Gripe
In case you haven’t noticed, most of the comics on this site come paired with a bitesize bitch fest courtesy of yours truly. I love gaming, but I make it my hobby to complain about it. So yeah. This comic is about me. Fighter is a jerk, and today I am Fighter.
It’s in my nature to criticize media. I was an English major before I was a gamer, and I’ve been trained to pick apart the things I love. Show me a Marvel movie and I’ll tell you how its villains are forgettable. Give me an epic fantasy novel and I’ll tell you how it’s derivative. Run a game for me and I’ll tell you how you’re having bad-wrong-fun. All this in spite of the fact that I ostensibly enjoy these things.
That’s the trouble with criticism. It’s fun to discuss our passions, but we run the very real risk of talking all the fun out of our favorite pastimes. I know that I’ve driven home from more than one session with Laurel in the passenger seat beside me, going back and forth over all the little hiccups that made the game less than perfect.
“Can you believe our GM was giving the paladin’s storyline so much attention?”
“Yeah!”
“And what’s with the weird unsolvable mystery? Throw us a bone, you know?”
“I know!”
“And can you believe how our friends go out of their way to spend their free time entertaining us?”
“Those jerks!”
No. It is I who am the jerk. I’m striving to get better about it though. Because I want to enjoy my hobby for the long run, and the last thing I want is to suck the joy out of gaming by being a grump about it.
Am I the only one that has this problem? Do any of you guys find yourselves turning into joyless, overly critical fun-sucks, or do you only acquire that template after you start writing a gaming blog? Let’s hear it in the comments!
THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!
I must confess that I too am an overly analytical nitpicker of the highest degree. Personally, I prefer to see it as a positive thing, provided you can enjoy an imperfect experience. When I read a story or play a game, I’ll pick apart the things I thought were imperfect and screwed up, but in the process I’m also trying to figure out why they didn’t work and how to be more conscious and cautious of them in my own endeavors (the works I’m most nitpicky about are my own.) For example, it was from nitpicking one too many puzzles and riddles in games that I began to develop my own philosophy on how to incorporate and deal with them properly in my own. So here’s to critics, who’s relentless nitpicking helps as laugh at the bad as well as appreciate the good. It’s a thankless job, but the snark must flow!
Now I want to know what kind of freaky alien worm secretes snark spice.
Rule #1 (or #0 considering how important it is): Is everyone having fun? Then that’s all that matters.
The comic does touch upon a important thing though; some people like rolling the dice, some like to RP, some like mysteries and puzzles to solve while others like hack n’ slash, Hell some people just like being with everybody and involved. While keeping things to your chest so the players can be surprised and wondering is important it’s even more so to know what they’re expecting out of the story.
I’ve linked it a couple of times, but I always think of this page as a useful tool for helping groups to get on the same page:
https://sites.google.com/site/amagigames/the-what-i-like-glossary
Actually i don,.. well there is one thing i do Complain about. If the DM has a string of very lucky Dice rolls, that screws my character over.
Getting Lucky once. Yeah thats okay. But Five times in a row!? Yeah i know Lady Lucky is a fickle Deity. Though most times i complain while laughing.
Oh man. I do this so much in Monster Hunter games!
Ya got me! There went half my health…
Ok ya got me again. Now I’m at 1/10th HP and stunned. Ya made yer point…
Ok tail swipe me when everyone else is ACTUALLY DOING DAMAGE TO YOU!!!!
On the tabletop, I think that intelligent monsters get a pass on this one. The ice devil knows that the cleric is its greatest enemy, and so it goes after the cleric. That’s probably less valid for a T-Rex.
In a video game however, that mess is straight up rage inducing no matter what’s doing it to you.
Yeah well i am a bit of a Hipocrite to be honest. If i DM and always giggle when i get lucky and screw a PC over.
Its quite funny with be because my dice have the “Go Big or Go Home Quality”.
I NEVER roll averange, i either always roll incredibly high or incredibly low. Its quite funny, somtimes my Players jut mow through the Enmies i give them other times Enemies with the VERY SAME STATS as the ones before almost wipe them.
I play DotA and one of the perennial complaints is heroes (characters) based around random chance like Phantom Assassin, Faceless Void, and Ogre Magi.
Every one of those heroes has one or more abilities that can make your opponents scream “BULLSHIT!!!” Especially when you follow it up with a comment like “lol skill” or “RNG loves me”.
The bad habit I need to stop is comparing homebrew settings to existing ones. I’m sure my friends want to slap me every time I say something like “Oh that’s like in 40k.”
In a similar vein, I should likely stop guessing at the plot. I don’t want to inadvertently spoil a big GM surprise with a lucky guess.
Both of those things have a way of hurting GM fun.
Send the GM a message with your guess. That way you’re not only discrete, but have written evidence that you had indeed called it.
That’s an interesting idea from the GM’s side of the screen too.
“OK guys. I want you all to PM me your guess to this mystery. If anyone gets it right, that player will get bragging rights and may select a prize from the Dicin’ Sphere.”
I’m sure we all complain about something or other. Me? The thing I “like” to complain about is thematic inconsistency or the “GM is adding all sorts of stuff because ZOMG SO AWSUM!!1!” approach.
Way back I griped about gunslingers in the classic high fantasy medieval-esque setting, but that applies to pixies in Ravenloft, and oozes in a pseudo-historic setting just as much.
Heck, one of the reasons I’ve been so reluctant to play Pathfinder is because most of it (sometimes even mechanically) is set in Golarion, and it just seems like every region that one can easily travel to has its own theme. Now some people actually like this, but for me it takes away some of the world consistency, and sense of adventure. It feels more like a theme park where one can go from one ride to the next. “Don’t like our viking themed adventure? Just step over here to pseudo ancient Egypt or our ‘totally not feudal Japan’, all in the same time and within quick walking distance”.
The real world is a theme park of different cultures. Egypt, Denmark and Japan are all very different, especially before modern times. Golarion is Earth, but with magic, the Great Beyond, and all the consequences those entail.
I just don’t think that a campaign setting needs to be limited to a specific region. A campaign might be well suited to being limited to a specific region, but a “consistent” world is what harms verisimilitude, not variance.
I guess you’re right in that regard (and that I’ve also poorly phrased that “consistency”). It’s just that despite being very fleshed out. The parts of Golarion seem too well connected and explored. That sense of mystery is diminished, and it seems more like Earth in modern times than that of old.
Haven’t played anything involving the Great Beyond, so there’s hope there…
Btw, are there any other established settings. So far I’ve only found Golarion and a number of disconnected adventure modules.
1st party? Not that I know of. I worked a bit on this one though:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/153361/Veranthea-Codex
The diesel punk goblin continent was my baby.
There are other 3rd party settings out there, but I’m afraid I haven’t explored too many of them personally. The only other one I can name off the top of my head is Cerulean Seas…
http://paizo.com/products/btpy8i1m?Cerulean-Seas-Campaign-Setting
…And that’s because I’ve been toying with the idea of a underwater campaign lately.
I think that Golarion is just a little more explicit about the “pick your theme” thing being a feature. I mean, just take a look at the Realms:
Vikings: http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Illuskan
Japan: http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Kara-Tur
Or Azeroth:
Vikings: http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Kvaldir
Japan: http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Pandaria
Or Earth:
Vikings in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan–Sweden_relations
I don’t think that these things existing together in the same setting is a problem. However, I do agree (and from personal experience) that mixing flavors willy nilly is a bad idea. Tomorrow I’ll be concluding my “dragoneers” campaign, which I’d initially pitched to my players as a three musketeers setting where each player got to play a dragon PC and a rider PC. That’s a pretty novel concept in itself, and it should have been easy to spend a full campaign exploring it. By the time they started fighting the giant floating head from Baron Munchausen I realized I’d strayed too far from the initial premise.
For me, it’s an issue of expectations rather than setting. Pick your themes and then keep your campaign focused. No need to fly off to totally-not-Arabia because it’s got a cool magic item you want.
The problem I have with it is that there are so many themes to choose from in the same setting that it makes the world feel smaller.
The previous editions had Mystara, Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Ebberon, etc. Paizo just doesn’t seem to have any setting for the system other than Golarion… where everything seems mixed together, made mundane and devoid of mystery.
…or is it just me running into this huge established setting and seeing everything laid out without much wiggle room? Not seeing the forest from the one huge, imposing tree as it were?
I think that it’s less the world than the way you use it that counts. Are you an Exalted guy at all? I can never tell since a lot of folks come here from Laurel’s other comic…
http://www.neverborncomic.com/?comic=filler-handbook-of-heroes
…But what say we get away from Wizards/Paizo for a second? I think that the edition stuff can be distracting, and this is too interesting of a topic to drown in editions wars.
Exalted then. Take a look at its setting map:
http://hd42.de/images/exalted/Creation_Map_v7.1c.jpg
The Blessed Isle in the middle there is the size of Russia. Creation is a physically huge setting, with any little corner of it conceptually large enough to contain a campaign. For example, I’d meant to run an Arabian Nights game in the south central city of Chiaroscuro. The narrative got away from me though, and the party wound up trekking to the totalitarian city of Paragon to the west. Then they sailed to the west coast for the Southeast Asia themed country of An Teng. After a few sessions there the party took ship up to undead pirate land in the Wavecrest Archipelago. From there they went down into the Underworld for an auction (the setting’s various BBEGs were bidding on the services of a PC’s antihero love interest). With that done the campaign finished in the occupied-by-a-giant-evil-Juggernaut city of Thorns way the hell back on the east coast of the setting.
I think my players had fun, but that campaign was all over the place. It certainly wasn’t the Arabian Nights premise that I’d pitched. However, I think that’s more my fault than the setting’s. Having a sprawling map with a lot of content means that a GM is tempted to bounce from cool thing to cool thing, and you’re absolutely right that it can make the world feel small. It’s a trap I’ve fallen to more than once, and it’s something I’m struggling to get better at.
That said, I know that it’s perfectly possible to stick to one spot. I’m running the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP at the moment, and that shares none of the globe-trotting tendencies of my long-ago Exalted game. The PCs are happy to stay in a single city because there’s enough to do in that city to keep them interested. That’s why the gothic horror themed setting across the border is less of a thing to do now, in this campaign, than at thing to explore in the next campaign. Its existence doesn’t impact the current urban adventure at all.
In other words, I don’t think that it’s helpful to look at a setting like this:
https://1d4chan.org/images/thumb/e/e7/PathfinderExplained.jpg/350px-PathfinderExplained.jpg
It’s better to start with a piece of it:
http://paizo.com/pathfinder/adventurePath
That’s why, if you’re curious about Golarion, I say to look at the individual APs. They’re more tightly themed than the setting as a whole, and don’t seem to suffer from the wandering focus of a “big world map” campaign.
First of all no, never played Exalted, nor have I read Neverborn (thanks for that by the way, I’ll be sure to check it out). The only thing I’ve heard about Exalted is that it’s grand in scale… I didn’t think that also meant the world…
Other than that, I think you might have hit the nail on the proverbial head. My introduction to the setting was the GM showing me the map, giving broad stroke summaries of regions and asking me where I wanted to play. The number of region options, coupled with the number of options in character creation (so… many… archetypes…), was pretty overwhelming.
So thanks for the advice. I’ll probably do just that and start small in the future. “We Be Goblins” perhaps. You can’t start smaller than goblins from an adventure scale standpoint… though they are pretty small themselves.
I think if you do something like that, you better warn your players: this campaign is gonna have a mixed theme, are you cool? And if the players are ok with it at this point, they aren’t going to complain later.
I think the only real complaint I have about either of my gaming groups is the other DM asking one particular question. Yes, Derrick, a 58 hits my flat footed touch AC.
He always asks.
https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/19260705_1701848156545344_4141515618593487513_n.jpg?oh=3751748024f187a1f1dd669e391e6d5e&oe=5B26013D
It’s better to check than just assume- maybe you got some buffs since last round or something 😛
Is Thief the only party member who’s not going to get a “Careful there, somebody almost had fun”?
I’m trying to imagine what Thief would bitch about. I think she’s made her peace with her bad luck though.
Is Wizard the type to revel in the roleplay of others, or does he resent it for taking the spotlight away from him?
If the latter, we know what his “Careful there Wizard, somebody almost had fun” comic will be.
Well, what does thief value? One of the most prominent “thief” characters in gaming-webcomic circles is Haley from Order of the Stick, and until relatively recently she had a chronic obsession with gold and other valuables (one of the other characters conned her into going along with something completely opposite her character with the promise of a “free trip”).
In your comic though, “Thief” doesn’t feel like she’s had as much specific characterization (IMO). She likes Wizard, and she’s a skill-monkey (presumably), but what is her defining trait?
Maybe it’s her heritage- how about a comic where Thief gripes about demons always getting a bad rap in popular culture. ….While she’s in the middle of looting St. Cuthbert’s Home for Blind Orphans and Bunny Rehab Center.
And/or some sort of thing that makes her out to be a Drizzt-like Mary-Sue: “oh woe is me despite the fact that I’m so selfless and noble and skilled im forever doomed to be hated for things i can’t control by people who dont understand me i’d better just get a for more novels worth of chances to prove im the bastard offspring of jesus ghandi and steve-jobs so anyone who hasnt already fallen down in praise of me can be beaten over the head a bit more how wrong they were…”
etc etc etc
Do any of those sound like Theif? If not, what WOULD a critic of Theif mock her for?
Aww. I caught up. I love these so much! I blasted through them in a day XD
You mean I’ve got to write more of these things? Dang it…
Sweet bard icon btw.
So gaming is your hobby and complaining about gaming is you… other hobby?
I feel like that says something about fandoms in general, but I’m not quite sure what.
I multiclassed.
Me and my dm often talk about problems that may or may not be actual problems in the campaign, but i always make a point to show that while the occasional problem may be present, that i think hes still doing a great job. Even if the dm actually isnt doing a good job, but atleast seems like he might be willing to get better, putting lots of flattery around your critique is probably still a good idea since people just react better to it.
Half of my old Firefly group is convinced that they individually were responsible for killing the game by offering unsolicited criticism. It’s a good idea to make sure your GM in on board for the critical discussion.
Yeah, that’s certainly a problem I have.
Heck, I just had it yesterday.
We were doing a thing which took the group as a whole way too long to agree on the specifics of and we do the mechanics portion. Then it comes to the IC portion and the GM decides it would be a good idea to throw in one of those character stance challenging issues right as we’re completing the goal. The problem was, this was happening at the very beginning of the game. I went on a bit of a tirade on how that just doesn’t work and is unfair and in the middle I realize that however right I might be, I was also being a jerk. So I went out of my way to figure out some way to make it work, even if I personally wasn’t super happy with it, for the sake of the GM and the game.
Of course I had to wind up dragging someone else into it with me due to the circumstances and they too wound up feeling that same “I understand this is necessary and it’s ok and I’m fine putting in the effort here for the future enjoyment of the game but… this really could have been avoided if the GM didn’t decide to be overly hasty with the drama and I’m still a little annoyed” feeling I have. So… at least I had someone to commiserate with.
What’s a character stance challenge?
Ok, let me just give you the actual thing. My character is a ghost hunter (it’s a Blades in the Dark game).
We were doing the IC to recruit a trainer for a particular set of skills.
We’d spent a bunch of effort (as players figuring things out, and a bit as characters with rolls) as well as some group resources to get them.
The GM then decides to make the trainer we were searching for turn out to be a ghost.
Now if we’d been playing for a while and there had been some build up to “maybe not ALL ghosts are an immediate threat to all life that must be destroyed on contact” or some such, that’d be fine. But this was the first thing that occurred after our first score that formed our group.
So my character’s stance on how they felt on the matter of ghosts was being challenged, but with absolutely no reason for them to have had even a reasonable chance of having the reasonable chance of having some kind of change of heart on the subject.
So the GM basically put us in this position where I had to break character or ruin something we’d all put time and effort into just because the GM decided to throw this twist at us right then in a situation where, mechanically we shouldn’t be getting twists that involve IC responses of “no, I’m going to ruin it and not take the thing we worked for instead”. All because they thought it was more important to make a dramatic twist than to actually consider the pacing for character arcs.
Myself and another player whose character was present in the scene (thank the gods otherwise it would have been 100% unsalvageable) had to basically tailor make an excuse that allowed us both to only very mildly break character to get what we’d all worked for. Doing so of course involved more effort we had to put in and the end result is still something we’re both a bit unhappy with, but can live with.
I think I used to have the opposite problem for a while. Generally, when something cool happens, everyone at the table appreciates it and agrees on how cool it was.
The problem was, I used to not complain about anything – even when I had a problem. I think it might have been some psychological thing with fear of abandonment that originated from normal social get-togethers and whatnot.
Anyway, I think I learned my lesson when a game collapsed despite my efforts to be the “perfect student” player that doesn’t complain and takes interest in everything (I think I shared that story in a previous related comic).
Now, I haven’t reached the point of complaining about everything, but if something actually irks me, I’ll mention it, usually off-game of course.
On a similar note, the players in my own campaign generally don’t complain either. It drives me crazy. Every now and then they’ll hint that they’re unhappy with their situation, but won’t tell me what is wrong or what I can do about it. In fact, just a few days ago, a player group-messaged everyone after the session apologizing about being moody and saying he didn’t like a couple of things. Thank the gods, I thought. Some actual feedback. I’m really inexperienced as a GM and, as if not enough, I selfishly invited my friends to my own homebrew campaign when it was time for me to take the GMing helm. Because of that, criticism is really important, so I’ll take any form of rationalized complaining in place of it.
My point being, sometimes it’s good to pay attention to the bad things, as long as you don’t ruin the good things in the process.
There’s definitely a balance to be had. As an overly-analytical dude, I risk killing the fun by picking everything apart. But if you don’t do a little judicious pruning, the game tends to grow in ways that you don’t necessarily want, spiraling out of control until you have to address it. Complaining in moderation is a good thing.
One thing I’ve done that comes to mind is reviving a four year old thread on the Circle Of Eight modding forum just to say that the design of one of the quests in their mod for Temple of Elemental Evil was “sloppy”
http://co8.org/community/index.php?threads/rabbit-hole-and-the-princes-gem.9568/page-2#post-144155
In the future, marginalia talks back.
Commenting late here, but I recently stood on the edge of being that guy, and had to step back. We recently transitioned games to a new gm, who turned out to be very different from the previous world-arbiter. I grew increasingly discontent in the opening weeks of the game, before finally reaching the point where I considered leaving the table. I talked to the GM about it. I still greatly disagree with him about some basic game philosophies, but I feel better having been heard.
Out of curiosity, what were the complaints?
I am the DM, and I am also “that guy” at the same time…”why are these jerk wads having such a good time? Dont they know how bad I am at this. What idiots they are for enjoying what I have put together, in a sloppy manner, for them!”
Ain’t no critic harsher than yourself. As a disinterested third party with no knowledge of your game whatsoever, trust me when I say that you probably don’t suck that much at everything all the time.
I tend to both enjoy and criticize most things in a manner my friends consider to be a form of overthinking, and worst if all, I sometimes try to explain both without explicitly specifying that I enjoyed it overall. It’s a mess.
But at least I can articulate why I liked/hated something more clearly! Assuming you understand what I’m talking about.
My first experience with 5th edition D&D was a lot like this. Still is, honestly, though I’m not actively vocalizing the complaints. The DM is a friend, and he’s put a lot of effort into making sure everyone is enjoying things and everyone’s characters gets focus and personal stories woven into the plot here and there. The group is fun and friendly, and the one time they did hear a full rant from me about someone getting “special attention” (I swear, I thought I had that microphone muted), they were even apologetic and agreed that I had some fair points. And the character I’m playing is one that I made the way I wanted, and is working out about as I expected.
But even with all those positives, including a story that’s still giving us things to do and talk about, I just find myself bored most sessions and not having as much fun as the rest of the group seems to. I try to avoid being overly-critical, but sometimes it’s just easy to get into that mindset and stay there for an entire campaign.
The only point i tend to rant or complain about GMs is around the use of mind control abilities from the part of the DM. I have yet to see one that does not fail big with it, as all use them as a free reign to do whatever they want with my PC (and they always choose to just attack other PCs as soon as is used) even when the ability does not let them to, and i have gone along with it because i did not know the details.
– First time was just an ability that made my PC act more in tune with my repressed desires, and the DM used it to attack another player, which my PC was completely friendly with and probably the friendliest to in the group. The DM never provided much of a reason for it and refused to tell me what he used so i was a bit pissed and got a copy of the book to check. When i told next session, just used a very piss poor reasoning to justify it.
My guess is that in previous sessions i handled what the DM threw to us easily (mostly his fault as he gave us ample advantage due to terrain knowledge) even when he was creating encounters focused on targeting at my PC’s weaknesses and that was the latest attempt at doing something i couldn’t handle (and my PC died because of it).
Another of my guesses is that the DM used it to attack specifically that player and not others, was because the PC who was closest to me was used by the DM’s RL couple and played favourites. This and other of their shenanigans made me leave after a few more sessions the group.
– Last one, decades after and with another group, was a spell where the caster could give me orders i had to obey, and the one he gave me was not much clear. From what he explained the spell allowed the DM to fully control my character and i thought the order was roleplaying so i happily let him expecting something interesting, and roleplayed the situation based on what he mechanically did with my character, which he just used to attack another PC.
The session ended with me controlled so i checked on the book to know better how to roleplay it and found it wasn’t that way, and that i could resist it better than what he told me, so i used that second part to talk to him and resist it. As it was casted near the end of the previous session and not much had happened he did not mind to rule it as that what had happened had been an alternate reality.
I chose to not tell him he was using it wrongly that way too because it wasn’t the first time by far i knew the rules better than him (and it was my first campaign with that system and his third or fourth), and no much matter how right i am i know well that many people do not take it well no matter how much tact is used when its done more than a few times.
Sincerely, more than complain i would like, and love, to discuss things after a session of any game, be it roleplaying or others, like … how we could have handled this better? What do you think of what we did? and analyze what happened in the game in general just to talk for the pleasure of it or to get better.
I have yet to find in three decades a single person like that and most just care about results and not about the process. At most i found people who don’t mind me talking about it even if they don’t provide answers or talking topics related to the conversation so its pretty much a monologue.
May I direct your ire this way?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/prince-charming