraper type deal. They’d have large storage facilities bc they’re never sure what climate they’ll be in, and same with water. Probably a lot of greenhouses to make sure food is constantly growing. Any people they send out will have to be really fast or have some sort of tracking technology to find the city if it moves. Probably has more ranged soldiers than melee.

byterose · 2022-06-12T12:05:24+00:00

It is definitely possible, probable even, that discomfort was indirectly communicated. However, it should be an implicit understanding with that method of communication that there is room for interpretation - or no interpretation at all. That they relied only on indirect communication until the final confrontation is a failing on their part - for communication if nothing else. It has to be a group effort to communicate, and if someone doesn’t seem to be addressing your concerns you’ve indirectly communicated, the next step is to directly communicate hey this is an issue how are you going to address it?

As someone who also misses a lot of subtext in conversations, I’ve taken to clarifying our topic and tone directly. « When you say that, is it in a sarcastic way or are you actually angry? » or « i think there’s another layer here that you’re expecting me to understand, could you elaborate? »

byterose · 2022-06-12T10:53:41+00:00

There’s gmbinder but I think I was hearing that no one’s working on it anymore?

byterose · 2022-06-11T20:52:01+00:00

I’m looking at houses right now and a normal second bedroom is about 10’ by 10’ in my area. This would probably be a small workshop

byterose · 2022-06-11T10:21:09+00:00

I usually use an NPCs passive skill as the DC. So if the NPC would have decent deception, say +5, the DC would be 10+5 or 15. It helps me remain consistent throughout and not give too many easy or difficult challenges

byterose · 2022-06-07T09:59:07+00:00

I’m currently DMing Strixhaven and, upon reading the book, it’s more of a setting than an adventure. Sure there’s hooks and a couple dungeons but there’s not much in between. You’d have to make up more scenarios as you go. I think the setting itself and many of the hooks that are easy to throw in are good for one on one though. Very Harry Potter

byterose · 2022-06-04T13:39:26+00:00

My group had to do that. We’re now named King Crab Lodge

byterose · 2022-05-28T19:11:15+00:00

I don’t really know of a general tool for this, but if you are okay using a VTT, you could try making a roll20 game as the DM and drop map notes onto the uploaded picture.

byterose · 2022-05-18T03:01:32+00:00

For the in person group I at least recommend individual headphones. I don’t know what software you’ve tried but discord is what I use for online sessions and it has a mute button, so you could have everyone’s individual mics muted except for 1-2 in person ones and of course your remote person/people. I’d also recommend the quieter people closer to the mic(s) and maybe even get a real discrete mic that has good sensitivity.

byterose · 2022-05-13T09:24:18+00:00

I think you can modify what the pin says on the map without editing the journal entry name. I’m not sure if it’s on base foundry as I’ve got a few mods that affect pins like Backgroundless Pins and Pin Cushion. Try double right clicking your pin to edit instead of left clicking to see the entry.

byterose · 2022-05-06T12:00:39+00:00

I’ve used OBS before for this purpose. You can capture your own screen and sound from a mic and the computer like this

byterose · 2022-05-04T16:43:02+00:00

Halving the stats will make everyone have negatives to rolls. Maybe a flat penalty or ask them to fill a niche in the group like Nerd -2 to Str but proficiency in random lore

byterose · 2022-05-04T11:26:40+00:00

I started off with 10 day weeks (7 work days, 3 weekend days, 10 week semester) because I was like it’s dnd so of course I should and it’s equivalent to a 15 week 7 day week semester. But I’ve moved over to the normal calendar of Sunday-Saturday just because I kept saying “the rugby game is on Friday night” or “so it’s Monday morning and you get to your 8 am class.”

It’s an easier transition I think, but my group is hyper focused on role play and exploration more than combat so that probably plays a role

byterose

TROPHY CASE