What ruins a campaign?

[greywulf]

3rd Edition D&D killed my very long running OD&D campaign.

We made the rules switch straight from OD&D to 3E, initially converting the existing (24th-ish) level characters to their 16th level D&D equals. That didn't work out, so we started again at 1st level in the same setting (Karameikos), intending to have a fresh start playing grandchildren of the original heroes. That died too.

This isn't a criticism of D&D, btw - the mistake was ours in injecting something new into a very well established campaign. WIth hindsight, we should have left well alone and started completely afresh. Instead, we dumped D&D wholescale into the game. Just adding something simple like races with classes proved a big headache, and the "new" abilities of the classes meant we spent more time retro-ing things than actually playing. In the end, we just have to switch out of D&D and into superhero gaming to take a step back. After that, we started a fresh D&D campaign and never went back to the old. One day, maybe we will - with OD&D again. I dunno.

 

[replicant2]

When my parents kicked me out of their basement, it was over.

 

[Slife]

Thanks alot Just be glad I wasn't tougher on you guys.

May I appropriate your catchphrase and say the one thing that ruins my campaigns is








"Scarred Lands"

 

[PallidPatience]

I'll second the "DM not knowing the rules" thing.

I don't like walking in to play a D&D game, knowing the D&D rules, playing with the basic assumptions inherent to the system, only to find out that the DM doesn't even really know the rules of the system. Assuming that one's tactics are sound only to find that the very assumptions upon which they are based have been instantly changed is, at the least, annoying, and, at the worst, infuriating.

DMs playing favorites is pretty harsh, too.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

Yes it can never be that the DM is an idiot.

Sometimes players don't work as well oiled combat machine but I can gurantee that no matter how good your tactics are a low level party can't take on a CR threat that even the DMG says is to high and does not list XP for.

Our second level party took on a 15 level mage and because of our tatics we won of course in the end half the party was dead and needed to be raised.

We were always facing a much higer CR threat than was suggested for our level and the amazing thing is that we never had a TPK.

I had a dm like that, He forced us to travel with cohorts and paid mercenaries, that in d&d don’t increase the cr you fight (at least not the cohorts), but even so, he would use that as a excuse to use a much higher cr, In most cases the cohorts and mercenaries would be useless and add nothing to the battle but the cr we had to face. Even counting our ecl, the cr we had to fight was way to high. Like fighting a dragon that the fighter can only hit on a 18 (20str +1magic weapon weapon foc), but we cant run because of the way the mission is setup. Not to mention that dragons cr is deflated anyway. Tanglefoot backs saved our life. I think it was a cr 13 just for the dragon, but before that we fought a few large sized monsters and all kinds of other things before the dragon, but the dragon came right at the end of the fight just so we couldn’t heal, but so he could justify the cr even though you would have calculated the cr together, not separate. I dont even want to think what the cr was with the extra large creatures. I think this was a level 7 party with 4 adventurers and a bunch of cr inflating lackys

It doesn’t help that he had the complex that all npcs are better then pcs and couldn’t run a game with players who thought outside the box thus he heavily railroaded.

yeah, dms are not god even if they think the book says they are. However if the players are lucky they can be good friends with a dm that tells wonderful stories and let the players have wonderful adventures, and experience magnificent worlds.

to be clear, I don't have a thing against dms, just bad ones that are very condescending.


anyway. The group I play in now has problems with Scheduling. We haven't burnt out yet. But we do all work so its hard to find a good time to play. most of us don't work the nice and easy 9-5 m-f.

finally we just said, if 2 people can make it, we play, even if everyone make it. To be fair we all level up even if you dident show up, but if you dont show up, you may not get of the treasure.

 

[Elf Witch]

I'll second the "DM not knowing the rules" thing.

I don't like walking in to play a D&D game, knowing the D&D rules, playing with the basic assumptions inherent to the system, only to find out that the DM doesn't even really know the rules of the system. Assuming that one's tactics are sound only to find that the very assumptions upon which they are based have been instantly changed is, at the least, annoying, and, at the worst, infuriating.

DMs playing favorites is pretty harsh, too.

This is why it bothers me so much when a DM does not know the rules and makes it up as he goes.

As a player who knows the rules you plan your actions around the rules and if the DM is doing something different that you don't know about then you often end up making a bad decision.

What makes me really angry about this situation are DM s who when showed the rule hand wave it away with a "I don't think that makes sense" or they get real pissy about the "rule lawyering" going on at the table.

 

[Gundark]

So, in your opinion what ruins a campaign?

Those Damned Apes!!!!!!!

 

[PallidPatience]

Yeah. All that being said, I don't mind houserules that are well thought out, interesting, consistent, and ANNOUNCED BEFORE I MAKE IMPORTANT CHARACTER DECISIONS BASED ON THE ALTERED RULES!

 

[FickleGM]

Having a DM that is fickle doesn't help a campaign.

 

[Lilith]

Apathy, whether on the GM's or the players' part, and railroading.