For what it's worth at this point I have flamed out of running a campaign twice and everyone still talks to me

to be fair we did get Wildly Distracted in kirkwall

(the true kirkwall experience)

i am just surprise fear at the endless possibilities and not being able to keep up

Wild Distraction is part and parcel.

i am, in theory, running a quickstart pregen scenario

but my previous STs are already plotting revenge against me for my dice ways

no way to learn but to try!

naughty chummers get put in the dice wiggler to atone for their crimes

the worst part of GMing is being excited about an idea you have but you can't be excited at your friends because it's a surprise for them

we're only going to haze you a little bit

the other worst part of gming is the gnawing anxiety

but pssshhh /flippy hand motion

The other, other worst part of GMing is watching players try to solve a puzzle and not being sure what you could say that wouldn't just give them the answer.

oh uhhhh

we wouldn't know anything about that

cough

[any of several memes showing toddler toys as puzzles for players goes here]

lmfao for the record, I have not told the wall story

(mostly because i was not there and would not be able to do it justice)

For the record

the wall was not even a puzzle

I have started using toddler toys and puzzles meant for children for my games.

It still takes forever.

one character (who turned out to be suffering the effects of nanobot poisoning) just thought that maybe the room we were looking for was down there, but the hallway was a deadend, so we were like "what if it's hidden somehow"

ah

and then we proceeded to spend several minutes doing different ways to perceive and check the wall

over the GM's increasingly desperate veiled hints that there were nothing

one character even used edge (this was shadowrun) to be really, really sure

and then we finally gave up and ran straight into the line of fire of some tank mounted guns the end

Well, that was an unfortunate end.

we survived..... despite our best efforts

i never expected to use the stabilize spell more than like, once, when my mage learned it, but here we are

no its worse than she's saying

e flat out told us there was nothing there

at which point we kept examining it specifically because it was very late and we were punchy and we thought it would be funny

i think he really wanted to tpk us there

but was there nothing there or was there "nothing" there huh

months later he finally threw in a perceivable wall to take pity on us and then we spent 20 minutes deciding what to do with it

on second thought, i deserve any hazing coming from ben's way. anabel, however,

Some of the plurk people I ran a game for might remember spending twenty minutes examining a bed and over forty minutes trying to figure out how to get the safe out from underneath it.

paige you forced me to rewrite the ENTIRE first act of my campaign

The bed had a mound of dung on it because the ogre who'd left it just really hated the hobgoblin it belonged to. They were convinced there was something inside.

I DIDN'T DO IT ON PURPOSE

it doesn't matter im still maddie

my vote is to run the dung through a sifter

nd then set it all on fire

The treasure was underneath the bed, in a safe recessed into the floor. The way to get the safe out was just to grab it and pull up, with the door being set on the side so it couldn't be opened.

that sounds too simple, it must be a trap

we're gonna need a ladder, a chicken, and at least several questionable history checks

(no for real my style of playing has been described as YOLO and it came about precisely because my first few IRL groups were the type to take 40 minutes to an hour figuring out how to open doors and take treasure and whatnot because what if it's a trap)

either it isn't a trap, and time has been saved and we can move on, or it IS a trap and now something is happening. the end.

and anabel look at least you're getting to reuse your written qadir plot

no thanks to you, that was all Ben and his shitposting gone horribly right

Paige every time we encounter a Might Be A Trap situation I'm just gonna imagine you as Alistair from now on

My style of play is very... oldschool. Have a bunch of tools on hand for every possibility, do the obvious tests for traps (Is it wired? Are there needle holes? Is it hollow? Does it look like a pressure plate?) and then go for it anyway.

Avoiding traps: Boring, slow, full of gnawing anxiety
Not caring about traps: Spicy, exciting, never know what's gonna happen, Maybe you'll die

my playstyle is to be tought enough that traps are a minor inconvenience

zitasaurusrex: that's not unfair imagery

just go THROUGH the traps

what is a trap but a pile of plot

Dealing with problems is very simple

also "and then go for it anyway" is extremely valid
know what you're setting off

You just fuck something up and suddenly you have an entire new problem to worry about intead

My favorite is when you've thrown several traps at the group so far, but they still just barrel through when you ask them "How do you open the door/chest?"

"whenever I have a problem I can't solve, i just through a molotov cocktail, and then, right away, I have a different problem!" - every character paige ever plays, including the repressed tremere

and yet, people keep letting me solve the problems

i dont\

anymore

I am nervous by nature and when Paige decides to do things the result is frequently exciting

anabel you and i both know that is categorically untrue and i can point of all of shadowrun and vampire to prove it

However I am going to bully about being denied van access

there's no vans in the fae hedge

but there could be if we believe hard enough maybe

when I am ST i have to let paige solve problems

and scylla does not solve problems she is their source

elf drama typhoid mary

That makes her very efficient

Create problems to solve! Then the GM doesn't have to!!!

every day scylla becomes more convinced of the validity of never talking to any elf ever again

and when that happens you will only have yourself to blame anabel

pfft

she could never not talk to saturday

sorry i can't hear you over the sound of saturday yeeting herself into a dimensional hellportal, AGAIN

and thank you zita

i am very efficient

she didn't yeet

she was yote

we have ALL been yote, repeatedly

yitten