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So last Saturday I was all ready to play some D&D. Only two adventurers showed up but we still proceeded. We started off in an inn after a long adventure (teleported back), and what happens? We get arrested. My barbarian, Clutz, was contemplating violence, as they were false charges anyway - thus more justifiable to spill blood. I at least thought I could weave my way through, using my boots of speed while picking up my bard friend and get out of the city.

Oh but such an exciting flight would not be had... no matter what. During the interchange with the guards, it dawned on us that our clones must have been the culprits (yes we have clones... that's from the bard's scheming) - whom killed off one of the temples of Lathander. We... more me, refused. BUT.... right when we did so, everything went silent and a whole lot of spells went off - hold persons. Our gear was then stripped and the GM folded his hands.....

He said something to the effect of, I'm done. I'm tired of this campaign'. :O

So.... after a whopping ~15 mins of play, my night, my saturday night, that I reserved for D&D, that I don't get to do every Satruday, was suddenly ended. It's kinda funny but at the same time sucks.

Oh but it doesn't stop there. He wants to do Robotech, so I began humoring him with making a character. By this time, the other player conveniently lost his wedding ring and really needed to go find it. I was stuck with entertaing the DMs new pet The genre doesn't interest me for RPG, even after listening to some of the fluff and doing the character creation.

I guess my new Saturday reservations will be more about going to my FLGS to do wargames, which anymore, I'd rather do now.

Any similar stories?

Which is a shame, if it's going to kill the gaming group. Which you don't have to let it do. Presumably you enjoy RPGs, or you wouldn't have been in a long-running campaign.

At the same time, GMs get sick of running a given setting every so often. I know I rarely run the same system/setting twice in a row for precisely that reason.

Stopping 15 mins into a session, if he'd not given any indication beforehand, is not ideal, but if he's not enjoying it himself, then it's a bit masochistic to keep going for weeks on end. I'd rather have said something before, rather than during the game.

And if he'sreally got something he wanted to try, that's not unfair. At the same time, if what he wants to try doesn't grab you, try discussing it rather than humouring him and then not turning up again.

There will be an RPG out there that he enjoys running and you enjoy playing, because there are so damn many. Or maybe even swap it over for a change?

There's no reason to bin saturdays because of one night not being fun.

locarno24 wrote:
Which is a shame, if it's going to kill the gaming group. Which you don't have to let it do. Presumably you enjoy RPGs, or you wouldn't have been in a long-running campaign.

At the same time, GMs get sick of running a given setting every so often. I know I rarely run the same system/setting twice in a row for precisely that reason.

Stopping 15 mins into a session, if he'd not given any indication beforehand, is not ideal, but if he's not enjoying it himself, then it's a bit masochistic to keep going for weeks on end. I'd rather have said something before, rather than during the game.

And if he'sreally got something he wanted to try, that's not unfair. At the same time, if what he wants to try doesn't grab you, try discussing it rather than humouring him and then not turning up again.

There will be an RPG out there that he enjoys running and you enjoy playing, because there are so damn many. Or maybe even swap it over for a change?

There's no reason to bin saturdays because of one night not being fun.

Aye. The writing has been on the wall with this group - as to my parting. It's been an off and on thing for a few years now. I use to go religiously every Saturday for ~10 years. It's just gotten to the point that it sometimes becomes too detailed, too mechanical; not imaginative enough. There's very little setting the scene, and a too much meta gaming. I would love to DM myself, even offered, but I don't think it'll matter, he's focused on doing something other than swords and sorcery (which is what I'd like to DM).

Also, I have yet to play with my 30k stuff, and it so happens that a new local store has 30k as a niche.

Aye. The writing has been on the wall with this group - as to my parting. It's been an off and on thing for a few years now. I use to go religiously every Saturday for ~10 years. It's just gotten to the point that it sometimes becomes too detailed, too mechanical; not imaginative enough. There's very little setting the scene, and a too much meta gaming.

Which - if I can be a bit reserved - is why I really, really dislike D&D compared to a lot of systems; because it encourages that. D&D is essentially a narrative skirmish game with some bolt-ons compared to a lot of 'looser' systems out there that are more designed to push the narrative bits. FATE, or the Star Wars RPG, are good examples of this. no maps required, and much more "so what actually happens" type interaction.

If he wants to do "not swords and sorcery" and you want to do "swords and sorcery", why not try and cover both?

Force & Destiny is the 'jedi' branch of the FFG star wars RPG - you get the force, swords, magic & destiny, but in a space environment with lasers and starships. The rule set is very simple but quite clever because every roll does multiple things - reducing the time you spend figuring out modifiers and increasing the time you spend describing what your awesome plan is/what the roll you just got represents.



Short version of the latter:

You build a 'dice pool'

~ you get one basic die for every point of relevant stat (let's say agility for stabbing someone). If you have a relevant skill, each point 'improves' one die to the better type. So maybe 3 dice, one of which is improved.

~ There are difficulty dice and 'upgrades to difficulty' which work in the same way. Shooting a man-sized target at medium range adds 2 difficulty dice.

~ Boosts and setbacks are added at the GM's whim, essentially from narrative details - aiming, poor light, particularly fiendish 'quick tricks' (like - taking the example of the Force Awakens - steam venting into your face from a saber pushed into snow)


Everything gets rolled at once. Every face shows a number of success/failure icons, or advantage/threat icons, or is blank.

That one roll covers the entire attack. Failure cancels success - if you have any left over you hit. No seperate damage roll, because you just add an extra point of damage for every success.

Advantage/threat is "good/bad things not directly related to success" - so, if shooting someone, I might hit, but if I have uncancelled threat, my blaster is out of ammo (guns - this being star wars - never run out of ammo in normal circumstances but only as a narrative 'oh crap' effect!), uncancelled success, I hit one guy and the guy next to him hits the deck so gets a setback shooting back.


Alternatively, if you want to really mess with people's heads, try paranoia. It's not sword and sorcery, but you'll have people either in stiches with laughter, apoplectic with rage or both halfway through the first mission. Everyone should try it at least once.

After all, fun is mandatory, and the computer is your friend.

Sorta in the same boat. Have had a 3 year campaign running. Entirely online, as a fair amount of us live the military life. Last 4 sessions have been cancelled because of no shows.

It's been more then a month, and there has been no talk of even scheduling another one. I can't blame him. He lives in Japan right now, and on multiple occasions cancelled some pretty amazing trips, so he could host a session, to not have half the group show up. As one of the guys who never missed a session though, it certainly sucks.

locarno24 wrote:

Aye. The writing has been on the wall with this group - as to my parting. It's been an off and on thing for a few years now. I use to go religiously every Saturday for ~10 years. It's just gotten to the point that it sometimes becomes too detailed, too mechanical; not imaginative enough. There's very little setting the scene, and a too much meta gaming.

Which - if I can be a bit reserved - is why I really, really dislike D&D compared to a lot of systems; because it encourages that. D&D is essentially a narrative skirmish game with some bolt-ons compared to a lot of 'looser' systems out there that are more designed to push the narrative bits. FATE, or the Star Wars RPG, are good examples of this. no maps required, and much more "so what actually happens" type interaction.

If he wants to do "not swords and sorcery" and you want to do "swords and sorcery", why not try and cover both?

Force & Destiny is the 'jedi' branch of the FFG star wars RPG - you get the force, swords, magic & destiny, but in a space environment with lasers and starships. The rule set is very simple but quite clever because every roll does multiple things - reducing the time you spend figuring out modifiers and increasing the time you spend describing what your awesome plan is/what the roll you just got represents.

Well I'm not a big fan of the die pool games from FFG. As a matter of fact I now loathe what FFG did to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. At first I had reservation, then I gave it a chance, got excited about it, but then realized it just seemed unnecessarily complex? The star wars version may be better mechanically, but I'm not a big Star Wars fan anymore. Warhammer 40k diminished the Star Wars franchise for me, as I don't really get excited over it like I used to.

Really, I like skirmish games, a lot. If I could run a Mordheim RPG I would. I even have some conversion rules I wrote for it. I'm now converting AoS into Mordheim (pretty easy thus far).

In the future though, I would ideally like to see my RPG group sticking with these queues: descriptions, choices, models - in no particular order.

I believe models are one of those aids downplayed too much in RPG groups. Seems like many would be happy to walk in and have fun with situational what ifs, with unpainted models and dry erase boundaries, but think of this: if your group instead brought in models & terrain relevant to the campaign, painted, what do you suppose that will add to the group? Think of the ambience that would create? The extra level of excitement or intrigue. Stoking the actual hobby of it.

And, one last thought: It seems like many treat situations like a computer game (DM included), where the DM follows rules beyond what's obviously appropriate, and parties go into dungeon sweep mode like a blue collar job. That spirit of brevity/convenience inserted kills the suspense.

There's a balance in skirmish and narrative. I think the key thing is finding people who actually agree with the notion. I'd wager a good indicator for a balanced player is one that really enjoys painting, using miniatures, and enjoys the fluff. Knowing the rules is a sideline they should be familiar with, but mostly, its on the GM. (IMO)

I ran numerous RPG games/campaigns online via mIRC, mostly Warhammer Fantasy (2nd) and Dark Heresy. With WH, I ran 4 campaigns, the first 3 stopping after people stopped showing up. 4th one is still going on right now.

As for DH, first campaign ended when people stopped showing up, second was put on Hidatus due to me being burned aobut the 40k 'verse as as a whole.

As I player, I did some D&D face-to-face, and the major problem was the fact that the GM was one-dimentional: We restarted the same 2 campaigns about 4 times...needless to say it was rahter boring an I no longer play with htem.

One of the things that someone can always look at with their group is asking. "What do we like about the RPG?"

It may end up being that, in actual fact, especially considering we're posting on Dakkadakka, what people might actually want to play is a narrative wargame or a pseudorpg.

By pseudorpg, I'm mostly referring to 'dungeon crawlers' (Dungeon Saga, Descent, Myth, Super Dungeon Explore, even Zombiecide) but when you're looking at some of them, like Star Wars: Imperial Assault, you really are playing out a story, with actual plot twists and cliffhangers.

Narrative wargame, I think the main one now is um, 7TV I think it's called. But I'm sure there's others out there too.


I've toyed with DMing myself in the future, but the whole commitment factor super freaks me out. I kinda liked an idea a friend had, where instead of doing the whole weekly session thing, instead it's either a day or a weekend of serious roleplaying every couple of months.

I'd say find a new group, or offer to DM for a bit. As a long time DM, it's easy to get burnt out running the same adventure, but that's when you take a break, say "Hey, I wanna run something different/ not be the DM for awhile" and go from there. Just stopping the group midgame is kind of lame

Yeah speaking as a DM myself, we can get burned out. I haven't run a campaign in two years prior to this year. I'm fortunate however as I have a gaming group with other people who like to try out DMing for various systems. (Talislanta, World of Darkness, etc.)

As a long time DM I can attest to the burn out.

I've had campaigns where the characters have gotten too powerful. I'm forced to either throw ridiculous threats at them, where they piss and moan if they are defeated, or nerf the characters, and listen to the unending whining.

I ran Necessary Evil, by Pinacle, which has a great story line. The players stuck to the story, but we ended up with 1 Character no NPC could hit, 1 Character no NPC to damage, and 1 Character that killed any NPC he hit, and 1 Character who was so average at everything he mostly didn't accomplish much. After about 6 adventures we could have just stopped rolling dice altogether an just narrated how they kicked the crap out of anything they encountered.

I've had campaingns where players get upset over something that happened in game one week, and then attempt suicide by team wipe the following week.

Playing Dark Conspiracy, one character "Rob" with no stealth skills attempted to sneak past vampire lookouts, by walking through a field of corn within 50ft of them. He fails his stealth check horribley, and gets spotted by the guards. They tell him to come out and surrender or they will open fire. He mouths off to them, they open fire with Uzis. Uzis in this game are basically spray and pray. They roll a bunch of dice, and Rob miraculously only gets hit with a single bullet, surviving with only a mere flesh wound. Something like a 15 minute argument ensues, because he insists that there was no way they could shoot him. Eventually he quits arguing and continues to play. A few minutes later they make it past the guards and are trying to rescue a hostage from a small home. He insists he'll go in the back, while the rest of the team goes in the front. As the team is about to walk in the front door, Rob kicks in the door to the kitchen in back, snuffs the pilot light on the stove, opens up his brief case full of explosives, and gives the rest of the team the all clear to kick in the front door. BOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!

The team's tank was in the door way and took most of the damage. Unbeknownst to the rest of the group, the team's tank is cyborg, and capable of surviving damage that would have killed a normal human. Last game I ever played with "Rob" and killed Dark Conspiracy for me till this day.

 adamsouza wrote:
As a long time DM I can attest to the burn out.

I've had campaigns where the characters have gotten too powerful. I'm forced to either throw ridiculous threats at them, where they piss and moan if they are defeated, or nerf the characters, and listen to the unending whining.

Yeah I hate when characters get so OP that anything throw at them that SHOULD be tough becomes trivial. Mind you, it just means I get to be creative....which sucks when they are able to throw out something I'm not expecting. Like Turning a stone tower to mud, crushing the occupants inside in what should have been a decently difficult encounter...

Hey I stumbled on this thread and thought Id throw my 2 cents in. Ive been rpg'ing for 10+ years run tons of campaigns and the same issue has happened with my group several times. 40k, however, has kind of been our saving grace. We kept playing narrative campaigns where we were afraid of our main characters dying, but then of course encounters never have the same tension they used to. So we started Deathwatch with that in mind. With our group down to 3, we swap DMing every game, with a narrative tie through that we all follow. Our characters are extremely mortal and we throw insane challenges at them to see if they live through it. So many of the amazing moments from younger years have been recreated and we never get tired of the same role because we always swap. Its been a blast and it could easily be done with another system or larger group and it makes for some fantastic storytelling with so many perspectives!

If you want a system which basically makes mechanical min-maxing and rules-lawyering void then I'd suggest trying the FATE system (either Fate Core or Fate Accelerated).

It is a very crunch-lite system which is designed around telling the story and using narrative hooks rather than messing around with in depth mechanical systems. Basically, if you can think of an action that you want to do and can justify what skill you're using for it, then you can do it.

Also, the players and GM often design the world together, deciding what world they want, what themes they want running throughout, what kind of characters they want to play and what connections between the characters. These also play a role in the game beyond just being backstory as they create "aspects" which can be invoked by players and the GM to gain bonuses on rolls or to steer the narrative.

The in-game mechanics basically boil down to 4 things: skills, stunts/powers, aspects and refresh.

Aspects are narrative constructs linked to characters, places and situations. When you create characters their aspects should reflect their personalities, backstories, motivations etc. It works similarly for aspects linked to places. A haunted house, for example, could have an "Unquiet Dead" aspect which the players and GM can invoke using refresh (see below), resulting in mechanical and/or narrative effects.

Skills start off with a maximum level they can be bought at and a maximum amount of points you can spend. In addition to this you must maintain a kind of pyramid structure with your skills, so you cannot have more skills at a higher proficiency level than you do at the proficiency level below it. So you couldn't have three skills at +5 whilst only having 2 at +4 and so on. It costs one skill point to get a skill at +1, 2 for +2 etc. Later on when the skill point cap is raised you can buy more skills or raise the skills you already have, however the pyramid structure must remain intact and new skills you buy must be bought at +1 and then work their way up.

Refresh is points you can spend on stunts/powers, which often grant bonuses to skills, allow you to use supernatural powers etc. However refresh is also a meta-game currency which players and the GM can spend during play to invoke aspects. So if your character had the aspect (and this is one which my FATE character actually had) "The Sisters Will Not Be Pleased" due to his time as a child in a strict Catholic school, the GM (or another player) could invoke that aspect in order to make your character act in a certain way which will cause them complications (such as not shoot that person in the face because killing is wrong, allowing the bad guy to get away). The player whose aspect is being invoked can either spend fate points to refuse or accept the invoke and get paid fate points. Aspects can also be invoked to gain mechanical bonuses (either a re-roll or a +2 modifier) if you can come up with a decent justification for why the aspect is relevant. So, as an example, the aspect "Can things go BOOM Now?!" (another of my characters aspects) could be invoked in combat when using a rocket launcher in order to either grant a re-roll for the attack roll or a +2 modifier to the result as the character is well versed in explosives and loves to see things go up in flames and shrapnel. Also, the person being shot at could invoke the aforementioned "Sisters..." aspect to gain a +2 to their defence using the justification that, as nuns may take a stern view of blowing people up, my character may be hesitant about firing, granting them precious seconds to dive away behind some cover.

The dice mechanics are really simple. You only need four fudge dice (D6s also work). You say what your character is doing and what they hope to achieve and what skill you are using. The GM then says what skill the opponent is trying to use to avoid the outcome (if possible) and then the player and GM roll. For an example lets say we're swinging from a chandelier into an enemy and knocking them down. Mechanically we're going to use our athletics skill to create an aspect of "Knocked on their arse" on the enemy we are swinging into, whilst the GM is using the bad guys athletics to try and dodge out of the way. Both player and GM roll their 4 dice, add the pluses to their skill level and subtract minuses and compare their results. If the players result is higher then they succeed (with free invokes of the aspect added for suitably high successes), if it is a draw then the player can choose to fail or succeed at a minor cost (say the player stumbles over as well, or something like that) and if the defender wins then they successfully dodge, unless the player wishes to succeed at a more serious cost (breaking a leg or having the chandelier drop on them for example). Both GM and players can also spend Fate points on suitable aspects to gain bonuses/re-rolls if they wish (which for big attacks is often a good plan as the more you beat an opponents defence by, the more damage you do, so invoking a load of aspects for lots of bonuses can really help you lay on the hurt).

Fate Core and Fate Accelerated are available for free in PDF/ebook form from the Evil Hat website.