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View Full Version : Dropping a campaign (venty-rantness)



Silus
2015-01-05, 08:42 PM
So after some deliberation and a terrible last session, I've decided to drop my current Saturday game of Rolemaster. As much of a relief it is to not have to deal with that system, I still feel kinda bad bowing out like this. The group currently exploded from 5 players to 9 and we were about to head back into a haunted house in search of some book.

But yeah, so last session was kinda the final nail in the coffin of my "Let's try old gaming systems with this group". We were declaring actions for combat, mine was essentially "I run towards the bad guy" (about 50ft of the 100 needed to get into melee). Now s few things to keep in mind:

-Some of the players tend to take a LONG time determining what they're going to do. Triple'y so with casters 'cause they have to roll on so many tables and cross reference them against the DM's tables. It's a long, drawn out mess.
-I was already set with my action, and unless something tried to attack or interact with me in any way, the DM could literally just go "Okay, the dwarf moves, who's next on initiative?"
-The DM has an annoying "no electronics" rule at the table, with the exception being calculators (because Rolemaster is terribly math heavy)
-I get bored VERY easily, and distracted even more so.

So, all of this in mind, I'm waiting for like...the last three players to decide what to do before we can get the round started, so I whip out my phone and check some PbP forums I'm apart of. Ya know, check the to see if I owe any posts at the time.

"What's that?" asks the DM. I look up and like half the group is looking at me. "Uh, my phone?" I reply with a hint of curiosity. "...The dwarf suffers an aneurism and is out for the rest of the session."

....

Yeah.

Tack on a general "I don't care about my character any more and am intentionally tempting fate and rushing decisions and playing as Chaotic Neutral as I can to try to expedite my character's death" (mostly due to my overall loathing of the system coupled with the DM's DMing style) and....yeah, I'm done.

And yeah, it was my fault for having my phone out, but basically saying "You're out for the rest of the game because you weren't paying attention to a thing that was being dragged out for too long" I feel is a bit much.

So yeah, Rolemaster is going on my list of things to never play again ever, right next to Palladium. I want some player agency! Not, as my friend put it: "We don't do stuff, we choose something we want, we submit it, and we get told what happens." To hell with these brutal lethal old school systems, if I could get away with it I'd beat the creators unconscious with their own material for creating something so terrible. :smallfurious:

*Deep, calming breath*

Anyway, dropping out of the game, though I do plan on running a game for them once that travesty of a TTRPG is over with.

Edit: Also, other terrible stuff, got all my character's stuff stolen TWICE in one session, the DM has no concept of a learning curve, expects us to read multiple books on the system and settings and basically runs the game like a dictator. There's little to no player agency and if we opt to stray from the rails set down we're stonewalled with rolls that the DM knows for certain we cannot make without the dice exploding upwards at least once.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-05, 08:45 PM
I don't like electronics at my table, at all, and will not tolerate them other to look up rules. But if you need one to be entertained...Er. The game has failed horribly.

Lappy9001
2015-01-05, 08:50 PM
I don't know anything about Rolemaster but that reaction was a little extreme. Had this happened before? Regardless, I would have been hard pressed to not respond with "the dwarf extends both middle digits and speaks a colorful expletive to the gods before backing out of the room, never to be heard from again" and Larping that to the GM.

Silus
2015-01-05, 08:50 PM
I don't like electronics at my table, at all, and will not tolerate them other to look up rules. But if you need one to be entertained...Er. The game has failed horribly.

There was one time early on where one of the player was casting ONE. SPELL. Took him damn near twenty minutes to sort everything out, and everyone else is just sitting around twiddling their thumbs 'cause we have all of our crap sorted out. And it wasn't even "look this up in the book" stuff. It was all "Okay so roll this to determine if you actually can start casting the spell then you have to roll this to bypass the spell resistance stuff then roll this after you modify with that" and it was just all manner of terrible.


I don't know anything about Rolemaster but that reaction was a little extreme. Had this happened before? Regardless, I would have been hard pressed to not respond with "the dwarf extends both middle digits and speaks a colorful expletive to the gods before backing out of the room, never to be heard from again" and Larping that to the GM.

It happened, I believe, once prior (the electronics thing). The end result was "The dwarf shrinks to half his size" and was fixed the moment we got outside.

This DM is the sort that, if we were playing, say, 3.5, would throw a creature with like +3-5 CR at the party then get annoyed when we opt to run or chide us when we don't handle things in a sufficiently clever manner. Oh, and never giving out any information, critical or no, to help with dungeons or creatures. "Oh, you're fighting undead. Nobody has ranks in Undead Lore to tell you how to harm or destroy them? That's a shaaaaaame."

icefractal
2015-01-05, 08:51 PM
That game sounds terrible, so I think you're well out of it. Actually, the DM's "style" (being a petty dictator) would be **** even with an awesome system, so double-fail.

Silus
2015-01-05, 08:59 PM
That game sounds terrible, so I think you're well out of it. Actually, the DM's "style" (being a petty dictator) would be **** even with an awesome system, so double-fail.

He's got that annoying tendency to just let things happen and never offers the players an out. Like my friend was playing a caster in the group. He botched a magic roll (as happens in games) and lost all his magic for ten weeks. Not ten 7-day weeks, ten 10-day weeks 'cause the system is a **** like that. 25 hour days, 10 day weeks, 5-month years, 6 coin denomination currency. It all sucks. And what sucks even more? My friend's character was all about casting. All about magic. Shut down for 10 weeks. He was little better than Jim the Farmer at that point, and knowing that his character had been reduced to NPC levels of uselessness, you know what the DM did?

Nothing. Not a friggin' thing. Just let him stew for just about, oh...3 sessions or so with no magic or any way to contribute or gain XP.

Lappy9001
2015-01-05, 09:05 PM
Goodness, why have you stuck around as long as you have?

Silus
2015-01-05, 09:07 PM
Goodness, why have you stuck around as long as you have?

Mostly stubbornness and not wanting to try to find another group to play with. Already trying to get a Friday group together and that's hard enough as it is.

Ninjaxenomorph
2015-01-06, 11:56 AM
To be fair to the GM, when I lost my magic he gave me a wand. Which was promptly stolen after two sessions by the party, and I was mugged when trying to purchase some basic goods. By the thieves guild. Who a member of the party, with us, was a part of. He got some of our stuff back. After I botched another two spell checks trying to cast from a wand that was about as effective as a taser (and when the GM said I had plenty of agency to... back out of the deal. Not fight, because that would be fun and interesting) I decided I had better things to do on Saturdays.

Beta Centauri
2015-01-06, 12:16 PM
So yeah, Rolemaster is going on my list of things to never play again ever, right next to Palladium. I want some player agency! Not, as my friend put it: "We don't do stuff, we choose something we want, we submit it, and we get told what happens." To hell with these brutal lethal old school systems, if I could get away with it I'd beat the creators unconscious with their own material for creating something so terrible. :smallfurious: Hear, hear. My general philosophy for most games is that if I have to ask the GM's permission to have it or do it, then I just skip it. That's why I love 4th Edition. I still can ask my GM for permission if I feel like it, but if I don't, or they're stingy, my character can still do the cool stuff I designed it to do, without going through "Mother May I?"

(Edit: Most games CAN be played without "Mother May I?" but I rarely see them played that way.)

I can understand having a no-electronics rule, but player boredom really has to be considered and mitigated. If a table needs a no-electronics rule, maybe it would be better to examine what about the situation is causing the player to resort to their electronics. Maybe it's the wrong game, or maybe something could be changed about the way the game is being played.

draken50
2015-01-06, 03:43 PM
I have a no electronics rule, but the punishment is... put your phone over across the room where you'll stop messing with it. Not, sit there and be bored.

The dm for that game sounds like an ass-hat. I always assume the people coming to my house to game are there to be entertained. Then any DM dumb enough to run a 9 player game is already stupid. I have no idea how that could possibly be feasible or entertaining. Entertaining 9 people in my mind requires a game where everyone can talk and play simultaneously and a single dm isn't handling that.

(Un)Inspired
2015-01-06, 04:29 PM
Did you know about the no electronics rule before you broke it?

Solaris
2015-01-06, 04:55 PM
The dm for that game sounds like an ass-hat. I always assume the people coming to my house to game are there to be entertained. Then any DM dumb enough to run a 9 player game is already stupid. I have no idea how that could possibly be feasible or entertaining. Entertaining 9 people in my mind requires a game where everyone can talk and play simultaneously and a single dm isn't handling that.

Tell that to my dozen-player group back in high school. It wasn't easy, and it requires players who know what they're doing as opposed to needing to be babysat the entire way through, but it's doable.

aspekt
2015-01-06, 05:07 PM
Tell that to my dozen-player group back in high school. It wasn't easy, and it requires players who know what they're doing as opposed to needing to be babysat the entire way through, but it's doable.

Cool you have mad gm skills (and I mean that I could never have done that), however, possible does not equate with feasible, let alone fun.

That Rolemaster system sounds awful.

As for 9 players I think 3 of those could have been peeled off to start another table.

Mr Beer
2015-01-06, 07:14 PM
Sounds like Rolemaster is the least of your problems there but anyway, congrats on the escape.

Palegreenpants
2015-01-06, 08:03 PM
What, if anything, has the DM done to other people who have broken the 'no electronics' rule? Also, is he new at this? The sort of DM faux pas you've described sound like critical newbie fails. I'd be aghast if players were accepting this kind of abuse from a longstanding DM.

cobaltstarfire
2015-01-06, 08:19 PM
There was one time early on where one of the player was casting ONE. SPELL. Took him damn near twenty minutes to sort everything out.

This is not typical of rolemaster casters as far as I'm aware (I've only ever played casters in rolemaster). Although the folks I got to play with had been playing it forever so maybe system mastery on their part made it faster. 20 minutes sounds like a long time for a combat much less a single players turn.


But eh, there's a joke that says they play D&D in heaven and Rolemaster in hell, so I can understand it if it was a terrible system for you.

Silus
2015-01-06, 09:33 PM
What, if anything, has the DM done to other people who have broken the 'no electronics' rule? Also, is he new at this? The sort of DM faux pas you've described sound like critical newbie fails. I'd be aghast if players were accepting this kind of abuse from a longstanding DM.


Did you know about the no electronics rule before you broke it?

The "no electronics" rule was known, and the DM is what I would term a "veteran", that being he was gaming since before I was in high-school (I'm in my mid 20's to give you an idea of how long ago that was).

Retro Gamer
2015-01-06, 11:01 PM
I GMed Rolemaster for years back in the day, and it was never like your GM seems to be running it. Casting a spell requires 3-4 rolls, if I remember correctly, not that much more than any other system. There's a roll to cast (an attack roll, basically), a roll to resist (i.e. a saving throw), then one for damage, plus an extra one if there's a critical. Yes there are charts to look up, but 20 minutes? I would say one minute, max. I can't imagine what your guy must be doing if it's taking that long.

It's a clunky system in the wrong hands, but I trimmed a lot of it down and it worked fine with my group.

JusticeZero
2015-01-07, 03:45 AM
It's still a newb mistake. If he's been GMing for 20 years, he has, at best, one year of experience that he has flubbed twenty times.

Arbane
2015-01-07, 04:39 AM
I have a no electronics rule, but the punishment is... put your phone over across the room where you'll stop messing with it. Not, sit there and be bored.


Best no-electronics rule I've heard yet was "Put all the phones in a pile. First one to pick theirs up outside of a break-time pays for the pizza."



That Rolemaster system sounds awful.


I am not a fan - it's an old-school class-and-level game with skills added in, and has tables tables tables for EVERYTHING, most of them with utterly hideous results on fumbles (and equally hideous results on criticals). It's also known as "Rollmaster" and "Chartmaster". It started as a rules add-on for AD&D to make combat more 'realistic'.

Yeah.

A friend of mine (who rarely posts here, sadly) once told about his party in a Rolemaster game being TPKed by sheep. Not Irish Venomous Sheep, just regular sheep who trampled them.

Knaight
2015-01-07, 04:48 AM
I don't like electronics at my table, at all, and will not tolerate them other to look up rules. But if you need one to be entertained...Er. The game has failed horribly.

I'm generally not a proponent of people multitasking while playing, which includes electronics. With that said, Rolemaster strongly encourages it. Turns take a very long time, you basically sit and do nothing on everyone else's turn, and the game is generally a mess. I think it has a few sets of nested tables three tables deep, and it has tons of nested tables that come up with an alarming frequency. There's a much simplified game based off of it that is a lot more playable, and still rules heavy enough that it could see another major simplification without getting into rules light territory.

GloatingSwine
2015-01-07, 05:03 AM
There was one time early on where one of the player was casting ONE. SPELL. Took him damn near twenty minutes to sort everything out, and everyone else is just sitting around twiddling their thumbs 'cause we have all of our crap sorted out. And it wasn't even "look this up in the book" stuff. It was all "Okay so roll this to determine if you actually can start casting the spell then you have to roll this to bypass the spell resistance stuff then roll this after you modify with that" and it was just all manner of terrible.


They don't call it Rollmaster for nothing.

(sounds like what you really need is some kind of board games you can play whilst you're playing your role playing game.)

goto124
2015-01-07, 05:13 AM
electronics. With that said, Rolemaster strongly encourages it. Turns take a very long time, you basically sit and do nothing on everyone else's turn, and the game is generally a mess. I think it has a few sets of nested tables three tables deep, and it has tons of nested tables that come up with an alarming frequency. There's a much simplified game based off of it that is a lot more playable, and still rules heavy enough that it could see another major simplification without getting into rules light territory.

Is there a website/program/etc that does the maths for you?

As for electronics ban: it makes sense to have everyone leave their handphones, while you display your laptop (with the maths-crunching website) such that you can't play on it without others noticing and frowning at you.

Knaight
2015-01-07, 05:39 AM
Is there a website/program/etc that does the maths for you?

Rolemaster is one of those games where it is strongly recommended that you have a bunch of excel spreadsheets up. There are some community made spreadsheets.

Personally, I prefer to solve the problem of Rolemaster being a horrifically crunchy mess by just not playing Rolemaster. It also solves the problem of it being tedious and boring.

Solaris
2015-01-07, 11:03 AM
It's still a newb mistake. If he's been GMing for 20 years, he has, at best, one year of experience that he has flubbed twenty times.

A wise old sergeant I once knew put it similarly. "It doesn't matter if you've been doing it for ten years, if all you've been doing is repeating the first six months twenty times."

aspekt
2015-01-08, 06:13 PM
Best no-electronics rule I've heard yet was "Put all the phones in a pile. First one to pick theirs up outside of a break-time pays for the pizza."


I like this homebrew rule.



I am not a fan - it's an old-school class-and-level game with skills added in, and has tables tables tables for EVERYTHING, most of them with utterly hideous results on fumbles (and equally hideous results on criticals). It's also known as "Rollmaster" and "Chartmaster". It started as a rules add-on for AD&D to make combat more 'realistic'.

Yeah.

A friend of mine (who rarely posts here, sadly) once told about his party in a Rolemaster game being TPKed by sheep. Not Irish Venomous Sheep, just regular sheep who trampled them.

I remember being very young and foolishly thinking how great all the combat table results in Palladium (c.1980's) looked. Just -- no.

VincentTakeda
2015-01-09, 12:11 AM
Thats so wierd... I play palladium to this day and I don't remember a single table except the attribute chart and the various xp charts...

Mr Beer
2015-01-09, 12:42 AM
Personally, I prefer to solve the problem of Rolemaster being a horrifically crunchy mess by just not playing Rolemaster. It also solves the problem of it being tedious and boring.

A simple yet effective solution to many otherwise problematic things in life.

aspekt
2015-01-11, 01:34 PM
Thats so wierd... I play palladium to this day and I don't remember a single table except the attribute chart and the various xp charts...

That is weird. I must be misremembering.

I could have sworn it was Palladium.

/shrug