Now Recruiting for WWDA: Weak Willed DMs Anonymous!

[VoodooGroves]

Must relate amusing story.

Think back. Its the mid to late 80s. I'm in high school. Me and my friends were playing in a long-running Mechwarrior/Battletech game amongst a few others. This was a bit different, as three of us handed off every month or so but (oddly) things remained somewhat balanced. Nothing got too out of hand, we weren't to the point where things were unmanagable or lost their fun.

What we were was slowly gaining power and wealth. The idea behind the game was that we were part of some sort of mercenary unit and as we played, etc. we gradually grew stronger and stronger. We had more and bigger 'mechs as well as supporting ground troops, tanks and eventually aerospace fighters.

Eventually another guy we play with wants to run things for a while. We decide, "Sure. What the heck."

Next week we get together to play and he's got a scenario written. He's told us how much time he's been putting into it all week and frankly the three of us who ran the game were looking forward to an opportunity to play as part of the unit instead of always one of us sitting out. We had a full house, maybe 6-7 folks including the guy running the show.

So, it takes forever for him to get his stuff together. My good friend (we'll call him Daryll) is getting bored and he keeps tossing this hackysack back and forth between his hands. The GM (who we'll call Larry) is getting mighty pissed and he takes the hackysack and makes a big deal out of how annoying Daryll is being. Then he starts with the handouts.

He's got all this crap he's typed up about the world we're supposed to go to, what's on it, where the cities are and the ultimate target. Then he's got a one page mission briefing statement. We spend our time reading these things while he sets out these complex maps, including one on the wall that tells us what the planet looks like with the metropolitan areas. As we read this information, some things don on us.
- This planet has no real aerospace defense, obstensibly so we can land a dropship fairly easily
- The major metropolitan areas do have some local air defense systems (missiles, etc.) that would be hazardous to a slow dropship (but not aerospace fighters)
- Larry and Daryll continue to argue and bicker over Larry's wealth of preparation and annoying ways of running the game
- From reading it we surmise that what he really wants us to do is to have (1) an aerospace battle where we break through the weakest defended metropolitan area (2) land a dropship there (3) fight as we cross the planet to the target area (4) destroy the target building
- Also from reading it, it becomes obvious that we can just take our aerospace fighters and destroy the building (since it has no defenses that can hurt our quick fighters)

So, as the Larry / Daryll squabble intensifies, Daryll finally just breaks down and says "this is a load of crap. I say we bomb the place, be done in 15 minutes and go catch a movie".

Larry promptly hurls the hackysack at Daryll, hitting him squaw in the forehead and damn near knocking him on his ass. The rest of us can't stop laughing. It takes a full hour to control the two of them and finally convince Larry that we'll play through his little battle at the building since he's put so much time into it. In the meantime, we pretty much decide not to have Larry run anymore Battletech for a while after this evening.

Incidentally, the office building was complete with Gygax-esque corridoors that abruptly end, secret doors and a chapel and a natural cave underneath. I halfway expected a lich with an undead killing sword to be hiding there, but there wasn't. Sniff sniff.

I can still see the look on Daryll's face right after he got slammed with the hackysack. This numb, dazed and slightly half-witted smile while the phrase "lets just drop a bomb on it" hung in the air.

 

[Mok]

To my shame, I capitulated on the following:

1. I removed spellbook scribing costs because they were "unfair".

2. I allowed the unrestricted buying and selling of magic items, in the interest of "player choice", reducing the DMG into a Sears catalog.

3. I allowed 38 Point Buy, It's more "heroic", dontcha know.

4. I nerfed the XP penalties for Raise Dead, because it wasn't "fun" to lose a level.

5. I allowed all splatbook Prestige Classes (broken or not) because they were "official".


I need help.

 

[Lady Starhawk]

I'm pretty sure I qualify. I had only been playing a few months when I thought I could take the reins of the game. We got to about 3rd level before I couldn't take it anymore.

I have many many files in teh pushover DM department, but these are the ones that were laid out in the questions:

1) You have made special concessions for a PC or player just so they would stay in the group.'

yeah <when we still played 2nd edition>, I let a freind play a homebrew character out of Wheel of time (even though I have never read nor do I ever plan on reading the series) when they were all first level because he said anything else wouldn't be any fun. (Having a 2nd level character hurling fireballs wasn't fun for me, but he wanted it)

2) You have given out an overpowered item, power, etc., and not taken it away and do not plan to, just because the PC is enjoying it.

Robe of eyes to 3rd level mage because he wanted it, staff of the magi, deck of many things, all kinds of yummy goodies because the players demanded it.

3) You have ever cried because of something that happened in-game.

Yeah, the players weren't gaming they were just joking around and wouldn't listen to me. Then the (Good aligned) characters killed the city guards because they asked the characters to sign in before entering the city (standard procedure in the country they were in adn they knew it). The ranger (a half dragon) didn't want to so he had the mage cast sleep on them all and slit their throats. I was so frustrated that I ended a few minutes later and packed up and cried all teh way home.

4) Your players have been able to persuade you to do something that you later regretted, but still follwed through with and kept it anyway, just because you are a crowd-pleaser. (See #1 and #2.)

see above: high powered races and goodies, and kits. If they could back it up in the books I would allow it.

5) You have refused to use Rule 0.

My players REFUSED to let me. If I didn't give in they would badger and pester and wine all night about it.

Keep in mind I was rather new when I tried to DM and we were playing 2nd edition without ECL's and CR's. the guy I learned to game under is even worse than I was because he KNEW better and still decided that it was ok to let the players be total munchkins as long as they were having fun. I admit fun is the biggest part of the game, but imagination is important, just seeing how to get the biggest badest character the DM will allow isn't MY idea of fun.

I would like to try my hand at DMing again...but I am afraid, I am a people pleasing person and I would probably just go back to my original rut (even though I have a NEW and better gaming group, I still think I am a pushover DM.)

HELP ME WWDA You're my only hope
Lady Starhawk

 

[Altin]

Yes, all of us DMs have done it at one time or another. We've given out too much stuff, or we've fudged the dice more than necessary. We're known as crowd pleasers, softies, whatever suits the peanut gallery. We do what we can, whn we can, just to please. We are afraid to see PCs die, or in my case, even see them get injured (though my case is a rare, and long-winded, exception).

We are the Weak Willed DMs.

I've been there ... not so much with the copious amounts of stuff because I am a stingy GM by temprament but I have yet (in ten years of GMing) to actually kill a character, mostly due to outrageous amounts of dice fudging. I think this sort of thing does get better as you get more games under your belt both as a player and GM. In my current (semi-horror) game, I've resolved to do things like make all rolls in front of the players and throw them against things they might not be able to handle. As the game is a fairly temporary affair, I am treating it a bit like weak-Gm therapy and it seems to be working thus far. Playing with a Gm who runs a very good game but kills players when the dice fall that way has helped me toughen up.

3) You have ever cried because of something that happened in-game.

If this ever happens, I am throwing out my game books and picking up something like gardening. Seriously, if you have ever been brought to the point of tears, I would look long and hard whether it is worth going on Gming - at least with your current group. If you're not having fun, there really is no point in the entire enterprise. At the very least you are perhaps investing too much in your weekly (or whatever) game.

Learning to Gm in a way which produces something worthwhile for both you and your players is a long road for even the most gifted of us (as Piratecat's post so aptly demonstrates), and therefore it should be one paved not with tears but with the carefree joy of participating in a game, however imperfect.

Yours,

Altin

 

[Chriskaballa]

LOL, guys. I love these stories, though they may be hijacking the thread...

Keep coming, Weak Willed DMs. In Unity We Shall Find Strength Of Will!

~Chris

 

[Angelsboi]

Actually Chris, i *WAS* Serious about mine

 

[Kibo]

The Eye of the Beholder

and I'm not talking about classic PC games.

I've had super powered PC's, maybe they didn't have 3 handed swords of God Slaying and Animate Dead. But they were not standard adventurers. I was perhaps a little intimidated at first. But it made me a much better DM/GM whatever, and made for better stories. And that's what I get out of it. A good story that's worth telling. Not that I'm telling it, but that is my price. I want to get a story that was worth the effort out of the deal.

For my part, I played the movie rules against the characters, in the myriad game systems we played. Throw more complex threats. That's all there is too it. This seems the antithesis of what I've said in another thread, about how I run, ran most of my stuff off the cuff. But it's really not. You've got the protagonists (most likely the players, possibly some NPC's), the wild cards (featured NPC's), the mob, and (everyones favorite) the bad guys. Everyone needs something. PC, NPC, Villains. I'm talking about motivations. It's such an easy way to get a cool story, I just can't say it enough in enough threads. Cause motivations plus a rough idea for a cool story, and decent players are all it takes. Set up a video camera then distill the game sessions in to a script and you have a method for sustaining your gamming habbit and getting to see your name ten feet high for eight bucks with a crowd of six hundred strangers.

But that said. There is something to be said for style. You cannot have a hero with out it. If the hero doesn't have it, he can't be a hero until he gets it. You don't get style with a three handed sword that casts symbol of death on command. That's gay. And not the protected kind. That's why it's so hard for superman to be cool. He's got to save the world every issue. Batman on the otherhand just has to foil overly elaborate plots that are really just simple robberies. And is walking through the woods slaying sleeping goblins with Farslayer really the image of cool your players were hoping for? If it is, that's where I would take my ball and go home. What the hell is the point of that? They don't me, they can mud, and do e-mail at the same time!

While I'm not opposed to people having gear way beyond there means, but there needs to be a point, and most of all it must be cool. Of course, there is no such thing as a free lunch. If it's powerful then perhaps it has a quest of its own "The One Ring", or certainly if its others must know of it, and powerful others must seek it "The One Ring." And a thousand other permutations. All of which are more fun than just wandering the woods killing everything, or checking local taverns for old hermits selling maps to dungeons. If you can't bring yourself to do that to your players, you're selling them short. It's not about winning it's about the struggle. Everyone will have more fun, and years later you can kick yourself for not transcribing everything word for word, so you could sell the script for mint.

Perhaps some of you are noting that qualifier farther up. I said, "decent players." If you don't have all decent players, but at least one, you get saturday night live skits. At the time I found them frequently infuriating, but in retrospect they are often quite amusing.

 

[bloodymage]

All it takes is willpower, dammit!

Read the sig. wimps!





The humor in this post may cause apoplectic attacks, read at your own risk.

 

[jasper]

Yes in my early years, teenage, in the army and into college, I was a Weak Willed DM.

I cried when my players started killing each other off other than continuing the adventure. All this because of something said during school and did not concern the game.

Captain America?s shield, magic missile machine gun, wolverine?s claws, Staffs of the Arch Magi ( add another column to each of the list), letting one guy to have a pet no matter what the character or class or animal.

Yes the generic temple. Grey walls and blank altar. Deposit x gold pieces to get y magic items.

Yes letting people have Quasits at 2 nd level so they would still play because I needed players.

Yes letting critical hit and miss chart in from Dragon mag. The first night 3 criticals and 3 fumbles. The second night six criticals and one fumble. The ratio gets worse from there.

Yes I Dm and played in a group of 6 Dms and 7 players. In 2 years on playing almost every Friday , we finished 3 complete adventures.

However have grown up, moved out of my parents basement and kissed and dated a girl.
I can play with as few as 4 characters.
I can tell Artucik to take his magic shovel and find a new game.
I can tell the rules lawyer to lump it.
I can tell the players I will not be Dming or playing with them because they are scum sucking people.
I can place my books on the shelves and go outside and play.

I can help the Weak Will Dms.

What is your problem?

 

[Darkness]

Chris,

I might have been a slightly weak-willed DM when I was a teenager, but nowadays, I'm anything but.

However, I'd like to join your organisation in an advisory capacity so I can help others.


Further, I feel that you should clarify the following point a bit:

3) You have ever cried because of something that happened in-game.

See, crying because your players are so nasty (to you, each other, the gaming world around them, etc.) might make you a weak-willed DM.
But OTOH, I've seen quite a few people cry (and cried myself, too) because of the emotional impact of a particularly well-played scene - which doesn't have anything to do with being weak-willed.
And this difference needs to be made clear in point 3).

- Darkness