Stupid Dungeon Master Syndrome

[Vocenoctum]

Good lord, I do that all the time. It's highly irritating. After 15 minutes of "The creature" or "The dark-cloaked man"....

"Okay the

Spoiler

attacks... dammit!"

Spoiler

My brother did something similar, there was an adventure with "prepared text" but it wasn't properly seperated from the non-prepared text.
(paraphrased)"The room is 10X10, with a door in the left wall and a man sitting at a table. The fiend will try to lure the players into ...."
"Uh, are we supposed to pretend we didn't hear that?"
"How about we just say the room is empty."

Also, when I had jury duty, the Defense during closing arguements;
"The Defense is trying to convince you the defendant had a gun."
I looked up, the prosecutor looked up, but I think we were the only one's that had noticed it.

 

[Daesumnor]

Heh, my favourite bout of SDMS happened when I ran a vampire as just a tall dark mysterious stranger for about an hour and a half straight, cause I didn't want my players to know his weaknesses right away, I wanted them to work it out.

PC: "Okay, I run over here."
Me: "Who's up? Ah. Okay, the vampire ducks behind the table. Er, I just said "vampire", didn't I?"
PC: "I look for something wooden and stake-like."

Yeah, I'm guilty of this too, but only in my first games. When in combat, I'd tell the players the AC, and potential damage the creature could do. It wasn't so much SDMS, but Lazy DM Syndrome. I've long since stopped doing that though.

This thread made me think of a KotDT arc, where Dave was DM. When the PC's entered rooms, he'd describe what guards, BBEG's, etc were wearing. Not , say, describing the glowing red runes on the ancient black platemail (etc etc), but directly telling the party that he was wearing +4 platemail, holding a +2 greataxe, etc.

 

[demiurge1138]

One of the only things more annoying than when a DM has an uber-NPC is when he has an uber-PC. You know the type; where the DM grants his favored player (often a really good friend or, in extreme cases, a significant other) with all the good treasure, more experience and the like.

The player in this case was the least paladin-like paladin I've ever seen. His modus operandi was to kill anything that wasn't one of the races in the PHB, no matter what. He was crude, violent, and obnoxious, yet got all the best treasure, more role-playing experience, and eventually possession of a Plot-Device Artifact.

What's worse is that through this whole escapade, he was always LG by DM fiat, so my character, in opposing his reign of terror, became evil just for opposing him. I quit in disgust after my cunning plan to kill him and use his armor to escape (note: even in this PvP, I got DM permission to do it; he just didn't tell me he'd make my action worthless) just got him ressurected by the Plot-Device Artifact.

Demiurge out.

 

[Blue Sky]

Hmmm, I've had a few.

Had one guy, running a Rifts game for me and another player. I'm playing some type of super-wizard (forgot the name), buddy of mine is playing some sort of hitman/ex-confederation type.

We get to a neutral town, do the shopping/finishing up quests thing, and then the town is attacked by the Confederation. Ok, cool. I dig. We're told that the only person that could help us stop the attack is a juicer (super druggie) who's lived more than 8 times as long as any other juicer. Kind of railroady, but once again, I dig.

Then the gm starts describing the battle, five minutes go by. Kinda long, but OK. Ten minutes go by. I start getting bored (yeah, I have a short attention span, sometimes). At twenty minutes of uninterrupted monologue (sp), I start a routine of look at GM, nod, look at clock, nod, GM, nod, and so on. 30 minutes later (yes, after 50 minutes of us sitting there listening to the story of this attack), the GM decides that it's getting late, and gives us a 10 minute "basic points" wrapup of the fight. Darn, I'm miffed, but I figure, everyone makes mistakes, right?

Next session, he starts off by telling us that he reconsidered, and wants us to play through the extremely long, boring fight. And yes, events go exactly like he described them, whether we like it, or not.

Uggh. I've beaten the worst memories out of my head, but that one still stands out as the worst game I've ever played.

 

[Castellan]

I have no problems with hosing characters (the beholder thing I can see the player's shouldn't know everything; losing magic items because of a time stop, I can see that too, your uberpower sword is just too uberpowered, I solve that by not giving out too many magic items except as plot points; and the dozen chained tarrasques, for petes sake, they're chained its not like you couldn't walk around them, maybe they were there for a reason, and that reason wasn't because of fighting). My players have come to expect it.

I agree that keeping players on their toes is a good thing. However, if you're going to break game-world continuity in favor of DM-creations, you'd better have some pretty good reasons. Otherwise, I wouldn't want to play in your game. A beholder that can fire into its Anti-Magic cone of effect is dreadfully over-powered, and should only be used if the players have been given some kind of fore-knowledge of this powerful entity.

I agree that if I saw a bunch of Tarrasques, I'd probably be curious enough that even if I expected a bad DM-ing experience, I'd stay just to see what happens next...

1) Excessive combat because he couldn't think of a story or because he's mad at us for not following his storyline.
Example: We were playing in a Mezzoberrazan (sp?, ah, who cares it a ficitional city anyway) and were told to make what ever we wanted as long as it was ECL 6, but that it was going to be a political game. The guy then never read the boxed set and they just put us in combat after combat. We were using character trees (modified from Dark Sun) and my first character was not a combat monster (He was a Drow Sorceror Drug Push..er..Apothecary), so I went to make two combat characters, of course, with the excessive combat I abused the rules a little bit (I made a combined Tanarukk-Orog crossbreed and showed him the rules, the other character was a Nezumi Psychic Warrior/Bladedancer, man he could book). At that point he just turned up the combat meter.

Yes, this kind of DMing sucks. However, one of the players in my game always talks about what a role-player he is, but he gets upset if there isn't major combat in every game session... So, I guess it comes from both sides of the Screen.

2) Railroading us into HIS storyline
I've had a DM (above) and a Storyteller (different guy) do this. He has loving crafted a story that he wants to run and no matter what we do we can't get off the rails, to the point of him rewritting our actions to conform to his game. Might as well read a book at that point.

I'm in this situation, now, though without the "rewriting" issues. I'm in three games, one of which I run, the other two in which I play. One of the games involves a DM who's developed "a very detailed plot you'll all love when you uncover it!" Recently, we discovered that it would be up to us to stop a cell of the Cult of the Dragon from creating a Dracolich. We're all 5th and 6th level (there are 5 of us). The Cult members are 13th level and higher.

Quite in-character, my druid said, "I don't think I can serve my god or nature by dying, senselessly. I think we should report this to someone who can handle it, and get out of here with our hides." The DM looked noticeably upset by that comment. As the game session ended, he said, "You guys can leave this quest, if you want. But you'll each have to give me a pretty good reason why you're willing to let Dracoliches take over the world..." Obnoxious.

3) The UberNPC
Oh, I really hate this one. The DM (same one above) creates this guy and our job is to get him to the climax and let him save the world. Not that he couldn't get there himself, we just end up being his flunkies. After a point we just started wasting entire sessions try to convince the guy to stay home and let us do this ourselves, or plotting to kill the uberNPC. In the end it doesn't matter, because we can't handle the task ourselves. The Storyteller also suffers from the "I'm mad at you guys because you don't think my story is the coolest" and the excessive ST talking to himself syndrome (while we sit there).

I could see having someone important be an NPC, but it really has to be done right. Obviously, the players need to feel like they're the center of all of the action. It would be better if this NPC were unable to complete his/her quest without the PCs to help him. I don't think I'm a good enough DM to pull this plot off, yet. I'd be really nervous about trying.

4) Favored Player Syndrome
Usually applied to the Significant Other, but it could very well just be a friend. Instead of the UberNPC we have the UberPC which happens to belong to the DM's SO/Best Friend. Without him/her the game doesn't go.

This is the other game I play in. A good friend (who is very much into anime) has developed an anime-esque plot that wholly depends on my PC. It's so bad, that if my PC doesn't do something, it can't get done, because the other players can't "see" what I can, or can't "hit" the monsters: only I can.

I finally had a good sit down with him last week and asked him to make my character a sub-plot and to make sure the other players aren't getting bored (technically too late). I like this guy, and I think he has potential, but it's bad when you're the only one doing anything for 4+ hours.

5) The DM doesn't want to run
This is a problem I suffer from. When I don't want to run or I am having an off day the game suffers. So we usually take a break from Kult or Vampire or D&D and we let some else run. We have short pick up games of Exalted or Paranoia XP that allows someone else to run.

I don't see this as a problem so long as the DM announces his intent before game-day. Sometimes we all need to get away from the game. I'll suggest board-games, other role-playing games, movies, or even just not getting together for once... I think the DM should be able to give the players at least a full-day's notice, though, to be fair.

* * *

It's interesting to me, reading the "Stupid Players" thread and then reading this one. Though this thread has some folks mentioning what I consider to be some pretty dumb things, for the most part, it's folks pointing out their own mistakes, or ones they expect they'd make. All-in-all, a useful thread with some light humor mixed in.

However, the "Stupid Players" thread reads like a list of DMs I'd never want to play with. Many of them are condescending, or downright nasty regarding current or former players. They seem to have huge issues with DM vs. Player Syndrome; railroading; development of apropriate challenges; or any number of other problems. I fully expect that if their players could post anonymously, they'd post about those guys in this thread.

If there's one thing I'd like all DM's to admit, it's that, "My game can always be better than it is right now." A little humility goes a long way.

 

[Algolei]

ME: "Ice Substituted Fireball!"
DM: "It reacts with the Frire Elementals creating a ploom of steam, 40ft in radius, blowing over the party" goes for 9d6 for blowback.

Oh yes! That reminds me!

One day, for no apparent reason, my old DM decided some spells would cancel out other spells. So when we cast a fireball and an ice storm into the same room, they cancelled each other out! Instead of seriously injuring/possibly killing the Big Bad Monster inside, we wasted our best spells. The Monster went on to savage our private parts....

 

[RangerWickett]

One major piece of advice to my fellow GMs:

Don't use antimagic.

It never helps. It only pisses off the PCs. If you're going to have antimagic, hint at it well in advance, so the PCs know what they're going into. That way, it's more like they're being heroic by facing this most horrible of fantasy horrors, rather than you coming across as a naughty word for naughty wording with them.

Certainly don't toss an antimagic pit at a group of 13th level PCs just because you want them to make some climb checks. *slaps head, mutters* Stupid, stupid, stupid.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I won't call it stupid DM syndrome, because that's a pretty harsh word, and I didn't and don't hate the guy. But probably the worst session I've ever played involved the party searching an ancient ruin, that had nothing in it. No monsters. No treasure. No traps. No riddles. Nothing. And yet we spent four hours laboriously exploring this ruin, with the DM drawing out each room in succession...

 

[shilsen]

When I was in India over the summer, one of the newer players to the group started DMing. He'd apparently been DMing much longer than I've even played D&D (5 yrs), but it turned into a disaster and he quit. Another guy took over, who'd apparently been working on his homebrew world and campaign for 4 years. Lots of railroading, uber-NPCs, and so on (or so I heard over email from the other players). When I got back, we had three sessions in his campaign, culminating with the following situation:

Our PCs are on the deck of a small ship, sailing across an incredibly huge lake. We know that it's supposed to be a dangerous area, so we specifically mention that we're keeping a careful watch, with two PCs on either side (plus the usual NPC sailors, lookout, etc). Six seacats sneak up on the ship and then leap straight up and out of the water to a height of between 15 and 20 ft, over the PCs and the ship's rail, to land in perfectly placed formation (on the deck that they couldn't see from the water) around us. Before our jaws finish bouncing off the floor at the feat of the ninja seacats, the DM says, "And I don't want anyone to ask how they did that, because I'm not doing this by the rules. I just think it's cool."

The situation presumably got even cooler as the DM soon realized that six seacats (CR 4 each; EL 9 total) are a little more than a match for 3rd lvl PCs (mine was 2nd). We ended up with only 1 PC dead because the sailors, who turned out to all be at or higher level than the PCs (the party in this campaign invariably included more NPCs than PCs, even when the PCs didn't want them along), distracted the seacats. Even so, two of them died, and in order to save the party, the DM decided that each seacat would grab whoever it killed and jump overboard.

At the end of the session, when we explained that his idea of "cool" and ours might not match, he defended himself by saying that it just made the game more realistic, that he couldn't use less seacats since the MM said that there were 5-12 in a pride (suddenly the rules were of paramount importance), that low-level PCs should always travel with more powerful NPCs since the PCs aren't strong enough to handle anything they might encounter, and when you're low-level you can't expect the story to be about your PCs since they're not important enough.

End of story - I'm DMing now.

 

[Chimera]

that low-level PCs should always travel with more powerful NPCs since the PCs aren't strong enough to handle anything they might encounter, and when you're low-level you can't expect the story to be about your PCs since they're not important enough.

(Packing up my gaming material)

"Ok bud, give me a call when your campaign reaches a level where what I do is important. Otherwise I have no desire to play."