is this GM bad or am i just a wuss?

[Kzach]

DM : Dude, i shouldn't have to tell you that you have to choose betwen the melee Goblins and the ranged Goblins. you have to make sure you know this and if you can't understand my subtle hints, it's your problem.

More information needed. For instance, if you're just being lazy about targeting all the time and casually saying, "I target whatever, I don't care," then I could see that becoming annoying for a DM. If, however, he's constantly telling you you're targeting the wrong thing and should target X, Y or Z, then he's being a dick.

the rest of the fights, we almost always start toe-to-toe with the enemy, making my archery Rogue entirely POINTLESS. i can only depend on my Rapier and hope i get criticals because i have no AB worth talking about.

Again more information is needed. Is he simply saying, "Right, you're all in combat now and this is how you're positioned?" Or are the combats naturally occurring results of the PC's actions and therefore are you choosing your locations to pick fights and always choosing poorly?

first campaign, he takes over some of my roleplay moments. i ell him that even if i blow at it, i'd like to do my own roleplay so i can hopefully improve. pretty much ignored.

Ok, that's unforgivable. I wouldn't care who he is or how badly he thinks I'm roleplaying, you don't do that that, period. That's like basic DM'ing 101.

the party meets up, we get out of town and about two encounters in, we get chased by Frost Giants...at level 1.

Again, more information. Were there signs leading up to the frost giants? Could it have been avoided? Or was it just sprung on the party without any warning or any chance of avoidance?

luckily, we escape. we ended up in an underground cavern and because the DM wouldn't give us any advice, half the party almost drowned in ice-cold water. we could have taken 20 but since we didn't ask him, he didn't tell us.

Eh, you're own fault.

luckily, we survived that too (he gave us 100 xp for surviving a danger we created ourselves). we end up in a Dwarven Kingdom. during a mission for a dwarven mine, we get captured by Drows because we didn't specify we were Silent Moving.

Again, your fault.

again, luckily, the prison we were in was falling apart so we got out.

You realise it's not luck, but the DM's imagination creating a flow to the story, right?

later, in the main city, we learn (too late) that we need a pass to even BE in there. it's possible we should have not told them we didn't have a pass but still, we had no way of knowing this at ALL. no one told us and we had no reason to suspect we needed one...until the innkeeper called the guards on our ass.

Again, your fault. DM is just RP'ing what he thinks a drow society would be like.

the rest of the campaign was us getting carried to jail and publicly executed. he also spent a few hours on this sequence. which means we spent the REST of the session jerking off because there was NOTHING we could really do. hell, i just said **** it and was doing intimidation checks for the lulz.

Again, more information is needed.

Was it truly that you couldn't do anything or was it that you all just gave up? It seems to me that the common thread here is that you guys as a party walk into trouble and he let's you find a way out of it somehow but that at one point you all just said, " it," and rolled intimidation checks for the lulz.

second campaign. we have to clear a mansion of undeads. after a while, we get to the source and what do we discover? a Lich. in spite of my inexperience, i had decided this was NOT worth it, turned around and RAN. heck, one of the players lost his character right there. lost their soul to it. the Paladin made a brave charge and after a few rounds, the Lich just teleported away and all was well again.

Ok, I'm seeing a real trend here so I think I can safely ignore the rest of the examples and make a roughly educated comment.

I think there are two major problems here. The first one is that the DM is not tailoring the play-style to the group that he has. Obviously it's not working and he's not realising that or not caring and requiring you to adapt to him instead of him adapting to you.

The second one is that you as players expect too much from the DM. There are many ways to DM and it seems that his style is very sandboxy, in that it's up to the PLAYERS to be cautious, investigate, research, roleplay and learn before charging off into the wilderness. In every situation you describe, it seems as if the group has just walked into danger without any sort of scouting, planning or preparation. And it seems that the players want the DM to give them the answers to every problem in front of them.

those are my personal experiences with that DM. so i ask...am i just weak or is the DM too unreasonable?

I think it's a bit of both and at the same time neither. As a group I think you all either need to sit down and explain to the DM that you're not enjoying his style of DM'ing so either the group switches DM's or he (and the players) try to find some common ground and meet half-way. Or you need to break up and find another DM and he other players.

For what it's worth, I'd probably happily play in his game and not really enjoy playing with you as a player. Nothing personal, mind, it just sounds like our play-styles are very different, and what I expect from a DM is rarely what I get.

 

[MortalPlague]

Your DM does not appear to be a Rat Bastard; he just seems like a jerk.

I'm with Rune on this one. And I'm shocked it took 8 posts for someone to call out your DM. There is very little in that post that seems like decent DM behaviour.

 

[Kzach]

Archery Rogues are entirely pointless. You should be sticking and jabbing with a blade like a real Rogue. Preferably with daggers like they used to do before the rapier became the only Rogue weapon. That way you can throw your daggers the few times you don't have to go toe-to-toe, so either way, yer using the same weapon!

I hope you're being sarcastic.

 

[S'mon]

Some of the elements sound like a GM being a jerk - "the closest goblin" is fully precise, unless 2 are equidistant, and taking over the roleplay of your PC is a big no-no. But reading on, a lot of it reminds me of me ca age 22 16 years ago, GMing AD&D for new players in college after years of GMing super high level, ultra lethal stuff for my friends in high school. This was after a few years' break from GMing.

I was way too adversarial, I railroaded horribly. I sucked. I developed a death spiral where the PCs were too weak for the planned adventure, so they died, so they came back weaker... Yet I had been a pretty damn good DM before, and I'm doing some pretty good stuff now I think (though I also ran a rather sucky game late last year, when work got too much).

So, I think it may be right that this guy can be a decent DM for the right players, but not for you. You should try your hand at DMing for the other newbies, making an effort to avoid all the pitfalls you've now seen demonstrated.

 

[pemerton]

These sound to me like crappy games that I wouldn't be interested in playing in unless I had a lot of spare time and/or was getting to hang out with some good friends while occasionally rolling the dice.

My general approach to GMing is: (i) frame scenes that will engage the players; (ii) frame scenes that the players' PCs are capable of dealing with in a fashion that those players will enjoy; (iii) let the players decide how to engage with the scenes you frame.

This GM, it seems, is framing scenes thinking only of what will interest him; is framing scenes that the players' PCs can't deal with in a way that is enjoyable to the players (Frost Giants, liches unpickable locks, lots of imprisonment, bland corridors, pointless loot location, etc); and is railroading the players into engaging with those scenes in a particular way (including by taking over control of the PCs).

Personally, as a GM I'm also happy to be relaxed about the rules, and to make suggestions to the players where a rule is obviously applicable and they haven't noticed it. I would think that a GM who is not going to be relaxed about the rules, and is going to be a stickler about the players doing it all on their own, might have the decency to respect their decisions. Apparently not so in this case!

 

[pemerton]

later, in the main city, we learn (too late) that we need a pass to even BE in there. it's possible we should have not told them we didn't have a pass but still, we had no way of knowing this at ALL. no one told us and we had no reason to suspect we needed one...until the innkeeper called the guards on our ass.

Again, your fault. DM is just RP'ing what he thinks a drow society would be like.

I don't think that's a very good excuse for running a crappy game.

The PCs are in drow society because they got kidnapped by drow NPCs placed by the GM. The PCs escaped from jail into the main drow town because the GM (i) had his NPCs put the PCs in a jail that (ii) decided that the jail is falling apart. The PCs were ignorant of drow pass laws because the players were ignorant of them, and the players were ignorant because the GM apparently hadn't told them (perhaps it's common knowledge) or let them roll a History check (perhaps it know to the learned) or had them stumble across a person carrying a pass (a pretty blatant clue, peppered throughout Gygax's D-modules) or had them stumble across a person being arrested for not carrrying a pass (a very blatant clue).

That's what I call (i) framing a scene that the players aren't really interested in, (ii) framing a scene that they can't really engage with, via their PCs, in a way that they will enjoy, and (iii) using GM force to resolve the scene rather than letting the players resolve it in the way that they want to.

There are many ways to DM and it seems that his style is very sandboxy, in that it's up to the PLAYERS to be cautious, investigate, research, roleplay and learn before charging off into the wilderness.

From my point of view, being captured by drow because you were in a dwarven mine which you had fled into to escape from Frost Giants doesn't look very sandboxy. It looks like an A-grade railroad.

A few hours of denouement in which the players are given the false hope of escape, then beat around the head with drow pass laws, and then listen as the GM explains how they are carried off by the drow and executed, sounds like a very slow but otherwise A-grade railroad.

I'm not seeing any sandbox, and I'm not seeing any game I would want to be involved in.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Seriously, what is "ORKO?"

 

[ibldedibble]

Like people have said before me, it sounds like your DM isn't used to teaching beginners, he probably should be dropping hints as to how you should play.
Such as telling you that sneaking might be a good thing, instead of just walking right on down or dropping a hint that just maybe you should try finding some passes to move about the city safely.

The complaint about having to choose which goblin to attack... depends. Since a lot of systems give you a penalty for attacking enemies in melee with a ranged weapon, maybe he was just trying to be nice? Especially if all you told him was "the closest one".

In my personal opinion you should talk to him, tell him that "Hey, we haven't played a lot of RPGs, could you give us some tips and hints every now and then?"

Seriously, what is "ORKO?"

A "Trollan". (Though in this case I suppose it's meant to stand for One Round KO (similar to OHKO).)

 

[JamesonCourage]

The thing about it is; you've gotta keep 'em coming back. And to do that; you have to drop the antagonistic arrogance and acknowledge that it is not the DM's game; it is everybody's.

The thing is, every campaign I run, I consider it my game. And I'm not antagonistic (I may be arrogant ). Three of my players have been playing with me since we got into it years ago, and I played with the fourth player before getting into any official RPG. The fifth player is new, and after four sessions with me, he quit his other game to devote his attention to mine.

I know that the game is for the enjoyment of everyone, but the campaign is mine. The responsibility of whether or not it fails or succeeds rests on me, and I'm the one in charge. Now, I don't advocate abusing this power, but utilizing this power is an incredible tool for keeping the game fun for everyone (at my table).

Like so many other issues, I think this boils down to the social contract at the table. If I went to your game as a player (I don't know if you play or run a game the majority of the time, but I'm assuming run, if only because this site has so many GM posters), and I found out that the game was everyone's, and not the GM's, I'd find it outside of my preference (and if there was some sort of player veto power, I'd never use it). I prefer to work with the GM, play to his standards, and enjoy his game. When I run a game, I expect the same.

This leads back to, of course, the social contract. You may not like the way I run my game, or you might (I really try not to abuse my responsibilities, and not only do I work with character concepts players present, I developed an entire, respectable-sized RPG system that helps players craft their character concepts). I don't know if you would like it. But, I do know that my players keep coming back to me, and that according to them, they've never had a better experience than when I run the game for them.

My advice, if you want to keep them coming back, is to find a group that shares your preferences, where people will agree to the social contract you prefer. There's really no substitute for (as always): play what you like

 

[delericho]

on the bright side, he's always able to come up with a good scenario (for as long as i've had him as a GM) and he's great at NPC acting.

You know, from the evidence you provide, I'm just not seeing it.

those are my personal experiences with that DM. so i ask...am i just weak or is the DM too unreasonable?

He definitely seems to be a poor DM, although it may just be a clash of styles. Also, it's hard to make a definitive statement without hearing both sides.

I would drop that DM, and instead run a game yourself. It's not that hard.

However...

the party meets up, we get out of town and about two encounters in, we get chased by Frost Giants...at level 1.

we get captured by Drows because we didn't specify we were Silent Moving.

a while after, we just left the region, got ambushed by way more bandit than we could handle (7 to 1 ratio)

then there was a massive tower that i couldn't unlock with maxed-out lockpick at Rogue level 2 AND a natural 20. we had to leave it.

I think you're in the wrong here. Overpowering encounters are valid, you should be required to specify if you're using stealth, and not every challenge needs to be something your character can succeed at - it's valid to have a door that you can't unlock yet, and have to come back to later.

Your DM absolutely makes a number of mistakes (according to your account), but I believe you also need to adjust your view somewhat.