What am I supposed to do?

[Rhynn]

You need to start blogging humorous write-ups of the game - this could be the stuff of legends.

[SiuiS]

Just once, though, I'd like an enemy to outsmart us, rather than having us be made to look foolish by forgetting some crucial fact that we knew when last we asked about it, and we're all getting kind of fatalistic about it. Before I came along, there was a reasonable chance that the party's intended course of action could play out.

I suppose that, as far as fun goes, I'd like to lose rather than be disqualified for once. The game was pitched as two intelligent sides fighting a shadow war; it's a bit discouraging to sit down to play chess and be told there are no pawns in checkers. So I guess what I'm after is a way to understand what he wants out of all this retconning, so that the party can work with it.

Tell him this. Exactly this. Paste this part across.

[killer_monk]

Well, yes. The only non-d20 system I know of him even playing is a single classic Deadlands game I ran over his protests that I should use Deadlands d20. Before this system he created, he ran 3.5, Mutants and Masterminds, d20 Modern, and a few other variants on the same.

Personally, I don't much like d20 systems, but his general stance is that they're the best and only way to play -- except Pathfinder, which he for some reason can't stand.

I've been following this thread for a bit now, and all I can say is that this guy sounds like a psychopath. Straight up, just look at the definition on Wiki. He's a Marty Stu-ing, Psychopathic narcissist and he needs a wake up call. Maybe you should tape him DMing and make him watch what he does? He may not even realize he needs help.

Seriously though, his "Game" would be the least of my concerns. It sounds like this guy needs some serious psychological help. If you're really his friend maybe you should step forward and tell him he acts like this, because he's only going to get worse over time...

[Jornophelanthas]

I've been following this thread for a bit now, and all I can say is that this guy sounds like a psychopath. Straight up, just look at the definition on Wiki. He's a Marty Stu-ing, Psychopathic narcissist and he needs a wake up call. Maybe you should tape him DMing and make him watch what he does? He may not even realize he needs help.

Seriously though, his "Game" would be the least of my concerns. It sounds like this guy needs some serious psychological help. If you're really his friend maybe you should step forward and tell him he acts like this, because he's only going to get worse over time...

I disagree. I think he's just immature and slightly self-centered, and he clearly taught himself how to DM, with either nobody ever giving him any feedback on how to improve, or him being too stubborn to listen to any feedback.

Being pigheaded and self-aggrandizing in his spare time does not necessarily mean that he has a personality disorder.

[Xiander]

I disagree. I think he's just immature and slightly self-centered, and he clearly taught himself how to DM, with either nobody ever giving him any feedback on how to improve, or him being too stubborn to listen to any feedback.

Being pigheaded and self-aggrandizing in his spare time does not necessarily mean that he has a personality disorder.

While you are correct, I did catch myself wondrering if the GM in question did have some mental diagnosis.
I have only met one person who was as bad a game-master as the one described in this thread.
That guy was diagnosed with Asbergers. He also had several big characterflaws (Egoism, stubbornness and a tendency to hide behind his diagnosis being the most infuriating of them).

While I am not arguing that this guy MUST be a psychopath, whenever i read a story that reminds me of that person, I cannot help wondering if there is some psychological baggage, which might add to the situation.

In short: He might just be a bad GM, but when someone is this bad, I figure there is likely more to the story.

[Rhynn]

Bad GM with an autism-spectrum disorder? Come on - what at the odds!?

Seriously, though, diagnosing someone's psychiatric or developmental disorders over the Internet from a description by a third party takes some skills. You guys should be putting those abilities to use getting paid and helping people in the real world.



Or maybe stop assuming people you don't know have some kind of disorder that makes them act like a regular jerk.

(Also, there is no such diagnosis as "psychopathy;" and way to conflate "psychological baggage" with "psychopathy.")

[JoshuaZ]

So the existence and nature of psychopathy/sociopathy is complicated, controversial among mental health professionals, and even as described generally doesn't fit most of this fellow's description. There's an excellent book about this subject - "The Psychopath Test" by Jon Ronson. The book is both informative and a very fun read.

[Arbane]

You need to start blogging humorous write-ups of the game - this could be the stuff of legends.

YES! Please do this!

Sounds like he's writing Yet Another Fantasy Heartbreaker. Which wouldn't be SO bad except if all he knows is D20, he's missed out on a large chunk of the last 30+ years of game design.

[killer_monk]

Bad GM with an autism-spectrum disorder? Come on - what at the odds!?

Seriously, though, diagnosing someone's psychiatric or developmental disorders over the Internet from a description by a third party takes some skills. You guys should be putting those abilities to use getting paid and helping people in the real world.



Or maybe stop assuming people you don't know have some kind of disorder that makes them act like a regular jerk.

(Also, there is no such diagnosis as "psychopathy;" and way to conflate "psychological baggage" with "psychopathy.")

It's always possible that the person in question is just a fracking bastard. But I wouldn't rule mental instability out completely.

But seriously consider video taping the session and having him watch it for review. It may just be the wake-up call he so desperately needs?

[Rhynn]

Sounds like he's writing Yet Another Fantasy Heartbreaker.

YAFH, everyone's favorite game!

[CarpeGuitarrem]

We're supposedly beta testing a "Pathfinder killer".

Oh dear sweet baby salamanders.

THE HEARTBREAKER LEVELS ARE OVER 9000!!!!!

[Sith_Happens]

You need to start blogging humorous write-ups of the game - this could be the stuff of legends.

Thirding(?) this. Watch the 1st/11th episode of Haruhi (the one with the movie) first though, because the more you can make your campaign log sound like it was written by Kyon, the more win it will contain.

[Arbane]

At this point, I'm just going to stay in the game and stay alive so I can witness our GM, with a straight face, describe this guy fulfilling every prophecy in CT (as is apparently his standard MO). It looks like the consensus on here is that this whole game is a single massive ego trip, so I'm hopeful he won't let part of his audience die.

CT?

I admire your capacity for cheap laughs. It sounds like you're going to need it.

Maybe have your character become a member (or the founder) of The Church of Katana Guy, GOD OF AWESOMENESS, and play it in the most farcical manner possible? Be sure to emphasize that all mortal efforts are as nothing, and ONLY Katana Guy can possibly hope to achieve anything in this world....

Or just create a drinking game for his game, and get everyone at the table to play. There's no reason to endure this nonsense sober.

That said, I'd like to think he's capable of more as a GM than this. Maybe. Hope springs eternal. So now I have to figure out how to explain to him effectively how wrong all of this is. How the system he's spent years developing is now expressly tailored to showing off a character who is laughably written, and in the process the only fun anyone has is laughing at this state of affairs. I've tried to explain things to him before, and his usual recourse is to nitpick every fact, figure, and other datum included to death in order to ignore the message, and when that doesn't work, to concoct some rationalization regarding how I don't know such-and-such and so I'm wrong. Or, when others have tried, to just ban them.

So any tips for how to explain that "this, no matter what your rationalization, is not good GMing practice?"? Is it just a lost cause?

Like I said, send him here. The resulting flamewar should be the stuff of legends. :D

Semi-seriously? Sit down with him outside of the game, and explain a few simple things:

1: Nobody is impressed by his UberNPC.
2: If you wanted to play in a world where everything shifts to frustrate every action you attempt, you'd play Toon or Paranoia. Or maybe Exalted as Fair Folk.
3: Nobody's going to purchase another D&D clone, especially not one whose entire cosmology is based around a character they've never heard of and don't care about.
4: People STILL don't think his UberNPC is impressive.
5: If he has a Big Story in mind, he should WRITE A NOVEL. Don't force players to go through the paces unless he's actually handing them scripts.
5.5 If he DOES hand you scripts, demand minimum wage.
6: You're here to be players, not an audience. He can give you something to do, or you can all play Settlers of Catan.
7: I feel the need to reiterate that treating the entire game as a showcase for Katana Guy, GOD OF AWESOMENESS, is laughable and best left to 14-year-olds.
8: Remind him that there is a REASON so many D&D fans dislike Elminster.

Good luck with this. Sounds like this guy has Improved Fact Resistance as a class power.

[Rhynn]

CT?

CthulhuTech, I believe.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

5.5 If he DOES hand you scripts, demand minimum wage.

This is the best response to railroading that I have heard.

[Xiander]

Bad GM with an autism-spectrum disorder? Come on - what at the odds!?

Seriously, though, diagnosing someone's psychiatric or developmental disorders over the Internet from a description by a third party takes some skills. You guys should be putting those abilities to use getting paid and helping people in the real world.



Or maybe stop assuming people you don't know have some kind of disorder that makes them act like a regular jerk.

(Also, there is no such diagnosis as "psychopathy;" and way to conflate "psychological baggage" with "psychopathy.")

I apologize if I came of as needlessly judgmental.

I did try to express that calling the guy a psychopath is more than a bit harsh.

The I tried to elaborate that some of the description reminded me of a person I knew that did have a real life Diagnose. So it set of some red lights with me.

I do not suggest assuming that your friend has any disorders because I have met a bad GM with a disorder. I am not a psycologist and cannot make any judgements and I did not mean to insult anyone.


Now to actually adress the topic: I would not play in that game for very long. I would however, give the G_M a clear talking to about why. Honest, friendly, but firm is the tone I would shoot for. This can be really hard if the guy is actually your friend, but in the long run you are doing him a favor.

[Trekkin]

5: If he has a Big Story in mind, he should WRITE A NOVEL. Don't force players to go through the paces unless he's actually handing them scripts.

This one may come back to bite me, since that's exactly what I did in the Deadlands campaign he was in; I lined up all the modules I had and tweaked them to flow better from one to the other. In general, when they jumped the rails, whatever baddie they decided to stop to combat ended up being in some way a pawn of the larger evil at the end of the track (which is kind of how Deadlands itself was set up). It was a Big Story.

Certainly, the larger point still stands that robbing the players of agency is the exact opposite of one of the main facets of RPGs, but I'm not sure how to differentiate "having an elaborate evil scheme for the players to investigate" from "writing the players' actions off until GodStu descends from the heavens", because the first thing he's going to point to is that I DID write a plot to my campaign, and the campaign (to the best of my knowledge; llehctim can confirm/deny, as he was in it too) worked fairly well in part because of it.

[llehctim]

This one may come back to bite me, since that's exactly what I did in the Deadlands campaign he was in; I lined up all the modules I had and tweaked them to flow better from one to the other. In general, when they jumped the rails, whatever baddie they decided to stop to combat ended up being in some way a pawn of the larger evil at the end of the track (which is kind of how Deadlands itself was set up). It was a Big Story.

Certainly, the larger point still stands that robbing the players of agency is the exact opposite of one of the main facets of RPGs, but I'm not sure how to differentiate "having an elaborate evil scheme for the players to investigate" from "writing the players' actions off until GodStu descends from the heavens", because the first thing he's going to point to is that I DID write a plot to my campaign, and the campaign (to the best of my knowledge; llehctim can confirm/deny, as he was in it too) worked fairly well in part because of it.

The preplanning helped with deadlands, one of the main issues was there were 8-9 players and initially there were 2 GMs making it a mess, not to mention the party infigthing and factions towards the end. You did make some mistakes in the deadlands campain, but even Certain mary sues, basically just acted as goals for certain characters to beat, (not getting into the specifics to avoid spoilers of the system) but my character was basically aspiring to beat one of the strongest mary sues in the system etc. and another was trying to beat another of the mary sues while trying to avoid becoming like him. (its complicated).
Another issue was with that many players, combat took forever and most times the loudest was heard and got to do things, there was also alot of between session planning/building things which some players opted out of, which allowed some degree of freedom in preparing for possible railroading and planned events that we could attempt to find out about in advance as well.
in my opinion mary sues are useful in the beggining of the campain as basically measuring sticks for character power growth and something to let them be part of the story before necessarily being strong enough to necessarily survive. I am still really sad that i lost my campaign journal for that campain, because i spent a lot of time on it and wanted to post it for others to enjoy :(. And even with the mary sues in that campain the players still had massive influences on the events.

[Trekkin]

And that WILL be a fun conversation to have with the GM of this current game, once he brings up this campaign as I know he will.

Setting aside the canon "no stats, the PCs are just dead" characters like

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the Reckoners and Stone (who, on reflection, I overused)

, the party's backstory included them being brought together by a young incognito Teddy Roosevelt (we moved his date of birth back a few years), who died holding Stone off to kickstart the campaign.

And nearly did so a second time, once he

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came back Harrowed, charging through the portal in Devil's Tower no less, chasing down future Stone

, although I maintain that was more of a dramatic backdrop to the fight at Devil's Tower than an actual attempt at anything impactful.

In retrospect, I'm not all that good about Mary Sue NPCs either, other than having the sense to let them butt heads uselessly while the PCs actually accomplish things--and it was my very first time DMing a full campaign. I guess we ought to bring up their mutual uselessness in the argument, then.

[llehctim]

Well to be fair, Mary sues are hard to deal with, I have issues with it when i try to GM, although looking at other examples I guess mine aren't that bad, because they are explicitly always killable, also oh yeah spoiler tags

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But when my character was hunting down stone, the mary sueness was more or less parodied. And most times a mary sue showed up another would eventually show up, to take on the mary sue that we had made several attempts (some sucessful later) to injure them, and more or less negated the other one letting us alter the battlefield. My character was actually hunting down stone for his "betrayal" in a certain adventure, and you know being evil and taunting her alot.

[Grod_The_Giant]

This one may come back to bite me, since that's exactly what I did in the Deadlands campaign he was in; I lined up all the modules I had and tweaked them to flow better from one to the other. In general, when they jumped the rails, whatever baddie they decided to stop to combat ended up being in some way a pawn of the larger evil at the end of the track (which is kind of how Deadlands itself was set up). It was a Big Story.

The significant part is bolded here. Having a plot isn't railroading. Adapting the plot to still work after the players jump the rails isn't railroading either. Railroading is when you don't allow the players to jump the rails.

[Mr.D]

So, your GM isn't just meta-gaming. He has built a Meta-Game. In which he has the most control both IC and OOC.

Fine.

Have your character get the power to read your mind, like his can. If he says no, say that YOU (real life you) have formed a psychic connection to your Character instead. He's the one that said 4th wall breaking is part of the game. Then every time you're about to do something, speak twice, once as you discussing it with the DM and then as your player saying "Nope, the DM has said we can't do that" everyone else's characters can that react IC "What the hell!? But we did that last week and it was fine!" or something.

Unfortunately it sounds like you're playing this game online, am I right? If not I would have suggested that once your 4th wall breaking powers become manifest, every time the DM is about to **** you out of something, you slap him in the mouth, not really hard, just hard enough to shut him up. He wrote himself in, combat encounters are part of the game! And I mean that, seriously, if nothing else it will demonstrate how much of an enormous arse he is being.

Have fun!

[Trekkin]

Oh, we play in person, so that's at least possible.

The emulation of his psychic cheat is, on reflection, going to be a harder sell. His system has that type of two-way trans-universe communication dependent on both sides having psychic class levels.

Which he's denied characters made from players in the past because "[they] aren't psychic in real life".

I never actually followed that train of thought to its logical conclusion before, but it makes sense in light of what I had thought to be joking remarks about the mind...

[Mr.D]

Which he's denied characters made from players in the past because "[they] aren't psychic in real life".

I never actually followed that train of thought to its logical conclusion before, but it makes sense in light of what I had thought to be joking remarks about the mind...

Urm...so he thinks he's psychic too?

Best thread ever.

[Mono Vertigo]

At this point, I won't even be surprised if you tell me he's Sephiroth's twin on the astral plane.

[Dimers]

Hey, is your DM the same guy that tried to publish an obvious White Wolf knockoff a couple months back? Mikal Lakim or something? 'Cos I remember him being kinda obsessed with self-inserts, too, and he was astoundingly resistant to logic ...

[llehctim]

He has a bunch of songs for the other campaign I'm in, since at the end there will be an epic showdown between our characters and him (lower level clone). Where one of the songs is one winged angel, which was a reference to Sephiroth I think. He also Is a huge fan of code geas, and the fleja or however you spell it is a disturbingly commonly used weapon, as well as katanas. Honestly I used to be ok with katanas being awesome weapons when they were rare, but I have recently determined that katanas follow the laws of conservation of ninjutsu. He also really likes code geas and uses his knowledge of the setting and few other manga/anime that he knew about to manipulate the settings.
Worth noting the psychic thing between players and characters wouldn't work, because a prerequisite of having a self-insert character was that the player/character would have no knowledge of the system. Since he was sucked into the game before he would have been GMing this game. (I know because I am playing me who got magic powers, because it was a funny idea at the time. Perhaps not as fun as anticipated, and may cause issues later)
I also got stuck being a pretty lame racial class based on me in real life. Every ability i try to pick for the class is moved to another class where its "more appropriate". I was told that my racial class is basically similar to nerd abilities, which is accurate in real life, I was just hoping that in an RPG where i could get magic powers I could also get a better racial class that lets me have cool abilities, instead of a just few extra class skills. Especially considering the GM getting an uber-racial class.

[illyrus]

Pull a pseudo-Inception. Have your characters sit down and play the RPG game inside the game. Set one of you up as the god-GM that pulls the same sort of stuff the actual GM does. Have the PC-players complain about it and have the mock GM use the same reasoning as the actual GM. If the GM himself gets drawn in to "roll up a character" then give him no agency.

On a more serious level, I'd simply ask the GM what he thought the purpose of the GM to be. If he responds with some sort of "tell a story" then ask him what the difference is between that and a novelist or a storyteller by the camp fire. At no point argue, just ask leading questions until hopefully he's lead to something like "telling a story WITH the players where everyone has meaningful input" or "to make the game fun for all". Not that these are the only valid answers or anything, but something that is a bit less self-centered as an answer.

If you can have him lead himself there then ask if he thinks the current game is fulfilling that goal or not.

[Lord Torath]

This one may come back to bite me, since that's exactly what I did in the Deadlands campaign he was in; I lined up all the modules I had and tweaked them to flow better from one to the other. In general, when they jumped the rails, whatever baddie they decided to stop to combat ended up being in some way a pawn of the larger evil at the end of the track (which is kind of how Deadlands itself was set up). It was a Big Story.

This seems more like "All roads lead to Rome", rather than railroading. The only time this becomes a problem is when the characters really don't want to go to Rome, whoever and whatever Rome ends up being.

Perhaps the best thing to tell your DM is that you (and the rest of the group, if they agree) are not having fun in this campaign where your every idea is struck down. Ask him if HE would enjoy playing in a game where the very laws of physics shifted at whim to specifically thwart any idea he came up with.

[Asmodai]

This sounds like a horrible trainwreck in the making. I got no idea why he is even bothering to call this a RPG if you cannot even affect the plot in any way. The fact that it's all a story about the apotheosis of his author avatar is even creepier.