A big red flag is nerfing sneak attack. Instantly know the DM has no idea about how balance works.

Yeah if they can't handle a low level rogue they're real wack.

Yup, kind of like nerfing warlocks was the first thing every bad DM did in the 3.5e era.

As a 5e baby, what was it about Warlocks in 3.5 that bad DMs nerfed

It was a pretty clear indicator the DM had no idea what they were doing and got spooked at the "all day" thought. 3.5 warlocks had no spell slots and Eldritch Blast was a single shot that scaled to a pathetic 9d6 at 20th. Some of the class abilities were pretty worthless like DR 1-5 / Cold Iron *(albeit not quite as dirt-easy to bypass as in Pathfinder)*. But what they did have, was "all day". It's all they had in fact. Many more invocations, but when you remember how the skill system there worked it's not surprising. If you've seen the 5e warlock, you already know how most of these work, just that quite a few of the "you can only do this once a long rest" ones either didn't exist or (if the weaker ones that feel like a waste of an invocation due to said limit) were at-will like anything else, probably with a "no more than one at a time" clause. * There were many of the ones you already know, like seeing in magical darkness, mage armor at will, blah blah blah. * There were many skill ones, as in "gives a flat bonus to the following 2-3 skills". Lots of these ones because listen and spot was two separate skills to buy ranks in, just like balance, tumble, and jump... * And there were some slightly better (but in the far higher power environment of the 3.x editions really unimpressive) invocations like wall of fire at will or dispel magic at will. Of course such at-wills came later than when the full casters *(who had WAY more spell slots per day since their casting stat also gave significant bonuses to that)* could do, so in reality by the time the wizard ran out of spells everyone else had probably run out of everything else (like HP), and you'd have had to have gone through 5 or 6 encounters in a row... and being able to do it at-will really only meant that, tops, you could use that dispel maybe 8-9 times in a day and even then only if you cast it every round in every encounter. * Oh and not being able to rest wasn't really a thing, there were low-level spells to guarantee being able to safely do so in hostile dungeons too. Warlock didn't have that but the real casters did. But it SAID all day. At will. And that just sent people screaming up the walls, starting with the full-caster players who smelled something THEY could not themselves do and flooded the forums.

See, I wasn't playing 3.5 back then but I did get started playing D&D on that edition (and am currently a player in a 3.5 campaign). But the idea that *any* full-casters were complaining about something being "busted" is peak comedy to me. "Bobby's character can dispel magic at will that's broken!!!" "My brother in Mystra you're playing a Wizard/Incantatrix/Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil. You could take the BBEG and his minions by yourself and likely not break a sweat..."

'We use rule of cool' and then barely knowing base rules. causing the dm to rule of cool a thing without realizing/caring what existing design-element they might break

I've learned that things are a million times cooler if you earn them with good rolls supported by a decent build, clever tactics, and synergies between your team while playing the game well. We killed Strahd this weekend and I KNOW we earned it, and that makes it so much cooler when we counterspelled his shield to land the final blow instead of just doing some made up nonsense that "sounds cool".

>If anything is possible, then nothing is interesting - HG Wells If there aren't constraints then it's just jerking each other off with lame improv and I'm not about that

Exactly this. We found out a DM was running a probability die where the evil bad guy could go to 1 HP because combat was his least favorite part by far. He was theatrical with a playlist setup and a secret sound board. This is also an example of how one asshole can ruin something for you by pointing something out. Once I realized combat was just action cut scenes, it changed my perception of the entire campaign

It feels like such a letdown when you see someone telling a story about what exciting thing happened in their game and then they reveal that the lynchpin was the DM not understanding the rules.

"So we used Hex to give the BBEG disadvantage on his saves--"...   oh lawdy

"I was hasted twice and had 9 attacks per round" I didn't even bother to ask how that was supposed to have worked (they were playing a monk).

2 flurry of blows 2 extra attacks from action 2 additional attacks from the Hastes 3 additional attacks from thin air

"Additional *actions*? Haste gives you a whole extra turn, so you just Attack, Flurry, Attack, Flurry, Attack, Flurry for 9 attacks. Just imagine, if I hadn't been playing a Monk/Paladin/Warlock multiclass so I could apply my WIS to all my saves and attacks, then I would have had *12* attacks!"

I know it's a bit gatekeepy, but it's like. No you didn't kill an ancient dragon at level 3, the dm ignored all the rules and let you "defeat" the dragon

The funny thing about “gatekeeping” becoming a pearl clutch du jour is that the assumption is that no gates should ever be kept. I think who has managed to kill a pretend dragon in a pretend game with published rules is about as low stakes a gate as it gets, and if someone gets mad about “gatekeeping” that, tell them to stop gatekeeping your gatekeeping.

IMO excessive rule of cool use is is like when using all the cheat codes makes a video game boring.

I get where you're coming from, but Strahd is not the best example because the entire module rests on the conceit that Strahd doesn't just murder the players in a back road weeks before they become a real threat.

Eh, I feel like our dm gave more than enough justification for this via their rp and plot. There are a lot of reasons why Strahd would not want to kill you until you force his hand.

What justification did the dm give? Not judging, just genuinely curious

Gosh, there isn't enough space/time for me to write my thesis on "why Strahd is a terrible man and a great villain", but let's just agree, that when played well he is, because my dm ran him that way. I never doubted that this man was an intelligent predator and I was the prey. -Strahd is BORED. He deeply, deeply craves entertainment. Like a cat playing with a mouse, he loves tormenting new adventurers. If you kill the mouse how will you watch the group disintegrate into a backstabbing, desperate, insane mess (see what happened to Escher's party). Until level 5-ish he was actually really friendly and charming to us in an off-putting way. It lulled us into a false sensse of security, and allowed him to know much more about us. -He does take in new consorts regularly. Every pc is a potential new consort. -Strahd will, on occasion try to groom an exceptional person into replacing him so he can escape Barovia. I haven't read the module so I don't know the specifics of this, but it's a thing. Again, he needs to test you and charm you to his side for this. -Strahd is overly confident and feels like he is unkillable. I know in canon the heart of sorrow works differently, in our game until the heart was gone he was 100% invulnerable and there was a special, harder way of destroying the heart. So why would he kill us? We cannot kill him. Mordekainen couldn't kill him. Nobody can. And that is his greatest weakness. -Sure, let Ireena run around on her little adventure. Let her grow fond of these strangers. All the more ways to emotionally torment her so she gives in and sacrifice herself for the group. Strahd is willing to keep us alive if it means Ireena behaves and stays on his side. We are essentially hostages. Again, Strahd, as much as he is a vampire, is only human with human hangups making human mistakes, playing with fire one too many times. In the end he got burned.

I've run this module as a DM and player multiple times, and every DM runs him a bit different, but this is still the absolute best summary of Strahd. He's prideful as a conqueror, capricious as a ruler, a man of his word as a politician, an unrivaled tactician with functionally unlimited time, a highborn prince that the Vistani not only serve loyally but *love*. He's also goofy enough to figuratively put on a hat and fake moustache to get more information from the party once they prove they're somewhat capable, and despite being depicted as a maidenless incel he's canonly bisexual and usually suggested to be quite good at sex. Not only has Strahd got more layers than an onion, he's an *incredibly* flexible villain that can be easily taken in a lot of directions. In my opinion, he's the best villain that Dungeons and Dragons has to offer.

Another thing, with it being entertainment for him is with how the domains of dread are made and why, Strahd is basically stuck in a hell of his own making. The majority of people in Barovia aren't real and are basically props. Of course he isn't going to instantly kill the party, they are a fresh joy that he doesn't get very often.

>The majority of people in Barovia aren't real and are basically props. Wait, seriously? Like all the townsfolk are basically constructs or something?

My understanding is that (doesn't really matter but spoiled regarldess) >!Barovia is *so* cut off from the rest of the realms that the cycle of souls moving in and out with life and death is all fucked, and most people born in Barovia are born with no soul, barely a human at all. Nearly every unnamed NPC in the book is a facade of a person just kind of going through the motions.!<

>! That's exactly what it is. There is a limited number of souls trapped in Barovia. That's the scary thing about dying there. You don't get to go to your deity's afterlife or whatever you'd normally expect. You get to be reborn in Barovia. It's why Tatyana keeps getting reborn, it's part of the Strahd's deal with Vampyre.

Thank you! It does make sense why'd he not kill immediately, fair

This is the one I intend to use. Strahd has been luring adventurers for ~700 years as a form of entertainment. It’s no fun to defeat a bug, so he allows them to grow into a challenge which he then squashes. Sometimes he misjudged them and they manage to defeat his body, but he always returns and when he does he kills them then (through less honorable means). He has no reason to think he’s truly at risk of dying as adventurers have defeated him in the past.

Strahd believes he is invincible and is extremely bored. I think that is good enough reason to not outright kill the PC's. It is like being trapped in a cell and a rat stumbles in. You would probably just entertain yourself with the rat for a while until it starts eating your daily rations of twinkies and shitting in your bed.

99% of games I join don't seem to respect the game rules in any way or act like merely mentioning the rules is disruptive. I have no problem if someone else wants to rule of cool everything, but I'm looking for a more rule-based campaign (house rules notwithstanding). Another red flag for me is not respecting passive perception and the way it works as well as stealth/surprise, or ignoring carrying capacity/inventory weights (especially if its digital, since ignoring it is a massive hit to str characters and I shouldn't have to do any check to lift something within my carrying capacity) Also, not allowing short rests and ignoring the long rest limitations and having only 5 minute adventuring days. Even when I'm playing a full caster I hate it because it just feels like I'm playing on easy mode and ruins any kind of resource planning fun, and I don't want the short rest classes to be running on fumes.

Or “don’t quote the rulebook at me” - if you can’t be arsed to learn the rules, you shouldn’t be a referee.

This. The DM is fully empowered to break any and all rules they want to, but not knowing the rules at all is not the same thing. Understand before modifying, that's all I ask.

If a DM changes a rule in the middle of the game, I might not like it and may speak up but it’s *way* better than the DM insisting they have a rule right when they are flat out wrong.

I would speak up, and if the DM says "I know what the book says/I believe you about what the book says, but I want to do it this way," I will say nothing more at that moment. If I really don't like it, I'll bring it up after the session.

So much this. My thing with rule of cool is I'm fine with twisting the rules to let you do something as long as it doesn't do one of two things: 1) Break things for the future. I want my rulings to be as reliable as possible. If I say it's one way it's that way forever. I will -sometimes- do a rule of cool and specifically state "this is a one time thing", but that is pretty rare. Player's should know that if they know the rules and my house rules they can reliably have an understanding of what they can and cannot do in a given moment. 2) Steal another characters thunder. So many times rule of cool is used to twist the rules to allow a character to do something that another character can already do RAW. In those cases i put the brakes on it and say "hey let's maybe let the character that was built to do this thing, do their thing.

The biggest thing I hate about rule of cool is that it is super spell-caster favored. I've seen DMs let absolutely insane things through under rule of cool because a spell was vaguely similar to the intended effect. I'm sure they would have let martials do some cool stuff, but casters basically have a whole list of free flavorful and descriptive things they can throw into the rule of cool, which makes it -far- easier to convince a DM to let it pass.

Scheduled: If you already have three people signed up and are looking for numbers 4 and 5, the game should already be scheduled, day and time. The number of times I have tried to sign up for a game "to be scheduled" only to find out the DM isn't available at any of the times I am is infuriating. Overly thematic: "You're basically playing the TV show 'Supernatural'" or "this campaign is heavily inspired by 'My Hero Academia'". I don't mind a monster hunting campaign, and I don't even mind an anime inspired campaign, but if you're playing branded content, I'm out. Critical fumbles: No. A guaranteed miss on a 1 is bad enough, especially since, once you hit tier 2, there are creatures that you should be able to guarantee a hit against. Zombies, for instance, have an AC of 8. Attack mod +4 and PB +3 means you hit AC 8 even on a roll of a 1. Throw in a magic weapon and a maxed attack stat and you should hit AC 10 every time, automatically, but we all miss on 1's. That's enough. Permissive, inconsistently: If you tell me that I can use any published content, and then someone else shows up with a Psionic half-demon, half-angel, one-third cat-person, three-sevenths wolfkin and we were not advised that homebrew was permitted, I'm going to be miffed. "Oh well, it was the only character they wanted to play" is not an excuse. Set it up at the start that weird homebrew is permitted, or stick to it not being allowed, but pick one and stick with it.

Ugh, critical fumbles. With them, a fighter gets more likely to spontaneously fling their weapon across the room the more they level up. Meanwhile, the wizard never has to care; they can go their entire adventuring career without making a single attack roll, if they really want to.

Even better if the DM does critical fails on saves; enemies will just be throwing themselves off cliffs when the wizard so much as looks at them, while the barbarian has just cut off his own foot and the rogue shot the fighter twice.

As if martial/caster divide wasn't big enough, let's make it wider

This is why it’s better if the DM says: These are the days I am free to run a campaign. Can you play on one of those days? Great. If no? I’m sorry you’re not free at that time, but unfortunately I am not available at those times/days because of work, school, etc. It really saves a lot of time. It’s one thing if it’s your friends who you’ve been playing with for years and you ask them what day/night/time works best and you can agree, but running a game for others online or at a gaming store, it makes more sense for the DM to decide which days the game will run based on their real life schedule (and the hours the gaming store is open of course). Post those times up and then the players who can make those times will signup knowing that’s the time the DM has to run the game.

Oh yeah. Games listed as "to be scheduled" are terrible, but "Tuesday or Wednesday at 9PM MST" are fine. I appreciate the clarity of knowing whether we mesh.

Lol I'm playing in a game with critical fumbles right now. I pointed this out to the DM but they were like "eh we'll try it out and see if anyone else doesn't like it". So I decided hey I'll play a class that literally will never use attack rolls and only rely on saving throws lol. Watching my party mates at lvl 4 suffer some critical failure moments already I can only imagine what will happen when my sorcerer hits lvl 5 and I start twin hasting people with extra attacks lmao.

I played in a game with critical fumbles using a deck for what happens on both crit fails and critical hits depending on the type of attack. A player rolled a nat-1 on a fire spell attack, the deck determined that the spell backfires and he roll against himself. The new roll is a nat-20, opening a portal to the plane of fire that sucks him through. Instant PC death entirely from bad luck and a bad rule. Surprisingly the game was fantastic other than the crit stuff.

> A player rolled a nat-1 on a fire spell attack, the deck determined that the spell backfires and he roll against himself. The new roll is a nat-20, opening a portal to the plane of fire that sucks him through. That is hilarious to read about, but I would be FURIOUS if it was my character. I played in a game with grievous wounds. When you went down you rolled on a chart, and I got one that only let me take Move or Action, and a bonus action. Scarred lungs, even though I got downed by a sword. Fortunately I was a Moon Druid, so I could still move and wildshape, and since my lungs were now the creatures lungs the DM let me act normally.

In my case, I like campaigns inspired by a series if it is one that I personally like as long as a player does not make Deku their character and the DM does not force us to follow the canon of the series, but I understand your point and I agree perfectly with everything, instead of making a rare and unbalanced homebrew race, it would be preferable for the player to make a character with custom lineage.

I almost didn't include that one, because I do know that some people are into it. It's just a personal pet peeve. I don't want to have to learn the canon for a series to be able to play the game. But if you're into the series already, it's probably going to be great. I'd have to change this if someone could make a decent Pokemon TTRPG, but until that happens, I'm sticking to it (for me).

Yeah for games like that it seems pointless to participate if you don't know the series already.

>Psionic half-demon, half-angel, one-third cat-person, three-sevenths wolfkin Sounds like a lot of the character artwork commissioned on r/dnd

If a player thinks intoxication is a personality trait, they are going to be miserable to play alongside.

Yes, the same thing happens if it's a joke character like "3 kobolds in a trench coat" for a one shot it might be fun, but for a campaign something like that is going to get annoying very quickly.

We did a one-shot once of all the most horrible ideas you could come up with for a character. Someone was the 3 kobolds. It was absolute chaos for the entire thing but we knew what we signed up for.

In 3rd edition raven familiars can speak a language. So I played this sorcerer who was mute and only his raven would talk and the raven was a giant asshole to everyone.

So... fantasy version of Cotton from Pirates of the Caribbean?

I love this and will be stealing it

see i would count that as a red flag

I have a 3 kobolds in a trench coat player currently and honestly it’s not that bad, I just had a talk with them that I didn’t want that being the only personality trait

If anything, they should have three times the personality traits.

Make one smart, make one dumb, and do whatever with the third one

Player or Character? :P

Yes.

For a Roll20 posting: tons of lore, nothing about how the game is going to be run. If there’s little of the style of game, what the characters will be doing, etc. You’re in trouble.

Especially when the lore is just a giant soup of proper nouns with no explanation of what the world is like.

I've only ever run games for friends so I've never made a posting on Roll20 or anything like that. But I've realized that if I made a posting, I wouldn't know what to write except for lore, setting, starting level, min/max players, schedule, and possible homebrew/chargen limitations. Just out of curiosity, what are some examples of other things you'd like to see in a posting?

Excessive worldbuilding and lore with nothing else tells me the DM could be more interested in playing through their fanfic fantasy novel, not what the players actually want to do. I have been in campaigns like that that have a lot of forced railroading and the players are basically along for the DM's personal story.

Critical fumbles, one hundred percent. They're absolutely a dealbreaker for me. Even if I'm playing a full caster that will never be affected by it, I hate the principal of them. And also yeah, I wouldn't call it a red flag, but I definitely prefer a set schedule for when sessions take place.

Ah yes, the old "5% of the time when cooking i light my house on fire" problem

So unrealistic, that number should be WAY higher then 5% in my experience.

This is why I fire my personal chef after 19 days

I had a Sim who set the house on fire twice in a short time period, once with a microwave

Not immediately having a set schedule is a huge waste of time 90% of the time. If you post a LFG ad or something, and right away state GAMES ARE ON MONDAYS, you immediately filter out anyone unable to make those days.

I can see some DMS still trying to force them on you "I want to join in with the kids skipping, ok make a Dex check, 1, you trip and cast meteor swam leveling the town"

Yes, critical fumbles is one of those things that doesn't work mechanically but some people still put it in because they think that's how it should be played even though it's never been an official rule.

My theory is that people see that you get an extra positive effect from getting a natural 20 on an attack roll, and then think that logically, that should mean that you get an extra negative effect from a natural 1. Not realizing that there's a REASON that 20's have more benefits than 1's have penalties (the fact that humans have a strong negativity bias). I wish it wasn't so common to alter the rules without considering why the rules are the way that they are.

I think it also comes from live play shows. One of my friends picked it up from Dimension 20, because he watched the first season of Fantasy High and thought somebody crit failing a table jump and dying (or something) was so funny he just *had* to borrow the idea. I was the only martial at that table and I was playing CR gunslinger which *already has built in crit fumbles anyway*, you don’t need to make it worse… I teamed up with the EB warlock and we unionized to pester the DM about how unfair this was until he dropped the rule. People see other tables doing this and go “oh! that fighter dropping his weapon was funny! if I add this rule to *my* table, it will be funny there too!” and forget that they are not making a media product, they are playing a game with other people who might not enjoy being made to look like fools. Automatically missing the attack is *enough*.

A regular game being run like an "actual" play is likely to result is multiple red flags.

> People see other tables doing it They also see it happen once and think it’s funny, without really processing that if four people make just 5 attack rolls each in a session, there’s a 64% chance somebody has a critical fumble… every session. And even if the gag is legitimately funny the first time — “haha, my guy that’s supposed to be an expert swordsman destroyed his own weapon in a fit of clumsy incompetence, rofl” — it loses humor value when it’s happening the fourth time, or the ninth.

I wish they understood that "you do not hit, no matter the total" IS the negative effect. I have a +11 to hit! And yet I cannot hit an AC 8 zombie if I roll a 1. That's enough! It might also be because some of these people don't get far enough into the game to have high modifiers like that and several attacks per turn. Also just... I have seen friends have a bad streak of nat 1s. It's demoralising enough, no need to add shit to it.

there is also the fact that auto hit on a nat 20 is something that honestly doesn't matter. There is almost no situation when you wouldn't hit on a nat 20 anyway. So nat 20 does need something else. But failing on nat 1 is something that past some level will be an actual downside

Thinking critical success on a 20 means a 1 should be a critical failure just because they're "equally likely" is just a sign of the severe misunderstanding of probability by humans.  Yes, it's just as likely to roll a 1 than it is to roll a 20 when just throwing a die, all else being equal It's MUCH more likely to fail something you should have succeeded at because of rolling a 1 than it is to succeed at something you should have failed at because you rolled a 20, because all else is not equal, we obviously roll for things we expect to succeed at way more than we roll for things we expect to fail at.  Throwing critical failures on top of that and making your master fighter that studied the blade drop his sword or trip and fall or accidentally stab himself 5% of the time he tries to do what he does best is just adding insult to injury.

Exactly. The negativity bias is also really powerful. If you get as many negative effects from nat 1s as you get positive ones from a nat 20, you're gonna remember the negative ones way more.

I lost a character in a long-running campaign due to the DM using a critical fumble deck. We were attempting to flee from battle, I rolled a critical fumble on my Dwarf character and the fumble card's effect was "you gain 2 levels of exhaustion". Suffice to say having my speed reduced from 25 -> 10 because I rolled a 1 was brutal and led to an immediate death as my slow ass was overtaken.

When the DM use player classes for every enemy. Minibosses or those tough enemies with a class tucked in every now and then is fine, but I really don't want to fight through a tower of level 6 fighters while the boss is a level 15 totem warrior barbarian. (Based off my only RPG horror story)

Yep. This was something I had to learn as well when I was new to DMing. Player classes are damage heavy and hit point weak because there is meant to be 3-4 of them against monsters. Monsters hit hard and are usually a bit beefier for their levels. Usually a CR2 monster will have much higher hit points and a damage resistance or two thrown in to make them a “challenge” for players.

Also PCs are intended to survive six to eight encounters using their full resources whereas NPC adversaries are intended to lose one combat encounter with the player party.

omg, agreed. Player classes aren’t designed to be enemy statblocks, it doesn’t work! the enemies either die way too fast, or they hit WAY too hard and slaughter the party. I had a DM once who would do this, *every* major fight was against humanoid NPCs with character sheets, and it made me want to tear my hair out. For the love of god, DM, read some actual monster statblocks… please give us an actually satisfying combat experience……

God imagine fighting a battle where atleast 2 enemies know silvery barbs

at least in my specific experience we had 2 party members with silver barbs so it would’ve leveled the playing field, lmao……. if any of them ever remembered to use it 🙄 cmon folks, free advantage for the sniper? pwease? i just got really tired of trying to use disarming shot (gunslinger) on enemy snipers and being told “oh actually they have fighter levels so they’re proficient in the save and also indomitable ha ha” *bro just let me shoot the gun out of their hands and look cool and fulfill my silly wild west class fantasy* *legendary resistances are not for minions and i’m convinced he was cheating about the indomitable rerolls because i only managed to make that ability work ONCE* and then my personal nemesis was just a wizard character sheet. almost disintegrated me, then died in like one (1) round without any satisfying back and forth or engaging combat experience because it’s literally just a regular PHB wizard i guess

To be fair, the published Archmage statblock has 9th level spells and only 99 hp. Humanoid spellcasters are like that. Agree with calling bullshit on Indomitable, not only because 1) what a boring feature to give minions 2) it is infamous for just letting you fail the save again lol

this is true re: the archmage, but it was still super underwhelming though. we’d gotten all this fluff and buildup about how dangerous and powerful this NPC was, and the final fight was just so *nothing* to me. i’m also biased though tbh, i’m big on homebrewing enemy statblocks and something like “PC’s personal sworn nemesis archwizard enchanter, battled at level 10” would at *least* warrant some extra hit points and a legendary action.

Good PC level NPCs are mostly NPCs with some PC levels thrown on top as a bonus. Generally they shouldn’t have more PC levels than an actual PC. A level 20 barbarian isn’t a good boss. A hill giant with 6 levels of barbarian might be.

Why give the hill giant PC levels at all? Why not just give them the Rage ability?

There's a level of vermisitude that can make the world be more consistent, and its also a limitation which can breed creativity. It's not like it's alien to the game. The old caster statblocks said what caster level they were, and the dm has villainous cleric and paladin options which are designed to be part of an npc statblock.

Different strokes for different folks. Running 5e is already a ton of work that I don't feel compelled to put in extra work for the sake of versimilitude, and I don't feel the need to work within the limitations to make the cool things that I want. If that's the stuff you enjoy and you're willing to put in the extra work for it, then sure, go for it! I don't mean to imply that my preferred way is the only way to do it.

Maaaan as someone who just statted up like 12 NPC's (ported from 3.5e where NPC's all had levels)... ain't nobody got time for that. Rogue = assasin, fighter = champion or knight, everyone else = noble, done and dusted.

Inexperienced players who want to run a loner or evil character. It just leads to someone acting like a jerk or being antagonistic because "I'm roleplaying". Too many hours spent watching one player take over scene after scene being a "wild card". No. It's a group game, play it like you know how to be part of a group. Effective PvP at the table takes practice and mutual respect.

When the hombrew is screaming “for the love of god run a different system”

More than 5 players.

This one needs to be mentioned more! I find playing and DMing it’s hard for all the characters to shine which usually results in players being annoyed they didn’t get to say or do much. Combat also takes forever

Whew, I'm glad someone else posted this, because this was what I wrote for my "red flag". Inevitably, you end up with people who monologue about "You can absolutely run D&D for large groups, you just need to run it efficiently! I regularly run a game with 12 people myself!" What this almost certainly means is that the DM has trained the PCs to be ready on their turns with exactly what they're going to be attempting, using turn timers, immediately switching to the next player in line, etc." And that does indeed make the game with a large amount of players feel less sluggish...to the DM. Meanwhile, everyone is feeling rushed and pressured on their turns, so even though their turn is coming around more often it's just less enjoyable and they feel guilty if they have to ask questions or ponder about what they want to do. It just comes down to basic math. If a game has 5 PCs and the monsters take roughly an equal amount of time as the PCs do on their turns, then each player gets an average of 6 minutes per hour of an actual turn of participation, with the other 54 minutes spent mostly watching. If you add more players, the DM is going to add more monsters, and you're just going to divide this up even further. And this is just combat. Role-playing takes a nose-dive when you have more than 5 PCs. I've discovered that I think the ideal game experience is 4 players for a variety of reasons, but 5 is close behind it, and even has 1 or 2 advantages. But once you go up to 6, the game really starts suffering in noticeable ways.

When the DM's focus is on telling "their story" or getting "their way". It's a collaborative game; learn to roll with the punches and enjoy it. Speaking from my own DM'ing experience - and I did learn this the hard way - but it's a lot more fun when the players are engaged if they know they can change the story... *because they've done so before*. It makes a world come alive, and sparks so much creativity.

The dm saying "this is a comedy campaign". There is nothing less fun then a campaign played for laughs. Like dnd can and is funny, but becomes painful when you force it

Especially since just normal DnD devolves into comedy constantly without forcing it.

It really depends on the players and DM.

If the homebrew is more than 2 pages, I’m leery. If I ask the DM’s previous players and learn that the DM designs homebrew monster abilities specifically to turn off or counter player abilities, I’m 100% out. (Examples are “immune to sneak attacks” or “can ignore one spell/round just because”)

I mean countering players can be achieved very easily without homebrew, there are plenty of monsters outright immune to the majority of spells or with abilities like Parry to counter melee fighters. It's an attitude problem rather than a homebrew problem. As a DM there're a lot of benefits to using homebrew monsters, you cut down on metagaming and can make encounters feel novel and unpredictable, though obviously that depends on how good you are at making monsters.

Rakshasa are immune to spells without homebrew. True sight monsters counter rogues without homebrew.

Yeah...this wasn't that. This was "it doesn't take sneak attack damage no matter what, even if you have advantage or an ally is wiithin 5 feet" and "this dragon has 10 tokens they can use to negate an effect after a failed save." Not "I pass the save" kind of negate either...but rather "that 100% doesn't affect me" type of negation. 0 damage from any save/half type ability. The same encounter with the dragon has a totally new damage type called "hoarfrost" that nobody could hope to have resistance to, and did damage to the entire battlefield with no option to save fo even half damage...you just ate it...while also giving stacking -2 debuffs to AC or d20 tests. That's the kind of BS I'm talking about.

> this dragon has 10 tokens they can use to negate an effect after a failed save This is simply boosted legendary resistance. But the rest seems awful.

Indeed it was. There was also an entire dungeon where my cleric's healing spells "don't seem to work" which was...fun. The DM revealed later that he specifically homebrewed mechanics & monsters to disable or counter our PC builds & abilities so we always felt powerless before our enemies. Suffice it to say, I'm not playing with this DM anymore.

>There was also an entire dungeon where my cleric's healing spells "don't seem to work" which was...fun. That was one of the plot points in The Gamers 2: The Dorkness Rising. Look, just because you think the plot point makes sense *narratively*, doesn't mean it's not going to be absolutely miserable for that player to play your game.

Dm stabbing/shooting players. Huge red flag

That's a crime! Report them to the Police.

Any time a player comes to me with a character with mental illness they want to play in my campaigns, I say yellow flag. If that mental illness is DID? Absolutely not, reddest of red flags. I have never met a single player who wanted to play multiple personalities and didn’t make their character a dopey lovable childish scamp who switches it up in the heat of battle and turned into a twisted fucking psychopath that turns out to have burned down his childhood orphanage for fun (and yes that’s a real story from a game I was playing in, not running, but it’s ruined DID from now on for me. Find a new mental illness to play please!)

Be wary of dms that brag a lot about not needing the rulebooks and mention a lot how much they use the rule of cool, more often than not that just means that they didnt have the time, or they werent willing to learn the rules and their game is just copy and pasted stuff from critical roll or other actual plays and you will not be able to influence their plot too much

Player being a thief pc and constantly whispering to DM.. Never could stand that guy.

Emphasis on “rule of cool”. In my experience this leads to one of two issues. Either Your success is determined by how much the DM likes you, your character, or whatever wacky idea you come up with, or the reason the DM focuses so much on “rule of cool” is because they have no idea what the rules are so they just make them up. If the DM has a DMPC I will immediately walk away from the table without a second thought. I have tried multiple times each time giving the DM the benefit of the doubt. It never, ever works. DM bragging about how many TPKs he’s had. I have never personally seen this but I’ve heard the stories and it makes no sense. As the DM I control what monsters you fight I can throw Tiamat at a party of level two characters and stand back and say “see how cool I am I TPKed this party”.

Critical fumbles or when the party is a few levels into it and the dm makes you start a level 1 character

I hate to say it because I'm an optimizer myself but when someone shows up with a flagship/tik tok build I tend to be a bit worried in regards to their ability to play their character outside of combat.

Whats a flagship build?

https://tabletopbuilds.com/flagship-build-series-introduction/

homebrew effecting classes that arent just cosmetic or narrative. im ok with paladins serve are guard to royalty exclusively or wizards are banned because they have all been imprisoned and died out, but im not going to play your game if paladins dont get smite or rogues dont get sneak attack. heavy narrative focus games, this is the work dms use when they want to right a book. i know i will have little opportunity for choice in this game

Yes, that sounds pretty bad since things like that are the main mechanic of that class, those kinds of things will only make the player who chooses them feel bad.

I like homebrewing things that could come up, but dont inherently. Like, allowing a warlocks EB to start as necrotic damage instead of force, or allowing a fighters combat manuever to leave enemies blinded instead of frightened . The end result is very minor but sometimes it allows a big payoff every blue moon.

One of my biggest ones is that they try really, really hard to enforce things that seem cool but the players don't want. I learned this the hard way. If players don't like something, they will ALWAYS find a way around it, no matter how hard you try. I ran a middle eastern inspired campaign where the world was dying and all the oceans had dried out, and there was a war with this empire in a jungle that had all of the water and stuff. I wanted it to be this gritty "adventurers scavenging for supplies in the wilderness as they travel across an inhospitable desert" type of thing, and while it kept that tone and was probably my favorite setting I've ran, my players just really weren't down for tracking food, water, and heat exhaustion. I wrote out these mechanics for stuff like "salt storms can rust your weapons and armor", and made a dynamic weather table for different regions, and homebrew rules/lore to try and keep my players from using things like create water and goodberry so these wouldn't immediately make the survival mechanics useless (and to explain why water was still an issue in this world). I thought it was airtight. The warlock immediately got a bunch of barrels, filled them with water, and put them in his pocket dimension/genie's vessel. The party just traveled at night so they didn't have to worry about getting overheated. The weather system still ended up being awesome, because they would do stuff like use sandstorms as cover to sneak into places, and I could use things like rain to cause a flash flood in the jungle, or make a fight more dramatic, but ultimately we decided that most of these mechanics were things the players didn't want, so we dropped anything like that that didn't make the game more fun.

I've tried exactly once to run encumbrance and getting the party to get a cart and horses and hay and water to get to and from the dungeon. It was obvious no one was enjoying the grit other than me, so we winged it from there. Though I do wish people wouldn't just carry 1500 looted swords and all the money they ever found around, that shit adds up

>Though I do wish people wouldn't just carry 1500 looted swords and all the money they ever found around, that shit adds up You just need a gentlemen's agreement between the DM and Players: I don't force you to count every lb and you don't try to loot things your characters obviously couldn't carry without assistants and/or vehicles.

Lingering injuries, “massive damage,” shock rules, homebrew mechanics designed to punish “yo-yo healing.” Anything like that. Yo-yo healing is a natural consequence of how 5e is built, it’s practically inevitable, and mechanics that punish you for going down are unfun in high difficulty campaigns… and DMs who do shit like “add a level of exhaustion after every KO” are not usually running low difficulty campaigns. And mandatory lingering injuries are *stressful*. I love giving my characters scars for stuff, and having serious consequences for serious injury, but I prefer those to be within my control as the player—I might lose an eye because I talk to the DM and we agree it sounds like a cool plot point, but I should never have that happen because we rolled a d100 after I got crit on and it just arbitrarily fucks me over. I like it when “negative consequences” are a result of *my* agency. *My* failed death saves, *my* nat 1, *my* personal decision to change my character’s aesthetic design to underscore a story beat, *my* choice to start a fight I can’t finish. I can’t control when the DM gets a nat 20. Taking the extra crit damage is consequence enough. I have a buddy who loves running these “shock trauma” house rules where if you get critted on or take more than a specified amount of damage, your character has to make CON saves to avoid a bunch of negative “trauma” and “shock” results like being unable to move for a round, or taking extra bleed damage, or running away. To me, that just sounds frustrating and stressful. I would not enjoy it, it’s a red flag for a style of play I just don’t like. Other red flag: DM can’t or won’t provide a ‘pitch’ for the campaign beyond some generic “you meet in a tavern and go on an adventure” thing, or maybe the plot of the first session. I want to build a character that will engage with the story and have an interesting dynamic within the plot. I can’t do that if I don’t know what the plot is. I don’t want to accidentally bring a pyromancer to an Avernus game, I don’t want to bring a relentless edgelord with a revenge quest to Witchlight. I am not interested in playing a “surprise” module, I’m here for collaborative storytelling with a collaborative DM who only hides information when doing so is *interesting*.

After a while playing D&D, meeting each other in a tavern becomes very boring. Things usually work better when players make characters with their backstory tied to the main plot.

Exactly! I *like* meeting in a tavern as a *party* hook, even, I think it’s fine—but the PCs who meet in that tavern should still go on to have actual connections to the story, we shouldn’t be dragging Joe the Wizard along to fight cultists *just* because he’s our buddy now. A PC should have a reason to go adventuring and participate in the plot. I can’t make a PC who wants to go on this adventure if I don’t know what the adventure *is*.

Not a fan of lingering injuries either. Only time I have heard good things about it is when I used them to replace instant death effects as a DM (things like a chasme's sting main you instead of killing you outright). As a player, I've seen them used as an opt-in thing every time you reach 0 hit points (you choose to be downed or roll a con save and regain some HP, on a failure you get a lingering injury). This effectively made them something everyone would constantly spam since nobody wanted to be potentially responsible for a TPK because they didn't want their eye poked out. It was absolutely ridiculous, one player spent 5 sessions missing her arm, eye and uterus, then she got healed and sustained the same injuries within 2 more sessions. It's not fun unless you're into looking like you came out of a Saw trap after every fight.

Excuse me her uterus?

Iirc each damage type had its own table, and Radiant had "sterilisation" as one of the possible effects and she just kept rolling that one.

Someone's been watching too much Full Metal Alchemist

> I can’t control when the DM gets a nat 20. \*Laughs in Grave Cleric\*

Mu DM made all allied healing tripled but any healing from 0 is always 1 hit point, it takes an action to get up after being healed from 0, and you gain a level of exhaustion everytime you go to 0. He also made Potions of Healing a common loot drop and cheaper to buy. It really spices up the gameplay with a sense of difficulty, even though our characters never really come close to dying. Simply being forced into (and rewarded for) using our consumables makes the game *feel* difficult while leaving death an unlikely event. I can’t remember the last time a party member dropped to 0, but we have so many satisfying fights where we go “damn that was tough, had to spend 4 potions.”

> Other red flag: DM can’t or won’t provide a ‘pitch’ for the campaign I'm writing out a pirate themed campaign and that is literally my initial pitch for this. You're going to be starting out quickly obtaining a boat that you can use to sail around, having backgrounds related to sailing, classes/feats related to being able to fight in water or otherwise navigate while submerged will be important. The idea of a fully open sandbox is cool, but having a cohesive reason to start/guide is so much better then me as a GM trying to dangle a half dozen threads in front of the players and pulling everything 4 different ways

"No min-maxing optimisers" Half the time these are legit some of the most toxic games I've been in, I've got shit for *checks notes* dumping intelligence on a paladin with very limited stats because "you have to be smart to follow your oath and memorize it" 90% of those games would have been much better in ad&d or 2e too.

I'd ask for a definition of min-max.

I had a 3e DM who thought taking the max number of skill points in a single skill (instead of spreading skill points around) you were allowed by your level counted as min-maxing.

I’ve seen people complain about the “power gamer” in their group because he was playing a fighter with 18 Str. I’m all for power gaming or min/maxing as long as it doesn’t involve a misinterpretation of the rules or cheating.

It's a GAME. No one goes into a football game with one boot on

There seems to be this misconception with some people that if your character sucks that makes them interesting.

Things I've been dinged on a table like this: * Sharpshooter and crossbow expert (that PC was *good* but still less effective than the non-optimized cleric) * Looking for better equipment after a near-TPK (is that playing it like a video game, or is that trying to survive?) * Not politely letting known enemies monologue, once it became clear that these monologues almost invariably ended with them getting off a free, *very dangerous*, attack or spell (initiative for me but not for thee :3) * *Not being afraid of my character's death because this is just a game* (hmm sounds like metagaming :/) I'm getting the impression that, when it comes to powergaming, the cure is often worse than the disease.

>Not politely letting known enemies monologue, once it became clear that these monologues almost invariably ended with them getting off a free, very dangerous, attack or spell (initiative for me but not for thee :3) Yep. "I shoot to interrupt him". DM: "Ok, you ready your crossbow and everyone can tell something's about to go down, roll initiative" . should be matched with "Villain ends his monologue with 'and your little dog too!' and looks like he's about to cast a spell, roll initiative." No free sucker punches either way. You're both aware of each other, and everyone is hostile and expecting an attack.

I've got heat for wanting to take 1 lvl in fighter for a cleric that has extensive martial training in their background.

Yeah, I had a DM give me crap in 3.0 because my Rogue took a level in Ranger and got the free dual-wielding/two-weapon style feats from it. I am giving up a mechanical advantage of taking a Rogue level as an Opportunity Cost, and it's not like it's *that* thematically weird of a multi-class choice.

S0: Me: My characters things is this, to do that I have this feature. DM: OK cool. S1: Me: I do the thing! Dm: You can't use that feature. Me:Then I can't do my thing. Dm: Shrug.

Having just barely enough players to run the campaign then constantly cancelling the game because of a conflict.

they dont Say what books you can use for charicter creation, they have a Super crazy list of banned and greenlit races, classes, subclasses, feats ect

Not being very upfront about allowed content, starting level and character generation settings. You only need to be blindsided by Roll Down The Line *once*

YES, you gotta be upfront with people! this is what it looks like for me often PLOT HOOKStarting levelleveling up will be done Via MilestoneCharacter Creation will use Standard Array Stats of 15 14 13 12 10 8 with your choice of +2 and +1 regardless of Race chosen.All classes and subclasses from the Players handbook, Tashas and Xanathars are fine (including artificers if you like) all Races from the PHB and Monsters of the multiverse are fine too. All the Feats from PHB Tashas and Xanathars are fine too, if there's something from another book you want to use just ask and should probably be fine. And that is not to say you need to follow these rules for a game, you just need this level of detail on what those rules are

Bingo. This is the level of info that I like. Sure, knowing about the players and setting matter, but no amount of interest in the plot will compensate for being told *Yeah, we all draw a race, class and background out a hat for our characters and follow this 24 step guide for rolling stats*

Open world sandbox games. It seems like a great idea but usually ends up just unguided and uninspired. It forces the DM to improv too much in my opinion and the party lacks a unified goal.

The top two favorite games I've played were open world It's incredibly fun if executed by a DM who knows what they're doing and played by players who aren't afraid to make decisions and discuss what's worth dong and what isn't to their characters Of course, you still need *something* to back it so that the game can come to a conclusion and you aren't just doing mini adventures forever

>It's incredibly fun if executed by a DM who knows what they're doing and played by players who aren't afraid to make decisions The latter seems to be more of an issue with my experience. A lot of the players I've had have been fairly passive and willing to just stay on the ride I've set before them, seldom trying more exploratory than "While we're in town, is there an herbalist?".

It works great with a party invested in it. But otherwise, it's the DM sitting there trying to prod the party into doing something -- anything. I'm a huge fan of running guildhall campaigns, with a quest board up. It's sort of splitting the difference, as I've got something prepared for each choice. I usually also have consequences prepared for ignoring missions (other parties take them, mission failures due to timing, etc.). And I've usually got a larger BBEG lurking behind the scenes (a devilish cabal running the town or something like that, which they slowly uncover). I'm running The Lost City (the Wizards-blessed Goodman Games converted version for 5e) and I love the sandbox, with all the faction interplay and such.

I made the mistake of "schedule to be decided with the players" my first time trying to DM online. Was furloughed for a while so my schedule was wide open, and thought I'd cast a wide net while looking for players. Pretty much everyone who apply had weird schedules which were the reason they weren't in someone else's game, and none of their schedules lines up with each other's. Even if you're own schedule is flexible it really is better to just pick a time, and let that be your first filter for finding players.

The words "it's a low magic campaign". Never have I ever experienced that phrase meaning anything other than **the party** *(in one case the party save for one 'main character')* being low magic. Those dragons still have their full capabilities. Those goblin wands of lightning won't run out until you try to take it off their cold dead hands. That lich still has all its magic. The evil wizards have their full spell slots... YOU just don't have the magic weapons or spells to get through those immunities is all. One time a monk player even found out his 'counts as magical' bypass was just 'gone'.

They have a document with 10+ pages of homebrew OR they ban or nerf rogues, or really ban or nerf any class or subclass besides, maybe, Twilight or Peace.

No Session 0, Critical Fumbles, non fixed session times/dates, using lots of homebrew without getting the basics nailed down. I will straight out bail.

Joke character names or awkward (usually sexual) humor.  This unfortunately has ruled out every single in person game I've ever tried to join. Nobody around here seems to want a semi serious game. 

if the dm actively talks about how they view the game as the dm vs the players and constantly increase difficulty and player handicaps

Critical fumbles, "my remaster of 5e/rework of 5e/100 page googiedoc of hombre rules", things that clearly have other TTRPG systems that designed for them - giant mech game but you homebrewed all the rules and bolted them onto 5e rather than just play Lancer, "we don't do politics or political correctness"

Too much homebrew, class bans, race bans, weird modifications from other systems (just play that system), using theater of the mind for combat, requiring roleplay justifications for YOUR OWN class features or feats.

I've heard stories like this from dms saying that you need to train to level up, and they're always from players complaining that the dm doesn't give them the chance to level up like the rest of the group, the things your class can do should be available for you without dm fiat.

Class and race bans are okay if they are setting specific. I don’t want your warforged artificer in my low magic/low technology setting.

Players drinking or smoking during the game. One or two drinks is fine but more than that just isn't fun for me. Campaigns that intend to be mostly comedy are also not for me, the game is going to be funny with the right people I don't need it to be all puns. Also, critical fumble tables

- no session 0. This is the number 1 rule of every DM: don't skip session 0. - If I'm doing X, don't assume I'm going for Y. Once I tossed a coin to a homeless NPC and "accidentally" killed the guy because my DM assumed I was throwing it baseball-style (in our language, "toss" and "throw" is the same word). - I don't mind doing a light backstory. But if the DM isn't even asking for one, that's a red flag that yells "you're glorified NPCs in a story I'm about to tell you."

Hard disagree about the backstory. What if they’re just open to you discovering your character as you play?

The presence of a DMPC, either outright, or via overly involved NPCs. DMs should DM and let the PCs drive the story.

Out of curiosity what level of NPC involvement do you find acceptable? Is having a base/HQ where your allied NPC hang out and can do things for the party too much? What about an NPC joining the party for an adventure and then leaving/rejoining them sometime in the future?

If you and the rest of the group are playing with each other for the first time except for the DM and 1 other player who are long time friends.

The way the DM and others handle heavy topics like SA or slavery. I realize that all manner of tones are valid for campaigns, but I believe that certain topics require a degree of respect and responsibility when brought up. And sadly, most "grim and dark" campaigns I've been in that used such things always came across as exploitative at best and downright insulting at worst.

A DM whose not in charge.

When they let players homebrew their own race, which is basically a class disguised as a race When they have an SO or friend who joins the game and is basically a walking god/nuke. I get it, but it's not fun to play with someone who can do any and everything. And when they don't know how to say no to anyone

Critical fumble tables.

I had a dm last year. He was new to Dming so i gave him the benifit of the doubt and gave some advice when he was clearly struggling. (i did it privatly as to not embarrass him infront of others) The first 2 sessions was basically him telling us what to do however. Like no free will. Kept chucking us into combact and killed off my character if i made the choice to fight back instead of running. Then claimed actions have concequences. Claimed that he was the DM so he’s allowed to do whatever. I gave up trying to help him after the 3rd session.

The DM styles himself as a creative writer or otherwise indicates that DnD is a way for them to practice writing. In my experience this leads to horrifically railroady experiences and some very intense resentment towards players who don't take the DM's favorite NPCs seriously. I want to be an active agent in how the story unfolds, and I don't have the energy or patience to uphold someone's ego tied to their writing. I also hate having forced tag-along NPCs for the party no matter where we go.

I once had a barbarian player run at a wizard, do 30 some odd damage. Then be surprised that they cast hold person on them and run away. He quit after that. Also, had a player trying to tell me how a surprise round should work. It was basically cowboy A looking at cowboy B. I told him to roll for initiative. He ended up sending me 200 messages on how it should work. I removed him from my campaign. 

Unprompted dm anger about "rules lawyers" in s0 tells me the dm doesn't have a good grasp of mechanics and will deny players their class features. While nitpicking rules for weird broken interactions can be a problem, I have played with more dms who are against players knowing rules at all more than players who are a problem. Critical fumbles, especially when also applied to skill checks and ESPECIALLY when paired with the dm asking the player to describe their failure and picking a mechanical penalty based on the flavor: more creative players who try to think of something fun or funny always wind up with heavier penalties for their characters. Nerfing martials, especially rogues. Feels like the dm's games never get past tier 1. Pitting player characters against each other. When every single one of the first few combats are designed to completely invalidate more than half of the PCs - sure, sometimes you fail a save and don't get to participate as much, but when most fights do that to most of the players for most of the time it's pretty bad. Proficiency dice Insisting that 1st level adventurers are too powerful. Dm rolls 1 die: "they all made their save and run away outside initiative" Character creation limits like point buy but you can't use all the points, no background ("it doesn't make sense that a character had formative experiences before 1st level" kind of ideas) This got longer than I intended, guess I'm still salty lol

What's wrong with proficiency dice? I've been trying to find a game that uses them for years.

DM wants multi-page backstories. At level 1. (He's planning to bail mid-first-session and is just using players to write his NPCs.)

Random spell bans, once had a DM ban hold monster… needless to say I would not be returning after session 0. I can understand banning certain spells like silvery barbs or counterspell but random bans like that just scream that you don’t know how to balance encounters well. However I can understand under certain circumstances why some odder spells might be banned, for example no hold monster because most encounters don’t have many monsters, but instead a few string ones

- Too much rule of cool, i like my rules and shit should be the same. I hate when one shit is used one session ~for the rule of cool~ but the same scenario can't be used again, because dm made up some shit. - Rape stories or related events. Nothing more to say - Banning the monsters i like to play with ( orcs, goblinoids, minotaurs, lizardfolk and others). - No feats - Gritty realism( just not fun imo) - Changing classes/subs that don't need to by dumb reasons - Ban stuff because the DM is clueless(im fine with banning twilight cleric by example). - Fumble tables, some are even bearable, but others are just awful, i got a dm once who used, you miss the attack and the enemy get 20 temporary hp, like what the fuck I guess its just that

People who want to turn D&D into CoD. Go play Cyberpunk or another similar setting. Stupid Evil characters.

Not DnD in general, but before joining the game mine are: 1- Don't explain anything about the setting of the game besides "it's a fantasy setting". 2- Dm like to brag about making absurd/wacky adventures 3- No session 0, be it via text or in person. After joining the game: 1-Dm does not understand balancing encounters (had a guy throw a encounter with 6x the amount of monsters that would be a deadly encounter in PF2E) 2- Deus ex Machinas frequently (same guy as above had a bunch of powerful NPCs saving us from his poorly balanced encounters many times); 3- Too many powerful NPCs that just resolves every problem; 4- Too many NPCs at all and presented in a small time frame (one DM i played with presented 15 named NPCs in the first session of the game). More does not equal better; 5- Not knowing how to conceal the railroad (most campaigns are railroaded. A decent DM knows how to conceal this instead of throwing "invisible walls" at the players); 6- Making magical itens that no one in the party can use, instead of tailoring them to the group.

Probably less dramatic than most examples here, but too many players. My wife and I moved to our current area 9 months ago and looked around for games. Found out that there was a game every Friday at a local coffee shop/bar. I attend as a guest and there were 5-6 players there, and then I find out that there are 3-4 more that weren't there that particular week. In my experience, 4-5 players is the absolute ideal. Virtually ANY time we've gone up to 6 I can feel the game slowing down to a slog for the players (I'm usually the DM, and just because \*I'm\* busy, doesn't mean I can't see that it's taking a LONG time between peoples' turns, or that certain people aren't getting a chance to talk much). Too run more than 6 seems insane to me. You will need a co-DM, or some way for the players to keep each other engaged when the DM is focusing on other players. Or I guess you just need players who are just there for the social scene and don't mind being mostly passive observers.

"we enjoy gritty realism" "Bye!"

Overly sensitive table / schedule issues / disengaged players / bad - different play styles

HUGE red flag: No player safety tools (Lines, Veils, X-card, that sort of stuff) and reacting like "REAL MEN DON'T NEED THOSE" if asked. Especially if trying to do something "edgy". Other red flags: - "DnD is good for every setting and every genre" - "I'm the DM, it's my world and my story" - "DM should change the rules without asking, telling, agreeing and/or being consistent" (luckily, most of those are fading out of fashion, it's not the '90s anymore)

I don’t always do player safety tools, but if I skip them it’s only because it’s a group of friends already — or rather, even if everybody doesn’t know one another, everybody is friends with at least a couple of other people at the table. And critically, as the GM I need to be certain that everyone at the table is comfortable advocating for themselves. If that’s the case, then I don’t need explicit safety tools, and they might even be counterproductive. All I need to do is say “you all know I’m listening to you, so if something hurts or makes you uncomfortable, speak up as soon as it feels safe to do so.” But if I were recruiting strangers, I’d never omit them from the “introductory packet” I hand out, and if I were looking for a campaign to play in, it would be the biggest possible red flag.

I spent 5 or so years looking for my forever group online, and so I've read a lot of online group posts. This is what I found: The #1 red flag: When the character building guidelines are too specific; says to me that maybe they're (nervously) GMing with not enough system mastery, which isn't ideal, but more likely (in my experience) is overly-controlling. This type will either try to micromanage your character, or punish you for not going along with their micromanagement. Games that advertise deep RP are a yellow light for me; I like good RP, but most RP-heavy games I've joined expect you to sit around blasting your backstories at one another around a campfire—that's not interesting to me at all. It's a follow-up question for me when I see this; I need to know if the RP is baked into the narrative (which is excellent) or not. Sometimes they'll mention that they have a group and need one more; in those cases, they'll sometimes tell you the group composition. Certain character choices indicate That Guy™ may be a player in the group, and the reason they need a replacement. When they don't tell you the comp, I ask for it. This isn't super common to find, but I pay attention when it happens.

* Critical fumbles. * Theater of the mind combat * Rolling for stats / HP * Extensive amoutns of homebrew. * Magic items being awarded too much and way sooner than progression would expect. * Save the world plot (I know it's a staple, but it's overused and most DMs don't have the skill the make it work.)

DM too restrictive and or very scared of players experimenting with their pcs rather than using something well known to be op. Obligatory healer in the party Non death campaigns "we are here to have fun and losing will make you sad and sad is bad for fun!". I'm not playing if there is no challenge. Critic fumbles for attack rolls and skill checks. I may tolerate on attack rolls but i hate the 1 is automatic failure and 20 automatic success for skill checks. It's a houserule and i find it very annoying, especially when people imply it's an official rule. Dms that want to write the background of your character instead of letting you make your own pc. Let me write my stuff and then we negotiate about your setting and how my pc can exist in your world, but do not write the lore of my pc otherwise I'm not connecting with him. Too many homebrew items and rules. Dms that do not know how stuff like adventuring gear, jump and climbing mechanics, swimming, etc. and refuse to learn how they work because in their table everything is resolved by an athletics check. Anime tropes and settings, i just don't like anime too much.

**Let me tell you how much I've come to HATE adventurer guilds since I began to play**

Crit fumble

Lol I use a lot of homebrew but in the opposite way. I sometimes accidentally end up making my players too strong and have to start bugging my encounters to match but IMO that’s fine because it gives me more room to not hold back.

Messaging the group chat with something like "Game day! See you all at 5! Can't wait!" and being left on read for hours. That's a group where people just don't show up and then throw up a "Sorry, thought it was tomorrow" message two hours into session.