Complaints about DMing

[Angry Bob]

I'm halfway through the "Nerfing players makes you a bad DM?" discussion, and it's basically turned into "My fun is better than your fun" and people talking past each other.

So I want to ask:

When have you seen players complain or quit because of something the DM has done? It can be you as a player or DM. How was it resolved, if it was?

Conversely, do you have any single game sessions you remember as having gone very well, to the point of serving(in your opinion) as an example of how a game should be run?

I'd like to ask that you limit it to stuff you've actually seen/done rather than discussing hypotheticals, to avoid this turning into a repeat of the other thread. I want to see what other groups actually put up with or don't.

I'll start. The game I'm running saw some acrimony after I crashed a new character's airship into the game to introduce him, and then ruling that the elemental dragonshard was worth more than it should have been. The party had an agitated discussion about giving one player a lot of treasure. I guess assuming they would split the profits once they got back to civilization was a miss on my part. No one quit, but I see now I probably should have had the dragonshard crack and have the party fight a huge elemental instead of giving them the shard. That way they could split the XP instead of arguing over the treasure.

I'm told there are some other complaints, but for some bizarre reason, I've been unable to hear them. In that case, it's their problem. I can't fix whatever's wrong if you don't tell me.

As a player, I had a phase where I liked to leroy things. That got some unjustified complaints out of me when I inevitably got killed, but I'm still playing with the same group, so I must not have been as obnoxious as I now remember myself being.

The biggest complaint I've had with a DM was the one who ran a DMPC several ECLs above the party who took a share of the loot and XP as a player, and played a huge part in most of our battles, often trivializing stuff that would have leveled us.

That DM actually got better, running a module I enjoyed until I rolled a series of fails that crippled me for the boss fight.

I still feel really bad about ending his campaign with the rant that came after that. As in, I don't think anyone else was complaining, but the fact that I did, for something that wasn't even his fault, made him not want to run it any more.

[kharmakazy]

Our party quit on a DM once after repeatedly trying to explain to him that it wasn't him VS us... and that his goal should not be to beat us at combat. I mean, some people might like to play like that, but we don't. And he would get mad when his monsters lost.

Plus he was constantly retconning everything... and then there were the elaborate puzzles that took the players 6 hours of brute force hacking out of game to get around... since the entire room was magical and impervious to getting around it in any way... and even though I actually solved the puzzle, he didn't like the way I solved it and decided it didn't work.

[Arbane]

Being the kvetch that I am, I've been complaining to our GM about the fact that it seems like everything we fight either has DR or causes stat damage.

Edit to add: The game's not bad otherwise - this just bugged me.

[kharmakazy]

Yeah, I had a DM that, since I had DR 8/adamantine started making all the enemies weapons out of adamantine, culminating with a giant flying island in the sky made entirely out of adamantine. Also no matter where you went, the doors immediately shut and locked behind you...

[PollyOliver]

I've never rage-quit nor had anyone ever rage-quit on me. I've had a few complaints about minor things, and I ran an accidental almost TPK in my first encounter as a DM, but so far nothing major has ever happened. I've also missed a few (bazillion) rulings over the years. I once had to ask someone to stop using one thing mid-campaign, but I let him retrain and he was fine with it.

I've witnessed one example of an actual rage-quit, which was really weird because it was on what I think was my main RL group's hands-down best DM. It had to do with our standard house rules, which the DM had explained to him beforehand. I guess he didn't quite get them, designed something which didn't work the way he thought it did, and then flipped when it didn't work. The DM actually apologized for not explaining the house rules clearly enough and offered to let him completely retrain or redesign the character, but he left and we never saw him again.

I have been once blindsided in a group I was just playing in for a few sessions by a set of house rules that were never explained to me. They not only used the 1 is an autofail on skills house rule but also had a fumble table for skills--and not only that, but used the same fumble table for everything. In the first session, I wound up failing a check I should have made even on the 1, confirming the fumble, and then rolling "instant death". It was, I kid you not, a decipher script check. I was extremely pissed, especially because I was playing the skill monkey of all skill monkeys, a factotum//bard with knack and jack of all trades, and no one bothered to tell me beforehand that you could die from knowledge checks.

The character I came back with almost never made a skill check and specialized in using spells for which he did not have to make any rolls whatsoever. The only rolls I ever made were saves or the occasional ranged touch, and I stocked up on luck feats. I was blindsided with several more rules over the course of that adventure, none of which ended so spectacularly, but vindicated later when another character fumbled an enervation so hard he reduced himself to level 2. Fortunately, my normal group resumed play not long after that adventure was over, because I was still having new rules sprung on me even toward the end.

[Shadowknight12]

When have you seen players complain or quit because of something the DM has done? It can be you as a player or DM. How was it resolved, if it was?

I left several games because the DM wouldn't listen to me. I would find something not to my liking, then I would talk to them privately, start "testing the waters" with harmless questions, then slowly try to manoeuvre the conversation to where I wanted, in order to see if it was possible for the to adjust the game to make it more fun for me. I would, of course, make myself open to suggestions from a DM on how to make the game more fun for him or her (and believe you me, I've had some very picky DMs), so I believed I had a right to expect the same from a DM.

In most cases, it worked. In others, it didn't. In those that didn't work, I'd find an excuse to leave the game. After all, I could think of better ways to spend my free time in.


Conversely, do you have any single game sessions you remember as having gone very well, to the point of serving as an example of how a game should be run?

From my experience in these boards, my playstyle differs significantly from most people here, so I doubt anything I say here will be of much use to anyone.

[Heatwizard]

In the first session, I wound up failing a check I should have made even on the 1, confirming the fumble, and then rolling "instant death". It was, I kid you not, a decipher script check.

That's...welp. So what, the script is so indecipherable that in trying to do so, every blood vessel in your brain pops simultaneously, and you die? Maximized Empowered Explosive Runes?

[PollyOliver]

That's...welp. So what, the script is so indecipherable that in trying to do so, every blood vessel in your brain pops simultaneously, and you die? Maximized Empowered Explosive Runes?

It was fluffed as an extremely dire paper cut. I was tempted to try to inflict a similar wound upon the DM, but sense ultimately prevailed.

[Angry Bob]

From my experience in these boards, my playstyle differs significantly from most people here, so I doubt anything I say here will be of much use to anyone.

To you. I'll edit the OP.

[Saintheart]

I've had a player quit over concerns another player may start doing the "Paladin as Party Policeman" thing. On the other hand, it was cordial enough and at least the player was cool to bail out at the beginning rather than halfway through the campaign.

[Gabe the Bard]

From having just finished a three month campaign as a DM, I think the least enjoyable sessions were the ones where I clung to my notes too much. Of course, those were also some of the earlier sessions when I was still getting the hang of DMing. The sessions that the players seemed to enjoy the most were the one where they veered off the path and made up their own story. That required more improvisation on my part, like throwing together an encounter on the fly, or making up an NPC on the spot. The adventure still had roughly the same ending that I had outlined in my notes, but the players found their own way of getting there, which made it much more enjoyable for them.

[Arbane]

That's...welp. So what, the script is so indecipherable that in trying to do so, every blood vessel in your brain pops simultaneously, and you die? Maximized Empowered Explosive Runes?

Critical failure on a SAN check, plus a mispronounced syllable causes you to summon Cthulhu? :smallbiggrin:


They not only used the 1 is an autofail on skills house rule but also had a fumble table for skills--and not only that, but used the same fumble table for everything. In the first session, I wound up failing a check I should have made even on the 1, confirming the fumble, and then rolling "instant death". It was, I kid you not, a decipher script check.

:smalleek:

I think that game may actually beat out RoleMaster (aka RollMaster) for Worst Critical Failures.



The character I came back with almost never made a skill check and specialized in using spells for which he did not have to make any rolls whatsoever. The only rolls I ever made were saves or the occasional ranged touch, and I stocked up on luck feats. I was blindsided with several more rules over the course of that adventure, none of which ended so spectacularly, but vindicated later when another character fumbled an enervation so hard he reduced himself to level 2.

:smalleek: :smallconfused: :smallfurious:

Yeah, I had one D&D game where the GM loved making us all suffer when anyone rolled a 1. I resolved that if I ever played in her game again, I'd make everyone ELSE roll dice, not me.

Oh, yeah - I didn't quit her game, I got asked to leave on the ground I wasn't enjoying it and was ruining it for everyone else. This was true:

* We all met in a jailcell - as zero-level peasants, after a year of horrible torture by Drow. We only managed to escape to the surface by UberNPC charity, the start of a continuing trend. :smallfrown:
* All the "quirky" dingbat NPCs were about 10 levels higher than us. Can't reason with them, can't stab 'em to death. :smallwink:
* We were on an (allegedly) "Save The World" quest - I couldn't help feeling if it was REALLY important, one of her many UberNPCs would be doing it, not us lowlife.
* 6th level characters vs. a Beholder. A slightly gimped one, I think it could only use 1 spell a round, but they were all still Save-or-Die/Lose. :smalleek:
* Then there was the whole business with her husband's character's gay Drow stalker. That guy was a disgrace to Chaotic Evil. :smallbiggrin:

I got booted the session before the other PCs got to... be bailed out by a bunch of NPCs, followed by an EPIC.. tour of a castle. I think I may have dodged a bullet.

At least I'm still friends with the DM, who's a great gal. I just think she's a bit too fond of Her World.


Yeah, I had a DM that, since I had DR 8/adamantine started making all the enemies weapons out of adamantine,

I hope you at least made some extra cash selling all your enemies' weapons. Adamantine ain't cheap. :smallamused:

[Big Fau]

I've quit because of bad DMing myself, but have never had a player quit on me. Mostly because the people who would be offended by my DMing style moved to a different coastline.


I'm actually more prone to not being able to DM than I am to having players get upset (save for when a problem stirs between the players themselves).

[Arbane]

It was fluffed as an extremely dire paper cut. I was tempted to try to inflict a similar wound upon the DM, but sense ultimately prevailed.

Do you mean they managed to talk you out of maiming the GM, or that they dropped the stupid fumble rule? (I'm too pessimistic to assume it's the latter.)

[kharmakazy]

I hope you at least made some extra cash selling all your enemies' weapons. Adamantine ain't cheap. :smallamused:

I stole every bit of it I could carry, and tied ropes around the rest and dragged it behind me. Adamantine door? More liek oversized adamantine tower shield m i rite?

She gave me "that look" when I took the adamantine spikes from the spike trap and used to to climb and spike doors and things.

[PollyOliver]

Do you mean they managed to talk you out of maiming the GM, or that they dropped the stupid fumble rule? (I'm too pessimistic to assume it's the latter.)

Neither (and definitely not the latter). They were very clear each time a new rule came up that it both stood and that there were "no takesies backsies", and whenever I asked what other rules I was missing, I'd get a one or two but apparently never the whole list, because new ones kept popping up from time to time. The fumble table was really the only big one, but the mere fact of it was really obnoxious. I managed to talk myself out of maiming the DM, however difficult it was. I hugged my normal DM when I got him back. He was confused.

[kharmakazy]

Do you mean they managed to talk you out of maiming the GM, or that they dropped the stupid fumble rule? (I'm too pessimistic to assume it's the latter.)

He means he calmed down and decided not to physically harm his DM.

[Rogue Shadows]

I'm halfway through the "Nerfing players makes you a bad DM?" discussion, and it's basically turned into "My fun is better than your fun" and people talking past each other.

It did become that, didn't it? I've decided not to post in it anymore after being able to leave on a high nore.


When have you seen players complain or quit because of something the DM has done? It can be you as a player or DM. How was it resolved, if it was?

...quit or become angry? Nope. Not once. Players have been angry at the dice, or the rules as written, but never directly at the DM, in a game I've run.

The closest is when, as a new DM, I had my PC's fight a trio of incorporeal monsters when they were totally unprepared to fight incorporeal monsters, without realizing ahead of time. Even then the anger wasn't really at me per se, as much as it was at the situation.

Still, it was years before I felt brave enough to try and run incorporeal monsters again.

Me as a player? ...no, not really. There was this one Star Wars campaign that ended with a kind-of-depressing TPK, which I later learned was the DM making the fight deliberately unwinnable.

Even then, the DM managed to construct the TPK very well, very epic - and we still almost won thanks to massive damage rules, as an Ewok laden with frag grenades and thermal detonators who decides to pull a pin and hug an evil Sith witch deals a lot of damage. Just not...quite...enough.

I was the last one to die, specifically, by self-destructing our (landed) ship's hyperdrive in a last-ditch effort. Didn't quite work. Sith witch still survived.

I'd probably be more annoyed still, if not for the fact that the act of the TPK made the Sith witch that much better an antagonist when we did Star Wars Campaign Episode II.


Conversely, do you have any single game sessions you remember as having gone very well, to the point of serving as an example of how a game should be run?

A single session? No.

A whole campaign?

YES.

My most recent one, based off of Kingdom Hearts. All the players became completely immersed in their characters. Decisions were made based on what was best for the characters at every point in the game, with no metagaming at any point.

This was the first time I'd experienced such character immersion in a game I ran, so I found it immensely fun.

No particular experience as a player, except insofar as I was also an active PC in the above KH campaign.

[Zale]

In the first session, I wound up failing a check I should have made even on the 1, confirming the fumble, and then rolling "instant death". It was, I kid you not, a decipher script check.


Am I a bad person for thinking that's the funniest thing I've read all day? :smallconfused:

[Rogue Shadows]

Am I a bad person for thinking that's the funniest thing I've read all day? :smallconfused:

No. That's hillarious as long as it doesn't happen to oneself.

:smallbiggrin:

(For the record...seriously? Decipher Script? Please tell me it was at least written in R'lyeh or Mi-Go or something...)

[Arbane]

They not only used the 1 is an autofail on skills house rule but also had a fumble table for skills--and not only that, but used the same fumble table for everything. In the first session, I wound up failing a check I should have made even on the 1, confirming the fumble, and then rolling "instant death". It was, I kid you not, a decipher script check.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3221/2914543497_e2df96b114.jpg

[PollyOliver]

Am I a bad person for thinking that's the funniest thing I've read all day? :smallconfused:

Yes.

Well, no.

I probably would have found it funny in different circumstances (say, a humor campaign), or if I hadn't spent so long designing a mid-level gestalt character to basically be able to make every skill check ever and had an entire table of people who knew the rule not say anything when I explained my character concept. Every additional house rule was more and more upsetting until a certain point at which I stopped taking the game at all seriously. It was difficult to suppress my laughter when the wizard's player enervated himself, especially since he was the one who told me there were no "takesies backsies" after I committed unintentional suicide via paper cut. In retrospect, I find it alternately enraging or hilarious, depending on my mood. But I was pissed as all heck at the time.

Edit: That picture is awesome. And Rogue Shadows, nope. Ancient elven, as in the ancient form of a language I actually spoke. Like I said, I should have auto-made that check without the house rule.

[Zale]

No. That's hillarious as long as it doesn't happen to oneself.

:smallbiggrin:



I honestly would have thought it was funny even if it did happen to me. Epic Failure sometimes makes me laugh.

I would have fallen out of my chair. :smallbiggrin:

[Rogue Shadows]

snip

Chapter One: How to Kill People With Explosive Runes.


I honestly would have thought it was funny even if it did happen to me. Epic Failure sometimes makes me laugh.

I would have fallen out of my chair.

...yeah, I would have too, if I had known about the houserule beforehand.

[NecroRick]

When I was much much younger I had a huge series of arguments with a DM over their decision to make one weapon immensely much better than it should have been and thereby unbalance the game.

Problem was, they were a sensationally good DM in all other respects, and in retrospect it wasn't worth killing the campaign over a rules interpretation, even if it did unbalance the game.

Since then, I look sadly upon the people who get so caught up in the pristine and unsullied nature of the holy and inviolate 3.5 rules, that a single one not 'right' will cause them to rage quit. The truth is that the rules are a filthy tramp that will sleep with anyone for a dollar and leave you itchy in the morning. They are not nice and tight, they are so wide and loose you could drive a demi-plane through them. They are not things of beauty, they are ambiguous and appalling. The rules get up in the morning and the DM applies make-up to them with a trowel, but they still look like Drew Carey's nemesis.

I've seen people rage-quit because another player dared to disagree on a rules interpretation, even if the DM backed their interpretation. Which is bizarre - they got what they want, right? Except they are unable to even contemplate sharing an imaginary world with anyone who thinks that it should work even the most miniscule fraction slightly differently.

I see people here with glee discussing their Candles of Invocation tricks and I feel nothing but pity. The truth is no DM worthy of the name is going to let that work. By getting emotionally attached to some feature of the game that you plan to abuse, you're just setting yourself up for rage quit / disappointment. But people scream "Raw raw! The holy Raw!" - and the same people are the first to stab the Raw in the back and trample its corpse in the mud when it suits them.

----

With respect to DMs causing trouble I find that the DMPC is the first bad sign.

[kharmakazy]

Had a DM run a game once who opted NOT to tell any of the players his houserule that ALL summoning spells had a percentage of accidentally summoning a very angry angel and or demon.

Oh, and clerics are unable to raise dead and any undead created poof after a few rounds.

Oh, and neglected to tell me that my character, who was designed around worshiping the dragon god IO RP wise, well he was SOL because there were no gods in his game.

Oh, and if any of the players ever say the word "Ash" then a god slaying demon thing would take over their characters forever.

We quit that game too.

[Shadowknight12]

To you. I'll edit the OP.

Well, you said "as an example," so I doubt that what I think was particularly good can be used as an example. An example of what, exactly?

[Lord Ruby34]

Oh, and if any of the players ever say the word "Ash" then a god slaying demon thing would take over their characters forever.

We quit that game too.

Wasn't Ash the name of the character that Lanky ran with Psycho DM?

[Mastikator]

When have you seen players complain or quit because of something the DM has done? It can be you as a player or DM. How was it resolved, if it was?
No, I've been a player where there's been a conflict between one player and the DM (based on the description of what his character does and the DM's decision on the consequences).
But never when I've DM'ed, so far I've used the players's experience as measure for the success or failure of my campaign and role as DM, and so far to me this has proven to yield positive results. I found some tricks that makes the players happy, so far without negative consequences.
I always ask them if they are happy with my DMing, this is something all DMs should do no matter the playstyle.


Conversely, do you have any single game sessions you remember as having gone very well, to the point of serving(in your opinion) as an example of how a game should be run?
Not session, but campaign; the current one I am running right now uses several loose ties left from previous campaigns from previous DM's AND uses the background stories of all the players. This seems to make them very involved and I've even received a "well played Mr DM" moment from one of my players. This has been a learning experience for me.

[Draconi Redfir]

*snip*

I lol'ed, hard.

I've never left a campain due to not likeing it or anything, i'd occaisionally join someone elses game on weeks were mine wasen't running, but thats about it.

Was slightly ticked off when my red hand of doom DM had my character's people go to "someplace safe in the mountins or something" rather then to the city we were all going to fortify and defend to help out there like i wanted. didin't really feel like i was "part" of the game world and just veiwing it.

Then again the people in question were a few dozen Chokers.

[Kenneth]

Had a player rage quit once over his starting rolls.

I do teh typical 4d6 drop the lowest and arrange to taste. liek I epxlained to him as well as teh rest of the group (All but 3 were 2nd ed players, and we had 1 who had never played before)

said ' its not the stats that make you a hero. it is what you do that deterimnes if you are a hero or not, but if I feel that your character is not up to snuff I will adjust some stats myself, {and by that I mean put a 16 in the prime requisite}

his rolls were as follows not in any order.
16, 17, 14, 12, 12, 10. He said " i need to re-roll my character is useless"

I looked at his stats and said " No" He literally stood up out of his chair and started yelling at me about forcing him to play a worhtless character becuase unless he had an 18 in Cha ( he was a going to be a sorcerer) he waqs completely useless. I tried to explain to him that those stats were AMAZING!!! and that he actually got the best stats of the group. He yelled soem more called me a f*cking **** of a DM' SO i said " get teh hell out of my house arse!" to whih he did but not before slapping our books on the floor off the table.

I have actually ran into this particualr thing more than once. people getting perturbed beucase they don't have an 18, and at least in my expericne it was people who had started playing 3rd ed. ( there must be some kind of crazy stat rolling method for it to give such high crazy stats)

fortunately this one time was the only one where the player actually got angry over it.


As for an amazing campaing. yes ive been lukcy enough to be in dozens, I as a player am pretty free flowing, I recoginize the fact that each DM has a personal style so i adapt, something that greatly helps my own DMing (my adaptability that is)

When there is something about the rules that I do not understand or dislike I tell the DM my point on teh matter. sometimes he sees it my way other times theyd on't but it has never ended in a bad way for me. one time I was suprised (this was a PbP btw) that I got a private mail from teh GM telling me he was awarding me an extra feat becuase he disagreed with teh needed exotic weapon proficiency to use a net., nice suprises are nice.

I knwo ne thing that semi upset a player of mine was that i disallowed Monks and Barbarians. I explain my reasons. I disallowed teh monk because my game campaign world was heavily midieval european, with soem middle eastern flavor tossed in, there was little to no oriental cultures in my world.

I told him that for me the barbarian was not a base class. to me being a barbarianm was just an uncivilized tribesman.

He didn't lik the monk explanation bu t accepted it and when I told him that orcs and half orc get rage as a racial ability and that I turned rage into a feat he was happy with that. ( i already bumped the fighter to having a d12 HP anyways)

[noparlpf]

I think I might be rambling a bit (I just decided to delete a wall of text which ended up pretty off-topic).
Anyway, I think that "it's not personal" is the most important thing to remember (and if that isn't the case, it should be). The character and player aren't the same personal, and people should be able to differentiate. And, hey, winning isn't the most important thing. Enjoying the adventure is. That's partially a choice. You can let yourself get pissed off by that one obnoxious character (And some parties have more than one. My first campaign had two, both of whom where pretty much useless. Luckily, I was a druid and could heal myself while the cleric argued with the bard and the rogue snuck away from battles, and our fighter was pretty good.), or by bad rolls, or you can just say "it happens" and not let it get to you.
Also, selfish characters are unnecessarily common (and often not even in character). Not splitting wealth evenly is really obnoxious and unfair. That's something the DM should watch out for and try to deal with, but mistakes do happen. Maybe something could poison the character who go extra wealth, and while he's unconscious the rest of the party goes on a side-quest to make up for the difference. (I will admit that I have taken a couple hundred extra gp once, but that was because a +2 sword was 8k and I was short a bit, but I fully intended to return the money to the party later when I had more, figuring that if I had a better sword we would be less likely to die and more likely to be able to find more money. It all worked out in the end anyway.)
I don't know if I actually said anything useful here. It's nearly 2AM and I haven't had more than four hours of sleep a night all week.

[Kojiro]

I have been once blindsided in a group I was just playing in for a few sessions by a set of house rules that were never explained to me. They not only used the 1 is an autofail on skills house rule but also had a fumble table for skills--and not only that, but used the same fumble table for everything. In the first session, I wound up failing a check I should have made even on the 1, confirming the fumble, and then rolling "instant death". It was, I kid you not, a decipher script check. I was extremely pissed, especially because I was playing the skill monkey of all skill monkeys, a factotum//bard with knack and jack of all trades, and no one bothered to tell me beforehand that you could die from knowledge checks.

Good grief, how does anyone survive in that world? A five percent chance at failing at anything, and being extremely generous assuming that it takes a 1 on a percent die to actually die from it (unlikely; bet there were several instant deaths on the table, or a range for the instant death result), that means that any mildly complex action you took, from waving a sword to trying to convince someone of something (Diplomacy) to lying about anything (Bluff) to trying to hear something (Listen), would have a .05% chance of killing you. Not too bad for a random thing, but as this applies to anything you do... Getting to the age of being able to procreate seems like a challenge. Especially considering that Search and Spot would both be "skills" used often in people's lives; failing to notice your friend walking down the path to your house could give you a spontaneous heart attack apparently.

Actually, that sounds like a good setting for a comedy. Or possibly some sort of satire.

[only1doug]

Our entire group stopped playing a campaign a while back (never played with that guy as GM again).

An "old school" GM, he used his own fumble tables and judged skill usage on the die roll alone (I once failed a balance check because i rolled a 4 on the die, despite the fact that someone else had passed with a lower total result) but that wasn't why we stopped.

The Adventure he was running had an encounter with a Black Dragon and a giant crocodile, we'd heard rumours of the giant crocodile and formulated a plan to defeat it. (L3-5 party) we obtained lots of alchemists fire and put it all in a barrel, then we all got fly spell and headed to the known location of the croc (carrying the barrel between us). We looked out for the croc and saw it, dropped the barrel, dead croc.

We were looking out for the 30' long croc... we got a 10' long croc.

Then a Black dragon came out and offered to fight us or we could fight his champion (the 30' croc) .

We left at high speed and never went back.

There was no way to progress the adventure without fighting the dragon or his champion and the majority of the party were unwilling to try to do so (or to trust the black dragon to keep his word).

End of campaign. Players unwilling to continue.

[SleepyBadger]

I once DMed a campaign some years back where the main storyline involved the players having to find the parts of a powerful artifact and assemble them. One of the parts as they managed to divine was hidden in the lab of an evil rakshasa wizard. The party broke into the lab, grabbed the item and some other valuable looking stuff, got into a short confrontation with the wizard and then teleported away making the mistake of leaving the rakshasa alive. The wizard was temporarily weakened as lots of his items were stolen and some of his best servants killed but he started to stalk the party, scry on them, send spies after them, send testing troops against them just to gauge their strengths and weaknesses, assess their favourite tactics. The players caught one or two of the spies but didn't bother to find out who sent them. And when the time was finally right (by then the players were 19-20ish level, soon to go epic) the wizard assembled a group of his most trusted soldiers and led them against the party. (I didn't make the encounter impossibly difficult only quite tricky, so they should have been rather lucky to win. They weren't. Of course they could have fled which they didn't do either.) The rakshasa took all their stuff and left them for dead in the desert (well most of them were dead anyway). Now of course this didn't leave them without any wealth as they already had a stronghold and various powerful friends in their debt so getting dead party members resurrected and acquiring some starting equipment wasn't that much of a problem. Still they told me explicitly that they would not continue with the campaign if they didn't get their items back. So we didn't continue and the issue wasn't resolved. I felt that the party could have avoided this fate by either going against the wizard on their own terms or by fleeing from him when he caught them unaware. But it was probably also an issue of the characters getting too boring to them as we had started the campaign at 1st level.

[Eldan]

There was one adventure that had, as it's endboss, a kind of lesser demon. Custom-made, it seems. I honestly pretty much failed as a DM there, not properly reading the statblock. I only during the fight noticed that the players couldn't even really scratch it. They still won, but only with a plan that wasn't really covered by the rules (grappling it and then poisoning it with gas bombs and rat poison in an airtight bag).

[NOhara24]

I've had a player quit over concerns another player may start doing the "Paladin as Party Policeman" thing. On the other hand, it was cordial enough and at least the player was cool to bail out at the beginning rather than halfway through the campaign.

I'm currently playing a Paladin. I've got two blatantly CN characters in my party and other who is maintaining that he's still NG after trying to rob an Orc in broad daylight. (Everyone in the party just rolls their eyes when the topic of his alignment comes up throughout the course of a game.)

The way I handle it is very "hands-off". If my character doesn't see any of those 3 characters actually break the law in-game, he doesn't go out of his way to investigate it as he doesn't have reason to. Probable cause, etc. (Most times it's just petty theft anyway, anything more serious and Detect Evil would pop positive on them.)

If he sees a wrong committed by a party member, I'll have him correct it. Either by the threat of turning them in to the town guard, or handling them himself. That way, they can't really pull the "Stop playing the policeman!" line. I think they may have pulled that on me once, to which I replied, "You were stupid enough to try and steal a drawer full of sliverware right in front of me. I'm not turning you in because of the theft, I'm turning you in because you're a terrible thief."

[Kantolin]

I'm part of the best group in the universe, but we frequently have our poor DMs. Which means people that really shouldn't be DMing (at least, not for our group), but said poor DMs really enjoy DMing.

You know the stereotype of: Player gets fireball. Player is excited to use fireball, and gets to maybe once. World suddenly becomes immune to fire land? Yeah, we had a DM do that en masse. Go to the point where our dragon shaman pretty much gave up on using his breath attack that he had been really excited about because absolutely everything was immune or highly resistant to fire - I think it was the third or fourth group of thieves that did it. We had one sequence where a DM said to the Ranger, "Oh, there's stuff for you to entangle here" and he gave the DM a dry stare and said, "I stopped preparing entangle four months ago due to the lack of vegetation everywhere."

Actually, that was added to by a different problem: This DM refused to allow us to know when our attacks were ineffective. We tried to counter this with bluff vs sense motives (of which we had several), to no avail. He did this with damage reduction as well - we're extremely low-optimized as a group, so the fact that we had no way to discern that our attacks weren't at all harming the target resulted in things being more frustrating than not. It felt kinda like being presented with a puzzle that you were unaware was a puzzle for the first hour.

The actual puzzles were somewhat worse. We fought a big golem we couldn't damage due to our lack of epic weaponry, so we summoned something to occupy it and tried everything we could think of on how to get through that room to the next one. Apparantly, the solution was to not summon something, as the golem was blocking all sight/awareness of the doorway, and the DM was trying to punish us for summoning things. When it was pointed out 'Had something not been summoned there, the dragon shaman or I would've walked forward and been essentially tanking it instead as that was our jobs'... but hey.

Had a druid go into the master of radiance prestige class, shooting his wild shaping and the like for the ability to shoot searing lights at people. We then ran into a lot of things that were immune to light, so he tried turning into small animals and summoning creatures or using call lightning. Then we ran into a lot of bad guys who'd attack all animals, birds, and insects that came near their camp for no real discernable reason, so he tried turning into a dire bear, a feature which has probably hurt our group more than most things said DM has done. :P

Sadly, for these, there usually isn't a big solution for them. Usually, after several talks to the DM, we stop playing that particular game and someone else tries to run something.

We have had blowups before, such as the time we spent hours trying to figure out what the DM wanted us to do about a giant floating sword. Sequences like that tend to result in the DM being essentially fired and us trying something else.

Sadly, nowadays this has gone on for so long that I'm not sure if some of these people are going to get another real chance. Most of us don't bother actually making characters for their games anymore, just 'Human, Fighter, 3', and we kinda putz around until we lose uninterestingly.

~

I think the best game I've ever played was when we were on a chessboard fighting a sizeable group of opponents with a small group on our side. That was insanely intense, people's lives were yo-yoing in the balance sending my poor little strictly-a-healer goblin all over the place to keep people up, and had tons of planning beforehand that was actually meaningful in the game - even with that last bit where things spiraled totally out of control and all our plans were ruined.

Insanely fun all around. ^_^ Sadly, that game concluded (Not with an explosion or anything, it simply finished) not too long after that.

[Volthawk]

There was one adventure that had, as it's endboss, a kind of lesser demon. Custom-made, it seems. I honestly pretty much failed as a DM there, not properly reading the statblock. I only during the fight noticed that the players couldn't even really scratch it. They still won, but only with a plan that wasn't really covered by the rules (grappling it and then poisoning it with gas bombs and rat poison in an airtight bag).

Eh, to be fair that was kinda a screw-up on our end, though, as well, what with the lack of preparation.

[LordBlades]

When have you seen players complain or quit because of something the DM has done? It can be you as a player or DM. How was it resolved, if it was?

I've both seen and experienced quite a fair bit of such situation

The worst are from the first DM in my city. He was absolutely horrible, and yet people stuck with him for quite a while until their patience ran our, as it was the only game at that point:

-once he had a paladin fall after the following scene: party has a small ship, they're in the harbor getting ready to leave when a party of armed dwarves comes aboard and tells the rogue he's under arrest for having stolen something the night before (which he did). The paladin, not knowing anything about it, comes to inquire what's going on and asks the dwarves who they are. He gets told to STFU and get his nose out of law enforcement business. Paladin says if they're law enforcers they should have some papers or something to prove it. If they show them to him he'll step aside; otherwise he wouldn't allow one of his friends to be taken by some strangers. The leader of the dwarves just attacks them without any further chatter, and in the ensuing melee he gets killed (bull rushed overboard by the party's barbarian). After the fight the DM informs the paladin he has fallen because he didn't obey the rightful authority of the land.

-some other time, a guy comes to the campaign with a rogue (social skill monkey, weapon finesse+imp feint with a rapier). DM okeys the char, but fails to tell him that the first 8 levels of the campaign (starting lvl 2) were about to be spent on an undead infested island. After 3-4 sessions guy asks to change his char because he's useless (he can't deal damage in combat because mos of the things have DR and are immune to sneak attack, no social encounters whatsoever to use his social skills, he's relegated to search/disable device monkey). Request denied. So the next session he has his character die in battle. He gets told that he can't make a new char, only way to come back into the story is to have the party carry his rogue's dead body around until they'd find a way to resurrect him, which would be 'soon'. Guy left the campaign and never came back.

After a few more of these, people left this guy and started running their own campaigns.

[Badgerish]

Never rage-quit a game or seen it happen, but I have politely retired from one game and would have rage-quit another game if it hadn't been right at the end of a one-off.

Savage Worlds, pitched as late 19th century england with a little weirdness... turned out to have teleporting cars*, time-traveling Nazis and US soldiers, magic boats, dinosaur-islands, zombies, a christian blood-sacrifice cult** and an Inca-style Lich (apparently) trying to save the world (which we had to work for).
So, given the complete setting/genre shift, some other issues with the GM, my character retired by handing over a 1940's rifle to the police and checking into a sanatorium.

The second game was Savage Worlds/Deadlands. A two-session game that was supposed to turn the PCs into the BBEGs for a future campaign, but the future campaign never happened. NPCs way over our power level bossing us around, threatening us even after with agree to do what they say, a couple of "you can't do that" vetoes, some random encounters where they really didn't fit (including rolling one, starting it then editing it away when he realised how overpowered it was), PCs being 'tricked' when we didn't have any other choices (and having NPC lording over the PCs for it), maiming my character at the end (had 3 edges for two-weapon fighting... left hand removed without any choice on my part) and the crowning jewel of failure: "roll a Spirit check or attempt to force yourself on the female PC" (she was exalting as the avatar of fertility goddess, but that's just not right).
The GM got a talking to by several people after that session.


*even a car would have been unusual, but a teleporting car that sends us to America in the second session?
**This was the 'weirdness' I was expecting, but it angered some of the other players. Oh, and the cult had magic shadow-wolves.
I have been once blindsided in a group I was just playing in for a few sessions by a set of house rules that were never explained to me. They not only used the 1 is an autofail on skills house rule but also had a fumble table for skills--and not only that, but used the same fumble table for everything. In the first session, I wound up failing a check I should have made even on the 1, confirming the fumble, and then rolling "instant death". It was, I kid you not, a decipher script checkThis? This is glorious. Beyond bad and into terribad. Not sure how this could happen without the campaign turning into a comedy campaign afterwards.

[Xtomjames]

I've only quit a game twice, once out of anger and ounce out of boredom. The boredom one was because the DM didn't know what he was doing and constantly failed to give necessary information for the characters in the game to operate within his story.

The other time was far more irksome. I was playing an Illumian Favored Soul in a homebrew game a friend of mine put together. I was in the game with two others (an Orc Barbarian level 10 and Rogue or Bard...) at some point our DM decided that he'd give one of the characters a weapon that broke the rules, and failed to inform the players that he'd change those rules. The character gained a weapon that would rend armor, and then was possessed by a god opposed to my character's god. The player's character (the orc) attacked me without warning rending my armor and taking out 2/3rds of my hit points in one hit. When my character fled (as he would in this absurd situation) the orc pursued.

The DM essentially created a situation that gave my character no chance what so ever, and because he broke the rules on rending armor in game my character's AC had no effect. This was on top of the fact that my character was the only healer in the group and I'd already expended my spells for the day healing the rest of the group which means I had no ability to cast spells to either heal myself or hide myself. The one spell I had left was the sanctuary spell, but because it was the god controlling the Orc it was the god's will save versus my low level sanctuary spell.

In short I was pissed off told my DM to bugger off and I left.

While I'd never do this to a group when I DM, I get frustrated as a DM when my players blockade their characters.

For example, in play testing a D20 Universal module I'm writing for the heck of it (Which incorporates D&D 3.5 Pathfinder, D20 Modern (et all) and D20 Star Wars into one universe) one of my player's characters was arrested and the corrupt cops decided not to give back all of her stuff. Rather than accept this and move on to try to find other means of finding information or leaving the city the player said he'd continue (male player female character) returning to the police station ad nosium because that is all his character would think of. He ignored all other potential actions, and shifted his character from a resourceful street smart motorcycle demoness of sorts to a dumb blond character.

[Lonely Tylenol]

They not only used the 1 is an autofail on skills house rule but also had a fumble table for skills--and not only that, but used the same fumble table for everything. In the first session, I wound up failing a check I should have made even on the 1, confirming the fumble, and then rolling "instant death". It was, I kid you not, a decipher script check.

This is the kind of thing you can't make up.

It also makes me really sad, because I don't think there's anything that can compare to this.

Sometimes, crit/fumble tables can be really fun though, when used right - the DM in my Pathfinder campaign is using a table for each, and a nameless Orc mook in an Illithid's illusion shot my character, rolled a natural 20, confirmed, and then rolled 100 on the crit table. The result? Head shot--instant kill. My DM decided that was lame, and gave me a Fort save (on which I rolled a 20). I proceded to kill the mook with an arrow protruding from my skull.

The rest of the party didn't really know what to do with me, but eventually decided that the Cleric should yank and twist to get the arrow out of my forehead, followed by the Fighter cauterizing the wound with his +1 Flaming longsword.

We roleplayed the whole thing.

Delicious.

Other times, though... :smalleek:

I think the worst thing I've seen happen in a campaign is three people leaving the campaign in the same week because we had an entire session (which is to say, 2-3 hours of actual game time) in which the party didn't kill anything.

We were in a city. Dealing with things that didn't necessarily need to be killed.

Roleplay-only situations? Oh, the horror!

[Username_too_lo]

We were introduced to the Slaughtergarde module as a world of magic noir - brilliant, we thought, urban rooftop chases, infiltrating society balls, negotiating with scarred lepers in the sewers, and we made well-rounded, interesting, dark characters - I was a warforged ranger PI with human as his preferred enemy.

Imagine our horror when the first task we were given was to descend into Dungeons and fight goblins armed with swords and shortbows.

I kid you not, we had to end up taking eight hours' rest in almost every freaking room.

[Username_too_lo]

They still won, but only with a plan that wasn't really covered by the rules (grappling it and then poisoning it with gas bombs and rat poison in an airtight bag).

Brilliant. Reminds me of the end of an Al Qadim module we played which had a giant vroc at the end of it in an ancient castle. There was, down the hall, a banquet of poisoned food, so we just loaded up on the food and threw it at the Vroc, group bluffing by saying "Please, take our delicious food - only spare our lives!" Eventually, it failed its Fort check and died.

[Darklord Bright]

There's a reason I refer to certain bad DM habits as "being a Chris" or "Chris-y". I'll apologize on behalf of the Chrisses of the world for my first DM, since they should never have to be associated with him. Luckily, it's a fairly common name, so his identity is rather protected even when I use it!

The details are hazy, since it's been a few years now, but I'll try to remember what I can. It's hard to remember moments that stand out not because there weren't many, but because there were few moments in the game that didn't cause objections.

This may take a while.

--

I remember the first game I played with him, I was playing with two of my friends who had played under Chris before. The first warning signs should have gone off in the first session, when he publicly executed the previous characters of my buddies in the very first scene, telling us how they 'cried like girls' and wet themselves (or something to that effect) before beheading them. The very next thing that happened was we were all singled out of the huge crowd for being outsiders or some such, and our hands bound as we were led to the stage. The halfling rogue, attempting to use sleight of hand to escape the bonds, was suddenly informed that they were in fact made of metal and magically made apparently specifically to stop his roguish behaviour. Keep in mind that the paladin was bound with little more than cloth, and I (the mage) with rope. The first sign that you are playing under A Chris is that he favouritises Paladins, and absolutely hates rogues. Always.

Anyways, flash forward a few minutes, and we beat the executioner (who turned out to be a vampire. We were level one.) by DM fiat, barely escaping a TPK, only to be informed that the crowd of villagers was becoming hostile and approaching the stage towards us. As we formulated an escape plan, our DM actually began telling us that they were getting closer as we tried to make a completely OOC plan. Also, suddenly the villagers are zombies, even though they were speaking intelligently a second ago.

Fast forwards again, we barely escape once again into a large warehouse-type building, and end the session.

Next session, he was bored of that campaign, and started a new one.

---

This one was about young soldiers being trained by an Obviously Evil Emperor to fight against Le Resistance. Hardly an inspired plot, but I was younger, and hadn't learnt my lessons yet about our DM.

We have a new regular player, and the old paladin player is an off-and-on addition to the group. The new player likes rogues, the old rogue now plays a mage (he was a good friend of mine, and only played the rogue last game because I wanted to be the mage, and it was my first time playing). I had at this point decided that wizardry was not for me, since I couldn't remember the spells I had, nor could I figure out what the good ones actually were, and decided to play a fighter (martial classes have become a regular thing for me in games since).

So, in the first session, there's only the three of us (Paladin-player didn't show up that day) and our characters have to take a coin out of our instructor's hand. All attempts to actually do so are met with "It fails" no matter what the DM rolls in response. At one point our rogue takes off his boots and throws them at the instructor, rolling a nat 20, and is told that the instructor still managed to grab them before they hit despite our objections. We plead to other groups doing the same around us to help, but they laugh at us as apparently we're the only group unable to do this. We are beaten unconscious, and awake tied to the bottom of a flag pole.

Next session, we're suddenly tied to a flagpole in the middle of a swamp enclosed by enormous walls. This session, our Paladin-player is here (suddenly he was with us, tied up). We get free, and some wyvern-riders circle overhead. The Paladin-player asks them what they're doing up there, and soon we're suddenly being dive-bombed by wyvern riders.

Now here's something I neglected to mention earlier. Our characters? Commoners. We stated our intent to be certain classes, but he said he wanted us to play and we would be granted classes based on our playstyle out of classes he had homebrewed. So right now, we're commoners being divebombed by wyverns with knights wielding spears riding on their backs.

So yeah, Paladin-player is knocked unconscious, and Rogue-player manages to down a rider, immediately being knocked out as well upon trying to loot the man whilst still surrounded by enemies.

During this time, I have gone as far away as I can. It's taken me three total sessions of playing with this DM to know that something isn't right about these games, and I'm not above fleeing when the DM plays dirty. Of course, I had direction. I wasn't just running aimlessly - we were walled in! I was running towards a ruined caravan in the distance. This paid off, as it was filled with the biggest crossbow I had ever seen, as well as kegs of TNT. The DM had thrown us a bone, even stating the crossbow as being of "Anti-aircraft" capabilities. Mage-player (who had been following me, because he was also starting to wise-up) grabs the crossbow, I grab the horse and get the caravan up and running while he charges off to kill the wyverns, downing another in the round where I get the caravan operational again. I had stopped asking how things made sense at this point, to preserve my sanity. Instead, I focused my effort on getting the caravan towards the gate to this crazy walled-in swamp of death. I set the charges and boom, gate open, with me barely jumping out of the way of the blast in time.

So Mage-player's getting close to death, too, but I'm having none of that. I gallop full-speed towards the battlefield, and say that I'm going to try and pick the guys up and then get the hell out of dodge. He tells me to roll Ride, which is completely untrained. I realise that I may well be boned.

I roll 20. The players cheer.

DM, throwing me another bone (I was getting suspicious at this point, seeing as this session was the first one we had played where we were actually succeeding almost as much as failing) tells me that I manage to defy the laws of reality and somehow pick all of them up as I pass, throwing them into the back of the cart as veer around and zip out the gate.

The session moments form ending, we are informed that suddenly everything disappears, and that we are in a dining hall with our instructor. It was all an illusory test, and we were now officially soldiers of the empire. We were awarded our classes, and suddenly I understood my successes.

He made me a Paladin.

---

Not long to go, so bear with me.

I was optimistic from last session, so I actually showed up in good spirits. We ended up going out to fight the resistance. Except Mage-player, who was informed that since he was now a mage, he was busy studying. He basically wasn't in the game from that point onwards for that ridiculous DM reason.

We went off to find some people who were opposing the Empire, explicitly told by our instructor to kill them, slaughter their children, and basically do other horrible things to people. I'm not even sure if the Empire was even trying to be subtle at this point. So we head off, understandably suspicious of this whole regime we were now part of. We end up talking down the leader, a man in gold armour, after he displays the odd quality of being able to shrug off bolts. Well, more to the point his armour deflects them somehow. You know, because gold does that. I'm beginning to suspect he wasn't wearing gold at all, but that our DM's bullcrap had actually solidified into some horrible mass upon the poor man's skin.

Anyways, he's suddenly instantly taken down (by bolts) the moment we consider joining him by a hidden squad, and it turns out all the kids in the building were already killed by some evil spirit that came from nowhere and disappeared into the space that Deus Ex Machinas go to die.

---

Last session.

We're suddenly attacking a rebellion stronghold. Well no, we're on one side of a ravine and it's on the other, pouring down a hailstorm of bolts the moment we try to go anywhere. Rogue-Player tries to clear the ravine, and is told he falls down and dies in a a river of boiling tar that was apparently there all along but was never mentioned.

A few moments later, suddenly everything is some horrible deathswamp again, and I'm led by a light across the instant-death goop up into the sky, where I think I might have met some deity or something. It was vague, but I asked him to bring back my dead party members, and he did. He then gave me a magic sword, and the game ended.

That's it. No ragequit, no culmination of all the horrible things that had happened. The DM just got bored and stopped. Nobody cared. Shortly thereafter, I briefly tried to DM a homebrew system, and though we had a blast, that system went under (still trying to bring it back) and I haven't DMed since, unfortunately.

I apologize that this ended up a lot longer than I expected it to be, but things kept coming back to me. Hopefully it was at least somewhat entertaining.

[Username_too_lo]

As we formulated an escape plan, our DM actually began telling us that they were getting closer as we tried to make a completely OOC plan.

To be fair, unless your OOC plan was "After this game, we're going to buy some marshmallows and watch My Little Pony DVDs" I think he was within his rights. Anything which leads to a level of co-ordination between player characters that wasn't there previously, however you phrase it in life, effectively eats at game time. I have known players who say "Oh, can we assume that because we've been spending so long together he knows that I want him to do that in combat?" :sigh:

[Darklord Bright]

To be fair, unless your OOC plan was "After this game, we're going to buy some marshmallows and watch My Little Pony DVDs" I think he was within his rights. Anything which leads to a level of co-ordination between player characters that wasn't there previously, however you phrase it in life, effectively eats at game time. I have known players who say "Oh, can we assume that because we've been spending so long together he knows that I want him to do that in combat?" :sigh:

We were planning for all of half a minute. By planning, I mean we were asking him which way was devoid of crazy villager zombies. We weren't doing anything complex, and we weren't taking longer than a minute at best. The entire time he was going "They're closer. They're closer. They're closer."

Edit: Also, to be fair, the first time we asked him if we could see any way to escape, he didn't tell us there weren't zombies behind us until we specifically asked if they were behind us, despite the fact that we looked to see an escape route and were told there was none.

[Kojiro]

I apologize that this ended up a lot longer than I expected it to be, but things kept coming back to me. Hopefully it was at least somewhat entertaining.

It was, albeit in a rather "wow, that's just terrible" sort of way. While I think the critical failure death world still takes the lead for this thread in general, your Chris is probably the worst DM so far, at least when it comes to writing or making sense. Congrats.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

A while back the local D&D players would talk about pvp-style tournaments, and I would get interested and start making a character. Then I would learn that the DM would be entering a character, and I'd roll my eyes and withdraw.

The only DM I ever ragequit on mid-campaign killed and incapacitated characters via cutscene, frequently, except for his DMPC. Yeah.

[Darklord Bright]

Yeah, the critical failure world is so far the 'best', I'd say.

Also, I neglected to mention all the "five minute sessions" our DM had us do, which included gems such as "You're the rogue, you're always taking point. The monster attacks you first.", "I want to see what happens when level 1s fight a Tarrasque" and having a sheep carcass in the wilderness be booby-trapped to shoot spikes at people after I off-handedly stated that it wouldn't make sense for the sheep carcass to be trapped.

[Username_too_lo]

I disallowed teh monk because my game campaign world was heavily midieval european, with soem middle eastern flavor tossed in, there was little to no oriental cultures in my world.

Dorkness Rising Ho!!

[Larpus]

Well, my group had a player "ragequit" once due to his own fault...

He made a non-combative character that wasn't a skillmonkey either, he was pretty much all social; however the player wasn't exactly prime at it, so in short he ended up quite useless and eventually complained to the DM how he was unable to do much but didn't want to change characters, they both got into a fight and he (player) left the table.

As for the rest...the only complaints I've got is that the DM is a bit way too goody two shoes, so the DM makes it nearly impossible to use Necromancy spells without being burned in a public square (I'm talking about the 'ok' Necromancy, not undead making) and saying it's a no-go to summon a demon even when we have his name and by doing so and locking or defeating it we could make the bad guys lose their main asset (though in the latter could also be due to an unforeseen plothole he didn't think of that would screw all his scheme).

But I don't stress much over it, other than undead making I'm not interested in Necromancy and I was the only one in the party who thought that summoning the demon was a good idea, so DM or no DM, it wouldn't stick.

[Tyndmyr]

I'm halfway through the "Nerfing players makes you a bad DM?" discussion, and it's basically turned into "My fun is better than your fun" and people talking past each other.

So I want to ask:

When have you seen players complain or quit because of something the DM has done? It can be you as a player or DM. How was it resolved, if it was?

Yes. Nobody has ever quit as a result of something I've done as a DM, but I certainly have left games for things DMs have done. I am much happier as a gamer since I started doing this...so much less frustration.

Complaints...many a time.


Conversely, do you have any single game sessions you remember as having gone very well, to the point of serving(in your opinion) as an example of how a game should be run?

None has ever been perfect...but there are elements from a number of games that have gone extremely well, and that I've adopted into later games.

One of my personal favorite moments was when my gf said "oh, he won't kill me cuz I'm his girlfriend". The entire table instantly busted up laughing at her.

To DM effectively, you need the players trust and interest. Both of these are simple things...but simple isn't always the same as easy. You've got to know your players well, and communicate with them openly. Sadly, there's a lot of players out there who accept the whole authoritarian DM role as a given...which means they often don't bother to challenge or discuss things that dissatisfy them. Getting people to give more honest feedback than "yeah, it was great" can be a challenge.

I strongly encourage starting discussion before the campaign even begins, asking people what they want to play, and what they like. It helps a great deal. I also encourage getting as many people to DM as possible, at some point in time. Options like round robin DMing are great, and most DMs like to play some of the time as well. Training up more solid DMs is always a good thing for your group.

[Gorgondantess]

There was one adventure that had, as it's endboss, a kind of lesser demon. Custom-made, it seems. I honestly pretty much failed as a DM there, not properly reading the statblock. I only during the fight noticed that the players couldn't even really scratch it. They still won, but only with a plan that wasn't really covered by the rules (grappling it and then poisoning it with gas bombs and rat poison in an airtight bag).

...Is this the skype planescape game you were running? If so- rat poison and gas bombs after stuffing him in a bag? Perfect way to kill the bad guy. Very Hive. Very apropos. I like.:smallbiggrin:

[ClothedInVelvet]

...Is this the skype planescape game you were running? If so- rat poison and gas bombs after stuffing him in a bag? Perfect way to kill the bad guy. Very Hive. Very apropos. I like.:smallbiggrin:

I also *LOVE* this solution.

"I can't hit him, his armor is too strong!"
"Ok team, hand me your gas bombs and hold him down, I've got a plan!"

[Volthawk]

I also *LOVE* this solution.

"I can't hit him, his armor is too strong!"
"Ok team, hand me your gas bombs and hold him down, I've got a plan!"

Well, we've solved a problem using the same bag filled with similar stuff twice. Hell, the guy who owns the bag even has a name for it.

[ClothedInVelvet]

Well, we've solved a problem using the same bag filled with similar stuff twice. Hell, the guy who owns the bag even has a name for it.

Can I hire you to teach my players? Their standard approach is run at it and hit it, and if that doesn't work, argue until they all killed horribly.

We are talking frontal assaults on orc war camps and fortresses before reaching level 5.

[danzibr]

The biggest complaint I've had with a DM was the one who ran a DMPC several ECLs above the party who took a share of the loot and XP as a player, and played a huge part in most of our battles, often trivializing stuff that would have leveled us.
Oh man that sounds terrible. As for me, my DMing sessions never went that great because we had way too many people. An exceptionally bad one was when they fought a golem and didn't have any way to overcome the DR. It was terrible.

As for good sessions, I just started DMing with my wife (and her alone). 2-player is pretty fun. We haven't had any great sessions, but I'll come back later when we've played some more.

[CTrees]

The paladin, not knowing anything about it, comes to inquire what's going on and asks the dwarves who they are. He gets told to STFU and get his nose out of law enforcement business. Paladin says if they're law enforcers they should have some papers or something to prove it. If they show them to him he'll step aside; otherwise he wouldn't allow one of his friends to be taken by some strangers. The leader of the dwarves just attacks them without any further chatter, and in the ensuing melee he gets killed (bull rushed overboard by the party's barbarian).

While this is horrible DMing, and I commiserate, I just had to add that in the DM's place, I would have been unable to resist the tempation of having the dwarf respond, "Badges? BADGES? WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' BADGES!!!"

---

I did once rage-quit a (PF) campaign because I was just so damned bored. Was playing a ranged Shadowdancer, with a heavy dose of skillmonkey thrown in. Well... when the environments are so completely barren and devoid of feature as to make a big swath of my skills useless, combine that with zero non-predetermined "roleplay" opportunities (I did manage to avoid a fight NONE of our characters would have wanted, which was accepted but which SERIOUSLY pissed off the DM - he just couldn't find a way to fizzle it)... And then make every fight be in a tiny room against multiple enemies with reach and improved grab? Eh, it was frustrating to me, but I was trucking along.

However, when we finished, at the end of a session, the 90min fight against a group of enemies way over our level, with reach and improved grab, in a tiny room? And then the first thing the next session was literally an identical fight, only in a slightly smaller room? And retreat is impossible, because these sewers have doors that auto-close behind us, and everything is made out of adamantine with magic immunity (yes, I tried methods to steal the adamantine. all of them failed as the walls grew new abilities)? Well, I'm annoyed, but I'm still trucking along, because this group is all friends. However, when the next thing to happen is a slightly lower CR, unavoidable fight against more monsters with reach and improved grab, in an even smaller room, dominated by a pool of acid (monsters were immune) with only a narrow walkway around the edges, and the monsters grew blindsight? "I hide in the hallways, sixty feet away. If anyone comes close, I ready a move action to re-stealth with HiPS. Let me know if anything appears to see me; I'll full run somewhere."

Left after that, as I was simply bored with the whole thing. Things were too repetitive to be entertaining, and combined with my character being made useless, it was too much. I would have re-rolled, but I actually really like the character, and my last PC was attacked by a froghemoth while he was level four, because the character seemed overpowered to the DM. Somehow. It was a very basic, single-classed fighter, who could... hit stuff, fairly competently.

[noparlpf]

All these stories just make me glad I started playing with a couple of really good DMs and a friendly, non-competitive group (I've only been playing a year). If my experience had been more like that, I might have stopped playing.

[Barstro]

having a sheep carcass in the wilderness be booby-trapped to shoot spikes at people after I off-handedly stated that it wouldn't make sense for the sheep carcass to be trapped.

The last DM I had would often have buildings with X number of rooms. If the players looked in Y number of windows before entering the building, those rooms would have one or two minions. (X-Y) rooms would be filled with archers and fighters who all had initiative.

Other than this bizarre version of Schrodinger's cat, his games were great. But I couldn't stand having to spend so much time "proving" that a room was safe in order for it to not inexplicably mean certain death.

[CTrees]

Heh, the sheep carcass reminds me - I had a character that for awhile was preemptively attacking every corpse he found. Usually just used a reach weapon to bash the skull open. See, we had a trap once that involved the apparent corpse animating, so I used that as in-character justification (I wasn't allowed to do it with bodies before that, because it wouldn't make sense IC). That obsessive habit once took out one of a room full of undead before the fight really started, so I count it as worthwhile. Still was soooo a "that look" from my DM. Hey, if you don't want me being paranoid, stop including traps and ambushes.

[Kojiro]

"Stop breaking everything and checking everything for traps!"

"Why?"

"Because you keep finding my traps!"

"That's kind of the idea."

"Augh!"

[Andorax]

Three incidents come immediately to mind (which, for a DMing career over a quarter of a century long, isn't bad).

As a teen, I was invited to play in a campaign by a friend of mine where I didn't know anyone else in the group. Found out, very early on, that it was horrendously monte-haul and...er...well optimized is the polite term.

Apparently, playing a character that was both obnoxous and as unkillable as a cockroach wasn't a welcome choice...they went out of their way to find a way to eliminate my character, and then followed it up with "hey, it's not working out, don't bother rolling up another one".

Multiclassed mage/cleric Firbolgs only one level behind the rest of the party? No problem. special better-than-normal Chain contingencies that could deliver 5 disintegrate spells at someone just by pointing at them? Fair game (that's what killed my character).

But we certainly can't have an Athasian cannibal halfling cleric/psion with a limited vocabulary, high-pitched voice, and a disturbing tendancy to stock up on extra supplies by slipping a ring of regen on his companion's finger, keeping him in enforced sleep via psionic powers, and slicing off a few tasty shoulder steaks.

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About six years ago, I was getting what has become an increasingly rare break from DMing...longstanding gamer friend decided to actually try his hand at being behind the DM's screen. I think we scared him off.

Players sat down ahead of time and worked up a concept (after asking if there were any rules or limits to what he had in mind...none were specified). We all chose to play fellow tribesmen and take a minimum of 1 barbarian level (started at 4th, so it was bar 4, bar1/ran 3, bar 1/cle 3, bar 1/sor 3). Problem was, it was a largely urban (mageocracy) campaign, and we played the ignorance-of-civilization thing to the hilt.

A few days in, one of those pesky colossal dragons swept in and ate the ship we were on...his way of ending the campaign abruptly and definitively. We all agreed (including him, in hindsight) that it was one of the more fun games we've played in, but he just wasn't ready to continue it.

-----------------------------------------------

More recently...in fact, just a few months back, I was running the first pathfinder series (Skinsaw Murders) and trying, to the best of my ability, to set a dark and scary mood. Longstanding gamer (same one as above) had recently (4-5 months ago) introduced his wife to the group, who in turn had brought a friend in about 3 weeks ago. These two ladies were cracking jokes continuously throughout the session and utterly destroying any momentum I could get into place by trying to set a mood.

After session, I confronted them about it, they told me that I was doing "too good" of a job and that they needed to do that to keep from getting creeped out. I blew up at them and told them that there's no point in my trying to set a mood if nobody will go along with it.

Neither have been back since, and the longstanding gamer's attendance has been distressingly spotty as well. I feel horrible about it, and wish I could take back (at least some of) what I said and HOW I said it.

[only1doug]

These two ladies were cracking jokes continuously throughout the session and utterly destroying any momentum I could get into place by trying to set a mood.

After session, I confronted them about it, they told me that I was doing "too good" of a job and that they needed to do that to keep from getting creeped out. I blew up at them and told them that there's no point in my trying to set a mood if nobody will go along with it.

Neither have been back since, and the longstanding gamer's attendance has been distressingly spotty as well. I feel horrible about it, and wish I could take back (at least some of) what I said and HOW I said it.

Eeek, Problems....

Bite the bullet, Its gonna have to be apology time for you.

Write to the Ladies concerned and admit that you are in the wrong and then establish why you over-reacted, apologise for your behaviour and request that they try your next campaign which will be much lighter in nature, not so gritty and dark (and hopefully much more to their likeing).

While they probably won't return the attempt may at least ease their opinions of you and thus (perhaps) allow longstanding gamer to return more frequently. If you are very lucky then you may get the Ladies back too.