DM vs Players

[Ethernil]

There is one thing that keeps bothering me. Both in these forums, and in live games i have played, many DMs feel like they are playing vs the players, as in a competitive game. They feel good when they kill the players or make them feel miserable. I don't see the point in that. Why is it so? I mean in one of my first games i was called a metagamer for picking power attack, combat expertise and weapon supremacy in my 20 lvl fighter. The dm had to run each feat through testing and almost banned many of them. When the fighter does more than 2d6+4 it breaks the game right? I am not talking optimization, as you have guessed the group was a bunch of total noobs, blaster wizard, healbot cleric, bow rogue and fighter alternating between twohand weapon and sword and board depending on the fight. Also, we had millions of gold, there were no magic markets to get items... ok so far... and i was not allowed to buy or raise/tame a crow as a pet. Not a familiar or a scout or whatever, i just wanted a pet crow to feed and roleplay with but it would ruin the game... Wait, now i remember, we were using that gold to pay for resurection costs cause we needed that magic pretty often.

I do understand there are players that want to bend the rules in half and exploit stuff/trick the DM, this is not the kind of tables i am talking of.

[Venger]

There is one thing that keeps bothering me. Both in these forums, and in live games i have played, many DMs feel like they are playing vs the players, as in a competitive game. They feel good when they kill the players or make them feel miserable. I don't see the point in that. Why is it so? I mean in one of my first games i was called a metagamer for picking power attack, combat expertise and weapon supremacy in my 20 lvl fighter. The dm had to run each feat through testing and almost banned many of them. When the fighter does more than 2d6+4 it breaks the game right? I am not talking optimization, as you have guessed the group was a bunch of total noobs, blaster wizard, healbot cleric, bow rogue and fighter alternating between twohand weapon and sword and board depending on the fight. Also, we had millions of gold, there were no magic markets to get items... ok so far... and i was not allowed to buy or raise/tame a crow as a pet. Not a familiar or a scout or whatever, i just wanted a pet crow to feed and roleplay with but it would ruin the game... Wait, now i remember, we were using that gold to pay for resurection costs cause we needed that magic pretty often.

I do understand there are players that want to bend the rules in half and exploit stuff/trick the DM, this is not the kind of tables i am talking of.

It's a holdover from earlier editions of the game. if you ever read any of the 1 or 2e stuff, there's a real emphasis on gotcha gamesmastering and an adversarial relationship between players vs gm rather than a collaborative one.

[ngilop]

It's a holdover from earlier editions of the game. if you ever read any of the 1 or 2e stuff, there's a real emphasis on gotcha gamesmastering and an adversarial relationship between players vs gm rather than a collaborative one.

I disagree. A lot of the whole 'DM vs THE PLAYERS' came from very specific dungeons/campaigns in the early days.

Are there people who play that way? Yes. Are there people who play that way regardless of whether they even knew the earlier editions existed? Yes.

Some people just do not understand the core of how much a collaborative work an RPG is and think its a huge 'gotcha' Thing for the DM.

And there are DM who are just plain jerks/are bads like the guy who wants to ban power attack because your doing 1st level non raging barbarian damage.

Most players I know have had bad, good, and decent DMs If you do not like the style and such of your current DM. Let them know and then move on to the next group.

[Menzath]

I have seen similar posted in many threads, and while at one point I did have a slightly sadistic DM, even they wouldn't go out of their way to kill PC's.

And while a "Me vs Them" does seem to be a portion of forum posts, conversely people like me aren't going to post about good the DM's we've had, or have.
I particularly like who we have right now and how the last two games the only roles have been social. And I'm happy, yet sad, that we are playing 5e at the moment as well, but that's a different issue.

Our DM gets joy in how we solve(or mess up) the situations that we come across, which is a great way to look at it. I could go on but I should really be heading to work, like 2hrs ago. But I will keep an eye on the responses in here.

[King of Nowhere]

the concept of the DM against the player mostly crops up in discussions against bad DMing. yes, there are bad DMs who make the player's life miserable.

The other face of the coin, however, is that the DM must provide entertainment by giving challenges to the players. If your godlike character goes through every enemy with ease, it becomes boring. The DM must also provide entertainment for all the players, so if there is one guy with a godlike character doing everything and everyone else being little more than a spectator, it also becomes boring - except maybe for the one godlike player.

So a DM's job would be to make life miserable for the players just enough that they have to strive to succeed, and have fun in the process. He also has to make life miserable enough to the stronger players that the weaker players will be able to help them. [EDIT: this includes killing a PC every once in a while, if things are getting too easy. A one-sided fight is not entertaining, and if the enemies are real threats to the PC, they may occasionally get lucky with dice and kill someone. It's no tragedy, there are resurrection spells for a reason, and if you go too much out of your way to save a PC, it undermines a lot of tension. Going out of your way to kill a PC, however, is bad DMing /EDIT]

Some DM overdo the miserable part, and others just have some deep misconceptions about the game - generally they only played with noob players, and when they suddenly found themselves with more experiences players, who could solve their whole plots with a few clever applications of magic or skills, they overreact by banning all the stuff that instantly solves their plots. After all, those plots worked fine when he played with the weaker players, so if now they could be solved in five minutes it's not because the former players were incapable of using their tools to the fullest potential, but because some of the gaming content is wrong.
Mind you, there is nothing wrong with banning some content, and especially with removing some features of the game to enable adventures that would not be possible otherwise. This is simply part of the worldbuilding. It's when all the best strategies are randomly banned that it's a problem.

[RoboEmperor]

There is one thing that keeps bothering me. Both in these forums, and in live games i have played, many DMs feel like they are playing vs the players, as in a competitive game. They feel good when they kill the players or make them feel miserable. I don't see the point in that. Why is it so? I mean in one of my first games i was called a metagamer for picking power attack, combat expertise and weapon supremacy in my 20 lvl fighter. The dm had to run each feat through testing and almost banned many of them. When the fighter does more than 2d6+4 it breaks the game right? I am not talking optimization, as you have guessed the group was a bunch of total noobs, blaster wizard, healbot cleric, bow rogue and fighter alternating between twohand weapon and sword and board depending on the fight. Also, we had millions of gold, there were no magic markets to get items... ok so far... and i was not allowed to buy or raise/tame a crow as a pet. Not a familiar or a scout or whatever, i just wanted a pet crow to feed and roleplay with but it would ruin the game... Wait, now i remember, we were using that gold to pay for resurection costs cause we needed that magic pretty often.

I do understand there are players that want to bend the rules in half and exploit stuff/trick the DM, this is not the kind of tables i am talking of.

Why are you playing with this DM? Leave immediately. I mean it. Leave now.

Terrible noob**** DMs like these ruin D&D for everyone. Never play with a DM that calls you a metagamer for picking basic feats, bans a bunch of stuff due to his low intelligence, and models the world after his **** tastes.

Make a list of everything this DM did and if any DM you play with in the future does anything on the list, leave.

[Geddy2112]

I never understood this as a DM. If I want, I can kill my players by snapping my fingers. Not just fiat "rocks fall, everyone dies" but legitimately end the players and make their lives utter hell. They have a party of 4-7, I have an entire world full of monster's and NPC's. They are locked in their classes and builds, which have weakness I can exploit. I have better system mastery than almost anyone at my table, and if I really wanted to my games would be so lethal players would have to bring 10 characters a session.

I don't "win" or find any enjoyment in ruthlessly splattering my players against the metaphorical pavement. I want my players to feel challenged, but I don't want to beat them(most of the time). The Angry DM once wrote "build fair, play to win". I avoid designing the kind of encounters that would simply ghost the party, despite being able to do so. That said, they are live fire exercises and when the party is in them I shoot to kill. Most of the time, they walk out fine, but from time to time a character drops. If you make the game hard enough where players are unsure if they will survive encounters and that the rules of death apply, you have a fun and challenging game. The game loses fun when the players know their characters are just a revolving door of a meat grinder(Exception, Call of Cthulu which is designed to be this)

I don't speak for all parties, and for all of you out there who want invincible FFVII style combats where players get back up from anything short of a TPK, or those tables that want even the threat of combat means a TPK, keep on trucking. However, in between the two works pretty well for my table.

[Luccan]

I disagree. A lot of the whole 'DM vs THE PLAYERS' came from very specific dungeons/campaigns in the early days.

Are there people who play that way? Yes. Are there people who play that way regardless of whether they even knew the earlier editions existed? Yes.

Some people just do not understand the core of how much a collaborative work an RPG is and think its a huge 'gotcha' Thing for the DM.

And there are DM who are just plain jerks/are bads like the guy who wants to ban power attack because your doing 1st level non raging barbarian damage.

Most players I know have had bad, good, and decent DMs If you do not like the style and such of your current DM. Let them know and then move on to the next group.

I'm not super familiar with earlier editions, but this makes me think of things like the Tomb of Horrors. Which was probably a bit funny to Gygax and Co., but got used to screw people over a lot at other tables. Then you have famous stories like Tucker's Kobolds, where the dungeon was designed to screw with players' concept of the game, but did so by ensuring most of them died on the first floor (it was not helped by the total lack of strategy on the players' part). And then somehow, you get the public perception that eventually pushes past d&d is Evil, into the realm of "d&d involves DMs cheating to kill their players". For awhile, all non-insider descriptions of the game (for TV shows and the like), the game usually showed the DM being extremely malicious to their players and cheating to make things harder when their players did well.

I do think death was seen more acceptably in earlier editions, however, since you were probably going to die a lot at low levels any way.

[Drakevarg]

Conflict is the soul of drama. If the party isn't put at risk it provides precisely as much drama as going to the DMV while someone plays trailer music in the background. Something needs to be at stake for an encounter to have any meaning, be it life, limb or fortune. Simply saying there is something at stake but making things so easy that the players would need to actively try to fail to do so is nothing more than a condescending pantomime.

Which isn't to say I'm a fan of meat-grinder DMing. I've caused more than my fair share of TPKs, but constant death only creates tedious paperwork, shallow characters, and increasing disinterest in events. The two extremes could be looked at as comparing a Saturday Morning Cartoon to Game of Thrones. In one extreme, nobody's really in any real danger and it's just a colorful series of action pieces to provide a bit of shallow entertainment with out much meat to it. On the other end of the extreme, we have a show where major characters die with such regularity, abruptness, and narrative arbitrariness that it's easy to lose all investment in the people and events unfolding. Everything up to now has been miserable, it's only gotten worse since then, and all signs point to it only continuing to get worse in the future. Why should I waste my emotional energy being invested in a neverending torrent of refuse and misery?

The players should succeed more often than not, because if they die their story ends, and whoever takes their place will have much less history with the unfolding events than the fallen characters. But at the same time, occasionally they need to be kicked into the mud to remind them that they're actually part of the world and that they need to work for their successes, and it's not all just an elaborate play being put on for their benefit.

Never losing and never winning are both equally undesirable trends. A DM's job is to find that happy middle.

[Darth Ultron]

There have all ways been jerks that have fun by ruining the fun of others. You can find them everywhere. They get a rush and thrill of power when they ruin the fun of others. And games all ways bring hem out.

So there have all ways been, and all ways will be, jerk DMs. But it has nothing to do with the edition or game. It's all about the people.

Now Character Death, Loss, Defeat, and Feeling Miserable are and should be part of the game. I idea of playing a ''safe game'' is dull and boring. To ''loose'' is part of the game, and you are to ''feel bad'' if you loose: it is kinda half the point. Now sure you don't ''want to loose'', but the ''respect'' for that makes the game better. Think of like Bumper Bowling (where the gutters on both sides of the lane are covered). You roll the ball down the lane, and it's not ''if'' you will hit some of the pins, it is just ''how many''. Or like put a couple dozen minnows in a cup, then try and catch one with a small net. It is ''sort of'' fun....

And how someone acts in defeat says a lot about their character (their real character, not the player character). A lot of people don't take it well. A LOT of people. To whine and cry and complain is the easy way out. The hard way is to just accept the loss, and try better next time.

Older editions of D&D were not gotcha gamesmastering and an adversarial relationship between players vs gm, but a lot of people played it that way. But it got really bad starting with 3E. With the whole 'build' idea and ''everyone following the rules'', the game did devolve into a very adversarial game. The whole game was about ''who knew the rules better'', the DM or the players, and there was the constant struggle for each to ''one up'' the other and be ''better''.

[Pex]

The 2E DMG taught DMs to say no to everything and anything a player wanted. Hyperbole, perhaps, but not without truth. There were ability score restrictions in playing classes. Ability scores were always rolled. Point Buy didn't exist. Ranger and Paladin were hard to get. Even if the DM is generous enough to allow adjustment of ability scores the DMG specifically tells the DM not to adjust the scores to qualify for those classes, forbidding the player from playing the character he wanted.

Monsters were no better. They get to cheat. Multiple attacks when most PCs only get one. Undead who take away levels just for hitting the PC. Cast spells or use psionic powers ignoring limitations PCs would have.

Spells were no better. A few punished you for using them like Haste aging you a year. Even benign spells like Restoration do so, aging the priest 3 years for the audacity of restoring the levels lost to the undead for which you had to be 14th level to even cast the spell so for many game sessions of playing beforehand undead were a death sentence.

I treasured the few 2E DMs I played with who were not tyrannical wretches. 3E was the first edition to teach DMs to play with their players instead of against them. 3E helped to teach me I didn't have to accept tyrannical DMing as the norm. DMs since then who had never played 2E or earlier who play against players are in it for the power trip. The game gives them official authority, and they abuse the privilege.