The critical difference is whether the DM says it with a frown or a grin.

Por que no los tres?


***"Eat your dice, Brennan!"***

I became a much better player after I DM'd. It taught me that it is possible to do both.

"Fuck you!" vs "Fuck you!"

"Sorry DM, I just want to say before we get started: thank you all for coming to my story-time one-man show. And now, if you'll observe my PowerPoint, I will begin my character introduction..."

Or the ever coveted ... 🤨🫩 "Fuck you." 🫡

I like to imagine doing that but doing it is just shitty and unnecessary, and probably not fun ...

I ran a cyberpunk red campaign as the GM. I set up a storyline where the group was captured by Arasaka using an experimental “flashbang” that would shut down anyone with neural implants (the whole group). The dumbest of my group attempted to escape that. He rolled a nat 20 and I had him literally commit ego death inside his mind to “wake up.” Inside the AV they were all trapped in was my version of the head of arasaka security. Basically an undefeatable t-1000. He rolled a nat 20 again and woke everyone on the av up with advantage. Then the fucking rockerboy convinced the head of security to save him rolling his own nat 20 while the others worked to override/crash the AV before it could land at arasaka So I ended up having the rockerboy being wrapped in a big hug by the head of security and jumping out as the av crashed (the tech lowered the speed). So the rockerboy survived with like no damage, the head of arasaka security was fucked up, the team survived, and never made it to the entire narrative I had planned. 10/10 would GM again

I mean there's the other approach, had the GM tell us that he didn't do as much prep as he hoped but game was still on. My response "I'll do my best to be inefficient" Then again the character I'm playing is with a group I've played with for years, and I sat down with them before it started with "I'm about to play possibly my most irritating character concept and I want everyone on board before I finalize."

I once knew a munchkin who literally had the GM say to them exasperatedly something like "Fine, you win!". The munchkin naturally replies with "But, you **can't** win at D&D", to which the GM just said "And congrats, you managed it anyway.", at which point the GM ended the campaign.

Please just write a fanfic

Virgin Silverhand: Sets off a nuke and barely anyone even remembers him or his band, gets soul killed. Chad random rockerboy: Restarts his own brain with pure willpower and immediately talks a decades long Arasaka supersoldier into helping him.

last time I played I assassinated the main antag the DM spent weeks on. had maps, quests, characters, back story, etc. the character was really rude and antagonizing towards me because I had the audacity to tell him to stop attacking the nearby village. just having a chat...pulled out my dagger and stabbed his bitch ass face without warning. before I rolled the DM asked, "are you sure? he's pretty high level." I rolled just high enough and dropped him inside his cottage door. the DM just sighed, defeated and started calculating exp. We didn't even know who he was until we saw how much exp we were getting. I felt really bad for the DM. he was really good at it for being so new. I didn't go back after because I felt I ruined the fun for everyone else. I generally play chaotic good and absolutely lose my fucking shit to evil characters. I'm drawn to them like catnip. this wasn't the first time I ruined a campaign like this. one time I *"accidentally"* burned a village down that was home to the only living heir to the kingdom we were hired to find. well, we found him. extra crispy. long story on how the village was set ablaze...

Sure, throwing away 40+ hours of work because one player chose to go completely off rail is fun once or twice, but it gets old really really fast. Nowadays I run my games on a pretty rigid railroad. At the end of the session I ask my players what they would like to do and that's what I'm preparing. Sure, there's some wiggle room, but if you decide to do something completely different, there's a pretty hugh chance it will result in character death.

I was with you in the first half. But shouldn't there be some out of game communication between "This is not the direction we agreed upon beforehand" and "I will kill your character as punishment"?

Set wide goals, expect mayhem, have fun. Anything more than this is wishful thinking. DnD is no more just dungeons and dragons. The moment it becomes an open world, the players roam around and do mischief. If you want to play out your dream campaingn, write a book. It will *never* play as you expect or want. Unless you have the play fully scripted, with fixed roles and outcomes, it will derail. You're welcome to down vote to your content.

Yes, of course. I'm not Dr. Bibber, one wrong move and you're dead. In fact I've only "killed" a character like this once. And even then I allowed the rest of the party to retrieve the corpse and resurrect them the next session. Usually my players are observant enough to notice the "Certain death this way" signs. This is more of a problem with newer group constellations where people still need to proof how random and quirky they can be and where the player GM dynamic is not yet fully fleshed out.

Lol it was the idiot solo who woke himself and everyone up. The rockerboy just always avoided conflict and made a wildly dramatic exit. But the events in motion had us all crying laughing while my brain scrambled to plot the continuation of the story as the group rolled to destroy my cool narrative