this one was hard to record Agents of the Empire: ghostfiregaming.com/XPT3_FB03... Merch, Discord, the Quest-O-Nomicon, and everything else: linktr.ee/XPtoLevel3
I wonder if it's like a 2 truths and a lie scenario, where you have to guess just which one Jacob was responsible for himself? Might explain why they seemed so... horrifyingly believable
The acting in this is honestly insane. The awkwardness after the player got himself killed and then blamed the others and left was so realistic it HURT
Hey I'm gonna do this thing. Hey can you wait? No, who's coming with me? Not me bro that's a bad idea you should not do that. Yea same. *dies* I can't believe you guys didn't help me kill myself ( in game)
One of our players was so....unique with his rp he got a custom "cringe" stat. Any time he digs himself too much of a hole with a friendly npc he can roll cringe and the npc will just walk away
I had one of my old PC's show up as an NPC once because my girlfriend hated him. I brought him back just to fuck with her. Now I pray it wasn't cringe like this for everyone else at the table.
@Seeing Star What opportunity did you see here where this pizza tutorial was needed. I was hyped to watch a video that would be funny with this context, but I got air fryer pizza instead.
Long ago, my DM did this, and I simply told him “Of course you know the specific answer to the puzzle. To me, it could’ve been anything.” He learned better after that.
I’m a merciful DM and I HATE killing player characters, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to build challenging situations or scenarios. If it were me and they were about to be faced with a TPK, I would TRY to pull something out of one of their character backstories to save them, or a pass event lead up to their rescue However in that case, I wouldn’t just introduce an out of nowhere Hail Mary.
@@TheCart54321 In my campaign im going to give my players a nuke which they can activate, just in case. Its a tool given as a reward from a fairy if they acted good to defend her forest and speak to her instead of killing moving trees and bushes. So she tells them that she knows a strong guy she is friend with from the fairyrealm. The thing is: Its and angel which doesent like mortals, and when he arrives he justs mocks the players why they didnt think twice about their actions and why they fucked it up, and then when the problem is solved, he disapears just to tell them they should let him alone with shit which isnt worth his time, so maybe they dont know if he appears the next time they call him. So you can choose to use the dice the next time, or decide by yourself as a DM if they acted good enough after a few days for him to appear to say things like: I have watched you, mortals.. luckily i´m in a good mood today, otherwise you would be dead now.
The one where he said "I made such a great mystery" hit me in the stomach. Like, some people don't understand that a good mystery *is made to be solved* and if it isn't solvable right now you should *drop additional clues*
yeah I once had a gm not tell us some big important stuff because it was in some documents we didn't see in a desk. we even searched the desk but after the session the dm said we didn't find the documents because we didn't specifically say we searched the drawers, it was pretty cringe tbh
I love mysteries, and while I am really good at building and executing them (though I could always be better), the main DM in my group says he enjoys when the party doesn't know stuff. It's not an interesting mystery if it's just a railroad of clues.
@@Antimonium Sounds like one of those DMs who will interpret you miming pulling opening a door as the way you try to open it and let you try to figure out how to unlock it for half and hour before someone pushes the door and it opens easily.
IMHO, Good riddle can be solved by force of muscles, players mind (meta?), skill checks and clues, but there should be consequences for every outcome, for example: you torture old dude for a secret password and you got a bad karma, you as a player get a password by chance of brainstorming it, and you attracted devine forces as no mortal can possess such smarts You seduce guard or spot hidden passage fail check and you got in trouble and you got password by reading through hidden notes and clues, imho best outcome as the door opens
I had this whole story planned where the bbeg is using werewolves he has control over to kidnap people to bleed them into a cauldron to summon a demon lord. And the first hints they got was that the only casualties were people who struggled. Then I described some of the victims of the struggle as having shredded skin around their necks (man-catcher pole thingies). Then they later came across a body pile inside a stump. All corpses were palid and seemed unnaturally emaciated. And I described their feet as having bruises around the ankles and being bloated compared to the rest of the body. Oh and their jugular veins were opened. One player straight-up told me "look, man, I see you're trying to hint to me what this is but I'm dumb.". So I just had her roll a medicine check for her character and spelled out that the bodies looked like they were hung up to be bled out. I think that was a reasonable amount of info to have the party piece together that the bbeg was after blood. Sadly that campaign fizzled out because I lost patience with the fact that someone was constantly a no-show without any prior warning. Like, my main rule is "everything but a lack of communication goes". I tolerate a lot of weird shit. I tolerate my discomfort with romance being ignored (as in if players forget I don'tlike my characters getting flirted with). But when I underline "fucken talk to me when something's not running right" as my no 1 rule, it gets on my plums that I don't get no one to talk to yet half the party regularly doesn't show up and don't announce it. I put it on ice until I'm done with my finals, hopefuly that gives me time to chill out as well. Shame, really, since the party was pretty fun.
Had the "lone wolf" rogue split off from the group in a military base in my sci-fi campaign. Picked a fight with 4 well-armed men, and was burnt to death with a flamethrower. He was very upset because "Well that isn't fair! Why would they even be there!?". Inside a military base. That's owned by the guards' faction. That are selling weapons and goods under the radar. And don't want to be caught. He was upset that they posted guards near the illegal goods. He still complains about it and compares situations to that one years later.
Oh yeah, I had a player doing something similar picking a fight against like 3 dudes. They almost kill him in like a round but he escaped. We still joke about it today.
once had a guy play a monk with an oath of pacifism (pathfinder, so he got some decent bonuses out of it), always getting us into trouble and never drawing his weapon to help since the encounter didn't meet any of his requirements. except for the time he drew his shortsword on the rogue the instant he learned she was dhampire. we came to a bandit camp and he decides to just rush through on his horse to try and pull aggro and be a distraction to make up for threatening the other player. as soon as he rode through the camp 16 goblins all came out of hiding and attacked him. since he was about 80 feet away and none of us had horses the goblins got a surprise round plus another effectively free round against him. he left the table shortly after he died, all while complaining that we had planned this with the dm
Imagine you play a game with Jacob and then 3 months later you see that one of his skits has a story scarily similar to your game. Just to realize he's roasting the fuck outta you.
@@HouseDiAngelo a player who interrupts the game to argue with the De Facto DM about a fake persons sexuality? Lmao. Yeah. Theyd get laughed at and roasted about it
@@Kyle_Riel how was that an argument? That was an attempt at clearance and guidance. Poorly done, sure, but hardly an argument. Just a kind attempt at pointing something out. By far the least cringe
@@HouseDiAngeloI have to half agree with Kyle a bit. Interrupting the game just to correct the DM on something is such a cringe move, mainly because I have been there (on different grounds tho) and it can really throw off a DM. However, it is definitely not the cringiest one as that is very subjective and it changes from person to person. I personally hated the DMPC one.
That last one I actually physically cringed and facepalmed. God, I would not want to be in that situation. They made such good role play, and then the DM just released a bukake of cringe.
As someone who has played in a campaign where my level 20 Barbarian was useless until the DMPC Wizard who could cast 4 spells in one turn and could use level 14 spells had to enter the mouth of a greatwyrm and brave its stomach acids I can confirm. Situations like those ones suck.
@@eddieattrill1965hello commenter from 5 months ago. I gotta say that really strikes a Coors with me. My DM's world is filled with people that can take 10 or more TURNS per normal player turn, and get kicked a continent away and be fine. Collectively several sessions worth of DM and co DM just playing amongst themselves like this lol.
@aone9050 Hi there I'm back! And I gotta say at the end of the day sometimes being campigns like that are kinda important to some degree. Because they teach you what NOT to do if you ever DM, and also how to notice the signs that a campaign is going in a bad direction ahead of time. Its certainly helped me in finding better games and groups.
The last one hurt me on a spiritual level. Don't get me wrong, the one where a player acts dumb and gets mad when he dies was uncomfortable, but that last one... Fear.
I've done a Deus Ex Machina moment before, but instead of it being a DM-PC or a character from another campaign, the party was dramatically saved by the BBEG.
@@Radioo3 I run a character in my own campaign. I NEVER do crap like that with him. He's basically a nudge to keep the party going in the right direction and a punching bag for combats that prove too difficult (because the CR system is BROOOOOOOKEN) I've actually tried to kill him legitimately a few times and the party keeps saving him. 🙃
Agreed, as a DM there is no worse feeling than imagining an awesome scene in RP but when it finally comes to playing it out, it turns out lame as fuck. Even worse when you become so engrossed with the vision in your mind that you fail to notice it being miserable for your players and so you just keep going
I was like "Oh this is starting off a bit uncomfortable but nothing too bad" and then you managed to hit me harder with each consecutive cringe-swing. I now lie dead on the pavement. God
That last one hurt so bad. I had a friend do a cooler version of this where their wizard that we all loved from a failed campaign showed up as a shop keep/info broker/group patron option. It was a beautiful surprise. He greeted us with a haiku, which was a little form of madness he picked up from the old game.
@@charlesvanzee4879 U should only do that if it makes sense. Like if u were to take a good aligned character and make them a boss against a group of good aligned characters it really wouldn’t make sense unless they have an insanely good reasoning on y they are opposing them. Now an evil character for example would make sense to oppose a group of good aligned characters. It has to make sense. I honestly think if u just do it cause u think it’s cool or like the idea without it making sense or making a good reasoning y then that’s way more triggering then what was shown in the video (which I didn’t think was that bad). I actually like the idea of older pc’s making an appearance in a new game and maybe earlier on they could help the party a bit since u know they are just starting out. Maybe not as to take the spotlight away from the current characters but to just help. Now it would be kinda lame to make all older pc’s to be villains cause that gets repetitive and predictable if u always do that. It could also ruin that character for some people idk.
It can be done well, if handled in a way that makes sense and doesn't take focus away from the party. In my campaign I have a few former PCs around the setting, acting as various political leaders, criminals and other supporting roles. It's understandable to want something like that for your game, given a lot of campaigns get cut short and we don't get to see more of the character we were previously attached to- but it has to be done in a way that doesn't make the game more about that character than the party. If a DM really wants to use a character as a main focus role, there are solo play options like third party sources for solitaire DND 5e or games like Solasta and Baldur's Gate, where a person can play out stories with the character or characters they've grown to love without it becoming an issue of bothering other players. If a DM doesn't either give them a supportive role or use other resources to play out adventures with their beloved character, it becomes an annoying situation for players, where they feel more like spectators to the DM's own power fantasies than an actual living breathing part of a story.
The second to last one resonates with me... One time me and a ranger got into a combat with a bunch of super weak slimes in a sewer, I was a rogue and I just started killing the slimes. The ranger on the other hand decided to try to grapple one of the slimes, which he failed because it was a -4 because the slime was so slimy. Then on the next turn he tried AGAIN and miraculously succeeded. The next turn he decided to take a bite out of it and before he did the dm warned him that it was a caustic slime, but he did it anyway. He ate a chunk of the slime, and it burned his throat and did a good amount of damage, about 1/4 his health. The dm clearly designed this battle to be ranged focused since the slimes were much slower than us, but since he had taken 3 turns to bite the slime, he was surrounded by the others. He then tried to argue that the other slimes would be intimidated by him biting it, but the dm said that they were pretty much mindless. Anyway he almost died and before he died he basically was just like "why didn't you help me... If I die I'm done I'm not making a new character this is stupid" everyone at the table was dumbfounded.
The main 2 things players do that annoy me. 1. Do things for the funny even though no one thinks it's funny. 2. Refuse to cooperate with the team then get annoyed when their teammates dislike and don't give af about them.
We were playing Curse of Strahd and one of my players hooked up with one of the NPC's and they did a sex scene but I had them do a preformance roll and they rolled a 1. That made the whole table burst out laughing.
If my characters ever get into a sexual encounter I'm gonna roll for that. Probably won't even anounce it to the group, it'll just be something for me to snicker at myself.
"You straight washed the blacksmith couple?!" Giga Chad: " I only used the campaign as a jumping off point to a greater custom campaign made by me, everything is different than what's in the book and I decided a woman blacksmith in a male dominated industry was the better option. In fact you've met a few gay people in the campaign already and didn't notice, because their sexual orientation isn't central to their personality and nobody asked ".
@@hundredpercentmetal "I think showing a woman in a traditionally male-orientated field of work is nice change of pace. But, Gigachad, I struggle to feel that I can properly appreciate queer characters if there queerness is invisible. And while I know queerness is not always a visible trait, I do nevertheless enjoy seeing undeniably queer characters in my entertainment, even if its in small ways. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to hear me out, Gigachad."
Oh, man, that enlarge/reduce problem solving was so clean and Jacob stopped Jacob from doing it. You are really good at getting me invested in these fictional situations.
Did something similar to a lava elemental. It left puddles of lava where it ended its turn and would heal 10d6 if it started its turn in lava. Reduced person on it allowed the fighter to shove it out of the puddles of lava. It was sick!
Story 2 is, in my opinion, the worst kind of sin a DM can commit. A DM who wants a specific thing to happen in the story, so they're deliberately obtuse and working against the players, so that their desired story outcome can happen "naturally". "Oh, it's not my fault you missed that key detail. You just didn't look hard enough."
I was the guy in the second to last skit. For my very first time playing D&D, I ran a blaster-caster. This guy was a classic glass-cannon wizard (seriously, we're talking Fireball, Chain Lightning, Boots of Flying, Improved Invisibility, and like 5 hp), who very arrogantly tried to take on a frostworm by himself. Unfortunately, his dumb self had forgotten to cast the appropriate protections upon himself that morning, and that frostworm beat him in initiative. My guy went from "Dumbledore" to "Dead" in half a second flat, and I left the session crying because it was my first character and I felt so stupid. I can laugh about it now, but my goodness that skit brought back some baggage lol. Great work Jacob!!
I love that you made the DMPC a cringery marvel character, it just fits so well. From the eye brow raise to the awful one liners , you truly embodied the cringe
The acting is so realistic I could believe it was just camera on an actual D&D game, but they aren't even in the room together because it's JUST ONE GUY
@@commandercaptain4664 Nope, opposite thing. They're all the same person. So when "one of them" is in one place, "the others" are, by definition, also in that same place, because they are not actually others.
In college I was playing Pathfinder with a sizeable group and one guy was a half-orc whose motivation was to find out more about his family and where he came from, because he had been separated from birth or something. Of course, with so many people playing it was probably hard for the GM to try to help him flesh out his story and lead him down that path, and the guy's motivations didn't fit with everyone else's, which was something like learning about corruption in a city and overthrowing it and finding out who is behind it all. Anyway, like the second session after I had joined in we had this huge battle and there were a pair of orcs in the enemy army that had been slain and this dude tells the GM that he wants to loot these bodies, but it's not even his turn yet. He kept hounding the GM to the point that he paused the current turn to tell him what loot he received, which consisted of some money, a valuable item that he would be able to sell for a good amount of gold, and some magical item, i don't remember if it was a weapon or something else that was useful, but either way he had gotten better loot from these two orcs than most of us got from looting corpses. This ungrateful motherfucker then got pissed off and started yelling at the GM for not giving him any clues to his family lineage and demanded he have him loot some journal pages or something that would help him. The GM told him that the orcs couldn't read or write so that wouldn't have made sense and told him the orcs had nothing to do with his family history or whatever and tried to get back to the player's turn that it was supposed to be. But the half orc player kept yelling at the GM, calling him an asshole, going on a full rant like a toddler having a temper tantrum. He threw his pencil across the room and slammed fists on the table and everything, no joke. The GM then told him to take his stuff and leave, he was banned from the campaign. To which the guy was screaming that he couldn't do that and that he had to let him play, acting all entitled for no reason. It took pretty much all of us telling him to get lost and a couple of the more muscular, sportsy players to threaten to physically remove him for him to finally leave. And let me repeat, this was college, this brat was a grown-ass man throwing a hissy fit over nothing. Cringiest thing I've seen in a TTRPG.
Just needs the DM's girlfriend being a player getting special treatment, or two players in a relationship IRL who get into a fight because of things that happen in the game.
Or-cringes-the two players who aren’t in a relationship yet who are making totally out of character choices in the game because they want to make D&D a dating sim. Like girl. His character tried to kill you. Stop doting on him. Please.
I've seen that last one. I used to have a DM who plugged his old level 20 wizard everywhere and making references to a campaign none of us were in. And everytime there was a problem, his character had to be part of the solution. None of our characters needed to be in this adventure, because everything had to be eventually solved by him.
Hah, had a similar situation in my early gaming days. At first we tried to participate, but every idea was immediately shut down with "No, that doesn't work" until the DMPC finally graced us with the only possible solution. Fighting the enemies would result in getting knocked out so only the DMPC could save the day. Culminated in a session where we tracked a bunch of goblin raiders to a cave. DM asks what we do and I reply "I start making victory sandwiches." Everyone's looking at me confused, so I explain "DMPC is going to go into the cave and slaughter all the goblins. When he comes back, I want to have a bunch of sandwiches ready to celebrate his victory." DM's like "You aren't going in there with him?" And all the other players jump in "He doesn't need us" and "He killed a demon, he can handle a bunch of goblins." So we all sat at camp making sandwiches and the DM finally got the hint and let us start playing in his campaign.
The cringiest thing I did was the first time I ever DM'd a campaign. A found a few sessions in that I wasn't really enjoying it, and I just wasn't ready to be a DM yet. So, I talked to my players and told them what was up right? I let them know that I didn't want to DM anymore and apologized, right? Nope, I simply ignored the skype call every week, making up excuses when I saw them at school the next day, until they eventually stopped calling. God, I wish I could go back in time to slap 2017 me in the face.
The first one is just... "Huh, guess I missed that, anyways, he says he can make one." The last 3 though...had those players, had that DM. Kill my memories for me so I can forget them, please.
The one where the player tries to go off on their own and then gets all salty about getting completely killed....because they were on their own; yeah if I had a dollar for every time I either had to deal with this as a GM or saw it happen as a player, I would have enough money to fund the economy of an island nation.
There's a big difference between getting caught completely alone and taking one turn to go on the assault and immediately getting killed while the entire party literally watches it happen.
My dnd character of 3 years started out with a folding boat, and at the time, the phrase “Ok Boomer” was still sort of used, so I made that the command word to open the boat. Three years down the line, it now makes no sense relevance-wise, but it’s both cringe and nostalgic at the same time 😂
Man, that second one with a DM that needs players to work out their specific clues. Gives no bread crumbs to the party, even giving red herrings that lead to dead ends, hits far too close to home.
I'm all for the DM playing a character or even using old characters from previous campaign's but there's a fine line to walk between playing DnD and Metagaming a personal fantasy
@@haku8135 I run a small host of supporting casts to give my players characters more motivation but I never have them solve an issue first, only extra viewpoints to consult with and an extra body to take more hits as a party. They're like gateways for shy or newer players to walk through who have a hard time immersing themselves
One of my new players made a blue dragonborn wizard in the campaign I'm currently running. I thought it was funny because I had made a campaign before, (which was my first) and one of my players had made a blue dragonborn wizard also. Since that campaign was cancelled due to me being very inexperienced I never got closure to the characters in that campaign. So I brought the old players characters of that campaign to this one and made that character the new wizard's dad. It was cool and it was the main reason why he is in the group
One way my DM did it was because one campaign took place in a homebrew, he had one character have dimension hopping, and she could bring back small items that were references to the other campaign
that last one hit too close to home we had a battle for a keep and basically won, the only enemy left was the main bad guy of the arc and we had already beat hiim twice at that point but he always got away this time tho, he couldn't get away, it was do or die for him. and as we slowly got closer to him, the DM suddenly drops a half-demon on the field, says "timer is up, your buddy that was being turned into a demon somehow regains his personality and comes to help you, he also instakills the badguy you've been hunting for months IRL now" I just sat there slackjawed and unable to speak
The whole thing of the guy getting himself killed just reminded me of one of my first dnd sessions where we were playing with a guy who kept trying to go a bit too wild with his plays, and after one of our party members basically befriended an orc as combat was about to start with them, he proceeded to try and turn a grick into a pet in the middle of combat, and then got pissed and left when he went down and we killed it.
that second one is just painful; i hate when DMs railroad you into/out of things then act like it's your fault (mine did this just recently, was not fun)
Hey, DM here. While railroading is a bad idea, it helps make games more functional. There is fun to be had at the old abandoned mine, let's go there and stop trying to bribe the guards to tell you what is the secret recipe to the cake the innkeeper prepared, or whatever silly shenanigans the PCs are doing. It is a "less fun now for more fun later" kind of equation.
@@Eisenwulf666 no, I understand that there needs to be some direction from the DM, and I do think players need to cooperate and actually try to stay on track. what I consider to be railroading is when the DM decides that something should be a certain way, and thus makes it happen that way regardless of what the players' actions are, and regardless of whether it makes sense in-universe for characters to act in a way that brings those events about. the example I mentioned in my original comment was basically us running from a boss and calling for backup. unbeknownst to us, the backup we called was very very powerful and decided that the best option was to use a meteor swarm, which instantly killed the boss and leveled the entire city the boss had been approaching. we of course protested, saying we had only wanted help defeating it and had definitely not intended to destroy the entire city and kill thousands of people. he told us that because we said it was urgent, and we needed as much help as we could possibly get, that of course the character would think that the best option is to use his most powerful spell. obviously this doesn't make sense, and we also had no way of knowing that was even something that could happen. I don't think the DM telling you "look, you guys are on an important, time-sensitive mission and you really should probably go to the abandoned mine" to be railroading. but when your DM causes NPCs to act in ways that don't make sense, and gives unforeseeable, unpreventible consequences to your actions, it's definitely not "less fun now, more fun later." we all had a talk with our DM about it and he apologized, and we moved on, but we were seriously considering leaving the campaign because we completely lost all motivation to play after spending months irl in this city only to have had none of our choices or actions matter.
@@timob1681 oh...well, that's..that's your DM being a bit of a d!ck to be honest. I mean, that's all kinds of wrong. It could be an intense climactic moment to end a chapter of the campaign but not like this. Like, you don't defeat the BBEG and something baaad( the beloved mayor dies for example) happens and you have to deal with the consequences, that could work depending on the campaign, but " meteors fall, everybody dies" seems stupid. In that case you are perfectly right XD
That last one was painful. I’m all for having past characters in other campaigns, just don’t make them the centre of attention lmao. Make them a quest giver or someone the players seek help from, not a godly saviour.
Yea. Honestly. Depending on the group I think a DM Controlled "PC" ain't a bad idea. At least for the RP sections. But there is a long list of things you need to have them never do. And being the center of attention is on the top. Unless if the party wants that. I have one and she will only heal and buff unless otherwise asked. And never helps with other NPC's unless asked. But it can be nice to RP with your players instead of it only being them RPing with NPC's. But that's also just kinda how our dynamic is.
@@redholm Matt the dm on tabletopnotch will have PCs that guide them through an area or give them jobs. He plays them for a short amount of sessions before furthering on of the PCs and that character either leaves or dies
Okay, the last one actually happened to me in a one shot. First time I was playing at this table, the DM put us in an impossible situation just to have this random wizard appearing out of nowhere to save our ass. I learned later that it was his PC from a previous campaign.
Jacob is getting so good at playing multiple parts. The way he makes the bickering and talking over each other sound so natural, it feels like he's doing the scenes with actual clones of himself. ...or is he? 👀
@@irishgeek7 There'a a blog called The Alexandrian that came up with it, as far as I know, everything the dude writes is really smart. Basically if you're doing any kind of "mystery", you need *at least* three types of evidence, and each of those should be in *at least* three different places if the PCs are searching a room. People seriously underestimate how tough it'll be for someone to go "I check behind this curtain" or whatever.
The mystery bit hit close to home. My players would always investigate the routes or NPCs that genuinely had nothing to do with the mystery, and somehow skip over or not notice the clues I was giving out. One time after several dead leads they picked a random NPC to beat up and interrogate and he happened to actually be one who knew some clues. The lesson they took away was to use violence to solve mysteries going forward... which was not a habit I wanted them to pick up. Luckily I've since learned that the best thing to do is improvise some sort of clue in to whatever it is they end up investigating, and figuring out how it all works in along the way. Some times the mystery even ends up surprising the DM!
One video I saw was a long time DM explaining that, in his campaigns, most of the narrative is driven by the players. Say there's a mystery in town and the players try to solve it, and after collecting some clues one of them speculates, could it be the dragon cult that's behind all of this? Pff, it is now! And by the way, the shady secret society mentioned in the Ranger's backstory? Totally the cult of the dragon now, too. Thanks guys! That's at least the next five sessions written out of one stray comment.
the best way to do clues is to know what the clues are but don’t set a location. say they need to find a book with some assassin’s name on it. don’t set a location just have them find it when it feels natural
@@milkshake0802 Yeah, that's the strategy I learned to employ. I do this with almost everything now too, it makes it much more enjoyable to DM when everything is free form. Although don't tell your players that the lever they thought they were so clever in finding wasn't actually supposed to be in a false compartment behind the throne they rolled a 25 investigation on, it ruins the magic.
Had me dying right up until I realized that there are people out there who are actually doing these things. I pray for those who cringe so hard, they get stuck like that
I allow phone character sheets at my table, but I still have my players keep a paper one as well and I personally prefer when they use it. As someone who spends way too much of my life in front of a screen, I think the beauty of DnD is that it allows us some time to have an adventure away from any distracting technology. Can’t deny the benefits to the game, but DnD without doodling on character sheets just feels wrong.
I don't think that's the weird thing, the embarassement to me comes from the self insert and from not caring for the party's choice cuz he wanted to do a cool DM Ex Machina moment and feels rad for a sec
Surprised he didn't bring up "the incident" a few years ago, they streamed a game and all was going normal, when one of the female party members farted and Colton dove across the dining table and starting sniffing and inhaling deeply. Everyone else just stared directly into the camera while Jacob started crying. Honestly i guess i understand why you didn't reupload that or mention it
That lone wolf one, I've been stuck in that from a different perspective once. Important friendly NPC got kidnapped, and as he was in the middle of upgrading my only magical item (compared to the mountains of magical and expensive things everyone else had since I would let them have my share / would often lend gold as needed, trying to be a team player/figuring this one item was enough for me), that was taken with him. DM planned on having our party go to rescue him, and set the difficulty of the encounter as such, intending it to be a serious challenge. However, when we got there, the rest of the party decided "who cares if the only item (a one-of-a-kind relic, story-related, that took irl weeks and all of my funds to get, and was now taking all of the funds I've recouped since then to upgrade) our healer and helper has gets lost forever, and our friend/blacksmith dies, it doesn't *really* affect us" (even though the entire party was allegedly "good-aligned"). My only options were to do nothing and lose basically everything, leaving my character unplayable at the levels we were in, or attempt to solo an encounter meant for 6 players who explicitly refused to help me despite my character constantly risking his own life to save them from every stupid fight they would start as the murder hobos they were. So I jumped in, alone with only a cold-iron sap, against a legion of celestials. Barely squeaked by when one member finally decided to jump in and help (and I had to basically cement myself as evil-aligned, and put my character on the shit list of the entire pantheon, by holding effectively the whole world hostage to buy some time. Longer story.). You can bet your ass I was salty, though. Learned that all the players (aside from the one) only cared about themselves, so I seldom helped any other party member, besides that one, again. Just enough to keep the rest alive by a thread, except the one (our actual/habitual lone wolf) who explicitly said "fuck that, this doesn't affect me" at that encounter, which led to three others going "yeah, this is too scary without him helping." That guy in particular proceeded to go through three more characters that campaign, when he stopped getting bailed out of his murder-hoboing shenanigans, and dying due to stupid choices, since I realized, "hey, that doesn't affect me," and stopped rushing after him when he'd antagonize yet another group of innocent people. Before you say that's petty, I should clarify: prior to that, I had to babysit the guy and provide healing and/or diplomacy to prevent his constant deaths. Or be a voice of reason and remind him every week that poisoning the nearby town's water supply was unabashedly evil, and didn't help our party in any tangible way. Or remind him that orphans were still civilians and not target practice. Or remind him not to stab the friendly guard escorting us through the middle of the town. He, OOC, stalwartly said his character was lawful good, btw. So after the encounter, I decided to let him be as lawful goid as he wanted, and stopped covering for him / healing him, is all.
that DMNPC moment is hilarious for me particularly, because every time our group adds one to the campaign, we specifically make them as smaller/weaker/as a side character, and they end up pulling this stuff off anyway because we cannot stop rolling Nat 20's on them. Added a cleric/rouge Aarakocra multiclass to the party (secret agent posing as a cleric, to betray them later) that was only level 5 to the party's level 7, and she just....cleaned house. I actually had to have her stop attacking and just heal because she would Crit sneak attack too often. Even when we had the big 'betrayal' moment some levels later she almost instantly killed THE TANK of the party.
The last one happened to me in a campaign a while back, the DM had his probably self insert NPC show up to "save the day" when we were already doing well, he even acted out the sword fight like a little kid It was horrendous, we all quit that night
DM = neutral facilitator of the game. Sure, some collaboration to add depth and texture to the campaign, but straight up dice results and engagement resolution is the way forward.
Our DM (who is awesome) has us run two characters, each in a different party. Your two characters never adventure together, although the groups get re-combined sometimes, and the action switches back and forth from group to group as the plot demands. One of our players had his male character constantly hitting on the female NPCs to the point where it became embarrassing and tedious. Our DM is good at deflecting or foiling this kind of behavior, so it was always a fairly minor annoyance. Then the plot required that, uniquely, all of our characters be present in the same location for a great Conclave. This player's other character was a female. Maybe you can see where this is going. Long frustrated in his attempts to get his male character laid, the player had his two characters hook up, and there was nothing the DM could do about it besides keep the action "off camera." The cringe wave crested when a Con check was made. The player rolled a natural 20, and the glee and triumph he exhibited (touchdown dance) was the most excruciating moment so far in my many years of playing D&D. (He's single, if that even needed to be said.)
@@shadowlord1418 well, when you’re playing D&D that’s a given. Personally though, I like to keep things like that out of my games. You do you though 🤷♂️
@@shadowlord1418he's not mad. He's just laughing at the absolute desperation of that player. Like it's genuinely funny, like imagine watching your best friend make a clone of himself and sleeping with it out of sheer desperation 😂 like bro, right infront of my salad?
When I was a brand new DM I wanted to make a my previous character a major part of the story, level 20 power fantasies and all. Eventually I realized that was really dumb, and this video helped me realize just how big of a bullet I dodged 😅
You kinda wasted your own potential, a DMPC can work as long as you don't make them the center of attention at every moment, I've done it several times and the current DMPC I run is basically a glorified Merc that can turn anything he touches into a bomb; He's died over 12 times throughout the game and had to be brought back to life by the party's Druid, so you don't have to run your DMPC like a stereotypical Mary Sue/self-insert.
@@borderlands10 I can fully guarantee I would’ve made it a Mary sue power fantasy. Plus, there’s a difference between a DMPC and bringing back your PC from an old campaign, especially considering only one of the players was actually in that original campaign
@@andrewcabrera505 fair enough, I've brought back an old character as well and put him in my current game as a cameo, he started off as a Pathfinder Gunslinger and I remade him using some homebrew into a 5e Gunslinger with a magitech arm that can turn into a shotgun as a bonus action, he talked to the party and helped them reach the mainland after the party got teleported to a cluster of islands ruled by a pirate queen.
Had a game where the party entered into a dungeon full of dragon cultists and convinced them that we were sent by tiamat to see if they had an 'adequit tithe' so that they would bring us to the treasure room. One cultist brings us there, leading us safely past traps and hazards, until we get to a room filled with mushrooms. Cultist mcgee tells us that " so long as the mushrooms are left alone, they are safe". The monk took that as "set the mushrooms on fire" despite every other party member trying to stop him. The mushrooms where myconids, which attack us, and blow our cover, and after he metagames to get back to the party because we left him, he says "what? Im chaotic neutral"
I've had a player rogue who would do that sometimes but luckily for me he only did it on social encounters so most of the times all it would happen is he would let some noble dumbfounded or confuse the hell out of an evil cultist to the point where he could get a sneak attack on him lmao. Sadly people think alignment is a magic force that compels you to be stupid. Like when a Lawful neutral guy decides to hand over said rogue of the group because welp, doesn't matter if he saved my life and I'm technically an accomplice at this point I've gotta hand him over. Alignments are more suggestions and general directions.
When I started DMing, I was the newest player into the group (Hell, I was dming a campaign after only 4 weeks of playing in another campaign for my first time). So I got lucky that my players were all experienced and "knew" how to play and Ive always stayed with the same group. A few months ago a new person joined us as chaotic neutral. And holy shit the stupid shit he was pulling with that excuse. I never knew the pain other DMs had.
You know it's gonna be a tough final battle to DM for when someone asks if they can fit a bomb big enough to deal 600 damage into their chest cavity without being noticed three separate times.
600? Child's play, there's a bomb out there that can deal around 16,200 radiant damage, but it's in 3rd-party territory and is meant for a sci-fi setting.
Well joke's on you, we now got the bad magic nuke in our favorite wizard and let me tell you the three bois and their pet brain didn't see that one coming.
the 2nd to last one is a mood. Had a pretty casual place you could go to play DND (i stopped going when the price per session went up) where somebody in a younger demographic than we're used to (although we were assured he had experience) came in. Generally he was fine but kept stealing my gold, everything was reset because practically everybody had characters around level 20, and in our first session together, we set up camp during the night, and he decides to leave the party to go "hunt for food" (rangers doing ranger things) only to get swarmed by a group of goblins that was about to jump our party in our sleep (or would've if we weren't doing night watches), and dies. He starts crying and so the dm practically just retconned it. brilliant.
Admittedly a ranger deciding to scout and hunt during a long rest is normal behavior. DM retconning it was the best choice because it would've instead been a great opportunity to go "oh, you're up and exploring? perception check! okay cool, you spotted the goblins you have a chance to go warn the party of the ambush" Even a low perception check & them all ganging up on him means he can still scream bloody murder, waking the party. That DM wasted a golden opportunity to what it seems like haze the new guy, sticky fingers or not.
I had this strange game once where GM have us a list of things we shouldn't do in a world she threw us in, like don't drink alcohol and don't get sexual. And then in this world, everyone tried to either get us drunk or seduce us. Of course, no one fell for it cause we KNEW, and there was no point in all this. She could have made the rules vague, like riddles, or at least she could have made us roll charisma or wisdom. It was all i could do to hide my disappointment)
In my world enchantment magic is illegal. I don't constantly throw shady people at them saying "hey man, you want a charm person scroll? I got that ring of suggestion man" Cause the point of making something illegal isn't to overindulge in it.
@@shadowbandit147 "So when you walk into the Goblin camp shoot the third box to the left labled with 'Rations', it will create an explosion that will wipe out every goblin in 80ft, make sure to get out of range first."
I mean, I suppose I could appreciate the warning. Now the players have agency on if their characters indulge despite the risk, since even if as a player you know it's a certainty, maybe you can say your character doesn't know it's a certainty and can still blunder.
As a DM I have used one of my past characters in a game before, however it was nothing like the last skit. Context this is the same world as the hole group had played in the campaign before and the last campaign ended at 13th level with me being a player and my character “joining” another adventuring party to mentor them. Cut to the next campaign we the party had just accepted a quest to recover a missing cart that was transporting a extremely dangerous prisoner while they were being moved between prisons, they were informed that another group had also been contracted to do the same and had left a hour ago. When the party gets to the last known location of the cart they could hear the sounds of battle, the rogue went to scout ahead and see what was happening and when they got within line of sight of the battle they could see around 5 body’s of adventurers on the ground with my the BBEG finishing killing my character, they were level 3. The look on their faces has to be my favorite memory as a DM
That's a good way to go about it, because your old PC is a good frame of reference for how powerful the BBEG is. They know (knew) how powerful they were, so their death is a good way to demonstrate that they should be scared at level 3.
I do sometimes for my villains. I take old character sheets from campaigns past. They become the villains for campaigns I run with my family. I know exactly how they play, so it makes DMing easier.
I've remade my first Pathfinder character in 5e and bumped him up a few levels and had him make a cameo in my current game as someone the party talked to in order to get from a cluster of islands back to the mainland, it was mostly because the last game he was in got cut short and the game essentially died and the group's characters' fates were left up in the air; So I decided to take mine, my girlfriend's and our gay friend's characters and turned them into 5e cameos in my game, they really appreciated it and enjoyed seeing their characters again after a year.
The mystery one was literally my group. A group of six of us couldn’t trace the trail of an important NPC so instead of pursuing this 1500 Platinum bounty we instead decide to go back to the city and get a good wash and some food-all because the GM would not give us a single clue beyond, “The trail splits off into different directions.”
The craziest thing is that I've seen these exact situations before in the very few games I've been in... the jerkwad going in solo and then complaining is frustratingly common. The detailed sex scene was worse as both the DM and the player were into it... the rest of us had to sit there and awkwardly pray for it to be over
These should be textbook examples of what not to do. If only there was a… book of text to show the way… something like a book… a book of Hand for Players… I dunno, it’s a lost cause, impossible to write.
Going in solo can be the right call. I've seen it, I've done it, sometimes it's exactly what you need. Sex is near impossible though. I've seen passable attempts at seduction for giggles, but even then it usually ends with the group shutting it down in horror.
Reminds me of the time my DM had us meet a Baron in his castle at night, and I kept asking leading questions like "Can I see his shadow?" and "Are there any mirrors?" and "Is there anything odd about his teeth?" to which the DM always answered that everything was normal. Turns out he was a vampire and attacked us in our sleep, who would ever have guessed?
I've been through most of these situations in my own D&D experiences... in most I simply walked away because it was cringy and painful... and the DM really favored the cringlord
The one with the lovemaking almost made me literally turn inside out from cringe... Just... As a DM if I had to listen to that... UUUUuuUuuuugh... I don't mind if a player wanted to have a romance or whatever, but, you get a fade to black if it goes further than that. The main story takes the front row, not your weird, smutty, cringefest.
@@pewpewpandas9203 I have made a story for the players. They craft the story along with me, but it is still fundamentally MY story, MY world, and MY NPCs. When you work for 2 years on your dream campaign, then come back and see if it's still "our" story.
@@sauronsrighthandman301 As DM you have to understand that it is fundamentally a collaborative story, even if you put more work or time in dosent make the DM the end all be all. Without the players your only writing a book. Ive DM'ed and GM'ed for over a decade now and don't consider any of my campaigns as "mine"
@@margar9021 Well that's your point of view and you're entitled to it. I understand full well that the players are vital to any good story. But overall I'm the one who has to craft the plot, the characters they interact with, tying in their stories into the grand scheme of things, and making a satisfactory experience for everyone, including me. The campaign I'm currently running is made from a story I have planned for years... granted it looks almost completely different from when I first imagined it, but the fundamental story is still there. My story. That I made. For others to enjoy. No-one has helped me, if anything my players have only made things harder. But so have I! And I'll be damned if anyone else is gonna take credit for this story 'cept me! You can have your opinion for your story and that's okay! But MY campaign is my personal baby! And she's beautiful in all her chaotic glory!
The one where the guy rushed into the battle on the skipper & then died was too relatable oof. The first time i ever dmed i lost a player character (party was relatively low level) because he decided to grab a mimic with his bare hands after i heavily hinted he shouldn't do that (mimic was foreshadowed in plot earlier too). The other party members didnt lift a finger to help him because he had been relatively uncooperative/rude the whole time. He failed all his death saves and then rage quit. I still play with that group but that guy doesn't play dnd with us anymore 💀
I was in the waterdeep campaign with my buds and we didn't know the Sunlight spell was a thing so we tried everything with the dwarven door but failed constantly. Eventually we break through through melting the wall with acid over the course of a week (artificer). Fast forward to infiltrating some party and we check everywhere except the basement because we didn't know there was a basement since it wasn't in the blueprints. The DM even mentioned this door to us but we all agreed it was likely a closet since it was under the staircase. We left the town after our failing and started a new campaign since we lost.
I honestly hate players like the ones at 8:25 they really are such hypocrites whining when they foolishly go forward to die alone without a plan and then saying why did no one help them.
Really is annoying. If you're gonna rush in alone, at least own it and accept the distinct possibility of dieing for it instead of acting like everyone else should've followed you in without a plan.
That second story with the mystery reminded me of a story we had. We were on a diplomatic mission to get a statue from the dwarfs that was contractually bound to the tabaxi clans (we were all tabaxis). But dwarven paperwork takes some years for some reason. So we had to get into one of three cities which were hidden in the mountains and which entrances were heavily guarded. Behind the entrances are big horizontal elevators which go for miles. No one but dwarfs are allowed to enter the cities. We had absolutly no idea how to get in. We weren't allowed to kill anyone. We couldn't disguise ourself. It took three sessions without any progression until our DM gave us an opportunity to get into the city. It was boring and absolutley frustrating...
(Repost from sub-comment because I genuinely believe it's a good tip for DMs who want to bring their old characters back) I have a long-running big, intimidating fighter character, who I'd played up to 15th level in a friend's Pathfinder campaign. During my first session GMing, I surprised my players - who all had fresh 1st-level characters - by having the same version of him show up. They were all excited, saying "oh sweet, Geinz is gonna help us finish the first quest," only for him to say "this quest is Pathfinder Society business. You are not Pathfinders. Give me the amulet and go home." The rest of the session was an epic chase across the mountains as they tried to get the maguffin back to the Pathfinder lodge before he could catch them and take it from them. Thankfully, rather than cringing, they were terrified and elated in equal measure. Bringing back your character as a saviour is probably difficult to do without making it cringeworthy. Bringing him back as an antagonist, though... well, it worked for us.
That's such a fun way to incorporate a past character; they're not the Deus ex machine that's making everything easier for them, they're here TO make it harder. And facing a 15th-level character, even if they're good-aligned, as a group of Level 1s is quite the challenge.
@@tabitha3861 It made it all the more effective that they knew who my character was. Even if it was technically metagaming, as players, they didn't need telling just how intimidating their characters would be finding this guy. >w< The level difference also immediately communicated to them that a fight wasn't going to be an option; they would have to either outsmart him, or take the maguffin and run.
i did the same thing for some of my partys previous campaign characters, as this campaign was a sequel to a previous one(i consulted my players beforehand and asked if it was ok). there were two characters i made the first a temporary villain, and the second i made the main villain. it really worked for the game because for the first villain, the players knew of their lycan curse and sympathized with them, and wanted to help them, and they did. but for the second, my players were dreading the main villain, because they knew of what they have done, and what they are able to do, and it works that the main villain was already teetering between hero and villain in the last campaign
That last one really struck a chord. Once I was in a campaign with a GMPC where we ended up in the middle of a fighting ring, surrounded by enemies and watching a fellow party member in a duel getting their ass handed to them. Then the GMPC swoops in from whatever they were doing and uses an ability from the published homebrew we were using to make everyone stop fighting in a cutscene. And I'm just sitting there like "If I knew I didn't have to worry about saving throws right now I could have just cast Calm Emotions for the exact same effect". Getting bailed out by the GMPC from a situation the GM put you in always feels bad, especially if you already came up with a clever plan but didn't get to implement it before the GMPC swooped in. I was later told the GMPC was so powerful because she was secretly the big bad who caused the whole mess we were trying to fix, because she wanted to set things right too. I wasn't even exactly a player in that campaign, I was a co-gm there to help because I had more familiarity with pathfinder mechanics. Now whenever I make a GMPC I absolutely stick to the mechanics harder than I would for any other character. I always make them a support class and build with a relatively quiet and passive personality, so I never overshadow any of the PCs. And also so I can focus on all the other stuff I'm doing as GM.
If I bother with a GMPC I like to make them old, retired veterans. They know a lot if the PCs want to ask them about relevant stuff but they're also crabby/tired enough to brush them off when the questions go too far afield. They don't fight much, but they have all the dirty tricks to save the party if need be. And when a player is about to do something really stupid, they can put a hand on their shoulder and say "I used to know a rogue who tried that once. They were picking up pieces of him as far away as Everdell."
I've been there for that second to last one. The dungeon Masters sister kept negging the Hobgoblin Commander and his response was to have him just spin around and cut her head off. I don't remember if it was he dealt so much damage it was into death or if he just said that her head went flying. Her response was to rip her character she didn't have stomp off into the living room (that was only 3 ft away) and sulk on the couch. A very awkwardly pointed out that I was a high enough level cleric that I was able to resurrect her pretty much on the spot. It took almost 15 minutes of convincing for her to come back and tape her character sheet back together. Hands down the most uncomfortable I've ever felt at the table 😰
The last one is a scene straight out of the last book from the 7-novel series I was definitely going to write when I was 15 years old. Now, 10 years later, I'm glad I didn't write it.
I once played in a campaign with a player who wanted to have a "relationship" with half of the female NPCs we met in that campaign. (We usually just kind of brushed it off a bit with a quick mention on his part and some Charisma checks before fade to black and figuring out what the rest of the party was doing, so not super invasive to the game but just a bit weird.) It culminated with the GM, who is an incredible GM btw and tries to accommodate everyone at the table, writing a 4 page recounting of one of his sexual endeavors with what was basically a Kuo Toa upon this player's request, before the rest of us decided enough was enough and asked him to quit it before it went any further. At least outside of that one thing he was a pretty good player and was understanding when we asked him to stop, but it was pretty awkward since that wasn't really the kind of adventure we were looking for. Not a horror story (since we stopped it from becoming one), but definitely made me cringe a bit.
Honestly as a DM I don't tolerate that anymore. If you want to play a character that has sex with NPCs find another table or go online. It's always the people with no love life doing this weird shit. I don't care how lonely you are, leave your sad reality at the door
Gotta hate it when someone thinks the DM wants to roleplay a sex scenario with them or do some other mega cringe thing along those lines. Keep your horniness out of my D&D please, there are websites for that
The only time when this is acceptable is if you're all perverts, or if you're playing FATAL. The two usually go hand-in-hand. God help you if you're playing FATAL.
The fourth example hit me really hard. I was never in quite the same scenario, but I did used to be a pretty toxic player, and that walkout at the end reminded me of how shitty my attitude was back in the day. Second place goes to that guy who graphically described sex with his girlfriend. General rule: never roleplay erotic scenes unless it's straight up an erotic adventure.
There is nothing more aggravating as a player than a DM who does nothing but tell you "That doesn't work" over and over while just passively waiting for you to tug at the right lead in a mystery scenario I just. Oooh boy. It hurts me.
I know it's bad, but sometimes the module, if they are using one, is genuinely written that poorly. We had a Call of Cthulhu campaign like this a couple of years ago and our GM, who is incredible, acknowledged that some of the points where we struggled had to be revised by him because the leads as written in the module were just kinda... bad and spread out all over the place.
One thing i love about a couple of these is that the idea behind them isnt necessarily bad, its just that they were handled horrendously lmao. Like the love making one - actually a meaningful, strong, emotional idea... Talking about tears + nut tho, not great
I think it really depends because I know that would make most people including myself EXTREMELY uncomfortable and you DEFINITELY need to make sure that every single person in your party is ok with it
I thought similar, if the guy wasn't so keen on describing the love-making and just focussed on the tearful scene (other fluids hecking excluded!) about how their love interest may never see them again, that could be very sweet, they can leave the love making as insinuated or simply fade to black on that part IMO
i agree. it was just so sudden, no meaningful buildup, and it was clear NO person in the party was comfortable but the player just didnt care. it came across as fetish-y and creepy. a short rp of what happened before, perhaps a heartbreaking scene of when the lover finds her at the door only to hear news that they might not see each other again, and then a fade-to-black.
Ugh, that first one. Can't believe someone would join a game of a module they've already played, and then grind the game to a halt over such a meaningless detail.
![tattoo printer tutorial[제품단순선물]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/g40_GwEJak0/mqdefault.jpg)
At least he RP’d his own girlfriend NPC’s actions. Even worse when a player just looks at the DM and is like “hey you’re RPing sex with me now”
"roll for pleasure"
"nat 17 and I'll use my bardic inspiration I've been saving all day for this... +2"
"you nutted gently into her womb"
"nice"
_Non-consensual RP?!_
I would not allow that 😆😆
The actual fucking worst, fade to black is my favorite homebrew for making me not wanna stab the homies
@@jackdaemon1056 Is a must for me.
Jacobs ability to embody these cringe characters is both insanely impressive and mildly disturbing.
The full video is here:
m.czcams.com/video/dQw4w9WgXcQ/video.html
He must become the cringe to defeat the cringe.
@@coranbaker6401 effect no
So...
actors are mildly disturbing...
I wonder if it's like a 2 truths and a lie scenario, where you have to guess just which one Jacob was responsible for himself? Might explain why they seemed so... horrifyingly believable
It's super impressive how he can run around the table so fast while also changing his clothes,
Don’t you know? He clones himself. Duh.
Aren't these different people?
Jacob is his own cinematic universe, which is cringe enough.
You do know he used the Clone spell In the Necromancy School to make multiple versions of himself, right?
No, those are all realistic puppets
The acting in this is honestly insane. The awkwardness after the player got himself killed and then blamed the others and left was so realistic it HURT
Hey I'm gonna do this thing. Hey can you wait? No, who's coming with me? Not me bro that's a bad idea you should not do that. Yea same. *dies* I can't believe you guys didn't help me kill myself ( in game)
One of our players was so....unique with his rp he got a custom "cringe" stat. Any time he digs himself too much of a hole with a friendly npc he can roll cringe and the npc will just walk away
Smart
That's hilarious mate XD The dejected "*sigh* I roll cringe" "OK she looks confused and a little disgusted and just walks away" Pride crushed!
Honestly that sounds like a great way to get out of a situation without fighting. Cringe your ass out! 😆
I mean that's literally how my current character is played, though she's got +3 charisma she fumbles every charisma check she makes
Erm... Totally not considering adding this to the table...
That last one was a lot more painful than I could have ever anticipated. As a DM I pray to never do anything half as cringey as that.
I had one of my old PC's show up as an NPC once because my girlfriend hated him. I brought him back just to fuck with her. Now I pray it wasn't cringe like this for everyone else at the table.
@@GimmickBox39 I promise it was. 😭
@Seeing Star What opportunity did you see here where this pizza tutorial was needed. I was hyped to watch a video that would be funny with this context, but I got air fryer pizza instead.
@@drasticquil9768 clickbait to get traffic on unrelated vids
The deus ex machina interrupting a well planned escape or the dm self insert hitting on the player? That was a double whammy
The way the dm speaks in the first skit PERFECTLY captures how i and probably other dms who just started out spoke. Dude is a legit amazing actor.
Your right😐
@@alienhoward2270 yes he is.
Long ago, my DM did this, and I simply told him “Of course you know the specific answer to the puzzle. To me, it could’ve been anything.” He learned better after that.
Best way to end this one in reality is "...ok, and?"
@@commandercaptain4664 I'm confused how this connects to the way a DM speaks.
The last one is so disappointing for players who just actually found out the way to solve the situation.
I’m a merciful DM and I HATE killing player characters, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like to build challenging situations or scenarios. If it were me and they were about to be faced with a TPK, I would TRY to pull something out of one of their character backstories to save them, or a pass event lead up to their rescue
However in that case, I wouldn’t just introduce an out of nowhere Hail Mary.
@@TheCart54321 In my campaign im going to give my players a nuke which they can activate, just in case. Its a tool given as a reward from a fairy if they acted good to defend her forest and speak to her instead of killing moving trees and bushes. So she tells them that she knows a strong guy she is friend with from the fairyrealm.
The thing is: Its and angel which doesent like mortals, and when he arrives he justs mocks the players why they didnt think twice about their actions and why they fucked it up, and then when the problem is solved, he disapears just to tell them they should let him alone with shit which isnt worth his time, so maybe they dont know if he appears the next time they call him. So you can choose to use the dice the next time, or decide by yourself as a DM if they acted good enough after a few days for him to appear to say things like: I have watched you, mortals.. luckily i´m in a good mood today, otherwise you would be dead now.
The one where he said "I made such a great mystery" hit me in the stomach. Like, some people don't understand that a good mystery *is made to be solved* and if it isn't solvable right now you should *drop additional clues*
yeah I once had a gm not tell us some big important stuff because it was in some documents we didn't see in a desk. we even searched the desk but after the session the dm said we didn't find the documents because we didn't specifically say we searched the drawers, it was pretty cringe tbh
I love mysteries, and while I am really good at building and executing them (though I could always be better), the main DM in my group says he enjoys when the party doesn't know stuff. It's not an interesting mystery if it's just a railroad of clues.
@@Antimonium Sounds like one of those DMs who will interpret you miming pulling opening a door as the way you try to open it and let you try to figure out how to unlock it for half and hour before someone pushes the door and it opens easily.
IMHO, Good riddle can be solved by force of muscles, players mind (meta?), skill checks and clues, but there should be consequences for every outcome, for example:
you torture old dude for a secret password and you got a bad karma,
you as a player get a password by chance of brainstorming it, and you attracted devine forces as no mortal can possess such smarts
You seduce guard or spot hidden passage fail check and you got in trouble
and you got password by reading through hidden notes and clues, imho best outcome as the door opens
I had this whole story planned where the bbeg is using werewolves he has control over to kidnap people to bleed them into a cauldron to summon a demon lord. And the first hints they got was that the only casualties were people who struggled. Then I described some of the victims of the struggle as having shredded skin around their necks (man-catcher pole thingies). Then they later came across a body pile inside a stump. All corpses were palid and seemed unnaturally emaciated. And I described their feet as having bruises around the ankles and being bloated compared to the rest of the body. Oh and their jugular veins were opened.
One player straight-up told me "look, man, I see you're trying to hint to me what this is but I'm dumb.". So I just had her roll a medicine check for her character and spelled out that the bodies looked like they were hung up to be bled out. I think that was a reasonable amount of info to have the party piece together that the bbeg was after blood.
Sadly that campaign fizzled out because I lost patience with the fact that someone was constantly a no-show without any prior warning. Like, my main rule is "everything but a lack of communication goes". I tolerate a lot of weird shit. I tolerate my discomfort with romance being ignored (as in if players forget I don'tlike my characters getting flirted with). But when I underline "fucken talk to me when something's not running right" as my no 1 rule, it gets on my plums that I don't get no one to talk to yet half the party regularly doesn't show up and don't announce it. I put it on ice until I'm done with my finals, hopefuly that gives me time to chill out as well. Shame, really, since the party was pretty fun.
Had the "lone wolf" rogue split off from the group in a military base in my sci-fi campaign. Picked a fight with 4 well-armed men, and was burnt to death with a flamethrower. He was very upset because "Well that isn't fair! Why would they even be there!?". Inside a military base. That's owned by the guards' faction. That are selling weapons and goods under the radar. And don't want to be caught. He was upset that they posted guards near the illegal goods.
He still complains about it and compares situations to that one years later.
You still play with him!?
@@Carnagepwnz Long story short, yes, but not in any primary campaigns. Every now and then he's in a one-off campaign I join hosted by someone else
"WHY DID THE DRAGON KILL ME?"
"Um, Jerry, you killed the dragon's children and ate their entrails. Inside of the lair."
Oh yeah, I had a player doing something similar picking a fight against like 3 dudes. They almost kill him in like a round but he escaped. We still joke about it today.
once had a guy play a monk with an oath of pacifism (pathfinder, so he got some decent bonuses out of it), always getting us into trouble and never drawing his weapon to help since the encounter didn't meet any of his requirements. except for the time he drew his shortsword on the rogue the instant he learned she was dhampire. we came to a bandit camp and he decides to just rush through on his horse to try and pull aggro and be a distraction to make up for threatening the other player. as soon as he rode through the camp 16 goblins all came out of hiding and attacked him. since he was about 80 feet away and none of us had horses the goblins got a surprise round plus another effectively free round against him. he left the table shortly after he died, all while complaining that we had planned this with the dm
Imagine you play a game with Jacob and then 3 months later you see that one of his skits has a story scarily similar to your game. Just to realize he's roasting the fuck outta you.
Imagine being the cringe player correcting the DM on fictitious characters sexuality? Lmao. "Acttrrshually, they're homosexualssss". Ugh cringe
@@Kyle_Riel that one’s the most cringe for you?
@@HouseDiAngelo a player who interrupts the game to argue with the De Facto DM about a fake persons sexuality? Lmao. Yeah. Theyd get laughed at and roasted about it
@@Kyle_Riel how was that an argument? That was an attempt at clearance and guidance. Poorly done, sure, but hardly an argument. Just a kind attempt at pointing something out. By far the least cringe
@@HouseDiAngeloI have to half agree with Kyle a bit. Interrupting the game just to correct the DM on something is such a cringe move, mainly because I have been there (on different grounds tho) and it can really throw off a DM.
However, it is definitely not the cringiest one as that is very subjective and it changes from person to person. I personally hated the DMPC one.
That last one I actually physically cringed and facepalmed. God, I would not want to be in that situation. They made such good role play, and then the DM just released a bukake of cringe.
We just got facialed. :(
And the plan would have worked.
There is a time and a place for DMPC, but this aint it, chief
As someone who has played in a campaign where my level 20 Barbarian was useless until the DMPC Wizard who could cast 4 spells in one turn and could use level 14 spells had to enter the mouth of a greatwyrm and brave its stomach acids I can confirm. Situations like those ones suck.
@@eddieattrill1965hello commenter from 5 months ago. I gotta say that really strikes a Coors with me. My DM's world is filled with people that can take 10 or more TURNS per normal player turn, and get kicked a continent away and be fine. Collectively several sessions worth of DM and co DM just playing amongst themselves like this lol.
@aone9050 Hi there I'm back! And I gotta say at the end of the day sometimes being campigns like that are kinda important to some degree. Because they teach you what NOT to do if you ever DM, and also how to notice the signs that a campaign is going in a bad direction ahead of time. Its certainly helped me in finding better games and groups.
The last one hurt me on a spiritual level. Don't get me wrong, the one where a player acts dumb and gets mad when he dies was uncomfortable, but that last one... Fear.
I've done a Deus Ex Machina moment before, but instead of it being a DM-PC or a character from another campaign, the party was dramatically saved by the BBEG.
@@Radioo3 I run a character in my own campaign. I NEVER do crap like that with him. He's basically a nudge to keep the party going in the right direction and a punching bag for combats that prove too difficult (because the CR system is BROOOOOOOKEN)
I've actually tried to kill him legitimately a few times and the party keeps saving him. 🙃
Agreed, as a DM there is no worse feeling than imagining an awesome scene in RP but when it finally comes to playing it out, it turns out lame as fuck. Even worse when you become so engrossed with the vision in your mind that you fail to notice it being miserable for your players and so you just keep going
@Radioo3 Ah, the good ol “NOBODY CAN KILL YOU EXCEPT ME!”
I was like "Oh this is starting off a bit uncomfortable but nothing too bad" and then you managed to hit me harder with each consecutive cringe-swing. I now lie dead on the pavement. God
I love how the savior NPC is the finale when one of the first skits is "having a sex scene with yourself in front of your friends."
Dang it... SOMEBODY GET A CLERIC
Imagine being the cringe player correcting the DM on fictitious characters sexuality? Lmao. "Acttrrshually, they're homosexualssss". Ugh cringe
@@Kyle_Riel Imagine having this strong of a reaction to someone doing that lmao
@@kizora6342 i know, exactly. Those poeple are weirdos lol
That last one hurt so bad. I had a friend do a cooler version of this where their wizard that we all loved from a failed campaign showed up as a shop keep/info broker/group patron option. It was a beautiful surprise. He greeted us with a haiku, which was a little form of madness he picked up from the old game.
I like making my old PCs the mid-game bosses (not BBEG). It makes it super challenging for the players because I know every detail of how they play.
that sounds like the right way to do it honestly
@@charlesvanzee4879 U should only do that if it makes sense. Like if u were to take a good aligned character and make them a boss against a group of good aligned characters it really wouldn’t make sense unless they have an insanely good reasoning on y they are opposing them. Now an evil character for example would make sense to oppose a group of good aligned characters. It has to make sense. I honestly think if u just do it cause u think it’s cool or like the idea without it making sense or making a good reasoning y then that’s way more triggering then what was shown in the video (which I didn’t think was that bad).
I actually like the idea of older pc’s making an appearance in a new game and maybe earlier on they could help the party a bit since u know they are just starting out. Maybe not as to take the spotlight away from the current characters but to just help. Now it would be kinda lame to make all older pc’s to be villains cause that gets repetitive and predictable if u always do that. It could also ruin that character for some people idk.
It can be done well, if handled in a way that makes sense and doesn't take focus away from the party. In my campaign I have a few former PCs around the setting, acting as various political leaders, criminals and other supporting roles. It's understandable to want something like that for your game, given a lot of campaigns get cut short and we don't get to see more of the character we were previously attached to- but it has to be done in a way that doesn't make the game more about that character than the party.
If a DM really wants to use a character as a main focus role, there are solo play options like third party sources for solitaire DND 5e or games like Solasta and Baldur's Gate, where a person can play out stories with the character or characters they've grown to love without it becoming an issue of bothering other players. If a DM doesn't either give them a supportive role or use other resources to play out adventures with their beloved character, it becomes an annoying situation for players, where they feel more like spectators to the DM's own power fantasies than an actual living breathing part of a story.
“you walk into the building and you see a human” incredible description from the dm
World with many races... Thats a fair thing to bring up.
I liked how this literally ended with "Death by cringe"
The second to last one resonates with me...
One time me and a ranger got into a combat with a bunch of super weak slimes in a sewer, I was a rogue and I just started killing the slimes. The ranger on the other hand decided to try to grapple one of the slimes, which he failed because it was a -4 because the slime was so slimy. Then on the next turn he tried AGAIN and miraculously succeeded. The next turn he decided to take a bite out of it and before he did the dm warned him that it was a caustic slime, but he did it anyway. He ate a chunk of the slime, and it burned his throat and did a good amount of damage, about 1/4 his health. The dm clearly designed this battle to be ranged focused since the slimes were much slower than us, but since he had taken 3 turns to bite the slime, he was surrounded by the others. He then tried to argue that the other slimes would be intimidated by him biting it, but the dm said that they were pretty much mindless. Anyway he almost died and before he died he basically was just like "why didn't you help me... If I die I'm done I'm not making a new character this is stupid" everyone at the table was dumbfounded.
And let him die, right?
@The Owl damn thats crazy
....I think that's even cringier than the one in the video
You let him die; Good riddance. Toxic self centered players don't have their place at a D&D table, imo
The main 2 things players do that annoy me.
1. Do things for the funny even though no one thinks it's funny.
2. Refuse to cooperate with the team then get annoyed when their teammates dislike and don't give af about them.
As a dm I once got the words “broth” and “brothel” confused.
What a wacky mix up
Reminds me of that Dragon Age moment where a companion asks why it’s named after soup
@@DeathnoteBB soup restaurant
Brothel in my soup sounds really unsanitary
"WHY ARE YOU SEEKING COMPANIONS AT THE SOUP STORE!?" "FUCK YOU!"
We were playing Curse of Strahd and one of my players hooked up with one of the NPC's and they did a sex scene but I had them do a preformance roll and they rolled a 1. That made the whole table burst out laughing.
If my characters ever get into a sexual encounter I'm gonna roll for that. Probably won't even anounce it to the group, it'll just be something for me to snicker at myself.
@@HolyApplebutter That's why I always take expertise in performance as a bard 🤣
When you wish gigachad was there...
Gigach&D eliminates cringe.
If you can't find gigachad, become the gigachad
"You straight washed the blacksmith couple?!"
Giga Chad: " I only used the campaign as a jumping off point to a greater custom campaign made by me, everything is different than what's in the book and I decided a woman blacksmith in a male dominated industry was the better option. In fact you've met a few gay people in the campaign already and didn't notice, because their sexual orientation isn't central to their personality and nobody asked ".
@@hundredpercentmetal yeah i can see giga chad saying that
@@hundredpercentmetal "I think showing a woman in a traditionally male-orientated field of work is nice change of pace. But, Gigachad, I struggle to feel that I can properly appreciate queer characters if there queerness is invisible. And while I know queerness is not always a visible trait, I do nevertheless enjoy seeing undeniably queer characters in my entertainment, even if its in small ways. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to hear me out, Gigachad."
Oh, man, that enlarge/reduce problem solving was so clean and Jacob stopped Jacob from doing it. You are really good at getting me invested in these fictional situations.
I am so mad and that's not even a real game (I hope)
and then crushing your dreams LOL
@@beedentist1223 The title does say "I've witnessed", so I'm inclined to think they're all based on real scenarios.
And yeah, I'm also mad, lol
great storytelling is itself a kind of magic
Did something similar to a lava elemental. It left puddles of lava where it ended its turn and would heal 10d6 if it started its turn in lava. Reduced person on it allowed the fighter to shove it out of the puddles of lava. It was sick!
Story 2 is, in my opinion, the worst kind of sin a DM can commit. A DM who wants a specific thing to happen in the story, so they're deliberately obtuse and working against the players, so that their desired story outcome can happen "naturally". "Oh, it's not my fault you missed that key detail. You just didn't look hard enough."
I was the guy in the second to last skit. For my very first time playing D&D, I ran a blaster-caster. This guy was a classic glass-cannon wizard (seriously, we're talking Fireball, Chain Lightning, Boots of Flying, Improved Invisibility, and like 5 hp), who very arrogantly tried to take on a frostworm by himself. Unfortunately, his dumb self had forgotten to cast the appropriate protections upon himself that morning, and that frostworm beat him in initiative. My guy went from "Dumbledore" to "Dead" in half a second flat, and I left the session crying because it was my first character and I felt so stupid. I can laugh about it now, but my goodness that skit brought back some baggage lol. Great work Jacob!!
I love that you made the DMPC a cringery marvel character, it just fits so well. From the eye brow raise to the awful one liners , you truly embodied the cringe
Yesss that's such an apt comparison!
This!
Don't forget the superhero landing
It hurts. The heroes used to be unique, down to their quips, and now they're all starting to get way too similar :(
it was basically iron man yeah
The acting is so realistic I could believe it was just camera on an actual D&D game, but they aren't even in the room together because it's JUST ONE GUY
I love the editing he did in another video to have 2 of him on screen at once.
They're identical siblings
Technically, they _are_ in the same room together. They are _always_ in the same room together, and can't ever not be in the same room together.
@theuncalledfor He’s in a Timecop paradox: same matter cannot occupy same space.
@@commandercaptain4664
Nope, opposite thing.
They're all the same person. So when "one of them" is in one place, "the others" are, by definition, also in that same place, because they are not actually others.
In college I was playing Pathfinder with a sizeable group and one guy was a half-orc whose motivation was to find out more about his family and where he came from, because he had been separated from birth or something. Of course, with so many people playing it was probably hard for the GM to try to help him flesh out his story and lead him down that path, and the guy's motivations didn't fit with everyone else's, which was something like learning about corruption in a city and overthrowing it and finding out who is behind it all. Anyway, like the second session after I had joined in we had this huge battle and there were a pair of orcs in the enemy army that had been slain and this dude tells the GM that he wants to loot these bodies, but it's not even his turn yet. He kept hounding the GM to the point that he paused the current turn to tell him what loot he received, which consisted of some money, a valuable item that he would be able to sell for a good amount of gold, and some magical item, i don't remember if it was a weapon or something else that was useful, but either way he had gotten better loot from these two orcs than most of us got from looting corpses. This ungrateful motherfucker then got pissed off and started yelling at the GM for not giving him any clues to his family lineage and demanded he have him loot some journal pages or something that would help him. The GM told him that the orcs couldn't read or write so that wouldn't have made sense and told him the orcs had nothing to do with his family history or whatever and tried to get back to the player's turn that it was supposed to be. But the half orc player kept yelling at the GM, calling him an asshole, going on a full rant like a toddler having a temper tantrum. He threw his pencil across the room and slammed fists on the table and everything, no joke. The GM then told him to take his stuff and leave, he was banned from the campaign. To which the guy was screaming that he couldn't do that and that he had to let him play, acting all entitled for no reason. It took pretty much all of us telling him to get lost and a couple of the more muscular, sportsy players to threaten to physically remove him for him to finally leave. And let me repeat, this was college, this brat was a grown-ass man throwing a hissy fit over nothing. Cringiest thing I've seen in a TTRPG.
I’m surprised no one called the cops on him
Jesus that had to have been awful. Hopefully the sessions after that were a lot more pleasant
@@raidenakajacktheripper5988 They were! lol
@@Blackenedwhiplash If it's cool to ask, what was your character?
Just needs the DM's girlfriend being a player getting special treatment, or two players in a relationship IRL who get into a fight because of things that happen in the game.
Or-cringes-the two players who aren’t in a relationship yet who are making totally out of character choices in the game because they want to make D&D a dating sim. Like girl. His character tried to kill you. Stop doting on him. Please.
Ahh dnd mystery plots, either solved immediately or is never solved
@Seeing Star god damit
The secret to designing a mystery is to not have a solution and just go with the first thing your players do that impresses you
@@lucykitsune4619 hahaha Genius
A good DM will drop hints and lead the party to the solution without making it too obvious.
@@lucykitsune4619 That's... Actually a pretty good idea...
ah, good ol D&D, where death is *always* a choice but the cringe still lives on
Characters are temporary
But the cringe is eternal
@The Owl your mother has left you
8:39 **walks back into the room** so here is my new character...
I've seen that last one. I used to have a DM who plugged his old level 20 wizard everywhere and making references to a campaign none of us were in. And everytime there was a problem, his character had to be part of the solution. None of our characters needed to be in this adventure, because everything had to be eventually solved by him.
Hah, had a similar situation in my early gaming days. At first we tried to participate, but every idea was immediately shut down with "No, that doesn't work" until the DMPC finally graced us with the only possible solution. Fighting the enemies would result in getting knocked out so only the DMPC could save the day. Culminated in a session where we tracked a bunch of goblin raiders to a cave. DM asks what we do and I reply "I start making victory sandwiches." Everyone's looking at me confused, so I explain "DMPC is going to go into the cave and slaughter all the goblins. When he comes back, I want to have a bunch of sandwiches ready to celebrate his victory." DM's like "You aren't going in there with him?" And all the other players jump in "He doesn't need us" and "He killed a demon, he can handle a bunch of goblins." So we all sat at camp making sandwiches and the DM finally got the hint and let us start playing in his campaign.
This is why when my campaigns are connected they're either on other sides of the world and/or the players are immediately aware
“Even with sharpshooter” after rolling really grinds my gears.
Thank you! That annoyed me so much.
I made one of those exasperated laughs
Absolutely. I hate random rolls out of nowhere "oh i'm attacking" "oh and that's with SS"
Let players know if they take that feat that they have to declare it before the attack roll
It's such a minor detail but says so much. Pretty similar to "forgetting" to tell the DM the level of a spell until after they failed the attack roll
The cringiest thing I did was the first time I ever DM'd a campaign. A found a few sessions in that I wasn't really enjoying it, and I just wasn't ready to be a DM yet. So, I talked to my players and told them what was up right? I let them know that I didn't want to DM anymore and apologized, right?
Nope, I simply ignored the skype call every week, making up excuses when I saw them at school the next day, until they eventually stopped calling. God, I wish I could go back in time to slap 2017 me in the face.
You abandoned them like your father did
@@acssination8541 I actually have a very positive relationship with my father
@@PlayerZeroStart too bad you have a very negative relationship with them players
@@acssination8541 Nah, we're still friends
@@PlayerZeroStart so you confessed the truth to them?
The first one is just... "Huh, guess I missed that, anyways, he says he can make one."
The last 3 though...had those players, had that DM. Kill my memories for me so I can forget them, please.
The DM’s grimace when the player goes off with his NPC girlfriend is so funny
The one where the player tries to go off on their own and then gets all salty about getting completely killed....because they were on their own; yeah if I had a dollar for every time I either had to deal with this as a GM or saw it happen as a player, I would have enough money to fund the economy of an island nation.
There's a big difference between getting caught completely alone and taking one turn to go on the assault and immediately getting killed while the entire party literally watches it happen.
in a DSA (The Dark Eye) rulebook is a text about giants: "When your players think, that they can battle a giant, you described it wrong!"
As a player who did this... Twice... I'm sorry.
I hate to tell you this but fourty dollars is not enough to fund the economy of an island nation. Oh wait that was hyperbole, my bad.
My dnd character of 3 years started out with a folding boat, and at the time, the phrase “Ok Boomer” was still sort of used, so I made that the command word to open the boat. Three years down the line, it now makes no sense relevance-wise, but it’s both cringe and nostalgic at the same time 😂
It was cringe and still cringe now. The older guys nowadays say ok millennial. They gave them ammo against themselves, the millennials, I mean.
@@adrianjuarez1162 commas, my friend. *Commas*
@@adrianjuarez1162 ok,zoomer
@@adrianjuarez1162 Yeah it’s definitely silly, but it can also be fun to look back on all of the trendy terms that come in and out of style
"Okay, schooner."
It's incredible how utterly convincingly and subtly Jacob can portray mediocre DMing
Man, that second one with a DM that needs players to work out their specific clues. Gives no bread crumbs to the party, even giving red herrings that lead to dead ends, hits far too close to home.
I'm all for the DM playing a character or even using old characters from previous campaign's but there's a fine line to walk between playing DnD and Metagaming a personal fantasy
I have a character in my dnd world.
He runs a magic item shop.
And that's basically it.
@@haku8135 I run a small host of supporting casts to give my players characters more motivation but I never have them solve an issue first, only extra viewpoints to consult with and an extra body to take more hits as a party. They're like gateways for shy or newer players to walk through who have a hard time immersing themselves
For a campaign I ran I used a past PC I had and made him an NPC with a two session side quest. He died 😂
One of my new players made a blue dragonborn wizard in the campaign I'm currently running. I thought it was funny because I had made a campaign before, (which was my first) and one of my players had made a blue dragonborn wizard also. Since that campaign was cancelled due to me being very inexperienced I never got closure to the characters in that campaign. So I brought the old players characters of that campaign to this one and made that character the new wizard's dad. It was cool and it was the main reason why he is in the group
One way my DM did it was because one campaign took place in a homebrew, he had one character have dimension hopping, and she could bring back small items that were references to the other campaign
that last one hit too close to home
we had a battle for a keep and basically won, the only enemy left was the main bad guy of the arc and we had already beat hiim twice at that point but he always got away
this time tho, he couldn't get away, it was do or die for him. and as we slowly got closer to him, the DM suddenly drops a half-demon on the field, says "timer is up, your buddy that was being turned into a demon somehow regains his personality and comes to help you, he also instakills the badguy you've been hunting for months IRL now"
I just sat there slackjawed and unable to speak
4:00 Tiamet only killed half the city? This place must be a super fortress.
Rogal Dorn himself gave the seal of approval.
The whole thing of the guy getting himself killed just reminded me of one of my first dnd sessions where we were playing with a guy who kept trying to go a bit too wild with his plays, and after one of our party members basically befriended an orc as combat was about to start with them, he proceeded to try and turn a grick into a pet in the middle of combat, and then got pissed and left when he went down and we killed it.
that second one is just painful; i hate when DMs railroad you into/out of things then act like it's your fault (mine did this just recently, was not fun)
First question in easthaven. (The one with the first troll) bruh I'm lvl one tf do you want me 2 do
Same bro my og dm did that to me
Hey, DM here. While railroading is a bad idea, it helps make games more functional. There is fun to be had at the old abandoned mine, let's go there and stop trying to bribe the guards to tell you what is the secret recipe to the cake the innkeeper prepared, or whatever silly shenanigans the PCs are doing. It is a "less fun now for more fun later" kind of equation.
@@Eisenwulf666 no, I understand that there needs to be some direction from the DM, and I do think players need to cooperate and actually try to stay on track. what I consider to be railroading is when the DM decides that something should be a certain way, and thus makes it happen that way regardless of what the players' actions are, and regardless of whether it makes sense in-universe for characters to act in a way that brings those events about.
the example I mentioned in my original comment was basically us running from a boss and calling for backup. unbeknownst to us, the backup we called was very very powerful and decided that the best option was to use a meteor swarm, which instantly killed the boss and leveled the entire city the boss had been approaching. we of course protested, saying we had only wanted help defeating it and had definitely not intended to destroy the entire city and kill thousands of people. he told us that because we said it was urgent, and we needed as much help as we could possibly get, that of course the character would think that the best option is to use his most powerful spell. obviously this doesn't make sense, and we also had no way of knowing that was even something that could happen.
I don't think the DM telling you "look, you guys are on an important, time-sensitive mission and you really should probably go to the abandoned mine" to be railroading. but when your DM causes NPCs to act in ways that don't make sense, and gives unforeseeable, unpreventible consequences to your actions, it's definitely not "less fun now, more fun later." we all had a talk with our DM about it and he apologized, and we moved on, but we were seriously considering leaving the campaign because we completely lost all motivation to play after spending months irl in this city only to have had none of our choices or actions matter.
@@timob1681 oh...well, that's..that's your DM being a bit of a d!ck to be honest. I mean, that's all kinds of wrong. It could be an intense climactic moment to end a chapter of the campaign but not like this. Like, you don't defeat the BBEG and something baaad( the beloved mayor dies for example) happens and you have to deal with the consequences, that could work depending on the campaign, but " meteors fall, everybody dies" seems stupid. In that case you are perfectly right XD
That last one was painful.
I’m all for having past characters in other campaigns, just don’t make them the centre of attention lmao. Make them a quest giver or someone the players seek help from, not a godly saviour.
Yea. Honestly. Depending on the group I think a DM Controlled "PC" ain't a bad idea. At least for the RP sections. But there is a long list of things you need to have them never do. And being the center of attention is on the top. Unless if the party wants that. I have one and she will only heal and buff unless otherwise asked. And never helps with other NPC's unless asked. But it can be nice to RP with your players instead of it only being them RPing with NPC's. But that's also just kinda how our dynamic is.
It might be cool to have previous characters appear as a minor deity or something. Like, they're a minor God of adventures
@@redholm Matt the dm on tabletopnotch will have PCs that guide them through an area or give them jobs. He plays them for a short amount of sessions before furthering on of the PCs and that character either leaves or dies
Okay, the last one actually happened to me in a one shot. First time I was playing at this table, the DM put us in an impossible situation just to have this random wizard appearing out of nowhere to save our ass. I learned later that it was his PC from a previous campaign.
Jacob is getting so good at playing multiple parts. The way he makes the bickering and talking over each other sound so natural, it feels like he's doing the scenes with actual clones of himself.
...or is he? 👀
That second story: Sounds like someone forgot the three-clue rule. It's absurd that there wouldn't be anything in the sewers.
That rule is crucial to a good dnd mystery
Newish to Dnd, what's this?
@@irishgeek7 There'a a blog called The Alexandrian that came up with it, as far as I know, everything the dude writes is really smart.
Basically if you're doing any kind of "mystery", you need *at least* three types of evidence, and each of those should be in *at least* three different places if the PCs are searching a room. People seriously underestimate how tough it'll be for someone to go "I check behind this curtain" or whatever.
@@colbyboucher6391 thanks so much for the explanation!! This is great to know
The mystery bit hit close to home. My players would always investigate the routes or NPCs that genuinely had nothing to do with the mystery, and somehow skip over or not notice the clues I was giving out. One time after several dead leads they picked a random NPC to beat up and interrogate and he happened to actually be one who knew some clues. The lesson they took away was to use violence to solve mysteries going forward... which was not a habit I wanted them to pick up.
Luckily I've since learned that the best thing to do is improvise some sort of clue in to whatever it is they end up investigating, and figuring out how it all works in along the way. Some times the mystery even ends up surprising the DM!
One video I saw was a long time DM explaining that, in his campaigns, most of the narrative is driven by the players. Say there's a mystery in town and the players try to solve it, and after collecting some clues one of them speculates, could it be the dragon cult that's behind all of this? Pff, it is now! And by the way, the shady secret society mentioned in the Ranger's backstory? Totally the cult of the dragon now, too. Thanks guys! That's at least the next five sessions written out of one stray comment.
Sometimes the mysteries are the people we beat up on the way
the best way to do clues is to know what the clues are but don’t set a location. say they need to find a book with some assassin’s name on it. don’t set a location just have them find it when it feels natural
@@thassalantekreskel5742 Thats how I ran all my games.
@@milkshake0802 Yeah, that's the strategy I learned to employ. I do this with almost everything now too, it makes it much more enjoyable to DM when everything is free form.
Although don't tell your players that the lever they thought they were so clever in finding wasn't actually supposed to be in a false compartment behind the throne they rolled a 25 investigation on, it ruins the magic.
10:56 let me go. let me DIE. YOURE ALL GOING TO BURN, WERE ALL GOING TO DIE
Had me dying right up until I realized that there are people out there who are actually doing these things. I pray for those who cringe so hard, they get stuck like that
Noticed that you had the Players look at their phones for character sheets. The future is now.
oh man i was wondering why he was always texting in these videos.
Well, DnD Beyond.
Etc.
I allow phone character sheets at my table, but I still have my players keep a paper one as well and I personally prefer when they use it. As someone who spends way too much of my life in front of a screen, I think the beauty of DnD is that it allows us some time to have an adventure away from any distracting technology. Can’t deny the benefits to the game, but DnD without doodling on character sheets just feels wrong.
Some of my players use digital character sheets. I hate it. Can't tell if they are paying attention or not. I use paper when I play as a courtesy.
what a terrible future it is
A player fully taking over one of the DM's npcs actions and dialogue is bizarre to me
I don't think that's the weird thing, the embarassement to me comes from the self insert and from not caring for the party's choice cuz he wanted to do a cool DM Ex Machina moment and feels rad for a sec
And I bet the player he was saving was a female.
@@trucid2 oh God, this gained higher levels of weird now
@@turinmormegil7715 yes...
@@trucid2
Wait? Which scenario are you talking about? I think the main comment is about the love making scene.
Surprised he didn't bring up "the incident" a few years ago, they streamed a game and all was going normal, when one of the female party members farted and Colton dove across the dining table and starting sniffing and inhaling deeply. Everyone else just stared directly into the camera while Jacob started crying. Honestly i guess i understand why you didn't reupload that or mention it
Ayoo?
Sorry what
is that even true?
Haven't laughed this hard in a while 😂
Based
That lone wolf one, I've been stuck in that from a different perspective once. Important friendly NPC got kidnapped, and as he was in the middle of upgrading my only magical item (compared to the mountains of magical and expensive things everyone else had since I would let them have my share / would often lend gold as needed, trying to be a team player/figuring this one item was enough for me), that was taken with him.
DM planned on having our party go to rescue him, and set the difficulty of the encounter as such, intending it to be a serious challenge. However, when we got there, the rest of the party decided "who cares if the only item (a one-of-a-kind relic, story-related, that took irl weeks and all of my funds to get, and was now taking all of the funds I've recouped since then to upgrade) our healer and helper has gets lost forever, and our friend/blacksmith dies, it doesn't *really* affect us" (even though the entire party was allegedly "good-aligned"). My only options were to do nothing and lose basically everything, leaving my character unplayable at the levels we were in, or attempt to solo an encounter meant for 6 players who explicitly refused to help me despite my character constantly risking his own life to save them from every stupid fight they would start as the murder hobos they were. So I jumped in, alone with only a cold-iron sap, against a legion of celestials.
Barely squeaked by when one member finally decided to jump in and help (and I had to basically cement myself as evil-aligned, and put my character on the shit list of the entire pantheon, by holding effectively the whole world hostage to buy some time. Longer story.).
You can bet your ass I was salty, though. Learned that all the players (aside from the one) only cared about themselves, so I seldom helped any other party member, besides that one, again. Just enough to keep the rest alive by a thread, except the one (our actual/habitual lone wolf) who explicitly said "fuck that, this doesn't affect me" at that encounter, which led to three others going "yeah, this is too scary without him helping." That guy in particular proceeded to go through three more characters that campaign, when he stopped getting bailed out of his murder-hoboing shenanigans, and dying due to stupid choices, since I realized, "hey, that doesn't affect me," and stopped rushing after him when he'd antagonize yet another group of innocent people. Before you say that's petty, I should clarify: prior to that, I had to babysit the guy and provide healing and/or diplomacy to prevent his constant deaths. Or be a voice of reason and remind him every week that poisoning the nearby town's water supply was unabashedly evil, and didn't help our party in any tangible way. Or remind him that orphans were still civilians and not target practice. Or remind him not to stab the friendly guard escorting us through the middle of the town. He, OOC, stalwartly said his character was lawful good, btw. So after the encounter, I decided to let him be as lawful goid as he wanted, and stopped covering for him / healing him, is all.
I applaud you for your patience with these bozos.
that DMNPC moment is hilarious for me particularly, because every time our group adds one to the campaign, we specifically make them as smaller/weaker/as a side character, and they end up pulling this stuff off anyway because we cannot stop rolling Nat 20's on them.
Added a cleric/rouge Aarakocra multiclass to the party (secret agent posing as a cleric, to betray them later) that was only level 5 to the party's level 7, and she just....cleaned house. I actually had to have her stop attacking and just heal because she would Crit sneak attack too often. Even when we had the big 'betrayal' moment some levels later she almost instantly killed THE TANK of the party.
Yea. The game is not very well balanced for PvP. Like at all XD
The last one happened to me in a campaign a while back, the DM had his probably self insert NPC show up to "save the day" when we were already doing well, he even acted out the sword fight like a little kid
It was horrendous, we all quit that night
Just from this comment alone: You guys would definitely be a lousy group I'd just TPK in order to get you the fuck out of my game...
Nothing worse than watching the GM play with themself during a group game
DM = neutral facilitator of the game. Sure, some collaboration to add depth and texture to the campaign, but straight up dice results and engagement resolution is the way forward.
Our DM (who is awesome) has us run two characters, each in a different party. Your two characters never adventure together, although the groups get re-combined sometimes, and the action switches back and forth from group to group as the plot demands. One of our players had his male character constantly hitting on the female NPCs to the point where it became embarrassing and tedious. Our DM is good at deflecting or foiling this kind of behavior, so it was always a fairly minor annoyance. Then the plot required that, uniquely, all of our characters be present in the same location for a great Conclave. This player's other character was a female. Maybe you can see where this is going. Long frustrated in his attempts to get his male character laid, the player had his two characters hook up, and there was nothing the DM could do about it besides keep the action "off camera." The cringe wave crested when a Con check was made. The player rolled a natural 20, and the glee and triumph he exhibited (touchdown dance) was the most excruciating moment so far in my many years of playing D&D. (He's single, if that even needed to be said.)
Good for him why you so mad
@@shadowlord1418 Dude is roleplaying with himself just to do the dirty during a presumably otherwise, clean D&D session.
@@CoolerExists so what your already killing things for your power fantasy. Let the dude have his fun
@@shadowlord1418 well, when you’re playing D&D that’s a given. Personally though, I like to keep things like that out of my games. You do you though 🤷♂️
@@shadowlord1418he's not mad. He's just laughing at the absolute desperation of that player. Like it's genuinely funny, like imagine watching your best friend make a clone of himself and sleeping with it out of sheer desperation 😂 like bro, right infront of my salad?
"I think I choose to die" is probably how we've all felt after any of these happens
When I was a brand new DM I wanted to make a my previous character a major part of the story, level 20 power fantasies and all. Eventually I realized that was really dumb, and this video helped me realize just how big of a bullet I dodged 😅
You kinda wasted your own potential, a DMPC can work as long as you don't make them the center of attention at every moment, I've done it several times and the current DMPC I run is basically a glorified Merc that can turn anything he touches into a bomb; He's died over 12 times throughout the game and had to be brought back to life by the party's Druid, so you don't have to run your DMPC like a stereotypical Mary Sue/self-insert.
@@borderlands10 I can fully guarantee I would’ve made it a Mary sue power fantasy. Plus, there’s a difference between a DMPC and bringing back your PC from an old campaign, especially considering only one of the players was actually in that original campaign
@@andrewcabrera505 fair enough, I've brought back an old character as well and put him in my current game as a cameo, he started off as a Pathfinder Gunslinger and I remade him using some homebrew into a 5e Gunslinger with a magitech arm that can turn into a shotgun as a bonus action, he talked to the party and helped them reach the mainland after the party got teleported to a cluster of islands ruled by a pirate queen.
Had a game where the party entered into a dungeon full of dragon cultists and convinced them that we were sent by tiamat to see if they had an 'adequit tithe' so that they would bring us to the treasure room. One cultist brings us there, leading us safely past traps and hazards, until we get to a room filled with mushrooms. Cultist mcgee tells us that " so long as the mushrooms are left alone, they are safe". The monk took that as "set the mushrooms on fire" despite every other party member trying to stop him. The mushrooms where myconids, which attack us, and blow our cover, and after he metagames to get back to the party because we left him, he says "what? Im chaotic neutral"
Ah yes. Classic Chaotic Stupid move.
This sounds like when people use star signs to decide all their decisions and personality, then blame the star sign for their actions
I've had a player rogue who would do that sometimes but luckily for me he only did it on social encounters so most of the times all it would happen is he would let some noble dumbfounded or confuse the hell out of an evil cultist to the point where he could get a sneak attack on him lmao. Sadly people think alignment is a magic force that compels you to be stupid. Like when a Lawful neutral guy decides to hand over said rogue of the group because welp, doesn't matter if he saved my life and I'm technically an accomplice at this point I've gotta hand him over. Alignments are more suggestions and general directions.
When I started DMing, I was the newest player into the group (Hell, I was dming a campaign after only 4 weeks of playing in another campaign for my first time). So I got lucky that my players were all experienced and "knew" how to play and Ive always stayed with the same group. A few months ago a new person joined us as chaotic neutral. And holy shit the stupid shit he was pulling with that excuse. I never knew the pain other DMs had.
Is it just me, or do "chaotic" and "monk" just not really fit together at all?
You know it's gonna be a tough final battle to DM for when someone asks if they can fit a bomb big enough to deal 600 damage into their chest cavity without being noticed three separate times.
600? Child's play, there's a bomb out there that can deal around 16,200 radiant damage, but it's in 3rd-party territory and is meant for a sci-fi setting.
The answer to that question should always be no..... Unless, you're playing a Warforged.
Or Gale, I guess.
Well joke's on you, we now got the bad magic nuke in our favorite wizard and let me tell you the three bois and their pet brain didn't see that one coming.
Lukas the Trickster moment
the 2nd to last one is a mood. Had a pretty casual place you could go to play DND (i stopped going when the price per session went up) where somebody in a younger demographic than we're used to (although we were assured he had experience) came in. Generally he was fine but kept stealing my gold, everything was reset because practically everybody had characters around level 20, and in our first session together, we set up camp during the night, and he decides to leave the party to go "hunt for food" (rangers doing ranger things) only to get swarmed by a group of goblins that was about to jump our party in our sleep (or would've if we weren't doing night watches), and dies. He starts crying and so the dm practically just retconned it. brilliant.
Admittedly a ranger deciding to scout and hunt during a long rest is normal behavior. DM retconning it was the best choice because it would've instead been a great opportunity to go "oh, you're up and exploring? perception check! okay cool, you spotted the goblins you have a chance to go warn the party of the ambush"
Even a low perception check & them all ganging up on him means he can still scream bloody murder, waking the party. That DM wasted a golden opportunity to what it seems like haze the new guy, sticky fingers or not.
I had this strange game once where GM have us a list of things we shouldn't do in a world she threw us in, like don't drink alcohol and don't get sexual. And then in this world, everyone tried to either get us drunk or seduce us. Of course, no one fell for it cause we KNEW, and there was no point in all this. She could have made the rules vague, like riddles, or at least she could have made us roll charisma or wisdom. It was all i could do to hide my disappointment)
In my world enchantment magic is illegal.
I don't constantly throw shady people at them saying "hey man, you want a charm person scroll? I got that ring of suggestion man"
Cause the point of making something illegal isn't to overindulge in it.
They basically gave you the IGN guide to their world. I'd be disappointed too
@@shadowbandit147 "So when you walk into the Goblin camp shoot the third box to the left labled with 'Rations', it will create an explosion that will wipe out every goblin in 80ft, make sure to get out of range first."
Almost like she was using you to larp her sick fetishes and didnt want it done to her.
I mean, I suppose I could appreciate the warning. Now the players have agency on if their characters indulge despite the risk, since even if as a player you know it's a certainty, maybe you can say your character doesn't know it's a certainty and can still blunder.
As a DM I have used one of my past characters in a game before, however it was nothing like the last skit. Context this is the same world as the hole group had played in the campaign before and the last campaign ended at 13th level with me being a player and my character “joining” another adventuring party to mentor them. Cut to the next campaign we the party had just accepted a quest to recover a missing cart that was transporting a extremely dangerous prisoner while they were being moved between prisons, they were informed that another group had also been contracted to do the same and had left a hour ago. When the party gets to the last known location of the cart they could hear the sounds of battle, the rogue went to scout ahead and see what was happening and when they got within line of sight of the battle they could see around 5 body’s of adventurers on the ground with my the BBEG finishing killing my character, they were level 3. The look on their faces has to be my favorite memory as a DM
That's a good way to go about it, because your old PC is a good frame of reference for how powerful the BBEG is. They know (knew) how powerful they were, so their death is a good way to demonstrate that they should be scared at level 3.
That's cool as shit.
I do sometimes for my villains. I take old character sheets from campaigns past. They become the villains for campaigns I run with my family. I know exactly how they play, so it makes DMing easier.
I've remade my first Pathfinder character in 5e and bumped him up a few levels and had him make a cameo in my current game as someone the party talked to in order to get from a cluster of islands back to the mainland, it was mostly because the last game he was in got cut short and the game essentially died and the group's characters' fates were left up in the air; So I decided to take mine, my girlfriend's and our gay friend's characters and turned them into 5e cameos in my game, they really appreciated it and enjoyed seeing their characters again after a year.
Honestly I'm surprised you didn't sneak Tiberius' infamous half-chub in at the end
The mystery one was literally my group. A group of six of us couldn’t trace the trail of an important NPC so instead of pursuing this 1500 Platinum bounty we instead decide to go back to the city and get a good wash and some food-all because the GM would not give us a single clue beyond, “The trail splits off into different directions.”
The craziest thing is that I've seen these exact situations before in the very few games I've been in... the jerkwad going in solo and then complaining is frustratingly common.
The detailed sex scene was worse as both the DM and the player were into it... the rest of us had to sit there and awkwardly pray for it to be over
These should be textbook examples of what not to do. If only there was a… book of text to show the way… something like a book… a book of Hand for Players… I dunno, it’s a lost cause, impossible to write.
Going in solo can be the right call. I've seen it, I've done it, sometimes it's exactly what you need. Sex is near impossible though. I've seen passable attempts at seduction for giggles, but even then it usually ends with the group shutting it down in horror.
That last one really hurt. As a DM I always have a little fear I would wind up doing something so dumb like that.
Reminds me of the time my DM had us meet a Baron in his castle at night, and I kept asking leading questions like "Can I see his shadow?" and "Are there any mirrors?" and "Is there anything odd about his teeth?" to which the DM always answered that everything was normal. Turns out he was a vampire and attacked us in our sleep, who would ever have guessed?
I've been through most of these situations in my own D&D experiences... in most I simply walked away because it was cringy and painful... and the DM really favored the cringlord
The wizard’s appearance was greatly appreciated
in dark times a familiar face is always welcome
showing up just to say "*you're"
@@PorkpieJohnny sorry, the you’re appearance was greatly appreciated.
Better?
Edit: I’m stupid
@@funnyvideoguy3216 no the wizard said YOU’RE
@@Koichi-Kun oh wait you’re right oops
The one with the lovemaking almost made me literally turn inside out from cringe... Just... As a DM if I had to listen to that... UUUUuuUuuuugh... I don't mind if a player wanted to have a romance or whatever, but, you get a fade to black if it goes further than that. The main story takes the front row, not your weird, smutty, cringefest.
L post. Our story*
@@pewpewpandas9203 I have made a story for the players. They craft the story along with me, but it is still fundamentally MY story, MY world, and MY NPCs. When you work for 2 years on your dream campaign, then come back and see if it's still "our" story.
@@sauronsrighthandman301 As DM you have to understand that it is fundamentally a collaborative story, even if you put more work or time in dosent make the DM the end all be all. Without the players your only writing a book. Ive DM'ed and GM'ed for over a decade now and don't consider any of my campaigns as "mine"
@@margar9021 well, if they said "The story that I have designed" or "The main story", would it be better sounding to you?
@@margar9021 Well that's your point of view and you're entitled to it. I understand full well that the players are vital to any good story. But overall I'm the one who has to craft the plot, the characters they interact with, tying in their stories into the grand scheme of things, and making a satisfactory experience for everyone, including me. The campaign I'm currently running is made from a story I have planned for years... granted it looks almost completely different from when I first imagined it, but the fundamental story is still there. My story. That I made. For others to enjoy.
No-one has helped me, if anything my players have only made things harder. But so have I! And I'll be damned if anyone else is gonna take credit for this story 'cept me! You can have your opinion for your story and that's okay! But MY campaign is my personal baby! And she's beautiful in all her chaotic glory!
6:28 There's always that one player who just embraces the absurdity of it all. 💀
The one where the guy rushed into the battle on the skipper & then died was too relatable oof. The first time i ever dmed i lost a player character (party was relatively low level) because he decided to grab a mimic with his bare hands after i heavily hinted he shouldn't do that (mimic was foreshadowed in plot earlier too). The other party members didnt lift a finger to help him because he had been relatively uncooperative/rude the whole time. He failed all his death saves and then rage quit. I still play with that group but that guy doesn't play dnd with us anymore 💀
what is skipper?
I was in the waterdeep campaign with my buds and we didn't know the Sunlight spell was a thing so we tried everything with the dwarven door but failed constantly. Eventually we break through through melting the wall with acid over the course of a week (artificer). Fast forward to infiltrating some party and we check everywhere except the basement because we didn't know there was a basement since it wasn't in the blueprints. The DM even mentioned this door to us but we all agreed it was likely a closet since it was under the staircase.
We left the town after our failing and started a new campaign since we lost.
Never heard of anyone losing DnD. What kind of DM-
I was just starting to have withdrawals and watched the wizard saga again.
Thank you
We need more wizard. I wanna crossover between him and Merlin/Noble Knight.
I honestly hate players like the ones at 8:25 they really are such hypocrites whining when they foolishly go forward to die alone without a plan and then saying why did no one help them.
Really is annoying. If you're gonna rush in alone, at least own it and accept the distinct possibility of dieing for it instead of acting like everyone else should've followed you in without a plan.
That second story with the mystery reminded me of a story we had.
We were on a diplomatic mission to get a statue from the dwarfs that was contractually bound to the tabaxi clans (we were all tabaxis). But dwarven paperwork takes some years for some reason. So we had to get into one of three cities which were hidden in the mountains and which entrances were heavily guarded. Behind the entrances are big horizontal elevators which go for miles. No one but dwarfs are allowed to enter the cities.
We had absolutly no idea how to get in. We weren't allowed to kill anyone. We couldn't disguise ourself. It took three sessions without any progression until our DM gave us an opportunity to get into the city. It was boring and absolutley frustrating...
God damn the dmpc made me really feel pain. Like real pain. Masterful Cringe
(Repost from sub-comment because I genuinely believe it's a good tip for DMs who want to bring their old characters back)
I have a long-running big, intimidating fighter character, who I'd played up to 15th level in a friend's Pathfinder campaign. During my first session GMing, I surprised my players - who all had fresh 1st-level characters - by having the same version of him show up.
They were all excited, saying "oh sweet, Geinz is gonna help us finish the first quest," only for him to say "this quest is Pathfinder Society business. You are not Pathfinders. Give me the amulet and go home." The rest of the session was an epic chase across the mountains as they tried to get the maguffin back to the Pathfinder lodge before he could catch them and take it from them. Thankfully, rather than cringing, they were terrified and elated in equal measure.
Bringing back your character as a saviour is probably difficult to do without making it cringeworthy. Bringing him back as an antagonist, though... well, it worked for us.
That's such a fun way to incorporate a past character; they're not the Deus ex machine that's making everything easier for them, they're here TO make it harder. And facing a 15th-level character, even if they're good-aligned, as a group of Level 1s is quite the challenge.
@@tabitha3861 It made it all the more effective that they knew who my character was. Even if it was technically metagaming, as players, they didn't need telling just how intimidating their characters would be finding this guy. >w<
The level difference also immediately communicated to them that a fight wasn't going to be an option; they would have to either outsmart him, or take the maguffin and run.
i did the same thing for some of my partys previous campaign characters, as this campaign was a sequel to a previous one(i consulted my players beforehand and asked if it was ok). there were two characters i made the first a temporary villain, and the second i made the main villain. it really worked for the game because for the first villain, the players knew of their lycan curse and sympathized with them, and wanted to help them, and they did. but for the second, my players were dreading the main villain, because they knew of what they have done, and what they are able to do, and it works that the main villain was already teetering between hero and villain in the last campaign
That last one really struck a chord. Once I was in a campaign with a GMPC where we ended up in the middle of a fighting ring, surrounded by enemies and watching a fellow party member in a duel getting their ass handed to them. Then the GMPC swoops in from whatever they were doing and uses an ability from the published homebrew we were using to make everyone stop fighting in a cutscene.
And I'm just sitting there like "If I knew I didn't have to worry about saving throws right now I could have just cast Calm Emotions for the exact same effect". Getting bailed out by the GMPC from a situation the GM put you in always feels bad, especially if you already came up with a clever plan but didn't get to implement it before the GMPC swooped in.
I was later told the GMPC was so powerful because she was secretly the big bad who caused the whole mess we were trying to fix, because she wanted to set things right too.
I wasn't even exactly a player in that campaign, I was a co-gm there to help because I had more familiarity with pathfinder mechanics. Now whenever I make a GMPC I absolutely stick to the mechanics harder than I would for any other character. I always make them a support class and build with a relatively quiet and passive personality, so I never overshadow any of the PCs. And also so I can focus on all the other stuff I'm doing as GM.
If I bother with a GMPC I like to make them old, retired veterans. They know a lot if the PCs want to ask them about relevant stuff but they're also crabby/tired enough to brush them off when the questions go too far afield. They don't fight much, but they have all the dirty tricks to save the party if need be. And when a player is about to do something really stupid, they can put a hand on their shoulder and say "I used to know a rogue who tried that once. They were picking up pieces of him as far away as Everdell."
Me playing a character named Tressa rn and I’ve never been so uncomfortable 💀
I've been there for that second to last one. The dungeon Masters sister kept negging the Hobgoblin Commander and his response was to have him just spin around and cut her head off. I don't remember if it was he dealt so much damage it was into death or if he just said that her head went flying. Her response was to rip her character she didn't have stomp off into the living room (that was only 3 ft away) and sulk on the couch. A very awkwardly pointed out that I was a high enough level cleric that I was able to resurrect her pretty much on the spot. It took almost 15 minutes of convincing for her to come back and tape her character sheet back together. Hands down the most uncomfortable I've ever felt at the table 😰
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the dragon cult mystery thing was a reference to Jacob's own adventure he made.
If so, good reference :)
The last one is a scene straight out of the last book from the 7-novel series I was definitely going to write when I was 15 years old. Now, 10 years later, I'm glad I didn't write it.
I once played in a campaign with a player who wanted to have a "relationship" with half of the female NPCs we met in that campaign. (We usually just kind of brushed it off a bit with a quick mention on his part and some Charisma checks before fade to black and figuring out what the rest of the party was doing, so not super invasive to the game but just a bit weird.) It culminated with the GM, who is an incredible GM btw and tries to accommodate everyone at the table, writing a 4 page recounting of one of his sexual endeavors with what was basically a Kuo Toa upon this player's request, before the rest of us decided enough was enough and asked him to quit it before it went any further. At least outside of that one thing he was a pretty good player and was understanding when we asked him to stop, but it was pretty awkward since that wasn't really the kind of adventure we were looking for. Not a horror story (since we stopped it from becoming one), but definitely made me cringe a bit.
Honestly as a DM I don't tolerate that anymore. If you want to play a character that has sex with NPCs find another table or go online.
It's always the people with no love life doing this weird shit. I don't care how lonely you are, leave your sad reality at the door
Gotta hate it when someone thinks the DM wants to roleplay a sex scenario with them or do some other mega cringe thing along those lines. Keep your horniness out of my D&D please, there are websites for that
The only time when this is acceptable is if you're all perverts, or if you're playing FATAL. The two usually go hand-in-hand.
God help you if you're playing FATAL.
@@darkbeetlebot God can't help you if you play FATAL
What's FATAL?
Am I about to be scarred for life by asking this?
@@Volition366 Yes.
Four words: Roll for penis circumference.
@@Volition366Imagine a TTRPG, but rape mechanics are in the rule book.
Because that’s literally what FATAL is.
The fourth example hit me really hard. I was never in quite the same scenario, but I did used to be a pretty toxic player, and that walkout at the end reminded me of how shitty my attitude was back in the day.
Second place goes to that guy who graphically described sex with his girlfriend. General rule: never roleplay erotic scenes unless it's straight up an erotic adventure.
I feel bad for all the people that had to suffer campaigns with you in it
It takes guts to admit that. Respect
I was so immersed in the solution with Reduce that I forgot what the video was about and then the DM slapped me in the face and reminded me
I read the "Craigslist" D&D things, i thought this was a collection of oddbal craigslist worthy unhinged wilderness of strangers level dnd stuff
There is nothing more aggravating as a player than a DM who does nothing but tell you "That doesn't work" over and over while just passively waiting for you to tug at the right lead in a mystery scenario
I just. Oooh boy. It hurts me.
I know it's bad, but sometimes the module, if they are using one, is genuinely written that poorly. We had a Call of Cthulhu campaign like this a couple of years ago and our GM, who is incredible, acknowledged that some of the points where we struggled had to be revised by him because the leads as written in the module were just kinda... bad and spread out all over the place.
One thing i love about a couple of these is that the idea behind them isnt necessarily bad, its just that they were handled horrendously lmao. Like the love making one - actually a meaningful, strong, emotional idea... Talking about tears + nut tho, not great
I think it really depends because I know that would make most people including myself EXTREMELY uncomfortable and you DEFINITELY need to make sure that every single person in your party is ok with it
This is why we do lines and veils with the squad before we start a TTRPG!
I thought similar, if the guy wasn't so keen on describing the love-making and just focussed on the tearful scene (other fluids hecking excluded!) about how their love interest may never see them again, that could be very sweet, they can leave the love making as insinuated or simply fade to black on that part IMO
i agree. it was just so sudden, no meaningful buildup, and it was clear NO person in the party was comfortable but the player just didnt care. it came across as fetish-y and creepy. a short rp of what happened before, perhaps a heartbreaking scene of when the lover finds her at the door only to hear news that they might not see each other again, and then a fade-to-black.
@@kit6024 I'd find it hard to focus on an rpg after doing lines ngl man
Ugh, that first one. Can't believe someone would join a game of a module they've already played, and then grind the game to a halt over such a meaningless detail.
These guys must be really good friends. They all have matches tattoos.
Should I be worried about how many of these I have witnessed personally?
You should have worried _while_ you were experiencing them.
I mean, did you witness yourself doing them?
"I think I choose to die"
For when the cringe is just too much to live with 😂
2:06 "the. F*CK" - JoCat, some time i think
Each one of these would be the last time I would ever play with these kind of people. Especially the first one.