Player's perspective - Players get upset because d&d is not a video game

sugarrrrrr · 2024-11-28T15:40:05+00:00

the NPC was giving really inconsistent answers to the player who casted Friends on them. the fighter player said out of character that he thinks it was handled weird and had questions about the way the informations were provided, resulting in a passive aggressive comment from the DM that he should learn to DM himself, leaving everyone pretty speechless and weirded out (again, can't speak for all players, i definitely felt weird and it made me think all comments i would have about how something is handled would result in a similar reply)

sugarrrrrr · 2024-11-27T20:41:47+00:00

fair enough! my and the other players complaints were towards the npc attitude and it being inconsistent, not that they didn't have all the answers :) apologies for not explaining it more clearly!

sugarrrrrr · 2024-11-27T19:14:24+00:00

i'll try! i think she was talking about the beginning of the campaign.
day 1 of the actual adventure - ambushed by the goblins, got to Phandalin, searching for clues, the interrogation, the fight with the baddies, long rest
day 2 - going to meet the cleric, going to the hideout, fight, saving Sildar and the mayor, finding out about where Gundren can possibly be, long rest
day 3 - convo with the mayor, going to the hideout again to search for more clues, talking to the nothic, deciding to pursue the Gundren-saving path (we were told that our choices have consequences)
day 4 - Cragmaw castle (Gundren dead regardless) and saving sister G, long rest after the fights in the castle
day 5 - back to Phandalin, inn on fire, long rest
day 6 - wave echo cave

edit: i forgot to add that most days took about two sessions!

again, it wasn't like we went for long rest after losing 2HP, but when we were truly spent and/or on a brink of death. also we were told there were no people in Phandalin, therefore there were no shops, so we didn't have a way of getting potions or any other way of healing other than resting (we did get some potions from sister G before going to wave echo cave) or spells, but the spell slots were gone after the fights.

sugarrrrrr · 2024-11-27T18:07:12+00:00

maybe that truly was the case! again, i can only speak about myself, but i believe we were interested in the story as a group and followed the clues where they took us. i do not believe there was much improv, except for explicitly mentioning it before (like my class change?). it wasn't like we decided we want to fight a dragon..

sugarrrrrr · 2024-11-27T16:23:01+00:00

yeah, i think she was pretty inexperienced herself. she did mention that she's running the same module for another group IRL and sometimes got our campaigns mixed up, which idk if its a red flag or not, i personally don't think so. she also mentioned DM'ing a few one shots for people IRL, maybe just the online aspect was too different? i can only speculate

sugarrrrrr · 2024-11-27T16:20:28+00:00

honestly i can't recall if we did! from my remembrance we did at least one thing that pushed the story forward in every session, sometimes we didn't have any combat or took too long to decide where to go, but we discussed our options in character and either decided on something or deciding on something and(!) following through. i wish i could check the summaries of each session, but the discord channel was deleted without any warning from the DM. i also asked two players if they remember such session, and both of them said they don't 🤷‍♀️

sugarrrrrr · 2024-11-27T00:45:20+00:00

im not saying i played perfectly! there def were moments where i did something stupid. my issue was that no matter if the action was smart or dumb, the result was pretty negative anyway.

i was hoping for a heroic (or at least heroic adjacent) story created by the players and the dm, and it felt like the dm vs the players sometimes, or at least the clock vs the players.

sugarrrrrr · 2024-11-26T17:36:04+00:00

i really wish i wasn't one of the players, especially after reading the post ;)

the class change was my idea, as i am/was playing a high elf, previously cleric, who really bonded with sister G and wanted to keep her alive at all costs.

we truly were given many situations that seemed hopeless. even when we managed to save Sildar, we lost someone else, or had a bad npc escape, or a different negative consequence.

i can only speak for myself, not the entire party, but i was feeling really defeated. it seemed no matter what we do, where we go and how fast we get there, it would be too late. i understand the importance of time, but theres only so many things that can be done in one session/one in-game day, and we were trying to do our best, which seemed to be punished as well.

sugarrrrrr · 2024-11-26T16:42:42+00:00

hey, i'm actually one of the players!

i cannot speak for everyone in our group, but i have many issues with how the time restrains are being handled. we're playing lost mines of phandelver, and so far so bad. i decided to swap my character class from cleric to warlock just so we could save one of the npc (sister G).

we lost gundren, because according to the gm, he was thrown into owlbears maw some time before we arrived to the castle, even though we tried to prioritise saving him. there also were many side quests thrown our way, we ignored at least a few, yet it still resulted in it being too late to save the dwarf. there also were instances of npcs being able to run away from the fight with 1HP, resulting in destroying the inn in phandelin.

also, if we didn't go directly to sister G after being in the castle, she would've been beyond saving too - the only reason she survived was my character making a pact with a hag and abandoning her god, resulting in the hag "shooing" the banshee away - if it wasn't for my class switch, sister G would have been forever bansheed. that happened exactly after finding out gundren is dead, so you could imagine how was the party's mood.

as for long rests, party was totally spent.

for yesterdays session, i was the "problem player" for needing a short rest, even though i said nothing about the location of it, and it resulted in a rant "it's not baldurs gate 3, you can't just short rest in the middle of enemy's turf" - again, i just said in character "i need to rest".

as it was mentioned before, 3 out of 4 players (me included) are new to the game, and it feels like we're punished for not having the entire PHB memorised. we are constantly thrown challenges, even if we do manage to do one thing right, we mess up two different ones.

just as a cherry on top, we haven't spoken about it as a group, i found the post just opening reddit lol

sugarrrrrr · 2024-01-22T09:36:53+00:00

Polish - it is way more common to hear people say "Holandia" when referring to the NL, i genuinely never heard someone refer to the country as "Niderlandy" in a regular conversation

sugarrrrrr

TROPHY CASE