[3.5] Play Smart, Get Punished?

[Endarire]

Inspired this thread about psychic reformation, threads like it, and personal experience.

Creativity
Player Definition: Using my resources in smart, unexpected, and efficient ways.
GM Definition: Nullifying my hard work, spitting on my best efforts, and ignoring my brilliant plans.

Too often I've heard of this or experienced it. Why does this phenomenon occur? Maybe it's my personality, but when as GM my group cleverly used detect magic to go through an obstacle course in near-record time- effectively a Dungeon Bypass- I smiled, accepted it, and never relied on that trick again.

Another incident famous in our group is "Ideal Tentacles." The DM herded a bunch of creatures into a room for a dungeon crawl. The Conjurer, using a core spell in the expected manner, would have soloed the fight by the default rules. Instead, the DM just said "no."

Are GMs so focused on "the one right answer" that they can't accept others? Is there something about the player mindset that turns them into "Secret Agent Mode" where they get super smart and creative? Do we assume D&D is just a dungeon crawling game when it's also a large part Minecraft and a turn-based strategy game?

[WarKitty]

Part of the problem is that most game systems are only systems for the players. The GM is basically playing this kind of freeformish pseudo-guideline system, and if they actually read and internalize some of the "You're better than the players, now punish them for not taking this horrendous duty that you've selflessly thrown yourself upon!" sentiment in the various Dungeon Master Guides, then of course it's going to turn out poorly.

Plenty of games are not this way. In Apocalypse World, the GM actually has a set of abilities they use just like the players do. If a player says "I want to go find a grenade launcher", there're actually rules for the how the GM has to deal with that. They can use "Make Them Pay" (or whatever it's called - I don't have the book next to me), and a trade caravan with some pilfered weapons comes through town, and the player can get their grenade launcher, but they have to pay for it, or barter, or kill the shopkeeper, or whatever. The GM can't just say "No, you can't have a grenade launcher".

For a second example, In a Wicked Age puts the DM on the same narrative ground as the players. The GM has absolutely no more say in how the story develops than the players. You're playing completely as equals (imagine that; mature adults treating each other as equals), the GM is simply playing a larger number of less consequential characters (the NPCs). The Dice are what determines any matter of chance - not the arbitrary rulings of the GM.

Second this. Even without the attitude, DMing in 3.5 is a lot of work and planning with little to no guidance. When you've spent hours poring over books and drawing maps, only to find that your players found some shortcut to get to somewhere you didn't plan for them to be for another three sessions and don't have statted up, it's very tempting to just say "it doesn't work."

The other issue is that, occasionally, one of the players finds one of the things in D&D that really is broken. Not every DM has a complete list of what's capable of breaking the game. Unfortunately, in that case you have to find a way to say "no, because it's broken" without being too arbitrary.

[Darth Stabber]

As a GM I can tell you that hours of planning can very easily go into each and every session. I hold a session every other week, and I use that 2 weeks to plan alot. I sat down and thought out a setting that has depth and internal consistancy, with cultures and cultural interactions based on thousands of years of cultural history that I have sit down and plotted out. Each dungeon is plotted out with a full history from it's original purpose to it's inhabitants subsequent. I have balanced out a series of encounters that challenge each PC's unique skillset, and I have made a logical progression of why each foe is there, and how strong they are. I know that a session should last a certain amount of time, and then I have to go to bed and go to work in the morning. I have this metered out how many encounters it should take to fill the evening. Now when you smart@$$ pcs take to the dungeon and point out one flaw in a body of work that large, and it invalidates 2 weeks of work in 10 seconds, i get a little grumpy and throw down the ban hammer. I have no problem with alternate means of handling encounters, heck I have had players that try to pull minor shopkeepers to follow them on adventures (and let them do it). I let them talk/bribe their way out of trouble, I let them assassinate their way to the top, but when your devoted to the light paladin all of a sudden does a face/heel blackguard shuffle right before he gains a level, nerdrage. Ther is not rule that means you have to bite a plot hook, but after you do and then purposefully ignore clues that lead to a centerpiece encounter that I spent hours designing, I WILL THROW YOU ON RAILS, AND I WILL ADD 1D10 TROLLS JUST TO SHOW YOU WHO YOU ARE MESSING WITH. When someone is late, or cancels last minute, all of my planning is now ruined. If you let my know 48 hours out I can adjust things, calling me when you are already 20 minutes late, saying you aren't going to be there calls down a nerdrage the likes of which you have never seen before. And I am doing all this planning and agonizing for YOU!!! When a decent GM is nerdraging, maybe you should cut him some slack because he puts in a lot more hours into the campaign than you do. Yeah, too much railroading/neutralizing ingenuity is a bad thing, but sometimes it is neccessary, or the whole session falls apart. Yeah, there is such a thing as improvisation, but I never TPK'd a party with a planned encounter. Add to that, with all of the additional powersources and splatbooks, the standard item table will never drop what the players need to be at an efficient level of WBL. When I have an incarnate, a psion, a binder and a warblade, the DMG does not have most of the Items you need to be effective. So I have to balance your treasure too. I have to go through every book and find items I think you might want, since when i ask you, you have no clue. And then i have to make enounters that give the experienced wizard and the n00b monk (who refused to play an USS because it wasn't a monk) both a challenge. All this and you still don't stat out your summons before play so combat get bogged down for 10d6 minutes WHILE YOU FREAKING CHOOSE STUPID OPTIONS FOR YOUR ASTRAL CONSTRUCT.

[/nerdrage]

[Endarire]

My biggest beefs are with GMs who don't know the rules and who are unwilling to learn them.

System mastery goes a long way toward making a good GM. While game worlds must be party-centric to some degree, I don't try making encounters that hinge on character X using ability Y in situation Z like some old adventure game.

Then again, I feel partial toward 3.5. Over the past ~10 years, I've studied the rules and have mastery over them. I feel like a Game Master.

[valadil]

As a GM I've made that mistake before and I'm sure I'll make it again. When I'm not in the middle of a session and have time to think about it, yes the right answer is to let the player be awesome and improvise something around it. PCs understand that you only have so much material prepped and they'll forgive you an improvised session if you let their cool plan work.

But GMing can be stressy. And you don't have time to think about these things. Given a half second to decide between throwing away hours of prep and sticking with what I wrote for the players, I can understand why someone would be inclined to try and finish out the session.

As a player I often feel powerless against a GM who compensates too much for the group. Yes, I want to be challenged. But I've seen a few too many GMs who balance away whatever the players do. This goes for creative solutions and optimization based ones.

Let's say the bard somehow scores a feat that lets his songs add 4 to everyone's AC. There are plenty of GMs who would just take that as an excuse to add 4 to all the enemies attack scores. It's a wash, except that the bard is out a feat.

One of the GMs who did this sort of trick applied it as a PC too. He'd always take constitution as a dump stat on the basis that that would force the GM to low ball damage. He figured HP was relative anyway since the GM would use HP appropriate damage.

Anyway, this is one of the few things I like about prewritten adventures. GMs are less likely to take it personally if their room gets bypassed by a clever trick. And there's enough content written out in advance that you're not at risk of a short session if the players skip 2 hours ahead. Monsters stats are set in stone and are in no way determined by a party. Just because there's no rogue does not mean the GM is obliged to leave out traps. The game becomes more like an obstacle course, where there are certain skills and stats that must be met and if the players don't make it, it's because they were ill prepared and not because the GM was being mean.

[Tyndmyr]

My biggest beefs are with GMs who don't know the rules and who are unwilling to learn them.

System mastery goes a long way toward making a good GM.

This. All GMs put in work, and want to use at least some of it. That's reasonable.

It's the GM who entirely invalidates his player's builds and/or creativity because he just really, really doesn't know what he's doing that bothers me. I quit my last D20M campaign after one session because of this. Let me give you a brief description.

GM: You're all in a bank.
Players: Why are we in a bank? Would we have our guns with us in a bank?
GM: Nobody has anything. It doesn't matter why you're in the bank. Grenades go off. Roll fort saves.
*all but two players fail*
GM: Everyone who failed gets knocked unconscious from the blast. Those of you who passed, guards come over, and club you on the head. You are now unconscious. You wake up in a metal box.
Players: What's in the box?
GM: A door.
Players: Hell, we're getting out.
*strength checks, over and over, until someone rolls a 20 with multiple assists*
GM: No, that's still a fail. The DC is 35.
Players:...so we stay in the box.
GM: The TV turns on.
Players: There's a tv?
GM: *long plot exposition*...

I'll spare you the tale of his glorious Marty Stu DMPC, the zombie that wasn't a zombie, the wonderful game show we were in, and the ability of NPCs across town to hear us whispering.

[The Rose Dragon]

GM: You're all in a bank.
Players: Why are we in a bank? Would we have our guns with us in a bank?
GM: Nobody has anything. It doesn't matter why you're in the bank. Grenades go off. Roll fort saves.
*all but two players fail*
GM: Everyone who failed gets knocked unconscious from the blast. Those of you who passed, guards come over, and club you on the head. You are now unconscious. You wake up in a metal box.
Players: What's in the box?
GM: A door.
Players: Hell, we're getting out.
*strength checks, over and over, until someone rolls a 20 with multiple assists*
GM: No, that's still a fail. The DC is 35.
Players:...so we stay in the box.
GM: The TV turns on.
Players: There's a tv?
GM: *long plot exposition*...

I'm not sure why this part had to be played and couldn't be put in the game pitch. After all, a Gantz-inspired game often kills you before the game even starts. A similar thing could be done with that.

[valadil]

I'm not sure why this part had to be played and couldn't be put in the game pitch.

Because few GMs know enough to include a game pitch. I guess they think it's spoilery? I'm a big fan of game pitches because it lets the players know what they're getting into and pick a character who would a) get into that situation and b) be fun to play in that situation.

[Saph]

Are GMs so focused on "the one right answer" that they can't accept others? Is there something about the player mindset that turns them into "Secret Agent Mode" where they get super smart and creative? Do we assume D&D is just a dungeon crawling game when it's also a large part Minecraft and a turn-based strategy game?

Sometimes the GM just isn't prepared to run something a certain way. In an ideal world, the GM is always prepared to run a great, entertaining game no matter what the PCs do. In practice, there are usually certain avenues the PCs can take that will shortcut, short-circuit, or generally mess up the GM's plans for the session.

As GMs get better and more experienced, they learn to plan their adventures in advance or adapt on the fly to work with whatever course of action the PCs take. But as the GM, you can never plan for everything - as long as the PCs have free will, there's always something they can do to wreck things. The best solution is usually to be up-front about it. These days, whenever I'm giving players character creation guidelines for a new campaign, I'm fairly specific about what I expect in terms of personality/character goals and also power level.

[The Big Dice]

...the zombie that wasn't a zombie...

I want to put this into a game!

Edit: I don't care how badly the original idea sucked, the name is so cool it needs to be liberated.

[obliged_salmon]

There's a great way to work around this problem. Let the players plan the session. Then, all you need to do as GM is have some generic obstacles ready to throw in the way as necessary.

Let's say you've got a trap, monster, and bad guy NPC.

Player: I want to find a magic sword!

DM: You hear about a mysterious tomb. When you get there, there's a trap! Then there's a monster! Once you get the sword, a bad guy shows up with a knife at your sister's throat! He says "Thanks for retrieving the sword for me. Now hand it over, nice and slow."

Voila, player is invested, DM doesn't have as much crap to do, everybody wins.

[Tyndmyr]

I want to put this into a game!

Edit: I don't care how badly the original idea sucked, the name is so cool it needs to be liberated.

Go for it. In his game, it was just a "zombie" that was that way because he was crazy. Therefore gaining all kinds of benefits and none of the weaknesses. Apparently this was a very popular condition. I named it that out of frustration.


Yes, I love player planning. Often, I literally just make the world, and give them a goal. They will come up with other, tangential goals(typically involving money and power. Very predictable), and will plan out the best ways to make off with everything they want. Sometimes, these plans are all kinds of complicated, and make everything much MORE interesting. And no matter what offbeat things they come up with, it's not an issue, since I have a roughly sketched out sandbox.

[The Big Dice]

I love player planning. Often, I literally just make the world, and give them a goal.

I don't go as far as making worlds, though I am sort of slowly putting one together for a True20 idea I've got. But I tend to write the beginning and end of sessions, campaings and so on. I know what the NPCs are up to so all I need to provide for the players is a hook to bait them in and an ending to aim at.

Of course, sometimes the flight plan gets thrown out of the window, but that's half the fun

[Gaius Marius]

This. All GMs put in work, and want to use at least some of it. That's reasonable.

It's the GM who entirely invalidates his player's builds and/or creativity because he just really, really doesn't know what he's doing that bothers me. I quit my last D20M campaign after one session because of this. Let me give you a brief description.

GM: You're all in a bank.
Players: Why are we in a bank? Would we have our guns with us in a bank?
GM: Nobody has anything. It doesn't matter why you're in the bank. Grenades go off. Roll fort saves.
*all but two players fail*
GM: Everyone who failed gets knocked unconscious from the blast. Those of you who passed, guards come over, and club you on the head. You are now unconscious. You wake up in a metal box.
Players: What's in the box?
GM: A door.
Players: Hell, we're getting out.
*strength checks, over and over, until someone rolls a 20 with multiple assists*
GM: No, that's still a fail. The DC is 35.
Players:...so we stay in the box.
GM: The TV turns on.
Players: There's a tv?
GM: *long plot exposition*...

I'll spare you the tale of his glorious Marty Stu DMPC, the zombie that wasn't a zombie, the wonderful game show we were in, and the ability of NPCs across town to hear us whispering.

I don't know about the rest of your description, but the intro's main failure is that he gave the illusion of control to his player. He made them roll Fort save while it had absolutely no influence over the course of the game. He allowed them to roll Strenght check while it could do nothing at all.

All of these things reeks of player's powerlessness, and it's absolutely horrible to any game mechanic. Rather than make them "roll Fort and haha, you fail", just tell them outright that this is for story purpose, and they fail. No, don't bother saving, you're gonna get your moment of glory later. I need to get the plot going, all right?

[Tyndmyr]

That pretty much described the entire game. I shot his DMPC in the face twice with a 12ga. One of those was a max damage hit. It bounced off, leaving him unharmed, and he then punched me into the ground.

We...were level one. That will outright kill any CR appropriate character in D20M, and will threaten instant death from massive damage to a fair proportion of ridiculously high CRed enemies.

After that, I just started painting models. It's not like what I did was going to change anything anyhow. And yes, it would have been much better describing the bank scene as an intro. And if he did want us to roll saves from flashbangs, which don't do what he thought they did, they would be reflex saves.

He did say that "I didn't really read the book. Figured it was more or less D&D". And yeah...it's not horribly different, but you shouldn't run D&D that way either.

[Another_Poet]

Are GMs so focused on "the one right answer" that they can't accept others?

That may be part of it, but they're also human. GMs are expected to simulate an entire universe in their head but in reality no one can do that. All you can do is prepare a couple contingencies and think about their consequences. If the players do something you didn't think about in advance, it's hard to come up with an idea of what happens next "on the fly."

It may be unsporting for a GM to just say no when the players break out of the mold, but it's usually done out of a moment of panic of not knowing how to react. It's not necessarily smallminded or even intentional.

Is there something about the player mindset that turns them into "Secret Agent Mode" where they get super smart and creative?

Sort of, yes. It's sort of automatic because of the numbers. The players outnumber the GM and that means they have more brainpower to throw at each scenario. It's almost inevitable that they will think of options the GM never could. You would need 4 collaborating GMs to really come close.

In a similar vein, the players can generally focus all of their mental efforts on the problem at hand. They also have all their powers/items in front of their face and know them well. The GM has a lot of things to concentrate on, and is often just going on rough memory of what the PCs have in their inventory or how their powers work.

So it's almost inevitable to happen at least some of the time.

Do we assume D&D is just a dungeon crawling game when it's also a large part Minecraft and a turn-based strategy game?

Yes. :)

[Thrawn183]

I've found the best thing that works for me as a DM is to do less preparation; Use things like reskinning monsters so that I don't spend hours trying to prepare a single encounter.

The moment you do this, you lose that horrible feeling you get when PC's bypass encounters, or defeat them way more easily than you expected. This is very good in terms of preventing a DM vs PC idea when building your encounters.

[Gaius Marius]

That pretty much described the entire game. I shot his DMPC in the face twice with a 12ga. One of those was a max damage hit. It bounced off, leaving him unharmed, and he then punched me into the ground.

We...were level one. That will outright kill any CR appropriate character in D20M, and will threaten instant death from massive damage to a fair proportion of ridiculously high CRed enemies.

After that, I just started painting models. It's not like what I did was going to change anything anyhow. And yes, it would have been much better describing the bank scene as an intro. And if he did want us to roll saves from flashbangs, which don't do what he thought they did, they would be reflex saves.

He did say that "I didn't really read the book. Figured it was more or less D&D". And yeah...it's not horribly different, but you shouldn't run D&D that way either.

What I highlighted.

There is nothing wrong with narrative elements when your DM. But when you want to have the players involved, they need the feeling that what they are gonna tell you actually matters. If you want to introduce a character that'll beat them, just don't bother with the battle. Or outright tell your players that you expect them to lose the battle, but they shouldn't worry.

Although if you bother with the battle, don't fiat things back into your railroad plot if your players get an incredibly smart idea and manage to put your overpowered NPC into a goo or something. It's like the 2nd Gamers movie: if you risk rolling (or playing), you risk things getting out of control.

Players can accept well-done narrative moments, and will accept moments of powerlessness if they feel it's in synch with the game. If you tell them: "what do you do?", expect them to actually hope to change stuff.

[Veyr]

I don't know about the rest of your description, but the intro's main failure is that he gave the illusion of control to his player. He made them roll Fort save while it had absolutely no influence over the course of the game. He allowed them to roll Strenght check while it could do nothing at all.

All of these things reeks of player's powerlessness, and it's absolutely horrible to any game mechanic. Rather than make them "roll Fort and haha, you fail", just tell them outright that this is for story purpose, and they fail. No, don't bother saving, you're gonna get your moment of glory later. I need to get the plot going, all right?

It's incredible how much of a difference this makes.

[Gaius Marius]

Thanks Veyr.

Just to add to what I said earlier: If you have your players face an overpowered NPC that they are supposed to lose against, they will eventually realise that they are on the losing end of the stick. One of them will probably protest, saying: "What's the point of us fighting here?! We are supposed to lose". At this moment, the best reply you can give them is:

"I actually expected you to be crushed 2 rounds ago. You are really good, even in such a one-sided fight."

Yhea, it might be a blatant lie, but who cares? your players are gonna be happy to actually surprise you and do better than you expected. Suddenly, they aren't just getting curbstompted. They are getting curbstompted while keeping their honor.

With competitive players, it makes a world of difference.

[Tyndmyr]

What I highlighted.

There is nothing wrong with narrative elements when your DM. But when you want to have the players involved, they need the feeling that what they are gonna tell you actually matters. If you want to introduce a character that'll beat them, just don't bother with the battle. Or outright tell your players that you expect them to lose the battle, but they shouldn't worry.

Telling them your expectations is legit. Setting expectations is HUGE in gaming. People will gladly accept all sorts of things if they know what they're getting into in advance.

That said, I still don't like cut-scene mode. It's another video-game thing that doesn't mesh well with pen and paper gaming. So, if you're playing a game with lots of combat rules like D&D or D20M, entirely skipping the rules for a combat is...weird.

It's better than the skewed battle in that it wastes less time, but it's still an area where you basically get to listen to the DM read you a story instead of play a game. Backstory before the game is fine. It sets the tone. But once the game has started, I expect to do things.

Although if you bother with the battle, don't fiat things back into your railroad plot if your players get an incredibly smart idea and manage to put your overpowered NPC into a goo or something. It's like the 2nd Gamers movie: if you risk rolling (or playing), you risk things getting out of control.

That's a good movie for comedy reasons, but I wouldn't recommend it for player or GM advice.

[Gaius Marius]

That's a good movie for comedy reasons, but I wouldn't recommend it for player or GM advice.

In that case, I was simply making the analogy:

The Monk player wanted to have his roll rather than insta-lose his save. He rolled a 1, he screwed up.

If a GM wants to let his players fight the hopeless battle, he should accept that his players might come up with a way to escape rather than being beat-down.

[Tyndmyr]

In that case, I was simply making the analogy:

The Monk player wanted to have his roll rather than insta-lose his save. He rolled a 1, he screwed up.

And then they used critical fumbles...with no confirm...on a save. Because it was "by the rules". Funny? Certainly. But probably not a great example.

If a GM wants to let his players fight the hopeless battle, he should accept that his players might come up with a way to escape rather than being beat-down.

Sure. However, I favor dropping clues that it is hopeless in advance, and letting the players choose if they wish to fight it.

[imperialspectre]

I suspect that most of the problems with GMs not being prepared for player tactics stem from GMs who don't know how the relevant game system works, or haven't carefully thought through the implications of players' powers. I can tell you from personal experience that building a game session around the player characters being trapped in the Lower Planes with yugoloth patrols chasing them is a waste of time if the PCs are 11th level and have access to plane shift. Being upset that the PCs managed to find a safe spot and then planeshift out would be stupid, because I failed there by not bothering to consider the PCs' capabilities when coming up with a "challenge" for them to overcome.

Sure, there are game design issues here. It takes far more preparation and thought to come up with challenges for Tier 1ish characters (in this case, a cleric and a sorcatrix) than it does to come up with interesting challenges for Tier 4ish characters. We've made a lot of effort in Legend to collapse this difference in capabilities so that there aren't "tiers" of character classes, but in 3.x you pretty much just have to live with it.

At any rate, ragenerfing player characters in the middle of the game, or inflicting non-interactive cutscenes on them, isn't a very nice thing to do. It's particularly stupid if a GM's pain is self-inflicted due to not reading character sheets or understanding the system in question.

[valadil]

There is nothing wrong with narrative elements when your DM.

I agree with this up until a point. I don't think you should ever tell the players what choices they make. Describing a foregone conclusion instead of playing it out is one thing. Making decisions for the players and then telling them the results of their (your) decisions is too far.

[Gaius Marius]

I agree with this up until a point. I don't think you should ever tell the players what choices they make. Describing a foregone conclusion instead of playing it out is one thing. Making decisions for the players and then telling them the results of their (your) decisions is too far.

Oh, agreed. Never make the actual choices for them.

Although, in the description made up-there, I'd probably say something like: "You try to open the doors with all the means at your disposal to no effect". Don't go into details, 'cause players are going to start nagging you.

[Sacrieur]

It can be difficult for PCs who haven't DM'd to really know what the DM is doing. I mean you may think you're just being clever or smart, but really it foils the DM's plans.

I tend to provide a source of entertainment to DMs. My characters tend to die in laughable ways. A cleric of mine failed three listen checks after someone was trying to break in and kill him while he slept... And had to kick the door in really hard... And I still didn't wake up.

Kill me? Is that the best you can do?

[Silus]

Oh, agreed. Never make the actual choices for them.

Although, in the description made up-there, I'd probably say something like: "You try to open the doors with all the means at your disposal to no effect". Don't go into details, 'cause players are going to start nagging you.

"The (Genius Loci) house is tired of you poking your metal thieves tools into it. It eats them."

[Gaius Marius]

It can be difficult for PCs who haven't DM'd to really know what the DM is doing. I mean you may think you're just being clever or smart, but really it foils the DM's plans.

I tend to provide a source of entertainment to DMs. My characters tend to die in laughable ways. A cleric of mine failed three listen checks after someone was trying to break in and kill him while he slept... And had to kick the door in really hard... And I still didn't wake up.

Kill me? Is that the best you can do?

I like to apply quid-pro-quo with my players. Sometimes, I gotta tell them: "It's a great idea, but I cannot allow you that, otherwise you're screwing up the whole campaign" (it's so rare, I think in my 3 years of GMing, it happened only once. I am quite the flexible GM, and my plots have often, often, often been derailed).

But then, if I have to pull a fiat like that, they know that I'm gonna let them do something I'd otherwise won't, because I owe them.

[mikau013]

Thanks Veyr.

Just to add to what I said earlier: If you have your players face an overpowered NPC that they are supposed to lose against, they will eventually realise that they are on the losing end of the stick. One of them will probably protest, saying: "What's the point of us fighting here?! We are supposed to lose". At this moment, the best reply you can give them is:

"I actually expected you to be crushed 2 rounds ago. You are really good, even in such a one-sided fight."

Yhea, it might be a blatant lie, but who cares? your players are gonna be happy to actually surprise you and do better than you expected. Suddenly, they aren't just getting curbstompted. They are getting curbstompted while keeping their honor.

With competitive players, it makes a world of difference.

I like what you're saying here

I'll share one of the sessions I had as a pc under a dm that is relevant to this situation.
3 other pcs and me (kinda low lvl so yeah) were investigating a town, where all the inhabitants were frozen in solid blocks of ice and put on a cart.
Then a huge (or maybe bigger) undead monstrosity came along to drag the cart away to a giant undead city.
The dm flat out told us at this point that it would be suicide for us to fight the monster, so our goals shifted from perhaps trying to kill it, to just distracting it, and trying to free as much frozen villagers as we could.

It was actually quite a bit of fun fearing what that monster could do and still succeeding in freeing most of the villagers

---
On a different note though, while some dms are well bad dms and since they are human they will make bad calls, I still think the dm isn't really the problem in the thread the op linked ( http://brilliantgameologists.com/boa...?topic=11379.0 ). Sure he made some calls I really disagree with, but after reading the first page.

It seemed to me that the op had a different view over how the game is supposed to be played. There just seemed to be a lot of miscommunication (or no communication) between the dm and the player about the kind of game it would be.

If you have a game where 6 of your pcs are making monks for a city based campaign about investigating crimes or something and then another player joins with a diviniation based wizard who just casts spells to basically invalidate the campaign, it is clear that something has got to give (the player, the plot or something else I guess )