Ever benched a GM?

[Dragon-Slayer]

In playing Vampire years ago I had a Storyteller that was an awesome player (he was very good at making up stories in real life, too. Well, maybe not good at it, but he sure practised a lot.) but a really bad storyteller, basically because he couldn't run with what the players were doing very well. His stories were great in theory, but it was too easy for us to outthink him without really trying, which turned the game into a Monty Hall marathon of ubridled bloodlust. Aleister Crowley? Trapped, staked, and drained before he knew what hit him. Justicars? I was taking them down left and right, making them pay in blood for attempting to bring me to justice. Baba Yaga and I had epic battles, and he was finally able to keep me at bay (as in she ran and had escape routes) but not without me taking over several small towns and converting the locals into vampires to create my own army. Not really my preferred style of play, but if the Storyteller/GM/DM cannot provide well thought out challenges, why not try to keep him on his toes?

The Storyteller himself is a good guy, I was his best man at his wedding, but he also had a penchant for running around town with guns and acting like he was in the CIA and doing special forces work when in reality he was an Army cook. He is a very good player though, few people can craft a backstory like him, and he was superb at whining his character out of tight spots.

 

[Ramien Meltides]

Grackle,

I've had a similar problem before.
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?p=698790#post698790

In fact, I had to double-check to see if you might've met the same campaign!
Thankfully, the campaign I'm talking about in the link above is over. The campaign setting, however, continues to survive. Go figure.

 

[jmucchiello]

We even brought it up before she started her last game. The problem is that she loves to write and what tends to happen as the game goes on she starts writing stories about her world and the NPCs in it and she gets very protective of her vision of the world so we are no longer allowed any input.

You can tell her all this before a game starts but once the game gets going and she starts doing this stuff she gets all defensive and her feelings get hurt if you tell her you are not having good time. She loses all perspective on it. It causes problems with our friendship and with her marriage. She feels betrayed at the time.

While I agree with the others who've said don't let her DM. If you have to have her write a manifesto of good DMing, in her own handwriting, which states: "I will not create NPCs that travel with the party or whom the party must ask for help who will then overshadow the party. I will not write stories about the game world. I will not get upset when a member of the party takes this paper out and waves it in my face that I am violating my promise." Sign and date it. Make sure everyone has a copy. If she's game to make the document, she might be more forgiving when you all turn on her poor NPCs she's written these little short stories about. Or don't let her DM.

 

[niastri]

Yep...In one long-running Forgotten Realms campaign where we rotated GMs the third GM who took over kinda ruined it for us...We look back at the campaign with fondness and basically say the whole tail-end of it just "Didn't Happen"

*sigh*

Bleh, just cause I didn't follow the "at least one fight per session rules"

 

[WalkingDead]

I've never benched a GM, and I've never been benched myself (I spend most of my time GMing, rather than playing). However, I've slipped out of groups that had terrible GMs. The worst example was a group formed through RPG Locator (I think -- one of those types of things, anyway). Myself and a friend were both contacted about forming a new group. It ended up being a total of five of us, and the group was formed to run WEG's Star Wars RPG.

Rather than action and adventure, the GM focused on cutting through red tape just to do simple things like receive permission for our ship to take off. One session and myself, my friend and one of the other guys split. For all I know, the two we left are still hanging together or maybe even formed a new group.

 

[uzagi_akimbo]

Benched several in fact. Or rather, helped bench, witnessed benching and once benched the fraggle myself.

First time ever was in a local AD&D 2E camapaign - which had started off as a exploration/land-grabbing campaign, and ended with all of the players as head honchos of differing (and often competing) realms at the edge of civilisation. Not much adventuring was taking place anymore, no loot was gained, to excitemnt was had and the "sessions" became pure administrative gatherings... the only guy who had fun, was the GM (a business major, as chance would have it ) who was detailing the world down to a tee.. Finally someone worked up the nerve and stated he was suffering "player burnout", and would like to play something else... It was a quick and unanimous vote (with an abstaining GM who had taken the hint ) - and the group stayed together.

Second and third time around where GMs who's "love interest" was one of the players, leading to PPS (pet player syndrome), making things vastly boring, because no blow would have harm said "pet", no trap would trigger or NPC play intelligently... except against everyone else, where no hods were barred. Things blew up when one player "accidentally" killed the "pet" along with some NPCs and queried by the GM replied that he thought she was "invulnerable", judging from her past "exploits" -and of course she had the best protections (loot being coincidentally tailor-made to fit for the "pet" and hardly anyone else) . Said GM blew up and stopped short of tackling the player, ditched the campaign with some less than pleasant insults and looked for other players ( I heard a similar thing happened two years later in his group - PPS again, though with a different pet..). Noone cried. Two weeks later, we had a new (and better campaign) running.
Third time, the GM was oblivious to our sensible and mature suggestions (all of the players were in their late twenties) that we felt excessive favouritism taking place - and we stopped turning up. He ha stopped GMing and gaming since - feeling deeply misunderstood and unappreciated.

We actively benched a GM, who took the seat IMC for a single adventure, and couldn't get challenge ratings under control - we got hit by wave after wave of cutting edge led and equipped monsters hurled against us from impossible ambush situations, inane traps blowing us to smithereens etc etc etc. Basically the GM was still playing in "aggressive player mode", but unfortunately with full GM resources...
We broke the adventure off by teleporting out (ingame) and confronting him (in RL) by showing him the math on his encounters and the sheer discrepancy of our projectable power of five characters versus his "encounters" (the first three rooms featured two CR 15 encounters against a level 10 party... and that was just for starters... the main BBEG we calculated at CD 19....). He admitted to have tweaked the adventure some to "add some spice".... the campaign has resumed, said unfinished adventure our common "shame", and things are back to normal. Needs to be said, that GM is a rather mature guy in the first place,

 

[The Grackle]

Grackle,

I've had a similar problem before.
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?p=698790#post698790

In fact, I had to double-check to see if you might've met the same campaign!
Thankfully, the campaign I'm talking about in the link above is over. The campaign setting, however, continues to survive. Go figure.

Similar, but in the game I was in, the NPCs weren't helping us so much as they were beating us to the conclusion and then making fun of us for not doing it right. Fun.

Did you bench him?

The wierd thing people who are bad GMs can be really awesome players. That's why it's hard to bench 'em, b/c you still want them to play. If they were just terrible gamers, it would be easy to kick them out, or walk out of their campaigns.

 

[Hanuman]

We have not really benched a DM but there was one guy that ran a game so bad that it was a case of "Get thee hence and never darken my door again"........We still shudder when we think of it "bbbbbuuuuuurrrrrrgggghhhh".



Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -Abe-

 

[Dinkeldog]

I think I'd like to get benched, but we're just a little ways into RttToEE so I don't think I'll get that chance for a while. Between school, work, DMing and trying to get a social life, things get busy.

 

[Terwox]

I've been benched, and I've benched some DM's.
I was running a thin-blooded V:tM game, where the basic theme was the characters would never be helped by anyone, be very confused all the time, be aimless, and eventually get lured into the sewers and eaten by Tzmisce.
Oddly, people stopped showing up.
Sadly, it took me a little while to understand.

Later, a player did tell me, "Yeah James. That sucked. A lot."
I do wish they'd of told me at the time, although to be honest, I do enjoy criticism, but I do have trouble hearing "Your work sucks." -- Even when it's very true.

It does help to hear criticism though -- I've always had trouble with running somewhat aimless games, and while trying very hard not to railroad I always end up with nothing to do, until recently. Which is cool. Progress is great, and it'd be nearly impossible to do without player feedback -- we can't just divine what players want from us!