Problem players. I need help.

I run a game with players with little quirks or habits that ten to annoy me or cause trouble running the game. I started a game with them and it took them three hours just to start walking somewhere. I am still learning how to be a good DM but it is also on them to try and be better players. I will post the following quirks that I find disruptive to the game, please post some advice below. ~Players who don't pay attention: Alot of them have attention disorders, meaning I have to put up with people who lose their attention quickly. I have the same problem but with them it's to a degree of them constantly asking me "What just happened?" on their turn.  ~Character jumpers: Those players who can't seem to hold on to the same character and end up killing them at least every few weeks. Then they make up some random idea, creating something stupid or complicated.  ~The newbies: Those people who are new and don't have a full grasp of what to do, but don't bother looking up the rules or buying the books. ~Ones that argue: The players that argue with each other so much it takes up time and you end up missing so much. ~The memes: Those guys who like memes so much that it's only jokes. So they put those jokes in game.  

random monsters! more and more random monsters. If they want to sit and argue, random monsters. If they create a character that is to complicated, big random monsters, If they want to argue, random monsters, memes? random monsters. After a while the players will catch on and get their act together. Dont wait on the players to make a decision, give them a small amount for time then if they are not done, random monsters! If you really need the help i would be available to join your game and force the game forward with a character. If you need any other assistance feel free to PM me.

Party wipes are a useful tool. IMO, characters should have some fear of their DM or shenanigans will develop. And, hey!  If they don't like being party wiped, they may fire you as their DM!  A win!

We can help you to figure out the Roll20 aspects of GMing, but these forums are specifically for Roll20-oriented topics. Teaching general Gamemastering  is not something we can do here, but these reddits may prove useful: /r/rpg  for general knowledge /r/gamemasters for Gamemaster-specific discussion I'll leave this thread open in hopes that Roll20-specific discussions can take place, but if it stays off-topic I'll have to close it down.

If they annoy you, dump them and find new players; Roll20 are full with them. Rinse and repeat until you find people that you enjoy pleying with. ( Not really a Roll20 answer, oh well. ) Drop me a PM if you want to. I'm always up for discussing the sociology of the game.

A couple things I can think of that might be of use: 1) If you start throwing some things at your players that require a quick response now and then, it might make sure they pay attention.  This can be anything from another player triggering a trap or event to an NPC suddenly showing up due to teleport or dropping invisibility, making a demand and giving them an ultimatum (you have 10 seconds to comply).  If you don't get a response, ask for initiative, and any player(s) that doesn't roll their initiative goes at the bottom of the order.  If they don't respond within a certain amount of time when it is their turn, they get skipped.  If the ultimatum is given by someone or something that isn't trivial to the group, not paying attention can certainly make survival by all players less certain.  Since you can hide tokens on the GM layer, it is pretty easy to do this on Roll20.  You could make up a couple scenarios and have the tokens somewhere out of the way just waiting for the right moment.  Since they can be copy/pasted between maps, you can take these ready made adversaries anywhere.   If this becomes something that does happen now and then in your games (rather than as punishment only used when you think players may not be paying attention), then hopefully that will help train your players to be paying attention. 2) I may be in the minority, but I think expecting someone new to a specific rule set to run out and buy the books may be unreasonable.  The number of books and their cost varies by system, so some might not cost much and some can be fairly pricey.  If you are going to require the books, either don't allow new players or require them to have their own books up front before playing.  Do you use any house rules?  Are there any online resources for the system you run?  Do you use anything that isn't going to be in the basic books that isn't available freely online?  If your answer is yes to any of those 3, then maybe you should make more use of handouts and the bio and info tab of character sheets. I run a system that went out of print before some people playing on Roll20 were born.  With that being true, I have created the ruleset within Roll20 on a network of just over 1000 handouts.  When someone makes a character, I create a link to the handout for their class on their bio and info tab.  Same goes for the spell list for their class if they are a casting class, and then a link to each spell they actually know.  I create handouts with info on in-game books only viewable to characters that know the right languages.  I create handouts for magic items, usually viewable by the whole group.  I have mule characters that do nothing but carry spell/ability macros (a sheet for each class that can use special macros) into new games so I can copy/paste them onto players' sheets.  Same for global macros for some commonly used rolls I might request.  The reason I bring that up is that making it as easy as possible for people to run the mechanics of their character through Roll20, the faster things move.  The faster things move, the easier it will be to keep people's attention.  The longer people have to search for things, the longer everything takes, which allows for more meme searching. You can do a similar thing on a smaller scale.  Have a handout with any house rules.  If there are many or covering different parts of the rule set, make a handout that is a table of contents with links to the different specific house rule handouts.  You can make links to those house rules on someones bio and info tab if one of the house rules specifically affects their character due to race or class.  You can make links to online resources that might help new players with their character (articles on their race, class, and any special class abilities).  Make sure they know they can log in at any time to follow those links. I'm not going to pretend that doing stuff like this takes no time.  However, you can make a base game with any handouts you make and copy that game any time you want to start a new game.  That way, you only have to do it once. As far as the interpersonal problems go, making your game run as smooth as possible may reduce some of them.  Maybe.  Other than that, all you can do is have a talk with your players.  After all, if you aren't having fun, then why bother?

It sounds like you and your players need to talk about what you each are actually trying to get out of the game. Throwing random monsters isn't going to fix that.

Players who don't pay attention: If you're not already using them, try using some of the following features to help get player's attention - Shift Pinging : While holding down Shift , hold down your left mouse button upon a point on the tabletop. This will center everyone's field of vision about that point. This is useful for when you want to forced players to see something that is going on. Zoom in on token objects: Pressing Shift+Z as the GM shows all players the larger version of that object. Another great feature for forcing the view of a player. I love using this for showing the image of NPCs, whilst they are speaking. Handouts: This is probably one of the things that will help the most. Make handouts for NPCs with images and descriptions / information regarding them. I also like to do this for creature encounters, as well as giving statistics of places the player's have visited, and key story moments that have been planned ahead of time. If a player isn't paying attention or has missed a game, these are great for helping them catch up. Character jumpers: It's a situation most GMs have to deal with at one point. I myself have had my fair share over the years I have GM'd. You could always make a few pre-gen characters for your players to use if they are dying quite a lot. Let them use these until they can come up with a solid character, that fits what your game needs. Newbies: Yet another great reason to make handouts. You could make some handouts for the major game rules of the system you are using . It's even possible to link handouts together, so that you can create your own in game rule books. This can be done by putting the name of any handout inside of brackets. For instance if you have a handout named Combat Rules , you could reference this as a link in another handout by writing it as [Combat Rules]. Once the handout is saved, it will appear as underlined pink text. If clicked, it will show the referenced handout. All you then need to do is make sure players have access to these in the player's journal, so that they can reference things when ever they need to. If you're not feeling up to the task of all the work in doing this, you could also make handouts that have outside links to pages of an online reference document for your game system. Ones that Argue: I guess it depends on the dispute, but if players don't want to see reason on certain things, you can always leave it up to chance. If players can't decide on what idea to go with or who gets what from loot, have them roll a d100, heck, make it a d1000 if you want. You could also have them use the in game card deck and see who draws the higher card. Have the player with the highest result get to have their choice granted. The Memes: List what you expect for your game, and of your players in your game description, when you are first looking for players. Talk with your current players. Tell them what is expected. If that fails, see 'random monsters'.

I don't know what the exact ratio is but I would guess there's 20 or 30 people that want to play to every 1 willing or able person to DM. You really don't need to stand for player's that are consistently being irritating or disrespectful. You are doing them a favour by running the game, putting in your time and effort and if they don't respect that, kick them. There are plenty of new players that can't find a game that would be grateful for the opportunity. No game is better than a bad game so read them the riot act then start replacing them.

Players with attention disorders could get easily overwhelmed by random monsters, or the amount of information on 1000 handouts. So I guess this won't solve the problem. May I suggest an approach of old times, quite forgotten nowadays: Just talk to them. Tell them in a friedly matter "hey there's something bothering me, can we work together to improve our experience?" Ask them if there's something that would help them be more focused. Listen to them and work together. It's not your job alone to make things work. And sometimes people don't realize what they do is bothering someone. So I'd just start with talking.

Handouts should most definitely help. At least they've helped for me with every situation I've had with a person who can't pay attention. If someone misses something, you can just click 'show to players', which will force it to their screen, and then tell them "Hey, look at this handout",  and go over it with them. They give both visual aide, as well as textual. They need not sift through thousands of them. The GM can just show them the ones they need, when they need it. Also, it's meant as a Roll20-oriented solution.

Jase, it's a group of 9 of my friends. I can't cut any of them because it would break our friendship. I also have a problem with them calling themselves "Billy Maze" or "Mario37" or "Jason Born" 

As a GM, you have just as much right to have fun as your friends who are the players do.  If they are making your experience un fun, and they are good friends, straight up tell them that they're making the game unfun for you.  And it is entirely possible that you will need to stop gaming with them.  You can still be friends and go to other stuff, but you might need to consider yourself as well as them.

As the majority of responses to this topic are not Roll20-focused, I'm going to go ahead and close the thread.  From the Roll20 Community Code of Conduct : The Roll20 Forums exist to discuss topics directly related to the use of the Roll20 program. Anything that more fittingly could be discussed on another website SHOULD be discussed there. Here are some good places to discuss this topic: /r/rpg /r/gamemasters