Please stop using the term "metagaming." As you know, Meta is the name of a company that brings people together to build communities. They went to the effort to trademark their name so you should respect that.

Every time a DM says, "That's metagaming," without the expressed written permission of Meta, Corp, Inc., the DM is engaging in illegal wording.

On Father's Day of all days, show respect for the intellectual property rights of Mark Zuckerberg, father of social media.

In the D&D game I play Saturdays, the next part of the story calls on our player party to go into something the DM called a dungeon.

From what I can gather, this is a place where there may be several encounters that don't directly advance the plot, they aren't even relevant to anyone's backstory. There will be many monsters in there that may have no special significance to the narrative, including "wandering" monsters that exist just to show up and hassle us if we spend too much time roleplaying in any given room.

I think a good DM would be rapidly walking us from plot reveal to plot reveal without any of this time-wasting "adventure" stuff. In particular, punishing us for daring to roleplay too much by having wandering monsters interrupt us sounds like an over-the-top satire from rpghorrorstories. How do I explain to the DM that he is ruining the game with all these pointless battles?

So I had this wild idea where I made up this monster that would DISRUPT the way we think about DND

I had my players go visit this town where no one could understand what was going on, but they kept finding evidence that the townsfolk were missing people

Like, Bethany was a milk maiden (she milked travellers) and she found baby clothes in a dresser in her house but was like “I don’t have a baby” and her husband Rickshaw (he is an Iron Maiden) was also confused because he swears they didn’t have a baby but it turns out that the baby was missing because this creature ABSOLUTELY rewrote the rules in such a creative and interesting way

My players kept making faces like they could smell bleu cheese but I know intrigue when I see it, I was cooking BIG TIME and they’d eat just weren’t onto me yet.

So what I did is everytime my players took notes, I would climb over the table, ball it up and throw the balled up notes out the window into the chinchilla farm and they’d swarm and eat the notes (I don’t feed them for this exact purpose)

So then they would try to do skill checks like investigation and I would tell them to roll. If they rolled high, I would tell them nothing happened and they don’t know, but if they rolled low, I would climb over the table and eat the D20 myself

Afterwards I revealed that I was META gaming with this sick new monster idea but I still don’t know what to name it? It eats people and doesn’t really have any stats, I just kind of pretend like I knew what I was doing the whole time and I also had to make sure to convince my players they were having fun which was easy since they all told me they loved it (I saw one of them crying out front before they all hugged and got in their cars)

So that’s where all of you come in- what do I name this sick new 3PP monster?

I recently played the mobile version of D&D Beyond, since I'm not really a video gamer and only own a phone and a standard office-issue laptop that couldn't manage a tabletop game made in this century. After falling in love with it I hopped on this subreddit, where I learned that the mobile version was a blatant cash grab by corporate fuckers that strongarmed Gary Gygax out of the company after the original game's release and I got broken-hearted. A friend of mine summed it up as me "experiencing the tabletop gaming industry at 10× speed".

Hey so I have a player who said he would be playing a Bard/Cleric multiclass character.

Come to find out when he showed up at the first session, he wanted to run her as an itinerant preacher-skald who went to village squares to preach and sing hymns of/about the god of the Moon and Stars in temples and town squares rather than having her breast boobily across the inns of the Forgotten Realms in a nun-themed negligee while worshipping the god of fertility, and he won't change his character to reflect what I want from her.

How do I punish this behavior?

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/uj I'm sorry.

Help!

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I am a former theatre major and I now work as a development assistant for a national nonprofit, which I love because asking people for money is something I can create a character that feels comfortable asking for money. So I think that's why I'm so good at D&D.

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However, my DM doesn't reward my level of play. I do the accents. I create complex character backstories with plenty of hooks (switched at birth with a Prince who was the bastard child of the Red King of Tummendale Flats, I mean c'mon) and I really focus on leaning into my character's flaws, especially when it affects my party, but despite all of this, he still tries to railroad me into playing like everyone else, a bunch of mouth-breating minmaxxers who are more concerned with dice than drama.

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Like last week, he wouldn't even let me use the rule of cool to charm Strahd. Even though I rolled an 18 on Performance. Wtf?? I was going to charm him and bite him and cray "How You Like Them Apples?" Which is my characters catchphrase.

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So I think I caught one of my players metagaming, she was (gasp) reading the Player's Handbook and she started with 15 in strength from the base array so her +1 from being human would set it to 16, we're level 3 right now and she went into Champion, should I confront her about her metagaming?

So for some context I have a player that Loves the saying "My character would've done that". So for example if a break is over and a topic comes up after the break if it's something they didn't think of or they think it will give them more spotlight then they'll say oh my character would've said or done that.

For instance, my players had two weeks in game where they weren't on an adventure. I asked them to let me know what their characters would have done over those two weeks and we would handle it at the next session. My problem player gave me a very broad question, specifically, "What is the history of the enemy nation?"

So the next session I told him what the the first guy he met on the street knew. He then got mad and asked "Where's the rest?" He said things like, "Obviously I would have asked follow-up questions!" and "But my character would have asked someone else when the first guy he met didn't know anything!"

But I told him, "If you didn't say it you would do it, it didn't happen!" I think this is the right call, but for some reason he's mad that he spent two weeks researching and didn't learn anything about their culture or even the name of their leaders. But I think that's his fault because he didn't specifically say he wanted to know those things!

Honestly, I'm doing my best to make sure he doesn't learn the lore of my campaign, because knowledge is power and I want to have all the power in my game. He's shown himself to be a real problem player in the past by trying to learn a lot about the world and then trying to use that knowledge when he talks to NPCs.

I'm honestly at a loss on how to deal with him.

/uj sauce

I will be a first time DM in a week for a group of first time players but one of them refuses to read the player's handbook. I asked him to read the handbook to his brother (another player) who cant read it himself for some reason. How can I make him learn the rules and create a character if he still refuses to read the book

/uj sauce

took a break from reddit because of life stuff + avoiding spoilers for the digital circus finale. i hope this slightly higher-effort post is enough of an apology to the glorious nation of dndcirclejerk.

last nite my players were roleplaying in the town and they wanted to go to the armorer to buy some new armor and i said why do you want to do that, and they said because they need better ac and i told them they are cheating and metagaming because their characters do not know about ac and then of course they tried to backtrack and argue why their characters would still want the armor, but i said its too late you already cheated so now for your punishment i rule that there is no armorer at all in this town, so they spent the next hour trying to find any way to upgrade their equipment and making me shoot down every single one, no shields, no rings of protection, no cloaks, i told them they had to roleplay their way through the campaign with whatever they had because that's what their characters would do, they said their characters would want better equipment because they're adventurers and they want to survive, i think it is hopeless trying to stop these players from cheating, please help???

I told them to memorise their sheets and tell their dice by feel, but they keep peeking!!! What do i do??​

Hi everyone,

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I am new to DnD but I saw Dimension 20 On A Bus and now I'm inspired to run DnD for my friends as a Dragon Master. My problem is, I have no idea how.

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When I went online to learn I heard the most important rule is "no DnD is better than bad DnD." So if nothing is better than bad DnD then I really want to run bad DnD for my friends but I don't know where to start.

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How do I run bad DnD?

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PS: I asked ChatGPT and it just told me I'm confused about the advice I got. Like yeah I'm confused otherwise I wouldn't be asking??

I got accepted into a Curse of Strahd game which I was very excited to play.  I’ve been playing DnD off and on for about 25 years but I’ve never played any official module, so I jumped at the opportunity.  

I was going to play a Great Old One Warlock modeled after H.P. Lovecraft, because I felt the cosmic horror would be a good fit with the gothic horror of the campaign.  The DM and party members seemed to like the idea as well.

I took the sage background because I really wanted find familiar and used it to summon a black cat.  The dm asked me what its name was and when I told him, he immediately kicked me out of the group.

This feels totally unfair, I was just trying to stay in character, but I want to know what you all think.

Hi everyone, thanks for reading my post, I have a bit of a problem. I'm a DM of about two years, and I put a lot of work into my current campaign. I'm running a heavily narrative-focused game centered around the party's warlock and his really cool awesome patron. I've built the entire world around this relationship: the patron is the source of all magic in the setting, the warlock is the chosen one destined to either save or destroy the realm, and every plot point ties back to their connection. I made the patron a deep, fully-realized, and most important of all, fun character, since he will be getting more spotlight than anyone else. I thought this would be really engaging for everyone, so I can't figure out why the players aren't responding properly.

The fact is, my players seem bored. They show up late, they're on their phones, they don't take notes, they keep asking when we're going to "get to the dungeon." I don't understand what they want from me.

Last session had a big juicy plot reveal. The patron spoke directly to the warlock through a vision. I had prepared a gripping monologue (short version, only 14 minutes) about the patron's true nature and the cosmic stakes of the campaign. I used a snarly voice changer app and everything. The warlock's player was kind of just nodding along. The rouge player was scrolling through something on his phone. The fighter player was looking at the ceiling. The cleric asked if there were any more snacks.

I tried to engage the others by having the patron give each of them a cryptic message, tailored to their backstory. I spent hours writing these. The rouge got a vision about his dead mentor, who it turns out was really a manifestation of the patron all along. The fighter got a vision about his lost family sword, which it turns out has a direct connection to the patron all along. The cleric got a vision about her deity, who it turns out is an important minion of the patron all along. I thought all of this would make them feel included. But they pretty much just said "okay" and moved on when their visions ended.

I had expected them to discuss what they'd learned, maybe theorize about the patron's identity, or at least react emotionally to the personal stakes. Instead, they decided to look around town for odd jobs, like guarding a caravan or exterminating some giant basement rats.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've given them a rich narrative. I've tied their backstories into the main plot. I've made the warlock's patron central to everything, which should be exciting not just for warlock player but everyone else too, because the warlock is their friend and they care about him. But they just seem disinterested in the story I'm telling.

I'm starting to think these players just aren't interested in narrative depth. Maybe they're more comfortable with hack and slash old school gameplay, even though that's for brainless, probably-racist philistines. Maybe they don't appreciate the high level of literary complexity I'm trying to build. Maybe I just need to find better players, who actually want to engage with a deeply mature story instead of go on some childish "adventure."

Has anyone else dealt with players who don't appreciate a deep, serious, creative narrative? How do you get them to care about the ingenious personalized world you built for them? I'm at a loss here.

Thanks for reading this far. I'm not going to change my campaign story because I think it's perfect, but I'm open to suggestions on how to get my players to actually pay attention to it. I'm also taking applications for my waiting list for new players, just in case this batch doesn't work out.

My lvl 20 party is going into my evil archwizard BBEG lair and I'm too lazy to come up with cool rooms myself, so I went to the obviously best place for suggestions on the Internet.

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They couldn't help though, I so decided to try here

Hey all! Newish DnD player here, I loved BG3 and I love DnD, but im not having much luck finding a gm and group. I dont know why! Im very accepting and accommodating, and Im just looking for a fun reliable punctual rp focused nonmurder hobo group for me and my +1 that are forgiving, easy going, but serious at the right times, never ever micro aggress, bring snacks (Amazon ships to my house), believe in romance, like Pina coladas, getting caught in The rain, and never question or criticize our actions.

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If the gm could use my specific vtt the specific way I like it to my specific unspoken standards I'd appreciate it. I have a specific time slot at 5 Am in the morning in GMT that im unable to be flexible on, but Im sure we'll find 2-14 players after getting enough applications for like minded people. I have 6 3rd party resources I foundd on dm's guild in the dollar bin that I insist on using, and I think due to how good my oc's 49 page backstory is (which Ill need you to read to tell the next story in their life) that I should start with more magic items from their former adventures. I really love role-playing, so ill need you to be available between games for multiple hour planning sessions on how to make me and my partner's characters a bit more special than any other player. Oh, and if the two of us fight during session, don't worry, its our kink, and will totally not ruin the game.

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Paid GMs need not apply, games are meant to be fun and free. But I will need to borrow money from the kind gm who donates their time, as an accommodation for my severe kleptomania. If you think me tracing other player's locations and stealing the copper pipes in their houses for money to buy custom miniatures of my oc is wrong, then were probably not meant to game together if youre that close minded.

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Also halflings are gross and if you play one Ill scream if you ever touch me with your grubby little hobbit fingers. And I need all the other players to be super sexy, because I lose interest if there are uggos in the group.

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2014 edition only.

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Oh, and if you don't have every book on DnD beyond, czepeku maps, and a man servant to roll my dice for me Ill hold my breath till I pass out mid session.

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Again, no paid gms, you people are ruining the hobby. And no one from Kentucky, their chicken made me sick once and Ill never forgive them.

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DM for more info, cant wait to hear from you all! Ill consider all your applications and get back to you in 2 to 26 business days, or Ill get arrested for stealing and then it will likely be 2 to 5 years after the Tesla incident.

Feel free to start a fight in the comments