Things You Never Want to Hear Your DM Say

[The Kool]

Players: "Alright yeah so we'll just do X, Y, Z. Tomorrow-"
DM: "Hold on... Okay, so right after X.a..."

[Arbane]

"You found a Deck of Many Things!"

"So, this is going to be a low-magic D&D game..."

[Telok]

"The first boat?" ... "The very first boat with crew. Are you sure?" ... "You waited until now to ask the name of the boat?" ... "It's The Minnow. You're expected to pay for the three hour tour package."

[FaerieGodfather]

"You found a Deck of Many Things!"

"So, this is going to be a low-magic D&D game..."

And if you're really lucky, these will occur in two different games.

[Potato_Priest]

"Could I look at your DMG for a second?"

especially if followed by

"What page are the siege weapons on?"

[noob]

"Could I look at your DMG for a second?"

especially if followed by

"What page are the siege weapons on?"

counts also for the thread "things you never want to hear a player say"

[The Kool]

"So, this is going to be a low-magic D&D game..."

I have wanted to make a low-magic game work well for a long time. I once ran a short campaign with no magic, actually (and it wasn't half bad). The trick (for low magic) is to run E6.

[Scripten]

"So, this is going to be a low-magic D&D game..."

I'm doing this myself in a few weeks, after prep is done. Told my players that it was going to be low-magic (for them), high lethality, and completely unbalanced/unfair, in an attempt to keep the party small.

It didn't work.

[Dire Moose]

“So you’re just going to walk down the corridor?” (typically with big smile on face)

I said this to a fighter who was trying to find the rest of the party in a waterlogged dungeon. He walked of a sudden drop-off while wearing full plate and drowned.

[Guizonde]

"you broke my plot in half. i need a few minutes."

"that didn't happen. i know it did, but i refuse to believe it did."

"roll luck."

"oh, crap."

"that wasn't meant to play out like that."

"sorry i forgot you had such a low movement speed. too bad for you."

"the guards are lubing up their truncheons. i'm going easy on you guys."

*graphic and lurid details of an imagined forced romantic encounter between an unwilling pc and an npc*

different dm's said those things. i'm kind of proud to be responsible for the first two, though. one involved bypassing a dungeon by befriending an encounter, the other one involved smoking a live lizard in a hammock made of poison ivy on a deathworld... and surviving 6 hours like it was a tourist beach resort. that was a crazy survival roll after my character got dosed with the 40k equivalent of lsd.

now, something i never want to hear players or dm's say is:"i know how girls are, i can totally roleplay them correctly!" that's about as big as a red flag as i can imagine to pinpoint the deviant basement dwelling weirdo in a crowd. i also outright quit a game session one time when a weirdo i knew came to the table with basically amounted to a nymphomaniac stripper-bimbo rogue/sorceror mary sue specialized in domination spells and the handle rope skill. it may have been for a silly one-shot, but even the dm flinched when he heard the character description. the rest of the group was a loin-cloth wearing barbarian, a wizard in a pointy hat, totally not king arthur, and a catholic priest filling the role of the (evil-aligned) cleric. from what the dm told me later, the weirdo tried to seduce the rest of the group, tried to seduce the innkeeper, got thrown in jail for sollicitation, and tried to seduce the bailiff with a highly detailed strip-tease before the dm called it quits. what was meant to be a fetch quest became a fetish quest centered on the weirdo. he is banned from all the rpg circles i know.

[FaerieGodfather]

Only reason I ever play a female PC is to play an exotic race and tell a male PC "I am the female of my species, like you."

I enjoy this way more than I should.

As a DM, my female NPCs are... unterrible, but I wouldnt boast about them.

[SirGraystone]

he hits you and I'll need more dice

[Themrys]

now, something i never want to hear players or dm's say is:"i know how girls are, i can totally roleplay them correctly!" that's about as big as a red flag as i can imagine to pinpoint the deviant basement dwelling weirdo in a crowd.

Yeah, well, all the (two) men I saw roleplay female PCs did okay, but then, I was in those groups, so any claim of "it's what my character would do!" to justify stripperiffic nonsense would have been immediately vetoed by at least one actual woman. But the players didn't seem inclined to do that sort of thing, anyway.

(DM of horrors couldn't even get female NPCs right, but that paled in comparison to his other crimes ...)

But then, a man who actually can portray an adult human female somewhat okay-ish would not refer to an adult woman as "girl" in such a context, and would also not boast about his "knowledge".

You did well to opt out of that game session. Why on earth did the DM not outright veto that character?

@FaerieGodfather: First step on improving your female NPCs: Internalize the knowledge that men have no good reason to feel insulted by being mistaken for women. (It took me about five minutes to figure out that that is probably what you try to do with those female characters? Because otherwise, I have no idea at all why you would do this)

Once you see women as human (or ... elvish, or whatever, depending), it is really not that hard.

[Segev]

Once you see women as human (or ... elvish, or whatever, depending), it is really not that hard.

In general, yes: there are differences between men and women, but they're not so great that they're defining character traits. Female characters are characters who happen to be female, just as male characters are characters who happen to be male. They're characters first. The fact that they're elves or dwarves or gnomes should probably make more difference than whether they're male or female. And even then, unless you're deliberately playing a setting where demihuman races are distinctly alien, even that should not matter beyond certain perspective elements and cultural points. They're still people, and people are people are people.

A woman is no more or less motivated by a thing than a man is, in general. Whether they're motivated is more about who they are than their sex. Play them like people, with motivations and drives derived from their character, their personality, their history, etc., and you should do fine.

Me, though, I admit I'll generally only play female characters in online games played via text. If I open my mouth to speak for my PC, the baritone that comes out just doesn't sound like a woman, and that shatters my own immersion in the character I'm trying to play.

[Telonius]

For what it's worth, the group I'm currently playing with is mostly doing genderbent characters. The only exception (woman playing a female Feytouched Bard/Warblade) is the one doing most of the "stripperific" stuff. Playing cross-gender isn't everybody's thing, but there's nothing that makes it inherently harder than getting into the character of a 500 year old elf, a warforged, or a kobold.

[Themrys]

Playing cross-gender isn't everybody's thing, but there's nothing that makes it inherently harder than getting into the character of a 500 year old elf, a warforged, or a kobold.

Unless you are a man who has enthusiastically participated in societal attempts to train him to view women as objects, while you received no such training with regard to elves.

Basement-dwelling-weirdo gets his idea of what women are like probably from porn, which is the easiest to spot version.

The DM who did most of the stuff I quoted in this thread viewed women as decorative objects whom he expected to provide free labour, emotional and otherwise, and not have any thoughts or opinions of their own. And was convinced that every man ever would think exactly the same. In retrospect, I should have grown suspicious that except from a very old witch who had to be female because witch, the only female characters were two barmaids who worked for free for the male tavern owner because of ... idk, he had rescued them from slavery or something. Free labour!
I later heard he wasn't happy with one male player playing a female character, which is hilarious because that female PC had loads more personality than any of that DMs female NPCs. (And not because she got more screentime. Male player of female PC quit the group pretty soon ... possibly because of the DM.)

[Guizonde]

For what it's worth, the group I'm currently playing with is mostly doing genderbent characters. The only exception (woman playing a female Feytouched Bard/Warblade) is the one doing most of the "stripperific" stuff. Playing cross-gender isn't everybody's thing, but there's nothing that makes it inherently harder than getting into the character of a 500 year old elf, a warforged, or a kobold.

there's no problem doing genderbent (hell, i've done it on multiple occasions), there's a problem doing it wrong, just like any character. for example, it's as wrong to portray women as walking porn movies as it is portraying rogues as shameless magpies stealing from the group and backstabbing them for the lulz. both ruin the fun of the game and makes people very uncomfortable very quickly. unless you're in an overtly offensive type of evil-karma game (eating babies, stealing from bums, raping the village, burning the loot and pillaging the women...), it gets old as soon as the character is rolled up. except where mary sues are just annoying wish fulfilment, stripper-sues are wish fulfillment that the rest of the group does not want to know about. it's why the "magical realm" webcomic became such a meme!

like segev said, gender does not make for an interesting character. my next character will be a halfling shepherd girl turned mounted cleric. could i do it with a male halfling? sure, it would not change the humorous aspect of having a 3ft tall badass being more boisterous than the 7ft tall half-orc paladin. her backstory? she really didn't want to end her life being a shepherd so she got a big stick and went hunting with the hunters of her tribe, and they said that she was good at it. why is the character interesting? brash, brazen, and willing to go off the beaten path in order to do what she wants to do. genderflip the description, and it works. gender has no impact on it. now, here's the what's really wrong from what i remember of the basement dwelling weirdo.

character: bimbo with a bdsm aesthetic. main weapon? whip. specialty? "forced seduction". unless we're talking about pf's callistria, i don't want that in pathfinder. i don't want that as a player, no matter my opinion on bdsm. that's exposing your kink out in the open, and much like your private parts, you keep it in your pants in public. i knew the guy and thought it was inappropriate, especially at uni. and i played the loin-cloth barbarian conan-expy. what did his character do before that? who cares?! it's a dominatrix!!1lol!! i'd expect that from a horny 14 year old, not a 25 year old "grown man" in a public place. you squirm now thinking about it, i lived through it mortified with the rest of the table. i think the dm didn't think it was possible and that it must have been some kind of joke. unfortunately, nope. i pity the guys who stayed at the table.

i've seen seduction done tastefully, and it actually helped advance the plot on some occasions. i did it once to get the team to a safe haven. seduction is not wrong, it's the reason why it's done that determines it.

i hope i don't come accross as a badwrongfun kind of guy, but that just makes me squirm remembering the cringiness of the situation.

[Cygnia]

The GM who had my male bard forcibly changed into a woman and then raped was a hypocrite when it came to cross-gender play as apparently he thought it was perfectly fine that HE got to play a big-breasted red-headed whip-wielding female elven rogue.

Or maybe he thought only that women should never play male characters.

College was an eff'ed up time for me. I know better now not to tolerate those players at my table.

[Fortis]

"You only won that because I nerfed the monster / I fudged a roll / I let you."

Nothing kills the thrill of victory faster than the GM telling you they cheated in your favor. It makes victory feel hollow and makes the GM sound like a condescending ass.

[FaerieGodfather]

@FaerieGodfather: First step on improving your female NPCs: Internalize the knowledge that men have no good reason to feel insulted by being mistaken for women. (It took me about five minutes to figure out that that is probably what you try to do with those female characters? Because otherwise, I have no idea at all why you would do this)

It's not about insulting them. It's about pointing out their ignorant assumptions, and then being a total hypocrite about making the same assumptions for humor value.

It's not a gender joke. It's a species joke.

edit: I don't make a habit of associating with people who would take this as an insult.

Once you see women as human (or ... elvish, or whatever, depending), it is really not that hard.

Preaching to the choir. I understand that women are people, but I'm not good at portraying the differences in gendered socialization.

[King of Nowhere]

Internalize the knowledge that men have no good reason to feel insulted by being mistaken for women. (It took me about five minutes to figure out that that is probably what you try to do with those female characters? Because otherwise, I have no idea at all why you would do this)

the reason for it is that (generally speaking, of course there are exceptions, and this applies to the rest of the post) males live sexuality much differently from women.
we all know the basic of evolution: the creature that leaves behind more fertile offspring passes its genes.
Now, males can have sex with 100 women and have 100 children. Women, on the other hand, can have sex with 100 men and still only have one child, because they have only one uterus.
that means that evolution hardwired men to look for as many sexual partners as possible, because that's how a man maximizes his chances of spreading his DNA. And women are hardwired to look for a stable partner that will stay with her and take care of her and help her raise their children, because that's how she maximizes her chances of spreading her DNA.
Now, this gets more complicated, I took a really interesting evolutionary biology course on it and I could go on for a while on the subtleties, and it gets even more complicated when you factor in cultural conditioning, but really that's the key point.

So ultimately the reason most men are driven to make stripperiffic female pc is because most men would actually behave that way if they could get away with it. "objectification" or "degradation" or stuff like that don't factor at all. A men that was explicitly sexually desired by scores of women would not feel objectified or degraded; if he did, he wouldn't care. He'd probably think he died and went to paradise...
Heck, if I was somehow polymorphed into a (good-looking) woman, I'd be a stripperiffic flirt, which I absolutely am not as a male. two reasons for this change of personality: 1) I would be able to perceive myself as attractive 2) I would be reasonably sure that most men would appreciate it.
So, I know not to make stripperific women, because they are rarely like that. I made nymphs asexual to stay away from easy pitfalls. But still, if I play a woman (npcs) and the conversation accidentally ends there, I either have to fight with my instinct to be openly sexual, or I must assume that this woman is a member of the minority that lives sexuality like a man.

All of the above does not justify being a ****. Treating people like crap, regardless of gender, or using an rpg session to live your erotic fantasies (unless all the participants agreed in that kind of game). But it can explain why men tend to play women in certain ways. Especially socially awkward men that don't really know much about women in the first place.

[Themrys]

Preaching to the choir. I understand that women are people, but I'm not good at portraying the differences in gendered socialization.

See, the great thing about fantasy worlds is that there need not be any gendered socialisation. (Or you can have completely different gendered socialisation)

Play in a setting where the sexes are equal, remove rape culture, and suddenly, your female NPC walking home alone at night is perfectly reasonable portrayal. Your female character talking more, talking over and interrupting men in conversations? Perfectly logical. Female character saying no to men where a real world woman would try to dance around it for fear of angering the man? Perfectly fitting. Female character not wearing make-up? Exactly as logical as male character not wearing make-up. Et cetera.

Your female character trying to impress a man by protecting him from monsters? I know women who are like that in real life, and there would be a lot more if men in real life were more impressed by that sort of thing.

Women may have evolved to not be as suicidally dumb about trying to impress potential sexual partners as men, and that might still hold true in a fantasy setting, but since the whole game is about taking immense risks, no one is likely to complain about lack of realism if you play a female barbarian who wants to slay a hundred foes to impress her crush. (Well, except men who think it impossible a man would be impressed by that, but, meh)

@King of Nowhere: That's a nice theory and all, but it does not explain the way some men play female characters. Men do not, in real life, behave according to what evolutionary psychology would dictate they should.

Men cannot get pregnant, still reject ugly women instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to spread their genes. Men want to have sex with as many women as possible, still don't use make-up to pretend better genes than they really have. Some of the men who roleplay female characters in a stripperiffic way don't even shower regularly, let alone dress nicely.

In fact, there even seems to be a huge overlap between men behaving in a way that makes them spreading their genes VERY unlikely and playing female characters in an offensive way. (Heck, offending women during DnD also lowers a man's chances at spreading his genes)

I have met some men who really take care of their appearance and then take advantage of their attractiveness, but I doubt they would play female characters in an offensive way. Their female characters would probably behave the same way they themselves behave in real life. That is, wear normal clothes, flirt a lot, and go to a private space for more overt sexual behaviour.

Women, when playing pen&paper games, tend to behave differently to how we behave in real life. Tell a woman that in this fantasy world the sexes are equal, show her that her char has a decent chance to physically overpower a man and anyways, you don't have any rape in your game, then describe how that guardsman at the city gates has really intense blue eyes and hair as golden as a field of ripe wheat, and you might be surprised how quick even a shy woman would be to ask whether an attempt at seduction would succeed.

What a female player is a LOT less likely to do than a male basement-dweller is have her character seduce an unattractive guardsman to get into the city. Wear a chainmail bikini. All those things that are not comfortable or fun for a woman, but that look nice to the man who looks at her from outside.

[King of Nowhere]

@King of Nowhere: That's a nice theory and all, but it does not explain the way some men play female characters. Men do not, in real life, behave according to what evolutionary psychology would dictate they should.

Men cannot get pregnant, still reject ugly women instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to spread their genes. Men want to have sex with as many women as possible, still don't use make-up to pretend better genes than they really have. Some of the men who roleplay female characters in a stripperiffic way don't even shower regularly, let alone dress nicely.

In fact, there even seems to be a huge overlap between men behaving in a way that makes them spreading their genes VERY unlikely and playing female characters in an offensive way. (Heck, offending women during DnD also lowers a man's chances at spreading his genes)

I said that the details got complicated.
what I described are the most basic tendencies. but then there is a certain interplay between male and female mating strategy, because in human society, in most places and for most of our evolutionary history, women could choose their partner, and so they would pick men that were more caring and less brutish.
And then you have to add in society, and all of our customs and traditions. And to top it all, we are thinking animals, and all of the above get mixed into our personalities. And everyone is a different individual.

The theory described general trends. Men tend generally to have a more direct approach to sexuality, and men roleplaying women on average tend to have a more direct approach to sexuality. that's as far as the theory goes.

then you describe some extreme nightmare cases. those are outliers. Or possibly they are males with their social sophistication removed. Or maybe they are simply jackasses, or socially inept, or all of the above.

finally, from some of the things you say, you seem to come from a more backwards social environment. I mean

Play in a setting where the sexes are equal, remove rape culture, and suddenly, your female NPC walking home alone at night is perfectly reasonable portrayal. Your female character talking more, talking over and interrupting men in conversations? Perfectly logical. Female character saying no to men where a real world woman would try to dance around it for fear of angering the man? Perfectly fitting. Female character not wearing make-up? Exactly as logical as male character not wearing make-up. Et cetera.

Your female character trying to impress a man by protecting him from monsters? I know women who are like that in real life, and there would be a lot more if men in real life were more impressed by that sort of thing.

that kind of thing is pretty normal in most of my social environment. some of my eldest relatives that were grown in a different time are exceptions. none of the women I hang around with have those kind of problems, though they all say that there is always that guy (often a coworker) that treats them condescendingly. but that guy is an unfortunate exception.
You talk like that guy is more common around you, so perhaps you are less lucky and you don't have socially-inept-but-ultimately-well-meaning people but actual jerks.
It's also worth noting that I am not exposed to the general rpg environment. My two groups are mostly isolated and have little contact with the greater roleplaying community. All people involved have above-average education. the only people who tried to roleplay a striperiffic woman were kids who didn't knew any better and/or found it amusing (I've been guilty of that 15 years ago ).
Perhaps I'm talking about different things because I had different experiences.

[Cluedrew]

"You only won that because I nerfed the monster / I fudged a roll / I let you."

"Oh, so you didn't get the difficulty right the first time?" More than being condescending, if a GM thinks that says something good about them, then they don't know much about being a GM.

If your GM is good enough: "We are going to have to skip this week."

For me personally: "Combat starts."

[Spore]

'The person you just drove over still stands. Your cart/car/vehicle is totalled.'

Yeah, (N)PC HP and durability can be a strange thing in RPGs sometimes. But **** like that takes me right out of the experience.

[2D8HP]

The GM who had my...

...I know better now not to tolerate those players at my table.

Um..

...that sounds beyond a "bad GM story" and into emotional abuse.

Just appallingly rude (actually a different word past rude), and at a college so presumably someone legally an adult?

[Telok]

'The person you just drove over still stands. Your cart/car/vehicle is totalled.'

Yeah, (N)PC HP and durability can be a strange thing in RPGs sometimes. But **** like that takes me right out of the experience.

Had that happen in a supers game. The players response was something along the lines of "I get out of the car, pick it up, and beat him with it."

[Spore]

Had that happen in a supers game. The players response was something along the lines of "I get out of the car, pick it up, and beat him with it."

I can get that in a supers game, and even in D&D nowadays. But this was a post apocalyptic game (similar scaling to Fallout, a late game character has at most 2,5x the durability of a normal human being). For some odd reason the DM decided to subtract the armor (read damage reduction) from the impact damage, meanwhile our armored truck had technically no armor so took full damage.

Ever since then I get a teeny-tiny meltdown whenever a player or DM puts rules as written above actual play experience and versimillitude. Also can we maybe stop talking about rape, I assume the topic is sufficiently covered.

[LordCdrMilitant]

I can get that in a supers game, and even in D&D nowadays. But this was a post apocalyptic game (similar scaling to Fallout, a late game character has at most 2,5x the durability of a normal human being). For some odd reason the DM decided to subtract the armor (read damage reduction) from the impact damage, meanwhile our armored truck had technically no armor so took full damage.

Ever since then I get a teeny-tiny meltdown whenever a player or DM puts rules as written above actual play experience and versimillitude. Also can we maybe stop talking about rape, I assume the topic is sufficiently covered.

This seems to be more of a problem with the implementation of the vehicle than the damage or ram mechanic.

In Dark Heresy, which also uses armor as DR, when you get hit by a Chimera Infantry Fighting Vehicle, you take 30+3d10 damage [which will kill you, period], and it takes about 4+1d5-30<=0 in return [technically it takes 0 unless the GM decides the target is of sufficient size and mass to be of concern to the vehicle, which you aren't anyway], and is entirely unfazed.

When a vehicle collides with a person, both experience the same force. A person has a lot less structural integrity than the vehicle though, and so is ground into a red smear beneath its tracks while the vehicle at best wonders what went thump.

[The Kool]

On topic:

"... No. Just... no."

With that finality and weariness that probably means you crossed a line.