So. Apparently I'm a murderhobo (my words) that runs from plot hooks (her words).

For the record, this was her first time running an RPG. Neither of us had a strong preference for what sort of setting we wanted, so we decided to leave the world and the character sheet empty and fill in the details as necessary.

She suggests that I might need to put points into video game skill, then places my character in the Dune setting and flat-out tells me that my character's goal is to, and I quote, "ride the worm".

She meant the Shai-hulud, but I have a dirty mind and was not okay with riding a gigantic phallic creature. Also, she made it fairly obvious that she was trying to pull a twist ("you were in a VR world all along!"), but she did this by trying to withhold knowledge that my character would have known. I pushed back and finally got her to admit that this was a VR game, but that my character still felt a strong urge to "ride the worm".

Even after I made a boatload of double-entendres about this she still didn't understand why I might not want to do this. My character shuts down the VR game. Okay, I'm in an arcade, with a cute girl who wanted to see me ride the worm. Apparently my character wanted to impress her (GM's words, not mine). I make several more double-entendres about the female NPC being a yaoi fangirl, then left.

Then I contact an NPC friend of mine, who I made up on the spot. He meets me at a local pizza place and tells me "we need to talk".

I'm seeing red flags here. See, my character was supposed to be friends with the NPC for a long time, but from my out-of-character perspective this was my first interaction with the guy and I didn't trust him at all. For all I knew, the GM was planning some sort of plot twist that would screw me over. In fact, I was tempted to just throw down a stun-grenade and get the hell out of there. I didn't, but it was a close one.

Anyhow, he tells me that he's part of a secret organization. I make fun of him and tell him he's spent too much time playing VR sims (again, mostly because I, the player, didn't trust him, the NPC). He puts his hand on my shoulder and we get into a completely freeform fight where he doesn't take any visible damage from my attack and avoids my stun grenade before spraying me with something that makes me woozy and disoriented. I didn't even get a saving throw against it, but the GM later admitted she should have rolled for it and messed that up. I decide to head home and she spends a lot of time focusing on how I get home, how other people are reacting to me as I appear to be drunk, etc. She's asking me to make a lot of decisions about non-urgent things, which I don't handle well in the context of RPGs. I'm not having fun, so we end the session there.

A few hours later, after going over the Dungeon-World inspired combat rules again, she starts by making an hobo NPC with several Moves, including "swindle money". We run a mock encounter that starts with him approaching me for spare change. I immediately get as far away from him as possible.

She decides to have him show up again in the direction that I run, and I think, "if nothing else, this is turning into a decent horror RPG." Several iterations of the same hobo appear. I jump up and over the one blocking me, kneeing him in the face in the process, and make it to the main road. It should be busy, but the street appears deserted. I close my eyes and run around, trying to bump into somebody (I suspect they're still there, just hidden from my sight). This is exactly what happens, and when I open my eyes again everything is normal.

Then she spends 5-10 minutes asking me what I do, where I go, etc. etc. in tedious detail. I was coming back from picking up some last-minute supplies from a local drug store. I'm getting ready to move away from the town. I walk home. My luggage is packed. I'm going to take the bus to the plane station. Now I'm on the bus, and the hobo appears in the seat next to me, saying, "you won't get away so easily." I, the player, want to punch the hobo NPC in the face, but I don't interrupt the GM and suddenly I'm back in town.

I had been asked to make a lot of non-urgent decisions, which, again, I don't handle well in RPGs (it drains me), so we stopped there.

Three potential plot hooks. I ran away from the first one, attacked and then ran away from the second one, and ran away from the third one. I tried to correct her GMing after the game but she really didn't enjoy that, so now I'm just wondering what I can do to keep this from happening again.

As a rant, 4/10. Its entertaining but your grammar is too good.

It sounds like you are a paranoid player who sees the GM as an antagonist, probably from your past experiences with bad GMs or from your own antagonistic style as a GM.

Single PC/GM games are really hard to pull off, especially when run freeform like this. It will only work if you both contribute and run with each other's suggestions. As a player, you have a greater responsibility to embrace the developing story and add to it.

It sounds to me like you spent more energy on avoiding the GM's suggestions than adding anything. This will significantly reduce the overall contributions to the game as the GM's own efforts are draw in to counter yours. I expect it was your behaviour that caused the GM to focus on smaller details looking for ways to engage your PC and coming up with more outlandish hooks in a hope to confound you.

My suggestion is that you need to stop seeing the GM as an antagonist trying to screw you over. Complication is a great source of drama that can move the story along. Be proactive. Run with the GM's suggestions and expand on them, before handing them back to her to do likewise. Expand on your descriptions of your PCs actions and decisions. With only 1 PC you need to help fill out the world around the PC. Stop the OOC banter.

Quote from: abcd_z;923147So. Apparently I'm a murderhobo (my words) that runs from plot hooks (her words).

For the record, this was her first time running an RPG. Neither of us had a strong preference for what sort of setting we wanted, so we decided to leave the world and the character sheet empty and fill in the details as necessary.

She suggests that I might need to put points into video game skill, then places my character in the Dune setting and flat-out tells me that my character's goal is to, and I quote, "ride the worm".

She meant the Shai-hulud, but I have a dirty mind and was not okay with riding a gigantic phallic creature. Also, she made it fairly obvious that she was trying to pull a twist ("you were in a VR world all along!"), but she did this by trying to withhold knowledge that my character would have known. I pushed back and finally got her to admit that this was a VR game, but that my character still felt a strong urge to "ride the worm".

Even after I made a boatload of double-entendres about this she still didn't understand why I might not want to do this. My character shuts down the VR game. Okay, I'm in an arcade, with a cute girl who wanted to see me ride the worm. Apparently my character wanted to impress her (GM's words, not mine). I make several more double-entendres about the female NPC being a yaoi fangirl, then left.

Then I contact an NPC friend of mine, who I made up on the spot. He meets me at a local pizza place and tells me "we need to talk".

I'm seeing red flags here. See, my character was supposed to be friends with the NPC for a long time, but from my out-of-character perspective this was my first interaction with the guy and I didn't trust him at all. For all I knew, the GM was planning some sort of plot twist that would screw me over. In fact, I was tempted to just throw down a stun-grenade and get the hell out of there. I didn't, but it was a close one.

Anyhow, he tells me that he's part of a secret organization. I make fun of him and tell him he's spent too much time playing VR sims (again, mostly because I, the player, didn't trust him, the NPC). He puts his hand on my shoulder and we get into a completely freeform fight where he doesn't take any visible damage from my attack and avoids my stun grenade before spraying me with something that makes me woozy and disoriented. I didn't even get a saving throw against it, but the GM later admitted she should have rolled for it and messed that up. I decide to head home and she spends a lot of time focusing on how I get home, how other people are reacting to me as I appear to be drunk, etc. She's asking me to make a lot of decisions about non-urgent things, which I don't handle well in the context of RPGs. I'm not having fun, so we end the session there.

A few hours later, after going over the Dungeon-World inspired combat rules again, she starts by making an hobo NPC with several Moves, including "swindle money". We run a mock encounter that starts with him approaching me for spare change. I immediately get as far away from him as possible.

She decides to have him show up again in the direction that I run, and I think, "if nothing else, this is turning into a decent horror RPG." Several iterations of the same hobo appear. I jump up and over the one blocking me, kneeing him in the face in the process, and make it to the main road. It should be busy, but the street appears deserted. I close my eyes and run around, trying to bump into somebody (I suspect they're still there, just hidden from my sight). This is exactly what happens, and when I open my eyes again everything is normal.

Then she spends 5-10 minutes asking me what I do, where I go, etc. etc. in tedious detail. I was coming back from picking up some last-minute supplies from a local drug store. I'm getting ready to move away from the town. I walk home. My luggage is packed. I'm going to take the bus to the plane station. Now I'm on the bus, and the hobo appears in the seat next to me, saying, "you won't get away so easily." I, the player, want to punch the hobo NPC in the face, but I don't interrupt the GM and suddenly I'm back in town.

I had been asked to make a lot of non-urgent decisions, which, again, I don't handle well in RPGs (it drains me), so we stopped there.

Three potential plot hooks. I ran away from the first one, attacked and then ran away from the second one, and ran away from the third one. I tried to correct her GMing after the game but she really didn't enjoy that, so now I'm just wondering what I can do to keep this from happening again.

This looks like a troll job to me quite frankly... but assuming it is real.. Obviously if it is your girlfriend's first time running a game, and you'd like her to stay your girlfriend, probably best to go for the obvious plot hooks and not get into a debate about dungeon world or play styles.

Either a troll or an assmunch, not sure which.

If you're not a troll, you're an utter rampaging fuckmorton and you owe your girlfriend about ten apologies.

But I vote 6+2 HD, green skin, AC4, regenerates 3 points per turn.

This reminds me of our current Traveller game.

GM had us wake up with no memories in a gutted spaceship. Turns out we're 150 years out of date and we're clones. Turns out the ship's AI got a message from outside the galaxy and is taking us... somewhere, and has overridden all controls. Oh, and there's some weird alien bomb in the hold.

But we don't want to go on a mystery tour.

So we take the ship's power off-line (involves a walk outside to short out some circuits), disengage the AI, and then manually turn the ship toward the closest known base (we're already waaaaay out on the rim of human space).
We, barely, make it before running out of fuel/life support. We contact the powers that be and tell the the whole story... ask them to take the bomb and insane AI off the ship.
They seem very happy to do just that.
The feds were not involved with our initial predicament, but nonetheless we end up drugged (more lost time) and then put back on the ship... with bomb still in the hold and the AI is hooked up again, this time with a high tech self defense rig that nearly kills us when we try to tamper.

So... I put the other two PCs and myself in stasis pods and flush us out the airlock into space. Goodbye fucked up GM railroad! (I was kind of hoping he'd just kill us but no such luck).
We got rescued and are now on some alien ship, minimal time loss... but if he tricks us back onto that fucking bomb ship I'm gonna shit a brick and throw it at him.

(It's obligatory that I mention this GM is usually quite decent... but that this scenario is just playing into my history of Traveller campaigns that kinda suck for no good reason)

Quote from: abcd_z;923147three potential plot hooks. I ran away from the first one, attacked and then ran away from the second one, and ran away from the third one. I tried to correct her gming after the game but she really didn't enjoy that, so now i'm just wondering what i can do to keep this from happening again.

dump her!

Girl friend wants to learn to be a better GM.

Boyfriend (I'm assuming a he), wants her game to run like an '80s 2D scroller game.

Next time, get more players at the table. Preferably role-players.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;923159dump her!

It's the only rational thing to do!!

... what, then, is your point?  To inform the Internet that you suck as a player?  Mission accomplished, though going to the trouble to register for a site and write a long post to that effect seems like a pretty weird use of your time.

To inform the Internet that your girlfriend sucks at GMing?  She doesn't seem to have done badly for a first-timer.  But sorry, dude, if your intent was to wave a bunch of responses at her and crow, "Haha, the Internet says you suck at this!" we're not interested.

Thank you for playing, and as parting gifts, you get the RPGSite home game and a case of Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat.

At a guess the OP is a little, or ALOT, phobic of anything remotely seeming like a railroad and yeah the discription does sound more like a story than an RP at first. But other tries seem to be more open ended and its hard to say what was going on here other than the OP resisting and the GM possibly getting frustrated.

Opposing playstyles?

You don't even trust your own girlfriend? Yikes.

Quote from: abcd_z;923147I tried to correct her GMing after the game but she really didn't enjoy that,

Huh, I always thought people LOVED it when someone points out "You're playing it wrong."
 

Quoteso now I'm just wondering what I can do to keep this from happening again.

Quit your bitching, thank her for running a game, then Thank God you are in a relationship with someone who (inexplicably) wants to RPG with you.

Quote from: abcd_z;923147So. Apparently I'm a murderhobo (my words) that runs from plot hooks (her words).

For the record, this was her first time running an RPG. Neither of us had a strong preference for what sort of setting we wanted, so we decided to leave the world and the character sheet empty and fill in the details as necessary.

She suggests that I might need to put points into video game skill, then places my character in the Dune setting and flat-out tells me that my character's goal is to, and I quote, "ride the worm".

She meant the Shai-hulud, but I have a dirty mind and was not okay with riding a gigantic phallic creature. Also, she made it fairly obvious that she was trying to pull a twist ("you were in a VR world all along!"), but she did this by trying to withhold knowledge that my character would have known. I pushed back and finally got her to admit that this was a VR game, but that my character still felt a strong urge to "ride the worm".

Even after I made a boatload of double-entendres about this she still didn't understand why I might not want to do this. My character shuts down the VR game. Okay, I'm in an arcade, with a cute girl who wanted to see me ride the worm. Apparently my character wanted to impress her (GM's words, not mine). I make several more double-entendres about the female NPC being a yaoi fangirl, then left.

Then I contact an NPC friend of mine, who I made up on the spot. He meets me at a local pizza place and tells me "we need to talk".

I'm seeing red flags here. See, my character was supposed to be friends with the NPC for a long time, but from my out-of-character perspective this was my first interaction with the guy and I didn't trust him at all. For all I knew, the GM was planning some sort of plot twist that would screw me over. In fact, I was tempted to just throw down a stun-grenade and get the hell out of there. I didn't, but it was a close one.

Anyhow, he tells me that he's part of a secret organization. I make fun of him and tell him he's spent too much time playing VR sims (again, mostly because I, the player, didn't trust him, the NPC). He puts his hand on my shoulder and we get into a completely freeform fight where he doesn't take any visible damage from my attack and avoids my stun grenade before spraying me with something that makes me woozy and disoriented. I didn't even get a saving throw against it, but the GM later admitted she should have rolled for it and messed that up. I decide to head home and she spends a lot of time focusing on how I get home, how other people are reacting to me as I appear to be drunk, etc. She's asking me to make a lot of decisions about non-urgent things, which I don't handle well in the context of RPGs. I'm not having fun, so we end the session there.

A few hours later, after going over the Dungeon-World inspired combat rules again, she starts by making an hobo NPC with several Moves, including "swindle money". We run a mock encounter that starts with him approaching me for spare change. I immediately get as far away from him as possible.

She decides to have him show up again in the direction that I run, and I think, "if nothing else, this is turning into a decent horror RPG." Several iterations of the same hobo appear. I jump up and over the one blocking me, kneeing him in the face in the process, and make it to the main road. It should be busy, but the street appears deserted. I close my eyes and run around, trying to bump into somebody (I suspect they're still there, just hidden from my sight). This is exactly what happens, and when I open my eyes again everything is normal.

Then she spends 5-10 minutes asking me what I do, where I go, etc. etc. in tedious detail. I was coming back from picking up some last-minute supplies from a local drug store. I'm getting ready to move away from the town. I walk home. My luggage is packed. I'm going to take the bus to the plane station. Now I'm on the bus, and the hobo appears in the seat next to me, saying, "you won't get away so easily." I, the player, want to punch the hobo NPC in the face, but I don't interrupt the GM and suddenly I'm back in town.

I had been asked to make a lot of non-urgent decisions, which, again, I don't handle well in RPGs (it drains me), so we stopped there.

Three potential plot hooks. I ran away from the first one, attacked and then ran away from the second one, and ran away from the third one. I tried to correct her GMing after the game but she really didn't enjoy that, so now I'm just wondering what I can do to keep this from happening again.

I wasn't there, but it seems likely that:
1. Your GF probably had the idea to run a slice-of-life campaign and get it more relaxed with VR playing an important role for the action. (Or maybe she was just planning you could become a NuNeo and slip the Matrix, if that girl knew that anyone who manages that achievement gets to benefit from a bug in the program which interferes with the programming of the Matrix. All for the small price of having ridden the worm, you know;p. We'll never know that part, because...well, because you fucking ran away from the knowledge, you coward:D! Why didn't you at least try to pick up the chick?
I mean, you presumably wanted to impress her. Why not try that out of VR? Just suggesting that she shows you how to ride the worm would have 1. been hilarious and 2. gone a long way towards playing with your GF, not against her:)).
2. Then she gave up on that and wanted to get you to join a secret organisation. You fought your way out of it.
3. Then she made up something new and you ran away.

Conclusion? You suck at improv. Not "improvising", improv. In particular, you commit the cardinal sins of improv - "not accepting hooks" and "not following what was established" (as well as the cardinal sin of sandbox games, which is "running from adventures").

Regarding "not following what was established (by yourself, at that): seriously, you said you're contacting an NPC friend. Your friend tells you you need to talk, you barely contain yourself not to stun-grenade him...seriously:D? Then your friend tells you he's involved with people that might be potentially dangerous for him...and you just go out.
Again, seriously? That's what you think adventurers do;)?

I get it! The first instinct of adventurers is often to not leave themselves open for further complications. But that's not a good idea for the game, and the kind of people that have adventures have those because they weren't doing that! That, or circumstances conspired to get them involved...but these days, we call the latter "railroading". Did you really want her to railroad you?
I mean, she even had a hobo chasing you to drag you into an adventure - but you outran him. At this rate, are you

Conclusion: Learn to play better in a freestyle environment, and she'd be able to GM better games for you.
Or teach her how to GM the kind of games you like. But as it is now, you're not going to get much mileage out of your games!

Also, as someone whose wife runs games, never tell your GF that she's playing it wrong. That might impact adversely your chances of getting her to ride the worm herself:p.
Not saying you have to accept anything, of course. I'm saying you need to learn how to present your critique as "suggestions how it might be better". And if she asks you "don't you like it", you'd better say you want her to try the other option, because it sure seems more fun;)! She's probably better than you at picking hints, so this will be good enough, while giving her a face-saving exit!


P.S.: Also, man...you ran away from an opportunity to ride a worm on Dune? Seriously? Because it had some homoerotic connotation in your mind that pretty much nobody from the fans has seen?
Shame on you! I hereby strip you of your Dune credentials:D!

You had a few strikes against you..

Her first time DMing.  So she tried a few things out, you treated her like a long time rail road fiend.

It was free form with out structer, setting or system.  Sounds like you were mete as fuck.  You didn't want to do the adventure she had prepared.  Her only mistake was to not say "look dumb ass, the adventure is to ride the worm, either get on that giant phalic symbol or go wash the dishes"

You sound like a terrible player.

Man I always read posts that say that after reddit posts but this is the first time I'm making one.

1) You kept mocking the GM's attempt at create a story. Right off the bat it's already a disaster. She obviously is new and needs work, but you should've just rolled with it, not expected a first time chef to cook you a master dish.

2) You weren't roleplaying your own character very well. I mean, you introduce your NPC friend yourself, but then you don't trust him? Regardless of your own personal feelings you should have played it out as if you trusted him. And why a fight all of a sudden??

3) In one on one games, and well, in games in general, you want to go with the flow rather than actively subvert what the GM is trying to do. If you see that the adventure is about going on a treasure hunt then you don't immediately say your character is going to stay home and tend to their garden, unless you just want to waste your time. It sounds like your GM wanted to create a Matrix-like scenario where you're dealing with VR and secret societies, etc. It could have been fun to get sucked into it.

Long story short, you should look at games like this as a cooperative endeavor where you're both trying to push things in an interesting and exciting direction, like someone making a TV show.