I can't tell if those stories are made up -- I sure hope they are.

The second to last one seems like a combination of the Combat Monster and the Pro From Dover. These are names made by the Champions writers (Aaron Allston or Rob Bell, I think). The Combat Monster only wants to do combat and doesn't care about RP or anything else. And the Pro From Dover has to be "the best" at whatever he does. If the Pro From Dover's character concept is that he's strong, he has to be the strongest character in the world. If it's that he's fast, he has to be the fastest. If it's that he's an assassin, he has to be the best assassin, and so on. If you're looking for names, those 2 seem to fit your second-to-last one pretty well.

I have doubts about some of those.

Quote from Brooklyn_Red_Leg >>

This is a "way back then" story, since it was when I was playing "Living" Blackmoor 3.5 way back in the early 2000s. I was playing a Lawful Neutral Noble/Fighter (Noble being a class in Blackmoor 3.5) and the party I was with were between settlements on the road (which basically amounts to wilderness). Our party chanced upon a wagon coming down the road and before we knew it, we were jumped by the inhabitants who just so happened to be slavers for the cultists running The Temple of the Frog. We barely managed to overcome them, thankfully the slaver's mage failed his saving throws and we subdued him and one other survivor. Now, the crime of Banditry had a death sentence of hanging in Medieval Europe and Blackmoor is a pseudo-Medieval European setting, but with magic and some steam technology thrown in. I was going to take the 2 scumbags we had managed to subdue out and hang them until dead from the nearest tree, since I am a Noble and I dang well enforce The King's Laws in the wild and the penalty for their crimes was to be an immediate and swift dance on the end of a rope.

Naturally, the party wanted to vote on their fate. I was the only Lawful Neutral person there, the others being a Lawful Good Noble/Paladin, a human Wokan (think a European Priestess-style Witch) and a few others (who I can't remember, but the Paladin and the Wokan I do). I got outvoted because the stupid Paladin wanted to send these 2 slime back to be judged by the elders of the nearest town. Never mind that they were SLAVERS, never mind that Slavery was outlawed and that they were no better than common brigands. In retrospect, I should have delivered the Coup de Grace on them since No Quarter is a valid and legitimate tactic. Stupid me accepting their surrender. But no, we merrily sent them on their way, tied up in their wagon back to the settlement we just left with a note attached.....cause we all know those 2 scumbags couldn't get free of their bonds, take their wagon and try again. The fact we would have lost TUs (Time Units) being slaves in The Temple of the Frog was lost on my party mates....and I'm still burned up about it to this day.

If there are 2 alignments I cannot stand, its Lawful Stupid (aka doofuses that think Lawful Good means Lawful Nice) and Chaotic Stupid (aka Chaotic Neutral which means people really want to play Chaotic Evil).

 I hate Chaotic Stupid, ever since I was introduced to it in High School. Even CN players need standards and some lines they won't cross. Everyone in that gods forsaken school was all about rebellion against authority and exercising their hormones and new privileges, like swearing in nearly every sentence, doing drugs, not caring about anyone except themselves. I often felt like I was the only one there who cared about her future, and did her homework, while everyone else worshiped Kratos. They were all CS because they forget that with their hormones and privileges come with responsibility. Sometimes I wonder whatever came of the rest of that student body, all these years later.

I had this GM back a couple year back who seemed to enjoy players failing at really stupid things. There was two instances that come to mind that really highlight what seems to be his dislike for proud players and content being "skipped".

The first was a skirmish against like 20 orcs and our characters were like 7th or 8th level? My character was a sort of tank. High AC and defensive duelist meant that orcs would need to roll a 18 or higher to hit. I knew the stats because I was also DMing pretty regularly at the time (adventure league). I made an offhand comment about being invincible. That was the moment, I knew it when I said it and I saw the look in his eye.

Then all of the attacks with great axes that were being deflected suddenly started hitting (but not critting) which means they all started making rolls of 18 and 19, but not 20. I mean, the smarter thing to do would be to have one use up my reaction so he had a much greater smokescreen available to his dice fudging.

Then my character goes down, as no class is particularly tanky if you ignore their AC, and he panics because that character is a good percentage of the combat effectiveness of the party and the combat has become incredibly unbalanced in favour of the enemies. So he ends up having to fudge in the other direction.

The second situation was when there was an acrobatics challenge and our party was pretty stacked to deal with a few skill challenges. Acrobatics were a non-issue. However, he decided that bypassing a rooms challenge by ... being really good at the thing the challenge is testing is ... unfair? uninteresting? cheating? Honestly, the players should have moments to do the things that they are good at doing. However, our DM was not of that opinion and cranked that room's difficulty to 11. Instead of one fairly (for us) easy skill check, we had skill-check after skill-check until, whoops, we didn't pass it. I learned later that the written room's challenge is like DC 10 and is a single check. Obviously, GMs can change aspects of written adventures to make them more suitable to their adventure but "keep making skill-checks until you fail" is a loathsome DM tactic.

Quote from DruidofMN >>

Quote from Brooklyn_Red_Leg >>

This is a "way back then" story, since it was when I was playing "Living" Blackmoor 3.5 way back in the early 2000s. I was playing a Lawful Neutral Noble/Fighter (Noble being a class in Blackmoor 3.5) and the party I was with were between settlements on the road (which basically amounts to wilderness). Our party chanced upon a wagon coming down the road and before we knew it, we were jumped by the inhabitants who just so happened to be slavers for the cultists running The Temple of the Frog. We barely managed to overcome them, thankfully the slaver's mage failed his saving throws and we subdued him and one other survivor. Now, the crime of Banditry had a death sentence of hanging in Medieval Europe and Blackmoor is a pseudo-Medieval European setting, but with magic and some steam technology thrown in. I was going to take the 2 scumbags we had managed to subdue out and hang them until dead from the nearest tree, since I am a Noble and I dang well enforce The King's Laws in the wild and the penalty for their crimes was to be an immediate and swift dance on the end of a rope.

Naturally, the party wanted to vote on their fate. I was the only Lawful Neutral person there, the others being a Lawful Good Noble/Paladin, a human Wokan (think a European Priestess-style Witch) and a few others (who I can't remember, but the Paladin and the Wokan I do). I got outvoted because the stupid Paladin wanted to send these 2 slime back to be judged by the elders of the nearest town. Never mind that they were SLAVERS, never mind that Slavery was outlawed and that they were no better than common brigands. In retrospect, I should have delivered the Coup de Grace on them since No Quarter is a valid and legitimate tactic. Stupid me accepting their surrender. But no, we merrily sent them on their way, tied up in their wagon back to the settlement we just left with a note attached.....cause we all know those 2 scumbags couldn't get free of their bonds, take their wagon and try again. The fact we would have lost TUs (Time Units) being slaves in The Temple of the Frog was lost on my party mates....and I'm still burned up about it to this day.

If there are 2 alignments I cannot stand, its Lawful Stupid (aka doofuses that think Lawful Good means Lawful Nice) and Chaotic Stupid (aka Chaotic Neutral which means people really want to play Chaotic Evil).

 I hate Chaotic Stupid, ever since I was introduced to it in High School. Even CN players need standards and some lines they won't cross. Everyone in that gods forsaken school was all about rebellion against authority and exercising their hormones and new privileges, like swearing in nearly every sentence, doing drugs, not caring about anyone except themselves. I often felt like I was the only one there who cared about her future, and did her homework, while everyone else worshiped Kratos. They were all CS because they forget that with their hormones and privileges come with responsibility. Sometimes I wonder whatever came of the rest of that student body, all these years later.

 

 If they’re anything like my high school friend group a lot of them became doctors and lawyers

What’s Kratos?

The first was a skirmish against like 20 orcs and our characters were like 7th or 8th level? My character was a sort of tank. High AC and defensive duelist meant that orcs would need to roll a 18 or higher to hit. I knew the stats because I was also DMing pretty regularly at the time (adventure league). I made an offhand comment about being invincible. That was the moment, I knew it when I said it and I saw the look in his eye.

I do understand the DM's desire to take someone down a peg or two, particularly the cocky.  Add to that the fact that you were admittedly metagaming, using your DMing knowledge for past games to inform your decisions and behaviors. I know it is very hard NOT to do this but one ought to try, or at least not flaunt it in the other DM's face. (For this reason, I tend to homebrew everything -- very little of what my party meets is absolute standard "by the book," even if it is just different by a bit of flavor.)

However, his solution, which was to just decide that all future attacks would hit you, is really not desirable. There are other ways to deal with this. Such as having the orcs realize this too, and do everything they can to avoid your tanky invincible character and focus fire the squishies. Or, if it can be credible for the situation, send another wave of 20 orcs... and another... and another. OK you think you have nothing to fear from orcs... let's see if that's really true. Either of these are more realistic in terms of the game world (it makes sense both that orcs, who are far from stupid, would be clever enough to attack the weakest members of the parry, and that they would have reinforcements waiting in the wings), and neither require the DM to cheat the die rolls.

Alternatively, I'd be happy to let you be invincible this time. But I'd try to get one of the orcs to escape and report back that fact to his superiors, and the next time you face the orcs, it'd be against onagers, trebuchets, and ballistas at range... shamans using spells that require a save vs. striking AC... and a bunch of hidden rogues striking with surprise (and thus advantage) and doing sneak attacks and backstabs. Again, orcs aren't stupid. If they see a shining knight in armor cutting through their regular forces like a scythe through wheat, they're going to come up with a counter to that.

@BioWizard and DruidofMN...  I can't tell if you honestly don't believe me or are just giving me a hard time.  I rather hope it is the latter.  A "smiley face" emote would be handy for that.  I know, I know, that last one is pretty tough to believe.

I forgot all about our Dice Cheat.  His standard gaming equipment included a little cardboard box top to roll dice in.  He was always very careful to hold up a hand and shield his rolls from view.  He wasn't quite blatant enough as to get strings of Natural 20's, but he rarely ever missed, failed a skill check, or a saving throw.  He was bad enough that I noticed it, and I was not the only one.  The Pro From Dover (thanks Bio!) in particular complained about it to me many times.  I think we all knew that confronting him about it would just lead to angry denials.  He really didn't hurt the game that much.  We just ignored it and moved on, but yeah, kind of frustrating.

As a side note... I happen to have the worst luck with dice.  Ask me to make a skill check, and I'll get under 10 on that d20 so often that I have taken to gleefully boasting about my sub-par rolls.  "Once again, I have made a  Perception Check with a grand total under 10!  Revel in the awe and majesty of my 7!  If I can find them, I get out my white cane and sunglasses."  That's verbatim from last Wednesday's game.  Our current DM is rather new to it all, and she likes to make people roll checks for things no matter what the Difficult Class or if there is any negative consequence to failing the check.

Combat Monsters aren't really that bad. Not everybody is into role play. They just want to kill stuff. I don't have a problem with them. Every party needs somebody who can throw down when it's needed.

I do have a problem with players that want to fight so bad they interrupt negotiations or attack random things. 

The most frustrating thing I get from my games is wangrods. Doing things to ruin other people's fun. 

Oh and my DICE! They are super frustrating at times.

Quote from BioWizard >>

The first was a skirmish against like 20 orcs and our characters were like 7th or 8th level? My character was a sort of tank. High AC and defensive duelist meant that orcs would need to roll a 18 or higher to hit. I knew the stats because I was also DMing pretty regularly at the time (adventure league). I made an offhand comment about being invincible. That was the moment, I knew it when I said it and I saw the look in his eye.

I do understand the DM's desire to take someone down a peg or two, particularly the cocky.  Add to that the fact that you were admittedly metagaming, using your DMing knowledge for past games to inform your decisions and behaviors. I know it is very hard NOT to do this but one ought to try, or at least not flaunt it in the other DM's face. (For this reason, I tend to homebrew everything -- very little of what my party meets is absolute standard "by the book," even if it is just different by a bit of flavor.)

However, his solution, which was to just decide that all future attacks would hit you, is really not desirable. There are other ways to deal with this. Such as having the orcs realize this too, and do everything they can to avoid your tanky invincible character and focus fire the squishies. Or, if it can be credible for the situation, send another wave of 20 orcs... and another... and another. OK you think you have nothing to fear from orcs... let's see if that's really true. Either of these are more realistic in terms of the game world (it makes sense both that orcs, who are far from stupid, would be clever enough to attack the weakest members of the parry, and that they would have reinforcements waiting in the wings), and neither require the DM to cheat the die rolls.

Alternatively, I'd be happy to let you be invincible this time. But I'd try to get one of the orcs to escape and report back that fact to his superiors, and the next time you face the orcs, it'd be against onagers, trebuchets, and ballistas at range... shamans using spells that require a save vs. striking AC... and a bunch of hidden rogues striking with surprise (and thus advantage) and doing sneak attacks and backstabs. Again, orcs aren't stupid. If they see a shining knight in armor cutting through their regular forces like a scythe through wheat, they're going to come up with a counter to that.

 Even without metagaming, I know my character  has an outrageous AC. It's pretty obvious, probably to the character herself that these orcs, who had until that point completely failed to get beyond her defences were completely outmatched. I think in a physical contest, you can pretty easily tell whether or not someone is in your league.

"Flaunting" how good your character is is kinda a sign that your players are having fun, so being upset about it as a DM is really weird. Especially because the DM is in the contest with the aim to lose.

But yeah, good combat tactics would have probably been desirable to ... punishing me for having high morale out of game?  It's not really the GM's business what kind of person I choose to be in real life. Period. It was tall poppy nonsense and he decided to punish me for... not knowing my place?

I mean, all of that sounds actually interesting but these were just throwaway random encounter orcs. It was in the middle of Storm King's Thunder, so we had taken out more than a few giants at that point, who were much better at putting us through our paces. The character was by no means "invincible" in all encounters and was actually more inclined to talk and investigate an encounter rather than rush in.

@BioWizard and DruidofMN...  I can't tell if you honestly don't believe me or are just giving me a hard time.  I rather hope it is the latter.  A "smiley face" emote would be handy for that.  I know, I know, that last one is pretty tough to believe.

Here is what you wrote that made me think the whole thing might perhaps be a put-on.

Now me, on the other hand, I was just the perfect player in every way.  I would never call into question something the DM or another player did and show them the actual rules about it.  Nope.  Not me.  Nor did I ever fail to make characters who had a ready-made motivation to join up with a group of complete strangers and go on adventures with them.  Nuh-uh.  Not me.  Must have been that other player.  And it was the DM's job to figure out why I was there anyway.  Er...  I mean that other player.  Yeah.

That sure reads as humorous and sarcastic...  After criticizing some very extreme, almost textbook examples of what Matt Colville would call "Wangrods," this paragraph made me think that you had perhaps written the entire thing as satire... making the point that those of us who are complaining are probably not so perfect either, and maybe have no right to talk. That's why I questioned the seriousness of the post.

Fair enough. 

No, I really did have those folks as fellow players and people in my games.  Those were my friends, no less.  My entry about myself wasn't meant to be anything but a humorous recognition that I had failings too.

To this day I still have to reign in my tendency to quote chapter and verse of the Rules at people I think don't know them or are not playing them.  :-(

Well then if those people are all real, and you had to play with them all, then you have my sympathies.

I have seen most of what you described at one time or another, but not all at once.

Quote from PenelopeTheWeaver >>

Quote from Brooklyn_Red_Leg >>

Quote from PenelopeTheWeaver >>

Is Blackmoor part of the Mystara campaign setting or is it its own separate world?

 It was basically considered part of the ancient Mystara setting though there is its "mirror' in Greyhawk.....

 Thanks

The Archbarony of Blackmoor, right?

But that doesn’t have the whole high-tech thing that the Mystaran Blackmoor does. Right?

Technically speaking, even Greyhawk's "Blackmoor" has high technology since both The City of the Gods and The Temple of the Frog are there. I suppose the best way to think of it is that the Archbarony of Blackmoor in Greyhawk isn't really there, its just a massive landspace that, when you enter it, you're transported to Blackmoor. And there are many similarities, though things will immediately be off when you consider High Thonians of the Great Kingdom are pale-skinned blonde haired/blue eyed while pure-blood Oeridians of The Great Kingdom of Aerdy are olive complected with dark hair. But its not like Greyhawk doesn't have blasters and other high-tech stuff masquerading as magic in some places: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks should ring a bell as would The Apparatus of Kwalish and Mighty Servant of Leuk-O. What Greyhawk technically doesn't have is gunpowder that works and early Firearms...supposedly...since its basically 13th Century Eurasia as far as technology goes (but even then, that may/may not be true when considering the totality of things, especially since Arneson's Blackmoor had early firearms according to First Fantasy Campaign).

Cool. Thanks.

I haven’t read any of the books in italics but I did read the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer and I don’t remember the entry for the Archbarony of Blackmoor saying anything about high technology. It just sounded like a generic feudal realm. (I would’ve found Greyhawk more interesting if I knew for sure it tied into the Blackmoor stuff from Mystara, which I did like.)

Quote from PenelopeTheWeaver >>

Cool. Thanks.

I haven’t read any of the books in italics but I did read the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer and I don’t remember the entry for the Archbarony of Blackmoor saying anything about high technology. It just sounded like a generic feudal realm. (I would’ve found Greyhawk more interesting if I knew for sure it tied into the Blackmoor stuff from Mystara, which I did like.)

Well, you have to remember that Gygaxian Greyhawk is very different in many ways to WotC Greyhawk. Gygaxian Greyhawk sort of assumed connections to places (especially when you go back into OD&D). Its connection to Mystara wasn't overt, especially by TSR back in the day, but the its really the only way to resolve the different Blackmoors both having The Temple of the Frog and The City of the Gods (especially since both Mordenkainen and Lord Robilar adventured in the latter in canon). Greyhawk is supposed to be a setting where weird magic takes place, instead of being a stable high fantasy setting.

That makes sense. Thanks. I didn’t realize the old school version of Greyhawk was so different from modern 5e Greyhawk.

Is Greyhawk more like sword and sorcery while FR is more like high fantasy? (I’m more familiar with the version from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer than the earlier stuff.)

Actually now that you mention it I do remember a City of the Gods in the Archbarony of Blackmoor.

Quote from PenelopeTheWeaver >>

Is Greyhawk more like sword and sorcery while FR is more like high fantasy? (I’m more familiar with the version from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer than the earlier stuff.)

Greyhawk is far more Swords & Sorcery (more Lankhmar/Fafhrd and Grey Mouser than Conan/Hyboria) but with a dash of High Fantasy. Humans make up 90% of the population and there are only a handful of purely demi-human settlements. Its also more low-population density because its a sandbox for DMs to put their own stuff into. Its also more geared to the "End Game" type of gaming where at 12th+ level you go out into the wilderness and carve it out for human/demi-human settlement. WotC, for reasons that still baffle many of us older Greyhawk fans, increased the human population of the Flanaess by upwards of 800%.

Greyhawk isn't quite as high fantasy as FR, but Dragonlance is really the sword and sorcery setting.  The big difference with Greyhawk is more that the gods don't get directly involved with mortal affairs quite as often and more of the conflict is between nations.

Quote from 6thLyranGuard >>

Greyhawk isn't quite as high fantasy as FR, but Dragonlance is really the sword and sorcery setting.  The big difference with Greyhawk is more that the gods don't get directly involved with mortal affairs quite as often and more of the conflict is between nations.

 No, DragonLance is purely Heroic Fantasy. There aren't weird cults or other elements of Swords & Sorcery, not even like more modern examples such as The Witcher. Krynn is basically D&D's answer to Middle-Earth.