I think you should take what the DM said at face value. No hard feelings, just vibe mismatch. It happens.

For sure. Or just chat with them outside of the session some time

Yeah I mean, basically anything can work with the right campaign, players, characters, etc. But my opinion doesn’t matter; your player’s opinions are the ones that do.

I’ll also add that the element of surprise is overrated. You think it will be cool when the player discovers this effect at a dramatic moment but it is far, FAR more likely that they never discover it at all. Or they only discover it after it’s been frustratingly negating everything they’ve tried to do so far. Or that they discover the curse at an un-dramatic moment and make the rational decision to just never trigger it again. That’s why I say it’s much better to tell the players ahead of time and set the expectation that being cursed will be a major part of their story; then they can DECIDE to have their character “accidentally” trigger the curse at a dramatic moment or what have you. You won’t have to tell the player “you’re compelled to yell now” they’ll automatically go “GOD I just feel like YELLING right now FOR SOME REASON!” and feel good about playing their character instead of feeling bad that you’re taking over their character.

With something more than an incidental curse, you really need player buy-in. I recommend meeting with each player, telling them you’d like to give them a cursed item that will be a major part of their character’s arc throughout the story, and the broad strokes of what you have in mind for their particular curse. Then, be receptive to feedback on that. Good players will recognize that this is a roleplay opportunity for them and try to fit it into the arc they had in mind for their character, but they may want the details tweaked to fit their particular narrative goals…eg to make the curse an ironic reflection of their flaws or a nod to their backstory or whatever. I recommend you try to approach this premise with a collaborative mindset.

This is good advice but I will add that putting a timer on player’s turns is also itself a bit of a problem…it comes off as infantalizing.

That’s not really how bots work. It would have to be coded to actually read and reply to your responses

You can use Google Forms to get the RSVP functionality you’re looking for. And maybe a dedicated Discord channel with suitable posting restrictions so it’s JUST DMs posting such forms? Or you could even have them DM you their pitches and you post them, such that you can make the channel so only you can post. I also like using this tool for scheduling: https://www.when2meet.com/

Science Fantasy is usually a fantasy story in a setting typically associated with scifi. The classic example is Star Wars; it’s it a world with spaceships and lasers, but it’s about space wizards having swordfights.

Every custom, every belief, every fashion, every turn of speech?

No, of course not. Why would anyone waste effort on infinite irrelevant details? But everything there is to know, I know.

I do believe that player should be able to gain a basic understanding of the cultures their characters come from. The question is how much information can they get, and process?

You give them an overview at the start with the information you guess might be relevant or interesting to them, and supplement it during the game as necessary.

Part of the fun of DMing for me is in homebrewing cultures…or, more accurately, homebrewing factions that have a culture.

Besides which, there are some fundamental flaws in your premises:

You assert that a counterpart culture is easier to understand than an original one. I 100% understand any culture I make up, definitionally. On the other hand, neither I nor anyone else at my table can say the same about any IRL culture. Even members of a given IRL culture can never fully understand the totality of it.

You also say

[if] you create fantasy ancestries from scratch, you need to convey all that information to the players.

And I don’t think that’s true. Players don’t need to know everything about a culture to interact with them. In many cases, the player characters are themselves unfamiliar with that culture, in which case any mystery, mistakes, miscommunications etc are valuable in-character roleplay. And when the PCs would be familiar with a relevant aspect of a given culture, you can simply tell them that detail, no need to loredump everything. (Eg “I beg for mercy” “Your character knows that The Southern Pirates are notorious for never taking prisoners, are you sure you want to try that?”)

If you don’t want to do a one-shot, I still recommend keeping it short. 3-5 sessions perhaps. Just to dip a toe in and even out the kinks, and be able to feel good that you completed something. Decide if you want to commit to a big sprawling campaign after the first little demo campaign.

For sure! And that scarcity of resources and failing supply chains is a GREAT setting for questing!

A couple thoughts occur:

• If you wanted to justify big cities in wildernesses, you could use the prevalence of monsters to do so. Say it’s just too dangerous to have small villages, and everyone has to spend the night in a walled town/city for their own safety.
• I’m pondering how magic could effect this, too. You might have a whole Town in this ecosystem replaced by just a single wizard, who’s willing to magic up complex tools or luxuries in exchange for an exorbitant payment from the peasants.
• A lot of fantasy settings are lowkey post-apocalyptic, inspired by the Dark Ages and/or The Black Death. You may encounter isolated Villages that are struggling to scrape by as their Town got wiped off the map, or isolated Cities crammed full of starving refugees that fled their Villages.

I know y’all are talking about like, buying a wish spell, but y’all make it sound like the mom hired a magic gigolo XD

Now you’ve inspired me. I should make a character who’s 1 level in sorcerer, the rest in wizard, and the premise is that they set out to prove everyone wrong that they’re not just going to rely on their inborn talents and they’re ready to do the work!

My current game might be helpful, but it will require a little context to explain and work to adapt to your purposes.

All my games take place in the same world. The last game was a pirate campaign, and, by the end, the players were legendary pirate kings (queens, nonbinary monarchs) that ruled the seas.

That leads to the setup for my current game: Sea travel is impractical and dangerous. A land route to totally-not-asia would be great, but none is currently known, due to a thought-to-be-impassible mountain range between there and here. The Explorers Guild is offering bounties on both a pass through the mountains and a viable charted land route to totally-not-asia. The players (and their rivals!) take a dangerous sailing journey around the mountains, to explore the jungle on the back side of the range and try to find a pass from that angle.

EDIT: They’re incentivized to work with the locals, because pissing them off would make a potential trade route dangerous and therefore worthless.

Google drive for notes, DungeonFog for maps.

IIRC you spent gold on XP by carousing; basically, blowing all your cash on ale and brothels was how you leveled up.