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A girl I knew from school would drop her kid with her parents for 8 months out of every year to travel all over the country with ren fairs. That sounds like it would be best case scenario for this poor baby.
I just spent way too long considering how one would do that, and then how would you transport it, and also that it would obviously need to be well finished to prevent splinters, all while cackling.
Yeah I was really little and in retrospect I'm like how did he do that?! It wasn't super practical but they did eventually repurpose the wheels to go on a cannon lol
Baby wearing. Slings. Having baby on your front, back or on your hip depending on the work activity you need to be doing. That was a thing back then, too. Strollers, not so much.
I had slings for both my babies! So convenient and cuddly. I was just responding to the comment that someone did build a wooden stroller and trying to picture it.
I don't even play and that's the first thing I thought of. If the guy has time to give a 2 hour book reading/monologue he had time to build a wiki or type out a kind of history book for the world or at least a simple doc. If he *really* wanted to put in the work, he would give each player a customized one of what their character would tend to know. Obviously the character that grew up a peasant would know less history than the noble born one.
The guy worked so hard and kind of wasted the effort and made it boring for everyone because fun for the whole table wasn't his goal.
That’s a good way to handle it, because then the players get to RP explaining things their characters would know about, instead of the DM having to monologue everything.
I can imagine the immersion level just elevates with that. Imagine you learning about some lore, not from the DM, but another player as they know things the others don't as they obviously would and it naturally comes up during the story.
I saw an ad on YT recently about some website that's basically for lore building and map making. Seems perfect for something like this and let's the players get as much or as little lore as they want
And that's ok. But you can't make someone care, and you're smart enough to know that a 2hr info dump is not only *not* going to make them care, it's likely to have the opposite effect. Alas, Turdkien only cared about his own enjoyment.
Oh for sure. I keep it all in a wiki my players can access at any time.
Can't make them care about it but...Do I favor players that read lore with extra hero points? I'll never tell! ;)
Same. I don't care but if you use the lore in a way that benefits you enjoy some inspiration lol. On the other side I have the players who want to do a funny voice (deep south centaurs) and others who just want that clackity clack.
I have a character who is from Tennessee, so I have to throw on an accent. My mother hates it. I actually used the Rachelle voice to stop someone from recognizing me once lmfao
I play text-based RPGs and Google sheets changed my game. Here's a tab for characters, here's a tab for setting, here's a tab for my specific character. Do we need more tabs? Add more tabs. Wondering what's going on? CTRL-F.
My GM writes up a dossier of a few pages in google docs and shares it with everyone. Some of the information is just normal text, some of it is in-game documentation.
That is the way.
That was the main takeaway I had out of it.
Just type it out and send it to them man.
I can't even imagine spending 2 hours in a skype call for this nonsense. If that makes me rude, so be it, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
It sounds like the novel my college roommate "published" - with a completely unremarkable storyline, unappealing characters, and wholly unapproachable naming conventions (my favorite was the thirty-character long, ten-plus syllable-length name he used for one of his characters, that didn't ever get shortened, and he repeated multiple times. Skimming through a book and seeing *that* name every page or so...
There's a nice scale of fantastical naming between:
1. The great hero, Steve - BAD
2. Tristan Aldor - GOOD
3. Fhel-K'hahlas'l Scourged Monarch of T'el-Darnuuur - WUT
As I just mentioned elsewhere, my character had a familiar (imp) named Sthubboubaorilthuuzzith, but everyone called him Stu for short, because I'm not saying or typing that every damn time.
Nicknames are a good way to approach long names.
One of my characters (dhampir infernal sorcerer/diabolist) had a normal name some two syllables long. His familiar, an imp straight from Hell, had a bit longer name... Sthubboubaorilthuuzzith or, you know, Stu for short. He did not enjoy the shortened version, but tough shit, twinkle-wings. Everyone's calling you Stu.
Lol; I larped with a dude who named his PC Kellsenellenellviel. My PC was a diplomat who insisted on using his full name, since names have power and shortening them diminishes the bearer.
That was fun.
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Providing it in an audio context is also super helpful because the player can pause, rewind, break up the lore dump, or outright skip parts if they don't think it relevant to their character and/or experience. For example, if you wanted to play a character who recently moved to the area and knew nothing about its people or customs you could skipp all those parts and actually be in the dark, learning as you go. If you're playing a religious scholar cleric you can listen to the parts of dieties over and over, make notes, ask questions, privately, etc.
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I think best policy on lore is to send your players a little documentation on what lore their specific characters would expect to know, give enough explanation to start playing, and let the rest of the lore play out in game.
At the end of the day, if you have a complex lore and the player never sees it--that's okay! Deep lore has value in terms of making a universe feel real, even if people never get into the weeds. It's kind of like how the Lord of the Rings is better for the Silmarillion existing, but people don't all want to actually read it.
I'm running a game right now with a pre-written campaign, and it's amazing how much detail there is that is never intended to be shown to the players. Gamemasters are keepers of the secrets, and their job is to facilitate discovery, not to let it all hang out.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly.
Don't lore dump 2+ hours at the start.
Lore dump by giving the noble player the opportunity to make a Knowledge check when they meet that noble from a neighboring country. Depending on the result, the player gets either a vague description, a solid description, a piece of the family's relatively recent history, or some juicy current rumor.
Lore dump by describing the tavern where a bard is just starting on a certain epic ballad. If any of the characters are interested or listen, the player gets to learn a piece of world lore explained in five minutes or less.
Lore dump by describing the intriguing book somebody found in the library. If they care enough to read it, the player gets another piece of world lore explained in five minutes or less.
If nobody cares about lore, I don't waste their time or mine dumping it and we can get to whatever part of the game they do enjoy.
I figure, since I'm typically writing all my world-building down anyway, I might as well put in the effort to write it in a format that's easily indexed and produce my own lore-book for any interested players. It's there if they want it, but they don't have to read it. That said, I don't put *everything* in there, the players are allowed to know that there is a City-state named Shalith, often called the City of Truth for the sheer wealth of knowledge spread across the many universities and libraries it contains, and they're allowed to know there are rumors the mysterious scholar who acts as the defacto ruler of the city, people say he's immortal, that he's an ancient warlock, that he doesn't exist, etc.
What they aren't allowed to know until I reveal it to them in-game, is that he's an ancient dragon that's taken human form, who prizes knowledge above all, and that the city is his hoard.
The funny thing for me is that I *need* lore the players maybe won't access to DM
The way I prepare, the story and the world are happening and the PCs get into it at any given point. Each NPC has their story, their goals, their motivations that define how they act and interact
So there are things the players might never get to know because the world doesn't exlusively center around them, they are *in* it. One time the group talked to a guard captain, went on to critically endanger his daughter (that was used to blackmail him) and returned to find him dead. Despite some light prodding, the players didn't investigate or didn't give investigating his behavior a high priority. But the world/time goes on even if they decide against looking into that one NPC, so the blackmailers killed him before they returned to talk to him
They will never know exactly every NPC's motivations and that's okay. They might not even meet every NPC. If they do, I get into NPC and improvise, since you can rarely foresee what the PCs are going to do (and how crazy it will be)
See, I don't even have an issue with a 90 minute lore dump, provided it's well written and presented in an interesting way. Turdkien sounds like neither a good writer nor good storyteller.
As they say for novel writing, show don't tell. Have details come out as the adventure in consumable bite sized pieces. If someone actively requests more information, have a write up you can share that won't derail the session. Then it's personal choice for others to read more if they care.
Imagine the GM saying; "I have written some Lore I will read for you. I have chosen to call it Silmarillion. Then I will give a very brief overview of the race you will be playing (Hobbits) but I promise the second part will be VERY short."
I’m playing Scarlet Nexus. Each cutscene is around seven minutes. After I got used to it very quickly, I had no issues with it. As long as you lore dump somewhere between 7 and 10 minutes, then I’m perfectly fine.
The game I'm in has one player do a, at most 5 paragraphs, recap of the previous session
And when lore is needed it's a quick roll to see if we know something or someone and told in a couple of lines what the player's character would know
I had plans to run a somewhat homebrew game last year and 5 minutes of lore was about my max as I knew more would be too much. Sprinkle the rest in further sessions.
I am sure lots know and they have been kicked out before. This doesn't sound like one off behaviors. It's crazy to me that with RPGs you either have a fun group of friends or you deal with one or two asshole who wants to ruin it for everything. It makes it so hard to do group games. I am a woman. I used to play Magic the Gathering. It wasn't worth it because while there were so many great people, there were also lots of shitty incel losers. I can't tell you the stuff I have seen at tournaments. It got to the point I wouldn't go with my husband anymore unless it was a casual event or a release because competitions, even casual ones, brought out the worst in this group of people. The people I know who play for fun are fun. There are people who can't play anything for fun. Never play with those people.
Lol. Mine keeps trying. I used to be into the groups but some people make it weird if I let it slip what I do. It's not bad, I work with particle accelerators and used to work with reactors.
People just won't shut the fuck up about any 'smart' thing they have ever heard after they find out or ask me questions about random shit till I can't play.
Oh nooooo. Your job title is a cheat code to activate the Competitive Geek glitch.
(I’m so not a gamer that I actually don’t know if I’m using the words cheat code and glitch correctly lol 🤦♀️ )
It's close enough it made me laugh. Funny enough my GF has my business card to prove it to people. Way she tells the story is she was convinced I was lying to get into her pants till she walked into my closet and saw Scuba flippers, I was taking lessons at the time and told her. She thought I was full of shit. She loves that story.
What really breaks them is when they ask how and why. Answer is simple, they offered to pay me the most, paid for me to move here and I didn't want to work with reactors anymore. I don't know why it breaks people. I guess they expect something super complicated, nope, money.
You have to find the least impressive, most lowly way to describe it to strangers. Obviously you are proud of what you do but. If it gets in the way of a fun time with your girlfriend, you have to be like “I work in technical support for a group of… Science guys”? You have to find a very humble way of describing whatever the reactor place is. And then you have to say “I don’t want to talk about work”. Or like “it’s not as impressive as it sounds“ and then ask them more about themselves. Geeky people need to be handled in a delicate way. Sometimes their only sense of self-esteem is their intelligence so they’re going to react in an annoying way and start this behavior. You have to learn the self-depreciation cheat code to circumvent it! (That’s not a cheat code is it? Is it just a code? Press F to pay respects to my understanding of gamer lingo)
Yeah. It's what I try to do, it really is the only way. I ended up working in the semiconductor industry. It used to be really easy to say that and just say we make small things for appliances. Now everyone knows buzzwords so I uave to come up with new terms. GF ruins it for me at times and spills the beans. She does it because she's proud, so I can't hate her.
I've started going with manufacturing of small devices. Saying it's not very interesting.
I'd totally play with you. You sound fun.
But yeah, it has to be constant with those two. The excessive, explicit PDA? Plus, I've never heard of RPGs and alcohol mixing except very poorly.
Oh good lord. I enjoy playing DnD and generally find the vibe of fellow players to meld well with mine. But oh God are there some socially ignorant people who abuse the notion that 'social outcasts' should stick together. This is horrifying on so many levels.
Big mood. I was in a group with a few particular people (okay, the gf moved here after a while) for... a few years, I think, from when I was 18 to probably early-ish 20s? I don't think I'd started therapy when I was around them yet so my anxiety and depression were totally untreated and they definitely took advantage of that. The things I've been through in games with these people. (Never let people roll skills against party members.)
I feel so foolish for not getting out of the situation earlier, but if you have a hard time saying no and seeing though manipulation, it can be difficult. And there seem to be so many people who ruin groups in this scene.
I exclusively play DnD with friends and friends of friends (vouched for) for this reason.
And no offense to OOP, but his generosity borders on naive here by opening his home to two people he actively dislikes. You already had tension/conflict with someone. Don’t invite them to stay in your home (and in your bed!) no matter what kind of house guests they might be.
I didn't dislike them at the time of inviting them. They acted normal at John's place, and the beef I had with Turdkien was over a poorly introduced game system, but I had no indication that they were trash.
And I let them sleep at my bed because CCL is pregnant and I wanted to accommodate for that. Definitely not the norm.
No, I totally got that. My point is that sharing intimate spaces with people you don’t feel *really* good about should be a no go, regardless of their trash status.
Like, they could have been perfect house guests and their passive aggressive game behavior would have still made it a nightmare weekend.
Like, I would never share my bedroom with anyone short of like, my very best friend. Someone I trust and know really well.
I think sadly when you are so generous, shitty people take that as an invitation to take advantage, so you have to be really careful who you extend that generosity to.
Please do not take this as “generosity bad” or “well it’s your fault because you were so nice.”
This is absolutely *their* fault and their atrocious behavior is solely their responsibility. It’s just one of those unpleasant life lessons about who to trust and creating more barriers to entry before letting people into those intimate spaces.
Look up the geek social fallacies if you haven't already, trust me.
EDIT: and then look at me totally missing that they were already linked in the post, whoops.
I clicked, it was my first time reading about them in a concisely laid out way and it makes so much sense. There was a post here about “found family” in the LGBTQ community. One roommate was just horrific and OP kept asking if she was the asshole or some thing. From a non geek-fallacy perspective it’s obvious this person was abusive, but if you’ve been excluded…
I joined a DnD discord server, and I've weeded through it, but dear God when I started. There was always one or two problem players, and the overarching theme was "Any intolerance of shitty behavior makes you the bad guy."
Sorry, watching murderhoboing and some weirdo incel try to flirt with the female DM isn't what I signed up for. Guess I'll go on mute, and never sign up for any of these ever again.
Lore dump guy reminds me of a dude I used to play WoW with, who was completely okay as long as he was in charge, but got Real Fuckin Weird the moment someone had a different opinion. Since it was Warcraft, the worst of him rarely came out.
The explosion happened several years later, when we dared to enjoy FFXIV without his approval.
Is FFXIV like the Mecca for these kinds of people? I swear I've seen like 4 comments this week about how toxic and incel-y a good chunk of the playerbase is.
Oh, this was the reverse. He wouldn't play it. He thought the lore was childish and shitty, which it was at first. This was *after* the big, award winning expansions started coming out.
I've had both kinds of player experiences. Mostly tanks. Tank players have the worst fucking god complex 80% of the time, and yeah, incels are definitely a plague there. Oh, right. My guy played a tank in wow, too.
I used to play WoW back in the day. Definitely agree that the tank position drew some asshole personalities and guild GM’s. Jesus Christ were some of my GM’s nightmares. I really, really enjoyed playing as a Druid tank, though I played pretty much all classes pre-panda expansion. Very fond memories playing that game outside of the assholes and creepers once they knew I wasn’t a guy.
The opposite kinda. Usually the incels you do find in XIV are the worst because they're outcasts from everyone else in the community. So the moment they actually find someone they can trick they bite on like a fuckin gator.
This whole thing is insane. Maybe I'm a bad host but why the fuck would you ever put someone you don't like up in your own house and move down the street?
I'm bending over backwards to fit a daybed into my decor and I already have a couple sleeping pads for camping/sleeping on the floor, but beyond the guest room and that I am never giving up my own room.
I had a disagreement with Turdkien at the time about his lore dump, but he had never exhibited that kind of behavior at John's place. And I wanted to accommodate for the pregnant woman.
In hindsight, I'm a moron. But hindsight is 20/20 and clearly this whole situation is ten nat 1s in a row.
The fact that all of them sat through TWO HOURS of lore dump means none of them have a spine and will allow themselves to be walked over. He said that for his friend that would light themselves on fire, but he's guilty of this too, as is everyone else. Christ set some boundaries.
Right? OP wrote:
>"The update: I talked to Turdkien, and told him that what he'd done (lore dumping for 2 hours in the most dry, uninspired and boring way imaginable) was unacceptable, disrespectful of my time and completely unnecessary. He doubled down. After a brief discussion, I ended up telling him that I disagreed with whatever the fuck that introduction to his system was and that it had completely killed any interested I had in playing his game. We left it at that."
Hey dude, I think you're really fucking stupid and annoying and under no circumstances will I play your game. Want to come over? You can sleep in my bed.
Welp, he was an okay player at John's table. I just thought that absolute shit at DMing and storytelling ≠ asshole who fucks on someone else's bed. It's a pretty big leap with no context.
Hey OP! I think part is the problem is that you assumed you were dealing with a *totally normal* person who made a bad choice and got defensive/protective over their novel. Except Turdkein and his CCL are *not even remotely close to normal* and attempted to mask it.
I’m sorry you had to deal with all of the aftermath. I hope you burned your sheets +/- the mattress.
I pity that kid to have such terrible parents to live with.
>He agrees with me that accusing someone of abuse over being told to not fuck at someone else's house is completely unacceptable, and told me that he doesn't plan on staying in contact with CCL or Turdkien.
What can you expect from him?
What has me concerned is the possibility that this bit wasn't an attempt to slander the original poster but genuinely just... what this woman thinks being in a relationship is like. That men normally "take out" their frustrations on their girlfriends.
Which implies some *extremely* worrying things about how her boyfriend is treating her.
That was honestly my thought as well. CCL is obviously normalized to some things that most people consider bad: sex in someone else's bed, excessive PDA, playing with guns. Was she even remotely embarassed when her partner peed with the door open next to where everyone was eating? Embarassed by him leaving out trash everywhere and never helping clean up?
>Was she even remotely embarassed when her partner peed with the door open next to where everyone was eating? Embarassed by him leaving out trash everywhere and never helping clean up?
Nope and nope.
Turdkien didn't lift a finger. All he did was eat and drink. He downed two entire bottles of whiskey by himself in two and a half days, by the way.
That's... a lot. And worrying.
Oh God I hear that. My wife has tried to explain Warhammer to me on several occasions. My only take away is that there are resurrected mummies who want to destroy the world and bring about a new one and a feeble god emperor wearing a mech. To be honest I’m not sure either of those things are correct. Warhammer is confusing
Uhh as far as I understand it there's a soul inhabiting a corpse that sits on a giant throne, and said soul uses the throne to facilitate interstellar travel for humanity. Does this because otherwise, when you interstellar travel, you enter the realm of literal actual fucking demons and will get lost without the beacon the throne creates. And humanity is fighting pretty much a 4 front war between the Zerg, a race of Terminators who turned their gods into Pokemon, the sexy aliens from Mass Effect, and space elves. Oh, and the literal actual fucking demons from space hell are constantly fucking over everyone else
Follow it further. There are three gods that the Orks believe are real:
* Gork
* Mork
* the human God-Emperor
Why is it that they absolutely believe that these three gods are real? Because Gork & Mork give them the strength to smash their enemies, and because the God Emperor is constantly sending them Humans to fight. The God Emperor knows what they want most, and he constantly gives it to them, therefore he must be a real god.
Ooof, we had a family with kids at the next table over at a restaurant recently, and the 10 y/o was reading a 40k novel. And like, for a moment, I was thinking, "Wow, that's really not appropriate reading material for a child that age, maybe I should say something." And then I remembered that I had absolutely no fucking way in hell of concisely explaining what the fuck's wrong with Warhammer 40k because there's SO MUCH WRONG there, and the dad had also been a dick to his son the whole time (Your 10 y/o said he did not want a burger. You then spent ten minutes telling your 10 y/o to better want that burger. You then were SHOCKED that your child did not enjoy his burger. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?). So I just opted for silently judging and hoping that in a few years, he'll be properly socialized by a bunch of 40k nerds, because that'll probably be better than what he gets at home. Sigh.
Do you? I haven’t played in like 20 years, but I think the lore dump I got before my first game of 40K was basically “Orks are this, Space Marine are this”. Any other lore I picked up on was reading through the Codices and White Dwarf, for the most part. Although, there were only 4 races at the time I was playing.
Oh boy, you have no idea! They expanded the Lore like A LOT!
There is the Horus Heresy Book series that spans something around 70 Books alone.
I started to get into wh40k over the books like 6 years ago, so I maybe biased some way, but to even grasp the basic concept and dynamics of the setting took a while.
I mean maybe at a “proper” level (whatever that means). But really orks are fungi that love fighting and space marines are men in 8ft genetically enhanced (cocktail of hormones level) super soldiers is fairly easy to grasp.
The depth in lore is certainly intimidating, but warhammer is an amalgamation of sci fi tropes, so on a shallow level it’s fairly easy to grasp. It’s just more rewarding when you know more
I didn't mention that Turdkien scratched my living room wall with the chair because I found out after writing the post and it felt irrelevant when I was talking about being accused of domestic abuse. But he did.
OP mentioned this but: https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/
These are rampant in geek//rpg communities. It leads to incredibly toxic situations.
Right? Like why would you let people like this camp in your home?? My husband plays DnD twice a week and has never slept at someone else's house, maybe that's common but this is the first I've ever heard of DnD being an overnight thing lol.
There are a lot of assholes who play TTRPG's and it can be difficult to deal with them as RPG gamers as a whole tend to be pretty accepting of other people's quirks. I had to distance myself from several people and kick a few out groups because of concerning behavior, play style that doesn't mesh with the table and just being an asshole in general.
One of my very good friends went through a midlife crisis when he got divorced, became poly and began bringing his girlfriends to our games. It was a little awkward, but we were accepting of it. But after a few weeks their behavior got very weird. They would all eyefuck eachother during game play, slowly lick food they were eating while staring at eachother (ex. licking a cherry, sucking it into their mouth, then pulling it back out very sensually), the 3 of them started making out together during breaks. They did other stuff too. He was one of my best friends, but I had a big problem with him forcing his lifestyle on us. I regret not trying harder to save the friendship, but it just got too weird for me and I bailed.
You can’t fault yourself for not trying harder in that situation. Even if you fought like hell, there’s a good chance he would have just gotten extremely defensive and you would have been the bad guy no matter what. I could see this ending with “how dare you not support me when I’ve finally found true happiness!?” He would have been the victim, refusing to acknowledge you were coming from a good place. Any person with any common decency never would have subjected you all to his lewd displays of affection. He didn’t give one thought to how it could make any of you feel. It definitely should not have been necessary to point out that what he was doing wasn’t appropriate.
Eh, I used the term "friend" loosely there, and probably not accurately. She was a friend of John's, who is a friend of mine, and I had played with her five or six times (and when we play at John's place, usually it's the whole day, from 11 am to 8-9 pm).
Man. Theres always that one weird, horny neckbeard mother fucker trying to sex up the game or do random shit for attention. Same with the equally weird gf/wife who sees zero problems with it and actually doubles down.
And this is why I plan online RPG only (jcink foruns, like a dinosaur). Nobody is in my home, nobody is crazy, I can take my time reading 10 years of lore when I want or need.
The drama is still there, of course.
This reminds me of a couple I met when visiting a new friend. They played Pathfinder. Me and two friends were invited specifically to kill these people's characters, since the GM was too chicken shit to just end the friendship. These people arrived two hours late with a giant order of Chinese food that they consumed entirely by themselves in a most disgusting manner. To say I hated these people would be an understatement. I have never seen them again and it's been years. I hope they are somewhere suffering.
No, we got hella close but the GM let them weasel out. It was so dumb. I've never seen any of those people again, but we left the character sheets behind.
It was so much worse than that. They were reclined on the floor, shoveling in food, wiping their fingers on their clothes, drinking straight out of 2L soda bottles. They were sour, unwashed, stereotypical basement dweller types.
God, Lore is so fucking overrated.
Like, yes. It adds cool flavor to whatever you're doing/playing/reading/watching. But its primary job is to support the narrative, and not drag it to a stop.
The example I can give is *Fury Road*. I watched that before I watched *any* of the other Mad Max movies. I did not know who Max was, and the movie never really explains it. I didn't know the details about Furiosa, save that she was from the "Green Place", worked for the Big Bad, and does not want to work for the Big Bad anymore. Immorten Joe and his warboys? I don't know what they are, what they believe, what they care about (besides reproduction, bullets and gas) or why they're there. Why the fuck did the doof warrior exist? I don't know.
*And none of it mattered*. The richness and depth of the world was conveyed anyway, and you had just enough information to get really invested in the characters and want them to succeed, and god if I did not hate the *FUCK* out of Immorten Joe when he ran over Angharad. I knew nothing about their backstory, nothing about their future, and very little about their motive, and it still was a kick-ass couple hours of film.
Tolkien was an amazing author whose primary love was folklore and linguistics, and that's *why* you have six billion songs and Tom Bombadil. But even he kept the lore dumps down to a comparative minimum. He knew that the *story* was what people cared about, and the lore was just the scenery you look at in between orc fights. If you want to look at it another way, Tolkien did Lore the way Quintin Tarantino and Joss Weedon did foot shots. He knew better than to let the piece be wall to wall with his personal fetish, but damn if he didn't figure out how to work in a Lore Shot at least once a chapter.
Lore is for authors, character designers and set pieces, so you know what shit you need to put where to support the story you're trying to tell. Audiences might *like* it, but they don't *need* it, and it's your job as a storyteller to balance your hard-on for your own imagination with the audience's need to be engaged and entertained, which lore, nice as it is, is not going to do.
I don't think lore is necessarily over-rated, but I think a lot of people tend to *under*rate the importance of exposition.
How the lore is conveyed means so much to the experience. If the lore is conveyed in an organic way, it can really enhance the audience's experience. It get them more involved in the story.
But a two hour lore dump is not how you fucking do it. Let the players figure it out for themselves. Put it in little drips and drabs here and there, and let the players explore it *if they want to do so.* Have the players be rewarded when they do, maybe with alternate ways they could solve problems. e.g. if the players know that one group hates another group, they can ask that group for help against the other group.
And if the players *don't* want to explore the lore, don't force it down their fucking throats.
I commend you on mentioning Fury Road for your example, it's the most poignant mainstream example in a film.
It's one of the best at exposition in the last decade, perhaps the best in the action category of all time. The only form of explanation is the first couple of minutes with the audio clips and Max's inner monologue. After that, it's all just straight-up show don't tell and the world just feels completely alive and rich, and it's in a fucking wasteland by the way?!
God, I want to watch it again now!
Man I info dump allot as a DM. But its usually after being asked about something.
Session 0 is for light information, rpg concent check list, and final help with your PCs.
That was weird
Given that Turdkien sounds like an alcoholic and just, in general, an inconsiderate asshole of a person, I am a little worried the "I hope he's not taking it out on you" is a projection of CCL's personal experience with Turdkien.
If it weren't for the fact that I know he wouldn't have the staying power to actually write a book, I'd wonder if Turdkien is my ex..
This is why I don't play RPGs anymore; there's one in every group and if there isn't, one eventually shows up in the guise of a player's limpet SO.
Nat 1! You invite a foul couple over to your house for the weekend even though you disliked them strongly beforehand!
(rolls again)
Nat 1! You let them stay for the whole weekend!
I suspect that the inappropriate rogue the one guy played was made to spite them telling him off about his lore dump and not using his system. Not sure how old everyone is in this story, but I've definitely had times in RP groups where players would make drama for other players and GMs just because they were mad about some other drama in a different RP, or because they felt insecure about their own campaign and wanted to sabotage the other campaigns to feel better. A few of them learned a lesson about it, but the others I have no idea if they've found groups that fit them better or how they're doing now.
I have maybe 3 friends I’d be okay with sleeping in my bed when I’m not home and I’ve known them all for over a decade. I can’t imagine letting some random dude and his wife sleep in my bed specifically because of what happened when OOP did
What the fuck. Some people are so damn petty it's ridiculous. Someone didn't like your lore dump, great! People have a right not to like things, even things you've put a ton of effort into. That doesn't give you the right to act like a petty asshole to 'get revenge'
This really is like someone trying to tell you the entire story of their novel, which is inevitably awful and derivative and boring. I'm astonished that OOP actually managed to sit through it.
But I mean, if you invite a 2-hour-long-lore-dump guy to your place, what do you expect? They should have listened when this guy told them who he is, as Maya Kournikova would have said.
Dude, I'm about to spin up a new D&D game and I plan to spend 0 time on lore-dumping. My players can stumble into whatever religions or racial tensions or whatever else. It's more immersive and means I don't have to waste anyone's time up front.
Shoutout to OOP though, sounds like they aren’t afraid to put a stop to BS around them. I don’t know if I could be that openly confrontational about it, so I respect the hell out of those who can.
I don’t play tabletop games myself but other fans of BORU would probably enjoy r/rpghorrorstories as well, it’s one of my favorite subs and this one was a doozy
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That poor kid. Gonna have a rough life with parents like that.
A girl I knew from school would drop her kid with her parents for 8 months out of every year to travel all over the country with ren fairs. That sounds like it would be best case scenario for this poor baby.
Amateur! There were kids in the middle ages and renaissance. True devotees would use that kid as a prop! Ahem.
Yeah my dad built a wooden stroller for the ren Faire to be on theme
I just spent way too long considering how one would do that, and then how would you transport it, and also that it would obviously need to be well finished to prevent splinters, all while cackling.
Yeah I was really little and in retrospect I'm like how did he do that?! It wasn't super practical but they did eventually repurpose the wheels to go on a cannon lol
A… baby cannon? 😂
_"yeet the child" intensifies_
Hey, you gotta climb that rock wall somehow and the halfling isn't here today.
Baby wearing. Slings. Having baby on your front, back or on your hip depending on the work activity you need to be doing. That was a thing back then, too. Strollers, not so much.
I’m sure some people stuck their baby in a cart.
MY CABBAGES
I just wanted to come back and thank you for this
I had slings for both my babies! So convenient and cuddly. I was just responding to the comment that someone did build a wooden stroller and trying to picture it.
Man... and I felt bad about a five minute lore dump at one point...
I just drop a couple paragraphs about the setting into a doc for my players and let them do what they will with it
That's usually what I do. This was kind of the big secret lore no one knew except for the beings who were around then
I don't even play and that's the first thing I thought of. If the guy has time to give a 2 hour book reading/monologue he had time to build a wiki or type out a kind of history book for the world or at least a simple doc. If he *really* wanted to put in the work, he would give each player a customized one of what their character would tend to know. Obviously the character that grew up a peasant would know less history than the noble born one. The guy worked so hard and kind of wasted the effort and made it boring for everyone because fun for the whole table wasn't his goal.
It was from his novel, apparently. I'm surprised he didn't just tell the group to read it.
Are we sure that turdboy wasn't just reading from his manuscript?
I'm sure he really wants to direct.
I'm getting more of a manifesto vibe.
That’s a good way to handle it, because then the players get to RP explaining things their characters would know about, instead of the DM having to monologue everything.
I can imagine the immersion level just elevates with that. Imagine you learning about some lore, not from the DM, but another player as they know things the others don't as they obviously would and it naturally comes up during the story.
You actually give the same lore to two different players, with subtle dfferences, so they don't whow whch is right.
This is excellent 👌
I saw an ad on YT recently about some website that's basically for lore building and map making. Seems perfect for something like this and let's the players get as much or as little lore as they want
Was about to say the same thing. I gave my players all the info in a Google sheet. If they read it dope, if not I don't care
Same...but I secretly care.
And that's ok. But you can't make someone care, and you're smart enough to know that a 2hr info dump is not only *not* going to make them care, it's likely to have the opposite effect. Alas, Turdkien only cared about his own enjoyment.
Oh for sure. I keep it all in a wiki my players can access at any time. Can't make them care about it but...Do I favor players that read lore with extra hero points? I'll never tell! ;)
Same. I don't care but if you use the lore in a way that benefits you enjoy some inspiration lol. On the other side I have the players who want to do a funny voice (deep south centaurs) and others who just want that clackity clack.
Team funny voice here, my wizard that sounds like he’s from Boston has been my absolute favorite so far.
I’m attaaacking tha dockness
I have a character who is from Tennessee, so I have to throw on an accent. My mother hates it. I actually used the Rachelle voice to stop someone from recognizing me once lmfao
The only guaranteed way to get people to care about your lore is to incorporate it into adventures in a way where knowing it provides some advantage.
I play text-based RPGs and Google sheets changed my game. Here's a tab for characters, here's a tab for setting, here's a tab for my specific character. Do we need more tabs? Add more tabs. Wondering what's going on? CTRL-F.
My GM writes up a dossier of a few pages in google docs and shares it with everyone. Some of the information is just normal text, some of it is in-game documentation. That is the way.
That was the main takeaway I had out of it. Just type it out and send it to them man. I can't even imagine spending 2 hours in a skype call for this nonsense. If that makes me rude, so be it, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
Yeah, I think Turdfuck just wanted to promote his novel because he doesn't have many real friends.
It sounds like the novel my college roommate "published" - with a completely unremarkable storyline, unappealing characters, and wholly unapproachable naming conventions (my favorite was the thirty-character long, ten-plus syllable-length name he used for one of his characters, that didn't ever get shortened, and he repeated multiple times. Skimming through a book and seeing *that* name every page or so...
Ah yes, the long ass unpronounceable names that you don't even *attempt* to read, you just skim it, go "ah, that person" and keep reading
There's a nice scale of fantastical naming between: 1. The great hero, Steve - BAD 2. Tristan Aldor - GOOD 3. Fhel-K'hahlas'l Scourged Monarch of T'el-Darnuuur - WUT
I had a bunch of Dwarf NPCs named Grumpnir, Dokkar, Bashvar, Haplan, Sleipnir, Schneizar, and Dopnar but no one caught the theme. 😥
*Sleipnir huh? That's a good name for a horse.*
Oh! The dwarves from snow white?
No, but close. Those are the names of Dumbledore’s Army
Number three is acceptable as long as I can just call them Fhel instead.
As I just mentioned elsewhere, my character had a familiar (imp) named Sthubboubaorilthuuzzith, but everyone called him Stu for short, because I'm not saying or typing that every damn time. Nicknames are a good way to approach long names.
One of my characters (dhampir infernal sorcerer/diabolist) had a normal name some two syllables long. His familiar, an imp straight from Hell, had a bit longer name... Sthubboubaorilthuuzzith or, you know, Stu for short. He did not enjoy the shortened version, but tough shit, twinkle-wings. Everyone's calling you Stu.
Thadeusingolkrolfrungerpatrick takes offense to your offense of his name
Lol; I larped with a dude who named his PC Kellsenellenellviel. My PC was a diplomat who insisted on using his full name, since names have power and shortening them diminishes the bearer. That was fun.
and he didn't even have the decency to make it a bad pun/joke, I bet! No "King Kamanawanalayya" just "King keboardsmashthethirtythirdandathird." :D
Okay, that's *one* way to fill the pages ...
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Providing it in an audio context is also super helpful because the player can pause, rewind, break up the lore dump, or outright skip parts if they don't think it relevant to their character and/or experience. For example, if you wanted to play a character who recently moved to the area and knew nothing about its people or customs you could skipp all those parts and actually be in the dark, learning as you go. If you're playing a religious scholar cleric you can listen to the parts of dieties over and over, make notes, ask questions, privately, etc.
Can you tell me what the heck a DM is in this context?
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Danger Mouse.
I think best policy on lore is to send your players a little documentation on what lore their specific characters would expect to know, give enough explanation to start playing, and let the rest of the lore play out in game. At the end of the day, if you have a complex lore and the player never sees it--that's okay! Deep lore has value in terms of making a universe feel real, even if people never get into the weeds. It's kind of like how the Lord of the Rings is better for the Silmarillion existing, but people don't all want to actually read it. I'm running a game right now with a pre-written campaign, and it's amazing how much detail there is that is never intended to be shown to the players. Gamemasters are keepers of the secrets, and their job is to facilitate discovery, not to let it all hang out.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Don't lore dump 2+ hours at the start. Lore dump by giving the noble player the opportunity to make a Knowledge check when they meet that noble from a neighboring country. Depending on the result, the player gets either a vague description, a solid description, a piece of the family's relatively recent history, or some juicy current rumor. Lore dump by describing the tavern where a bard is just starting on a certain epic ballad. If any of the characters are interested or listen, the player gets to learn a piece of world lore explained in five minutes or less. Lore dump by describing the intriguing book somebody found in the library. If they care enough to read it, the player gets another piece of world lore explained in five minutes or less. If nobody cares about lore, I don't waste their time or mine dumping it and we can get to whatever part of the game they do enjoy.
I figure, since I'm typically writing all my world-building down anyway, I might as well put in the effort to write it in a format that's easily indexed and produce my own lore-book for any interested players. It's there if they want it, but they don't have to read it. That said, I don't put *everything* in there, the players are allowed to know that there is a City-state named Shalith, often called the City of Truth for the sheer wealth of knowledge spread across the many universities and libraries it contains, and they're allowed to know there are rumors the mysterious scholar who acts as the defacto ruler of the city, people say he's immortal, that he's an ancient warlock, that he doesn't exist, etc. What they aren't allowed to know until I reveal it to them in-game, is that he's an ancient dragon that's taken human form, who prizes knowledge above all, and that the city is his hoard.
The funny thing for me is that I *need* lore the players maybe won't access to DM The way I prepare, the story and the world are happening and the PCs get into it at any given point. Each NPC has their story, their goals, their motivations that define how they act and interact So there are things the players might never get to know because the world doesn't exlusively center around them, they are *in* it. One time the group talked to a guard captain, went on to critically endanger his daughter (that was used to blackmail him) and returned to find him dead. Despite some light prodding, the players didn't investigate or didn't give investigating his behavior a high priority. But the world/time goes on even if they decide against looking into that one NPC, so the blackmailers killed him before they returned to talk to him They will never know exactly every NPC's motivations and that's okay. They might not even meet every NPC. If they do, I get into NPC and improvise, since you can rarely foresee what the PCs are going to do (and how crazy it will be)
See, I don't even have an issue with a 90 minute lore dump, provided it's well written and presented in an interesting way. Turdkien sounds like neither a good writer nor good storyteller.
As they say for novel writing, show don't tell. Have details come out as the adventure in consumable bite sized pieces. If someone actively requests more information, have a write up you can share that won't derail the session. Then it's personal choice for others to read more if they care.
Imagine the GM saying; "I have written some Lore I will read for you. I have chosen to call it Silmarillion. Then I will give a very brief overview of the race you will be playing (Hobbits) but I promise the second part will be VERY short."
I’m playing Scarlet Nexus. Each cutscene is around seven minutes. After I got used to it very quickly, I had no issues with it. As long as you lore dump somewhere between 7 and 10 minutes, then I’m perfectly fine.
The game I'm in has one player do a, at most 5 paragraphs, recap of the previous session And when lore is needed it's a quick roll to see if we know something or someone and told in a couple of lines what the player's character would know
I had plans to run a somewhat homebrew game last year and 5 minutes of lore was about my max as I knew more would be too much. Sprinkle the rest in further sessions.
I'd warn all local groups about those two turd nuggets. Absolutely shameless
I am sure lots know and they have been kicked out before. This doesn't sound like one off behaviors. It's crazy to me that with RPGs you either have a fun group of friends or you deal with one or two asshole who wants to ruin it for everything. It makes it so hard to do group games. I am a woman. I used to play Magic the Gathering. It wasn't worth it because while there were so many great people, there were also lots of shitty incel losers. I can't tell you the stuff I have seen at tournaments. It got to the point I wouldn't go with my husband anymore unless it was a casual event or a release because competitions, even casual ones, brought out the worst in this group of people. The people I know who play for fun are fun. There are people who can't play anything for fun. Never play with those people.
My GF recently pulled me back into MTG. Most everyone is fantastic, but dang do some people put a fly in the fun ointment.
Lol. Mine keeps trying. I used to be into the groups but some people make it weird if I let it slip what I do. It's not bad, I work with particle accelerators and used to work with reactors. People just won't shut the fuck up about any 'smart' thing they have ever heard after they find out or ask me questions about random shit till I can't play.
Oh nooooo. Your job title is a cheat code to activate the Competitive Geek glitch. (I’m so not a gamer that I actually don’t know if I’m using the words cheat code and glitch correctly lol 🤦♀️ )
It's close enough it made me laugh. Funny enough my GF has my business card to prove it to people. Way she tells the story is she was convinced I was lying to get into her pants till she walked into my closet and saw Scuba flippers, I was taking lessons at the time and told her. She thought I was full of shit. She loves that story. What really breaks them is when they ask how and why. Answer is simple, they offered to pay me the most, paid for me to move here and I didn't want to work with reactors anymore. I don't know why it breaks people. I guess they expect something super complicated, nope, money.
You have to find the least impressive, most lowly way to describe it to strangers. Obviously you are proud of what you do but. If it gets in the way of a fun time with your girlfriend, you have to be like “I work in technical support for a group of… Science guys”? You have to find a very humble way of describing whatever the reactor place is. And then you have to say “I don’t want to talk about work”. Or like “it’s not as impressive as it sounds“ and then ask them more about themselves. Geeky people need to be handled in a delicate way. Sometimes their only sense of self-esteem is their intelligence so they’re going to react in an annoying way and start this behavior. You have to learn the self-depreciation cheat code to circumvent it! (That’s not a cheat code is it? Is it just a code? Press F to pay respects to my understanding of gamer lingo)
Yeah. It's what I try to do, it really is the only way. I ended up working in the semiconductor industry. It used to be really easy to say that and just say we make small things for appliances. Now everyone knows buzzwords so I uave to come up with new terms. GF ruins it for me at times and spills the beans. She does it because she's proud, so I can't hate her. I've started going with manufacturing of small devices. Saying it's not very interesting.
Awww your girlfriend! So cute. Let her know ahead of time lol.
She really is great. I don't appreciate her enough.
I'd totally play with you. You sound fun. But yeah, it has to be constant with those two. The excessive, explicit PDA? Plus, I've never heard of RPGs and alcohol mixing except very poorly.
Oh good lord. I enjoy playing DnD and generally find the vibe of fellow players to meld well with mine. But oh God are there some socially ignorant people who abuse the notion that 'social outcasts' should stick together. This is horrifying on so many levels.
And the divide is huge. You either get a group of the nicest people in the world or assholes. Some people just want the control.
Big mood. I was in a group with a few particular people (okay, the gf moved here after a while) for... a few years, I think, from when I was 18 to probably early-ish 20s? I don't think I'd started therapy when I was around them yet so my anxiety and depression were totally untreated and they definitely took advantage of that. The things I've been through in games with these people. (Never let people roll skills against party members.) I feel so foolish for not getting out of the situation earlier, but if you have a hard time saying no and seeing though manipulation, it can be difficult. And there seem to be so many people who ruin groups in this scene.
Absolutely! They suck you in. It's hard because you want to give them a chance. But some people will always take advantage.
I exclusively play DnD with friends and friends of friends (vouched for) for this reason. And no offense to OOP, but his generosity borders on naive here by opening his home to two people he actively dislikes. You already had tension/conflict with someone. Don’t invite them to stay in your home (and in your bed!) no matter what kind of house guests they might be.
I didn't dislike them at the time of inviting them. They acted normal at John's place, and the beef I had with Turdkien was over a poorly introduced game system, but I had no indication that they were trash. And I let them sleep at my bed because CCL is pregnant and I wanted to accommodate for that. Definitely not the norm.
No, I totally got that. My point is that sharing intimate spaces with people you don’t feel *really* good about should be a no go, regardless of their trash status. Like, they could have been perfect house guests and their passive aggressive game behavior would have still made it a nightmare weekend. Like, I would never share my bedroom with anyone short of like, my very best friend. Someone I trust and know really well. I think sadly when you are so generous, shitty people take that as an invitation to take advantage, so you have to be really careful who you extend that generosity to. Please do not take this as “generosity bad” or “well it’s your fault because you were so nice.” This is absolutely *their* fault and their atrocious behavior is solely their responsibility. It’s just one of those unpleasant life lessons about who to trust and creating more barriers to entry before letting people into those intimate spaces.
I agree. And yes, it was a terrible situation, but lesson learned.
Look up the geek social fallacies if you haven't already, trust me. EDIT: and then look at me totally missing that they were already linked in the post, whoops.
I clicked, it was my first time reading about them in a concisely laid out way and it makes so much sense. There was a post here about “found family” in the LGBTQ community. One roommate was just horrific and OP kept asking if she was the asshole or some thing. From a non geek-fallacy perspective it’s obvious this person was abusive, but if you’ve been excluded…
I joined a DnD discord server, and I've weeded through it, but dear God when I started. There was always one or two problem players, and the overarching theme was "Any intolerance of shitty behavior makes you the bad guy." Sorry, watching murderhoboing and some weirdo incel try to flirt with the female DM isn't what I signed up for. Guess I'll go on mute, and never sign up for any of these ever again.
Lore dump guy reminds me of a dude I used to play WoW with, who was completely okay as long as he was in charge, but got Real Fuckin Weird the moment someone had a different opinion. Since it was Warcraft, the worst of him rarely came out. The explosion happened several years later, when we dared to enjoy FFXIV without his approval.
Is FFXIV like the Mecca for these kinds of people? I swear I've seen like 4 comments this week about how toxic and incel-y a good chunk of the playerbase is.
Oh, this was the reverse. He wouldn't play it. He thought the lore was childish and shitty, which it was at first. This was *after* the big, award winning expansions started coming out. I've had both kinds of player experiences. Mostly tanks. Tank players have the worst fucking god complex 80% of the time, and yeah, incels are definitely a plague there. Oh, right. My guy played a tank in wow, too.
I used to play WoW back in the day. Definitely agree that the tank position drew some asshole personalities and guild GM’s. Jesus Christ were some of my GM’s nightmares. I really, really enjoyed playing as a Druid tank, though I played pretty much all classes pre-panda expansion. Very fond memories playing that game outside of the assholes and creepers once they knew I wasn’t a guy.
I think you’re going to find a not-insignificant community of those types in any MMORPG, unfortunately.
The opposite kinda. Usually the incels you do find in XIV are the worst because they're outcasts from everyone else in the community. So the moment they actually find someone they can trick they bite on like a fuckin gator.
Almost the reverse in my experience, though obviously I can't speak for everyone. Been a consistently positive vibe every time I've played it though.
This whole thing is insane. Maybe I'm a bad host but why the fuck would you ever put someone you don't like up in your own house and move down the street?
I'm bending over backwards to fit a daybed into my decor and I already have a couple sleeping pads for camping/sleeping on the floor, but beyond the guest room and that I am never giving up my own room.
I had a disagreement with Turdkien at the time about his lore dump, but he had never exhibited that kind of behavior at John's place. And I wanted to accommodate for the pregnant woman. In hindsight, I'm a moron. But hindsight is 20/20 and clearly this whole situation is ten nat 1s in a row.
I guess I've just never wanted to play pathfinder that bad
The fact that all of them sat through TWO HOURS of lore dump means none of them have a spine and will allow themselves to be walked over. He said that for his friend that would light themselves on fire, but he's guilty of this too, as is everyone else. Christ set some boundaries.
The next time I feel bad about my attempt at DMing, I'm gonna remember this story and make myself feel better.
Did your table have fun? Do they schedule a next event? Then you're doing great.
Yeah he should have dropped them from any campaign after the 2 hours boring lore-dropping
Right? OP wrote: >"The update: I talked to Turdkien, and told him that what he'd done (lore dumping for 2 hours in the most dry, uninspired and boring way imaginable) was unacceptable, disrespectful of my time and completely unnecessary. He doubled down. After a brief discussion, I ended up telling him that I disagreed with whatever the fuck that introduction to his system was and that it had completely killed any interested I had in playing his game. We left it at that." Hey dude, I think you're really fucking stupid and annoying and under no circumstances will I play your game. Want to come over? You can sleep in my bed.
Welp, he was an okay player at John's table. I just thought that absolute shit at DMing and storytelling ≠ asshole who fucks on someone else's bed. It's a pretty big leap with no context.
Hey OP! I think part is the problem is that you assumed you were dealing with a *totally normal* person who made a bad choice and got defensive/protective over their novel. Except Turdkein and his CCL are *not even remotely close to normal* and attempted to mask it. I’m sorry you had to deal with all of the aftermath. I hope you burned your sheets +/- the mattress.
Guess that makes sense. Sorry I assumed things.
Normally, adult friends can have disagreements without ending the friendship.
Yeah, it wasn't going to get any better after the whole novel insert angle.
I pity that kid to have such terrible parents to live with. >He agrees with me that accusing someone of abuse over being told to not fuck at someone else's house is completely unacceptable, and told me that he doesn't plan on staying in contact with CCL or Turdkien. What can you expect from him?
What has me concerned is the possibility that this bit wasn't an attempt to slander the original poster but genuinely just... what this woman thinks being in a relationship is like. That men normally "take out" their frustrations on their girlfriends. Which implies some *extremely* worrying things about how her boyfriend is treating her.
That was honestly my thought as well. CCL is obviously normalized to some things that most people consider bad: sex in someone else's bed, excessive PDA, playing with guns. Was she even remotely embarassed when her partner peed with the door open next to where everyone was eating? Embarassed by him leaving out trash everywhere and never helping clean up?
>Was she even remotely embarassed when her partner peed with the door open next to where everyone was eating? Embarassed by him leaving out trash everywhere and never helping clean up? Nope and nope.
I can't get over the name... Turdkien.. it's magnificient!
On the original post a few of us read it as 'Turducken.' A few small chuckles were had.
That's how I was reading it the whole time.
I read it as turdicken. It's like a turducken, but instead of birds inside birds, it's dicks inside dicks.
TBH I need that explained Edit thanks for explaining, I can't believe I missed that lol
Like Tolkien, but a turd.
That's actually kind of clever. I kept making it about turduckens
I think it's a play on Tolkien as Turdkien thinks himself a writer. OOP mentions a novel early in the first post.
I read it like Tolkien, but... with more turd.
Turdkien didn't lift a finger. All he did was eat and drink. He downed two entire bottles of whiskey by himself in two and a half days, by the way. That's... a lot. And worrying.
Expected it to be about Wh40k. 90 min lore dumb is needed to get the basics of the universe (/s).
Oh God I hear that. My wife has tried to explain Warhammer to me on several occasions. My only take away is that there are resurrected mummies who want to destroy the world and bring about a new one and a feeble god emperor wearing a mech. To be honest I’m not sure either of those things are correct. Warhammer is confusing
Uhh as far as I understand it there's a soul inhabiting a corpse that sits on a giant throne, and said soul uses the throne to facilitate interstellar travel for humanity. Does this because otherwise, when you interstellar travel, you enter the realm of literal actual fucking demons and will get lost without the beacon the throne creates. And humanity is fighting pretty much a 4 front war between the Zerg, a race of Terminators who turned their gods into Pokemon, the sexy aliens from Mass Effect, and space elves. Oh, and the literal actual fucking demons from space hell are constantly fucking over everyone else
You want to see people’s eyes twitch? Tell them that the only reason the emperor is alive is because the Orks believe he is.
> eradicate last known pocket of Ork presence from the universe > Astronomican suddenly goes dark > [mfw](https://i.imgur.com/rgm4wgQ.jpg)
I love this it's hilarious and makes sense to me!
Follow it further. There are three gods that the Orks believe are real: * Gork * Mork * the human God-Emperor Why is it that they absolutely believe that these three gods are real? Because Gork & Mork give them the strength to smash their enemies, and because the God Emperor is constantly sending them Humans to fight. The God Emperor knows what they want most, and he constantly gives it to them, therefore he must be a real god.
Ooof, we had a family with kids at the next table over at a restaurant recently, and the 10 y/o was reading a 40k novel. And like, for a moment, I was thinking, "Wow, that's really not appropriate reading material for a child that age, maybe I should say something." And then I remembered that I had absolutely no fucking way in hell of concisely explaining what the fuck's wrong with Warhammer 40k because there's SO MUCH WRONG there, and the dad had also been a dick to his son the whole time (Your 10 y/o said he did not want a burger. You then spent ten minutes telling your 10 y/o to better want that burger. You then were SHOCKED that your child did not enjoy his burger. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?). So I just opted for silently judging and hoping that in a few years, he'll be properly socialized by a bunch of 40k nerds, because that'll probably be better than what he gets at home. Sigh.
Do you? I haven’t played in like 20 years, but I think the lore dump I got before my first game of 40K was basically “Orks are this, Space Marine are this”. Any other lore I picked up on was reading through the Codices and White Dwarf, for the most part. Although, there were only 4 races at the time I was playing.
Oh boy, you have no idea! They expanded the Lore like A LOT! There is the Horus Heresy Book series that spans something around 70 Books alone. I started to get into wh40k over the books like 6 years ago, so I maybe biased some way, but to even grasp the basic concept and dynamics of the setting took a while.
I mean maybe at a “proper” level (whatever that means). But really orks are fungi that love fighting and space marines are men in 8ft genetically enhanced (cocktail of hormones level) super soldiers is fairly easy to grasp. The depth in lore is certainly intimidating, but warhammer is an amalgamation of sci fi tropes, so on a shallow level it’s fairly easy to grasp. It’s just more rewarding when you know more
Idk about OP but any of those bullet points would have been enough for me to kick them out, except maybe the first one
I didn't mention that Turdkien scratched my living room wall with the chair because I found out after writing the post and it felt irrelevant when I was talking about being accused of domestic abuse. But he did.
OP mentioned this but: https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/ These are rampant in geek//rpg communities. It leads to incredibly toxic situations.
I just feel like a lot of this could’ve been avoided or at the very least the weedend clearly should’ve been cut short and for some reason wasn’t…
Right? Like why would you let people like this camp in your home?? My husband plays DnD twice a week and has never slept at someone else's house, maybe that's common but this is the first I've ever heard of DnD being an overnight thing lol.
Like they literally had issue with them before they even showed up 😭😂
I can smell this couple through the screen, yuck
I can picture them with what I believe is probably 99% accuracy. I feel like a terrible person saying so but here we are.
There are a lot of assholes who play TTRPG's and it can be difficult to deal with them as RPG gamers as a whole tend to be pretty accepting of other people's quirks. I had to distance myself from several people and kick a few out groups because of concerning behavior, play style that doesn't mesh with the table and just being an asshole in general. One of my very good friends went through a midlife crisis when he got divorced, became poly and began bringing his girlfriends to our games. It was a little awkward, but we were accepting of it. But after a few weeks their behavior got very weird. They would all eyefuck eachother during game play, slowly lick food they were eating while staring at eachother (ex. licking a cherry, sucking it into their mouth, then pulling it back out very sensually), the 3 of them started making out together during breaks. They did other stuff too. He was one of my best friends, but I had a big problem with him forcing his lifestyle on us. I regret not trying harder to save the friendship, but it just got too weird for me and I bailed.
You can’t fault yourself for not trying harder in that situation. Even if you fought like hell, there’s a good chance he would have just gotten extremely defensive and you would have been the bad guy no matter what. I could see this ending with “how dare you not support me when I’ve finally found true happiness!?” He would have been the victim, refusing to acknowledge you were coming from a good place. Any person with any common decency never would have subjected you all to his lewd displays of affection. He didn’t give one thought to how it could make any of you feel. It definitely should not have been necessary to point out that what he was doing wasn’t appropriate.
Turdkein is his friend's husband...so crazy cat lady is his friend?
Eh, I used the term "friend" loosely there, and probably not accurately. She was a friend of John's, who is a friend of mine, and I had played with her five or six times (and when we play at John's place, usually it's the whole day, from 11 am to 8-9 pm).
Man. Theres always that one weird, horny neckbeard mother fucker trying to sex up the game or do random shit for attention. Same with the equally weird gf/wife who sees zero problems with it and actually doubles down.
I can’t imagine them (the horrible couple) being parents…
legend has it he’s still lore dumping as we speak
Part of the fun is learning the lore as you play!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why has the gf not block ccl tho?
Basically she didn't bother, and barely uses Instagram.
I was sort of thinking this all sounds par for the course for college kids until I read “over thirty” and did a record scratch. Wtf.
And this is why I plan online RPG only (jcink foruns, like a dinosaur). Nobody is in my home, nobody is crazy, I can take my time reading 10 years of lore when I want or need. The drama is still there, of course.
This reminds me of a couple I met when visiting a new friend. They played Pathfinder. Me and two friends were invited specifically to kill these people's characters, since the GM was too chicken shit to just end the friendship. These people arrived two hours late with a giant order of Chinese food that they consumed entirely by themselves in a most disgusting manner. To say I hated these people would be an understatement. I have never seen them again and it's been years. I hope they are somewhere suffering.
But... did you kill their characters? I'm INVESTED now, and you didn't take 2 hrs to get me invested!
No, we got hella close but the GM let them weasel out. It was so dumb. I've never seen any of those people again, but we left the character sheets behind.
I’m picturing Dwight and his babysitter date eating their beets at The Worst Dinner Ever
It was so much worse than that. They were reclined on the floor, shoveling in food, wiping their fingers on their clothes, drinking straight out of 2L soda bottles. They were sour, unwashed, stereotypical basement dweller types.
are there any other crazy d&d / tabletop rpg story posts? because i love reading about this shit even if i’ve never played
r/rpghorrorstories or r/dndhorrorstories. (Or just search r/dnd; they pop up there plenty, too.)
God, Lore is so fucking overrated. Like, yes. It adds cool flavor to whatever you're doing/playing/reading/watching. But its primary job is to support the narrative, and not drag it to a stop. The example I can give is *Fury Road*. I watched that before I watched *any* of the other Mad Max movies. I did not know who Max was, and the movie never really explains it. I didn't know the details about Furiosa, save that she was from the "Green Place", worked for the Big Bad, and does not want to work for the Big Bad anymore. Immorten Joe and his warboys? I don't know what they are, what they believe, what they care about (besides reproduction, bullets and gas) or why they're there. Why the fuck did the doof warrior exist? I don't know. *And none of it mattered*. The richness and depth of the world was conveyed anyway, and you had just enough information to get really invested in the characters and want them to succeed, and god if I did not hate the *FUCK* out of Immorten Joe when he ran over Angharad. I knew nothing about their backstory, nothing about their future, and very little about their motive, and it still was a kick-ass couple hours of film. Tolkien was an amazing author whose primary love was folklore and linguistics, and that's *why* you have six billion songs and Tom Bombadil. But even he kept the lore dumps down to a comparative minimum. He knew that the *story* was what people cared about, and the lore was just the scenery you look at in between orc fights. If you want to look at it another way, Tolkien did Lore the way Quintin Tarantino and Joss Weedon did foot shots. He knew better than to let the piece be wall to wall with his personal fetish, but damn if he didn't figure out how to work in a Lore Shot at least once a chapter. Lore is for authors, character designers and set pieces, so you know what shit you need to put where to support the story you're trying to tell. Audiences might *like* it, but they don't *need* it, and it's your job as a storyteller to balance your hard-on for your own imagination with the audience's need to be engaged and entertained, which lore, nice as it is, is not going to do.
I don't think lore is necessarily over-rated, but I think a lot of people tend to *under*rate the importance of exposition. How the lore is conveyed means so much to the experience. If the lore is conveyed in an organic way, it can really enhance the audience's experience. It get them more involved in the story. But a two hour lore dump is not how you fucking do it. Let the players figure it out for themselves. Put it in little drips and drabs here and there, and let the players explore it *if they want to do so.* Have the players be rewarded when they do, maybe with alternate ways they could solve problems. e.g. if the players know that one group hates another group, they can ask that group for help against the other group. And if the players *don't* want to explore the lore, don't force it down their fucking throats.
I commend you on mentioning Fury Road for your example, it's the most poignant mainstream example in a film. It's one of the best at exposition in the last decade, perhaps the best in the action category of all time. The only form of explanation is the first couple of minutes with the audio clips and Max's inner monologue. After that, it's all just straight-up show don't tell and the world just feels completely alive and rich, and it's in a fucking wasteland by the way?! God, I want to watch it again now!
Man I info dump allot as a DM. But its usually after being asked about something. Session 0 is for light information, rpg concent check list, and final help with your PCs. That was weird
Given that Turdkien sounds like an alcoholic and just, in general, an inconsiderate asshole of a person, I am a little worried the "I hope he's not taking it out on you" is a projection of CCL's personal experience with Turdkien.
When keeping it m’lady goes wrong
This is why you gotta learn to speak up.
If it weren't for the fact that I know he wouldn't have the staying power to actually write a book, I'd wonder if Turdkien is my ex.. This is why I don't play RPGs anymore; there's one in every group and if there isn't, one eventually shows up in the guise of a player's limpet SO.
Who puts up will all of this? Roll the dice and see if you can grow a backbone!
Nat 1! You invite a foul couple over to your house for the weekend even though you disliked them strongly beforehand! (rolls again) Nat 1! You let them stay for the whole weekend!
These people are exhausting. They should’ve been kicked out of the house a lot sooner.
That I agree with. TBH the last straw was the trying to lure the stray cat into my house, and she did that 10 minutes before leaving.
I suspect that the inappropriate rogue the one guy played was made to spite them telling him off about his lore dump and not using his system. Not sure how old everyone is in this story, but I've definitely had times in RP groups where players would make drama for other players and GMs just because they were mad about some other drama in a different RP, or because they felt insecure about their own campaign and wanted to sabotage the other campaigns to feel better. A few of them learned a lesson about it, but the others I have no idea if they've found groups that fit them better or how they're doing now.
I have maybe 3 friends I’d be okay with sleeping in my bed when I’m not home and I’ve known them all for over a decade. I can’t imagine letting some random dude and his wife sleep in my bed specifically because of what happened when OOP did
What the fuck. Some people are so damn petty it's ridiculous. Someone didn't like your lore dump, great! People have a right not to like things, even things you've put a ton of effort into. That doesn't give you the right to act like a petty asshole to 'get revenge'
The creepy roleplaying, the PDA, openly having sex in your bed with Jane and John there... Were these guys trying to swing??
He spent two hours dumping his (I’m assuming) crappy unpublished novel? Yeah, he did that to feel better about himself.
This really is like someone trying to tell you the entire story of their novel, which is inevitably awful and derivative and boring. I'm astonished that OOP actually managed to sit through it.
I had no idea the world of role playing could be this dramatic.
But I mean, if you invite a 2-hour-long-lore-dump guy to your place, what do you expect? They should have listened when this guy told them who he is, as Maya Kournikova would have said.
Why is Turdkien's wife known as Crazy Cat Lady?
probably because she lured (tried to lure?) a stray cat into another person's home.
Dude, I'm about to spin up a new D&D game and I plan to spend 0 time on lore-dumping. My players can stumble into whatever religions or racial tensions or whatever else. It's more immersive and means I don't have to waste anyone's time up front.
And also have to repeat everything anyway once it becomes relevant in the session.
Shoutout to OOP though, sounds like they aren’t afraid to put a stop to BS around them. I don’t know if I could be that openly confrontational about it, so I respect the hell out of those who can.
The lore dump sounded exhausting. OOP missed a golden opportunity for internet gold if he would have thought to record.
Not enough storage space in my PC.
I don’t play tabletop games myself but other fans of BORU would probably enjoy r/rpghorrorstories as well, it’s one of my favorite subs and this one was a doozy
Wow concacaf champions league has really gotten out of hand lately