Not “boo boo beep bop?”

https://piped.video/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g

I’ve got to recommend Monster Hunter Freedom Unite. One of the most legendary games in the series for its sheer amount of content. It might feel a bit dated if you’ve played World or Rise, but still good

Remind them every, single, turn.

“Really? Your dagger? Not your cantrip?”

“Oh yeah, I always forget about those”

If they prefer to use it for thematic or aesthetic reasons, they’ll tell you and the mystery will be solved. Maybe there’s a class that does what they want and you can push them towards it. Or maybe they really are just that forgetful and they just need to be reminded every turn. Consider giving them a character sheet that more obviously shows what they can do. Action cards, spell cards, stuff like that might help too. But ultimately, just don’t let them make a dagger attack. Just stop them and present the better option EVERY TIME. You’ll learn one way or another what they want because they’ll go with it or resist it

And I’m not necessarily saying to find a new group (although it seems like you’ll have no choice since you’re moving). I’m just saying, I cant imagine how you could keep playing with this person and no one at the table is making suggestions on how to play their turns. My players strategize about each others’ turns constantly. It’s a bit meta-gamey, but they’re newer and don’t know all the mechanics well so I never stop them. In fact, I try to help them find the course of action that will make them feel the coolest or the most useful without outright telling them what to do

I can see where you are coming from but OP assures us that this player knows about games and specifically makes caster characters. This isn’t one sorcerer with a quirk in their backstory about never using their magic, this is multiple characters in a row. I play with new players all the time. Maybe an occasional person will take others’ suggestions as law, but if they do the same thing too many times in a row or force themselves to use the move you recommended when it still doesn’t make sense, you just keep guiding them.

“Don’t forget you have other cantrips too. Using fire bolt was a suggestion. In this fight, you could try using your shocking grasp to get away. Or you could use your magic missile for some guaranteed damage on that heavily-armored hobgoblin. It uses one of your slots, but now seems as good a time as any. They’re no good to you when you’re dead.”

The DM and even the other players should be chiming in with suggestions on other players’ turns. It can get annoying when you know how to play and others are telling you what to do, but if you had a fighter player who just stood in combat and took a disengage action every turn, wouldn’t you eventually speak up and suggest they try a dodge or an attack instead?

There’s really no right answer here and I don’t think it’s something that we can work through without that player involved in the conversation. It’s not that they don’t know better, it’s not that you haven’t helped them, it’s not that you haven’t made suggestions, and they’ve been doing this for 3 YEARS??? I’m sorry, but this is above my pay grade. I am almost certain there is some detail that I’m missing because this makes zero sense. I have played with veterans of all walks and ages, new players who are 8 years old, new players that are 60 years old, and everywhere in between. It just doesn’t make sense unless there’s more to it.

Sit down with the player again. Ask why they don’t use cantrips. Leave the leveled spells aside for now (saving them forever is a problem, but an understandable one). Continue to remind them every combat, every turn, every time they take out their dagger. I know you said your group doesn’t know the rules well, so maybe it’s time to learn (3 YEARS???). Cantrips and weapons work exactly the same, so I don’t know how “not wanting to engage with the mechanics” has anything to with it. There’s something going on and I can’t be sure what it is without talking to this player themselves

“I run up and stab it with my dagger!”

“Are you sure? As a wizard, your dagger is very ineffective and puts you in harm’s way. You could cast fire bolt from where you are standing. You’d have a better chance to hit, do more damage, remain safe, and play to your character’s strengths more. Do you want to do that instead?”

“I’m trying to save my spells for an emergency”

“Well fire bolt is a cantrip, so it never runs out and you can use it every turn like a fighter would use their weapon. Cantrips are the ‘auto-attacks’ for spell casters”

I can’t understand your situation OP if the exchange I described above isn’t the solution. I play with newbies and first timers all the time and we constantly strategize in combat so they can learn how to play as we go. Would your player really say “no, I don’t care, I stab them” after being presented with that option? If so, I think they are doing this intentionally because they think it’s funny or interesting, not because they don’t know better

I actually kinda love WYSIWYG because it’s pronounced “wizzy-wig” in some circles and that always makes me chuckle

Just to be “that guy” I wanted to say that an acronym is technically an initialism that you pronounce as a word, like SCUBA, LASER, or NASA. If it’s just letters that stand for something, it’s called an initialism. No one cares (not even me), but I had to say it :P

Most acronyms that have a W in them are pointless to say aloud in English. It’s almost always shorter to just say the words. Like WTF, for example. Those are my least favorite

Oh and YMMV. I used to work with car data and we would use YMMB to mean “year/make/model/body” and so I always start reading YMMV wrong and that bugs me

It’s easy to get hung up on this stuff. I’m guilty of spending way too much time thinking about this kind of thing. There are so many potential nameless towns and villages that you can just make up your own without worrying too much. You can always make up your own kingdom or region without ever specifying or even mentioning what sphere, planet, plane, continent, or whatever you are on. With deities, they almost never matter unless a player is planning to lean heavily into it, and even then, you usually can skim some basic details about one or two gods and make stuff up from there.

If you read deeply into the history of the realms and their lore you will learn that it’s mostly independent nonsense. The pantheons and cosmology that the official setting uses has changed so many times that you can really just do whatever you want. There are literally worlds that are identical in every way except for a few things. They exist in the same place and time but are invisible to each other and just served as an excuse for the writers to say “it’s just like this other setting… but different.” The world your campaign takes place in can just be another one of those. A world based on the official Forgotten Realms, only in this world, the king is dead of the magic is delicious, or there’s no such thing as dragons, or gods don’t exist, or whatever.

Don’t let the existing lore stop you from telling the story you want to tell, because it never stopped any licensed content creator from doing whatever the fuck they wanted

I’ve been watching some GPW3 gameplay, but I also would probably not be able to play it lol. I just beat Jedi: Survivor yesterday. I waited a while to pick it up because of all the performance issues and it really did run like crap, but at least I got it on sale and it was still quite fun.

I’ll probably either go back to Sea of Stars, which I only played for a couple hours so far, or maybe I’ll play The Messenger, which I bought at the same time in a bundle.

Also, with the release of the Rivals 2 Kickstarter, I’ve been playing a bit of Rivals of Aether with friends. It’s one of the greatest platform fighters out there, but I feel like it’s still very underrated

This is a great idea and a good write up! I don’t know why I didn’t even think of rogue when I wrote my comment. I think it makes a lot of sense as someone with a lot of enemies

Charisma is the most important stat for a successful Bard, but it kinda sounds like this person is unlikeable and not even a good Bard, so they would probably have bad Charisma. You can always make your character bad at what they are meant to do, but it will probably get old pretty fast when you’re useless in most situations.

I would recommend just not choosing that class. Maybe pick a background that gives you proficiency with a musical instrument, but even then, it’s probably funnier if they can’t even play. Then choose a completely unrelated class that doesn’t care about Charisma. Maybe they’re a Wizard who read about Bard spells and tries their best approximation while singing and playing poorly. Or maybe they’re just a Fighter or a Barbarian who has to learn to fight off haters while continuing to talk shit.

If you do choose to play a Bard, I would just give yourself high Charisma and role play as an insufferable asshole anyway. At least that way you can have some magic that actually works. Or you could forget Charisma and spell casting and lean into something like College of Swords Bard and focus on Dexterity and Constitution. You’d be better off just picking Fighter, but at least this way you could actually cast spells poorly for the joke. You’d just be hamstringing yourself in the long run. Maybe they are a Bard at level 1 just for the basic spells and then start taking levels in something else when the Bard stuff clearly isn’t working

Which part of this is infuriating you? The fact that a message is popping up or what it’s asking you to do? Or is it the fact that it’s all in comic sans? Honestly, 2FA is a really simple way to greatly improve security on your account. I’m no expert, so maybe it’s got major flaws that I don’t know about, but just set it up really quick and choose to remember your device. Now you’ll never need to worry about it and you won’t see this message

I’m glad it’s not just me. Like some are decently obvious and fairly funny. Some are tongue-in-cheek and some are like anti-jokes but lots of them just don’t register as any amount of funny to me. I’m 35 years old and I have no trouble with humor from people young and old. I consider myself to have a very good sense of humor, but Far Side comics are just weird sometimes. Like I swear the author is “it was funnier in my head” personified

The best feeling is knowing that your players had fun and want to play more. Glad you are all having fun. LMoP is great for new players and DMs alike

Been looking forward to this, but this drip feed of info is so tiring. I feel like I’ve seen this trailer like 3 times now with tiny bits added each time. Not a huge fan of that rival’s character design, but some of the Indigo Disc characters looked cool.

First one I saw was the YouTube algo showing me the Lanky Kong vid a few months back, but yeah, he has a unique, slightly dark sense of humor. The RPG one had me rolling though. An absolute gem in my book. Thanks for sharing this one. I hadn’t seen it

Love this guy’s videos. They are hilarious. You definitely need to watch the RPG series if you like this one. Other honorable mentions are the Curious George one and the Lanky Kong one

Adventure awaits! Huzzah!