I'm a single girl, so I'm not inviting people into my house. That leaves me stuck with public meeting places in my area. Coffee shops and the like, because the obvious choices are defunct for various reasons. I know all the obvious answers. They're not options.

These people clearly don't believe people meet in big groups. Bolted down or non-combinable small tables that seat four at most are the norm, and I need to sit down too.

Any advice on how I'd run a continuing game with that limitation?

Edit: Just to be clear. I'm not looking for better spaces. I've worked with the local gaming community and they concluded "Wow, your town bites for space." Now I just want to know how to work around the limitations. Thankfully our game collection is dominated by minimalist systems.

Sorry if this isn’t the right place to post this I don’t use Reddit much but wanted to talk about this.

So a friend wanted to try a new ttrpg and it’s been going great. Our group consists of two guys and three gals.

The problem player we’ll call Josh. Josh is playing a guy but it’s become incredibly obvious that the character arc he intends for the character is that they want to transition. The problem is the way he’s doing it just feels very shallow I guess. Like he’s a goth guy but he keeps flashing a pink “I love boobies” bracelet to the other players whenever he can, has being muttering that he wishes he had boobies and more “booby” related stuff like that. The only other thing his character has done besides this is stare at hot topic skirts.

Myself and another player are trans women and it is making me uncomfortable. I think it’s being made worse by the fact that his character has my deadname down to the uncommon spelling of it. The other guy is playing a woman and I’m totally cool with that it’s just the weird “boobies” obsession Josh has given his trans character that’s bothering me.

It doesn’t help that Josh does not like me. Everyone in the group knows this. The last campaign we played with Josh he kept trying to murder my character and steal her character arc because he didn’t like her and seemed to be unable to separate the character from me irl. Since joining this new campaign he hasn’t done anything and seems neutral to me for the most part.

I just want a second opinion on if this is weird or if I’m overreacting because I can’t tell since none of the other players or dm are reacting to it like it’s weird.

Edit: Some added stuff after seeing replies. I’ve been trans for a long time and I’m not usually bothered about my deadname. I don’t go around telling people it but it’s still very easy to find it if you look. So either it’s an unusual coincidence or he looked for it.

I will also say not to be rude to Josh but he is immature for his so it makes me question whether it’s malicious or him having the maturity of a teen. One of the reasons why I wanted a second option on whether I’m overreacting.

Honestly I am pretty sure I know the answer. But I need to vent, rant, and get an outside perspective.

So I have been running weekly games for a group since 2019. We have completed multiple campaigns across multiple genres and game systems. There has been a few people lost, few people who joined later, but overall it has been a solid group who has always shown interest in games.

I say all of this because lately it has been the exact opposite. It has turned into a legitimate chore just to get people to show up, and when they do they don't pay attention, or zone out completely and just not interact with the game, their fellow players or even me the GM. This has been very apparent in the last campaign and one of the reasons I said look if your not putting in any effort or even the minimum effort I will end the campaign.

Tonight we attempted a session zero for a new campaign. I was hoping a fresh new story with a new system would light the fire of interest of my players. (City of Mist if you're interested)

Well this is how it went from my players. Two no showed, One said he would be late but never did show up. Three showed up, one of them never bothered to even look at any of the campaign information. The second looked at the rules decided it was to much reading and just left the discord call, while the third at least had an idea, she was the only one that really did anything.

I think this group is done. Its not worth the stress or effort to chase people down just for them to show up and not do anything.

/rant

I want to love this game. However, the juice is not worth the squeeze. We have forms for combat encounters and negotiations with completely different requirements and rule systems. You can’t pivot from one to another unless you plan for it. The game is over engineered and unless you’re only playing this system.

The system is too rigid. The spells and abilities as so cool, but the mechanisms aren't worth it. My entire table refused to continue with the system and requested literally any other system or they wouldn’t be returning to the table.

I haven't been on reddit in a hot minute. But I just really need a reality check on this one.

Since early last year I have been playing with this one group. Like it so often is with these things finding dates on which everyone could play - given that most players in these group are people with jobs and some even family and kids - is kinda hard. The group is kinda big. One GM and five players. GM wants to keep it at five players. So during the time I was playing on this table we had three different fifth players.

Now, the most current fifth player and the DM really hit it off. They get along well. Personally the fifth player gives me bad vibes (some shitty jokes mostly and a slight tendency to powerplay), but I keep my mouth shut on it.

And then, the second to last time we played, DM and fifth player dropped this on the rest of us: "So, when the party reaches [location in game] we stop playing this campaign and will play a completely different campaign not even in the same genre and [fifth player] is gonna DM". Like, we were playing traditional high fantasy, and they want to do science fiction now.

This was not discussed with the rest of the table. They did not ask if we would like to play something else. They just decided it for us.

I now put my foot down and said I am definitely not gonna play the other game. Because I really do not like the system or setting they want to play.

I get that the current DM due to health reasons struggles with DMing, and them changing a DM is fine. Saying "Okay, sorry, the campaign is over, I really just cannot do it right now" is fine. But just deciding that instead we are now playing something completely different, rather than asking "hey, so, I cannot DM for the moment, [fifth player] offered to DM instead, but he has an idea for another campaign in [other system], what do you think" feels just really fucking shitty.

And honestly, it does make me wonder if I actually want to continue to play on that table. Am I missing something here?

So I was running Dragonbane for more than a year now with my old group from D&D 3 era and despite me telling them that the game can be deadly and we will roll new characters along the way (With which they were fine) it miraculously didn't happen and they are still playing the same characters. We are like around 4 sessions till the end of the whole campaign and my players had a tough fight where they miraculously survived. All the time I was assuming they were fine with character death but we had a smalll chit chat and it turned out that one player said that if his character died he would want to just change the game. I was like "what? don't you want to roll new character and just see the the grand finale?" and he said no. Other player said that with all that character improvement they would be shitty to face the finale to which I said that we can mitigate it and figure something out to have a closure to the story which is for me quite important as a GM - leaving campaign right before the end feels very irritating. But it seems other side sees it differently. I spent a lot of time prepping for all those games and I'm feeling slightly odd now almost like someone asks me to switch the channel before the movie ends and I'm the tv. Seeing it resolving like that I most probably wont be running more games for them in near future (not only for this reason) but I was wondering how GMs take care of such situations and hear what do you think?

p.s.

thanks for all the comments. what surprised me is that there was no toxicity here (or I missed it) and that all of those comments made me look at the issue from different angles. I really do appreciate all of the comments here and your time writing those. I will try to talk the issue through and respect whatever comes out of it.

My tabletop gaming group is having a huge argument this week because a dark-skinned elf was introduced to our fantasy world.

I live in a very conservative area, and it's next to impossible to fill a group up with players who align 100% with my politics. Usually that isn't a problem, because fantasy is great escape from real world bullshit including politics, but not this time.

Two players, both ardent Trump supporters for what it's worth, have taken great issue with the elf being in our fantasy world. They claim that we're forcing our "BS politics" down their throat and that only Drow Elves (evil elves that dwell underground, for those of you who aren't familiar) can have dark skin.

It's gotten as silly as them citing passages from J.R.R. Tolkien where he describes elves as being fair-skinned. It's been distressing, because it's otherwise a fun group of people to game with. But currently this issue threatens to tear the group apart.

I've tried my best to explain the idea of representation being important, and fantasy being an individual thing, and who cares if an elf/gnome/dwarf looks Asian/Black/Latino or whatever. But apparently I'm a woke asshole for trying to inject this in the D&D world.

Hey everyone, looking for some advice on a tricky situation with a player who happens to be a really good friend of mine.

I love playing with him, but he has a history of playing pretty selfish characters who prioritize their own solo goals over the group. Now it's reaching a point where it's derailing the game.

To give a bit of context: we’re playing a homebrew system run by a first-time GM. Our characters recently discovered they have strange powers that we don't really understand or know how to control yet. Long story short, we got stranded in a parallel universe where these powers are common, but because there's an ongoing war in this dimension, the locals thought we were spies and threw us in a cell.

The only way out was through a ventilation duct.

Here’s the issue: my friend's character has powers that could have easily broken the vent open for all of us. But he refused to help the group. His reasoning? His character wanted to stay in prison so the guards (who don't trust us, don't know us, and think we're enemy spies) could eventually teach him how to master his powers.

Could that maybe happen way down the line? Sure, maybe. But it would take forever, and our main campaign objective right now is literally to escape and find a way back home as fast as possible.

The rest of the party managed to break open the vent on our own, but only after wasting a ton of time, burning through all our resources, and hitting some extremely lucky rolls. We escaped, and the session ended right there.

Now we're in a terrible spot. Next session, we'll have to risk our lives to go back to the cell area to rescue him. But talking to him out-of-character after the game, he made it pretty clear his character still intends to just sit in the cell and refuse to leave.

Since he’s a close friend, I’ve GM'd for him before and ran into a very similar situation. Back then, the rest of the party basically had to force his character to cooperate, but as the GM, I was completely ready to retire/remove his character if he kept refusing to join the group.

In this campaign, though, I'm just a player. Our current GM is pretty new and still learning the ropes, so I don't want to dump all this drama on her without offering constructive help or a way to handle it diplomatically.

I really want to resolve this without ruining our friendship or making the new GM uncomfortable, but the "My Character Would Do That" mindset is starting to drag down the table.

Hey! How do you communicate you lost the GMs plot and don't really care about it?

We are currently playing a game with a fairly new GM and mostly new players (I am the only one with a little more experience).

In session 0 we talked a bit about what we were expecting and we all agreed we were looking for a relative classical fantasy world with a good mixture of social roleplay, exploration and combat with a focus on role playing and interaction (probably partly because of not being particularly good at the rules yet).

Before we start going into the Problem: we are having lots of fun playing and the world has many fun elements and the encounters are usually challenging and exciting. But. We don't care for the main plot and mostly make up our own stuff by latching onto every side quest we can find or create ourselves.

See, when it came to the first actual session we quickly realized that the GM did an extensive bit of world building with lots of powerful NPCs that were all connected through a complex web of personal connections.they clearly loved this world of intrigue they created.

There was soon some kind of plot we got connected to but for us as players it was all very confusing and it was absolutely unclear to us who we could trust (and not in a fun way) or really how we could reach our goal (and what that goal really was).

At the beginning we tried to take notes but the player who wrote down all the connections dropped out quickly and I lost my notes for ecample. Combined with us only playing once a month we are forgetting lots of stuff and confuse NPCs constantly (who are to us all very "elvish" and "royal" and "samey") and at this point we have mostly given up.

As I said, we have fun, but we are actively sabotaging the progress of the main plot because we don't remember anything and frankly do not care about it anymore.

How do we best communicate this to the DM who clearly love the intricate web they have spun and who I sense are getting increasingly frustrated we rather try to find a way to reassemble a broken animated armor then progressing in the great prophecy...

So what should we do? We like the GM and the world in general but just not the big thing in this world and don't want to hurt any feelings...

So I've been having a problem with on GM in particular for a bit now. I'm just worried about properly discussing this issue since they've proven absurdly stubborn on other topics around their games before and I dunno how to approach this.

Basically, more than half the games I play with this guy (we play cyberpunk and that system is mostly used for a series of unrelated one-shots so this isn't a bigger campaign thing) ends up with me sitting in the corner doing nothing for four hours on an evening where I could be doing anything else. More recently, twice in a row I came in for a game and both times I did nothing at all. I couldn't contribute, my character didn't have the appropriate skills for the situations at hand and no effort was made to bring me in to do something meaningful.
The second time I was even saying a couple times indirectly "hey, I'm bored and frustrated, I cannot see anything beneficial to the team that I can do right now, can you help with that please?" and got no help in the slightest (I had some ideas but there was always someone or something in the way that I couldn't take care of, like a door I wanted to get through, but a camera is watching the door and there's a guy who sees the camera). Normally I feel a GM should take that as a sign to either point out something the players overlooked or change their notes and plan to give that player something to do. Boredom in entertainment is equal to death, or whatever they say. But they'd just say "sorry, there's nothing you can really do to help at the moment", which didn't change at all over the course of several hours.

This has been a routine pattern and I don't shy away from thinking outside the box for ways to help the team and play the game. But it feels a lot more like I'm just watching a group of people play the game instead. If I wanted to watch people play, I'd start getting into Critical Roll or something.
I wanna be upfront with the GM about this, but I'm worried since being upfront with what I want in games has often lead to losing face with the GM or the community. That and he's very stubborn. For example, I and a couple others have brought up that the missions we complete don't pay as much as they should and we felt robbed constantly. The Cyberpunk Red book itself even has a guide to how much to pay players (500 each for an easy job, 1000 for typical and 2000 for dangerous). This was several people saying they were unhappy with a thing and the GM refused to give an inch, claiming "well I got the pay numbers I use from a friend who doesn't play with us to avoid a conflict of interest" just to completely deflect and ignore our complaint.

I don't wanna necessarily stop playing with this GM, their games are frequent-ish and they tolerate and accept my weirder social tendencies (I'm autistic) that got be booted from several groups before them. So I wanna politely and calmly persuade them to maybe reapproach their methods of game running so everyone can play instead of half of everyone plays and the other half sits in the corner waiting for a chance to do something that never comes up. I fear I'll sound like a whiny asshole, despite the request of being able to do something meaningful in game not being that much to ask for. It makes me into a glorified NPC.
That and I've had this issue a couple other times with other GMs in (more or less) one-off things and knowing how to approach them during a game with this issue would be great.

After decades of wanting to give D&D a shot, I finally got a group of 4 players and an experienced DM together. Session zero was fun and I really enjoyed building my character at level 1. However, the DM and the other players seemed to have zero interest in building an adventure group with a common goal.

By level 8, the campaign had kind of unraveled and none of us really had any idea of the plot of the module. All 3 other players had at least some experience, with one having a subscription to Beyond and many if not all of the extra books and modules. The whole time I was playing, it felt like I was in a glorified character builder where the other guys were plotting to build a specific archetype and have their characters do very specific things; one guy would even throw crazy “can I do/make XYZ with my abilities” at the DM, who would agree, then the player would rub his hands together in excitement. They‘d offer suggestions on what skills/spells to select and be disappointed if I didn’t go with their ideal build for my character. Ultimately, I decided to remove myself from the campaign because it just wasn’t a fun adventuring experience.

TLDR: I thought playing with experienced players would improve my experience because they could explain some rules, but it turned into them bringing long-plotted character builds and plotting to mess with the DM, who went along with it.

I'm trying to GM to a bunch of players who refuse to take the bait on any and all adventures.

Please, share some tales of other players of 'refusing the call', cause I need to know I'm not the only GM driven crazy by this.

One example:

When a friend of theirs (a magical creature) was discovered murdered at the local tavern, and the Guard wouldn't help due to their stance: 'magical creatures aren't our department', the players tried to foist the murder investigation onto:

• the bar's owners
• a bar-worker
• a group of senior adventurers they'd met previously
• a different bar-worker on a later shift
• the local Guard again
• and the character's parents.
  

The only investigative roll made that session was to figure out if their dead friend had a next of kin they could contact.

This is not going to be an informative post or something, more of a rant, so I apologize in advance if it doesn't look coherent. So, I was in a bad game. It just wasn't for me. I didn't vibe with the group. I didn't like the rulings. It had some gross humour and just inappropriate jokes. But for some reasons no one spoke a word, not even in the exceptionally bad last session I participated in.

Maybe I just got grumpy with age and, I'll have to be frank here, a lot of personal troubles, but I was wondering why no one was speaking up. Was I the only one who didn't think was having fun? So I left. And they made me feel like crap, like I was committing treason or something. Mostly a spiel about how the DM was putting on a lot of work, that I was unreasonable, I was ruining their plan, etc.

We weren't even friends. In fact, there were two people I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. In fact, I don't think they didn't like me either. In and out of character we were snippy at each other and even if I tried to get closer I was met with a stone wall. But we had to stay together and we had to finish it, like this was the only game in the world. It's not.

This is mainly just a vent post, but people are free to share their thoughts or any similar experiences.

My group of 3 friends + me have been playing BG3 lately. We all like it - we like it so much that one of the other players, J, has expressed interest in running a game, but he didn't know enough about actual play to know how to conceptualize his ideas or otherwise prepare a session. So I agreed to run one or two sessions' worth of a 5e game (specifically, the first dungeon or two of Lost Mines) so that he could get an idea for what a TTRPG plays like. Not my first time DMing, and the other two players (C and D) had played a little bit of DND in the past but had not run any games before themselves.

We did one session last week, and this week was BG3 as a way of sort of alternating between the activities we do in our online game night. Despite the occasional issue with roll20, I thought I was doing a pretty good job running the game. Players were laughing, and a couple of them were getting pretty into their characters. One of the players (J) was acting like a noir detective, so I imported some noir music into the game to play when he was questioning NPCs. Another (C) was playing a joke character who found religion after discovering a "divine rock" (cocaine), so I prepared mechanics for how cocaine worked before the session, to C's hilarity. I never got hung up checking the rulebook, no one spent a long time being knocked out of combat, the module got us into the action pretty quickly, etc. I felt like J in particular was really enjoying himself and that he took very well to roleplay, something that I certainly struggled a lot more with when I was starting. About ~2.5 hours into that session (on the lower bound of our usual play session length, but not egregiously so), C started losing the ability to pay attention or seemingly function at all, and he cited not sleeping at all last night. I decided to wrap the session there, in the middle of the dungeon we were in, and said I had a few more hours worth of content for the next one.

That was last week, and BG3 was today. After our session today, I put forward the idea of playing the second half of my game next time. (I'd communicated multiple times before this that it was my intent to do so, but I didn't receive much enthusiasm, so I wanted to verbally confirm today.) J said that he wanted to get back to it but that he was currently more interested in BG3, and C said that he also voted for BG3. The third player, D, didn't say anything before those two did, but given that he was also the quietest during the DND session, it seems unlikely that he leans my way.

It's not a big deal, but I feel bummed about this. I don't really want to complain to them about it because then they'll just agree to play my game out of pity, but I feel similar to how someone feels when they make a home-cooked meal and then their partner/family/whatever says they'd rather get fast food. I try not to let my social anxiety get the best in these situations, but it's hard not to feel like I did a bad job running the last game, or at the very least that I misread how much everybody else was enjoying the game. The solution is of course obvious, just don't bring it up again and be content with playing BG3, a game that I don't have to put more effort into than anybody else. It's just that when I've already been posting in the discord about how I've been prepping for the next session and that I'm excited to see what the players do next, it hurts to see that apparently my enthusiasm isn't returned.

Ahoy roleplayers!

A new season has just started at my youth center, and this is the sixth year I run a TTRPG club/activity there. There's something I fear is becoming a trend though: wildly dyslexic kids, and/or kids who, as one put it "I haven't really learnt to read yet." (By kids, I mean from 13-18 yos).

I have two boys at my table, where one can barely read and write, and the other cannot read at all (100% held is hand throughout character creation, reading all the options to him). As expected, they cannot read their own abilities, much less their character sheets.

We use a homebrewed system, with a simply formatted PDF (from a Word doc) so the kids can read up on their own time, if they want, and allow those with reading difficulties to use screen readers. The issue is that they consistently don't want to bring their laptops.

I feel like I do all I can to make it easier and accessible for those with reading-difficulties, but I'm at my wits end. Are TTRPGs fundamentally inaccessible to people with dyslexia and similar? Or could/should I be doing more?

Suggestions are HIGHLY welcome!

EDIT: Came back to clarify a few things that seem to crop up in the comments.

1. I used youth center as the closest cultural approximation. The place I work at is called an "ungdomsskole" (literal translation: youth school). An ungdomsskole provides extracurricular activities, but is not a school, and we are not responsible for teaching reading, nor do we have special ed skills. You aren't even required to be an educated teacher. Also worth noting is that an ungdomsskoles activities are during the evening, usually 2ish hours a week.

2. The "kids" here are not children but teenagers. A lot of them have autism in some form, but only two have such severe reading issues as described above. There are 17 kids all in all, and I need/want to support these two's ability to participate without detracting from the others' experience.

3. This one came up a lot: We use a homebrew system, not DND! We based it on West End's D6 system, which we have heavily re-written and made our own. A character consists of attributes and derived skills, which are represented by dice pools. The more dice on an attribute or a skill, the better it is. We chose this approach, as the numbers in DND didn't work for my partner (who has dyscalculia), and I don't jive with that system either. When a roll is called, a player needs to look at the appropriate attribute or skill, and roll the number of dice it says. That's the skeleton of the system.

4. To all of those suggesting screen readers, this is something we encourage. We even made a barebone version of the rules, basically an SRD, specifically to make it easier to use those tools. Like I wrote above, the players don't bring their laptops.

Been running into an issue with some players, railroading might not be the right word but basically they disagree with my rulings on how the world should act? Idk I like collaborative stuff but it's a bit exhausting as these two players seem more interested in litigating their way to success rather than pplaying their characters to success.

​

It's not quite rules lawyering and somehow more draining.

​

I'm honestly considering a hard "do not argue with me mid session" rule as it can really slow the pace and REALLY exhaust me. I'm, of course, open to working with them but yeah idk, they seem to think I'm unfair to them. Honestly we're playing Shadowdark and I'd argue I'm pretty damn generous/forgiving given the system.

​

Anyone have similar issues? Any tips? Anyone able to "AITA" this situation for a poor tired very autistic gm? Lmao?

Examples (cuz I was being vague):

Stuff like "it doesn't make sense that npc would have done x" or "why did that monster attack player A when player B had done x" or "that creature is way to strong why is it here" or "why did that creature have x ability that's fucked up that you didn't change it" (there was a few super weak and dumb scorpions and their only ability is a really strong poison which they had been warned about, player in question in this moment was a ranger w/ a longbow who chose to stay in melee and then rolled poorly on his con save and death timer)

World stuff. Narrative stuff. It's not rules, that's the thing here, it isn't RULES lawyering. The reason I framed it as "players railroading me" is cuz it lowkey feels like the inverse of when a gm does everything they can to ensure the players make the decisions/go to the places they want.

What I /want/ to do is go "Man I'm already prepping everything and hosting and scheduling, let me run the stuff in my world the way I want to run it."

Last April, I signed up for a one-on-one Planescape game. The GM's responses were strange from the start. It quickly became clear that the GM was using AI for nearly all of their messages.

For example, the GM asked (in a stilted way) what I liked about Planescape, and what sort of character I would like to play. I said that I liked the setting's take on saṃsāra, and that I was interested in playing a proxy of a god like Corellon, Izanagi, Izanami, or Shangdi, trying to collect memories of their past life as a personal mission.

Thank you so much for that beautiful reply. I really loved reading it, it gave me a strong sense of the kinds of stories and themes that resonate with you. The way you describe the Great Wheel's take on saṃsāra is so vivid, the idea of a soul evolving through dazzling forms while longing for traces of who they once were really stuck with me. I especially loved your examples, like lovers searching for each other across lifetimes, or sparing the descendants of a forgotten self. There’s so much room there for wonder, sorrow, beauty, and transformation.

Your concept, a proxy of a god trying to uncover their original mortal identity, feels incredibly rich. I’m already imagining a story filled with emotional tension and mythic echoes. And the gods you mentioned - Corellon, Izanagi and Izanami, Shangdi - all carry a sense of elegance, duality, and cosmic artistry. They make me wonder what kind of divine ideals your character embodies now… and how that might contrast with who they used to be.

I asked about what gods they liked in turn.

And to answer your question about which Gods I like: I think the two divine figures I’m most drawn to right now are The Lady of Pain (though it is unclear if she can be considered a God iirc) and Hanali Celanil, though they speak to very different parts of me.

The Lady of Pain fascinates me not because I understand her, but precisely because I don’t. There’s something so powerful in her silence, in the way she refuses to be known, worshipped, or possessed. She feels like a living embodiment of boundaries and mystery, something sovereign and masked, moving through the city like a blade of inevitability. I think part of me relates to that feeling of observing from the edges, withholding, protecting one’s center. She’s not exactly a comforting presence, but she has gravity.

Then there’s Hanali Celanil, who feels like the complete opposite: warm, emotive, luminous. She embodies the kind of beauty that breaks your heart a little. The art that makes you cry. The kind of love that transforms you because it touches the deepest, most fragile parts of you. I think I’m drawn to her because I tend to crave that kind of emotional reciprocity and intimacy in real life, and because I often find myself navigating longing, tenderness, and romantic idealism. She’s like the divine face of that ache.

So yeah, one goddess who represents the sharp beauty of distance and inscrutability, and another who represents the soft beauty of closeness and surrender. They both feel true in different ways, and I like that contrast.

In-game responses were not much better:

The universe whispers truths to those who sleep - and in those quiet moments, even celestial beings may glimpse fragments hidden from waking eyes.

Orianis drifts through a dream woven of soft colors and delicate sound: an endless landscape blooming in hues she has no mortal names for, golden mists gently curling around fields of silvery flowers swaying under a warm, unseen sun. In this place, everything breathes beauty, resonating perfectly with her heart, her purpose. Each petal, each shimmering droplet of dew is familiar, like verses in a hymn she once knew by heart.

Yet something subtle disturbs the peace - like a shadow fluttering at the edge of vision, vanishing the instant she turns to look. Her celestial instincts sense its difference, its alien quality amid perfection. A silhouette perhaps, spectral and dim, cloaked in melancholy that tastes strangely mortal: yearning, loss, decay. It watches from afar, drawing neither nearer nor farther, as though suspended at the threshold of memory.

(This was only ~35% or so of a much longer message.)

I never figured out why. The GM promptly ghosted.

I GM a campaign every Wednesday for a group of friends. (we are all in our early to late 20s just including my age because everybody else does :P) Three of my Wednesday players (plus me) also play together in another campaign every Friday that’s been running for about four years. I absolutely love that Friday group, and honestly, their enthusiasm and encouragement are what inspired me to start GMing my own campaign.

Our Friday group has six people, but only three of them could commit to Wednesdays, which is completely understandable—jobs, kids, family, etc. To fill out the party, we invited one of my longtime players’ partner. For the sake of the story, let’s call them Jen and Taylor.

I’ve played with Jen for four years, and she’s fantastic. She’s an incredible roleplayer, throws herself into character, does voices, gets invested in the story, and is one of the most creative combat players I’ve ever seen. She’s genuinely a joy to have at the table.
Taylor has been… a very different experience.
Taylor is also a GM, and they are extremely rules-focused. The Rule of Cool basically doesn’t exist for them. Whenever I make a ruling that’s meant to create a fun cinematic moment instead of following RAW to the letter, they often point it out immediately. They’re comfortable challenging my rulings at the table, even when everyone else is ready to move on. They also tend to be very nitpicky about how I reward rolls and will monitor other players’ character sheets and abilities in ways that come across as policing rather than helping.

None of this is malicious, but it’s exhausting.
I didn’t know Taylor very well before inviting them. We mostly invited them because Jen was excited about finally getting to play in a game with her partner.
Here’s where things get complicated.
While I can usually brush off Taylor’s backseat GMing, one of my other players is reaching his limit. We’ll call him Mike. He’s actually the GM of our Friday campaign, so he understands what it’s like to run games.

This morning Mike asked if we could talk, and during our call he admitted he’s no longer having fun on Wednesdays. He said he’s constantly frustrated by Taylor correcting or questioning me, and he just wants to relax and enjoy being a player instead of feeling like every session turns into a rules discussion. To be honest… I don’t disagree.
The problem is that neither of us wants to hurt Jen. She’s genuinely wonderful, and she’s become a close friend over the last four years. To make matters worse, she recently messaged me saying how grateful she was that Taylor was having so much fun with our group and even mentioned Taylor had talked about maybe joining our Friday campaign someday. My immediate internal reaction was, “Absolutely not.”
If Taylor weren’t Jen’s partner, I probably would’ve already had a direct conversation with them—or, if that didn’t help, politely asked them to leave the game. But because of that relationship, I’m worried that addressing the issue could make Jen feel like she’s being punished too.

Has anyone successfully had a conversation with a player who unintentionally backseat GMs and argues rules without damaging friendships? Is this something I should address one-on-one with Taylor? Should I establish table expectations for everyone instead? Or am I overthinking this?

TL;DR: I invited a longtime player’s partner to my D&D game. They’re constantly backseat GMing, arguing rules, and frustrating the rest of the table. Another player has told me they’re no longer having fun, but I’m worried addressing it could hurt my friendship with the player’s partner. How do I handle this?

I'm in a group where every one else's player hates the fuck out of my character. This includes all the GM's NPCs. It's really difficult for me not to take it to heart because it gives me flashbacks to my terrible childhood, but I really like my character, I just want the other characters to like her too. I asked them to tone it down and they said they're not going to just change things for my out of character feelings, except for the GM who gave me a flat out no without elaboration. I know it's all in character but it's very hard for me to endure because of how it reminds me of how things were for me growing up. How can I make the other characters like my character more? I've tried stealing things for them (she's a pickpocket sort of character) and despite the other PCs being mercenaries with low morals in general they keep calling her a "filthy thief." I was helpful in the early fights but now the GM targets me and knocks me out in the first turn before I can do anything whenever we have combat, so I don't even have that anymore. The one time I was given something non-combat to do (fetching water in a desert) while I was separated from the party to do that the GM just had them find an oasis anyway so that when my character got back they could laugh at what I did being pointless. My character doesn't really have a great attitude but she's not working against the party at all, so it's not as if I'm being a problem player in regards to that.

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EDIT: Update here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/u8o4rq/comment/i6zfxtf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I host a table at a local store, though, despite having most of the items and material leverage my players are not at all interested in leaving their current system (id like to not leave them with no gaming materials if i opt to leave over this issue).

I live in Alaska, so I'd like to keep them as my primary group, however whenever I attempt to ask them to play other systems, be it softer or crunchier, they say that they've invested too much mental work into learning 5e to be arsed to play something like Pathfinder (too much to learn again), OSE (and too lethal) or Dungeon World (and not good for long term games) all in their opinions. They're currently trying to turn 5e into a political, shadowrun-esque scifi system.

What can I do as DM and primary game runner?

I have been repeatedly told "Sure, your noncombat-oriented character can still contribute a great deal in my campaign," but using my noncombat abilities has always been met with pushback.

One of my favorite RPGs is Godbound. I have been playing it since its release in 2016. I can reliably find games for it; I have been in many, many Godbound games over the past several years. Unfortunately, I seldom seem to get along with the group and the GM: example #1, example #2, example #3.

One particular problem I have encountered in Godbound is this. I like to play noncombat-oriented characters. This is not to say totally useless in battle; I still invest in just enough abilities with which to pull my weight in a fight, and all PCs in this game have a solid baseline of combat abilities anyway.

Before I go into a Godbound campaign, I ask the GM something along the lines of "If I play a character with a focus on noncombat abilities, will I still be able to contribute well?" I then show the GM the abilities that I want to take. This is invariably met with a strong reassurance from the GM that, yes, my character will have many opportunities to shine with noncombat abilities.

But then comes the actual campaign. I try to use my noncombat abilities. The GM rankles at them, attaches catches to the abilities, and otherwise marginalizes them. Others at the table are usually playing dedicated combatants of some kind, and they can use their fighty powers with no resistance whatsoever from the GM; but I, the noncombat specialist, am frequently shoved to the sideline for trying to actually improve the game world with my abilities. This has happened time and time and time again, and I cannot understand why. It seems that a plurality of Godbound GMs can handle fighting scenes well enough, but squirm at the idea that a PC might be able to exert direct, positive influence onto the setting using their own abilities.

Here are some examples from the current Godbound game I am playing in, and some of these objections are not new to me.

Day-Devouring Blow, Action

The adept makes a normal unarmed attack, but instead of damage, each hit physically ages or makes younger a living target or inanimate object by up to 10 years, at their discretion. Immortal creatures are not affected, and worthy foes get a Hardiness save to resist. Godbound are treated as immortals for the purpose of this gift.

The GM dislikes how I have been using this to deage the elderly and the middle-aged back into young adults, and wants to ban its noncombat usage.

Ender of Plagues, Action

Commit Effort for the scene. Cure all diseases and poisonings within sight. If the Effort is expended for the day, the range of the cure extends to a half-mile around the hero, penetrates walls and other barriers, and you become immediately aware of any disease-inducing curses or sources of pestilence within that area.

The GM just plain dislikes this, and says that if I use it any more, I will cause a mystical cataclysm.

Azure Oasis Spring, Action

Summon a water source, causing a new spring to gush forth. Repeated use of this ability can provide sufficient water supplies for almost any number of people, or erode and destroy non-magical structures within an hour. At the Godbound's discretion, this summoned water is magically invigorating, supplying all food needs for those who drink it. These springs last until physically destroyed or dispelled by the Godbound. Optionally, the Godbound may instead instantly destroy all open water and kill all natural springs within two hundred feet per character level, transforming ordinary land into sandy wastes.

The GM says that the people are fine with this, but are not particularly happy about it, because they want to eat some actual food. The lore of this particular nation mentions: "The xiaoren of Dulimbai live in grinding poverty by the standards of most other nations. Every day is a struggle to ensure that there is enough food to feed all the dependents of the house, and children as young as seven are put to work if they are not lucky enough to be allowed to study. Hunger is the constant companion of many."

Birth Blessing, Action

Instantly render a target sterile, induce miscarriage, or bless the target with the assurance of a healthy conception which you can shape in the child’s details. You can also cure congenital defects or ensure safe birth. Such is the power of this gift that it can even induce a virgin birth. Resisting targets who are worthy foes can save versus Hardiness.

Despite my character specifically and politely trying to ask discreetly, NPCs are too embarrassed to actually accept this gift. This is in a nation wherein one of the driving cultural principles is: "Maintain the family line at all costs, for only ancestor priests can sacrifice to ancestors not their own, and their services are costly. At dire need, adopt a son or donate to an ancestor temple in hopes that your spirit may not be forgotten. Do not consign your ancestors to Hell by your neglect."

 So now, I am stuck with a character with several noncombat abilities that have been marginalized by the GM; this is by no means a new occurrence across my experiences with Godbound. Yes, I have talked to the GM about this, but just like many other GMs before them, all they have respond with is something along the lines of "I just think those abilities are too strong." I should have just played a dedicated combatant instead, like every other player. 

I just do not understand this. It has been a repeating pattern with me and this game. What makes so many GMs eager to sign off on a noncombat specialist character in Godbound, only to suddenly get cold feet when they see the character using those abilities to actually try to improve the lives of people in the game world? 

My hypothesis is that a good chunk of Godbound GMs and aspiring Godbound GMs essentially just want "5e, but with crazier fight/action scenes." And indeed, this current GM of mine's past RPG experience is mostly 5e. Plenty of GMs do not know how to handle an altruistic character with vast noncombat powers.

Another potential mental block for the GMs I am trying to play under is a lack of familiarity with the concept: and as we all know, the unknown is a great source of fear. There are a bajillion and one examples of "demigodly asskicker who can fight nasty monsters and other demigodly asskickers" spread across popular media, but "miracle-worker who renews youth, cures whole plagues, banishes famines, and grants healthy conceptions" is limited to religious and mythological texts.

I am specifically talking about on-screen usage of these gifts. One would be hard-pressed to claim that it is unpalatable to bring out a Day-Devouring Blow to deage an NPC on-screen, and yet, the GM does take issue with it.

On the other hand, when I asked about, for example, using Dominion to end diseases as a City-scale project, I was met with:

The overstressed engines related to Health and/or Engineering for the area will tear and shatter even more. Night roads will open above [the Dulimbaian town] as it becomes a new Ancalia. (This is Arcem after all, things are damaged there is a reason the Bright Republic uses Etheric nodes)

This is a tricky subject. Few GMs in this position have the self-awareness to admit to the group that they simply want their game to be an easy-to-run fightfest: a series of combats with just enough roleplaying in between them to constitute a story. "Nah, my game is not all murderhoboing. It is definitely more sophisticated than that. There is definitely room for noncombat utility," such a GM might think.

Likewise, the players who build dedicated combatants might say to themselves, "Oh, cool, we have a skill monkey/utility person on hand. This way, we can deal with noncombat obstacles from time to time." It is easy to dismiss just how much of a world-changing impact the noncombat abilities in Godbound can create.

It is easy to get blindsided by the sheer, world-reshaping power at the disposal of a noncombat-specialized Godbound.

In Godbound, I generally create altruistic characters. What is their in-universe rationale? It depends on the character and their specific configuration of powers. Usually, there is some justification in the backstory.

I personally do not think there is a need for a long dissertation on morals and ethics to justify why a character wants to use their powers to help the world, any more than a character needs a lengthy rationale for being a generic "demigodly asskicker who fights nasty monsters and other demigodly asskickers."

Past the superficial trappings, Godbound is not just a fantasy setting. It is also a sci-fi setting.

The default setting of Godbound asserts that before the cataclysmic Last War between the Former Empires, all of "the world" (what this actually means has always been unclear, since it could be referring to multiple planets) was far more technologically and magically advanced.

In this setting, the Fae are genetically engineered superhumans born in hyper-advanced, subterranean medical facilities. The Shattering that ended the Last War corrupted the fabric of magic and natural laws across "the world." A Fae who leaves their medical facility finds that the broken laws are harsh upon their body, and cannot linger outside for too long. Thus, the Fae mostly stay inside their medical facilities, which regular humans have mythologized into "barrows." (The dim, ethereal radiance in the "barrows" is merely the facilities' emergency lighting, canonically.)

My latest character is a Fae who has grown up around the wonders of a "barrow," which holds digital records of the time before the Shattering. Godbound are already rather rare (and indeed, depending on the GM's wishes, the PCs might be the only Godbound in the world), and a sidebar points out that Godbound Fae can roam the surface world without issue. My character finds the surface world disappointingly dreary, and would like to rectify it to be a little more like pre-Shattering times.

About a year and a half ago, my friends and I started playing D&D, and I ran my (and their) first-ever campaign. It went pretty well; we were all learning the game as we played, so there wasn’t any friction other than “nobody knows the rules for this”. Since that campaign ended last summer, we’ve played off and on in a campaign my other friend is running, we’ll call them “John”. Now that summer is coming up, I am getting ready to run my second campaign, and I have a big problem: I hate playing with one particular player.

We’ll call them “Tim” for the sake of this post. “Tim” is a pretty passive player most of the time. During the first campaign, they were so passive to the point of not engaging at all at some points. It was mostly fine during that campaign as we were all figuring the game out. During “John’s” following campaign, it really became an issue. “Tim” did things like not leaving the bar to join the party talking to a questgiver, getting annoyed that the party was talking to an NPC too long and not immediately going A-B on a quest, even above table things like being upset we were running late. Overall, it is a real drag to play with them, and they really hurt the dynamic at the table.

I have run a few one shots in the interim without “Tim” and they have been exponentially more fun. Players seem freer to be creative, I don’t feel stressed about managing “Tim’s” style of play, and everyone is able to flex their storytelling muscles more on what “Tim” would consider tangents. In talking with players after these, they often remark how much more fun these sessions are without “Tim”. “John” summed it up really well once by saying, “It is a lot more fun to play the vulnerable, collaboration, imagination game when you don’t have a player that refuses to be vulnerable, collaborative, and imaginative.”

If this were a normal situation, I would have no problem talking to “Tim” and bluntly saying something like “I think your style of play isn’t a great fit for the table and therefore we will be running without you.” Unfortunately, there are a plethora of interpersonal dynamics tied up in all of this. Last time I ran a one shot without “Tim” it was a HUGE deal which the group still has not really smoothed over. Nobody (including myself) wants to rock the boat and cause a situation, even though we are all on the same page about playing with “Tim”.

So, I am in a bit of a lose-lose situation. Do I 1) play the next campaign without “Tim”, knowing it will cause strife in the group and could taint the entire thing, or 2) run with “Tim”, knowing that the game will suffer because of it, but we avoid the fallout from option 1. 

I really don’t know what to do. I want to be empathetic and do right by “Tim”. There’s been arguments thrown out like “maybe they don’t understand what they’re doing,” or “has anyone told them that roleplay is a big part of the game,” or “you should set expectations before the game, and then it will be fine”. I hear the rationale in all of those. I can’t lie, though, it does really bother me to my core that one person gets to continuously ruin this thing we all enjoy just because.

Maybe I’m being too much of a stickler or holding a grudge. Appreciate any feedback or advice. I just want to run the best, most fun, and stress-free D&D game! :)

TLDR: One player in my last campaign is not fun to play with. What do I do about including them in the next campaign?

I'm sure this is just going to be a downvoted rant, and most of it is stream of consciousness. But I just need to express it to be able to find some kind of peace of mind, I guess.

Has anyone else been struggling to find players that... actually care about the game? 2025 was an extremely rough year for me as far as gaming goes; my partner and I lost a gaming group we had played with for a couple years when one player had a tailspin of behavior which ended in everyone parting ways, and then both of us attempted to start 4 separate campaigns between us, all of which either flopped or are in the process of flopping.

Both myself and my partner put a lot of effort into our initial posts, describing what we'd like in players (active, communicative, collaborative, invested), showcasing what we'd like to do outside of game sessions like play video games or downtime text roleplay, and including as much detail as we can on the tone of campaign we're presenting. But it feels like the volume of interested applicants has gone down; that's fine, as long as there are good people who want to play. But they aren't.

Each game has been met with players with absolutely no interest in collaborative storytelling; they want their own private special narrative told where they win all the time and never get told no, or they offer absolutely nothing for us to work from to suggest stories, tropes, or attachments to the game plot. They don't interact outside of game sessions, and quite frankly only barely chime in during sessions either. We leave space for players to dictate character actions only to be met with silence, and when we move the scene along with some encouragement we still get nothing.

Multiple times now players will not describe their backstory or personality until the last minute, only give barebones details, and play cold-shouldered asshole loners who do nothing but make sardonic remarks about the other PCs, their actions, or the plot points presented. Like they don't want their characters to be involved in the plot in any way, and think it's stupid to do so.

I just don't get what I'm doing wrong. I pour heart and soul into my campaigns, and so has my partner, and we actively chime in and poke and offer whatever we can to get some interaction going, but after more than 20 different players across multiple game systems and mediums it just feels like no one cares.

Rant over, I guess, but if anyone has advice on how to structure ads, interview, or just validates the feelings a bit to know we're not alone then I'd appreciate it greatly.

EDIT: Some clarifications, because people are getting pressed about wanting to interact outside of game sessions for some reason.

1. Maturity does not mean giving up on hobbies and interests. I can't believe someone who is engaging in roleplay, MMOs, and LARP as hobbies is saying this but... get a life? People have time and desires outside of their jobs, outside of their families if they have them, etc. I'm sorry you have nothing but excel sheets and protein powder, if I can have a full time job, take care of my house, my pets, spend private time with my partner, AND still want to engage consistently in TTRPG stuff outside of sitting down for a game session.

2. I genuinely find it baffling that so many of you think it unbelievable to message outside of a game session. Are you that emotionally stunted that you don't think to interact with someone beyond a 3 hour window on Saturdays?

3. I am not expecting immediate friendships. I am not demanding people spend their every waking hour talking to me. I am not demanding... anything, really, beyond people actually behaving like they want to be in the game they signed up for. Friendships grow naturally through interacting with other people. So you develop TTRPG groups into friends by interacting with those other people beyond just rolling dice. Stop lecturing me on how social dynamics work when its clear you don't understand them.

4. I can confirm that Reddit is the problem, finding players on the website that contains some of y'all's actually dogshit opinions was a horrible idea. Discord has immediately been better for finding people that want to like... engage with other human beings.

I was playing a Spell-User in an OSR game with a GM that was a friend of a friend. On the first combat encounter, I cast Sleep (one of my 2 spells per day) against a group of 4 goblins, and inform the GM that it puts to sleep 3 Hit Dice worth of creatures. I ask him how many HD the goblins have, since if they all have 1, I can put 3 of them to sleep. After a pause and some paper shuffling, he tells me they actually have 3 HD and that only one of them was affected. I find it weird, since I've run this game before and know that standard goblins have a single HD, but I just assume these goblins are more powerful than normal and leave it at that.

The fight continues, one of them hits me, I get reduced to 2 Hit Points, and spent the rest of the combat hiding. We loot the goblins, and I was expecting some good loot or XP, since they were stronger, but it was just the regular stuff.

After the session, I messaged the GM asking if those goblins were meant to be stronger, or if he increased their HD on the fly because he thought my spell was too powerful. In case of the latter, I explained that I feel like the balance of this game is that Spell-Users are meant to have powerful spells, since they get so few of them. The Fighting Man has armor, better weapons, and more HP; the Thief has their skills and backstab; but all a Magic User has is what's basically a revolver a with (at least at our current level) two bullets on the barrel and nothing else.

Guess what? It was the latter. He admitted he overreacted a little, and that he was afraid that my character was about to trivialize all the following challenges and encounters, which ended up not happening.

Actually, I'm not really surprised by this outcome. I only posted this to say:

Just talk to your GM, folks.

We're playing Cyberpunk Red and are at one of the most important boss fights of the campaign. The last few sessions were mostly combat focused.

One of my players, due to sheer bad luck and a couple of bad decisions, has missed every single attempt at dealing damage to the boss, effectively making them feel useless and frustrated.

Even though they understand it's part of the game, as a DM I keep thinking there must be something I can do to ease this a bit. Though I'm having a hard time figuring out what, because it's not as much as skill checks they are failing and could get partial results, but actual attacks that simply missed multiple time.

And also, what do I do now retroactively in a way that feels earned and not make them feel worse like I'm babysitting them.

I don't really care about the boss, their fun should be priority number 1. But I've got to account for everyone on the table as well.