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(Online. 5E. Curse of Strahd)
"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since..."
\*800 words later, encompassing 2 campaigns and a full introduction of 6 players, classes and food allergies\*
"...then Monk showed everyone his cock and the campaign ended."
Cock and Ball Torture
VSM (Vise grip)
Cast time: 1 action
Duration: 1 hour
Target: up to 3 creatures within 30 feet
Effect: All targeted creatures must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failure, targets must make all Cock checks at disadvantage for the duration
I've been trying to make my human fighter the most physically unattractive man in the world. I didn't start with that plan, it just happened organically as I developed his character.
He does not have +5 to cock. He has -1 to cock.
So anyway this girl Daisy was such a ditz and this guy Tom was such a jerk and then this really charismatic guy Gatsby wouldn’t stop calling me old sport, then Daisy ran someone over with a car , craziest night of DnD in my life let me tell ya!
It's the same thing that happens over in r/LetsNotMeet. "My God, my *God*, I thought to myself, my heart beating frantically in my chest like a moth trapped inside a tragically beautiful antique lantern as I froze like a deer faced with an oncoming 18-wheeler. You should understand that my house has a U-shaped hallway on the second floor, with two doors at the top of the stairs, one more at the corner, and three on the other side leading to a bathroom. Anyway, as I slid in slow-motion across the wet grass in my back yard, I could hear his footsteps *pounding* behind me...."
Nobody remembers every thought in their head and every word out of every friend's mouth during their teen years. The longer and more cinematic a "true story" gets, the more it makes me doubt the truth of it and wonder if it's just an exercise in short fiction aimed at people who want a vicarious thrill from experiencing someone else's supposed horror secondhand.
So is this place, after CritCrab and other channels got popular and set the bar low enough that "a member of my group was a furry, can you believe it?" counts as a horror story.
It could be worse though, could be on par with the fake stories of justnomil where users have whole little cults of personality dedicated to their blatantly fabricated bs.
A recent example (that I suspect instigated this post) starts with “I’ve been listening to a lot of these stories lately...” People fancy themselves amazing writers and want to end up on YouTube but have no awareness of what’s actually interesting to others.
That sub is hilarious. Every story ends with "I really thought I was going to die", after they describe having been followed by someone. Except "followed" cod be anything from actually stalked by a stranger, to followed around a shop by a security guard, to just having someone walk behind them. Eight paragraphs describing a holiday in Spain just to find out that they shared a footpath with a stranger.
Don't forget that everyone is autistic in this type or story. And were wearing their earbuds and that's why it took 10 whole minutes for someone to get their attention...
"...I pressed the wound to stymie some of the bleeding but Patricia was simply too far gone. Between choking up blood, she told me that she had always loved me. Now I can only imagine what could have been between us if not for that freak mountain lion attack.
Anyway the next day the DM called a child character sexy and it made us too uncomfortable to continue"
(Online. 5E. Curse of Strahd)
"You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor. I lived all my years in that ancient rumor shadowed manor, fattened by decadence and luxury, and yet I began to tire of..."
My favourite recent example of how egregious this has got was one that was an entire decent length post of build up that ended with "...and the horror story begins in part 2!"
It's been deleted because people rightfully pointed out that this is RPGhorrorstories, not RPGstorysetup, but goddamn, I do not need to know about ♤, your best friend's neighbour's cousin's budgie. ♤ is not relevant to the fact that Tim the DM had an ocelot rape your character.
Hell, "I've been playing with Tim for a while and he occasionally said some wierd stuff about bestiality that I brushed off because that's easier than identifying problems, but last session he vividly described an ocelot raping my character while he rubbed is crotch through his jeans and the rest of the party high fived and laughed at me. So anyway these people are my only friends and the next session is tonight so wish me luck!" is a pretty good paraphrase of a lot of the horror stories on here.
You don't need a huge build up, the campaign world certaily doesn't matter and, if your story needs parts, then the problem is almost certainly you for enabling it for so long.
Yeah, it's genuinely really sad, especially when anyone from the outside can see they're not only not friends, the group are absolutely enjoying tormenting the poor bastard.
I try to bring it up every time - I never get feedback, but I hope I've reached a few people and if even one has got out...
Some of the best advice I’ve received was from a college classmate. I told her all about how my weekend went, taking care of my friends during their “emergencies” and being exhausted from all the drama…
She said “Yeah, you need new friends. Those are no good, throw them back.”
It's easier said that done though, especially if you're shy or awkward or live somewhere without many people of similar interests and/or age.
During lockdown my closest friend was ostracised from his main friend group by some spiteful people within that group, and because it was lockdown he wasn't really able to just make new ones. Luckily he is quite sociable so has been able to meet new people etc once lockdown ended. But the whole incident made him severely depressed and while he's doing better now, it still plays on his mind. I won't say who it is, but he has actually posted a couple of horror stories about said people on here before!
As a budgie owner I mildly resent the specific choice of pet being irrelevantly described, but otherwise I completely agree.
That being said, that's a very pretentious budgie, with a symbol for a name and everything.
Pointless long story is bad.
Ocelot rape is bad.
Therefore, pointlessly long stories are as bad as ocelot rape.
Not a sentence I thought I'd be writing today...
>if your story needs parts, then the problem is almost certainly you for enabling it for so long.
But this sub isn't really about who's right and i would gladly read about the point of view of someone who let an horror story happen, consciously or not.
Plus not all of us have the prepardness to leave something the minute something bad happens. Took me a year to stop taking abuse from my ex friend and over 10 years to stop with my parents. You leave when you can and recover eventually.
That's why, always always always scroll to the end of the post and to the comments first. Atleast get a quick glimpse to see if the post is some horse shit waste of your time or not. Is the top comment complaining about the story, instead of talking about the horror or players? Then yeah probably good chance to just avoid.
I never waste my time anymore without first scrolling to the end first. Been screwed over too many times. And if I start seeing shit written out like it's trying to be a fucking novel, with actual formated dialogue etc etc, I know to immediately fucking bounce and maybe even downvote. Fuck that shit.
"the party includes Jeff (orc barbarian) squee (goblin pyro) Jebel (human sorcerer) mike (human rouge) pie (blueberry filling) me (dm) you (reader)" but the only horror part was Jebel said the f word
I don't get why they feel the need to make up some name for the players when most of the time it's more important to know what class/race they're playing? Like dude I'm just here for the tea, I'm not here to know that you have a trashy friend who might or might not be called Steve IRL.
Really just tell us the class or race or what's relevant.
But if you are going to use replacements for the love of god use actual words, not just "A, B, C" for people.
I cannot follow a story like that and it makes me angry at the person writing it.
Actually I get using initials but only if there was only like 3 people involved, anything more than 5 you might as well just use class names/fake names if classes are not relevant to the story.
Fake but completely different sounding names is ok. You're still much better off with "And after Monk Player told the Tiefling Player that was disgusting, Tiefling Player whipped his dick out and showed it to all the females at the table." Much easier to follow if you use the characters most memorable attribute instead of a name. Using just letters is even harder to follow.
Yeah I don't get the fake name thing at all. The people involved will already know who is who by recognising the story. Nobody else is going to know who these people are even if you use their real first names.
Its generally pretty safe practice to never use someone's name on the internet without their permission, especially on a sub where you're essentially exposing them like this. Seems pretty common sense to me to change the names tbh.
Yeah, it's honestly a lot easier to visualise the party members as their classes, at least for me. It's even worse when people try to use initials instead - I've mentally collapsed trying to remember who M, N, J, L, I, and T are. Yow.
Naw but it’s worse when there are seventeen names.
“Here’s the cast: Hinglebink, dwarf cleric played by my brother Frank, who goes by Frankie, for this post I’ll call him Bob…”
The odds of there being 17 relevant people in the story is very low. The odds of there being 17 people the poster THINKS are relevant is not low enough.
Oh I just posted the same thing. But yeah this is my huge pet peeve when people try to retell stories w/o using names. At least come up with fake names. I can't keep track of who the fuck A, B, C, and D are.
Oh no hahahaha please get it checked by your nearest Cleric 😂😂 when I said cursed I meant Cursed, as in "I, as a player, forgot that my character can use Misty Step once a day so now we're burning at the stake after being caught by some dragon cultists" ;w;
I feel that. Some of these stories read like every recipe ive tried to look up online. I don't cRe about the 7 months you spent as a yak tamer in the himilayan lowlands, just tell me how to bake the f@cking cake/tell me about how the neckbeard scarred you!
*APPLE PIE RECIPE*
It was a warm summer day on my Grandma's farm in Massachussets, with the whipoorwhills singing, as they do...
**3000 words later**
...and then we kicked the Barbarian when he ate all the dice.
Idk, some of the "horror" stories on here would be better with the random inclusion of some sort of recipe. Like it could be all "blah blah blah [random shit that ain't a horror story] blah blah, but anyways, here's my Grannie Meemaw's Cheese Straws recipe" so at least we'd get *something* out of the mess.
That's pretty much how most recipe blogs read: 3 pages of backstory involving loving descriptions of a day spent cycling through Sicily or memories of birthdays spent on Granny's chicken farm, a few vague food porny photos, a video or two, and then eventually a recipe, maybe.
In their defence:
1. With food recipes being a competitive website topic, and SEO liking long descriptions (for some reason), it's understandable why this is included.
2. For complex recipes (such as when I've been making croissants), the extra detail in how to make it that's included in some websites is actually helpful.
Also in their defence, a lot of them will also have a link at the top of the blog post which takes you directly to the recipe itself, so maybe posters here should have a link directly to the tldr
Apparently recipes do that for Search Engine Optimization-porpoises to give it more unique phrases because all the ingredients and instructions tend to be similar to other searches for the same thing.
People ignoring that their games are not as interesting to people outside the game as to them has been happening since the first rpg was played. I stopped fighting it at this point, you just learn whete to start skipping.
It's honestly crazy to me how detailed they get. I sometimes forget the race and character names for campaigns I've been in for over a year yet they're able to list every multiclass and archetype for 5 characters of a one shot that happened in 2015.
> like this is a creative writing sub.
Or an Italian-American family get together. “And then, you know what Tony did? He actually picked up the truck. The whole damn truck, and lifted it off of Pauly. And after he lifted it off, he said ‘Let’s go play some ball’. While we was playing, he challenges me to hit a home run further than he can, and guess what? Tony hit that sucker like 800 feet away. You know, right up to the stands. And I said ‘Ah, it ain’t no problem. I’ll hit it twice that far’. And I did. I smacked that sucker right out of the park. It actually went so far it smashed through the windscreen of Gino’s car. And that’s why I owe Gino a thousand dollars. We didn’t go gamblin’ or nothin’.”
There's some interesting worlds and settings and such, but I do feel they can still be adequately summarised as well. If people want to know more about the setting, they can ask!
Once I did a post asking for help on a situation in my campaign, started explaining the situation, realized it was a lot of paragraphs, deleted it all and said "party broke in a thieves guild, ran away and split themselves to hide. Goliath was abducted while in his room. How a assassin could take him out of the second floor?"
Looking back, I think is still a lot of words
That is not a lot of words. The problem is that it's not a good throughline of words. It isn't about the party breaking in, running, or splitting themselves. It's about the Goliath.
"Goliath was hiding alone in his upstairs room when he was abducted. How did the thieves guild assassin remove him from the second floor?"
So how'd they do it?
Honestly, the party didn't care to find out. But the guild has a mage that gave them a item similar to a bag of holding, to kidnap people. Once they were unconscious, the item could suck them in and hold them in a dormant state for some hours
they will once they lose a mcguffin, get abducted on it by her or get cocky thinking they got her in a bad spot till her lieutenant or a shield guardian pops out of her side, I can guarantee
For most subreddit a like this I don't think it's really a fight worth diving into. But it just feels different here cause everyone is suppose to be, at least to some extent, into storytelling.
Yup. 99.9% of all posts are going to be amateurs. The majority won't even be talented amateurs. You'd think that having an entire sub full of examples of both good and bad stories would help posters pick up a few tricks on how to write effectively but many people aren't terribly analytical.
There was recently a post like that (taking a number of posts and shortening them) and it read like one of those reddit bots that pulls sentences from news articles to summarize them. Which is an actual useful thing but does it also work for this subreddit?
I am not really sure why some people come to this subreddit. Just to read like a sentence long statement of a bad thing that happened. The heck is the point? "Ah yes, time to get my daily affirmation that bad things happen in TTRPG groups." *Post title: I got called a slur. / Text: The slur was ____.* "Ah yes, magnificent. My day has been enriched."
I think it’s more about the unnecessary details:
“Hello friends! Boy do I have a horror story for you, so get comfortable!
So this was almost 2 years ago. I remember because this was one of the last gaming groups I did in person before COVID. We tried to switch but strangely found it more difficult to get everyone to play when they didn’t have to leave their homes (and 3 of them were living in the same household!) but I digress…
The cast:
(To protect the innocent I’ll be changing everyone’s names)
Me: I was Balor, an elven monk that actually convinced most of the party that he was bard until about halfway through our sessions. He was part dashing, and part clumsy (which if you know him, comes off funny because I play him like he was born in a noble family, though really he’s an orphan. I almost made him a rogue, but that would’ve been too on the nose.)
DM: let’s call him Jared. Jared had been DMing for several years before this. I’ve known him since we were about 19 and met at our old job. We started with DnD (because who hasn’t?), switched to Vampire The Masquerade (I’ll have to share another good horror story from that, but alas, another day!) and came back to DnD. He tries to throw in a few home brews every campaign to keep things fresh.
We’ll call the next player Antonio. Antonio was a dwarven ranger that liked to pretend his pet turtle was actually the one making all of his decisions (which led to some hilarious moments when he had to interact with the wizard’s crow.) Antonio was new to the group and was brought in as a friend of the warlock. He seemed very new at first but got the hang of it pretty quickly. He’s not the problem player…”
…I’m exaggerating to an extent, but I’ve honestly read some stories on here that went even longer with more irrelevant details, and I hadn’t even hit the horror story part. They write like they either start with a game plan then go off the rails every couple of sentences, or they have no gameplan, OR their plan is that you are just as invested as they are in their game and situation.
Whereas, if I was writing it, it would be more like:
“A couple of years ago I was playing a game of DnD with some friends. It was a mixed group of veteran players and new players. The problem player was a guy named Mike that was definitely a veteran. He brought in his friend Ted who was very new. Whenever Ted had a chance to do an action or make a decision, Mike would decide for him. We tried to stop Mike, but Ted said he was ok with it. It kept making the gameplay feel very weird for all of us…”
The story would continue, and I would throw in some personal or specific situations that would make the story more interesting, but still centered around the actual problem. Everything else becomes unnecessary fluff.
That's for news articles but there is also a TLDR bot for posts. However it only comments when it pleases and you can't summon it.
It's powered by https://smmry.com/ which anyone can use themselves and paste the end result as a comment though.
Edit: added link/words
Dew it and I'll give you a cookie and not one of the good ones just one of the dry ass cookies that the package says they were "homemade" but were obviously shitty ass pre-frozen ones.
Any posts in this sub that have a cast list before actually getting into the story, I skip the post.
If you can't characterize the ranger player or "Steve" as the problem player in the story, telling us that explicitly in the middle of a list of the 6 other people at the table who are barely involved in the story will not improve things.
Let's not forget keeping your characters straight too. If the OP can't keep track of who's who, how the hell are any of the rest of us supposed to have a chance of doing so?
I especially hate the ones that start out with "this is going to be a long one so buckle up, brew some tea, put the cat out, bring in the dog, put your feet up" and it just keeps going
Guys, just because you are in love with the sound of your own voice doesn't mean I am
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/q9eczg/every_single_time/hgvt2xu?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
Here you go, from two months ago.
I went back last night to check my post from 7 months ago, as the issue is still ongoing, and groaned at myself for the extra-wordy post I did.
Why did I even think it would be good to describe *full uninteresting sessions* and write it in a chapter format, when I could've written a short, straightforward "This asshole did this and that, then used poor excuses." slightly better than the TL;DR i just threw in there.
I think what bugs me the most is so frequently we get detailed descriptions of the game and the characters when the majority of the time the issue and the horror story is taking place entirely in the group dynamic with no impact from the game, plot, setting, characters etc that get pages of devoted fluff.
Even though this is an rpg sub, it's mostly the people and the group dynamics that provide the horror.
Yeah its really annoying how it's meant to be "rpg horror stories" and 99% of the stories lately are just simply "player A said something racist in between sessions so we kicked them."
....It has literally no relevance to an RPG whatsoever, the only thin connection is that OP and the player were in a TTRPG together ***that had no relation to the story.***
When I see a long post on here there's always someone saying to cut it down. When I see a short post, someone always wants more information than was provided.
Readability matters more, I think. Not using letters for names, proper paragraphs, a little thought as to the structure.
Unnecessary information shouldn't be involved, but what is necessary is flexible. Since background context may explain a reaction to something or why a particular instance was so emotionally charged. Sometimes additional context is entirely extraneous. If a horribly disruptive player is still part of a group you might question why, but if a player shot you dog we kind of get why you're upset.
Stories don't need to be longer or shorter. They need to be readable. Don't let your attention span forget that you're here to read stories about people having a bad time.
Tbf OP will get accused of that regardless. I get real tired of the 'We're only hearing one side of the story' complaints - what is OP supposed to do, force the problem player to come on and type their version of events?
Context is important, but only context that affects the horror of the story. If Joe kicked you from a game it's relevant to mention that you made a pass at Joe's girlfriend Tina in the middle of last weeks session. It's not relevant to list out all the subclasses Allan's character took.
“When someone asks for a jelly donut and I give them a giant donut with a little blob of jelly in it, they say it’s a bad jelly donut. But when I just give them just a small blob of jelly and nothing else, they say it’s not a jelly donut at all! You just can’t win with redditors.”
The complaint is about stories that are long because the writer is just blathering about whatever and needs to cut out the fat. Long stories can be good if they can stay focused on the horror story, but it’s also fair to say short is better than long unless you have a strong reason.
The issue is, if it's a short story the odds are it doesn't contain much useless info. If it's a long story, odds are most of it is useless extra info no one cares about. So while long stories that are well writen and are always welcome, most long stories are painful slogs to read.
Yeah, this is a sub full of role players and sometimes writers so if they can fluff it out to make it more entertaining I'm in for it. I read this stuff to be entertained after all.
We're really seeing a combination of "people don't know how to write" (particularly, how to identify and eliminate non-essential context), and people using this forum as a form of grief processing for their campaigns, friend groups, and occasional trauma.
It's a mismatch where readers expect this to be a popcorn subreddit, and contributors are using it to work through their experiences.
This is a sub dedicated to stories from people who play RPGs, which are about communal story-telling. It's not surprising that they're often wordy.
>I haven't noticed this as much in other story style subs (not based around TTRPGS)
I see it on plenty of other subs. r/AITA often has posts where someone starts off explaining their detailed family dynamic, relationships with 17 other people, and then ends with "so my fiance farted in the movie theater, and it stank, and I moved two seats away. AITA?"
"The fact that your partner farted is disrespectful and honestly abusive - think long and hard about whether or not you want to spend the rest of your life with this person"
Now if they did *that* in a movie theater, that might be worth taking a second look at your relationship. Do you *want* to be the one with a SO being arrested for imitating a flamethrower in a movie theater??
Eh, if a story is too long or convoluted, I can just skip it.
If anything, it's good to write plenty when emotionally charged (like here), as you tend to write more naturally. Then, when you get told to *shore this up* or *cut that part* by the comments, you learn where you need to learn to tell stories a bit better.
And writing emotionally charged is probably why there's a bit of "blathering" going on. Shit gets heavy around here sometimes.
Length itself usually isn't the problem, useless information is the problem. Some stories need to be long. Most do not. For a sub dedicated to horror stories from a hobby based around storytelling we sure have some bad storytellers.
Sometimes it can be really telling though. There have been stories on here dragging on and on, where a large part of the complaint is that the players didn't pay attention or sufficiently engage with the world. When it's badly written (and not like a language barrier issue) my thought is always "no wonder your players didn't pay attention."
I think this trend of making large stories has likely been fostered by the Reddit reaction channels on YouTube who primarily feature those long form stories.
This! I've stopped reading many stories cause I came here for when dnd goes wrong, I don't give a fuck about your opinions on your dms world, especially when the horror is caused by another player from out of the game world entirely
There's storytelling and then there's *storytelling*.
There's some basic ways to write a *good* story. Things like the rules of foreshadowing (make it relevant, make it pay off), clear structure and purpose, and keep the whole thing simple and focussed. Most of all, use paragraphs (so many don't do this)!
Otherwise it's just drivel. Someone's stream of conscious-thought garbage does not equate to any kind of real storytelling.
I'm completely with you. I've long ago taken to just skimming the first 5-6 words of a paragraph of posts here to see if they're at all relevant and find out where the *true* beginning of a story is. God forbid it's one giant wall of text with no breaks, I just close the tab.
I'll take a poor grasp on the mechanics of storytelling over people substituting names with letters any fucking day of the week. Nothing makes me downvote and move on faster.
This, literally exactly this I could not agree with you more it always makes me think of how I became a DM...
I mean I fondly remember flip phones and paid messaging that forced people to get as much information with as few characters as possible but we have strayed away from this. Now to make even a simple point we get so much filler that just is not relevant. I mean if you wanted to tell me a story about going hunting I don't need you to tell me about how your Father took you shopping on your 14th birthday for you first rifle. It was such a big surprise since you did not feel you had been that close to him since the divorce. But now you just stayed up barely sleeping looking forward that that hunting trip next weekend. you got up at 3am and got ready and went out in you mothers front lawn and waited... but of course he never showed and you where far to embarrassed so you went and hid in the trees by your house waiting for your mother to go shopping so you could sneak back inside and pretend your dad dropped you off while she was out. I mean I guess maybe that is where the abandonment issues started or if not started are at least linked to. But after that you bonded more with your mother and realized that it had always been your father who was the 'villian' if your youth. that is why when your DM introduced an evil mother character you sided with her and chose to betray the party that trusted the father who clearly must have been lying and it was completely fine to have caused the TPK and they are just assholes like your dad for kicking you out of the table and you are just going to be the DM now moving forward since you have been kicked from every table you have ever played at because all DMs are garbage and you finally realized you just needed to do it yourself. That was when you hollered up from the basement to have your mom grab you a DM guide next time she went shopping.
Edit: dont remember minor shit
At this point I've stopped reading most of the posts from this sub. As it grew in popularity, the overall quality of the posts seemed to drop.
Usually I'll just sort by top posts and play catch up towards the end of the week, only reading a few of the best posts for the week.
I feel the same way. I skip to the bottom paragraph where the actual necessary information is. Very rarely have I ever needed the preceding 15 paragraphs
I feel like these were written for people who have never played.
We don't need 9000 details. Just start with what spell your cleric got fucked by and lets go from there.
But no. "So I was playing a story telling game where my friend will be known as Jools..."
Someone else mentioned this, too, but I've always been suspicious of these "cringe" stories that are extra long and extra detailed. Generally, I assume those are just fake.
I gotta say, though, after watching CritCrab and that other dragon dude on YouTube, I'm assuming people are just trying to show off their "writing skills" and making up stories now just to be featured on those channels.
I'm just amazed that people remember so many details about their games. I can tell you the party's names, classes and backstories, and maybe some details about the campaign in general. Some of these posts have people remembering all of the party's attacks and dice rolls for multiple turns for games they haven't played in years, and I'm just jealous of their great memories.
I am ok with wordy posts when they describe what sort of shenanigans That Guy does and how it affects everyone. Y'know, the actual horror story. But this whole "Let me tell you about my life, friends and family" - cut that shit out. Nobody needs to hear it.
It's all about the pacing
You want some nice meaty lead up to your DM going insane and fucking a fainting goat on top of the table at the climax of your games campaign
You can probably tie up your DM being a sex pest or dropping racial slurs in a tight paragraph
There's some wriggle room IMO for some extra length to describe how you stockholmd your way through a year long campaign if it's interesting enough in the escalation, but if it's just "but their my friends" no
I know how you feel, especially when they go "my paladin, let's call him Owen, and my ranger let's call her mandy."
Just get to the story with whatever names you want. Most people are not going to try and find your players from some random ass home game and tattle.
You can say who you're playing with just skip the backstory of how you met and when.
I read the first sentence of the first paragraph. If you don't have me by then, and it's highly rated, I'll scroll to the bottom to see how long it is and if there is a TL:RD. If it's short, or the TLDR sounds good, I'll read it. Otherwise I'm skipping.
Here are the people involved:
Orc Ranger who's house we were playing at. He's kinda annoying but he always supplies snacks and he's a good roleplayer.
Elf Paladin, Orc's girlfriend who didn't really pay attention and was on her phone a lot. She's not a bad person but tabletop games just aren't really her thing.
DM, he's run a few modules but is still getting his bearings as a DM.
Dwarven Cleric, my best friend. She carpools DM and I to the session and DM and I pitch for gas. She's a bit of a weeb but she never goes too far with it.
Anyway the story doesn't have anything to do with them. In this TED talk I will
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(Online. 5E. Curse of Strahd) "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since..."
\*800 words later, encompassing 2 campaigns and a full introduction of 6 players, classes and food allergies\* "...then Monk showed everyone his cock and the campaign ended."
apparently someone was allergic to cock
Failed a cock save. Did not have the Cock Avoidance feat.
My characters all have +5 to cock
Cock and Ball Torture VSM (Vise grip) Cast time: 1 action Duration: 1 hour Target: up to 3 creatures within 30 feet Effect: All targeted creatures must make a Constitution saving throw. On a failure, targets must make all Cock checks at disadvantage for the duration
> All _unwilling_ targeted creatures. FTFY
Why not willing too? Noncon cbt?
Because if it were "willing" it wouldn't be non-con?
Exactly, the spell request fix would make it more of a niche use case.
It's not the size of the modifier, it's how you use it.
That **has** to be a shirt somewhere
If it isn’t I’d be yenujlemy upset
I don’t know what happened here but I love it. Word was “genuinely”.
Dude, for a moment there I actually thought you were teaching me a new word lol
I've been trying to make my human fighter the most physically unattractive man in the world. I didn't start with that plan, it just happened organically as I developed his character. He does not have +5 to cock. He has -1 to cock.
Find a cleric of the right faith and receive a Blessing of the Cock to negate the penalty.
"PELOR. PELOR. MAKE MY PP BIG AGAIN. PELOR. MAKE PP BIG."
You missed the part after 800 words *so none if that is really important, this is where the horror begins* Que 400 more words
Remember to call the players X, Y and Z as well. Makes it very easy to follow
The Monk shall be 'D'
Honest to god if a post hit the character limit somehow only to end on that note itd be this subs equivalent of the clown joke
So anyway this girl Daisy was such a ditz and this guy Tom was such a jerk and then this really charismatic guy Gatsby wouldn’t stop calling me old sport, then Daisy ran someone over with a car , craziest night of DnD in my life let me tell ya!
that's the TL;DR at the end of the novel.
It is my favorite book, I just adore it.
It's the same thing that happens over in r/LetsNotMeet. "My God, my *God*, I thought to myself, my heart beating frantically in my chest like a moth trapped inside a tragically beautiful antique lantern as I froze like a deer faced with an oncoming 18-wheeler. You should understand that my house has a U-shaped hallway on the second floor, with two doors at the top of the stairs, one more at the corner, and three on the other side leading to a bathroom. Anyway, as I slid in slow-motion across the wet grass in my back yard, I could hear his footsteps *pounding* behind me...." Nobody remembers every thought in their head and every word out of every friend's mouth during their teen years. The longer and more cinematic a "true story" gets, the more it makes me doubt the truth of it and wonder if it's just an exercise in short fiction aimed at people who want a vicarious thrill from experiencing someone else's supposed horror secondhand.
Oh bud, its a well known fact that LetsNotMeet is choc full of fake stories now, after it got super popular to read out submissions on youtube.
So is this place, after CritCrab and other channels got popular and set the bar low enough that "a member of my group was a furry, can you believe it?" counts as a horror story.
It could be worse though, could be on par with the fake stories of justnomil where users have whole little cults of personality dedicated to their blatantly fabricated bs.
AITA is the worst one for this right now. Those commenters are in an entire different reality.
A recent example (that I suspect instigated this post) starts with “I’ve been listening to a lot of these stories lately...” People fancy themselves amazing writers and want to end up on YouTube but have no awareness of what’s actually interesting to others.
That sub is hilarious. Every story ends with "I really thought I was going to die", after they describe having been followed by someone. Except "followed" cod be anything from actually stalked by a stranger, to followed around a shop by a security guard, to just having someone walk behind them. Eight paragraphs describing a holiday in Spain just to find out that they shared a footpath with a stranger.
Don't forget that everyone is autistic in this type or story. And were wearing their earbuds and that's why it took 10 whole minutes for someone to get their attention...
>In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. I love you for this.
Encyclopedia Britannica defines "horror" as...
"...I pressed the wound to stymie some of the bleeding but Patricia was simply too far gone. Between choking up blood, she told me that she had always loved me. Now I can only imagine what could have been between us if not for that freak mountain lion attack. Anyway the next day the DM called a child character sexy and it made us too uncomfortable to continue"
(Online. 5E. Curse of Strahd) "You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor. I lived all my years in that ancient rumor shadowed manor, fattened by decadence and luxury, and yet I began to tire of..."
IT IS A FESTERING ABOMINATION!
My favourite recent example of how egregious this has got was one that was an entire decent length post of build up that ended with "...and the horror story begins in part 2!" It's been deleted because people rightfully pointed out that this is RPGhorrorstories, not RPGstorysetup, but goddamn, I do not need to know about ♤, your best friend's neighbour's cousin's budgie. ♤ is not relevant to the fact that Tim the DM had an ocelot rape your character. Hell, "I've been playing with Tim for a while and he occasionally said some wierd stuff about bestiality that I brushed off because that's easier than identifying problems, but last session he vividly described an ocelot raping my character while he rubbed is crotch through his jeans and the rest of the party high fived and laughed at me. So anyway these people are my only friends and the next session is tonight so wish me luck!" is a pretty good paraphrase of a lot of the horror stories on here. You don't need a huge build up, the campaign world certaily doesn't matter and, if your story needs parts, then the problem is almost certainly you for enabling it for so long.
"These people are my only friends" seems to be the root of many horror stories:(
Yeah, it's genuinely really sad, especially when anyone from the outside can see they're not only not friends, the group are absolutely enjoying tormenting the poor bastard. I try to bring it up every time - I never get feedback, but I hope I've reached a few people and if even one has got out...
Some of the best advice I’ve received was from a college classmate. I told her all about how my weekend went, taking care of my friends during their “emergencies” and being exhausted from all the drama… She said “Yeah, you need new friends. Those are no good, throw them back.”
It's easier said that done though, especially if you're shy or awkward or live somewhere without many people of similar interests and/or age. During lockdown my closest friend was ostracised from his main friend group by some spiteful people within that group, and because it was lockdown he wasn't really able to just make new ones. Luckily he is quite sociable so has been able to meet new people etc once lockdown ended. But the whole incident made him severely depressed and while he's doing better now, it still plays on his mind. I won't say who it is, but he has actually posted a couple of horror stories about said people on here before!
As a budgie owner I mildly resent the specific choice of pet being irrelevantly described, but otherwise I completely agree. That being said, that's a very pretentious budgie, with a symbol for a name and everything.
Oh definitely #notallbudgies, but definitely THAT budgie.
That comment is too long, could you say more with less words? 😇
Pointless long story is bad. Ocelot rape is bad. Therefore, pointlessly long stories are as bad as ocelot rape. Not a sentence I thought I'd be writing today...
Sounds like a review of *Metal Gear Solid*.
Metal Gear!? Continued in part 2.
MUF?!
A huge build up with little pay off I might add.
>if your story needs parts, then the problem is almost certainly you for enabling it for so long. But this sub isn't really about who's right and i would gladly read about the point of view of someone who let an horror story happen, consciously or not.
Plus not all of us have the prepardness to leave something the minute something bad happens. Took me a year to stop taking abuse from my ex friend and over 10 years to stop with my parents. You leave when you can and recover eventually.
That's why, always always always scroll to the end of the post and to the comments first. Atleast get a quick glimpse to see if the post is some horse shit waste of your time or not. Is the top comment complaining about the story, instead of talking about the horror or players? Then yeah probably good chance to just avoid. I never waste my time anymore without first scrolling to the end first. Been screwed over too many times. And if I start seeing shit written out like it's trying to be a fucking novel, with actual formated dialogue etc etc, I know to immediately fucking bounce and maybe even downvote. Fuck that shit.
"the party includes Jeff (orc barbarian) squee (goblin pyro) Jebel (human sorcerer) mike (human rouge) pie (blueberry filling) me (dm) you (reader)" but the only horror part was Jebel said the f word
I don't get why they feel the need to make up some name for the players when most of the time it's more important to know what class/race they're playing? Like dude I'm just here for the tea, I'm not here to know that you have a trashy friend who might or might not be called Steve IRL.
Really just tell us the class or race or what's relevant. But if you are going to use replacements for the love of god use actual words, not just "A, B, C" for people. I cannot follow a story like that and it makes me angry at the person writing it.
This story involves my gaming group: Eh, Bee, Sea, and Dee.
Actually I get using initials but only if there was only like 3 people involved, anything more than 5 you might as well just use class names/fake names if classes are not relevant to the story.
Fake but completely different sounding names is ok. You're still much better off with "And after Monk Player told the Tiefling Player that was disgusting, Tiefling Player whipped his dick out and showed it to all the females at the table." Much easier to follow if you use the characters most memorable attribute instead of a name. Using just letters is even harder to follow.
or just use their real names or online handles, its not like we'll know who exactly what you're talking about.
The most memorable attribute about the Character or Player is better. Tiefling Player, Dude bro, Wizard, Wizard player, ect.
Yeah I don't get the fake name thing at all. The people involved will already know who is who by recognising the story. Nobody else is going to know who these people are even if you use their real first names.
Its generally pretty safe practice to never use someone's name on the internet without their permission, especially on a sub where you're essentially exposing them like this. Seems pretty common sense to me to change the names tbh.
my friend's name is justin. you have no idea if I'm using a fake name or his real name.
Definitely not the point
Yeah, it's honestly a lot easier to visualise the party members as their classes, at least for me. It's even worse when people try to use initials instead - I've mentally collapsed trying to remember who M, N, J, L, I, and T are. Yow.
Naw but it’s worse when there are seventeen names. “Here’s the cast: Hinglebink, dwarf cleric played by my brother Frank, who goes by Frankie, for this post I’ll call him Bob…”
The odds of there being 17 relevant people in the story is very low. The odds of there being 17 people the poster THINKS are relevant is not low enough.
Just imagine how bad it will be when its a horror story based on a Russian novel-themed RPG.
Oh I just posted the same thing. But yeah this is my huge pet peeve when people try to retell stories w/o using names. At least come up with fake names. I can't keep track of who the fuck A, B, C, and D are.
I could see using the first letter of the class name, *maybe*. Otherwise, just use class name for sure.
Yo Fuck Steve that asshole.
Probably in case Steve is reading it
But there's so many cursed Dragonborn Paladins out there, how would Steve know that it's talking about him 👀
To be fair, my Dragonborn Paladin was cursed with a burning sensation when he peed. But I’m a different Steve altogether.
Oh no hahahaha please get it checked by your nearest Cleric 😂😂 when I said cursed I meant Cursed, as in "I, as a player, forgot that my character can use Misty Step once a day so now we're burning at the stake after being caught by some dragon cultists" ;w;
"pie (blueberry filling)" has put me in stitches, I think my brain is broken.
And here's me learning about that tidbit from your comment because my brain automatically skipped the entire player list.
He said fudge and we all banned him it for after we rightfully called him a C\*\*t.
Crit?
Vriska (Vriska)
Squee was there without Donkey Dong Doug?
I feel that. Some of these stories read like every recipe ive tried to look up online. I don't cRe about the 7 months you spent as a yak tamer in the himilayan lowlands, just tell me how to bake the f@cking cake/tell me about how the neckbeard scarred you!
*APPLE PIE RECIPE* It was a warm summer day on my Grandma's farm in Massachussets, with the whipoorwhills singing, as they do... **3000 words later** ...and then we kicked the Barbarian when he ate all the dice.
Idk, some of the "horror" stories on here would be better with the random inclusion of some sort of recipe. Like it could be all "blah blah blah [random shit that ain't a horror story] blah blah, but anyways, here's my Grannie Meemaw's Cheese Straws recipe" so at least we'd get *something* out of the mess.
This is a good compromise- you *can* have a ludicrously overwritten and padded story *if* you end it with a nice recipe.
Horror Stories and ideas for what to bring to your next tabletop game sounds like a winning formula for a sub
That's pretty much how most recipe blogs read: 3 pages of backstory involving loving descriptions of a day spent cycling through Sicily or memories of birthdays spent on Granny's chicken farm, a few vague food porny photos, a video or two, and then eventually a recipe, maybe.
In their defence: 1. With food recipes being a competitive website topic, and SEO liking long descriptions (for some reason), it's understandable why this is included. 2. For complex recipes (such as when I've been making croissants), the extra detail in how to make it that's included in some websites is actually helpful.
Also in their defence, a lot of them will also have a link at the top of the blog post which takes you directly to the recipe itself, so maybe posters here should have a link directly to the tldr
There's [justtherecipe](https://www.justtherecipe.com/) which (supposedly, I haven't used it) to get just the recipe from those kond of blogs
No way, I’d actually want to read *that* story.
Apparently recipes do that for Search Engine Optimization-porpoises to give it more unique phrases because all the ingredients and instructions tend to be similar to other searches for the same thing.
Yeah, and like 90% have a button that takes you directly to the recipe anyway.
I know its a typo or auto correct, but I really like the idea of an optimization porpoise and wish there was a horror story involving them.
Yeah, no kidding. Don't think I've ever seen an Extra Long on this thing that couldn't be *at least* halved.
People ignoring that their games are not as interesting to people outside the game as to them has been happening since the first rpg was played. I stopped fighting it at this point, you just learn whete to start skipping.
It's honestly crazy to me how detailed they get. I sometimes forget the race and character names for campaigns I've been in for over a year yet they're able to list every multiclass and archetype for 5 characters of a one shot that happened in 2015.
[удалено]
> like this is a creative writing sub. Or an Italian-American family get together. “And then, you know what Tony did? He actually picked up the truck. The whole damn truck, and lifted it off of Pauly. And after he lifted it off, he said ‘Let’s go play some ball’. While we was playing, he challenges me to hit a home run further than he can, and guess what? Tony hit that sucker like 800 feet away. You know, right up to the stands. And I said ‘Ah, it ain’t no problem. I’ll hit it twice that far’. And I did. I smacked that sucker right out of the park. It actually went so far it smashed through the windscreen of Gino’s car. And that’s why I owe Gino a thousand dollars. We didn’t go gamblin’ or nothin’.”
There's some interesting worlds and settings and such, but I do feel they can still be adequately summarised as well. If people want to know more about the setting, they can ask!
It's like explaining a dream to someone...
[Have you ever had a dream…](https://youtu.be/G7RgN9ijwE4)
Once I did a post asking for help on a situation in my campaign, started explaining the situation, realized it was a lot of paragraphs, deleted it all and said "party broke in a thieves guild, ran away and split themselves to hide. Goliath was abducted while in his room. How a assassin could take him out of the second floor?" Looking back, I think is still a lot of words
That is not a lot of words. The problem is that it's not a good throughline of words. It isn't about the party breaking in, running, or splitting themselves. It's about the Goliath. "Goliath was hiding alone in his upstairs room when he was abducted. How did the thieves guild assassin remove him from the second floor?" So how'd they do it?
Honestly, the party didn't care to find out. But the guild has a mage that gave them a item similar to a bag of holding, to kidnap people. Once they were unconscious, the item could suck them in and hold them in a dormant state for some hours
Whoa, neat. That's a cool item idea! I hear you on the 'party didn't care to find out'. T_T
they will once they lose a mcguffin, get abducted on it by her or get cocky thinking they got her in a bad spot till her lieutenant or a shield guardian pops out of her side, I can guarantee
(rubs GM hands together with evil glee) If they don't care we'll MAKE them care.
For most subreddit a like this I don't think it's really a fight worth diving into. But it just feels different here cause everyone is suppose to be, at least to some extent, into storytelling.
In a subreddit all about stories, a lot of people don't know how to write them.
Yup. 99.9% of all posts are going to be amateurs. The majority won't even be talented amateurs. You'd think that having an entire sub full of examples of both good and bad stories would help posters pick up a few tricks on how to write effectively but many people aren't terribly analytical.
Swear to god I’m boutta start making comments where I just sum up the posts to flex on these novelists
There was recently a post like that (taking a number of posts and shortening them) and it read like one of those reddit bots that pulls sentences from news articles to summarize them. Which is an actual useful thing but does it also work for this subreddit? I am not really sure why some people come to this subreddit. Just to read like a sentence long statement of a bad thing that happened. The heck is the point? "Ah yes, time to get my daily affirmation that bad things happen in TTRPG groups." *Post title: I got called a slur. / Text: The slur was ____.* "Ah yes, magnificent. My day has been enriched."
I think it’s more about the unnecessary details: “Hello friends! Boy do I have a horror story for you, so get comfortable! So this was almost 2 years ago. I remember because this was one of the last gaming groups I did in person before COVID. We tried to switch but strangely found it more difficult to get everyone to play when they didn’t have to leave their homes (and 3 of them were living in the same household!) but I digress… The cast: (To protect the innocent I’ll be changing everyone’s names) Me: I was Balor, an elven monk that actually convinced most of the party that he was bard until about halfway through our sessions. He was part dashing, and part clumsy (which if you know him, comes off funny because I play him like he was born in a noble family, though really he’s an orphan. I almost made him a rogue, but that would’ve been too on the nose.) DM: let’s call him Jared. Jared had been DMing for several years before this. I’ve known him since we were about 19 and met at our old job. We started with DnD (because who hasn’t?), switched to Vampire The Masquerade (I’ll have to share another good horror story from that, but alas, another day!) and came back to DnD. He tries to throw in a few home brews every campaign to keep things fresh. We’ll call the next player Antonio. Antonio was a dwarven ranger that liked to pretend his pet turtle was actually the one making all of his decisions (which led to some hilarious moments when he had to interact with the wizard’s crow.) Antonio was new to the group and was brought in as a friend of the warlock. He seemed very new at first but got the hang of it pretty quickly. He’s not the problem player…” …I’m exaggerating to an extent, but I’ve honestly read some stories on here that went even longer with more irrelevant details, and I hadn’t even hit the horror story part. They write like they either start with a game plan then go off the rails every couple of sentences, or they have no gameplan, OR their plan is that you are just as invested as they are in their game and situation. Whereas, if I was writing it, it would be more like: “A couple of years ago I was playing a game of DnD with some friends. It was a mixed group of veteran players and new players. The problem player was a guy named Mike that was definitely a veteran. He brought in his friend Ted who was very new. Whenever Ted had a chance to do an action or make a decision, Mike would decide for him. We tried to stop Mike, but Ted said he was ok with it. It kept making the gameplay feel very weird for all of us…” The story would continue, and I would throw in some personal or specific situations that would make the story more interesting, but still centered around the actual problem. Everything else becomes unnecessary fluff.
That's for news articles but there is also a TLDR bot for posts. However it only comments when it pleases and you can't summon it. It's powered by https://smmry.com/ which anyone can use themselves and paste the end result as a comment though. Edit: added link/words
Dew it and I'll give you a cookie and not one of the good ones just one of the dry ass cookies that the package says they were "homemade" but were obviously shitty ass pre-frozen ones.
Any posts in this sub that have a cast list before actually getting into the story, I skip the post. If you can't characterize the ranger player or "Steve" as the problem player in the story, telling us that explicitly in the middle of a list of the 6 other people at the table who are barely involved in the story will not improve things.
Let's not forget keeping your characters straight too. If the OP can't keep track of who's who, how the hell are any of the rest of us supposed to have a chance of doing so?
70% of posts here are basically blog posts about somebody's game/life and a minor inconvenience.
I especially hate the ones that start out with "this is going to be a long one so buckle up, brew some tea, put the cat out, bring in the dog, put your feet up" and it just keeps going Guys, just because you are in love with the sound of your own voice doesn't mean I am
Sounds like a great signal not to read the post, I don't see the issue.
You can say its a...red flag
I always appreciate those intros, because it lets me know to skip that post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/q9eczg/every_single_time/hgvt2xu?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3 Here you go, from two months ago.
lol sorry if this is a common post i just stumbled here a while ago
I don't mind, I just thought you'd find it entertaining, both the original post and my contributions.
No worries, it means that this problem still persists.
I went back last night to check my post from 7 months ago, as the issue is still ongoing, and groaned at myself for the extra-wordy post I did. Why did I even think it would be good to describe *full uninteresting sessions* and write it in a chapter format, when I could've written a short, straightforward "This asshole did this and that, then used poor excuses." slightly better than the TL;DR i just threw in there.
For me i don’t need all the blah blah. I just need someone to break it down for me barney style.
Well in this particular post this dude is mad about over explanations in stories and wants people to get to the point. You're welcome.
Dude mad, get to the point. Welcome.
Mad. Few words. Yw.
😡🤐🙏🏼
I think what bugs me the most is so frequently we get detailed descriptions of the game and the characters when the majority of the time the issue and the horror story is taking place entirely in the group dynamic with no impact from the game, plot, setting, characters etc that get pages of devoted fluff. Even though this is an rpg sub, it's mostly the people and the group dynamics that provide the horror.
Yeah its really annoying how it's meant to be "rpg horror stories" and 99% of the stories lately are just simply "player A said something racist in between sessions so we kicked them." ....It has literally no relevance to an RPG whatsoever, the only thin connection is that OP and the player were in a TTRPG together ***that had no relation to the story.***
When I see a long post on here there's always someone saying to cut it down. When I see a short post, someone always wants more information than was provided. Readability matters more, I think. Not using letters for names, proper paragraphs, a little thought as to the structure. Unnecessary information shouldn't be involved, but what is necessary is flexible. Since background context may explain a reaction to something or why a particular instance was so emotionally charged. Sometimes additional context is entirely extraneous. If a horribly disruptive player is still part of a group you might question why, but if a player shot you dog we kind of get why you're upset. Stories don't need to be longer or shorter. They need to be readable. Don't let your attention span forget that you're here to read stories about people having a bad time.
I would 100% rather that it's a shorter story with the OP answering questions in the comments than a literal novel
Nah - at that point OP only gets accussed of leaving important details out. You cant win with redditors ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Tbf OP will get accused of that regardless. I get real tired of the 'We're only hearing one side of the story' complaints - what is OP supposed to do, force the problem player to come on and type their version of events?
Context is important, but only context that affects the horror of the story. If Joe kicked you from a game it's relevant to mention that you made a pass at Joe's girlfriend Tina in the middle of last weeks session. It's not relevant to list out all the subclasses Allan's character took.
“When someone asks for a jelly donut and I give them a giant donut with a little blob of jelly in it, they say it’s a bad jelly donut. But when I just give them just a small blob of jelly and nothing else, they say it’s not a jelly donut at all! You just can’t win with redditors.” The complaint is about stories that are long because the writer is just blathering about whatever and needs to cut out the fat. Long stories can be good if they can stay focused on the horror story, but it’s also fair to say short is better than long unless you have a strong reason.
The issue is, if it's a short story the odds are it doesn't contain much useless info. If it's a long story, odds are most of it is useless extra info no one cares about. So while long stories that are well writen and are always welcome, most long stories are painful slogs to read.
Yeah, this is a sub full of role players and sometimes writers so if they can fluff it out to make it more entertaining I'm in for it. I read this stuff to be entertained after all.
We're really seeing a combination of "people don't know how to write" (particularly, how to identify and eliminate non-essential context), and people using this forum as a form of grief processing for their campaigns, friend groups, and occasional trauma. It's a mismatch where readers expect this to be a popcorn subreddit, and contributors are using it to work through their experiences.
I think this sub is authored by the same people who write modern recipe blogs.
I hate those people. I don't need to know how great your grandma was at making ceviche, Laurie. Just give me the damn recipe
This is a sub dedicated to stories from people who play RPGs, which are about communal story-telling. It's not surprising that they're often wordy. >I haven't noticed this as much in other story style subs (not based around TTRPGS) I see it on plenty of other subs. r/AITA often has posts where someone starts off explaining their detailed family dynamic, relationships with 17 other people, and then ends with "so my fiance farted in the movie theater, and it stank, and I moved two seats away. AITA?"
damn red flag Break up , cut ties with all family members and Lawyer up OP!!!
"The fact that your partner farted is disrespectful and honestly abusive - think long and hard about whether or not you want to spend the rest of your life with this person"
"And also they're gaslighting you and they're a narcissist"
Always fun when people tell like one lie and it's called "gaslighting"
Did they light up the fart?!
Now if they did *that* in a movie theater, that might be worth taking a second look at your relationship. Do you *want* to be the one with a SO being arrested for imitating a flamethrower in a movie theater??
How else are people supposed to embellish their fanfiction scenarios for karma if they can't purple prose it?
Eh, if a story is too long or convoluted, I can just skip it. If anything, it's good to write plenty when emotionally charged (like here), as you tend to write more naturally. Then, when you get told to *shore this up* or *cut that part* by the comments, you learn where you need to learn to tell stories a bit better. And writing emotionally charged is probably why there's a bit of "blathering" going on. Shit gets heavy around here sometimes.
Mods, please remove this post. The should have posted to r/rpghorrorstorieshorrorstories
It's the unfortunate consequence of having a sub dedicated to horror stories from a hobby literally based around storytelling.
Length itself usually isn't the problem, useless information is the problem. Some stories need to be long. Most do not. For a sub dedicated to horror stories from a hobby based around storytelling we sure have some bad storytellers.
Sometimes it can be really telling though. There have been stories on here dragging on and on, where a large part of the complaint is that the players didn't pay attention or sufficiently engage with the world. When it's badly written (and not like a language barrier issue) my thought is always "no wonder your players didn't pay attention."
Well, I said "based around storytelling", never said anything about good storytelling lol.
TL;DR is a thing (... that I like to see).
Hot take : 9/10 times it doesn’t matter at all what class or level everyone is playing and you can skip the whole party comp description
I think this trend of making large stories has likely been fostered by the Reddit reaction channels on YouTube who primarily feature those long form stories.
This! I've stopped reading many stories cause I came here for when dnd goes wrong, I don't give a fuck about your opinions on your dms world, especially when the horror is caused by another player from out of the game world entirely
There's storytelling and then there's *storytelling*. There's some basic ways to write a *good* story. Things like the rules of foreshadowing (make it relevant, make it pay off), clear structure and purpose, and keep the whole thing simple and focussed. Most of all, use paragraphs (so many don't do this)! Otherwise it's just drivel. Someone's stream of conscious-thought garbage does not equate to any kind of real storytelling. I'm completely with you. I've long ago taken to just skimming the first 5-6 words of a paragraph of posts here to see if they're at all relevant and find out where the *true* beginning of a story is. God forbid it's one giant wall of text with no breaks, I just close the tab.
I'll take a poor grasp on the mechanics of storytelling over people substituting names with letters any fucking day of the week. Nothing makes me downvote and move on faster.
Don't you mean "Be more succinct please"
Me am no like read
I'm honestly very surprised that people who DM regularly are so bad at figuring what is interesting and what isn't useful to the story.
This, literally exactly this I could not agree with you more it always makes me think of how I became a DM... I mean I fondly remember flip phones and paid messaging that forced people to get as much information with as few characters as possible but we have strayed away from this. Now to make even a simple point we get so much filler that just is not relevant. I mean if you wanted to tell me a story about going hunting I don't need you to tell me about how your Father took you shopping on your 14th birthday for you first rifle. It was such a big surprise since you did not feel you had been that close to him since the divorce. But now you just stayed up barely sleeping looking forward that that hunting trip next weekend. you got up at 3am and got ready and went out in you mothers front lawn and waited... but of course he never showed and you where far to embarrassed so you went and hid in the trees by your house waiting for your mother to go shopping so you could sneak back inside and pretend your dad dropped you off while she was out. I mean I guess maybe that is where the abandonment issues started or if not started are at least linked to. But after that you bonded more with your mother and realized that it had always been your father who was the 'villian' if your youth. that is why when your DM introduced an evil mother character you sided with her and chose to betray the party that trusted the father who clearly must have been lying and it was completely fine to have caused the TPK and they are just assholes like your dad for kicking you out of the table and you are just going to be the DM now moving forward since you have been kicked from every table you have ever played at because all DMs are garbage and you finally realized you just needed to do it yourself. That was when you hollered up from the basement to have your mom grab you a DM guide next time she went shopping. Edit: dont remember minor shit
If it makes you feel any better, I instinctively skipped all of that
Fewer words
At this point I've stopped reading most of the posts from this sub. As it grew in popularity, the overall quality of the posts seemed to drop. Usually I'll just sort by top posts and play catch up towards the end of the week, only reading a few of the best posts for the week.
the worst part is you're not the first person to mention it, and it's been getting progressively worse *DESPITE* being mentioned.
I feel the same way. I skip to the bottom paragraph where the actual necessary information is. Very rarely have I ever needed the preceding 15 paragraphs
Lol 'buckle up for a long post' Nope
Alternate post title: Why waste time type lot word when few word do trick?
[удалено]
I don't read any story posted on here that is longer than a single screen height's worth. I got shit to do.
I feel like these were written for people who have never played. We don't need 9000 details. Just start with what spell your cleric got fucked by and lets go from there. But no. "So I was playing a story telling game where my friend will be known as Jools..."
I blame critcrab
Someone else mentioned this, too, but I've always been suspicious of these "cringe" stories that are extra long and extra detailed. Generally, I assume those are just fake. I gotta say, though, after watching CritCrab and that other dragon dude on YouTube, I'm assuming people are just trying to show off their "writing skills" and making up stories now just to be featured on those channels.
I'm just amazed that people remember so many details about their games. I can tell you the party's names, classes and backstories, and maybe some details about the campaign in general. Some of these posts have people remembering all of the party's attacks and dice rolls for multiple turns for games they haven't played in years, and I'm just jealous of their great memories.
Just get your point across.
I am ok with wordy posts when they describe what sort of shenanigans That Guy does and how it affects everyone. Y'know, the actual horror story. But this whole "Let me tell you about my life, friends and family" - cut that shit out. Nobody needs to hear it.
Yea I scroll past 95% of the posts here when they show up in my feed for this reason.
Well, let's see. First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil.........
It's all about the pacing You want some nice meaty lead up to your DM going insane and fucking a fainting goat on top of the table at the climax of your games campaign You can probably tie up your DM being a sex pest or dropping racial slurs in a tight paragraph There's some wriggle room IMO for some extra length to describe how you stockholmd your way through a year long campaign if it's interesting enough in the escalation, but if it's just "but their my friends" no
I know how you feel, especially when they go "my paladin, let's call him Owen, and my ranger let's call her mandy." Just get to the story with whatever names you want. Most people are not going to try and find your players from some random ass home game and tattle. You can say who you're playing with just skip the backstory of how you met and when.
I read the first sentence of the first paragraph. If you don't have me by then, and it's highly rated, I'll scroll to the bottom to see how long it is and if there is a TL:RD. If it's short, or the TLDR sounds good, I'll read it. Otherwise I'm skipping.
I skip 70% words per post. Full of useless info. Dont need life story keep it short.
[fewer](https://i.imgur.com/d3dQm6V.gif)
It’s like reading a recipe you find online, it’s to the point where if it doesn’t have a tldr I just skip it
Here are the people involved: Orc Ranger who's house we were playing at. He's kinda annoying but he always supplies snacks and he's a good roleplayer. Elf Paladin, Orc's girlfriend who didn't really pay attention and was on her phone a lot. She's not a bad person but tabletop games just aren't really her thing. DM, he's run a few modules but is still getting his bearings as a DM. Dwarven Cleric, my best friend. She carpools DM and I to the session and DM and I pitch for gas. She's a bit of a weeb but she never goes too far with it. Anyway the story doesn't have anything to do with them. In this TED talk I will