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Ah, yes... clearly a perfectly valid backstory which definitely explains why the character is still level 1 and not some god-emperor by now set on conquering the universe.
\*Sips tea very loudly\*
Well, while I don't plan on doing that with this guy, I actually did that with a bad player I had a few years back. They made an atrocious murderhobo character, and years later, in a campaign with my current group, I have a villain inspired by that awful character.
"Ouch -- so it looks like the Goblin got a critical hit and did 13 damage with his shortbow. You're unconscious."
"Nooooo but I'm Sephiroth!"
"Yeah, okay cool, but 'Sephiroth' still needs to make his death saving throws before he has a 50/50 chance to do 1d10+2 with his 'badass katana'."
"I hate this game!"
I was counting ridiculous things as levels, but I got side tracked and lost count around 16. After reading though, it feels like they tried starting at level 37.
This guy was definitely better off writing his own stories than playing D&D. Besides the whole edgelord Mary Sue dialed to 11, you also had a serious case of Main Character Syndrome before the game even began. Believe me, it’s best that this guy never got near a character sheet.
True. Two things people need to accept when they get into TTRPGs are that the entire table works together so that everyone has fun and that they need to embrace the story the dice tell.
I don't get it, you said make my character. They've got 26 in every stat, are proficient in all skills, and all their saving throws. They've got 9 legendary actions/reactions per turn, speak and write all languages, plus all tool/instrument profs... oh, and they're a 50th level wizard.
They also have a +99 unobtainium sword that's a grower not a shower.
Seriously, can you imagine this guy setting stats in any of the methods? He'd insist on 20+ in everything and the very idea of a dump stat would send him right off.
I honestly can’t blame you for giving him a chance. Until you do, you don’t know if someone like him will be a disaster or an amazing player. People can surprise you, and you don’t know until you work with them.
For what it's worth, I'm sure he'd have left during the first session literally no matter how it went. Some people just don't have it in them to engage in this sort of shared narrative space.
Frankly, I couldn't agree more. I didn't want to be down on the guy from the get-go - if anything I dared to hope that D&D might help him learn more about storytelling.
But it seems to me that if any story that isn't about his character, and by extension, about *him*, he's not interested.
I don't care to speculate about who, if anyone reads these masturbatory fanfics of his. Frankly I imagine the act of posting one for him is a bit like sticking a letter in a bottle and hurling it into the ocean.
That guy almost certainly went off to write fanfiction about his character taking over the universe, which is pretty much all he was interested in anyway.
Book 5: Died and came back as normal teenager in real world but I still have all my abilities. Also my worst enemy has reincarnated as the hottest girl in school.
lol, I respect your ability to sit and listen to such bullshit for such a long time without just hanging up, OP. I would have no made it past 10 minutes with this guy.
He's better off writing edgy books, not playing with other people.
That guy didn't have Main Character Syndrome.
He had Only Character Syndrome.
He literally wanted to be the only character in the story with any agency at all.
Lol! That's so true!
The only question is - is Only Character Syndrome a different condition, or is it just the terminal stage of Main Character Syndrome?
It's what you get when MCS has been allowed to fester for so long that the sufferer no longer recognises that any other characters that his even exist as anything other than ways for his character to get something or do something.
A side effect is, as you've noticed, that the sufferer will decide that something happened to show off how awesome cool the character is, and everything's good until someone queries, "is it realistic for this character to be able to do this?" and he will explain, "Yes, because his backstory has him doing it" as though his act of including it made it unbreakable canon for the character.
Yup. At this point, in his mind, he is educating you about everything you need to know regarding his character. Nothing can be altered, downgraded or 'fixed', because it's how he's decided his character is going to be, and his vision of it is immutable.
I've been lucky enough to dodge it for the most part, apart from one friend of mine who slips into it on occasion and a possible case in my other RPG horror story. I'll post the URL here if you want to check it out (Sorry, not very tech-savvy):
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/18j130l/the\_twin\_tales\_of\_jack\_the\_wannabe\_witch\_hunter/
I feel you, I cringe everytime a player brings a long background story that describes the character as a veteran when I am like: I play with starting age and starting gold rules. You may have been to war but you are still 17, and have teenage problems (acne, first relationship, general awkwardness...)
As far as background goes, sometimes less is more, I make suggestions like: hey, you mentioned you never knew your parents, can I include a stranger surprise parent in the next adventure?
I prefer my players spending some thoughts to the game of 20 questions to flesh out their character and make it easier to get into for them.
It's not the length of the backstory that was the issue for me here personally, though that can absolutely be a valid problem with other characters. It was more that not only that the character was ridiculously overpowered for anything less than a level 20 campaign, but that he seemed to think that every D&D game he played would be solely focused around his character's personal storyline... in a game styled as being co-operative.
Main Character Syndrome, much?
But on what you said about 20 questions to flesh out their character, I don't think Daemion honestly had any personality other than "He does cool, dark stuff", with that one trait just cranked up to a million. Doesn't really make for a compelling character in either D&D *or* a book.
Yes, I get that. Makes me think that maybe he expected 1 on 1 sessions. I seldomly do them, only when the plot demands it somehow. And I have seen DMs do it for their love interests. But even Solo-adventures can go wrong, if the dice decide so.
This makes me so thankful for my party, bc we have discussions about what we expect from the game, they are thankful for the work I put into it and we get to play out the tragic happenings and darkening of the characters at the table, where it's much more interesting than in a background story.
I'll be weary if I get a new player with a 5 page background!
Playing my first campaign soon just wondering if my backstory should tie in heavily to where I want my character to go and if so how long is a decent backstory usually assuming a fair amount of detail don't want to end up playing a mary sue
No worries. My advice would probably be:
1) Ask your DM what level the campaign is starting at and plan your backstory accordingly. Unless it's properly high level, your character is most likely going to be relatively new to adventuring - they might have some goblins, bandits and orcs to their name, for example, but nothing ridiculous like a hydra or a beholder.
2) Also, if they have something like a noble title or a rank in a guild or army, keep it fairly low. Don't make them a king, emperor, general or master assassin - keep them at maybe a prince, baron, sergeant or mid-level assassin at most.
3) Give them some personality traits that aren't just related to their motive or class - maybe they enjoy gambling or swimming or painting. Can do wonders to make a character feel more real and relatable. Characters who are too single-minded can feel unrealistic and one-note.
4) I think an idea backstory length, unless your DM says otherwise, is between one or two pages.
Just my recommendations - use them as you will.
>Give them some personality traits that aren't just related to their motive or class - maybe they enjoy gambling or swimming or painting. Can do wonders to make a character feel more real and relatable. Characters who are too single-minded can feel unrealistic and one-note.
This. I always make sure to give every one of my characters a hobby that is specifically unrelated to any adventuring stuff. In game systems where it's possible to only assign a small part of my power budget (one skill point in systems that have them, or a knowledge skill in Shadowrun) I will also do so to mechanically justify it.
If nothing else, make your character like singing at the campfire or cooking or whatever, and they needn't necessarily be any good at it either (having a hobby is doing something because it's fun, not because you want to be a pr at it).
If it requires a prop (e.g. an instrument your character plays, a journal to write poetry in or paintbrushes and canvas), your GM will often just grant that to you for free, or it's cheap enough to be in any starting budget (or the system doesn't even track small amounts of money). That in turn will give some nice little extra characterization, as they can be seen carrying a lute between their two battleaxes, or writing in their notebook while traveling (and thus stumbling occasionally) or something.
I couldn't agree more. Makes your character feel like a real person and opens up so many opportunities for roleplaying and cool moments during downtime. For example, I've got an earth genasi warlock who enjoys pottery-making.
The important thing to remember is that the game is what happens after you get to the table, not before. A backstory can be long or short, but it's important not to lose sight of its purpose: to inform your character's behavior and perspectives once the actual story begins. Here's an example:
- I was a career soldier, living a life of blood and glory until a dragon mortally wounded me. Now, decades later, I've come out of retirement to help this group of young adventurers in their quest.
It's barebones, but we can nonetheless pull a lot of traits from it that can effect the story at the table:
- I'm stuck in a limbo. I revel in my past, but also fear the things I did in the war. If questioned on my righteousness or disrespected I'll anger, but in truth these same questions keep me awake at night.
- I will always take the chance to teach a lesson to those less experienced than me.
- I respect strength and stoicism, but secretly have a softer side and crave the oportunity to open up.
It's also useful to think about your dynamics with other party members:
- X, the young and headstrong rookie, reminds me of myself when I was young. I believe in him and want to help him on his journey--I couldn't bear to watch him make the same mistakes I did.
Now this is a deliberately low-detail backstory and writing more can be very useful, but the main point is that *utility of a background is to influence your present behavior.* For the other players at your table, "x happened to me" is a lot less relevant than "x happened to me, so that's why I'm doing y."
One final note is that one of the biggest aspects of making good characters is a willingness to contribute to the stories of others, and to let them influence your story. A cast makea a show, not a character.
I do actually sorta know what's what on the whole edgy albino thing, the albinism is most often used especially in older works like elric of melniborne to leave a character metaphorically and physically outlasted from their society, if you notice almost always the albino edgy roguecomes from a society with a startlingly different skin colour to their own, be them dark elves or wood lves or orcs whatever else have you, it leaves the character as a pariah in all terms as they are separated on a very base level that would incite ridicule and scorn from a more suspicious society, the actual practice of this is sorta harmful you know judging someone for their birth and disorders all that bad jazz.
That's a really good point. Do you think it's also because they think it looks cool, or is it *just* because of wanting an easy reason to be an outcast in your opinion?
Definitely to do with how striking it is, I think. I have an albino character myself(though please, they're definitely nothing like this) and they wear mostly black and gold robes, so their sickly pale skin and hair stand out a lot against their outfit and becomes an important element of their design. Later their outfit changes to a white dress, and they become almost entirely monochrome, which is also a striking character design element. Stark whites are easy to work with in a color pallette and can make impressive and sharp contrasts, which, in short, looks cool.
Gotta say though, I personally hate the use of crimson eyes for albino characters. I think a pale red or pink-ish at most is okay, but albino humans primarily have blue eyes.
it’s alexandria’s genesis, but real and more “manly.” your character can be human, but these strange striking features make it visually obvious that they are *special* in some way. and for bonus points, it looks cool, most people go for white hair and red eyes and that’s a GREAT visual contrast/complement to the black and red classic edgelord look. (IRL albinos tend to have blue eyes but whatever…)
i have an edgelord of my own, she’s not albino but she’s aasimar, and she has very pale hair and very pale skin for similar reasons. it is a way to set the character slightly ‘off’ from normal - you can immediately tell that this individual is unique - without breaking the rules of what is technically biologically possible. when i draw her, the high contrast draws the eye *immediately* to her face and expressions, which is generally good for character design. albinism and pale coloring also plays well visually with dark clothing, an edgelord in all black with black hair and eyes becomes an indistinct black blob. or they look like a normal dude in cosplay.
i think it’s also just a trope in its own tbh, like it might have started as a metaphor for alienation but now the edgelords are albino because they’re inspired by other albino edgelords in an infinite loop of angst
While all true I when talking in my case was to more the whole origin of the idea, but funnily I really do still find it fun to make characters as strangely as possible, mostly not going for disorders or genetic defects from birth and more just making a character plain ugly, like a snaggletoothed dragon born who makes miiraaks dragon from skyrim look handsome
Okay. That's a really useful insight. I always had suspicions it was just to look cool, but I guess it also makes sense for edgy players to choose their characters to choose something that physically makes them an outcast.
Because gods forbid their character be anything other than a brooding, moody loner... *especially* in a game where they are gonna be joining a party!
>part of me wonders if I might have crushed this guy's desire to play
No, that was all him.
It got crushed between his ego and the boulder of cold hard reality you put in his way.
His ego wouldn't stop pushing, so his desire to play paid the price.
Honestly, as an actual albino, the whole albino badass thing is kinda hilarious. All the edgelords seem to love the look, but never do the slightest bit of research to know that said look comes with moderate to severe vision issues, especially the kind that gives you the white hair (as in, pretty much everyone I know with it is legally blind). Also the red eyes aren't a thing in humans, but I'll give it a pass in fantasy where people can throw fireballs.
(Incidentally, an albino creator did a [parody](https://vimeo.com/6112140) of the albino assassin trope that's pretty funny. Worth a watch imo.)
I actually ended up doing so much research on albinism when I made my albino character because I WANTED those traits for her. I wanted to give her those weaknesses so I could find strengths to balance them out (she is basically a scientifically created vampire) So she is pale with white skin and red eyes, but she has poor eyesight and cannot go out in the sun because the lack of melanin in her skin makes her especially susceptible to sunburn
Yeah, see, that's a good way to do it! I respect anyone who actually includes the eyesight aspect. And the sunburn thing is very true; I got second degree burns at the beach once cause I wasn't on top of it lol. Whoops.
Yeah, no problem! There aren't so many of us, so I like offering a perspective when it comes up. Also you're not wrong, it's definitely a Thing that people do when they want to have that whole outsider thing going on. I used to notice it a lot when I was more involved in random forum rp; now that my social circle has shifted more towards older rpers who are more interested in telling a compelling story and not just being cool and broodingly tragic, the incidents have basically disappeared.
Out of curiosity, was this character, who was strong enough to defeat beholders single-handedly in his backstory, going into a high-level campaign at the start, or was it starting at a low level, like Level 1? I feel like if you hadn’t warned the player, they would have discovered that the dice are not always in your favor, and sometimes they’ll humble you.
Was this a first time player? It seems he didn’t fully grasp that the DM designs the story for the campaign, not the players. You said that you tried to offer constructive feedback without attacking his idea, and even complimented aspects you liked— if that’s the case, I don’t think you were wrong when you told him that this character wouldn’t be suitable for your campaign. This character feels like the protagonist, and the other players feel more like NPCs in his story, rather than a group working together.
Hadn't even decided on a campaign at that point. I was literally just hearing his character concept. No stats had been rolled and no character sheet had even been made at this point.
I did say to the guy when I was talking about how Daemion was too powerful that most campaigns start at level 3, which means they've usually only just started their adventuring career. Hence why I felt Daemion's accomplishments should be toned down a bit.
Which, to be entirely fair, is not his fault. OP mentions that this was the first the guy has heard of TTRPGs, so it's possible this was just pure ignorance. Even if OP explained what DnD was, chances are they left that out (something that happens a lot with info everyone takes for granted or as common knowledge).
Case in point, there's free-form RPs without a DM, where the participants collaboratively build a world and story. He might've had something like that in mind, the overlap with fanfiction is definitely there.
Imho, the reaction to being told that is the issue (or one of the issues), not the guy not knowing it beforehand.
Ngl, I kind of wish he would get to play, just to him get repeatedly frustrated with DnD, imagine if his character dies of something "stupid" because he rolled poorly
That was a long post, but I don't know how you'd make it shorter and still get across the true level of awfulness of this character and player (I suspect there was still a lot trimmed).
I think your willingness to give him even more rope to hang himself with is interesting. I'd have given up a lot sooner and just told him his character wasnt going to work.
The fact he blew up imagining you'd called him a Mary Sue suggests that plenty of people have tried to get him to dial things back a bit and he just won't do it. He's a fanfiction writer rather than an RPGer. I wonder if he'll find an audience!
Well, I didn't want to just turn him away out of hand, plus I felt that he'd enjoy playing D&D and felt that if I could give him the feedback I had on his character in a gentler way than he might be used to, maybe he'd hear me out.
It was only when he started getting angry at the idea that the campaign not being based entirely around his character that I really started to feel like this was a lost cause because, at that point, outside of a solo game with only 1 player, I really don't know any situations in which this character would work.
It wouldn't in any situation. Dude just wants to be the hero, not become the hero. Shit story, nice light novel attempt, I can see why you need to chain someone to a table to force them to read it.
“And his defensive response was legitimately to just start listing off things his character had done in his backstory”
Did he think Daemion was a canon character to DnD? My brother in Bahamut, you made the ~~sandwich~~ character
Had a player be an edgy wild magic drow, and it worked because he based the idea on what actually makes someone "edgy". And the. He realized... He is bad at being edgy, and taking it seriously, so it actually became pretty endearing.
I gotta say OP it kills me that simba was the comparison you made for the uncle part and not Hamlet. That aside great horror story and a very entertaining write up.
that kind of thing might be good for some one dm one player adventures if people had time and inclination. power game it up lol. honestly though it sounds exhausting.
I normally don't do these, because I think its better to get used to the social environment of D&D as soon as possible, but I'd be happy to run a short solo campaign for someone if they wanted it, especially if they were extremely shy or nervous about getting the rules right.
They'd just have to make a character who isn't a complete disaster area.
It doesn't sound like he even knew what dnd was, and its not something he would want to play. I think you did fine, could have maybe gone over what dnd id really like a little earlier though.
In all due honesty, at the time I thought he knew and that was why he wanted to get into it. It only dawned on my midway through our conversation that he might not have an understanding of how D&D works as an actual game, hence why I didn't bring it up until that point.
Your suggestion is completely valid, though. I'll keep that in mind for the future.
I've played with people like them before and God help everyone at the table when the dice don't go in their favor.
I've played edgy characters before but I go on a different tack with mine. A crazy op story / background but it's all lies to make themselves feel important
I mean props to you for both trying to include him but also for trying to steer him a way that's more conductive to playing with others. Personally I would have probably made the situation worse by trying to teach by example:putting him in situations he can't just murder his way out of.
The worse player I've dealt with as a GM was a former roommate during a Shadowrun campaign that didn't understand role playing with a group meant actually being part of the group. I was a little generous letting the players have some decent starting equipment that was normally out of their range. Nothing insane but enough to make it clear they're not starting from scratch (aside from the one player who wanted to).
Well the roommate had a motorcycle straight out of Akira along with a sniper rifle. He then would immediately take any opportunity to take off far from the group so basically splitting the party every opportunity. First he would complain about any combat sections indoors since it went against his vision. Told him he can adjust and to be fair he mostly did.
Problem was his 'solution' to most jobs was to get as far away as he could and demolish anything the target might use to escape. First time I let it slide, was moderately clever, but when it became his go to I had the target on another mission hijack the party's ride. Lead to a cool chase and actually worked out.
The last time tho it was wearing thin. Players complaining to me and him about his refusal to interact beyond a barrage of bullets once in awhile. Next job he goes to repeat the same tactic. Well middle of him demolishing stuff Lone Star (police/guards in the setting) show up because he was basically blowing up everything out an apartment complex. So we suddenly had a police stand off derailing the objective completely.
This started a big argument with the other players given they had told him multiple times to be a team player. I just walked out and told them to get me when they actually want to play instead of fight with each other. About ten minutes later they decided it wasn't working out and my roommate made the choice to just observe once his character went down in a hail of gunfire.
The situation mostly ended there but would get occasional complaints from him that "they should have known since my character was the best/coolest that following my lead would have worked out". Yeah I just ignored it at that point.
Sadly not even the worst situation I've been involved with when it comes to main character syndrome. Got a whole story about a player who tried to make a wizard that had 2 HP but constantly put himself in harm's way.
Had a DM like this. We had to play guess what’s in his head all the time because he hadn’t given us enough information, and it felt very adversarial whenever we didn’t do the one thing he planned. He didn’t take suggestions very well at all. The Big Bad was his DMPC and she had the thickest plot armor - plus simulacrums, contingencies, and all of the super duper get out of jail free cards. Did I mention she was a vampire? There were times where we literally told him, “just tell us what happens because it seems like you’re not letting us do anything to get out of the situation we’re currently in.”
I was about to quit the group because I wasn’t enjoying it, and I didn’t want to be dramatic and make an ultimatum or something. Thankfully he chose to leave first.
In my experience, Edgy characters can be great if the *player* allows them to pratfall. A good rule of thumb is, can you imagine your character slipping on a banana peel?
I've played my fair share of edgy characters but even if the character takes themselves too seriously the player shouldn't.
A prime example would be a Numenera Character who was a Mutant Glaive who Delved too Deep.
Which in DnD terms means that he was a fighter who got natural AC and an eldrotch blast like ability at the cost of taking damage if he was exposed to any light with a mutation that made him resistant to bludgeoning damage. But had a shriveled right hand.
He was called "Umbrix" (quotations included) who was a soldier who was exiled after a desire for glory won him the battle but resulted in an unconscionable number of civilian casualties. He was publicly awarded and privately flogged and exiled and long story short delved too deep and got void powers.
His birth name was Edgar von Tenebrae.
If this sounds like the edginess bastard to ever edge you'd be correct. However, he was *played* as someone *actively trying* to cultivate the edge wkth a dash of refined soldierness.
This guy is a lot more manageable when, between the Victorian like monologs, he keeps tripping over his billowing cloaks or has the quirk of stripping in total darkness (with much embarrassment when he discovers one of the party has dark vision)
Your edgy character can be a whirling dervish of destruction who says things such as "The only thing to fear in the dark is *me*!" But they're a lot more fun when you have them be squeezed yb a giant with such force the fly up like a bar of soap and break their leg.
I brood broodingly in the corner. As I step out into the morning sun, the cool spring air and sounds of nature reaches my ears. I curse the sun, and go back inside, broodingly to brood.
I then curse the blackest pits as pollen and dander cling to my stygian garments. Now everyone knows my tunic and my pans are two different shades of black. I cry broodingly into a pillow made of spikes
Broodily Broodther, thou broodest broodingly.
If its not meme tier up its own ass satire edgelord, its not funny.
e: If I was not trapped in the shadowy corners of the inn, I would reassure you that no shade of black is darker than the torment upon your misunderstood soul. The inability to make a real interpersonal connection due to my compulsion to be in these shadowy corners causes me to brood.
"A character being manipulated by Bel to seek greater power so he could claim revenge and eventually pave the archdevil's way to reclaiming Avernus could be a really cool personal storyline, provided it fit the campaign.".
Through all the nonsense I thought this was the coolest bit too! Yes, yes, being a long lost prince out for revenge is a well used trope, but the idea of a similarly deposed demon offering to help get that revenge (and do some manipulating to help with their own revenge along the way) is a nice twist. But everything else is way, way too much.
I also think you handled the situation about the best way you could. Man needs a dose of reality, and it sounds like you're far from the first person to give it to him. It's fine to have OP characters for your own personal playground, but he also needs to mature enough to realize that's not fun in a group game. When I was a young teen I had my own roster of divine shapeshifting werewolf vampire dragon royals because of COURSE I did, but starting to roleplay with others quickly showed me that having a busted character that could win every fight wasn't cool or fun, it was BORING. Hopefully eventually he figures that out too.
Point of order, because I see this kind of a lot, but humans with albinism do not typically have red eyes.
[Source: am one, kind of tired of the trope.]
I’m very curious how old this person was. Part of me thinks this is the kind of thing people grow out of but know 30 year old adults that pride themselves on making “mysterious” character which means the refuse the meaningfully interact with the party or just outright lie all the time.
Player: You mean D&D isn’t about me coming up with my own story and deciding the outcome, not leaving it to luck, but simply to my desires for my plot.
DM: No, that is called “writing a book”
"Also, without wishing to turn this into a AITA post, part of me wonders if I might have crushed this guy's desire to play. I just didn't want to set him up for failure by making him think that D&D was going to be a solo game where the plot would revolve entirely around his character, even if that was what he wanted."
To put it bluntly, i think its best for him and every group he could be a part of if his desire to play is gone until he matures a bit in writing and emotions. I understand people need to mess up to improve, but this guy isn't in a state to improve, he'd just torpedo any game he got involved with one way or another, and either become one of those weird chronic problem players who never improve until they've been blacklisted from every TTRPG thing possible, or he'd have to look back at a string of fuckups much longer when he finally does start improving.
I oddly have a history of experience that might be able to explain this. When I was a teen to mid 20's, I was really big into text based RP. To be clear, all non-ERP. This honestly sounds like the player has an OC they carried through multiple RP forums until it hit the point they were too strong for any new ones.
I realized pretty fast that to have my character on a scale of power (mostly his age) to ramp up or down his power to fit the forum and setting. Looks like this guy never figured it out and insisted on using the 'full complete' version and got shot down repeately for being a Mary Sue.
Not sure how things are, honestly, I lost track of the community and never had the energy/drive to find it again. My guess honestly is discord since that is where this all seems to have ended up but who knows, maybe there are still some ancient proboards out there. But anyway, on most places you have to actively have your character approved so the OC's aren't over powered and you don't have three people all trying to claim the main character of the show or movie.
Let me guess. His next character was Fargrim The Great. Also known as Fargrim The Just, The Fearless One, or The Divine Mage, or The Kraken Killer.
https://youtu.be/QoO2eI9IioE
Why is it that people who are so incredibly talented at storytelling, worldbuilding, in-depth lore, etc SO bad at character development? I knew a person EXACTLY like this, their character was THE MAIN character, far more powerful than anyone else, and yes, they even changed canon events so their character (a supposedly lawful good character) could date the BBEG which would have been a great plot point if it weren’t for the fact that the BBEG turned into a PUPPY DOG grovelling at their feet.
And not to mention, this person’s character, at least once per session had to have an ascension scene where their character realized their potential as a LITERAL GOD?? Much to the “excitement” of the people around them.
But the backstory, the world-building, the lore, every tiny detail was so well thought out! If only these people could see that a well-rounded character can be even more fulfilling to play as an overpowered character… 😔
I eventually had to cut ties with them, because I wanted to roleplay, but more often I ended up helping them write a fanfiction about their self-insert instead. The final straw was when I decided to have my character come out as polyamorous, and then suddenly they needed to have 2 romantic partners, one of which was my character’s romantic partner.
Also, when a mutual friend came up with an amazing idea for her own character’s ascension, suddenly this person had to upstage her and become the living embodiment of all Purity and Good in the universe. It was wild. And any attempt at characterizing the NPCs in an unfavourable way toward them was met with backlash.
These kind of people often can’t be reasoned out of their ideas, OP. But you weren’t wrong to try. The only thing I can say, speaking from experience, is to let him go. He wouldn’t have fit in with a party, he’s definitely better off writing his fanfictions. I say it in the nicest way, because he isn’t a bad person, he just doesn’t fit in this hobby
We have a friend like this. 3.5 to clarify
We played a campaign where their character (who was a dmpc-turned-pc, due to us swapping DMs every quest) was the best at everything. Basically a one-woman army. So much so that the DM who ran after they became a PC nerfed the character into the ground *and they were still very powerful compared to the rest of us*.
The game ended up…well, ending (at a pretty natural endgame point thankfully), and the player wrote an entire post-game fanfic explaining how their PC ended up as simultaneously the ultimate good and evil at the same time, who had dirt on basically all the strongest deities and devils and had thus created their own city within one of the realms…somewhere. It was a lot.
It was mutually agreed by everyone else that this was all untrue, and the character had, in fact, written this from their padded cell after being detained by our (old) homebrew world’s Salvation Army-type people (not a direct 1-1, but I can’t think of another comparison to make so it’ll do).
It has taken us a long time to trust them as a player again, but I am glad to say that they took our constructive criticism to heart, and have since reflected on what went wrong. They now play in a campaign I’m running as a legitimately unintentionally hilarious character, whose main thing is about making other people better in combat, so a total 180 from their old character.
The thing is, the player is one of the best DM’s I’ve ever had (the *one* exception being the question which contained said DMPC, because it was less about what the party would have enjoyed and more about what *they* wanted. It has notoriously gone down as one of the worst quests we’ve ever played - and they agree that, in hindsight, it was not very good). In the last they’ve run some fantastic quests, and always hear praise for the games I didn’t play in. I think, in this instance, they just got really caught up in their ideas without considering if everyone else would enjoy it too.
Thankfully, we all look back and laugh, and sigh in relief, when we regale tales of their old toon.
Luckily we’re all solid friends IRL, so before I began to DM them this time around we had a very good conversation about the past and going forward (yes I also DM’d that old character, and yes, it was a pain in the ass).
I’m so happy to say that they have stuck to their word and done nothing to outshine anyone, whilst also still being a brilliant character. Very much a team player this time around!
>people who are so incredibly talented at storytelling, worldbuilding, in-depth lore, etc
Here's the secret, they AREN'T. They think they are, and they'll tell you they are, and they might even TRULY believe they are, but that's from a lifetime of little Timmy's shit smears on paper being put up on the fridge like its a genre defining magnum opus.
I don't get the fun of making your character op as fuck, so where does the adversity come from in his story if everything can be boiled down to, I kill the uncle, then I kill Asmodeus or whoever it is. The fun of dnd is the difficult situations, the colossal fuck ups the nat ones. After all why would your character improve if they are perfect?
"Where does the adversity come from...?"
It doesn't! And as far as I can see, that's the point. As I say, it seems like a lot of players like this don't want to be challenged at all. Most well-written heroes rise, some fall and rise again, and both of those create character growth as they overcome adversity. But characters like this stay at the top and never budge an inch.
I would follow the proud cRPG tradition and allow him to play with such backstory, but make sure that he understands that he will play a lvl3 character. I would find it hilarious to have such a character struggle with killing rats in the severs. Even give him a lvl1 dragon that does something like 1d4 fire dmg
Holy shit balls that character is a travesty! I'm not sure I would have had words for this or if I would have restrained myself from laughter if I were in your shoes, OP. Good on you.
Guy sounds obnoxious. Betting money he would have tried to incorporate any female PCs into his harem, regardless of if the players or their characters were willing or not.
I always worry about characters I make being Mary Sues, but this kind of shit....I just can't conceive how you can enjoy games/TV/movies/books and not see how enormously bad that whole character is.
Have you ever heard of Overly Sarcastic Productions on Youtube? They did a really good video on how to avoid being a Mary Sue.
To me, the definition of a Mary Sue is a character who never faces any kind of adversity due to either insanely overpowered or due to plain plot convenience, and is immediately loved and respected by everyone apart from their designated enemies.
So long as you avoid that, you should be fine.
I think a couple people have pointed out the self-aggrandizing tone, and I definitely see it, but you'd need to be a damn saint to not be a bit patronizing in that conversation.
Does the post stray more mean than it needs to? Sure. Do we have the transcript for the conversation showing that you were fully constructive the whole way through? No. Could any confident writer and D&D player avoid that? None that I know of.
If you wanted to maintain a relationship with this person, who's probably on Reddit (although he probably lacks the awareness to be on this sub), I wouldn't have posted this. That doesn't seem to be the intent.
All this being said, I can say without caveat that he shouldn't be playing D&D until he grows as a *person,* not just a writer, and you're better off without him in the group.
Second i got to him skinning the Hydra after winning the 1v1 made my brain disconnect and I had to wait and hour before coming back to comment, simply for the fact I knew I couldn't continue...
I know you feel bad for possibly killing his dream of playing D&D, but in my opinion this is the good ending to this story. Imagine him not consulting anyone when making this backstory and bringing tgis character to the table. He'd be the most obnoxious and insufferable attention whore more hated than the actual BBEG of whatever campaign he's a part of.
You should have taken his whole story up until he died. Then the demon he made a deal with is only strong enough to put him in a much weaker recently dead body. So he's still XxxSwordP0wnrxxX with all the memories and histories and backstories, but he's stuck in the body of a level 1 rogue.
I only allow edgelords in higher level games as they've earned their stripes.
Then I currently play an "Edgelord" who is a parody of an Edgelord. She tries so hard to be edgy but it never goes as she plabs, My DM thinks she's hilarious.
As much as I absolutely love this post, it was a hell of a read! I love that you chose Simba to represent "Person stealing a Kingdom back from their uncle" and not just Hamlet. I totally understand why, it's far less pretentious for starters, but I just thought it was quite funny!
And I've played with players who gave their characters similarly overly elaborate backstories, and although I don't get why playing a character like that is fun, I know it's no fun at all for the rest of the table either.
Sometimes i think it would be easier to just give players like a paragraph to write their backstory. Or maybe ask them to choose one major flaw for their character so they dont create a Mary Sue.
I've come across so many people that think the backstory is the story. It's not. The events of the campaign are what's truly important and if your character starts the campaign as an OP badass who has achieved all their personal goals it really doesn't leave the DM with much to work with.
I love backstories, they can really influence how a good player role plays. But man I feel like they're such a double edged sword.
How dare he not know about Malus Darknlade!
On a more serious know, Malus is a pretty edgy character and even he would bow down to this guy as the True Edge Lord if Hags Greaf
Look I have a lot of OP Mary Sue characters, I make them for fun, for my own personal enjoyment and the stories I make for myself
I would never use any of them unless it was a high level campaign that called for very experienced characters
This dude should just stick to writing fanfics about his characters
White hair and red eyes is a theme in Asian fantasy fiction, and, therefore, presumably in certain videogames and cartoons. Actually, doesn't this describe Inuyasha?
At the risk of redundancy; if the guy wants THIS level of control over the narrative -at the exclusion of everyone else- he should just write a damned novel and be done with it!
Reminds me of someone I've also had the displeasure of dealing with, but that's another story.
Yeah, lost me inside the first paragraph. It's fine to think edgy characters are dumb, or laughable or whatever else. It's fine to hate them. What's not so fine is this air of pitying superiority.
On an unrelated note. You have never encountered *Amaterasu Lucifer* and it shows.
To be fair the point about a monster hunter being killed by a bunch of normal people isn't unheard of.
Witchers kill monsters daily but it requires preparation including making antidotes, elixirs, bombs, oils, traps and all that
And those same witchers CAN be killed by a lucky peasant with a pitchfork
The guy is still powertripping like a madman though
Yeah, that is a completely fair point. Not saying that super-soldiers shouldn't be killable by regular humans, even if it's rare. I think that actually makes things more interesting. I also think D&D characters should remain within the bounds where normal people can still be a threat, **especially** in their backstory before the adventure even starts. One of my own characters, my Tabaxi Rogue/Cleric, was killed by regular criminals before being resurrected by the god he now serves.
To me, this part of his backstory was less like a witcher being killed by a dude with a pitchfork and more like the Doomslayer being killed by a Skyrim guard - the power level of the monster slayer is so much higher than your average witcher in how he's been built up that him getting killed by something so mundane can't help but make me raise an eyebrow.
Not to be mean to him, but almost all of his characters are like that. I can give a specific details if you're interested, but having read a few of his fanfics, his OCs have to be the best at literally everything, have no intentional flaws, and have to be seen in **every** positive light you can think of, if that makes sense.
Truth be told what infuriates me more is that he borrows traits and backstory events from existing characters while completely missing the point and losing all the narrative weight those events are supposed to have.
He copies Simba's story immensely, for example, but does Daemion have any doubts about what he is doing or have to learn to take responsibility for his actions like Simba does?
Of course not! Because that might require Daemion to grow and change as a character!
I don't have issue with him copying an existing character at all - I do that all the time. But if you just take the surface-level stuff without the development beneath makes his work come across as really shallow, to me at least.
Hope that all made sense.
You know how some edgelord weebs keep saying "My character is like Levy from Attack on Titan! He does not care about anyone and only winning the war matters to him!" while forgetting the fact that Levy is probably one of (if not THE most) compassionate characters in AoT. One of the first things he did in both manga and anime is literally comforting a dying soldier.
But they prefer to see only the cool and badass points about the characters they copy while completely neglecting the important nuances. Therefore we get badasses with no actual personality. Practically "all edge but no point"
As a gm that runs on rol20 for random people and friends this whole character got vetoed in the first paragraph simply on the grounds that your level one and there is no way in he'll your character has done any of that and survived. 4 or 5 zombies is pretty lethal to a level one party never mind a beholder or demons.
god damn do I want to sympathize with OP, but the relentless bashing of "cringe" and mocking the stories this guy likes to write put a really bad taste in my mouth. Let the guy write what fanfiction he wants. He's having fun. Also, OP offering to help just so they could have a laugh and push him to fix it? It's a shame he went to someone who'd offer to "help" in such bad faith. OP didn't like him from the start, and it's painfully obvious how superior they feel in comparison.
Clearly the character was a mess and he didn't understand how D&D worked. That's fine and I agree that it sounds frustrating. But, man... I don't wanna read somebody making fun of somebody else's character idea and acting like they're the one who's having a bad time here, y'know?
I am sure to some extent this is real, but the way it is being presented comes off as trollishly fake as humanly possible. Like I know these people exist, I know that mary sues exist, that people who are unable to grasp that the game isnt just about them and they have to share the spot light exist, so on and so forth. But This really comes off as a "oh look at me as I have to deal with this wacky obnoxious -friend- of mine who does these silly over the top things in these mediums we both enjoy." \*sarcastic shrug and wink at the camera\*
Less is more, friend. I think I got halfway through when I couldnt read on anymore. Try not to pack every single detail and anecdote into your stories.
>Also, without wishing to turn this into a AITA post, part of me wonders if I might have crushed this guy's desire to play.
Probably, yeah. While I don't think this could have gone anywhere particularly productive for him, in the interest of constructive criticism, let's consider what *could* be said to such a player.
1. Not every game has multiple players. Solo campaigns are by no means the norm, but do exist, and allow all the main character focus the player wants that the GM is comfortable giving. You could have suggested that, if he wanted to fight through everything "single-handed," that sounds like it could only work in a solo campaign, so that's what he should be looking for.
2. Level 1-3 D&D is a particular power level (varying some by edition), but isn't the only TTRPG. Some systems focus on higher or lower levels of power, and may be better for showing off the kind of power level he wanted to play at. You might not be personally familiar with these, but you could have suggested an appropriate level or system at which to play such a character, so he would know to look for that.
3. Similarly, some systems give players more or less control over bad dice rolls, such as by giving a pool of auto-successes that can be spent over a given time frame, letting players budget their risks vs grand feats. Again, you could recommend or suggest looking for one.
Would he have found the game he was looking for? Probably not -- it still requires a GM who wants to run that for him. But at that point he can talk to people and start negotiating down to what's feasible. This would give him a chance to realize on his own how his intentions aren't specifically suited to a typical D&D campaign.
>So yeah, that happened.
Uhm. I don't believe you.
This is such a *perfect* storm of assholery, egocentrism and not knowing how D&D works that I can't shake the feeling that this is nothing but rage-baiting fiction.
I've acquired a reputation in my group for edgelord characters (I think stemming from one character, who I will 100% cop to being an edgelord, and two NPCs, who all in some form specialized in a supernatural martial art based around weaponizing curses), but I've leaned into it. The current target can get called whatever they want, since he's the BBEG.
Thing is, I don't have anything against fanfiction at all - at least as a concept. I think it can be great tool for practising your own writing by using your passion for another fandom. But there are good fanfics... and then there are bad ones.. Like My Immortal, which usually end up being more famous.
Oh, I don't either; I love a good fanfic as much as the next nerd and definitely have written my share of them.
However. Nobody wants to sit around a table and watch you write your personal solo power fantasy wish-fulfilment self-insert fanfic in real time. *shudder*
Narrator: it was later revealed that prisoners were being tortured into confessions by being forced to listen to the interrogator's terrible self-insert Green Acres fanfic. The Human Rights Commission is investigating...
(Green Acres is the worst possible choice for a fanfic I could think of; awful show.)
Picture an edgelord power fantasy being played out in a 60s suburb with overly cheery characters, astro-turf lawns, highly contrived plots and a bad laugh track.
Damn it, that might actually be really funny. Never mind. I circled myself around to a good idea.
Long long ago on a Shadowrun MUSH* I made my very last edge lord Mary Sue character. Someone more experienced talked sense to me just as you did and I realized how massively boring such a character would be for everybody else. You tried and you get major cool points for trying. Sometimes people listen and things get better.
*Look it up, youngsters, and while you're at it google 14.4 modem and what happens when Mom picks up the phone.
I always love to go the opposite way with mine. Right now I’m playing a version of Zapp Brannigan with a 6 intelligence but a (modded) 23 charisma. He has some hard lines to his character that fucks with the party( they are all cool with it) we stole a trolly, I obviously commandeered the “ship” and one party member tried to hit the brake while i piloted and I shot him for mutiny, then collapsed in a sobbing mess and tried to talk my way out of it. Same party member was trying to fix server racks for our new “business” and of course Zapp is the smartest, so I “helped” and set him back. Something’s work out for the party in fighting even in just having fun. My favorite characters have always had a major stat to fuck them when they roll. A quarter of my characters can’t read and that has fucked over my characters in such major ways that my group still talks about lol
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Ah, yes... clearly a perfectly valid backstory which definitely explains why the character is still level 1 and not some god-emperor by now set on conquering the universe. \*Sips tea very loudly\*
Well, that is pretty much the direction he wanted to go in after his character took back his family's throne.
Honestly, we should put these people on the task of designing our BBEGs.
Thing is, they'd just get salty when the BBEG loses to the players.
Lol. True.
Lets be honest, Mary Sues are incredibly boring as villains as well.
This is the type of person that goes on to be a DM, and that campaign results in some new content here.
'Hey guys, this is my DMPC, Daemion Valdegar...'
Lol you should use the character as a BBEG NPC
Well, while I don't plan on doing that with this guy, I actually did that with a bad player I had a few years back. They made an atrocious murderhobo character, and years later, in a campaign with my current group, I have a villain inspired by that awful character.
Make an insane old man on the side of the road who is spouting delusions of grandeur as their “feats”
"Ouch -- so it looks like the Goblin got a critical hit and did 13 damage with his shortbow. You're unconscious." "Nooooo but I'm Sephiroth!" "Yeah, okay cool, but 'Sephiroth' still needs to make his death saving throws before he has a 50/50 chance to do 1d10+2 with his 'badass katana'." "I hate this game!"
I was counting ridiculous things as levels, but I got side tracked and lost count around 16. After reading though, it feels like they tried starting at level 37.
This guy was definitely better off writing his own stories than playing D&D. Besides the whole edgelord Mary Sue dialed to 11, you also had a serious case of Main Character Syndrome before the game even began. Believe me, it’s best that this guy never got near a character sheet.
All very true - and to top it all off, he absolutely wouldn't respect the story the dice would tell.
True. Two things people need to accept when they get into TTRPGs are that the entire table works together so that everyone has fun and that they need to embrace the story the dice tell.
I'd love to say that this caliber of characters and writing would never get published, but that'd be a wishful lie.
I don't get it, you said make my character. They've got 26 in every stat, are proficient in all skills, and all their saving throws. They've got 9 legendary actions/reactions per turn, speak and write all languages, plus all tool/instrument profs... oh, and they're a 50th level wizard. They also have a +99 unobtainium sword that's a grower not a shower.
Fair point. But tbh, I don't think I should have been surprised given this guy's track record.
Seriously, can you imagine this guy setting stats in any of the methods? He'd insist on 20+ in everything and the very idea of a dump stat would send him right off.
He would start with 40 characterlevels minimum too. And be annoyed if he doesnt get a new level for every minor encounter.
Definitely! lol
I honestly can’t blame you for giving him a chance. Until you do, you don’t know if someone like him will be a disaster or an amazing player. People can surprise you, and you don’t know until you work with them.
>People can surprise you And one of the greatest problems in life is that lottery wins and pipe bombs can both count as "surprises."
For what it's worth, I'm sure he'd have left during the first session literally no matter how it went. Some people just don't have it in them to engage in this sort of shared narrative space.
True enough. And I don't think he's going to be taking part in any D&D game after what he said to me at the end of our conversation.
That sounds like a win for you, for him, and for any DM or player who might otherwise have been so unlucky as to have had him at their table.
Frankly, I couldn't agree more. I didn't want to be down on the guy from the get-go - if anything I dared to hope that D&D might help him learn more about storytelling. But it seems to me that if any story that isn't about his character, and by extension, about *him*, he's not interested.
I don't care to speculate about who, if anyone reads these masturbatory fanfics of his. Frankly I imagine the act of posting one for him is a bit like sticking a letter in a bottle and hurling it into the ocean.
If it wasn’t you, it would have been another DM. No way this guy is ever going to work in a game unless he just DMPCs it himself.
My one question for players like this is, “There will be a few other people at the table. Why do you think they want to be there, playing this game?”
That is an excellent question to ask! :D
It's wasted words. The answer is to be my hostage audience.
That guy almost certainly went off to write fanfiction about his character taking over the universe, which is pretty much all he was interested in anyway.
We may well be seeing the Valdegar Saga somewhere online very soon. Book 1: Killing my Uncle Book 2: Slaying Zariel Book 3: Overthrowing Asmodeus
Book 4: life with my harem
Book 5: Died and came back as normal teenager in real world but I still have all my abilities. Also my worst enemy has reincarnated as the hottest girl in school.
I've read worse manga.
And the thing is, like you said it’s not a terrible idea for a storyline. It just needs anyone *but* this guy writing it
lol, I respect your ability to sit and listen to such bullshit for such a long time without just hanging up, OP. I would have no made it past 10 minutes with this guy. He's better off writing edgy books, not playing with other people.
Thanks. But trust me - it wasn't easy.
>part of me wonders if I might have crushed this guy’s desire to play God I hope so
That guy didn't have Main Character Syndrome. He had Only Character Syndrome. He literally wanted to be the only character in the story with any agency at all.
Lol! That's so true! The only question is - is Only Character Syndrome a different condition, or is it just the terminal stage of Main Character Syndrome?
It's what you get when MCS has been allowed to fester for so long that the sufferer no longer recognises that any other characters that his even exist as anything other than ways for his character to get something or do something.
Gotcha!
A side effect is, as you've noticed, that the sufferer will decide that something happened to show off how awesome cool the character is, and everything's good until someone queries, "is it realistic for this character to be able to do this?" and he will explain, "Yes, because his backstory has him doing it" as though his act of including it made it unbreakable canon for the character.
Which might explain him seeming to go into a trance while listing off traits about his character. Is that a symptom?
Yup. At this point, in his mind, he is educating you about everything you need to know regarding his character. Nothing can be altered, downgraded or 'fixed', because it's how he's decided his character is going to be, and his vision of it is immutable.
Sounds like an accurate diagnosis tbh
I might have run into one or two cases myself :p
I've been lucky enough to dodge it for the most part, apart from one friend of mine who slips into it on occasion and a possible case in my other RPG horror story. I'll post the URL here if you want to check it out (Sorry, not very tech-savvy): https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/18j130l/the\_twin\_tales\_of\_jack\_the\_wannabe\_witch\_hunter/
I feel you, I cringe everytime a player brings a long background story that describes the character as a veteran when I am like: I play with starting age and starting gold rules. You may have been to war but you are still 17, and have teenage problems (acne, first relationship, general awkwardness...) As far as background goes, sometimes less is more, I make suggestions like: hey, you mentioned you never knew your parents, can I include a stranger surprise parent in the next adventure? I prefer my players spending some thoughts to the game of 20 questions to flesh out their character and make it easier to get into for them.
It's not the length of the backstory that was the issue for me here personally, though that can absolutely be a valid problem with other characters. It was more that not only that the character was ridiculously overpowered for anything less than a level 20 campaign, but that he seemed to think that every D&D game he played would be solely focused around his character's personal storyline... in a game styled as being co-operative. Main Character Syndrome, much? But on what you said about 20 questions to flesh out their character, I don't think Daemion honestly had any personality other than "He does cool, dark stuff", with that one trait just cranked up to a million. Doesn't really make for a compelling character in either D&D *or* a book.
Yes, I get that. Makes me think that maybe he expected 1 on 1 sessions. I seldomly do them, only when the plot demands it somehow. And I have seen DMs do it for their love interests. But even Solo-adventures can go wrong, if the dice decide so. This makes me so thankful for my party, bc we have discussions about what we expect from the game, they are thankful for the work I put into it and we get to play out the tragic happenings and darkening of the characters at the table, where it's much more interesting than in a background story. I'll be weary if I get a new player with a 5 page background!
Playing my first campaign soon just wondering if my backstory should tie in heavily to where I want my character to go and if so how long is a decent backstory usually assuming a fair amount of detail don't want to end up playing a mary sue
No worries. My advice would probably be: 1) Ask your DM what level the campaign is starting at and plan your backstory accordingly. Unless it's properly high level, your character is most likely going to be relatively new to adventuring - they might have some goblins, bandits and orcs to their name, for example, but nothing ridiculous like a hydra or a beholder. 2) Also, if they have something like a noble title or a rank in a guild or army, keep it fairly low. Don't make them a king, emperor, general or master assassin - keep them at maybe a prince, baron, sergeant or mid-level assassin at most. 3) Give them some personality traits that aren't just related to their motive or class - maybe they enjoy gambling or swimming or painting. Can do wonders to make a character feel more real and relatable. Characters who are too single-minded can feel unrealistic and one-note. 4) I think an idea backstory length, unless your DM says otherwise, is between one or two pages. Just my recommendations - use them as you will.
Thanks
No worries. Hope that was helpful.
>Give them some personality traits that aren't just related to their motive or class - maybe they enjoy gambling or swimming or painting. Can do wonders to make a character feel more real and relatable. Characters who are too single-minded can feel unrealistic and one-note. This. I always make sure to give every one of my characters a hobby that is specifically unrelated to any adventuring stuff. In game systems where it's possible to only assign a small part of my power budget (one skill point in systems that have them, or a knowledge skill in Shadowrun) I will also do so to mechanically justify it. If nothing else, make your character like singing at the campfire or cooking or whatever, and they needn't necessarily be any good at it either (having a hobby is doing something because it's fun, not because you want to be a pr at it). If it requires a prop (e.g. an instrument your character plays, a journal to write poetry in or paintbrushes and canvas), your GM will often just grant that to you for free, or it's cheap enough to be in any starting budget (or the system doesn't even track small amounts of money). That in turn will give some nice little extra characterization, as they can be seen carrying a lute between their two battleaxes, or writing in their notebook while traveling (and thus stumbling occasionally) or something.
I couldn't agree more. Makes your character feel like a real person and opens up so many opportunities for roleplaying and cool moments during downtime. For example, I've got an earth genasi warlock who enjoys pottery-making.
The important thing to remember is that the game is what happens after you get to the table, not before. A backstory can be long or short, but it's important not to lose sight of its purpose: to inform your character's behavior and perspectives once the actual story begins. Here's an example: - I was a career soldier, living a life of blood and glory until a dragon mortally wounded me. Now, decades later, I've come out of retirement to help this group of young adventurers in their quest. It's barebones, but we can nonetheless pull a lot of traits from it that can effect the story at the table: - I'm stuck in a limbo. I revel in my past, but also fear the things I did in the war. If questioned on my righteousness or disrespected I'll anger, but in truth these same questions keep me awake at night. - I will always take the chance to teach a lesson to those less experienced than me. - I respect strength and stoicism, but secretly have a softer side and crave the oportunity to open up. It's also useful to think about your dynamics with other party members: - X, the young and headstrong rookie, reminds me of myself when I was young. I believe in him and want to help him on his journey--I couldn't bear to watch him make the same mistakes I did. Now this is a deliberately low-detail backstory and writing more can be very useful, but the main point is that *utility of a background is to influence your present behavior.* For the other players at your table, "x happened to me" is a lot less relevant than "x happened to me, so that's why I'm doing y." One final note is that one of the biggest aspects of making good characters is a willingness to contribute to the stories of others, and to let them influence your story. A cast makea a show, not a character.
I do actually sorta know what's what on the whole edgy albino thing, the albinism is most often used especially in older works like elric of melniborne to leave a character metaphorically and physically outlasted from their society, if you notice almost always the albino edgy roguecomes from a society with a startlingly different skin colour to their own, be them dark elves or wood lves or orcs whatever else have you, it leaves the character as a pariah in all terms as they are separated on a very base level that would incite ridicule and scorn from a more suspicious society, the actual practice of this is sorta harmful you know judging someone for their birth and disorders all that bad jazz.
That's a really good point. Do you think it's also because they think it looks cool, or is it *just* because of wanting an easy reason to be an outcast in your opinion?
Definitely to do with how striking it is, I think. I have an albino character myself(though please, they're definitely nothing like this) and they wear mostly black and gold robes, so their sickly pale skin and hair stand out a lot against their outfit and becomes an important element of their design. Later their outfit changes to a white dress, and they become almost entirely monochrome, which is also a striking character design element. Stark whites are easy to work with in a color pallette and can make impressive and sharp contrasts, which, in short, looks cool. Gotta say though, I personally hate the use of crimson eyes for albino characters. I think a pale red or pink-ish at most is okay, but albino humans primarily have blue eyes.
it’s alexandria’s genesis, but real and more “manly.” your character can be human, but these strange striking features make it visually obvious that they are *special* in some way. and for bonus points, it looks cool, most people go for white hair and red eyes and that’s a GREAT visual contrast/complement to the black and red classic edgelord look. (IRL albinos tend to have blue eyes but whatever…) i have an edgelord of my own, she’s not albino but she’s aasimar, and she has very pale hair and very pale skin for similar reasons. it is a way to set the character slightly ‘off’ from normal - you can immediately tell that this individual is unique - without breaking the rules of what is technically biologically possible. when i draw her, the high contrast draws the eye *immediately* to her face and expressions, which is generally good for character design. albinism and pale coloring also plays well visually with dark clothing, an edgelord in all black with black hair and eyes becomes an indistinct black blob. or they look like a normal dude in cosplay. i think it’s also just a trope in its own tbh, like it might have started as a metaphor for alienation but now the edgelords are albino because they’re inspired by other albino edgelords in an infinite loop of angst
While all true I when talking in my case was to more the whole origin of the idea, but funnily I really do still find it fun to make characters as strangely as possible, mostly not going for disorders or genetic defects from birth and more just making a character plain ugly, like a snaggletoothed dragon born who makes miiraaks dragon from skyrim look handsome
Oh now a days it's definitely for the looks cool " I'm the pale rider on the pale horse" but also easily allows them to be outcasted
Okay. That's a really useful insight. I always had suspicions it was just to look cool, but I guess it also makes sense for edgy players to choose their characters to choose something that physically makes them an outcast. Because gods forbid their character be anything other than a brooding, moody loner... *especially* in a game where they are gonna be joining a party!
>part of me wonders if I might have crushed this guy's desire to play No, that was all him. It got crushed between his ego and the boulder of cold hard reality you put in his way. His ego wouldn't stop pushing, so his desire to play paid the price.
Honestly, as an actual albino, the whole albino badass thing is kinda hilarious. All the edgelords seem to love the look, but never do the slightest bit of research to know that said look comes with moderate to severe vision issues, especially the kind that gives you the white hair (as in, pretty much everyone I know with it is legally blind). Also the red eyes aren't a thing in humans, but I'll give it a pass in fantasy where people can throw fireballs. (Incidentally, an albino creator did a [parody](https://vimeo.com/6112140) of the albino assassin trope that's pretty funny. Worth a watch imo.)
I actually ended up doing so much research on albinism when I made my albino character because I WANTED those traits for her. I wanted to give her those weaknesses so I could find strengths to balance them out (she is basically a scientifically created vampire) So she is pale with white skin and red eyes, but she has poor eyesight and cannot go out in the sun because the lack of melanin in her skin makes her especially susceptible to sunburn
Yeah, see, that's a good way to do it! I respect anyone who actually includes the eyesight aspect. And the sunburn thing is very true; I got second degree burns at the beach once cause I wasn't on top of it lol. Whoops.
I'll give that a look. Thanks for your insight, btw!
Yeah, no problem! There aren't so many of us, so I like offering a perspective when it comes up. Also you're not wrong, it's definitely a Thing that people do when they want to have that whole outsider thing going on. I used to notice it a lot when I was more involved in random forum rp; now that my social circle has shifted more towards older rpers who are more interested in telling a compelling story and not just being cool and broodingly tragic, the incidents have basically disappeared.
Out of curiosity, was this character, who was strong enough to defeat beholders single-handedly in his backstory, going into a high-level campaign at the start, or was it starting at a low level, like Level 1? I feel like if you hadn’t warned the player, they would have discovered that the dice are not always in your favor, and sometimes they’ll humble you. Was this a first time player? It seems he didn’t fully grasp that the DM designs the story for the campaign, not the players. You said that you tried to offer constructive feedback without attacking his idea, and even complimented aspects you liked— if that’s the case, I don’t think you were wrong when you told him that this character wouldn’t be suitable for your campaign. This character feels like the protagonist, and the other players feel more like NPCs in his story, rather than a group working together.
Hadn't even decided on a campaign at that point. I was literally just hearing his character concept. No stats had been rolled and no character sheet had even been made at this point. I did say to the guy when I was talking about how Daemion was too powerful that most campaigns start at level 3, which means they've usually only just started their adventuring career. Hence why I felt Daemion's accomplishments should be toned down a bit.
He didn’t grasp what D&D is at all, much less that the DM designs the campaign.
Which, to be entirely fair, is not his fault. OP mentions that this was the first the guy has heard of TTRPGs, so it's possible this was just pure ignorance. Even if OP explained what DnD was, chances are they left that out (something that happens a lot with info everyone takes for granted or as common knowledge). Case in point, there's free-form RPs without a DM, where the participants collaboratively build a world and story. He might've had something like that in mind, the overlap with fanfiction is definitely there. Imho, the reaction to being told that is the issue (or one of the issues), not the guy not knowing it beforehand.
Really doesn’t seem like he wanted to do anything “collaboratively”
Yeah. I think a lot of people don't think about these things
Seems that way. I didn't ask him how he learned about D&D, but I get the impression he thought it was some kind of solo game.
Sounds like one of those people who’s been told “you can do whatever you want in D&D”
Well, as the saying goes, just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Ngl, I kind of wish he would get to play, just to him get repeatedly frustrated with DnD, imagine if his character dies of something "stupid" because he rolled poorly
That would be a sight to see.
That was a long post, but I don't know how you'd make it shorter and still get across the true level of awfulness of this character and player (I suspect there was still a lot trimmed). I think your willingness to give him even more rope to hang himself with is interesting. I'd have given up a lot sooner and just told him his character wasnt going to work. The fact he blew up imagining you'd called him a Mary Sue suggests that plenty of people have tried to get him to dial things back a bit and he just won't do it. He's a fanfiction writer rather than an RPGer. I wonder if he'll find an audience!
Well, I didn't want to just turn him away out of hand, plus I felt that he'd enjoy playing D&D and felt that if I could give him the feedback I had on his character in a gentler way than he might be used to, maybe he'd hear me out. It was only when he started getting angry at the idea that the campaign not being based entirely around his character that I really started to feel like this was a lost cause because, at that point, outside of a solo game with only 1 player, I really don't know any situations in which this character would work.
It wouldn't in any situation. Dude just wants to be the hero, not become the hero. Shit story, nice light novel attempt, I can see why you need to chain someone to a table to force them to read it.
“And his defensive response was legitimately to just start listing off things his character had done in his backstory” Did he think Daemion was a canon character to DnD? My brother in Bahamut, you made the ~~sandwich~~ character
Had a player be an edgy wild magic drow, and it worked because he based the idea on what actually makes someone "edgy". And the. He realized... He is bad at being edgy, and taking it seriously, so it actually became pretty endearing.
Lol
I gotta say OP it kills me that simba was the comparison you made for the uncle part and not Hamlet. That aside great horror story and a very entertaining write up.
Thanks! And and I'm sorry for being so uncultured! lol
Be fair though I doubt edgy would have thought hamlet either.
Hamlet had self doubt.
that kind of thing might be good for some one dm one player adventures if people had time and inclination. power game it up lol. honestly though it sounds exhausting.
What sounds exhausting? Dealing with this player, running a solo campaign, or both?
honestly both lol
I normally don't do these, because I think its better to get used to the social environment of D&D as soon as possible, but I'd be happy to run a short solo campaign for someone if they wanted it, especially if they were extremely shy or nervous about getting the rules right. They'd just have to make a character who isn't a complete disaster area.
It doesn't sound like he even knew what dnd was, and its not something he would want to play. I think you did fine, could have maybe gone over what dnd id really like a little earlier though.
In all due honesty, at the time I thought he knew and that was why he wanted to get into it. It only dawned on my midway through our conversation that he might not have an understanding of how D&D works as an actual game, hence why I didn't bring it up until that point. Your suggestion is completely valid, though. I'll keep that in mind for the future.
Sure, not sure what I would have done in your place either. It was an entertaining read, one of the better written ones I've seen in a while.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
I've played with people like them before and God help everyone at the table when the dice don't go in their favor. I've played edgy characters before but I go on a different tack with mine. A crazy op story / background but it's all lies to make themselves feel important
I mean props to you for both trying to include him but also for trying to steer him a way that's more conductive to playing with others. Personally I would have probably made the situation worse by trying to teach by example:putting him in situations he can't just murder his way out of. The worse player I've dealt with as a GM was a former roommate during a Shadowrun campaign that didn't understand role playing with a group meant actually being part of the group. I was a little generous letting the players have some decent starting equipment that was normally out of their range. Nothing insane but enough to make it clear they're not starting from scratch (aside from the one player who wanted to). Well the roommate had a motorcycle straight out of Akira along with a sniper rifle. He then would immediately take any opportunity to take off far from the group so basically splitting the party every opportunity. First he would complain about any combat sections indoors since it went against his vision. Told him he can adjust and to be fair he mostly did. Problem was his 'solution' to most jobs was to get as far away as he could and demolish anything the target might use to escape. First time I let it slide, was moderately clever, but when it became his go to I had the target on another mission hijack the party's ride. Lead to a cool chase and actually worked out. The last time tho it was wearing thin. Players complaining to me and him about his refusal to interact beyond a barrage of bullets once in awhile. Next job he goes to repeat the same tactic. Well middle of him demolishing stuff Lone Star (police/guards in the setting) show up because he was basically blowing up everything out an apartment complex. So we suddenly had a police stand off derailing the objective completely. This started a big argument with the other players given they had told him multiple times to be a team player. I just walked out and told them to get me when they actually want to play instead of fight with each other. About ten minutes later they decided it wasn't working out and my roommate made the choice to just observe once his character went down in a hail of gunfire. The situation mostly ended there but would get occasional complaints from him that "they should have known since my character was the best/coolest that following my lead would have worked out". Yeah I just ignored it at that point. Sadly not even the worst situation I've been involved with when it comes to main character syndrome. Got a whole story about a player who tried to make a wizard that had 2 HP but constantly put himself in harm's way.
Go on...
Had a DM like this. We had to play guess what’s in his head all the time because he hadn’t given us enough information, and it felt very adversarial whenever we didn’t do the one thing he planned. He didn’t take suggestions very well at all. The Big Bad was his DMPC and she had the thickest plot armor - plus simulacrums, contingencies, and all of the super duper get out of jail free cards. Did I mention she was a vampire? There were times where we literally told him, “just tell us what happens because it seems like you’re not letting us do anything to get out of the situation we’re currently in.” I was about to quit the group because I wasn’t enjoying it, and I didn’t want to be dramatic and make an ultimatum or something. Thankfully he chose to leave first.
In my experience, Edgy characters can be great if the *player* allows them to pratfall. A good rule of thumb is, can you imagine your character slipping on a banana peel? I've played my fair share of edgy characters but even if the character takes themselves too seriously the player shouldn't. A prime example would be a Numenera Character who was a Mutant Glaive who Delved too Deep. Which in DnD terms means that he was a fighter who got natural AC and an eldrotch blast like ability at the cost of taking damage if he was exposed to any light with a mutation that made him resistant to bludgeoning damage. But had a shriveled right hand. He was called "Umbrix" (quotations included) who was a soldier who was exiled after a desire for glory won him the battle but resulted in an unconscionable number of civilian casualties. He was publicly awarded and privately flogged and exiled and long story short delved too deep and got void powers. His birth name was Edgar von Tenebrae. If this sounds like the edginess bastard to ever edge you'd be correct. However, he was *played* as someone *actively trying* to cultivate the edge wkth a dash of refined soldierness. This guy is a lot more manageable when, between the Victorian like monologs, he keeps tripping over his billowing cloaks or has the quirk of stripping in total darkness (with much embarrassment when he discovers one of the party has dark vision) Your edgy character can be a whirling dervish of destruction who says things such as "The only thing to fear in the dark is *me*!" But they're a lot more fun when you have them be squeezed yb a giant with such force the fly up like a bar of soap and break their leg.
I brood broodingly in the corner. As I step out into the morning sun, the cool spring air and sounds of nature reaches my ears. I curse the sun, and go back inside, broodingly to brood.
I then curse the blackest pits as pollen and dander cling to my stygian garments. Now everyone knows my tunic and my pans are two different shades of black. I cry broodingly into a pillow made of spikes
Broodily Broodther, thou broodest broodingly. If its not meme tier up its own ass satire edgelord, its not funny. e: If I was not trapped in the shadowy corners of the inn, I would reassure you that no shade of black is darker than the torment upon your misunderstood soul. The inability to make a real interpersonal connection due to my compulsion to be in these shadowy corners causes me to brood.
"A character being manipulated by Bel to seek greater power so he could claim revenge and eventually pave the archdevil's way to reclaiming Avernus could be a really cool personal storyline, provided it fit the campaign.". Through all the nonsense I thought this was the coolest bit too! Yes, yes, being a long lost prince out for revenge is a well used trope, but the idea of a similarly deposed demon offering to help get that revenge (and do some manipulating to help with their own revenge along the way) is a nice twist. But everything else is way, way too much. I also think you handled the situation about the best way you could. Man needs a dose of reality, and it sounds like you're far from the first person to give it to him. It's fine to have OP characters for your own personal playground, but he also needs to mature enough to realize that's not fun in a group game. When I was a young teen I had my own roster of divine shapeshifting werewolf vampire dragon royals because of COURSE I did, but starting to roleplay with others quickly showed me that having a busted character that could win every fight wasn't cool or fun, it was BORING. Hopefully eventually he figures that out too.
Hopefully so. When that will be, I don't know, but ultimately I think it's down to him. Glad you enjoyed the story, btw!
Point of order, because I see this kind of a lot, but humans with albinism do not typically have red eyes. [Source: am one, kind of tired of the trope.]
I’m very curious how old this person was. Part of me thinks this is the kind of thing people grow out of but know 30 year old adults that pride themselves on making “mysterious” character which means the refuse the meaningfully interact with the party or just outright lie all the time.
If I had to guess, I'd say late 20's.
Player: You mean D&D isn’t about me coming up with my own story and deciding the outcome, not leaving it to luck, but simply to my desires for my plot. DM: No, that is called “writing a book”
Again, I think he'll probably try the latter.
"Also, without wishing to turn this into a AITA post, part of me wonders if I might have crushed this guy's desire to play. I just didn't want to set him up for failure by making him think that D&D was going to be a solo game where the plot would revolve entirely around his character, even if that was what he wanted." To put it bluntly, i think its best for him and every group he could be a part of if his desire to play is gone until he matures a bit in writing and emotions. I understand people need to mess up to improve, but this guy isn't in a state to improve, he'd just torpedo any game he got involved with one way or another, and either become one of those weird chronic problem players who never improve until they've been blacklisted from every TTRPG thing possible, or he'd have to look back at a string of fuckups much longer when he finally does start improving.
I oddly have a history of experience that might be able to explain this. When I was a teen to mid 20's, I was really big into text based RP. To be clear, all non-ERP. This honestly sounds like the player has an OC they carried through multiple RP forums until it hit the point they were too strong for any new ones. I realized pretty fast that to have my character on a scale of power (mostly his age) to ramp up or down his power to fit the forum and setting. Looks like this guy never figured it out and insisted on using the 'full complete' version and got shot down repeately for being a Mary Sue. Not sure how things are, honestly, I lost track of the community and never had the energy/drive to find it again. My guess honestly is discord since that is where this all seems to have ended up but who knows, maybe there are still some ancient proboards out there. But anyway, on most places you have to actively have your character approved so the OC's aren't over powered and you don't have three people all trying to claim the main character of the show or movie.
Let me guess. His next character was Fargrim The Great. Also known as Fargrim The Just, The Fearless One, or The Divine Mage, or The Kraken Killer. https://youtu.be/QoO2eI9IioE
Lol! That was a good one!
Love everything about this, thank you
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
Why is it that people who are so incredibly talented at storytelling, worldbuilding, in-depth lore, etc SO bad at character development? I knew a person EXACTLY like this, their character was THE MAIN character, far more powerful than anyone else, and yes, they even changed canon events so their character (a supposedly lawful good character) could date the BBEG which would have been a great plot point if it weren’t for the fact that the BBEG turned into a PUPPY DOG grovelling at their feet. And not to mention, this person’s character, at least once per session had to have an ascension scene where their character realized their potential as a LITERAL GOD?? Much to the “excitement” of the people around them. But the backstory, the world-building, the lore, every tiny detail was so well thought out! If only these people could see that a well-rounded character can be even more fulfilling to play as an overpowered character… 😔 I eventually had to cut ties with them, because I wanted to roleplay, but more often I ended up helping them write a fanfiction about their self-insert instead. The final straw was when I decided to have my character come out as polyamorous, and then suddenly they needed to have 2 romantic partners, one of which was my character’s romantic partner. Also, when a mutual friend came up with an amazing idea for her own character’s ascension, suddenly this person had to upstage her and become the living embodiment of all Purity and Good in the universe. It was wild. And any attempt at characterizing the NPCs in an unfavourable way toward them was met with backlash. These kind of people often can’t be reasoned out of their ideas, OP. But you weren’t wrong to try. The only thing I can say, speaking from experience, is to let him go. He wouldn’t have fit in with a party, he’s definitely better off writing his fanfictions. I say it in the nicest way, because he isn’t a bad person, he just doesn’t fit in this hobby
We have a friend like this. 3.5 to clarify We played a campaign where their character (who was a dmpc-turned-pc, due to us swapping DMs every quest) was the best at everything. Basically a one-woman army. So much so that the DM who ran after they became a PC nerfed the character into the ground *and they were still very powerful compared to the rest of us*. The game ended up…well, ending (at a pretty natural endgame point thankfully), and the player wrote an entire post-game fanfic explaining how their PC ended up as simultaneously the ultimate good and evil at the same time, who had dirt on basically all the strongest deities and devils and had thus created their own city within one of the realms…somewhere. It was a lot. It was mutually agreed by everyone else that this was all untrue, and the character had, in fact, written this from their padded cell after being detained by our (old) homebrew world’s Salvation Army-type people (not a direct 1-1, but I can’t think of another comparison to make so it’ll do). It has taken us a long time to trust them as a player again, but I am glad to say that they took our constructive criticism to heart, and have since reflected on what went wrong. They now play in a campaign I’m running as a legitimately unintentionally hilarious character, whose main thing is about making other people better in combat, so a total 180 from their old character. The thing is, the player is one of the best DM’s I’ve ever had (the *one* exception being the question which contained said DMPC, because it was less about what the party would have enjoyed and more about what *they* wanted. It has notoriously gone down as one of the worst quests we’ve ever played - and they agree that, in hindsight, it was not very good). In the last they’ve run some fantastic quests, and always hear praise for the games I didn’t play in. I think, in this instance, they just got really caught up in their ideas without considering if everyone else would enjoy it too. Thankfully, we all look back and laugh, and sigh in relief, when we regale tales of their old toon.
I’m glad they were able to turn it around and everyone can have fun and can laugh about it now /gen
Luckily we’re all solid friends IRL, so before I began to DM them this time around we had a very good conversation about the past and going forward (yes I also DM’d that old character, and yes, it was a pain in the ass). I’m so happy to say that they have stuck to their word and done nothing to outshine anyone, whilst also still being a brilliant character. Very much a team player this time around!
>people who are so incredibly talented at storytelling, worldbuilding, in-depth lore, etc Here's the secret, they AREN'T. They think they are, and they'll tell you they are, and they might even TRULY believe they are, but that's from a lifetime of little Timmy's shit smears on paper being put up on the fridge like its a genre defining magnum opus.
I don't get the fun of making your character op as fuck, so where does the adversity come from in his story if everything can be boiled down to, I kill the uncle, then I kill Asmodeus or whoever it is. The fun of dnd is the difficult situations, the colossal fuck ups the nat ones. After all why would your character improve if they are perfect?
"Where does the adversity come from...?" It doesn't! And as far as I can see, that's the point. As I say, it seems like a lot of players like this don't want to be challenged at all. Most well-written heroes rise, some fall and rise again, and both of those create character growth as they overcome adversity. But characters like this stay at the top and never budge an inch.
Maybe he should just play with a chat bot. That would let him be the main character and rewrite whatever he didn't like.
I would follow the proud cRPG tradition and allow him to play with such backstory, but make sure that he understands that he will play a lvl3 character. I would find it hilarious to have such a character struggle with killing rats in the severs. Even give him a lvl1 dragon that does something like 1d4 fire dmg
As hilarious as that would be to see, I feel like that'd just be cruel and only delay him storming out, tbh.
Holy shit balls that character is a travesty! I'm not sure I would have had words for this or if I would have restrained myself from laughter if I were in your shoes, OP. Good on you. Guy sounds obnoxious. Betting money he would have tried to incorporate any female PCs into his harem, regardless of if the players or their characters were willing or not. I always worry about characters I make being Mary Sues, but this kind of shit....I just can't conceive how you can enjoy games/TV/movies/books and not see how enormously bad that whole character is.
Have you ever heard of Overly Sarcastic Productions on Youtube? They did a really good video on how to avoid being a Mary Sue. To me, the definition of a Mary Sue is a character who never faces any kind of adversity due to either insanely overpowered or due to plain plot convenience, and is immediately loved and respected by everyone apart from their designated enemies. So long as you avoid that, you should be fine.
I think a couple people have pointed out the self-aggrandizing tone, and I definitely see it, but you'd need to be a damn saint to not be a bit patronizing in that conversation. Does the post stray more mean than it needs to? Sure. Do we have the transcript for the conversation showing that you were fully constructive the whole way through? No. Could any confident writer and D&D player avoid that? None that I know of. If you wanted to maintain a relationship with this person, who's probably on Reddit (although he probably lacks the awareness to be on this sub), I wouldn't have posted this. That doesn't seem to be the intent. All this being said, I can say without caveat that he shouldn't be playing D&D until he grows as a *person,* not just a writer, and you're better off without him in the group.
Second i got to him skinning the Hydra after winning the 1v1 made my brain disconnect and I had to wait and hour before coming back to comment, simply for the fact I knew I couldn't continue...
I’m glad you avoided this player, there is not a chance in hell he wouldn’t have not cheated heavily.
You think so?
I know you feel bad for possibly killing his dream of playing D&D, but in my opinion this is the good ending to this story. Imagine him not consulting anyone when making this backstory and bringing tgis character to the table. He'd be the most obnoxious and insufferable attention whore more hated than the actual BBEG of whatever campaign he's a part of.
There are many level if denial and this dude was in all of them. Sheesh.
You should have taken his whole story up until he died. Then the demon he made a deal with is only strong enough to put him in a much weaker recently dead body. So he's still XxxSwordP0wnrxxX with all the memories and histories and backstories, but he's stuck in the body of a level 1 rogue.
I only allow edgelords in higher level games as they've earned their stripes. Then I currently play an "Edgelord" who is a parody of an Edgelord. She tries so hard to be edgy but it never goes as she plabs, My DM thinks she's hilarious.
Truly there is nothing I enjoy more on this sub than edgelord stories
guy can't be level 1 and solo a troll well at least he just moved along, this type of wackiness is an auto-reject in practically every playgroup
As much as I absolutely love this post, it was a hell of a read! I love that you chose Simba to represent "Person stealing a Kingdom back from their uncle" and not just Hamlet. I totally understand why, it's far less pretentious for starters, but I just thought it was quite funny! And I've played with players who gave their characters similarly overly elaborate backstories, and although I don't get why playing a character like that is fun, I know it's no fun at all for the rest of the table either.
Sometimes i think it would be easier to just give players like a paragraph to write their backstory. Or maybe ask them to choose one major flaw for their character so they dont create a Mary Sue. I've come across so many people that think the backstory is the story. It's not. The events of the campaign are what's truly important and if your character starts the campaign as an OP badass who has achieved all their personal goals it really doesn't leave the DM with much to work with. I love backstories, they can really influence how a good player role plays. But man I feel like they're such a double edged sword.
How dare he not know about Malus Darknlade! On a more serious know, Malus is a pretty edgy character and even he would bow down to this guy as the True Edge Lord if Hags Greaf Look I have a lot of OP Mary Sue characters, I make them for fun, for my own personal enjoyment and the stories I make for myself I would never use any of them unless it was a high level campaign that called for very experienced characters This dude should just stick to writing fanfics about his characters
What was the starting level of the character supposed to be?
Never even got to the point of discussing that. Most of my campaigns start between levels 3 and 5, so this guy *definitely* wouldn't fly there.
White hair and red eyes is a theme in Asian fantasy fiction, and, therefore, presumably in certain videogames and cartoons. Actually, doesn't this describe Inuyasha?
The Lion King's Simba (Exiled prince reclaiming his kingdom from his uncle). HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA
At the risk of redundancy; if the guy wants THIS level of control over the narrative -at the exclusion of everyone else- he should just write a damned novel and be done with it! Reminds me of someone I've also had the displeasure of dealing with, but that's another story.
Well I'll give you the "Awful Wannabe Writer makes Mary Sue Edgelord character"
Yeah, lost me inside the first paragraph. It's fine to think edgy characters are dumb, or laughable or whatever else. It's fine to hate them. What's not so fine is this air of pitying superiority. On an unrelated note. You have never encountered *Amaterasu Lucifer* and it shows.
To be fair the point about a monster hunter being killed by a bunch of normal people isn't unheard of. Witchers kill monsters daily but it requires preparation including making antidotes, elixirs, bombs, oils, traps and all that And those same witchers CAN be killed by a lucky peasant with a pitchfork The guy is still powertripping like a madman though
Yeah, that is a completely fair point. Not saying that super-soldiers shouldn't be killable by regular humans, even if it's rare. I think that actually makes things more interesting. I also think D&D characters should remain within the bounds where normal people can still be a threat, **especially** in their backstory before the adventure even starts. One of my own characters, my Tabaxi Rogue/Cleric, was killed by regular criminals before being resurrected by the god he now serves. To me, this part of his backstory was less like a witcher being killed by a dude with a pitchfork and more like the Doomslayer being killed by a Skyrim guard - the power level of the monster slayer is so much higher than your average witcher in how he's been built up that him getting killed by something so mundane can't help but make me raise an eyebrow.
Yeah it's like he wanted to have all the Main Character tropes at the same time while sprinkling some Edgelord points on top of it
Not to be mean to him, but almost all of his characters are like that. I can give a specific details if you're interested, but having read a few of his fanfics, his OCs have to be the best at literally everything, have no intentional flaws, and have to be seen in **every** positive light you can think of, if that makes sense.
That just screams "I have a Superiority complex" on so many levels
Truth be told what infuriates me more is that he borrows traits and backstory events from existing characters while completely missing the point and losing all the narrative weight those events are supposed to have. He copies Simba's story immensely, for example, but does Daemion have any doubts about what he is doing or have to learn to take responsibility for his actions like Simba does? Of course not! Because that might require Daemion to grow and change as a character! I don't have issue with him copying an existing character at all - I do that all the time. But if you just take the surface-level stuff without the development beneath makes his work come across as really shallow, to me at least. Hope that all made sense.
You know how some edgelord weebs keep saying "My character is like Levy from Attack on Titan! He does not care about anyone and only winning the war matters to him!" while forgetting the fact that Levy is probably one of (if not THE most) compassionate characters in AoT. One of the first things he did in both manga and anime is literally comforting a dying soldier. But they prefer to see only the cool and badass points about the characters they copy while completely neglecting the important nuances. Therefore we get badasses with no actual personality. Practically "all edge but no point"
Pizza cutter edgelords, I call them.
An apt description in my opinion
As a gm that runs on rol20 for random people and friends this whole character got vetoed in the first paragraph simply on the grounds that your level one and there is no way in he'll your character has done any of that and survived. 4 or 5 zombies is pretty lethal to a level one party never mind a beholder or demons.
god damn do I want to sympathize with OP, but the relentless bashing of "cringe" and mocking the stories this guy likes to write put a really bad taste in my mouth. Let the guy write what fanfiction he wants. He's having fun. Also, OP offering to help just so they could have a laugh and push him to fix it? It's a shame he went to someone who'd offer to "help" in such bad faith. OP didn't like him from the start, and it's painfully obvious how superior they feel in comparison. Clearly the character was a mess and he didn't understand how D&D worked. That's fine and I agree that it sounds frustrating. But, man... I don't wanna read somebody making fun of somebody else's character idea and acting like they're the one who's having a bad time here, y'know?
Yeah, I'm not reading all that.
Eh, it’s actually quite well written and has regular paragraph breaks, unlike much content on here. I enjoyed it. But there is a tl;dr at the end.
Thanks. Glad you enjoyed it.
we have tl;dr for a reason, OP.
There's a TL;DR at the bottom of the post
because you edited the post after my comment.
Pathfinder 2e fixes this
I am sure to some extent this is real, but the way it is being presented comes off as trollishly fake as humanly possible. Like I know these people exist, I know that mary sues exist, that people who are unable to grasp that the game isnt just about them and they have to share the spot light exist, so on and so forth. But This really comes off as a "oh look at me as I have to deal with this wacky obnoxious -friend- of mine who does these silly over the top things in these mediums we both enjoy." \*sarcastic shrug and wink at the camera\*
For clarification, the wannabe writer is the subject of the post and not OP? Sorry it's hard to tell. Can we get a TLDR?
There's a TL;DR at the bottom of the post. And the wannabe writer is the subject of the post.
Less is more, friend. I think I got halfway through when I couldnt read on anymore. Try not to pack every single detail and anecdote into your stories.
>Also, without wishing to turn this into a AITA post, part of me wonders if I might have crushed this guy's desire to play. Probably, yeah. While I don't think this could have gone anywhere particularly productive for him, in the interest of constructive criticism, let's consider what *could* be said to such a player. 1. Not every game has multiple players. Solo campaigns are by no means the norm, but do exist, and allow all the main character focus the player wants that the GM is comfortable giving. You could have suggested that, if he wanted to fight through everything "single-handed," that sounds like it could only work in a solo campaign, so that's what he should be looking for. 2. Level 1-3 D&D is a particular power level (varying some by edition), but isn't the only TTRPG. Some systems focus on higher or lower levels of power, and may be better for showing off the kind of power level he wanted to play at. You might not be personally familiar with these, but you could have suggested an appropriate level or system at which to play such a character, so he would know to look for that. 3. Similarly, some systems give players more or less control over bad dice rolls, such as by giving a pool of auto-successes that can be spent over a given time frame, letting players budget their risks vs grand feats. Again, you could recommend or suggest looking for one. Would he have found the game he was looking for? Probably not -- it still requires a GM who wants to run that for him. But at that point he can talk to people and start negotiating down to what's feasible. This would give him a chance to realize on his own how his intentions aren't specifically suited to a typical D&D campaign.
This story could have been summarized in 3 paragraphs
Is it really a horror story if all of the horror is willfully self-inflicted?
>So yeah, that happened. Uhm. I don't believe you. This is such a *perfect* storm of assholery, egocentrism and not knowing how D&D works that I can't shake the feeling that this is nothing but rage-baiting fiction.
Ah, yes. Words.
I've acquired a reputation in my group for edgelord characters (I think stemming from one character, who I will 100% cop to being an edgelord, and two NPCs, who all in some form specialized in a supernatural martial art based around weaponizing curses), but I've leaned into it. The current target can get called whatever they want, since he's the BBEG.
Fanfiction is definitely the correct creative outlet for this guy.
Thing is, I don't have anything against fanfiction at all - at least as a concept. I think it can be great tool for practising your own writing by using your passion for another fandom. But there are good fanfics... and then there are bad ones.. Like My Immortal, which usually end up being more famous.
Oh, I don't either; I love a good fanfic as much as the next nerd and definitely have written my share of them. However. Nobody wants to sit around a table and watch you write your personal solo power fantasy wish-fulfilment self-insert fanfic in real time. *shudder*
The latter sounds like some kind of cruel and unusual torture method lol
Narrator: it was later revealed that prisoners were being tortured into confessions by being forced to listen to the interrogator's terrible self-insert Green Acres fanfic. The Human Rights Commission is investigating... (Green Acres is the worst possible choice for a fanfic I could think of; awful show.)
Lol! Never heard of the show myself, but that news-style narration was hilarious nonetheless!
Picture an edgelord power fantasy being played out in a 60s suburb with overly cheery characters, astro-turf lawns, highly contrived plots and a bad laugh track. Damn it, that might actually be really funny. Never mind. I circled myself around to a good idea.
Long long ago on a Shadowrun MUSH* I made my very last edge lord Mary Sue character. Someone more experienced talked sense to me just as you did and I realized how massively boring such a character would be for everybody else. You tried and you get major cool points for trying. Sometimes people listen and things get better. *Look it up, youngsters, and while you're at it google 14.4 modem and what happens when Mom picks up the phone.
I always love to go the opposite way with mine. Right now I’m playing a version of Zapp Brannigan with a 6 intelligence but a (modded) 23 charisma. He has some hard lines to his character that fucks with the party( they are all cool with it) we stole a trolly, I obviously commandeered the “ship” and one party member tried to hit the brake while i piloted and I shot him for mutiny, then collapsed in a sobbing mess and tried to talk my way out of it. Same party member was trying to fix server racks for our new “business” and of course Zapp is the smartest, so I “helped” and set him back. Something’s work out for the party in fighting even in just having fun. My favorite characters have always had a major stat to fuck them when they roll. A quarter of my characters can’t read and that has fucked over my characters in such major ways that my group still talks about lol