Benched? More like sacked.
We had a DM that just could not get it through his head that the party wanted to "kill stuff & get treasure"
This was a game with a load of flaws.
For starters, since the game was being held at a college game club, the DM felt that he had to include anyone who asked to join. There were no rules about this, but he just liked having a lot of "little people" to control.
At the start of the campaign, he asked us what we wanted to do, and it was nearly uinanimous that we wanted to do fairly standard dungeoncrawl, hack & slay, Orc & Pie type heroic adventuring.
We got off to a bad start when he let everyone make any kind of character they wanted. so my 2e Gnome Illusionist was surrounded by some munchkin-esque elf archers, power mad wizards, bloody handed fighters, as well as 1 wild mage, and 1 merchant.
Why he let those two looneys play these characters is beyond me.
Did I mention that the wild mage also thought he was a physician? He favored bleeding PC to cure anything that ailed them, including being low on hp. He killed 2 PC's that way. Don't even mention the numerous wild surges that caused us no end of trouble.
So with a group of 12 players, some of whom are playing moronic characters, or characters totally inappropriate to our expected "kill & loot" style campaign, he proceeded to start us with ... a political adventure.
We somehow become attached to a local nobleman and were trying to prevent his assassination before his wedding day.
Well, that was the plot as he pitched it to us. The evil PC's (oh yeah, everyone could play any alignment they wanted too!) decided to throw in with the assassin and try to sieze the kingdom for themselves. So we suddenly had a PvP game.
Oh yeah, we never actually were told that we'd be rewarded for defending the local noble. So we were essentially doing this pro bono!
What happened to the dungeoncrawl? What happened to the treasure?
Anyway, we got off to a rocky start, but through careful planning, and sheer bullheadedness the good team managed to save the day, and drive off the players of the vil PC's. That's a good thing! Smaller group, no more interparty fights. Yay!
So we go to the next adventure, we get sent to explore an uncharted island.
Alright! This is more what we were asking for!
And on the way there we get shipwrecked, losing ALL aour equipment.
Still, I'm hanging in there, now it's a survival kind of game, and that's pretty interesting, plus, any weapons or clothes we find will be pretty good treasure, right?
So we begin to fashion crude weapons and explore.
And we find crap. Nothing.
No ruins, no primitive peoples. No monsters. We basically just wander and scavenge for food.
Realistic? Sure.
Fun? Not so much.
After a few REAL TIME weeks (we played every thursday night) of this boredom we finally found a grove, where a magic mouth informed us that the faeries would appear to the faithful and help them escape this accursed island.
We searched for clues of how to attract the faeries attention, but the clerics and druids were unable to come up with a single clue. Mind you - we never actually SAW these faeries. We never saw ANYTHING! We just spent over a month of real time pretending to be a dozen Robinson Cruesos (sic?)
After another month (real time) of trying to find some way to attract the faeries unsuccessfully ... I snapped.
The actual rant I screamed has been lost to history, but I seem to recall having my gnome stipping naked, smearing himself with honey and wildflowers and frolicing in the "faeire grove" until "these f'ing faeries get their sparkly little heads out of their butts and help us end the misery that is this f'ing game!"
I think I got a little animated OOC as well, because when I stopped shouting everyone at the table aside from the GM gave me a standing ovation, cheers and laughter.
In shock the GM muttered something about needing a bathroom break and we called time out.
During the time out, I moved the DM's books to my seat, and took my place at the end of the table in the "DM's chair"
The players returned before the DM, and I simply began running the game. I had them attacked by some lizardmen who they rapidly dispatched - to cheers! And then, they looted the bodies and found gold! More cheers!
At last the Dm wandered back into the room and saw what had happened. I smiled at him. The players waited to see what would now happen.
I stood up to give him back his game if he wanted it.
And he calmly went to my old space at the table, pulled out a blank character sheet and started rolling dice.
"Can I play a swashbuckler?" he asked with a nervous grin.
That DM and I have been fast friends ever since, he was even in my wedding. We still laugh about "The day Tinner frenzied on the Faeries."
He told me later that he knew the game was falling apart, but he just didn't know what to do about it, and didn't want to look stupid by quitting.
Moral? I guess it's talk to your DM, and don't be afraid to be animated if you're bored?
YMMV.