Quote from: AsenRG;989610Let me nominate illusionism

But how do you know when it's #Illusionism?

Quote from: AsenRG;989610as worse than the simple, open railroading;).

But #Railroads are incredibly popular!

Quote from: fearsomepirate;989634One of the worst practices is the "Rule of Cool" rubric to let players get away with doing "creative" things that break the game and are nearly impossible to walk back, like letting a player use Create or Destroy Water to dessicate an enemy after a cut. Congratulations, idiot, you have now given a 2nd-level character Power Word: Kill.

But that's the entire foundation of #OSR play!

Quote from: Headless;989640Computers or screens of any type at the table.

But all my #RPG books are on a tablet!

Being late on a regular basis and phones at the table. Pay the fuck attention.

Quote from: Itachi;989605What do you think are the worst practices in RP gaming?

Flipping the table while yelling in a rage goes on my list.

Quote from: DavetheLost;989732See my players. They love a railroad, or as they call it "missions". They are completely lost in a sandbox.

Can they deviate from the mission? Get really creative with how they fulfill the mission? Fail to take the objective and experience actual consequences as a result? Add additional objectives that their CO or High Command never even considered?

Then it probably isn't a railroad. Missions and railroads are not the same thing.

QuoteThey want nothing more than to be handwaved from fight to fight.

OK, maybe they do want a railroad.

Quote from: Crawford Tillinghast;989792My guess illusionism is the practice of presenting four directions to go, and whichever is picked just happens to be the correct route to the Place of Mystery?

Good guess.

Another one that I dislike is fudging dice rolls; feels like cheating to me. I'd prefer a cheating player than a cheating GM, TBH, even if the GM cheats to save the PCs.

This is somewhat related to the problem at hand, i.e., GMs making players choices meaningless.

Quote from: Crawford Tillinghast;989792What are those?  My guess illusionism is the practice of presenting four directions to go, and whichever is picked just happens to be the correct route to the Place of Mystery?

Yeah, that is it; "quantum ogre" is just another name for the same concept (you have only one ogre, but he is behind whichever door the players choose).

EDIT: just found this bit by Justin ALexander, which explains some concepts nicely:

More generally, I think your example of combat with the ogre is conflating illusionism (“I’m going to present you with a false choice; no matter what you choose, it will result in the outcome I predetermined”), dice-fudging (“I’m going to modify the mechanical outcome of this action resolution in order to change the outcome to something I think will be preferable”), and script immunity (“you can’t die, no matter what you choose or how the dice roll”). While people with a particular taste for “let’s see what happens, good or bad” are going to be unified in their dislike for all three of these things, they’re actually very different things. And attempting to conflate all three of them into being a single thing is, IMO, needlessly muddying the waters of understanding.

I think dishonesty in presenting the style of game being played is pretty bad, whether you were told to expect a hack and slash D&D adventure and end up navigating a largely scripted courtly intrigue or vis versa.  The expectations and intentions should be clear.  This is one way in which a ruleset can be a social contract that clarifies the style of game.  But even then the GM should be clear about what their game will be like and the players should be clear about what they want.  I set up a AD&D 1e group once with the intent that it be an old school combat oriented game and the PCs spent the first session talking to a frog*.  I handed them potential combat encounter after combat encounter and they disengaged every time.  Oh well it was fun while it lasted but talk about not getting what you offered.

*Well a Death Slaad posing as a talking frog anyway.  Chaotic neutral what're you gonna do?  Why?  What's wrong with using a Death Slaad as a quest giver? It's looking to spread chaos in the world and what does that better than a pack of murder hobos?

When I was in my late teens and early twenties some of the things that drove me away from RPGs were powergamers and creeps who used the game to act out their barely repressed sadism and sexual misery.

Quote from: Dumarest;989737I don't much care as long as you show up on  time. I hate tardy players who waste the time of the ref and the other players.

[rant]
Yes this.
I've pretty much recently burned out from GMing for a while due to having to chase people and contacting them regularly to ensure they turn up, even then I get people cancelling at the last minute due to various excuses.
I have asked people to not to agree to come if they don't want to and it's always, yeah I'll defo come etc...  until the day itself and it's all excuses.
It just turned into more work chasing people than putting the work into maintaining a campaign.. grrrr..
[/rant]

Anyway, right now I only run some DnD sessions at an open table club twice a month, which doesn't rely on particular people turning up... much less hassle and more fun.

Quote from: Simlasa;989757I can see 'hounding' having its place... such as when trying to escape from a village of mad cultists... but yeah, not for an entire game, every game.

One that's a bit of a pet peeve is GMs who give away too much OOC. Like, they just can't keep from letting you in on their brilliant ideas, even though the PCs would have no ideas. Setting secrets, detailed/accurate maps, villain motives... stuff that should be unknown till the PCs discover it... or don't. Even after the fact I really don't want to hear about the great stuff we missed or almost got.

Oh aye! Definitely... I use it myself a lot to create panic and drama and keep PCs on the back foot (where dramatically appropriate).

I was kinda' referring to a couple of bad GM experiences that I had where (the entire campaign ran like that).

It was the most bizarre game I'd ever played. We all started leaving the game as well. The GM must have there wondered why people would weren't turning up.

Actually looking back, we should have told him, but he was such as nice dude nobody had the guts to hurt his feelings (myself included).

Quote from: Voros;989872When I was in my late teens and early twenties some of the things that drove me away from RPGs were powergamers and creeps who used the game to act out their barely repressed sadism and sexual misery.

God! This as well for me... I can't stand power gamers (I used to be one when I was 15).

When I was GMing Vampire many moons ago I came across a lad who wanted to play a Tzimice. Cool I thought, I love them. However, all he wanted to do was torture humans - He even brought up a few medieval torture books for reference. Needless to say, after a few sessions he wasn't asked back.

I say he's got a few heads in his fridge.

One thing I have occasionally seen in various groups over the years, which I cannot stand, is a bullying practice where one player has his character attack another player character in order to assert a dominance or settle some sort of gaming (or other) grievance. They tend to have power gamer tendencies too - the sort of player who 'rolls up' a character that miraculously has high stats and are combat freaks - so they often have advantage over other characters. They seem to think that the virtual space of the game world makes it a legitimate thing to do in a game.  

If anybody acts like that in games I run, these days, I ask them to reconsider their character actions or leave.

Quote from: Itachi;989605What do you think are the worst practices in RP gaming?

Can we agree railroading is one of them? Or does it have it's place?

Players who have no intention of role-playing, enabled by desperate GMs who settle for crap players at their table.

No call, no shows. I make it a point to ensure my players have my phone number, email address, and Facebook messenger handle. If you can't be bothered to let me know you aren't going to make it when we have agreed to play, then I can't be bothered to run a game for you.

Even worse, is finding out that a portion of the players are going to miss the game because of some event which is known for weeks and the players not bothering to tell me that you all are going to this other event instead of the game. That is just fucking insulting.


Deliberately stupid player character actions because the player doesn't feel like gaming just pisses me off. I get it, sometimes you just don't have it in you to game. Just let me know in advance and it is cool. Don't have your character do stupid childish shit in game, it is nothing more than a temper tantrum by proxy and can really fuck things up for the rest of the players (which is not fair to them).

I think cheating on dice rolls bugs me worse, even more than players not turning up. GMs cancelling at the last minute is second worst. GMs not showing up at all is the worst RPG practice!

Coming to the game completely unprepared, no paper, pencil, dice, character sheet, etc.  I now collect all the character sheets into a folder at the end of each session, just to be sure they are available for the next.

Not paying attention to the game. Never being ready when called upon for your action. "Huh? You're on intitiative 3? But I was a 6"

Bullying other players at the table, including using your character to the threaten theirs.

Explicitly detailing your power gore rape violence fantasies when noone else at teh table wants to hear them.

Constantly interupting the GM with questions that are not relevant to what is happening in the game. e.g. interupting mid-combat to ask how a special ability works for the new character you are rolling up. That is just rude to everyone else at the table.

Prolonged discussions about what happened in your Warhammer game last week.  

Definitely agree with the dislike of over-indulgence in the gore/sadism/sexuality stuff.  That gets extremely uncomfortable real quick for me.  Even in horror games.

Players who seem to take pleasure in finding clever little loopholes in the rules that kinda break the game and then insisting on taking full advantage of them.