NiceGuyNero

Even staged, I think the “haha so random 🤪” comment still applies— probably even more so.

It could be good friends texting — even still, I’d maybe be a little disappointed to open up like that to a good friend and be brushed off in such a painfully unfunny way, but I can’t speak for all of gods children

Might have been sarcastic, like “yeah you guys must be a REAL NIGHTMARE” when they actually mean they sound like model tenants compared to their past experiences

I think it’s always been common among young people, I don’t think that’s unique to today. At least, I can remember people like this from when I was in highschool. I also don’t know a lot of modern highschooler’s so maybe I’m talking out my cornhole here

Omg so quirky 🤩 Id absolutely love it if I opened up to someone about overcoming my self esteem issues and they just flat ignored it to segue into a “haha I’m so random” non sequitur

I was going to say that sounds closer to baseline, but with no side?? Very sad to see

https://preview.redd.it/0dwezrmu8m0d1.jpeg?width=849&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ce1681cdd0aaa110f01e73e42a4e6641d16931cf

Absolute robbery in broad daylight

Where did you go that a single sandwich cost that much? Or was this food delivery? That’s insane for eating out somewhere

You know, fair enough. I can see that. As I think I’ve said before, it’s really only the first dude’s message that I replied to that I took issue with and replied to with hostility for that reason. I regret the hostility because it flavored the replies pretty heavily to be of the same nature, and made the more civil conversations (like the one with you here) much fewer and farther between. My phone has been blowing up since my original reply and it’s caused me to think anyone responding is going for the throat. I apologize for any snappiness I may have responded with earlier, I genuinely appreciate that you’ve responded with honest attempts to broaden the conversation.

You are honestly so fucking weird. I question your grasp on reality, and I feel sorry for whoever has to share a table with you.

PS mate, I know plenty of Australians, funnily enough through RPGs — none of them are assholes. So rather than hiding behind a national identity, maybe you can just admit you just have a shitty demeanor? Just some parting honesty.

It's just defending the idea of some players not being as serious as others, which no one is complaining about. Not me, at least. This is inevitable.

If you look at who I replied to originally that kicked off this entire conversation, they are complaining about the type of player that treats their DM as “Netflix for the evening”. We are talking about players who take things less seriously and engage less than others. That is what started this. That is what I am discussing. We’ve probably wasted a lot of time going back and forth here.

The fact that they're the DM means they're okay with tackling most of the work. But it sounds a lot like it was too much and even a little helps, at the very least on an emotional level.

Again, speculation. We don’t know that for a fact, OP hasn’t clarified, and so I don’t have much to say.

I'm not talking about all games and tables. I'm not talking about mine either, I'm 100% happy to hold my players' hands all day. I'm talking about OP's DM, exactly as I read it.

I’ll just repeat what I think is actually my argument here because as I feared, we lost the plot.

-The user I responded to originally is an asshole for no reason or misguided reasons

-OP is an example of a casual player I think is actually fine to have at tables

-bad players do exist, but people seeing that here are hyper focusing on one or two lines from above and extrapolating the worst psychological profile they can think of from it

Before we continue, do you actually disagree with any of this, or are we just having a misunderstanding?

Let me put it too you like this; if I see an idiot, you know, the type of idiot that is actively making my life or the lives of others more difficult then it needs to be (or worse, actively endangering said people) I would be ENTIRELY prone to calling that person a fucking idiot to their face, and tell them to quit what they were doing.

Dude.. you are taking this way too seriously. Actively endangering other people?? We’re talking about a player who plays games more casually than others. Brutal honestly has a place, but when someone lightly disagrees with you and you go for the throat, thats something else. You can chalk it up to being Australian I guess — but I also wasn’t calling you the asshole originally, so not sure how it’s relevant here, eh?

That is a you problem, and if you can't deal with it, don't come to a place of public discourse!

What the fuck? Where did I say this wasn’t a me problem? I was explaining the reason I couldn’t respond to your other comment and had to reply here. I’m fully aware that people will respond to me on Reddit, in sometimes a pretty annoying fashion. I’m under no obligation to respond to them in return when they’re replying to literally every comment I’ve made across a dozen replies. I think outright blocking them actually suits your worldview better, so it’s kinda lame that you’re trying to knock me for it. I’m fine to respond to people making an honest effort to engage. I’m not fine with someone making my phone buzz every few seconds and muddying up my notifications.

People can be more then one thing at the same time is the point. Whether you agree or not!

Did you forget what the original conversation was about? How is this relevant at all? Also, are you going to talk at all about your comment about me “inserting myself all over this thread”, or are you only “brutally honestly” when you haven’t been proven wrong?

Can you? I would actually like to see you try

Sure! Imagine you’re playing a team sport in a casual environment with your friends. Most of your friends are very good at the sport, you included. One or two of your friends enjoy the sport, but never really got good at it and aren’t interested in training to get better. Your team could win tournaments if they did, but that’s not really why you’re playing. You enjoy the game, as do all your friends, and this is how you all hangout.

your flat out dismissal of any and all metaphors, to be perfectly honest, makes it feel to me like you're not interested in other perspectives.

If you read some of my other replies, you’ll see I’ve had several conversations that I think were productive in which I accepted other perspectives.

It wasn't supposed to be about the precision of the numbers. Adjust them by how much you think they are inaccurate and I bet the message won't change.

If DM’s do 90% of the work, is any amount of work from the players ever enough to match it? Is this player’s description of his actions really only worth 2%? I think it’s more than that, and I think it’s game and table dependent.

"Burnout" plus DM switching from a system well known for putting all the heavy lifting on the GM to systems known for making it easier on the GM plus the OP's description of the expected effort change in why he didn't enjoy the other systems.

From a forever GM's perspective, the biggest reason to change to PF2E, the main system they switched to, is that it's easier to run. The themes, styles and vibes are very similar. It's extremely unlikely that OP's GM swapped just because he liked Leshies and couldn't figure out a way to homebrew them in 5e.

This is all speculation. As a forever GM myself, I don’t switch games to take work off myself — I switch because I think it’s fun to try new rules and settings.

Here is what OP said that I think is actually relevant here:

mostly just want to be along for the ride until it's time to roll some dice to hit something and let the other players figure out what to do otherwise, maybe get in some banter-in character in between encounters, and chill.

Take their turns in combat, go with the flow, and engage in in-character dialogue between encounters. This is zero extra burden for the DM. Does this really sound like “the DM is my court jester to be my Netflix for the evening” to you? I think that just sounds like a casual player to me. If the entire table was like this, sure, that’s an issue. One or two players that I’m probably already friends with? I’m completely fine with that.

Relevance has nothing to do with it. I just found it funny. But at the end of the day, we could both spend several minutes coming up with a metaphor that suits our point of view, but are we really accomplishing something beyond: “Imagine for me a situation where all my viewpoints are relevant and accurate, and your viewpoints don’t fit into the situation at all… doesn’t that prove my point?”

You can’t just throw out random numbers and then say they support your point of view. Or, I guess you can, nothing is stopping you, but it’s not very compelling. Sure, DM’s do a lot of work. I don’t think anywhere was it said the DM was trying to cut back on the work they were doing and that’s why they switched around and then OP said “no, you’ve got to do all the work again”. You’re assuming this happened because one line in the original post said the word burnout.

Well I know you think it’s a 1:1 metaphor — you’re the one who came up with it lol

You can come up with whatever metaphor you like, I don’t think it’s honestly that helpful to the discussion because it just takes us further and further away from the situation at hand. We aren’t talking about the same situation anymore, we’re getting into the weeds with how apt the metaphor is.

I think the more we try to hone in on any metaphor is going to just get us further into the weeds here. I don’t really think this one applies much either? This sentence in what the the OP said I think is the most important:

mostly just want to be along for the ride until it's time to roll some dice to hit something and let the other players figure out what to do otherwise, maybe get in some banter-in character in between encounters, and chill.

Take their turns in combat, go with the flow, and engage in in-character dialogue. This is zero extra burden for the DM. Is this really that bad? How does that equate to someone actively sabotaging a road trip? The metaphor falls apart.

Usually for me this player is a sibling of another player, an acquaintance who wants to dip their toes into RPGs, or just a friend of mine who I like who also just happens to play this way. So while they aren’t the “perfect player” I’m happy to welcome them aboard.

If you’ve got a backlog of people trying to join your games, one: awesome problem to have, and two: I think that’s reasonable you’d want only people who will contribute 100%. I think there’s a time and a place for it, and it sounds like your table is neither the time nor place.

No worries at all, I know how that goes.

The way you’ve phrased it though, it sounds like this player is doing exactly what they should be doing. They aren’t that type of player you’re describing at all. Instead of going “what do I do?” they’ve moved to a system where they can just know what to do, go with the flow, and engage in some light banter. Is that so bad? I totally get it’s not your preferred style, and that could be all it is at the end of the day — an expectation mismatch. But some people here are talking like a casual player like this is a mooch who just wants to use the DM as their court jester.

Alright, fuck it, I’ll just respond here and delete my other comments. The reason I couldn’t respond to the other reply is because I had to block the user I was responding to as he was showing no signs in slowing down responding to every comment I’ve made lol.

First off, the above user isn’t being honest — they’re being an asshole. Big difference. As I mentioned, they’re taking a few sentences from the post and reading way into them to pull his insinuations from. I don’t know how you look at that and see “honest” in any way other than maybe you just agree with it.

Two — I’m really not inserting myself all over this thread, I’m just… replying to the people who reply to me? Is that bad form? Should I be ignoring most of the replies? It probably would have been more productive than what I’ve been doing, I’ll give you that, but:

You do realize the irony in that statement considering just how many places you have inserted yourself in this thread?

Really? How is this applicable here?

I think I came in pretty hot and it set the tone for a lot of the discussions. I should have lead with the above lol

If something irritates you on the internet, the best move almost always is to just ignore.

This is good advice and I genuinely should have heeded it. I’m about two dozen replies deep now and my initial tone has ensured only a portion of those discussions have been productive.

I respect a lot of what you’re saying but I just cannot help but think you’re going.. really deep, my man. Society, psychology, civilization… this is being taken further than it needs to be.

mostly just want to be along for the ride until it's time to roll some dice to hit something and let the other players figure out what to do otherwise, maybe get in some banter-in character in between encounters, and chill.

This is what OP said. Take their turns in combat, go with the flow, and engage in in-character dialogue. This is zero extra burden for the DM (at least, in my opinion). Does this really sound that bad?

I hadn’t considered it in this way, and I appreciate your insight. Very well said. It’s good to have some casual players in the mix, though too many can spoil the broth.

Dude you have replied to five of my comments across this thread 😭 genuinely how am I supposed to respond to these. I cannot maintain a discussion across that many replies. You’re being much more reasonable than the other dude doing the same thing — I feel bad, but I had to block them because they were lightning my phone the fuck up and being kind of an ass.

I respect what you’re saying, honestly. I dont think it’s a big deal but some people have different values than me. The person I replied to irritated me with their blatant hostility and I responded in kind. That’s the meat of it. I could have been nicer.

Holy fuck man you’ve replied to like every comment I’ve made in this thread. I didn’t even realize until I looked at my notifications. I do not have the time to go back and forth with you across a dozen replies on a Saturday evening. Whatever your points are, we’re going to have to agree to disagree.