Poll of the Day > How serious do you guys like your D&D campaigns to be?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm just wondering if the style I DM my campaigns is what the normal people like or not.

I keep mine pretty light hearted(like the main goal and the main villain will be serious, but the rest will be less so). Like I'll cameo a bunch of characters from animes/games/comics, but I'll change up their names a bit(like I had Chandra and Jace from MtG give out quests, but changed their names to Drachan and Ceja for example), will have little mid bosses be incompetent as fuck,(I once had a group fight through a mansion full of baddies to get to the "powerful wizard", only for him to only know spells that wow people, but not really useful for combat, basically like a stage magician) etc...

I also hate coming up with weird names for elves, dwarves, etc... so all the NPCs and stuff have normal names like Steve, John, etc...
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It's been almost universally my experience that players will make things light-hearted and eagerly derail a serious moment if there's a joke to be made or they can build off one someone else has made. (I'm very "guilty" of this myself when I'm a player, too)

So I think in general, the DM should mostly keep things serious and on track, b/c the players will be pulling the lion's share of the weight in turning the game into a campy comedic romp regardless. The occasional humorous event or NPC is fine, though. I enjoyed in my last campaign running duels between summoner mages/psions as pokemon matches w/ a running gag that all of the rival pokemon trainers were super sketchy weirdos and delinquents that probably belong on some kind of watch list.

When my players die in my game, I kill them in real life.
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Felxable.

My NPCs make jokes or are really weird and quirky.
Then turns out they eat kids for fun or some shit.

Like I have a zombie Jan-Micheal Vincent that turns other people into zombie Jan-Michael Vincent's.

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streamofthesky posted...

It's been almost universally my experience that players will make things light-hearted and eagerly derail a serious moment if there's a joke to be made or they can build off one someone else has made. (I'm very "guilty" of this myself when I'm a player, too)

So I think in general, the DM should mostly keep things serious and on track, b/c the players will be pulling the lion's share of the weight in turning the game into a campy comedic romp regardless. The occasional humorous event or NPC is fine, though. I enjoyed in my last campaign running duels between summoner mages/psions as pokemon matches w/ a running gag that all of the rival pokemon trainers were super sketchy weirdos and delinquents that probably belong on some kind of watch list.

This sounds about right. Having something more serious to act as a backbone for the whole thing is good, but players will inevitably do stupid things to have fun with it, and it's important to be able to roll with that instead of trying to shoehorn them into "no-fun-allowed" mode. Trying too hard to make the whole thing ridiculous is also risky, because the players will also be silly and then the whole session ends up being one note, which gets boring. Don't take your campaign too seriously and feel free to throw some jokes in where appropriate, but still try to keep it grounded so it can have some direction.

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Depends imo what mood I'm in.

I've been in more serious and less serious ones before, and they were both fun. Albeit in different ways.

DM always let us do some goofing around though regardless.

Like one campaign DM ended up using the same voice (a vaguely Mickey Mouse voice) for two NPC shop keepers. Also both climbed up on a stool, as they were halflings. As soon as he'd talked the first time I'd ended up asking if his name was Mickey, and it was. The second time I just exclaimed 'Mickey is that you? Are you okay?'

It became the poor NPC's story that he was the mayor and ran all of the shops. Mickey became one of the most beloved characters of the sessions, if I'm being completely honest. Every time we went shopping we always asked if he was sleeping and eating okay, since he was clearly busy all the time.

Otherwise that one was of normal seriousness.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

When my players die in my game, I kill them in real life.

lmao

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I've enjoyed mostly serious campaigns/maximum flexibility regarding humor in the dialogue.

Doesn't frustrate the DM, loosens up the players. In my experience as a player, it's always helped create a friendly environment.

Players who derail campaigns for a second of attention with no logical reason behind their actions are dicks.

I've never played one but I have watched a little bit. I'm pretty sure I'd have trouble keeping things serious if I played. I wanted to make a sorcerer that has as low an int stat as possible and have my character think lewd thoughts and fail the mind reading spell on as many people as possible which causes the target to see your thoughts. Thats the kind of thing I'd be doing as opposed to playing seriously.

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I make wacky characters so it's hard to play seriously.

I have a half-elf, wild soul barbarian who is a swole pacifist, he never wants to fight but who turns into a fucking maniac when he becomes enraged.

And he's is draped in gold boots, loin cloth and a golden cape.

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dunkin doughnuts? not too serious
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I played D&D with a group of guys for the first time and it was really boring because they were role-playing serious

"No your name can't be silly"
"No you can't have 30000 cups" (they were free unlimited and weightless, come on, just play along, "you take 23457 cups and starve to death")

I can't take D&D serious, it's D&D, I'm here to have fun, not write bad fan-fiction. Competitively I'd take it seriously, but 30,000 cups is an objectively competitive advantage.

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Action movie serious. Stakes are high and warrant taking the stiuation seriously but there's room for light hearted moments in there.

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Erm, it should really depend on what's going on in the campaign, but I think things that are too frivolous can be irritating and too serious can make it a drag. It's not a bad idea to alternate between "arcs" which are designed to edge more towards one or the other tonally, I think. I do think the DM should make it clear before the game begins what sort of tone the story is gunning for to try and make sure everyone's down with it.

But I think tone matters slightly less than... well, the most unpleasant thing for me in a campaign is when you're thrown multiple very important time-sensitive plot-lines at once which means you're inevitably not going to make it to certain areas where vitally important things are happening in the setting. Sometimes that can be interesting but most of the time it's just stressful and makes you regret spending too much time on other sequences that you were enjoying earlier and annoyed that your party doesn't have reliable teleportation options yet.

I think that frustration factor is more important than tone of a campaign, because tone can always be tweaked with a little effort.

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Yellow posted...

"No you can't have 30000 cups" (they were free unlimited and weightless, come on, just play along, "you take 23457 cups and starve to death")

I can't take D&D serious, it's D&D, I'm here to have fun, not write bad fan-fiction. Competitively I'd take it seriously, but 30,000 cups is an objectively competitive advantage.

In the campaign a friend of mine ran last year, while we were creating characters and picking out starting equipment, I pointed out that backpacks could carry 30 lb and weighed 5 lb each, which resulted in all of us carrying a backpack with six other backpacks inside of it (not that he really bothered worrying about encumbrance and whatnot since he played it fairly loosely with mechanics, but it was nonetheless a fun bit of silliness).

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You meet an impassible cliff.

"I dump my 30,000 cups into the crevice and we all cross"

You are in a room with a dragon.

"I fill the room by dumping out my 30,000 cups on the floor so there's no room for the dragon to move"

A robber wants your stuff

"I give him all my cups one by one until he gets frustrated and leaves"
"I dig through my cups looking for my gold until there are too many cups to see me and I make my escape"

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Very early in the campaign, we came across a pit that had some absurd number of giant rats in it, which we murdered en masse by throwing a molotov cocktail into the pit. We then proceeded to tie a rope around our dwarf and use him to fish out 30-odd freshly-roasted rat carcasses, which we carried around for a while and subsequently fed to a troll and a small dragon to subvert the intended boss fights and cause them to ally with us. It was a good time, albeit very much not what the DM was expecting.

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Mine are not taken seriously at all. Our campaign had a dwarf who would get throw at bad guys by the troll and do massive damage. He also believed he was the son of Poseidon. And we found out he actually was because of GM didn't want any of us to die. We also named every place after foods. Like Baguette, France or Hamburger, Massachusetts or whatever. I also brought a nearly cyborg Minotaur with me to rob a museum. And we amazing weren't spotted (The GM said the rolls for the guards were unbelievably bad)... We just play for fun. And we do get missions done. But it didn't matter as long as we had fun... We also did stuff like challenge a french guy to a jousting match with bicycles and the stalest baguettes they had. And blew up lots of countries. They were a bunch of places we weren't allowed back to. We went, anyway... Oh. We also once built an aquarium for the Dwarf and filled it with different fish. But the problem was the fish became violent and fought each other die to the fact that they were natural enemies. The Dwarf loved it!
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I just started my first campaign three weeks ago. We are a bunch of weirdos, so we dont take things too seriously unless we encounter a boss. Then we go all out. Honestly the most fun thing is just chilling with friends. Having a blast so far! Hopefully we keep things going.

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adjl posted...

Very early in the campaign, we came across a pit that had some absurd number of giant rats in it, which we murdered en masse by throwing a molotov cocktail into the pit. We then proceeded to tie a rope around our dwarf and use him to fish out 30-odd freshly-roasted rat carcasses, which we carried around for a while and subsequently fed to a troll and a small dragon to subvert the intended boss fights and cause them to ally with us. It was a good time, albeit very much not what the DM was expecting.

I liked your Infinite backpack life hack

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LinkPizza posted...

Mine are not taken seriously at all. Our campaign had a dwarf who would get throw at bad guys by the troll and do massive damage. He also believed he was the son of Poseidon. And we found out he actually was because of GM didn't want any of us to die. We also named every place after foods. Like Baguette, France or Hamburger, Massachusetts or whatever. I also brought a nearly cyborg Minotaur with me to rob a museum. And we amazing weren't spotted (The GM said the rolls for the guards were unbelievably bad)... We just play for fun. And we do get missions done. But it didn't matter as long as we had fun... We also did stuff like challenge a french guy to a jousting match with bicycles and the stalest baguettes they had. And blew up lots of countries. They were a bunch of places we weren't allowed back to. We went, anyway... Oh. We also once built an aquarium for the Dwarf and filled it with different fish. But the problem was the fish became violent and fought each other die to the fact that they were natural enemies. The Dwarf loved it!

Nearly cyborg?

adjl posted...

Very early in the campaign, we came across a pit that had some absurd number of giant rats in it, which we murdered en masse by throwing a molotov cocktail into the pit. We then proceeded to tie a rope around our dwarf and use him to fish out 30-odd freshly-roasted rat carcasses, which we carried around for a while and subsequently fed to a troll and a small dragon to subvert the intended boss fights and cause them to ally with us. It was a good time, albeit very much not what the DM was expecting.

We once fed orcs to a roper my character named Mr. Roper like the Three's Company character.

Really liked the guy. He was just hungry. He let us pass. I mean, parties often kill mobs anyway, might as well have them not go to waste.

My character may or may not have also collected bones to make dice sets for the party. Rolling bones, literally.

Whitley posted...

Nearly cyborg?

Sorry. I meant cyborg Centaur (Also meant centaur instead of Minotaur) who was nearly a robot. I think he replaced so much that he was like 0.01 essense away from becoming a full robot or whatever. Like, if anything else was replaced, he would have basically been a robot, IIRC... I think his backstory was he was used for organ farming...
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Yellow posted...

You meet an impassible cliff.

"I dump my 30,000 cups into the crevice and we all cross"

You are in a room with a dragon.

"I fill the room by dumping out my 30,000 cups on the floor so there's no room for the dragon to move"

the cups, as you pointed out, have no mass, so none of these would work. the dragon could just walk right through them

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OniRonin posted...

the cups, as you pointed out, have no mass, so none of these would work. the dragon could just walk right through them

Do objects without mass have friction or structure? Do D&D cups float away? Do they interact with photons? Can I even see them?

Fuck, my plans are foiled.

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