Miles O'Brien

At least my parents church has the decency to give first time visitors a free 6oz cup of coffee.

I decided a long time ago that if I ever walk in and don’t recognize anyone, and someone thinks I’m a visitor who didn’t grow up there, I’m going to start quoting Bible verses about how selling shit inside the church is wrong and I would be channeling the righteous anger of Jesus himself if I flipped all their tables and whipped them.

Unfortunately despite the fact that I have been there twice in 10 years, people still recognize me.

Look, if you didn’t want people watching you, then why run lines in a public place?

And will you not also be center of attention during the performance said lines are for?

I suppose a birthday is aa good a place as any to test your public speaking…

And then you bolt awake, with adrenaline now surging, only to be staring at your wall and it’s 4am so you definitely won’t be feeling rested when your alarm goes off.

Local city is doing fireworks at 10pm.

I’m too old for this shit, just don’t wake me up.

Clearly you’ve never met someone like my wife.

OK, boomer

Quark, you’ve been warned a hundred times about discussing human hunting techniques with menagerie owners.

Don’t make me get Odo.

… “FeEmAlEs”… you ferengi sure know how to raise 'em…

should be impeached

Impeached and then executed for treason.

From a certain point of view.

140 (87mph).

I’m sure there are cars where I wouldn’t feel a thing and all that, but mine would shake itself apart.

120/75 is my limit, and honestly my truck shouldn’t be going over 90/55 because it loses the tiny bit of efficiency it has.

New noises don’t bother me. The amount of things that can shake rattle and roll (it’s a mess but it’s all tools and things I need for work) means a new sound pops up every week.

It’s the new slightly different vibration that sketches me out.

Ever so slightly up/down vibration that you can barely feel when you get to 70? Congrats, next week when you drive to work you’ll hit a bump at 15 and the whole front bottom falls off. And now you have 3 other problems because drive shafts start flying all over and smashing into things when they break.

No, I love vehicle ownership and definitely wouldn’t prefer to relax on high speed rail for 20 minutes with a rolling bag/tool box or literally any other form of mass transit…

If that’s what you took away from my comments, have fun I guess.

I told him the game focuses on the group and if he’s not part of the group then he won’t be playing, and since that first game he has participated, with few issues popping up.

I probably could have been clearer before we even got to the table that if you aren’t playing with the group then you aren’t playing, rather than just expect them to stick with a group on their first game.

I told him multiple times that if he was going to try and do his own thing, he won’t be participating with the group, and the group is the entire focus of the game.

I suppose I could have made it more explicit that he could join the group or he could leave the game.

I should add that that was many games ago, and he has since begun participating, although he often tries to go his own way and threatens to leave the group constantly, but so far he hasn’t actually tried leaving the group unless it was agreed upon for strategy reasons. (they split up inside a crypt in the most horror movie fashion possible)

let people roll to see if something happens

Oh god so many DMs in the past have done this, and I just roll my eyes every time.

Like I’m okay if you want to roll your own dice behind the screen to see if we get attacked overnight, but that should be the only kind of “roll to see what happens” going on.

I really need to do some kind of team building exercise before a game, something that they’ll want to do, but requires teamwork, just to demonstrate the point that they need to work together.

When my first character did the whole “I’m gonna be all by myself because I’m a lone wolf” thing, the DM let me go off and the totally unexpected happened and my character got into a scuffle he wasn’t prepared for, but a group sure would have been.

I absolutely used to be that “my character is a quiet rogue-ish type that definitely wasn’t modeled after Aragorn when he was introduced at the Prancing Pony mixed with Robin hood” who always “had to be convinced” to join, and nobody ever called me out for it. I honestly wish they had because that’s annoying as fuck and you miss out on playing an actually fully developed character.

Nowadays I tend to be less tactful that you are, but essentially tell people the same thing, or literally beat their characters over the head with ambushes.

I started running games for my wife and her niblings, and the oldest boy is getting into that “I’m such a rebel” phase where they think they’re bad ass for taking slightly longer to do a chore than needed and say “no” the first time you ask them to do something.

He thought it was hilarious to have a character that refused to join the rest of the group, so I said “okay, you can stay at the inn if you want” and then proceeded to intentionally ignore anything he was saying or doing, leaving him out of rolls, and never addressing him.

He’s 12 and started literally crying to his mother about how we’re all being mean to him. Apparently “he had the opportunity to participate and chose not to” wasn’t a good enough response to his mother. I stand by my choice. Although my wife managed to convince me to let him “rejoin” at the next town/session.

He doesn’t pull that shit anymore though, when he’s playing he’s playing or he gets shut out again.

Genuine question to anyone reading: does that make me a bad DM? If so, suggestions on how to handle it?

I’m a big fan of “you all wake up in loincloths sitting in a wagon, hands bound” and as long as someone at the table can roll higher than a 1, they can break free.

Or something attacks them while they’re all in a tavern

Basically I’m a fan of “you could ignore having your shit kicked in, but will you?” since so many players would stop at nothing.

Fallout NV had the right idea. “Where’s that little fucker who shot me in the head?!”

It works at the current 93 billion light years of observable universe (46ish in every direction)