(Any) I really AM kinda good at this!

[AtwasAwamps]

God that felt GOOD.

While I’m fairly confident in my DM abilities, I have to admit that recently I’ve been a little bit doubtful due to some events that happened with the larger group I play with. One of the players, who has always had trouble with the rules, finally lost his temper during a fight with a dragon, yelled at me, and stomped out of the room and the house. He hasn’t attended in the past two weeks and nobody has had any contact with him. It’s generally been agreed that this wasn’t my fault, but I am still upset about it. I haven’t run my games for them since because of that.

Last night, I ran an online Skype session for my smaller group that just made me feel GOOD. Everything came together, everything fitted, and one of the players called me after the session to thank me for brightening up his day. I threw them for a loop, I gave them more motivation than they’d ever had before, I showed them a world they hadn’t even expected, and in the end they found themselves caring more for the town that had helped them than they had felt for anything since the start of the game. The last 90 minutes of our four hour session were tense, insane moments that had my players cursing and shouting in joy as they failed and succeeded multiple times in a matter of moments. When we finally wrapped it up due to it being 2am, combat coming up, and all of us working today, I actually felt exhausted…and so very proud of myself and my players. What had started as an incredibly basic sandbox game had developed into a trio of clever, well-developed, and dangerously genre-savvy characters that have an actual impact on the world around them.

And god help me I love it so much.

Look out, big group. I'm back on the damn wagon.

[hamishspence]

Shouldn't that be "fallen off the wagon"?

Depending on your view of DMing.

[AtwasAwamps]

Shouldn't that be "fallen off the wagon"?

Depending on your view of DMing.

Power is addicting.

[Lord Loss]

I'm glad your game went well! Myself and my players have noticed a huge increase in my DMing ability recently .

[Saph]

Something like this happened to me a couple years back. I was DMing a group that was quite hard work. Two of the players were really difficult to deal with, and I felt like I was spending most of the session fighting them. It got to the point where there was a huge argument and the two of them stormed off . . .

. . . and suddenly, the new, smaller group was loads and loads of fun to DM for again. Sometimes you don't realise how much of a drag some people are until you suddenly don't have to deal with them anymore.

[AtwasAwamps]

Something like this happened to me a couple years back. I was DMing a group that was quite hard work. Two of the players were really difficult to deal with, and I felt like I was spending most of the session fighting them. It got to the point where there was a huge argument and the two of them stormed off . . .

. . . and suddenly, the new, smaller group was loads and loads of fun to DM for again. Sometimes you don't realise how much of a drag some people are until you suddenly don't have to deal with them anymore.

Was this during the RHOD game you posted?

I remember that...I remember reading your threads and SilverClaws before I started playing and realized that THAT was what I wanted to do and how I wanted to make my players feel. SO hey, thanks for that :)

It's just a wonderful feeling when you can make the party's necromancer freak out and scream "OH GOD IT'S IN THE HOUSE WITH US! IT'S UPSTAIRS! IT'S COMING FROM UPSTAIRS!"

[Saph]

Yep, same one. Heh, glad it made an impression. :)

[PersonMan]

In about two weeks I'll(hopefully) be seeing some people I DMed for back when I had nearly 0 experience. Now I'm returning with a year of weekly 2-hour(4 hour for the past 7 months!) DnD sessions worth of DMing experience. It'll be great if they're all there again this year. It'll be fun to see how it goes now that I've done so much more DMing.

[Bharg]

Is the single purpose of this thread patting your back? :
What happened before that player stormed off?

I think I so would enjoy a session on Skype if there wasn't my terrible lack of english skills.

[SilverLeaf167]

How exactly do you play on Skype? The DM probably rolls all the dice for convenience and truthfulness, right?

It would be fun if our style of play wasn't so grid-relient...

[AtwasAwamps]

Is the single purpose of this thread patting your back? :
What happened before that player stormed off?

Yes. Yes it is. Sue me. I don't get to pat my own back very often IRL and I was feeling mildly pleasant, so I am patting my own back. It's comfortable. Though it's also here for anyone who wants to talk about similar subjects and such.

The player that stormed off...::...I still feel crappy about it, but I might as well tell the story.

Q is a pretty cool guy. I really like him and we get along really well. But he doesn’t have a head for the game in any way, shape, or form and struggles a lot. We were playing 4e and before we even started this campaign, he and I sat down and talked out a number of things, going over the rules, his character build, and all of the minutia of 4.0. We talked about what he wanted to do, established a background, and so on and so forth. Throughout the campaign, I’ve stopped the game and we’ve done our best to make sure he knows why X happened, what caused Y, and so on.

He’s NEVER been able to understand how attacks of opportunity work. He was playing a melee character and he and the party were up against a dragon, specifically an adamantine dragon. Prior to this encounter, he’d been botching skill checks to stealth his way closer to a target while the other rogue was making them regularly, without fail. Already frustrated, he tried to close in on the dragon, who made an opportunity attack on him. Angry about this, he accused me of giving things opportunity attacks whenever I wanted them to have them. I pointed out that the creature had threatening reach and he subsided. I am glad I chose not to use the wing buffet power that these beasts have.

On its turn, the dragon shifted out of flanking and unloaded on the paladin. Because of its size, the rogue had to move around the dragon rather than just shift to gain flanking and CA again, incurring another opportunity attack. When he turned at me in fury as I said this, I started to explain why he incurred another OA and one of the other players jumped in to help. This was the final straw, he snapped, yelled at me and insulted my game mastering ability, rolled his die and got a 2, and then stomped outside. I paused the game, stepped outside with him, and told him that I was very sorry he felt that way and that if he had anything he wanted to talk about I would be really happy to meet up with him and just talk, grab a bite to eat, whatever. Since I was his ride home, I made sure he understood that I was upset that he hadn’t had fun and that I wanted to make the game fun for everyone, and that I was perfectly willing to work on our differences. He nodded and shook my hand and such…and has since basically cut off total communication with the group.

How exactly do you play on Skype? The DM probably rolls all the dice for convenience and truthfulness, right?

It would be fun if our style of play wasn't so grid-relient...

Google "Map Tools". You get your grid, your dice, everything you could possibly want.

[Bharg]

I don't see him acting very reasonable or you doing anything wrong there. *pat pat*

If he just doesn't get the rules tell him next time when he is about to provoke an attack of oppurtunity. Explain it again to him if he still doesn't get it. It's not like AtoO's are supposed to surprise the players. Or just shout at him what he should do. We do that sometimes...

[Lord Vampyre]

It sounds like you did everything you should have. The only thing I would suggest is to warn players when they are about to incur an AoO, although they should be able to figure it out for themselves and isn't required.

I've had similar issues with different groups. In one group I specifically informed the players that I awarded XP by their appearance in game. I had a number of players that missed game regularly. I was willing to accelerate their XP accrual, but I wasn't going to just give them the same XP that everyone else had earned. They really weren't able to handle the fact that I had a Player NPC in the group.

I think they were just used to dungeon crawls, and didn't understand how their absence affected the storyline. It killed the group, but I wasn't complaining about that. I already had a second group that I was running on the off weeks. The size of that group had really become unmanageable. I think I had 9 players at one time.

I suppose it really comes down to the definition of the word "fair". They really thought that I was being unfair in how I ran my games. They were so worried about the xp and magic items that I wasn't giving out, that they were unable to enjoy the game.

[AtwasAwamps]

It sounds like you did everything you should have. The only thing I would suggest is to warn players when they are about to incur an AoO, although they should be able to figure it out for themselves and isn't required.

Just to be clear, I did this. He would start moving, I would stop him, warn him that he would take an AoO, the group would provide him with alternate options, and then he would get frustrated and move anyways. He even has a power that allowed him to gain AC vs. AoOs, which he never used, even after he was reminded of it. So yeah. I did what I could.

[Lord Vampyre]

Yeah, it souded like you probably did. I just didn't want to make any assumptions. Unfortunately, we'll always run into the occassional difficult player. Hopefully, it will always remain an occassional event.

I'm glad you were able to start DMing again.

[KillianHawkeye]

So the guy got frustrated playing a game he doesn't know how to play? Shocking....

[Tedesche]

Something a psychology professor of mine said to me the first time I met him:

"Empathy is a double-edged sword. Yes, it affords you insight into other people's actions and mental states; yes, this allows you to better influence them. But it also means you are more likely to be influenced by that awareness yourself. Empathizing with someone often opens us up more than the person in question, and that often means we tend to put their needs before our own. This is why "sensitive" people often wind up being taken advantage of by other "less sensitive" people. Being innately talented at understanding others is an incredibly powerful tool, but to the extent that you also care about the person you're dealing with, you're in danger of letting your awareness of their emotional needs and wants eclipse your awareness of your own."

That's what he said, more or less verbatim. I remember, because it was the first in a long, LONG list of things he said that changed the way I view the world. The man was a god.

Anyway, my point is this: sometimes, you need to close the door on that empathic connection, and consider your own thoughts and feelings about something for a moment. It sounds like your failure to resolve that situation with your friend made you question your ability as a DM, and dealt a fairly hefty blow to your self-esteem in the process. It also sounds like later events helped you get over it, thankfully. However, if this ever happens again (and it undoubtedly will) it would probably be a good thing for you to remember to take your own perspective into account more often. This was his problem, not yours. You can try to help, but taking on sole responsibility for resolving the problem helps no one. Sometimes we need to take a step back, separate ourselves from others again, and let them deal with their own issues.

I know, I know—enough with the Dr. Phil crap. I'm mainly pointing it out, because of the thread title. This problem your player had should not have caused you to question your own competency as a DM. After all, the real issue is that he's just not a very good player yet, due to his lack of experience with the rules, right? That can be very frustrating to be sure, but it's his problem, not yours.