What to Do about a Bad Dungeon Master| D&D Discussions
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- Опубликовано: 20 авг 2024
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Nerdarchy Tells You What to Do about a Bad Dungeon Master| D&D Discussions
What is a player to do when they find themselves in a game of Dungeons and Dragons with a bad Dungeon Master? Nerdarchy discusses the different types of bad DMing and what you can do to fix your gaming experience. Sometimes the GM is inexperienced or just has a different game play style than you. Other times the GMs idea of how to enjoy the game are just different than your own. no matter what is messing up your RPG night we offer up some suggestions to help fix things.
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There are some bad DM types that just make one leave.
I'll start by saying that I DM'ed for a very, very long time when I was first exposed the D&D. After that very first campaign in which I played fell through, if I didn't DM, I didn't D&D.. No one could or would, and I was the only one to step up.
I decided that I wanted to play. Then...
I had one who wanted their "NPC" to be the star of the show. Everything they did saved the day. Nothing you did was good enough. This guy was a flat out narcissist. It was all about him. The other players would look at each other with that knowing look every time this DM-controlled "NPC" did something. My brother and I quit.
I took over as DM...again. We founded a whole new group.
Tried playing again:
I had one who actively did everything to screw you over. He made every aspect of life difficult to the point where taking any cloth-wearing spellcaster meant you would be murdered in your sleep. He allowed female PCs to be raped, favorite characters could perform multiple actions to get out of trouble, and the rest were allowed to hang. Two players including myself quit over that stupidity.
I had one that only allowed XP to characters for things they killed. This was in AD&D. Imagine a Wizard trying to level with it's one spell slot and no cantrips. What a shitshow. I played for ONE session, then quit.
I had another who captured, mutilated, and then made fun of the characters at the table, and thought it was funny. Even when the players threated to quit, he continued to laugh. Result? The players quit. He was out. Someone else took over as GM.
Then I found a new group. It was great for three years. Then personal issues crept in and my future brother in law decided to be a douche. I left 2E because of social issues with other players at the table. I went on to play EVERYTHING but D&D for 20 years.
My brother in law is STILL a douche.
...then 5E came out. I found a venue, recruited players, and found someone willing to DM....
This guy was so scared of his players that he allowed three obnoxious and self-centered players abuse the others at the table. His own son couldn't even get a word in edgewise. Man-up for crying out loud. The table collapsed because three players demanded the other four shut up and let them run the show...and the DM did nothing to stop it. That DM quit.
Found a new DM for the League. All the other players quit.
The League (under "Crash" now) went on for quite some time, and then when I mentioned that my daughter was interested in playing, one player said he ran a table where younger players were present and she was more than welcome.
That player-turned DM ex-posited for 1.5 hours straight and mutilated two PCs as part of that speech - no roll, no save, no option. That was, unfortunately, my daughter's first exposure to D&D. We quit that very night and I ran her next two campaigns.
I joined those so I could actually play and _NOT_ DM. It didn't always work out. Solution? Found a new table. Or I DM'ed game myself.
Our "League" has become a private game at the DM's house and it's been great. Crash is awesome. He gets that the story comes first.
My only regret is that my daughter has seemingly left her "tabletop" phase for now and is only interested in console gaming. I hope to win her back when she matures a bit. Crash will likely play at that table once again.
...and for the record, the only "alignment" a DM should have is Neutral. Not Lawful, not Chaotic. Not good. Not evil. Just Neutral. See all sides. Otherwise you metagame.
I think they meant Lawful neutral in that you maintain the relative order through rules, but take no sides and do your best to remain impartial.
Well dang...
***** To an extent. but if you allow the rules to get in the way of great ideas, then the "lawful" part gets in the way.
+Mike Gould That's a pretty vague statement.
***** Not at all. Too many ideas have been crushed by "technically" and "actually". The rules are there as guidelines. Sticking absolutely to them is "Lawful Neutral". Understanding that there is some room to move within them is Neutral. I thought I had made that pretty clear.
I once had a GM who had a 1,000,000 place table that he would randomly pick from at the beginning of each campaign to decide what the world would be like. Without us knowing he rolled a 1. The game started out pretty normally, we played a group of beast hunters roaming the world for rare game to hunt. Some things were eventually realized to be hints, like when our fighter stuck his sword into the ground and the GM made him roll for damage. We had about four sessions in this campaign before coming to an absolutely massive crevasse. The thing went for at least a thousand feet across and for farther than even our wizard's eagle could see. We eventually decided to try and cross the gap by using a combination of ballistae firing grappling bolts, magic floating logs, and good old fashioned dex checks. As we were about half way through the GM rolled 3 d20's, sighed, and said, " well, the planet yawns. I just rolled to see if your bridge would stay together and I got a 1, so probably not. You're going to need a crazy den save to get out of this one." Naturally, we all were rather confused, but we made the checks. Nobody passed. As we fell to our deaths the DMV started talking about how if it were a movie, the camera would pan all the way out to show the planet, closing its mouth, and going back to sleep. It turns out that the 1/1,000,000 chance he had on that table of worlds was that " The planet, is actually a mimic" ( roll initiative on this bitch).
Flashstorm HD I have a feeling that this would be awesome, if the DM took special care to lay down hints and clues, made sure every history check would suggest that hey, something has been fishy with this world as far back as history goes, every natural event would be explained like the actions or reactions of a living being.
In this particular case, I can't tell if you're suggesting this DM was a bad DM. Seems to me like the characters made a really poor choice to try to get passed an extremely difficult or impossible chasm, and it didn't go well. It was all hinged on the roll of the dice, both sides of the screen. That's not bad to me.
Flashstorm HD To expand, if the PCs have only lived in this world and never been to another, they wouldn't find the things about the planet to be weird, they would be normal, everyday things, but then the players should be treated like they knew that. Even low intelligent characters know that they can't breathe water, so treat the characters the same way if everything they have ever experienced is this planet.
But that doesn't mean that the players can't know the situation about the planet. That way they can RP accordingly.
And this, folks, is why session zero is an absolute must. Get it all on the table what everyone expects from the game before you start playing
Reading the comments makes me appreciate having good friends/brothers a bit more.
My first DM ever was terrible. Would penalize you sickness for not telling him your character took a dump. Killed you by having the dragon you just killed fall on you. Stuff like that. One of the other players eventually took over as DM as everything was cool, but it's a bloody miracle I stuck with D&D as a hobby after that.
D&D rolled a nat 20 persuasion to stick with it.
I also dealt with a jerk DM when I first played it; he even railroaded us into stuff that was literally 'Get lucky or die instantly'
You didn't mention the No GM where everything you do is either countered, back fires or just plain said no to. Sometimes this is a killer GM, but it's usually just a GM they wants you to solve his puzzle the exact way he wants you too. Then there is the rail road GM, and I'm not talking about getting you back on track or having the crazy player tangent loop back around to where you want them to be, but a complete rail road of the story and events.
THIS!
My previous GM: "Ok guys, are you ready to leave town and set off to fight through the temple of fire elementals"
Me: "I would like to look for a wizard or alchemist quickly to try pick up a few potions of fire resistance, can I roll an investigation check or something?"
My previous GM: "Nope, we are not doing that. You find yourself outside the temple and open the doors"
Some people struggle with the idea of "communal storytelling"
FitzNitrox ,,, That's just lazy. He could have let you look but not let you find, for any one of a thousand reasons. But a DM also has to keep the story going for EVERYONE. So taking 5 minutes to go through a search of the town for potions with you is kind selfish.(especially if he knows you will fail). That seems like a very minor complaint. Remember your DM has a lot on his plate. And what happens if he lets you go get potions? Then the fighter wants to check for something that S/he would want or think would help. Could easily snowball into 30 minutes of non story. & if he just says yes you can, he may have to adjust the whole set up of the encounter because of your new found resistance to the main damage type. I wouldn't say your DM is "Bad" just cuz he doesn't let you have everything every time. P
If you can't be bothered to play it out, just do a roll to see if they find any (roll investigation, on a 15 plus find 1d4 potions at standard table price, non negotiable).
Also balance is not the main consideration. You shouldn't crush your players, obviously (easy to "win" when you are basically omnipotent, no point really), but if they gain an advantage by doing something smart, let them have it (also if they hinder themselves by doing something stupid).
Don't fuss over your loss of "balance": it just means for that one time instead of enjoying the thrill of danger they are enjoying the power trip of their preparation paying off. Or the thrill of running away, which you should make clear to them is a perfectly valid option and is better than dying in most usual circumstances.
Well, I always love when rolling two natural 20s in a row along with +8 persuasion to each roll does nothing to persuade the prison guard.
I'm kind of on the fence about this still. Your roll is is how well your character does something, in this case being charismatic to a guard. So your guy was really charismatic, like the the best he could possibly be at that time. The roll, to me, is not how well you influenced him, but rather how well you tried to influence him. The roll itself does not include how he reacts to you. It also kind of depends the kind of game you're in, the experience of the guard, and his intelligence I suppose, or what your goal was and how you asked him. No matter how charismatic you are, some guards just aren't going to do what you ask them to do, logically. But at the same time if the campaign isn't set from the beginning with that sort of logic, its unfair to deny players a reward when they get two nat 20s. I dunno, just wanted to set the other side of that out there.
Do you dislike shadedoom for some reason? Being argumentative for its own sake can be a little unkind. I think Shadedoom had a perfectly valid point.
I'm with Rogue. People don't escape prison just cause they asked real nice, even "perfectly" so :P. That's asinine lmfao.
I would like to know more details about what exactly you tried to do? Perkins has definitely said something I agree with when asked if a player could make a dragon do its bidding: "All the diplomacy in the world won't help if the dragon is dead-set against it". Same would obviously apply to prison guards.
With two 28s (remember, you can only crit on attack rolls) you can obviously do _something_, but you can't do _everything_. Did you simply ask the guy to let you out? No chance. Did you, in earnest, try to convince him that you could offer him a better life than that of a prison guard because you knew of nearby treasure? Then the guard might wanna hear more.
From what I'm getting you were in a prison cell, and if you were asking for the guard to let you out, then sorry no. However, if your offing a believable bribe then I would say DC 30 (which you still failed), or asked for something that would be an obvious tool for escape, then DC 30, if you asked for something that was less obvious, then DC 25.
Wow. I was going to describe my experiences with awful GMs when I realized: both of them were named Steve. Maybe we should ban people with that name from the hobby (Mr. Jackson gets a pass.)
The lesser of two Stevils was just a weak storyteller who made questionable rulings and played favorites. All of us except one player abandoned him and started our own group, which thrived for years.
The really bad Steve was really bad. Not only did he revel in putting the party into impossible moral/ethical situations, he regularly inflicted unintended consequences that were impossible to predict-deus ex machina Stuff. He loved to pit party members against one another. For that matter, he loved pitting players against one another in real life. Dude must have had a serious power fetish.
Haha, THIS confirms my suspicion that killer DMs are named Steve! -Nerdarchist Ryan
my first time dming the other night and a player wanted to jump up from behind onto another prayers shoulders jump off of the player to make a attack on a monster I had him make an acrobatics check to see if he made it I also made the other player roll a strength check since he was unaware that it was about to happen longer story short the strength check failed I gave dex saves but they both ended up prone and they were upset about it and told me I was wrong to do it. watching this video I was wondering what you thought about my call if it was fair or correct, how do I decide between making rolls and letting a cool story unfold?
It sounds like a fair and reasonable call to me and if the jumping player had succeeded, I'd probably give them advantage on the attack due to how unorthodox it is, but if your players wanted to have a more "Wire Fu" game, you could run it that way as well. So, you might want to talk to your players about what kind of game they want to play. -Nerdarchist Ryan
thanks
I would have literally done the exact same thing. Don't try to jump off of a low Strength players shoulders and you won't fall down... You made the right call in my opinion.
We're they proficient in either? If so, I wouldn't require that player to roleplay and would give it to them because they're trying to contribute to the game by interacting in the situation. Too often DMs use dice to justify making the game, "realistic", but if players wanted to be confined to realistic, they'd play video games.
I was close to being a killer DM in my first few games with my new group. I went in with the description of my game being "old school dungeon crawl" and it being a possibly very deadly game, along the lines of Tomb of Horrors or Undermountain. I guess they didn't realize what they were agreeing to, because they got a little grumpy after a few sessions.
After the first campaign arc of sorts, when an intellect devourer took over the barbarian (death), and a mind flayer ate the cleric (the cleric's last stand to let the party escape), I heard the rumblings that my players weren't very happy with being ground down by difficult encounters and deadly traps. So I switched up my style. The game is a lot easier combat-wise, but I introduced difficulty via story. Tough choices, consequences for the players' sometimes chaotic actions, and tricky NPCs that may not always be on the up and up, and everyone seems happier with that.
had a case a while back when my buddy who was dming for was asked by another less experienced PC to have our lvl 3 party take on druegar which resulted in a near TPK. the only person to make it out was the PC who asked for the druegar in the first place. pissed all of us off in the process.
Yea, you can talk it out with the dm, you can talk it out with the other players in the group and vote your dm out, you can leave and find another group altogether, or you can just deal with it. Also, I love the lilo and stitch shirt. I feel like that was a scene in the animated series Disney never finished and that sucks cause I always wanted to see that series through to the end.
Unless your DM is completely unreasonable in real life (though many are), you can usually figure out an MO if you all just want to play. But characters who cast fireballs and lightning bolts underwater deserve what's coming to them...
If it is magical fire though it should be able to go through water, unless that water is also magical, the way magical fire in D&D works is a lot like how greek fire worked, except better. I mean lightning that's just stupid, but magical fire should work.
Mario can cast fireballs under water.
Lightning bolt turns into lightning ball under water. It has the same AOE as a fireball, but with the range of Lightning bolt. Fireball just doesn't work at all under water. Not even a puff of steam.
Matt Mercer had to make a call that the water elemental wasn't on fire even though the rules say that it should of been!
HAH, well in the face of logic, some times you do have to adjudicate against RAW. -Nerdarchist Ryan
+Nerdarchy I mean, how would you explain water being on fire? (Unless if it's Greek fire)
Everything has a burning point...water's is just only reachable through magic....
+DatsVatSheSaid But wouldn't it just evaporate at that point?
Maybe it does maybe it doesn't.....
With the Fireball spell, depending on how you flavour Fireball, it could actually do more damage. In Critical Role, Matt Mercer flavours it as kind of like a grenade. And, underwater, explosions do a lot more damage than in the air (because Air can compress and absorb the explosion more than water), so Fireball could actually be MORE effective underwater.
I've had an absolutely horrible DM. This guy would repeatedly lie about his rolls, alter enemy stats depending who was rolling against them, give advantages to guys in our group he wanted to sleep with and disadvantages to everyone else. Girls were not allowed to play in his game unless his husband forced him to allow them to play, and then they were immediately killed. He would routinely wait until everyone arrived for game and then call it off saying he was tired, ignoring the fact that we all had to drive to his house to play and not giving us any warning before hand. He would suddenly change games when he didn't have time to create a story (ie, there was no new post online or in the DMG or dragon magazine). He outright murdered one of my characters at the "beginning" of massive battle, giving me no rolls because I "should have known better" (it was my third session), then proceeded with a 6 hour combat in which I could do literally nothing because he had to supervise any character creation. In that combat three other PCs were knocked out, but he refused to kill them. My next character was locked in a cave and forced to serve a dragon after rolling a nat 20 and the rest of the party failed (his reasoning being that I "successfully navigated the landslide into a dragon's lair" while the rest of the party "failed to navigate the landslide" and ended up on the side of the mountains we were trying to get to.) This same DM suddenly changed the DnD campaign to Exalted, forced my character to waste bonus points in character creation on backgrounds I specifically said I didn't want because he thought it was cool, then proceeded to take those backgrounds away from my character throughout the game because I "wasn't using them anyways". My character got 7 successes searching for a 1 dot item, ended up falling into a unused manse with traps including an Indiana Jones rock down the hallway (which I specifically asked about the dimensions of prior to the trap triggering, was told it was perfect square, used a perfect Dodge to squeeze my lithe, small acrobat through the gap only to have him change it to a perfectly round tunnel with no gaps and the rock then knocks me through a wall). At the bottom, after the wall, there is a 5 dot/ N/a artifact. Guess what, can't use it. On top of that, my character (with an immunity to poison) gets poisoned and dies. These are just a few of the things he specifically did to me, nothing compared to what he did to anyone who made a female character, his own brother, his husband's ex, or anyone who was only there for a single session. Myself and two other friends left the group and take it in turns to DM
I mainly DM. Played a bard too. To me being a DM is all about making awesome stories, plot twist, writing the player characters into that story, portaying their strengths and weaknesses, giving them chances to roleplay etc. As a DM you're only there to facilitate THEIR adventure and choices.
Examples of wtf rulesets that are not killer gms: you're invisible but you have to roll stealth check because you're making sound, you can't use lay on hands because you're wearing a gauntlet, creature casts charm on the mage-mage casts charm on another party member-who in turn casts it on another member-now the creature control all three of you, you know the pit traps are in a checkboard pattern and use stones to trigger all of them but he says you missed a couple when it's clear you wouldn't quit triggering them all until the pattern was complete all the way down the hallway.
The first one can make sense if you're walking on flooring that makes a lot of noise, or if there is a lot of tightly-packed furniture or other objects in your way that can fall over and you can't easily walk around it. The rest seem pretty daft, though.
The only bad DM's I've ever had were the ones who didn't read or understand the DMG. If you want to be a DM, read the DMG. To this day, as soon as I find out a DM hasn't read the DMG, I just stop showing up. "Oh, sorry guys. My cat exploded. I gotta go. Bye."
I just finished up a first edition Pool or Radiance game with a DM that first, insisted playing a Druid would be fine and fun. Now I'd rolled pretty much the minimum stats I needed for a Druid, so I said, great, I'll do that. I spent the game being told "No, that spell wont work in a city." or "I don't agree with how that spell works, so I'm nerfing it." or "No you can't have a bear in the city, that'd freak people the hell out." Thus my animal companion, even when I had 24+ hit dice of animal companion space, was my wondrous figurine owl. I had a 5HD tiger at like, level 8 I think, and it got to see one fight. Minimum stats meant no combat capabilities, dealing raw damage plus magic when I eventually got a magic weapon, and I was generally kinda sat there playing the healer wishing I'd taken Cleric. I think the first time I felt useful in a fight was when I got wall of fire in a haunted graveyard. That spell can sure kill some undead.
Meanwhile, he'd interfere with PCs, or push players a certain direction with their character. Our NG wizard ended up LE because the DM wanted him to have an imp familiar, and his spells all worked as written or better.
Our 18/00 St 17 Dx fighter thief was made and Bushi/ninja because the DM thought that was cool, and the DM put his Int from 7 to 15 to make it happen, and subsequently was reincarnated as an Ogre Mage with a dubious roll behind the screen (Because the DM liked the idea of a ninja Oni) losing his Bushi levels and stuck with a super hard to level Ninja class.
Our LN Cleric of Tyr (Who joined late and was 5 levels lower than the rest of the party) drew the charisma card for the deck of many things (which was not bogus) and was made a Paladin, complete with alignment change, despite that going completely against the original character. He then found Gauntlets of Ogre Power and later a Holy Avenger, pretty much rendering us all redundant in a fight.
For my draws from the deck? I got the magic weapon and treasure map card, as did the Wizard, and the Paladin, all in a row, it was kind of uncanny. The wizard got a sentient +3 life drain dagger. The Paladin got the scabbard to his Holy Avenger (functionally a periapt of wound closure) and I got... The completely useless head of a spear I would not receive the haft to for 4 levels right before we went for the final fight. The spear ended up being cool, but paled in comparison to the Holy Avenger, quite frankly.
What I did get pretty much immediately (literally two sessions later) was attacked by an Ice Devil at level 8. I'd even used up a wish to protect myself from that particular card, which admittedly helped contain it a little while, but us beating it came down to some stupendous luck. I was initially caught alone, and nearly killed several times. A potion of diminution and a rabbit hole bought me time, and a potion of growth that let me hit the damn thing hard enough to damage it.
All that, and he'd almost always rule against us in contentious situations, roll where we couldn't see, roll twice or three times til he got the result he wanted (literally our whole group knows he does this, even as a player. It's well disguised but we've played together weekly for five years or more.) Deride us for not figuring out his puzzles or "clues", hand us stuff the answer when he thought we were dumb, and he seemed to like us knowing he'd "beaten us" before artificially pulling us out of the fire.
This all makes him sound awful, and he isn't. I butt heads with him sometimes, as do others in our friends group, but none of us would want to lose him as a friend, we still all love the guy. I just wouldn't play in his DnD campaign again. It's just a sad reality that none of want to confront him because, well, he's pretty intimidating and does badly with criticism.
Anyway, that's my whinge. I'm sure it comes off as not being all that bad, but I assure you we all had frayed tempers at some point in the campaign. Oh and I'd totally recommend playing Pool of Radiance at the table, not just the PC game, it's actually a really good campaign, it just wasn't handled the best.
I was once a horrible dm, but not because I was a killer DM. I tended to monty hall everything. I\ve now had much more experience in both playing and running games (30 years), but still tend to give characters more then one way out of a situation. It is up to them to find the more then one way out, but I admit I still am not the best DM. More neutral good...Don't get me wrong.. a character goes to poke a dragon.. going to be dragon meat.. but I feel characters having fun trumps rules.
My local comic book store is trying out more DnD tables so they've brought on new DMs, and the dude we got yesterday is... well he's lazy. Not only was he late, he only came with his cell phone to look at the PDF of the module, and he told us verbatim the things in the module, would only give us one viable option, and whenever we were contemplating a choice that might have to make him go off the module's path of least resistance he'd warn us and loom over our heads that he's a DM that likes killing PCs. And when we got into combat he made me tally up initiative and keep track of turns cause he outright said he's too lazy to do it himself. We all still had some degree of fun at least, and I'm glad he was upfront about his DMing "style," but we are paying a fee to be at these tables so I don't think it's too much to ask for a semblance of professionalism, and maybe reading the module before you walk in the door.
I was one of the people who volunteered to be a DM for these new tables, and this will be my first time DMing for Adventures League, but after seeing that sorry show I am so much more confident in my abilities, at least.
videos like these always help me when i begin to think im a bad dm
I once had a DM who ran his adventures where EVERY encounter with enemies was " you round the corner and are facing ..." Or "around the corner steps a..." It sucked at that point. My brother and I had been in games with him before as another player.
We actually worked out a shared world, where 4 of us rotated as DM, and everyone who wasn't DM had their party members and over the course of a couple months, we all learned things from each other's DM style. (The party rotated based on who was playing)
I have had some bad DMs in my day, but the worst was the significant other of a friend of mine in the group. They were pretty new to dming, but they wouldn't take any advice from the more experienced people. Consequently our characters got stranded and we didn't have any idea what to do next. We were in the underdark and the reasoning behind it was literally "a wizard did it." We gave the dm a fair few sessions , but they never really gave us motivation to do anything. We all ended up just leaving the group.
A DM once dropped a magic shop on my bard because he was getting pissed off at me talking my way out of every situation.
We were at a magic shop, I found a singing sword that also took control of my mind (no save allowed). It forced me to dance and sing with it as the entire magic shop began to collapse. The rest of the party got out but my bard died.
if they are genuinely your friend and you fail to call out your friend on their bs then you aren't their friend. it should be ok to say dude you're doing this badly and it's not fun. there should be a reachable middle ground and if there is none to be had then you both move on.
Just word it a bit more flowery.
MY DM made a point of killing all rogues the adventure they appeared. He also wanted to kill a character (except his wife) at least once every other week, Sometimes he would get lucky and kill two in one week. Uggh . And we were using 4th edition.
What the hell
I just don't get why DM's kill players... I find it so much more enjoyable, to give them everything they ever wanted... Then watch the players heart snap as they have to retire their badass character into my control in the background.
My facing with the killer dm was if you began going off the wall with what he didn't want you to because of plot holes that broke the story he threatened to drop a terrasque on the party. This happened somewhat often, eventually just began calling his bluff and played on.
Worst DM i ever had was unfortunately a close friend of mine. He took over as DM when our first one had to step down because he didnt have time to plan sessions, so they switched. This guy was extremely disorganized, showed favoritism, got annoyed when we didnt do what he wanted us to, and even tried to kill one of our characters out of sheer spite. He was particularly fond of our druid, in his mind the druid could do no wrong, he awarded him about 3 inspiration per session for normal actions, and gave him more new equipment/items than the other 3 of us combined. One time he awarded him inspiration for being "well rested" after we took a normal every day rest.
He also had a bad habit of playing our characters for us. There were times where we had to sit and listen to him talk for 30 minutes on end, describing what each of us was doing. If we tried to make a roll for something he would tell us to wait, but by the time he finished talking so much had happened there was no point anymore.
The last session we had with him he and our monk got into a big argument. Our monk had recently gotten his personal healing ability (wellness of body or something i think). The monk was close to death and decided to use it for the first time. DM told him it was OP and he wouldnt allow it. We eventually took a group vote and DM was out voted 4 to 1. Ten minutes later we killed the monster we were fighting, which according to DM fell on our monk, killing him instantly, no saving throws, no warning, no damage, just instant death. After that session we did some backroom democracy and quietly excluded him from any future sessions. Our ranger took over as DM and tyrant DM has not been involved in our sessions since. We also resurrected our monk and stripped our druid of 11 inspiration by unanimous decision.
I have a story about an inexperienced DM. It's not DnD but his own system. He has a lot of story telling experience and is a massive gamer, but he never had the communal experience of tabletop roll playing. I did my best to guide him along but the game fell apart after he made some horrible errors:
1. He rushed the story way too fast. We, a pack of strangers, were hired by a seemingly all-powerful man (anything we tried to do off script was rejected in one form or another), and then we were on a train. Then a boat with a very strange captain, whom we all disliked a LOT. We tried to figure out how to make the ship our own but then Elf Pirates came out of no where. So our new plan was fight off the pirates, take THEIR ship, and be done with the strange captain. But then a Kracken came along! And we had nearly won the battle with the Kracken when suddenly lightening! And that was ONE SESSION.
2. In the next session, we were on an island, all separated - he hadn't even given us a chance to form bonds and now we were all off on our own mini-adventures. We had only one reason to seek each other out again - and that was because we recognized our powers and strengths and needed each other to get off the damn island. The island was filled with magical creatures and humans with different factions and a witch ruled over all of them . . . and it would have been an interesting place, if it wasn't for the fact that we were all ready pissed at how little control we had over the events. And the strange captain survived the ship wreck, the f'ing turd, and when my character tried to shoot him, I roll a 20 and basically nothing happened. He doesn't have nat 20s in his game, but that was STILL the absolute best my character could do and all I did was knock him out of the tree.
We played three or four sessions but it fell apart. I talked with him between sessions and it was clear that he was struggling with telling his story vs. telling the player's story. He's a good guy but his inexperience with tabletop in general was so evident.
I've been in games sort of like that more times than I care to admit with the same 2 DMs. I guess I'm a slow learner. Admittedly, they are good friends, but they're terrible DMs.
Both of these DMs have THEIR story that they're going to tell in THEIR game come hell or high water. The players' decisions be damned because they don't matter at all. What the DM wants to happen is what happens. What is absolutely infuriating about them though is that when they play in someone else's game, they do everything possible to intentionally disrupt the story and then complain about "railroading" when they experience the natural consequences of their actions. In other words, they do the sorts of things in other people's games that they'd never let someone even attempt in their own games.
Its a game and games exist so folks can have fun together. If no fun you must run.
Anyone can be a bad DM if they make the mistake of thinking they can control to much of the story and failing to account for the fact that sometimes the players just won't be lead through it. For instance, a DM in my group drew us up a map of this land we were in, and showed us where we were and where we were going, with all of the towns laid out in an L shape with a huge expanse of wilderland in the middle. Not surprisingly, since the DM told us that time was of essence, we decided to skip all the towns and cut across the wilds to the destination, since all the towns in the area were ruled by an anti-magic religious government, and we were a bard, a sorcerer, and a druid, so we had enough "the party has to deal with a problem without revealing their magic to the local authorities" story beats just in the first town. The DM proceeded to spend a huge amount of energy trying to bludgeon us back onto his intended course, including accidentally randomly waking up a sleeping gargantuan Green dragon, a mimic disguised as a fallen tree, and a Sun Dragon we never got a spot check to see.
Old vid, most villanous DM thing I did is an antimagic room trap... filled with undead Rust monsters. Since undead are not stopped by antimagic (unlike constructs). We are in a high magic setting with a lot of enchanted gear. The fighter had to swap to a bow instead of PAM spamming for a while.
At the same time this acted more like a puzzle with the easy solution of Turn undead.
I had a DM who was constantly handholding the party with level 20 NPCs for the entire adventure. When it ended the party was level 9 and there was a level 20 NPC helping us out nearly every step of the way in most major encounters...
so your group was just helping the real heroes then?
TheBronf Yup, first chance I got for my character to die I took it and opted not to reroll. apparently he ended the campaign by having one of his level 20s cast wish to undo the whole conflict starting the party back at the beginning of the campaign Zelda OoT style... Funny part is the DM fancies himself a good author. /Sigh...
James Marino should of tried to prevent his heros from doing there jobs then. would of been funny lol.
Yeah, there is a difference between being a good 'author' and being a good DM. One writes books and only has to focus on the world and characters he has created, using his own logic and choices. The other has to create the world and characters for the players to actively interact with... I think it's okay for DMs to set up a story arc that can happen, but more often then not, they need to alter, and improvise, based on the actions and choices of the players.
All good DM's are authors in their own respect, but not all authors are good DMs. Hopefully your DM learned from his mistakes. That's the only way any DM will ever improve.
As a regular GM, my number one fear is becoming a bad GM. So much so that I regularly discuss whatever game I am running with the players to figure out what they are wanting.
I dislike meta-gaming, so I try to limit it, but using a little meta-gaming here and there to help fix problems can be very useful. For example, I am running a Song of Ice and Fire Roleplay game, and all but one of the characters was a noble. Due to the nature of the universe, that character gets locked out of a lot of the interactions that the other PCs could engage in.
I talked to the player and he was beginning to get frustrated by this. So I told him that I would resolve it next session.
Next session comes, and I had set up a brief scenario where he saves a noble's life, and that noble decides to get him a knighthood. He gets knighted, and finally no longer has to wait in the stables while his friends play the Game of Thrones.
P.S. He very nearly ruined the moment, because after receiving a hard dubbing blow, his knighter says "let that be the last blow you let go unanswered." He has the gall to go "Can I please answer the blow?"
I told him he could either retcon that line and keep his new found status, or start rolling a new character as he has just been freshly liberated from his head.
He chose retcon :)
My First GM was a college classmate and an aspiring author. He was running his first even campaign, and well there were several red flags that I with newby rose colored glasses ignored. One of which was story he was having us play in the current book he was writing. Now that sounds cool at first, but he was such a control freak that I'm very surprised he didn't end up giving us as players a damn script. Seriously it was like no amount of character choices or player agency mattered, because if we tried to do anything even remotely of topic or unexpected he shut us down. For example my character (who I really enjoyed) was a bear paladin ( a class I was forced to play, in fact most players were assigned classes in this game) was well versed in alchemy, he tried to invent an explosive similar to dynamite and rolled a natural 20. He was able to make 6 sticks, but had the memory erased from his mind immediately nor could he give the dynamite to anyone to be studied because the dm was pissed. He also contastly made the party fight impossible creatures or challenges only to have one of his epic book NPCs save the day. And when ever he got slightly pissed off he would literally throw things around the room. And he was a self entitled person that when I was putting together another campaign he had tried to appoint himself the Co-DM and tried to manipulate what I was doing. It got to the point that I had my beloved character kamakzi a dragon so I could leave the campaign. Apparently other player felt the same way because two more left his by teleporting themselves out of the universe.
I have had some horrible players, but not DM's. Most DM's I have had have been excellent storytellers and incredible imaginations with a love of the game and it's complexity.
I'm currently in a group that I might leave because of the constant combat, theres little room left for anything else. Fortunately though its an online group and I often have tech issues so I can use that for my reason for leaving
my GM just amputated another party members leg off with an explosion, without a dexterity save or anything, is that a bad GM?
Well, if it's an immediate trap that happens, for instance you step on a pressure plate and it triggers a thing that amputates your leg, if you don't have a high enough passive perception, you could just miss it therefore not being able to dodge it because you don't know it is there. Also I have been amputated for walking into a mimic door that had teeth for some reason, I'm not sure what that was about but it was weird and it added flavour so I didn't question it.
I can understand having consequences for actions, but maiming a player's character in a way that effectively nerfs them permanently or makes them unplayable is bad form, in my opinion... NPCs on the other hand is fair game, so long as it drives home a point or story.
To directly answer OP: Yes.
I'm kinda repeating a bit of what Christian said here, but IMO a player should only be killed or "permanently" crippled outside of combat if the player does something really stupid (or has a _very_ long string of bad rolls). It probably makes me a softy I know, but I equally won't say that's the way everyone will want a game to run. That being said things become more acceptable when the party gains access to methods of healing it - so losing a leg is fine for a level 15 party who can just ask the cleric nicely to prepare regenerate tomorrow, but not for a level 3 party where the player might as well roll a new character.
To go to the given example: Whatever did that should have been 1) preventable via reasonable player action (eg expecting a party to check for traps in a dungeon is reasonable; expecting them to do it in a busy street is not); and/or 2) preventable via roll (probably reflex save); and 3) within the party's reasonable means of fixing; unless it was caused by doing something monumentally stupid like playing hopscotch in a well-signposted minefield.
All of which can be summarised by the following: "DM should be fair".
Another dm that you didn't mention is the dm that takes away power from the players. I had a dm that didn't allow actions durning some parts. Which is mostly fine but things like,"no, you can't cast fly because of reasons"
That's kind of in the vein of the DM that makes up kooky rules though. -Nerdarchist Ryan
Had a terrible GM in uni, at least as far as roleplaying is concerned. It was a large group so I could understand him not wanting a single character to hog too much of the spotlight, but I had from the outset said that because the others were making combat-oriented characters (two old hands that powergamed like mad and four newbies who were being mentored by said old hands), I was going to make a pure social character, and he was into the idea.
Our first "quest" so to speak was a plan to swindle the local law for the bounty money on the group leader's head, so we decided I'd do the talking, convince the guards that we were handing him in and get the bounty money, while the others busted the guy out. Cue the guy being taken to jail, busted out of jail after a six-round combat, taken to the other side of a moderately-sized fortress, another ten-round combat, climbing up to the top of a tower, stealing a bunch of giant eagles, then flying all the way over to our ship, in the time it takes me to cross a room to the chief of police's desk, so I got zero time to roleplay and didn't even manage to start negotiating to get the bounty. Even the other players called him on his shit, and I just outright left.
Well in your old DM'defense, was your character walking in slow motion to go talk to the chief of guards? 😜 A problem of some DMs' is they get preconceived notions of the players HAVE to resolve a situation. It's not terrible to have some ideas of what the players might do, but they shouldn't feel anchored to these ideas. -Nerdarchist Ryan
Oh he knew what I was doing, and that I was trying to get it done as quickly as possible. Later on people told me he'd been deliberately stopping RP from happening the whole game.
I had a DM one time who was trying for a kind of "let the dice decide everything" approach to the game, which was fine, but he made some calls that were so bad I had to leave the game. Things that could've easily been avoided or mitigated or if handled differently actually would've made things much more awesome, but he chose to handle it in an extremely poor way.
First off, we were playing this homebrew story that was extremely railroaded - after we cleared the first dungeon, our characters were literally chased from the first town to the next 3 towns by the advent of eldritch horror tentacle monsters falling from the sky at the whim of a mad being from the far realm, which was really frustrating after 3 sessions of this because all the PCs felt powerless. I get the idea of introducing a big baddy to the PCs when they're too low level to do anything about it and are beneath it's notice, but 3 sessions of this was just ridiculous. As we went on, there was actually a really interesting bit of roleplaying going on between my gnome rogue and a character playing a pantheistic monk - he decided that my rogue was a member of his pantheon and started worshipping him. My rogue was at first really weirded out by this, but eventually came to feel responsible for the monk in a way and it was a very fun inter-character thing going on. So we go into this random cave on our way to find some people who may be able to help us figure out what's up with the whole death from the sky happening in every town and clear out the monster and end up having a harmless bit of roleplaying about the whole monk worshipping my rogue thing, so the DM decides that because of this we (barely 2nd level PCs mind you) somehow manage to open a planar portal in this cave and get sucked into gods know where by giant tentacles. This was annoying and I disagreed with penalizing us for a fairly interesting but ultimately irrelevant bit of roleplaying, but the next session was where I finally decided to leave.
We had a PC who, due to some scheduling issues, had only made it to like 1 or 2 of the 5 or so sessions of this. The DM dropped us into this interplanar gladiator slave pens thing and had some crazy beings capturing things from across the planes and dropping them into a ring to fight to the death. He was letting the dice decide who got dropped into the ring when - and through the first 3 (of 5) PCs no two PCs had to enter the ring together. The last dice roll ended up having our rogue and the missing player (I think she was a cleric - can't remember) in the ring at the same time. The two PCs both survived and refused to kill each other, so the DM had the beings running the arena execute the absent player's PC while she wasn't at the table (we were playing on roll20, but you get it). That was the last straw for me. I got my character killed and left - but that was the moment I decided to start my own campaign. The DM could so easily have simply had the absent PC end up somewhere else and dropped her back in when the player was able to reliably make it to the sessions and probably had her save our asses after her own harrowing escape or something, but instead he chose to kill a character while their player wasn't even at the session. And it wasn't like the player wasn't ever coming back (at least nothing like that was ever communicated to the players about that). It just seemed to me to be totally unnecessary DM cruelty there. If we were in the middle of a dungeon or boss fight, and there was no narrative way to remove the PC from the party and they had to miss a session and someone assumed control of their character and they just had a bad break with dice or something that's one thing in my book, but this was so pointless and overlooked such an obvious way to have a cool narrative reason for their being missing that could ultimately play out, it just really turned me off to that DM and that game.
Bad Dm.... Is it a personality conflict. I had one friend who was great to play PCS along side with but the moment I DMed, he was person who had 80% of rules challenges. I changed the rules DM. Ask for the rules and house rules. RUN AWAY if the person hands you a 6 inch thick notebook of house rules. aka I smarter than Gary. Talk not during the game to ask for changes. And always you can Run Away and just socialize with the Bad dm on video/ board game night.
So there were 4 of us including my brother running a game with a friend who is a new GM. We go into a dungeon at the very beginning and there are literal mountains of gold guarded by some pretty challenging enemies. The enemies at hand weren't too strong but the lack of teamwork on our end left me to tanking all of the damage, and killing half of the hostiles at the bottom of the steps. After clearing that. my brother and I took some gold back outside and stashed it in the woods. wile we did this the other 2 on our team got greedy for loot and ended up getting one of them killed. We spent half our gold and then they laid claim to the rest "which I don't mind due to my knowledge of a high level wizard living down there". Well we agreed to take all we could carry back with us for assisting them in the dungeon. We cleared it and the wizard appeared to congratulate us for surviving. The one of the other players shot him and was instantly killed... we decided to just abandon them since they lacked any common sense and we ran with as much gold as we could carry. The amount was 15,700 and we rode off back towards town and that's where the session left off. I had told the dm that I planned to purchase some property and maybe some supplies to have a small business of my own to sustain ourselves when not adventuring. The GM then messaged me emphasizing that he planned on stripping the gold from my person by unconventional means. I had literally picked a ton of spells just for carrying gold for nothing...
Our bad DM made the story and everything about the NPC's and made the players feel like bit part in his story. The worst part was he used to be a great DM and is a good friend.
As the Angry GM says "I'm not friends with my players, that would be a conflict of intrests"
In our group we take turns at being DM and when we told one guy that he's a killer DM his first response was "What? No way!". But after explaining the circumstances about what makes him a killer DM he rather took pride in it.
Also, a killer DM isn't necessarily bad. If the players are onboard with that at least one will probably die each session and the DM will keep that hope up that there's a chance and it's not all on the dice. Then it can still be fun.
Of course it also have to fit the setting. Like, it works better with some postapocalyptic survival and keep your settlement healthy game, rather than a classic fantasy fellowship travel game.
I'm the DM of our group, in this group are only good friends and my girlfriend, everything was great (we had 8 players, which was quite taxing on me, but i managed) but one session everything went up shit creek without a paddle, everybody lashed out at one another, including me, ill admit shamefully, and now the group has 5 players... But everybody is happy. Moral of the story, sometimes if people wanna quit, let them quit without contest, it tends to solve problems and prevent DM burnout.
Got something of a "bad GM" situation that I'm dealing with myself and could use some advice. The GM let us create our characters, with backgrounds and brief backstories, then promptly shoehorned us into his story, even to the point of retconning our backstories to have us be townspeople in the town that the campaign is focused on. On top of that he gave one player an item and let him recruit a Goblin to train as a "sorcerer's apprentice" and create the character, then promptly took control of said apprentice away from the player, and generally made several inconsistent rulings towards him compared to other players. He's gotten to the point where he's considering walking away from the group.
There is a such a thing as tough love and good communication can salvage an faltering group. I would always encourage people to air their issues first, provided everyone's an adult about it.
I became a DM as I like my games to have a lot of freedom and I've met too many DMs who are trying to tell a linear story.
My DM I feel is a bit weird. We get to level up pretty steadily, and the party has fun, but the main enemy, a godling lich, is pretty much indestructible. You kill him? He comes back because he's a lich. You wanna wish some kind of way to kill him? He just won't die the way you want because you didn't *word* the wish good enough. It's just annoying, and every time we encounter the Lich, I know it will never end well, because you literally can't kill him
I may have talked about this in another video, but now that you mention it; I had an experienced in college where the DM pulled homebrewed classes and races from the D&Dwiki. The setting was based on the Fairy Tail anime, and there were Kitsunes, and Dragonslayers. I was expecting it to be traditional D&D, so I took a half-elf bard. Long story short, the DM purposely skipped me, during combat, because I was the only character that didn't have Darkvision.
Half elves have darkvision...
In 5th edition. This was 3.5, where half-elves have Low-light Vision.
+Nykolo Abarai That's pretty lame.
Not really, it's a little more realistic, and helps with role-playing (in my opinion). Most creatures with Darkvision are those who make their homes underground, such as Dwarves. Elves (except Drow) never lived underground, but they can still see better than a normal Human.
+Nykolo Abarai I guess
It really depends on what game you want... but i'll be saying this up because the major problem is always because of the question all DMs askes... Never ask your players what they want game wise, because all they will always tell you is the same useless thing, like god mix of role play and combat. that is totally useless. when a DM ask you what you want from the game, he actually askes you what type of game you want. do you want a lovecraftian game, do you want a video game like venue where you just dungeon crawl. do you want game of thrones stuff.
so tip number one as a player,
- never tell your DM you want a good mix of role play and combat. that doesn't tell him anything about your preferences.
most DMs you find have a game in their head, its not that they wanna be jerks, they just wanna do a game.
problem is, DMing is Power, Power Corrupts.
Tip number two...
- DMs and Players, this is a coop game, not DM versus Players.
We have just recently had a(nother) falling out with our bad GM. Not the first time this has happened, but I think after all these years, it might be the last one, at least in my case. The story is always the same. First 10 games or so of the campaign aren't bad, challenges are reasonable, nothing seems to be blatantly horrible or unfair, and we're actually feeling good about our characters. The party is having a good time.
Then, the "godlings" start showing up. And by that I mean these NPCs that are blatantly power-gamed or otherwise so broken that they completely ruin immersion and completely take you out of the experience. All of his games are like that, and I've noticed it much more keenly since I started gaming with him again about 2 years ago. In Star Wars, even though we did everything to avoid it, no matter what we did, super-powered Sith just kept showing up to face the ONE force user in the party, or on the RARE occasion I actually got to try to be an awesome pilot, I was immediately outmatched (I actually quit that game, not that it actually continued after this, when I saw that my suped-up freighter that I had spent tons of credits on to beef up to the point that I felt like it was the baddest thing flying had the exact same stats as the basic INTERCEPTOR for one of his super-powered factions).
Move on to M&M, where you'd think super-powered things would be okay...nope! We literally had two games that I can recall (when I wasn't zoning out due to boredom) that were almost entirely fighting against a single being, literally for 3-4 hours because it could never fail our saves and we could never hurt it long enough to matter. Only the GM's own super-powered hero could hope to save the day! (Just another reason I don't care for Superman, btw). Even our heroes' debut fight in that campaign was terrible, because we got our asses handed to us by the GM's version of the power puff girls; we just couldn't hurt them. If you ever tried to play a character that didn't have defenses maxed out and didn't have arrays of powers that could basically do anything, you didn't have a chance to survive in these games. The last game of the campaign was so horrible...the big bad for whatever reason deigned our pathetic three player characters as his opponents, and we never hurt him, I honestly think we only landed a handful of hits, and his defenses/PL were so high he just shrugged them off. There were literally two tea breaks in game during this confrontation so that we could talk with the big bad, and it just ended on such a crappy note, completely anticlimactic.
D&D 5E didn't fair any better, as he simply abused the hell out of the monster rules, creating things that were supposedly within our challenge range, but that we could barely hurt and could literally be one-shotted by in some cases. Most egregious were his 'Witcher' knock offs who came after our vampire characters (who may as well have been humans with 18s for physical stats for all the good our special powers did us). None of our vampiric abilities worked on them, they were basically able to make any of our saves, we could barely hit them, they had 3 legendary actions each, were not only immune to poison, but could absorb it, and carried around vials of the most powerful poison to use as haling potions (which was usable as a legendary action of course). Not only that, they showed up in groups of 2-4! For our non-twinked characters (pretty much all but one player's character), this was more than overkill.
Last campaign we played was giving a try to the Fantasy Age/Titansgrave system. Again, things started great. We were digging the new system until about 10 games in (GM had planned 20 games), which is when the 'godlings' started showing up again. One PC was outright murdered by the super-powered big bad, who trapped him in a spell from the Dragon Age system (Force Crush, basically) that he couldn't make the save for. This is when our heavy-armor wearing fighter started getting shut down EVERY fight due to things either pushing him away, tossing him down steps, or otherwise keeping him from getting close at all and forcing him to spend each round moving back to the fight, and for some reason pretty much everything started bypassing armor. My gunslinger's damage was harder to deal with, but that was taken care of the last couple of games by more overpowered spells that pretty much nobody could pass; I spent one whole fight basically trying to kill the party thanks to what amounted to blood bending with a save I had to roll 18 on 3d6 to make. We found out later when the game came crashing down that the big bad's spell save was 24, meaning that the only one who could have saved against it was our tank, who had to roll 15 or better to do so. Our mage (the player who had previously had his character killed off for no real reason other than the GM being a-hole) had had enough by this point and called the GM out on his BS, which prompted him to pick up his stuff and leave.
I honestly can't say I'm sad about it; actually felt kinda good after the awkward silence cleared. Having seen the same pattern still in effect even after not gaming with the guy for several years prior, I can say with relative certainty that I'm not going back for more this time. I'll just content myself running my own games and playing whenever the others manage to run one.
I got a situation where I was 2 sessions doing nothing, I literally just threw the dice 1 time in each ocassion and I wasn't making progress of the story because the master decided to make all NPC talk dead languages, and only one guy knew them, and then this guy only told all the info to the "leader" of the group. They just managed to kick me out of the game just because I complained of liteally having no impact on the story as a PC. Also I knew the master for 6 years. Now he's condemned in every other game we play.
I have asked of other D&D assistance RUclips pages "what's the best way to run a 2nd edition module in 5th edition? Is there a reference for quicker transition of monsters?" I imagine just taking the time and just typing it out and repopulating it with new monsters using the MM, but just need a way to make the classed NPC go faster. Thanks!
If you haven't already, make sure to ask Matthew Colville. I believe he is currently running a 2e module using 5e rules
You're basically on the right track. As long as the story is the same, the NPCs and monsters are easy to handle for the most part. I just use similar monsters from the MM, and approximate the NPCs with "newer" versions using 5e rules.
You've asked two questions there, and they may contradict each other.
What's the best...
What's the quickest...
If you want the adventure to be accurate, you'll have to go over CR's, and make sure that everything balances out. Orcs of 2E are NOT Orcs of 5E. A 2E Orc was a minion. A 5E Orc will kick your arse and take your lunch money.
If you want the quickest, don't use a 2E adventure. Or reduce the number of monsters in first few encounters and play it by ear.
I always found it easiest to not memorize pre-written adventures and just make my own. There's less reading from pre-written text and more adlib.
to each their own, though.
Thanks! I have an original idea of an adventure, just don't want to slow the action down, plus I have only two weeks to throw it together.
troy nordyke Write down only the key points. Names, locations...that sort of thing. Improv the descriptions. Get an idea of how you want it to look in your head and describe that.
Trust your gut. If you sound like you believe in what you're saying, so will your players.
So I've had a couple of Negative GM experience. The first was an out and out bad GM. We were playing Pathfinder as a group of independent mercenaries being tested by the local kingdom for some kind of quest. We get sent to an abandoned mansion somewhere outside of the capital, and it turned into a meat grinder where it would be a good session if we only lost one character per session. Things like not seeing the ghouls because they were hidden behind a door we had just come in through.
Anywho, we reached the basement, and this is where things got bad. We ran into monstrosities like a perfectly silent Gibbering Mouther, and the fireball that went around corners. When we called this last one out as bullshit even by the rules he just ignored us because Fireballs don't behave that way IRL. so fireball for the party. At this point the party was so demoralised they were talking about leaving. I talked them into giving him one more chance, so I had a word with him, and he said he understood and he'd rethink.
Fast forwards a couple of weeks. Everything is really bad. Demons are everywhere and instead of engaging with his plot we do what sensible low level characters would do and decide to run as far away as possible to gather our strength, or live out our days on another continent cowering in a cave. Suddenly we find all of our options that don't lead back to the story blocked. For instance: We go to a port town and start arranging for passage away. WHen we woke up the next morning all the boats were mysteriously burned down. So we keep looking. We're told about a pirates cove where there might be a boat we could steal, so we go down, only to find pirates in magical platemail with even more bullshit. It is at that point that most of the group decides to quit.
This isnt the only story involving this DM, but from what I gather this group just kept on building characters that were bigger and bigger monsters and still he'd find ways to smash them nearly every session. I eventually got a call from one of them asking for advice because it was becoming too much for them and I advised them to get the group together and suggest that this guy change his behavior and if that failed do what we did and peace out. There is no winning with a person like that.
I am new to D&D although I've played many computer versions. Where I play, the DM's are always asking, "Are you having fun?" I suspect that if players complained, the store would fire them. There are little differences from DM to DM, but for the most part, I have found them all very amenable to what the player's want. Judging by what I'm hearing, maybe I've just been lucky so far. I mean, if a DM maliciously killed my character, I might walk out and never come back. I think people are becoming aware of that in other people and realizing that is a terrible thing - to alienate your customer base.
We've recently heard of instances of people getting paid to run games at shops- there's one near Ted's house, where we film that has "employee DMs". As far as I know, this is a pretty new development- most DMs at gaming stores in times past have been volunteers (though sometimes it happens where people are running games in a public space, but it's basically a private game). Glad to hear that all of your experiences have been positive ones- that's what we need to keep the hobby growing and welcome to it! :) -Nerdarchist Ryan
It's really pretty cool. Every player pays 5$ for a D&D ticket to ride which you present to the DM at the beginning of play. Before I say any more - how great is that? 5$ for four hours of entertainment? But there is more. The 5$ goes into your customer account and can be used as cash in the store. Each DM gets 2$ pay from each ticket so gets paid $12 for running a 6 player game. It's a pretty fantastic-everybody-wins kind of a system. I am going to buy Volo's Monsters out of my store account soon!
Paying a stranger to GM seems like getting a prostitute. All the parts are there, but it's just not the same. Quit paying, and find some friends.
Aside from your absurd and unwarranted attack upon the oldest profession, I don't pay anything to the GM, I get store credit for the money. If you are going to attack people for no reason, at least have a coherent manifesto. And yours is "Find Some Friends"? Okay, I find friends at my local game store. What's your problem?
Murry Witzel if you ate enjoying yourself and have no problem with paying then do so. just enjoy yourself. that's what truly matters.
If you're under water doing things, and there isn't a change with how you have to now alter your solutions to problems due to the new environment, why even bother with being underwater? However, it's also understood having logical flavor is a two-edged blade where you must maintain the system for better and worse.
I've had a bad experience with a WTF DM in my senior year of high school that was very inept and loved to kill his players, it was Pathfinder and I joined in the middle of the campaign and I'm very familiar with the rules for Pathfinder & 3.5, so he designated me as the group's rules lawyer. I tried to do that to the best of my abilities and did contest his rulings multiple times.
He was new so I cut him some slack, but his fickle and inconsistent rulings really sucked on the players' part. He did not allow reflex saves unless you were fighting defensively, low magic steampunk campaign with Thor personally showing up to spout exposition and to kill people that smart talk, and I was the only player allowed to play a spellcaster.
He would often have players do stuff that the characters wouldn't necessarily do, such as having the party drink all the booze in an abandoned tavern and then give penalties on all d20 rolls afterwards. I was having none of that and established my character as a cult leader that did not drink.
He kept track of all the player's character sheets and "updated" them as they leveled, and all he did was give them their increased HP, BAB, and saves, so most of the party were running around in melee against clockwork monsters that explode on death with only their class features and feats from level 1.
I got permission to play an Ur Priest, started as a Lawful Evil Monk, transitioned over to Ur Priest, and then the DM ruled that my caster level = my character level for some reason.
Every other session, 1 of the 7 other characters died and I would use Speak to Dead to make a contract to animate them until I could resurrect them, they never made their Sense Motive checks to see if my character was bluffing, then I cast Animate Dead to turn them into a zombie or skeleton, and the DM ruled I could update their sheets and that they will keep their class levels and the like, they were apparently awakened undead, but couldn't speak and I got final say on what they do?
Needless to say, the undead party members were loving their characters since I added in their class features and feats on top of the skeleton/zombie template.
At no point did I go all out with my character in combat, and even gimped myself in a few combats just to keep it interesting, the party totally forgot I'm lawful evil, Thor doesn't do anything about me animating the corpses of the dead party members, and then I snapped when the final boss was Cthulhu in a campaign that had nothing to do with Cthulhu or Lovecraft in general.
As the party was about to kill off Cthulhu I ordered the undead to stab the living party members in the back and kill them, which they did, and then I nuked them (forgot what spell I used), and I ate Cthulhu.
My DM just constantly nerfs me if I get any sort of proper power. Recently I went through with changing my class and ended up a Marid and he almost immediately changed me back, undoing all the work I had done to get to that point. He also fits well into the WTF DM category based off both his bulls**t rules and his ridiculous plot points. You touch the padlock on the lighthouse with the key and the whole lighthouse morths into a Stargate that takes you to starwars. S**t like that.
To echo another comment below: Talk to the guy; it just might work. Or, offer to run a game, with him as player. Showing often works much better than telling. I don't mean mirror his behavior - show him the game that you and the other players enjoy. You just might win him over. Failing that, it might be time to be heavy-handed or passive-aggressive with the issue . . .
Yeah, we dropped the ball in not mentioning talking it out, but leading by example is great too. -Nerdarchist Ryan
Copying this story from Reddit, on the topic of bad GMs, b/c I found it funny as hell:
"When I first moved to the RPG-devoid hellhole I currently reside in, I decided in desperation to post an ad on Craigslist to see if I could get a group together. It took a couple of weeks, but I finally got enough people that we felt we could make something happen. One guy insisted on being the DM, citing years of experience and familiarity with the material. We're playing AD&D 2e because that's what we had.
We meet up in a lounge/coffee shop to start playing, and this is the first time we've all met in person. It's an eclectic bunch, but they're all mostly normal - except the guy that insists on being the DM. He's about every socially-inept D&D geek stereotype you can think of, and he made a lot of people in the lounge uncomfortable.
We've all rolled up characters beforehand, so we just jump right into play. We're summoned to the castle to meet with the king, and it's at this point the DM informs us that he has his own character that he's playing. I've used DMPCs before, so the decision to have one wasn't a big deal, but it is a surprise because this is the first we've heard of it.
So we're meeting with the king and then the queen shows up and just starts showering the DMPC with praise, calling him the hero of the land and exhorting his accomplishments and it's basically just an awkward few minutes of listening to the DM talk about how awesome his character is. We go on a quest to investigate a nearby mine. Ok, finally some adventure.
Well, it turns out that the DMPC is a level 20 paladin (we're all level 1), and the DMPC proceeds to annihilate all of the enemies in the mine, including one-shotting a Balor and banishing a demon prince back to whatever Hell it came from. All we could do was watch.
We then went back to the castle to tell the king we had cleared the mine, and when the king came out, the DMPC killed him and made sweet love to the queen, declaring himself the new king. The new king then offered us a quest. I don't even remember what that quest was because at that point we all just decided to get up and leave.
It was the D&D equivalent to a guy inviting you over to his house and then forcing you to watch him masturbate for 45 minutes.
That was the last time I RPed with strangers in this town. And that was the worst experience with a DM I've ever had."
is it the DM's fault if the characters decide to split the party 3 to 1 and the 1 member finds the boss room and gets blown to smithereens trying to fight by himself when the other 3 manage to take it down.
If the player refuses to get the parties help I think it's a valid punishment
A little curious, when advising how to deal with problem players, the solution always starts with having a conversation with the player and trying to work out the problematic behaviors. Why is that not put forth as a possible course to take with a problem DM?
Because he will kick you out :p
Plenty of players out there, DM`s are more rare.
What he said. It basically boils down to leaving or taking over the chair. It's a hard truth.
We probably should have started it off with that, but there is a bit of being a monolith to being a DM that if you wished your DM to have a drastically different play style, may be more difficult than a conversation with players. -Nerdarchist Ryan
Nerdarchy Ryan, I've read this twice and still can't follow it. Is your point "It's hard to have that conversation with a DM"?
Mike Gould ,,, I think the point was, it's a lot harder to get a DM to change how they are playing, than a player. It's a lot harder for the The DM to conform to what the players want than vicea versa, but that's ultimately the mark of a good DM. I think? P
I had a killer GM we had fun we all made normal people well with classes but I played a cleric who crafted pots, another a mage who was a school teacher, the druid was a goat herd and so forth and we refused to adventure save do our business after a month he opted to play and I took over. We after a year let him to a pick up game and he was a lot better. I think he figured out we didn't like always dying off with no reason we caused it.
I generally need someone to tell me the odds and ends rules of things. Spells are generally out of my domain entirely, so even my enemies tend to avoid casting. Overall I try to make it fun for the party.
what about cover where you are standing adjacent to the object that gives cover, do enemys still have cover from you.
I got the rep as killer Dm. But I always allow Raise Dead.
I've always been a rules light DM/player and my buddy is a very technical DM/player, we get along very well. He loves when we do Call of Cthulhu very role playing heavy and when he runs dnd I love the technical and tactical aspects of the play esp. combat. His girlfriend is going to try and run something as a very inexperienced DM, but I have a feeling she'll be fine with us there, but is my recommendation of having a pseudo-Dual DM situation where Joel runs to get it started and she can run whenever she is comfortable? I'm second guessing myself and thinking she should start it and be in majority control and Joel just supports her and sometimes DM when she feels the need?
I don't really see myself as a bad dungeon master. I've actually been told by everyone that's played with me that I'm the best DM they've had, so I can't be too evil. But I won't hesitate to kill a player for doing something stupid. One guy in my current campaign usually goes through three or four characters a campaign, and he loves the game. He still loves charging down halls at full sprint in a temple full of traps, so I really don't feel bad about killing his characters. I usually just make sure that my players have whatever knowledge their characters might have (how the weather or whatnot would impact spells, for example), and let them try anything they want. But jumping from the back of one dragon onto another a thousand feet up, while awesome sounding, will end horribly with a failed athletics check.
Oh, and I discovered the best way to resolve PCs attempting to rape another PC, although it did technically involve me deciding to beat a player. I had a game where a new player (female) was playing a cleric or paladin that worshipped Bahamut. Basically, she dropped during a fight, and before giving her a healing potion, the douchebag player tied her up. He gave her the potion, then declared his intentions. I asked if he really wanted to do it, he said yes, so the second he reached out to her, a massive platinum dragon burst forth from the female player's chest. I looked at the offender and just said, "Roll initiative."
I have a bullshit rules call DM who will say a rule works one way when an NPC does it then when I try to do the same thing next week he reverses the rule saying I can't, then follows up by having an NPC do the exact same thing the following week.
When I call him out he says that he's creating a story and the rules work whatever way he says because he's the GM. I should just take whatever he dishes out because he wants the story to go whatever way he has planned out.
The worst GM i've ever had to deal with decided not to tell us anything about what we were going to be doing, giving us no expectations of what we were getting in to when we made our characters. Basically me and the other three people who were making characters made our characters based on combat and their ability to fight. We didn't have a fight throughout the entire session and ended up staying in the school of this world. It was like if dragonball z had only a school episode with zero fighting at all, not a bad idea but very out of place for the characters we made because we didn't know what kind of characters we should have made.
Campaign start. You are walking though a forest and get eaten by a tree. You die. The End. Level 4 party of 4 members gets attacked by a frost worm. My DM informs me the they always go after the smallest target. Guess who was playing the halfling rogue :). Same rogue level 8 is chaotic neutral, kills a random NPC whom was pissing him off. The DM declares the act Evil, curses the rogue removing all of his skill and making all his stats 1. Then he decapitated the rogue with magic invisible assassins before he could notice them.
That's way harsh, and I'm sorry you had to go through that...
The forest part confused me, was that something the DM literally said? Because it sounds to me like he was just tired of DMing... and if that's the case, someone else should step up, lol!
The worm part, I could understand since certain monsters have certain preferences, but the DM automatically killing your character because of a an evil / chaotic action seems way too harsh. That would be something you and all of the players should challenge him on.
For one, is there some rule in your campaign setting that murderers are instantly punished by being cursed and assassinated by invisible ninja reapers? If this isn't a common occurrence then it shouldn't be used as a punishment against your character. Even if that NPC was important to some quest line the DM had set up, there are so many better ways to improvise and deal out consequences to players.
This is just my opinion and preference, but dealing out consequences for any actions, good or bad, should be objective and make sense in the world. For example: you save the farmer from a hungry Bullette that popped up in his fields, you are considered a hero, and the farmer or the town rewards you for your good deeds. Another example: you slay a guard that was harassing you or someone else because things got out of hand, or you lost your patience. The consequence is that now there is a murder to investigate. The city guard look for clues as to who may have killed their comrade, and through eyewitnesses or spells, they find out it was your character. You become wanted in the surrounding area and have to evade the law or pay for your crimes.
Player's choices should be the most dynamic part of the game, and the DM should be willing to be flexible in order to make their choices feel more real and more meaningful. It adds to the story of the game, and gives the DM a lot of material to create more fun adventures and conflicts the party must overcome. It's not about the DM vs the Players. It's about the DM and Players all having fun playing in a living and breathing world that they get to impact. That's just my opinion though.
D&D has issues with magic FIAT deus ex killing. Because in a world withed with too much magic it can be justified. Low magic, or maybe more correctly grittier low fantasy(magic if done well can still be low fantasy) internal rules make those things not happen. Just kill the player the proper way-use plot and allow the dice to decide.
If I was a douche and wanted to off your character, i would have it where a pack of (insert animals/creature) are able to attack at night(use them magically under a wizard if need be if wards and watch are high) scatter the party and leave your character to fend off the biggest challenge. If you succeed maybe I don't pick on you and you get some fame and a meta story to tell. If you don't at least I gave you a chance though a slanted one and likely a meta story to tell. "If I had just managed to not slip from that tree that character would still be alive blah blah blah"
Watching this because I still have a bit of a grudge on the one time a bad DM was being an exploitative jerk
i don't understand the references to real life friendship, what does that have to do with the characters
with the characters, nothing. with the players, everything.
The problem isn't people getting offended for things that happen in game, it's people getting offended for being told how much they suck at the game. In this video, GM edition.
I'm more of a Chaotic Stupid DM, the stuff I run is quite silly or weird but I'm not a jerk to my players and they get to do funny stuff; I also give them stuff that buffs them because I have homebrew rules that I think are cool
I gave them a heads up beforehand and they are cool with it
I feel like I'm the bad GM. I've never gotten to run d&d (yet, currently world building) but I ran a few games of marvel heroic role playing. My players liked it but I felt like I failed because most of my missions were witnessing what established characters in the world were going through with the PC's help. I have a hard time feeling confident in giving players what I think they don't know they want. I don't even know how to ask without planting spoilers.
It's ok. The only way to become a better GM is to learn from your mistakes. I ran a game for my family for a few years, and I made plenty of mistakes. What's important is that you notice what you or the players didn't like, and then find a way to address that problem or improve it for future games. It can feel discouraging, but if it's something you enjoy then don't give it up. Just keep doing what you can to improve!
there is another kind of GM. the GM that will torture the PC to death but roll not to kill the PC.
Love that thumbnail
What happens if a bad GM is also a lot of fun?
Maybe they are making the game too easy, but giving out lots of freedom.
You enjoy having the freedom to do what you like. Then the characters start doing things that don't make sense for their characters to do. There are places that lorewise it makes no sense for them to go.
A few fudge dice rolls later and it quickly becomes apparent that the GM is adverse to player failure. The players are all having fun, but at the cost of challenge.
It is possible for gamers to have a blast with a poor GM.
Bobby Ranger If you're all having fun, he's not a bad GM.
Fair enough. I was trying to be a "Devils Advocate" and rolled a 1.
:)
In my current game, I play an 8 year old girl (kalashtar wizard) and I play with my core group of longtime friends. Our DM writes great story and the most interesting NPCs but my favorite part is the drownings that he creates, from battlefields to scenes to characters. BUT the dude is just brutal. In 2 sessions my 8 year old black girl has been randomly throw in a stable, raped, straggled to near death, burned at the stake, spellbook ripped apart and burned as kindling, all belongings stolen, taken to a courthouse only to be ignored and thrown in a cage, and then sold as a slave. All this was unprompted. Meanwhile, other characters have been treated nicely and given items.
I don’t know what to do. I invest a lot in my characters and they die after 3-5 sessions.
When I want to leave a game under a bad GM, I just make my character more and more reckless, eventually leading to his or her death. Then just ghost them on coming back!
Thanks, this really helped!
I had a DM that basically railroaded the shit out of us to the point were he set out a map before we were even invloved in the quest to get to the dungeon, he then also messed up some information when we were in a fancy library in a noble district so he said all the info was wrong and it was like the Wikipedia of librarys... just lazy
hmm, your thoughts on dashing requires a full turn, therefore you get no bonus action...........
How do you handle a Dm whose game is just incredibly boring?
Stop playing or find clever ways to make it more fun....i've turned a boringly played intrigue game into a straight up hilarious session.
Are there any universally bad DM behaviours that a group could suggest a new DM to avoid at all cost?
dont make a dmpc ever.
Never be antagonistic towards the characters.
rule of cool is always an option,, don't get bogged down on the nitty gritty.
also sometimes you can pull punches, some evens are awesome cause you just scrapped through instead of tpk.
Don't be a control freak. Foster good communication. Everyone's time is valuable(keep the game moving). Be fair and consistent.
Why would a character know what happens when you cast Fireball under water if he's never tried that before?
Well if they were well schooled in Arcana they may have read the obscure text, Manerva's guide to spells in odd environs~Nate the Nerdarch
My problem with my dm is that he stutters and describes things really loosely, and mostly doesn't understand the rules. I will have to admit though he has the funniest sessions, but I'm more into story telling which he isn't really good at. Should I try to adapt a different mood as I go into a session as he tells the story, or is there a way to help him improve his storytelling so that he makes funny and story filled sessions?
That should depend a lot on the rest of the players: if they like the funny parts, then it's on you to change approach; if they have the same preferences you do, then it's on the DM. (Though admittedly it's more likely for a DM to not have the skill for certain approaches).
How about the DM shusher. Constantly, telling players, "stop talking your not there," or "stop talking your player does not know that." He / she expects you to raze your hand to talk.
hello everyone, i posted this in the wrong vid so nerdarchy might see this twice so...fair warning lol
So myy dm has a country run by an emporor whos basically a god (head of tiamat) with a handful of henchmen that have an infinite gold budget which i know because there is a good and evil side to it. every villian has over 40 AC and can do hundreds of damage per round. there are a few dozen colosal black dragons with a thousand hp because one was the last boss in the previous campaign and we have a lv 10 and 20 to control because campaign sequel stuff. that emporor in this is one of 5 people (heads of tiamat) who can do over 200 points in a turn and to top it off he is railroading. i suspected because we were on the run from the bad guys and he says they found us before i even said where we landed!
i have tried everything from talking to him to trying to overpower my characters to match them but they still dont measure up to anyone on the other side. granted we have overpowered magical stuff but it basically has nothing to do with our characters at that point and we still get wrecked. my teeam is made up of his friend and a girl who does see this and wont speak up because she doesnt like conflict and the other is to trusting of the dm.
i dont think he will let up and he wants whatever dumb ending he has planned to happen so im out of ideas and even considered leaving because im tired of bieng the angry one at the table so if you have an idea or anything please let me know.
what do I do when the GM makes me rebuild my character 3 times 6 sessions into the game because he thinks he misinterpreted the rules and spends hours arguing rules and killing off characters who strongly disagreed?
Save up 50 bucks and get your own DMG, because that's just not okay. Have you tried talking to the guy? You gotta let him know he's abusing his power; and if he doesn't make a concerted effort to fix it, he might not be someone you want to play with.
+Seb M. thanks for the advice I think I will because I'm tired of his crap ^^
Dude, leave that game immediately, or kick him off DM. There's no place for such childish behavior at the gaming table.
Quit. He's a douche. Start your own table and DM for a while. That may give you a better understanding of not only how the game works, but also what players expect and respect. Nothing builds wisdom like understanding. Nothing builds understanding like learning.
Thoughts on an alternative view-point by a less-than-perfect GM :
_He thinks he's misinterpreted the rules_ : He's willing to question himself
_He spends hours arguing the rules_ : He puts time into listening
The players are willing to spend *hours* arguing with GM?
After hours of arguing with a player on rules, plenty of great GM's would have had enough.
He's killing off the characters who don't fit the game he's trying to deliver?
Ok, the guy is reacting badly - immaturely and heavy-handedly.
Is he new? And is he human? We're all fallible.
what should i do if my DM is controlling my life trying to stop me from metagaming by talking about it
i have a dm who ive been playing with for 2 yrs now. in the beginning he was fair and open minded to new stuff to try stuff. so i began to actually go online and show and the fellow players my findings. 2 months ago he told me about something he as a player was using in his own games called templates. i felt kinda jilted. so right or wrong on my part im honestly not sure i began to plot like he the dm outside of the games was my enemy and i began to play information wars, i no point would i ever not let him see my papers but i also didnt tell him when i used things like a template. even with this technical cheating id feel useless as a party member unable to offer anything in or out of game. i presented my concerns and found a veteran of his felt the same. dm made some points to me and now step by step i show him what im doing and what my intent is and he is still hiding things from me and the group. i understand a player never has to tell another player anything about themselves, but if dm balances us and he is a player and doesnt share with the group who balances him?
What's a template? What do you mean about balancing?
Poldovico lycanthropy is considered a template to give an example. An example of balance is everyobe using the same edition. Wizards balance their material to the best of their abilities but when u start making home brew stuff its dm's role to balance it with the world. Also while he was dm he'd play as a player. While we adhered to the rules of the world he would bend and break them as he saw fit.
The thing is that there ARE bad GMs, not just ones with a differing playstyle. my gf's bro for example. is you name micheal? if so you're good because he's gonna pamper you and make every campaign about you. if not he doesn't give a shit and your character'll get tortured and/or killed for no reason other than his enjoyment or daring to not be micheal. I've also had GMs that randomly change the rules FAR more than what ted described (making the same action require a different roll 5 times, say somethign works one time but doesn't later, then does again later because they feel like it, and even that X person can make a roll but another person in identical situation can't for no real reason). there's a difference between being killer GM and just having blatent favoritism or making the rules change constantly for no reason.
like I know the GMs you described exist, but you make it sound like there's no bad GMs. there are. the term may get thrown around more than it needs to, but don't discount the whole concept. and I disagree with the idea of becoming GM to a degree. I've always disagreed with the notion that I have to be a master carpenter to say someone's bad at making chairs. if the thing collapses in on itself then the chair's bad, I don't need to know how to make one to know its bad. now if it's not the style chair you like then suck it up, be glad you have one. but I don't think that someone should have to be ready to DM to point out that the current guy is blantently abusing power. you need to be ready to leave the group if nobody else steps up, but not ready to replace.
but leaving's the only answer to a bad GM. it stinks, but it is. that or kicking him off the GM chair if the whole group agrees.
Yeah, I don't think we touched on the "favoritism DM" too well, which is kinda the "DM's girlfriend" idea. -Nerdarchist Ryan
Nerdarchy I knew there was a term for it! to me they're the major kind of actually bad GM. sorry for the rant, it was a long day and I got a little too passionate XD
what do you do with a DM/GM that is just out right....wrong. For example I was in a game were I played 2 characters. 1 was a savage species demon that a was leveling without a class, it was just a pure demon. The DM forced me to take a class, but not just any class, it was assassin ( oh, and some how said assassin could also cast two 3rd lvl spells...)
The second character was forced to be insane just because. No rolls or anything.
Both characters also ended up with weapons that had # or more magic ablities and a angel and demon (respectively) trapped inside them for about 100gp. All of this was in the first few hours of play.
I didn't play the game again. What would you classify this tpye of DM/GM?
A railroad DM maybe, pretty much make you play the game the way they what you to play it. Hope I answered your question
DEATH ROLLS, DEATH ROLLS, DEATH ROLLS! - DM Steve
CritCrab specializes in sharing stories about Bad DMs and Bad PCs.