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Akisa
2008-10-16, 02:42 PM
Once he found out 2 of us were going to be playing a druid, 1 cleric (with DMM) and 1 wizard he decided he wouldn't be able to DM a game like that. /end rant

Tsotha-lanti
2008-10-16, 02:45 PM
What is wrong with you people?

Did none of you - including the DM - go, "Hey, how about a different sort of party? Let's cooperate on planning. Here's what I'd like to play - what about you?"

LibraryOgre
2008-10-16, 02:46 PM
See, he forgot the most important quality of a DM:

The ability to say no to characters.

I'd let such a group slide, probably... but I'd take a look at DMM, and get rid of the nightstick cheese, at the very least.

And I'd probably send you up against martial adepts in Anti-magic zones. Swordsage assassins who kill magic-users.

Blackfang108
2008-10-16, 02:51 PM
I had a game cancelled by the players before it started. That bit.

Calinero
2008-10-16, 02:56 PM
Um....was no one willing to just make new characters?

RTGoodman
2008-10-16, 02:56 PM
Well, welcome to D&D - I've had a ton of games where people got all excited and ready to play and made characters and everything... only to never get together again to play. :smallyuk:

I agree with Mark and Tsotha-lanti, though - PC classes and party make-up are no reason to cancel a game.

Also, did you all make characters separately and without the DM's consent, or did you get together and all decide on that sort of party? If the first, well, don't do that again - it's cool to have ideas already, but if the DM doesn't want a certain kind of party, he needs to be around to tell you.

Also, making new characters isn't that hard - some of you could keep the ones you made, and the rest save them for the inevitable next campaign that starts.

valadil
2008-10-16, 02:59 PM
My players may bail on me soon too.

I'm finally trying out the Game of Thrones RPG. It's been on my shelf for years. One of my players bought it for me when it came out and I feel bad I hadn't gotten to use it yet. He suggested I run our next game using the system and I agreed.

Our most vocal player (who is the only one who hasn't read the books) doesn't see how we can have a game that isn't hack and slash adventure. I don't mind criticism, but he hasn't even given the game a chance yet and each time he complains about the idea, my confidence for the game slips.

ken-do-nim
2008-10-16, 03:04 PM
My players may bail on me soon too.

I'm finally trying out the Game of Thrones RPG. It's been on my shelf for years. One of my players bought it for me when it came out and I feel bad I hadn't gotten to use it yet. He suggested I run our next game using the system and I agreed.

Our most vocal player (who is the only one who hasn't read the books) doesn't see how we can have a game that isn't hack and slash adventure. I don't mind criticism, but he hasn't even given the game a chance yet and each time he complains about the idea, my confidence for the game slips.

If it makes you feel any better, it sounds like a game I'd love to play in.

Tengu_temp
2008-10-16, 03:07 PM
On the bright side, at least he canceled it before it started, not during the game - that'd be even worse.

And, on another bright side, a DM who does such stupid decisions probably wouldn't run a very fun game anyway.

ocato
2008-10-16, 04:32 PM
And, on another bright side, a DM who does such stupid decisions probably wouldn't run a very fun game anyway.

That's not really fair. While it is definitely not the best course of action to throw one's hands up and declare you cannot work under these circumstances, the idea of running a game with a group of players who intend to break the system over their knee and drink its delicious marrow is very daunting. If the DM has little or no experience as a DM or is a lousy optimizer, he very well could have taken one look at the game and foreseen a weekly 4 hour session of wanting to pull his hair out as new and exotic sources were thrust into his face and confusing combinations destroy his challenges in ways he doesn't actually understand. (I'm not saying the group would do that, I'm suggesting the DM may have thought they might) And while the obvious ideal would be for the group to come to a compromise, it is indeed up to the DM whether or not the frustration of herding the players and building the campaign is worth it for him to have fun. People overlook that a lot. The DM is supposed to have fun too. Wrecking his campaign with uber characters to the point where all he can really do is hang his head and sigh as you waltz through stuff he spent hours making probably isn't fun for him.

I give this DM 0 points for compromising and 2 points for standing up for himself enough to not get himself into a situation he can't handle.

Colmarr
2008-10-16, 04:37 PM
TBH, if I were the DM and my 3.5 players nominated druid, druid, DMM cleric and wizard, I'd pull the plug too.

I don't enjoy optimizing, and I don't have the time to retrofit every creature in the MM with feats other than Alertness and Toughness. Nor do I have the inclination or ability to scrounge together NPCs of sufficient deadliness to give such a party a challenge.

The DM's entitled to enjoy him/herself too.

So why quibble about it? I'd say I didn't want to DM such a game.

bosssmiley
2008-10-16, 04:49 PM
My players may bail on me soon too.

I'm finally trying out the Game of Thrones RPG. It's been on my shelf for years. One of my players bought it for me when it came out and I feel bad I hadn't gotten to use it yet. He suggested I run our next game using the system and I agreed.

Our most vocal player (who is the only one who hasn't read the books) doesn't see how we can have a game that isn't hack and slash adventure. I don't mind criticism, but he hasn't even given the game a chance yet and each time he complains about the idea, my confidence for the game slips.

Get someone to lend the guy in question the first three books of ASOI&F, right? :smallconfused:

Lack of familiarity with the setting is probably about 9/10th of the battle in this instance. There's plenty of hack-and-slash in the series, just not the dungeon-crawls he might be used to...

Rei_Jin
2008-10-16, 04:50 PM
Nah, see, if I had a party of players who wanted to break the game, I'd let them try.

And then respond with equal levels of munchikinry.


Ikea Tarrasque, roll out!

Tia-Rat, roll out!

Mecha-Igor, roll out!

If anyone doesn't know what any of those are, let me know and I'll explain. But needless to say, when I can pull these bad boys out, most players sit down and shut up. They then play nice.

No-one can optimise like the DM. That's why Rule 0 exists.

Lappy9000
2008-10-16, 05:09 PM
Nah, see, if I had a party of players who wanted to break the game, I'd let them try.

And then respond with equal levels of munchikinry.


Ikea Tarrasque, roll out!

Tia-Rat, roll out!

Mecha-Igor, roll out!

If anyone doesn't know what any of those are, let me know and I'll explain. But needless to say, when I can pull these bad boys out, most players sit down and shut up. They then play nice.

No-one can optimise like the DM. That's why Rule 0 exists.

DM Smite Screen. When my screen (a 2" folder weighted down by gratituious Improv material) accidentally slams down on the table, scattering miniatures and dice alike. When this happens, the campaign world ends.

Tengu_temp
2008-10-16, 05:17 PM
Ikea Tarrasque, roll out!

Tia-Rat, roll out!

Mecha-Igor, roll out!


I know Ikea Tarrasque, but not the others - what are they? Mecha-Igor, efpecially, fillf me with curiofity.

Lord Tataraus
2008-10-16, 05:20 PM
Once he found out 2 of us were going to be playing a druid, 1 cleric (with DMM) and 1 wizard he decided he wouldn't be able to DM a game like that. /end rant

So...did you offer to change characters or did you stubbornly stick to your cheese-fest? If the latter then you have no right to rant and the cancellation is entirely your fault.

Rei_Jin
2008-10-16, 05:23 PM
I know Ikea Tarrasque, but not the others - what are they? Mecha-Igor, efpecially, fillf me with curiofity.

Well, Mecha-Igor is what happens when you take a construct (any type will do, the higher the CR on it the better) and then give it the Incarnate Construct Template which halves its CR. You then give it the Half-Golem Template, which increases its CR by 3. Repeat ad nauseum, as the strength increases go on every time you add the Half-Golem Template. Eventually you end up with an absolutely monstrous creature with a CR around 6-7.

Tia-Rat is a Horrid Rat that has had the Titanic Template put on it, then the Multi-Headed Template, then 5 different half dragon templates added to it. The CR is really high, but it freaks them out to see a rat version of Tiamat. Most of them run for their lives without taking it on. Would YOU take on Tiamat?

ocato
2008-10-16, 05:23 PM
Nah, see, if I had a party of players who wanted to break the game, I'd let them try.

And then respond with equal levels of munchikinry.


Ikea Tarrasque, roll out!

Tia-Rat, roll out!

Mecha-Igor, roll out!

If anyone doesn't know what any of those are, let me know and I'll explain. But needless to say, when I can pull these bad boys out, most players sit down and shut up. They then play nice.

No-one can optimise like the DM. That's why Rule 0 exists.

This is great if you have the knowledge and savvy to do it. I wager the DM in question either can't or refuses to meet optimization or cheese with the same. What's the say? "If you wrestle a pig you soon find that you've become just as dirty and worse yet, the Pig enjoyed it." That's probably butchered.

Rei_Jin
2008-10-16, 05:25 PM
This is great if you have the knowledge and savvy to do it. I wager the DM in question either can't or refuses to meet optimization or cheese with the same. What's the say? "If you wrestle a pig you soon find that you've become just as dirty and worse yet, the Pig enjoyed it." That's probably butchered.

Well, I look at it more in the way that some players just don't understand how the balance between player and DM works. You can tell them something, but they don't listen.

So you butcher them mercilessly, and they learn.

They learn not to screw with the mechanics, and not to piss off the DM.

DM Raven
2008-10-16, 05:26 PM
Sounds a bit shady, I'm wondering if there wasn't another reason he cancelled the game. I've experienced several people who wanted to DM but then ended up cancelling the game after a few sessions for strange reasons. One game we started I was having a lot of fun playing, and our DM cancelled the game one week because one of our players couldn't make it...he hasn't hosted it since and this was a year ago.

I end up DMing most of our games for this reason...

Oslecamo
2008-10-16, 05:36 PM
Well, Mecha-Igor is what happens when you take a construct (any type will do, the higher the CR on it the better) and then give it the Incarnate Construct Template which halves its CR. You then give it the Half-Golem Template, which increases its CR by 3. Repeat ad nauseum, as the strength increases go on every time you add the Half-Golem Template. Eventually you end up with an absolutely monstrous creature with a CR around 6-7.

That's so cheesy I think I'm in love:smallbiggrin:

Must...Resist...Urge...To unleash it whitout a very good reason....

only1doug
2008-10-17, 05:41 AM
Get someone to lend the guy in question the first three books of ASOI&F, right? :smallconfused:

Lack of familiarity with the setting is probably about 9/10th of the battle in this instance. There's plenty of hack-and-slash in the series, just not the dungeon-crawls he might be used to...

Is the player having troubles sleeping? I tryed my best to enjoy ASOI&F, but I just couldn't force myself to like it, I gave up on the yawn fest.

(not that i wouldn't try a game in the setting, far from it, i just hated the books)

kamikasei
2008-10-17, 05:49 AM
TBH, if I were the DM and my 3.5 players nominated druid, druid, DMM cleric and wizard, I'd pull the plug too.

I don't enjoy optimizing, and I don't have the time to retrofit every creature in the MM with feats other than Alertness and Toughness. Nor do I have the inclination or ability to scrounge together NPCs of sufficient deadliness to give such a party a challenge.

The DM's entitled to enjoy him/herself too.

So why quibble about it? I'd say I didn't want to DM such a game.

And you would be perfectly entitled to say so. But why not say "I don't want to DM such a game, but since I do want to DM a game, let's rethink character selection here"? Especially if the players made their choices in isolation, immediately shutting down the game at that point is like leaving a restaurant with your meal uneaten because they offered you a condiment you don't like. You could just tell them you're fine without the condiment.

Smeggedoff
2008-10-17, 06:29 AM
DMM Cleric? which variant's that?

magellan
2008-10-17, 06:40 AM
Ok, i start to get curious.

I never ever played 3rd ed. I browsed the books, went "eeeeewww no negative armorclass" and stuck with 2nd ed.
Clerics are casters that can fight, used to be the same in 2nd ed. same with druids. The tactic to challenge casters was to wear them out. Ticking clock, interrupted rest and at higher levels enforce the preparation time for spells. Teleportation had that fun little "oops who put a rock there" moment so most players only used it in dire circumstances.

That doesnt work anymore in 3rd ed? why?

Irreverent Fool
2008-10-17, 06:42 AM
DMM Cleric? which variant's that?

Assuming you're not kidding, it's a cleric that has taken the Divine Metamagic feat, which allows you to sacrifice turning attempts in place of increased levels for applying a metamagic feat. It is typically used for persistent spell along with the 'nightstick'. Persistent spell increases the duration of a spell with a fixed range to 24 hours. Each nightstick a character owns grants that character four extra turning attempts a day, and they are relatively cheap.

You see where this is going.

The problem is confounded further by the fact that by the RAW, Persistent Spell allowed you to choose any metamagic feat, whether or not you had said feat yet. It has since been errata'd.


...wear them out.

That doesnt work anymore in 3rd ed? why?

I believe in the case of the DMM cleric this is described partially above. In the case of a druid, they will simply turn into something ridiculous and overpower everything. The simple answer is: They get too many spells.

Additionally, there is a much greater degree of customization available in 3.5. This seems like a good thing, but one must bear in mind that the players have the course of the entire campaign to go through all the books they have and find things to optimize a single character each. The DM, by contrast has to come up with challenges for the party every session and isn't going to have as much time to customize each and every thing the party faces. Even if he does, the players are just going to kill it. An optimized party will destroy any CR-appropriate encounter.

In order to challenge them, the DM will have to use bigger guns, but because of the way the players have made their characters, any combat is going to be one-sided. Either the characters murder the challenges, or the challenges murder the characters. The characters may have an out-of-whack power level, but ultimately they only have normal hp for their level.

I don't really fault the OP's DM at all. Unless your group already knows each other pretty well, I think walking away is a perfectly valid answer to such disrespect. I would highly recommend sitting down together and agree on the type of game you all want to play, and then fit your CHARACTERS into the world rather than your BUILDS.

...unless you want to play hack-n-slash, which is fine.

Smeggedoff
2008-10-17, 06:46 AM
ah, gotcha. I know of the feat I just didn't know it had it's own build abbreviation.

kamikasei
2008-10-17, 07:12 AM
I don't really fault the OP's DM at all. Unless your group already knows each other pretty well, I think walking away is a perfectly valid answer to such disrespect.

What exactly is the disrespect? We don't know enough for that conclusion to seem justified.

Jayabalard
2008-10-17, 08:21 AM
Once he found out 2 of us were going to be playing a druid, 1 cleric (with DMM) and 1 wizard he decided he wouldn't be able to DM a game like that. /end rantI don't see the problem; it's certainly a better situation than getting into a game where you aren't going to enjoy DMing.

Burley
2008-10-17, 08:40 AM
{Scrubbed}

kamikasei
2008-10-17, 09:06 AM
I don't see the problem; it's certainly a better situation than getting into a game where you aren't going to enjoy DMing.

Any number of things may prevent you from enjoying an activity. Since when is the default response to one of those things cropping up abandoning the activity rather than excising the troublesome thing?

It may be that Akisa's situation is such that the DM is justified in seeing his players come to him with this lineup and concluding that they will never be a group for whom he can enjoy DMing. Perhaps he started out by telling them he wanted to play a fairly low-powered campaign with a traditional mix of classes and/or archetypes to ease him into his role, and they then went off and conferred and returned with a deliberately broken and overpowered setup. On the other hand, perhaps he was talking to each of them separately and they each told him without reference to the others what they wanted to play. Maybe he had the option of saying "wow, that's more power and less balance than I'm aiming for here. Let's coordinate a bit better so that you guys aren't stepping on each others' toes, and tone things down a bit while we're at it".

Depending on the context of the event, his reaction may have been a (fortunately) early display of an attitude that would have had the game running fine for a while and then come screeching to a halt as soon as any single thing wasn't to his liking.

Again, giving Akisa the benefit of the doubt here, the DM's action comes off as equivalent to feeling that one of your guests at a party is being too loud and boisterous and so throwing everyone out and shutting the party down rather than, say, asking that one guy to take it easy.

Jayabalard
2008-10-17, 09:09 AM
And you would be perfectly entitled to say so. But why not say "I don't want to DM such a game, but since I do want to DM a game, let's rethink character selection here"? Especially if the players made their choices in isolation, immediately shutting down the game at that point is like leaving a restaurant with your meal uneaten because they offered you a condiment you don't like. You could just tell them you're fine without the condiment.That's not really a good analogy; a better one would be leaving a restaurant because they don't serve any food that you're interested in eating. You're interested in food, just you have no interest the type of food that they're offering, so rather than order something that you're not going to enjoy, you leave and go find a different restaurant.


Any number of things may prevent you from enjoying an activity. Since when is the default response to one of those things cropping up abandoning the activity rather than excising the troublesome thing?That's precisely what the DM did... in this particular case, the troublesome thing appears to be the players, so by excising them, the game winds up canceled.

"Abandoning the activity" doesn't apply unless the GM stops gaming entirely, and we don't really have enough information to make that assumption.


Again, giving Akisa the benefit of the doubt here,I don't agree that the OP deserves the benefit of the doubt any more than the GM does; quite the contrary, the fact that the OP thinks that ranting about the GM bowing out of the game is ok goes a long way to show that the GM was quite correct in identifying it as an unenjoyable situation, and that the GM picked the correct course of action.

kamikasei
2008-10-17, 09:25 AM
That's precisely what the DM did... in this particular case, the troublesome thing appears to be the players, so by excising them, the game winds up canceled.

That's the question: was the problem the players or just their characters? We don't know enough to say whether the DM recognized that his players were irredeemably horrible people who he had to avoid being near at all costs, or cut off his arm to fix a chipped nail when his group's first pass at character creation happened to turn out an unfortunate combination of overpowered choices. We don't know whether the DM had set any expectations or guidelines for them before chargen, nor whether they were communicating or working on their own while coming up with the characters, both details which are important in assessing the situation.

By activity, I was referring to the game, not the hobby of gaming itself; staying in the hobby is not much use if every time any problem occurs in a game you abandon that game. As to my restaurant analogy, it's perfectly solid, you're just making different assumptions about the situation. I see canceling the game because you didn't like a player's character idea as akin to walking out on a meal because you were offered a side dish, because you're giving up the meal (game) when you could just work out a different choice you'd prefer. Your rephrasing would work if the DM could reasonably conclude that the restaurant had nothing on the menu that interested him, i.e., that the players would never produce characters he'd be happy to run a game for.


I don't agree that the OP deserves the benefit of the doubt any more than the GM does;

I'm not saying that we shoudl give either party the benefit of the doubt; I'm saying that if you give one the benefit the situation looks one way, if you give the other the benefit it looks different, and we don't know enough to judge who deserves it. Tsotha-lanti isn't justified in assuming the DM overreacted, but nor are others justified in assuming the players were in the wrong.

edit: I was being a little unfair to Tsotha-lanti, who now that I look again spread the blame around to everyone involved, which is fair enough.

Burley
2008-10-17, 09:37 AM
That's not really a good analogy; a better one would be leaving a restaurant because they don't serve any food that you're interested in eating. You're interested in food, just you have no interest the type of food that they're offering, so rather than order something that you're not going to enjoy, you leave and go find a different restaurant.


I'm sorry, Jayabalard, but this is an even worse analogy than Kamikasei's.
I think there is a real problem with so many people, especially online, forgetting that when you join a group of people for a gaming session, you aren't there to just get what you want out of it. By going into social situation, it is required that you have social interaction with people. The people in this gaming group are people, not food. A person can't look around the table and say, "You aren't the type of people I'm looking for." Because then you just left an entire group of people A) with a horrible image of you, and B) a horrible image of themselves.

{Scrubbed}

Blackfang108
2008-10-17, 09:40 AM
I don't agree that the OP deserves the benefit of the doubt any more than the GM does; quite the contrary, the fact that the OP thinks that ranting about the GM bowing out of the game is ok goes a long way to show that the GM was quite correct in identifying it as an unenjoyable situation, and that the GM picked the correct course of action.

Not really.

You're drawing unbased assumptions. People rant for reasons other than being shameless, selfish idiots.

Example: Dennis Miller. He rants for comedy.


Example:
I have had one game I was going to play cancelled on me before the campaign started.

It was cancelled three hours after the assumed start time when I had to leave because the DM wouldn't get off the phone with his roommate's girlfriend. (I kid you not.)

I had to wake up at 6:30 am the following day. It was 10:30 when I left the apartment in anger, and drove the hour it takes me to reach my house from there. I was ticked, because he had asked me to join the campaign, knowing full well my time constraints.

Thankfully, I haven't seen him since he moved out of that apartment over a year ago.

Am I in the wrong because I am ranting about the above?

does it make me a bad player that this is what happened to me?

No.

EDIT:


That's not really a good analogy; a better one would be leaving a restaurant because they don't serve any food that you're interested in eating. You're interested in food, just you have no interest the type of food that they're offering, so rather than order something that you're not going to enjoy, you leave and go find a different restaurant.

No, it's more like leaving the restaurant without reading the full menu because you don't like the specials they serve.

UglyPanda
2008-10-17, 09:59 AM
I'd like to hear more from the OP before I share my thoughts. Are you sure that it's an optimization thing? How long has this guy been DMing? Are you sure he knows all the rules? Is it possible he was just expecting a Melee, Skill-monkey, Healer, Mage party and didn't know how to cope?

Roland St. Jude
2008-10-17, 12:46 PM
Sheriff of Moddingham: Thread locked for unnecessary flaming/trolling.