Greetings Enworlders! I've long lurked your forums as a member of groovygamers, but recent developments in a face-to-face group have brought me to break my silence and bring an issue before the collective wisdom of the gamers here on this site. The question I have for you all is this: Can this situation be salvaged?
To give a little context, I've recently become a part of a Mutants and Masterminds campaign that's been running for a little under 5 years now. I was invited by some of the original players who thought new blood would freshen the game. This particular campaign has a bit of notoriety on the M&M forums as a long-running feature in their story hour, if you've ever been to the ATT I'm sure you've seen it. Anyway, to my delight, I found I had joined a tight-knit group of gamers who had been playing together for a long time and were really fun to be around. As usual... there was a caveat.
Simply put, the group has GM issues.
I got an inkling of the problem with an incident prior to my joining the game. Long story short, a PC thought of a creative way to dispatch the villain of the month, one that would have resulted in a casualty-free encounter. All he had to do was tell a nearby NPC to use his powers to nullify the villain. The GM's response was to simply say "No." And leave it at that. No discussion. The fight happened, a PC died and was shortly resurrected via "mysterrrrrrrious means". This was part of a plot thread that set off the rest of the story of that arc. I took this knowledge in stride and played a few sessions.
I've been in about thirteen sessions with this group now. Seeing as this is a monthly game, that's quite a bit. I've experienced some railroading firsthand, moments when the plot goes into pretty heavy "cutscene" mode and the PCs are frozen in place while it happens. All NPCs seem to come with immunity to social interaction skills, nothing but the right set of key words actually seems to do anything to them. Investigations often yield no information whatsoever. Knowledge skills are virtually useless due to their potential to get around certain plot walls. I was actually told not to invest much in skills when creating my first character...
...Speaking of the NPCs, they're becoming increasingly cheap/broken as the game goes on. Most ignore power level limits, and are built on more power points than their PL limit should actually stand for. Most of our fights (which, the ONLY tried and true method of getting anything done is to beat the crap out of something until The Plot shows up) are long, drawn out experiences with seven (yes, seven) PCs beating on a single horridly broken NPC for about an hour. This is mainly due to absurd toughness and defense, but also GM fiats being so horribly abused, social services should be contacted immediately. Myself and another player aware of these issues have taken to seeing this as an arms race, and find our builds becoming increasingly overpowered and.. dare I say it, "munchkined", merely to *put up a fight* in this campaign.
The problem is that the story has a lot of inflexibility to it nowadays. When the campaign started, it was not this way at all. My talks with past players report that this GM was once a lot of fun to play with, he rolled with the punches and came up with creative ideas that the PCs worked with him on to craft a cool story. It was so cool and fun, in fact, that this GM decided to write the adventure into a novelized form, recording what had been done so far...
...but he didn't quite stop at "what had been done." He instead went straight into planning what else was going to happen. Over time the PCs were relegated to the background as pet NPCs gained more prominence.
I've even brought all these issues up to the GM, he and I both have noticed the other players lack of interest in the actual story. Half the players do things that Mr. Welsh > http://theglen.livejournal.com/16735.html would be quite proud of on a session to session basis. I said it had to do with the inflexibility to the plot and the general impotence of the PCs in the face of it.
This GM has expressed a desire to fix things, he'd like to see the players be interested in the game again and actually take an active role in the story. Well, that's what he says at least. The question I'm asking is, as previously stated: Is this possible? Can this game be salvaged? Truly I hope it can. It used to be great, so I hear. We have a great group of people when they're into the game, and the campaign world is one I'd love to be able to take a hand in shaping.
So Enworldites, what should be done, if anything CAN be done, to start this gaming group down the path of recovery?
Thank you for the advice ahead of time!
To give a little context, I've recently become a part of a Mutants and Masterminds campaign that's been running for a little under 5 years now. I was invited by some of the original players who thought new blood would freshen the game. This particular campaign has a bit of notoriety on the M&M forums as a long-running feature in their story hour, if you've ever been to the ATT I'm sure you've seen it. Anyway, to my delight, I found I had joined a tight-knit group of gamers who had been playing together for a long time and were really fun to be around. As usual... there was a caveat.
Simply put, the group has GM issues.
I got an inkling of the problem with an incident prior to my joining the game. Long story short, a PC thought of a creative way to dispatch the villain of the month, one that would have resulted in a casualty-free encounter. All he had to do was tell a nearby NPC to use his powers to nullify the villain. The GM's response was to simply say "No." And leave it at that. No discussion. The fight happened, a PC died and was shortly resurrected via "mysterrrrrrrious means". This was part of a plot thread that set off the rest of the story of that arc. I took this knowledge in stride and played a few sessions.
I've been in about thirteen sessions with this group now. Seeing as this is a monthly game, that's quite a bit. I've experienced some railroading firsthand, moments when the plot goes into pretty heavy "cutscene" mode and the PCs are frozen in place while it happens. All NPCs seem to come with immunity to social interaction skills, nothing but the right set of key words actually seems to do anything to them. Investigations often yield no information whatsoever. Knowledge skills are virtually useless due to their potential to get around certain plot walls. I was actually told not to invest much in skills when creating my first character...
...Speaking of the NPCs, they're becoming increasingly cheap/broken as the game goes on. Most ignore power level limits, and are built on more power points than their PL limit should actually stand for. Most of our fights (which, the ONLY tried and true method of getting anything done is to beat the crap out of something until The Plot shows up) are long, drawn out experiences with seven (yes, seven) PCs beating on a single horridly broken NPC for about an hour. This is mainly due to absurd toughness and defense, but also GM fiats being so horribly abused, social services should be contacted immediately. Myself and another player aware of these issues have taken to seeing this as an arms race, and find our builds becoming increasingly overpowered and.. dare I say it, "munchkined", merely to *put up a fight* in this campaign.
The problem is that the story has a lot of inflexibility to it nowadays. When the campaign started, it was not this way at all. My talks with past players report that this GM was once a lot of fun to play with, he rolled with the punches and came up with creative ideas that the PCs worked with him on to craft a cool story. It was so cool and fun, in fact, that this GM decided to write the adventure into a novelized form, recording what had been done so far...
...but he didn't quite stop at "what had been done." He instead went straight into planning what else was going to happen. Over time the PCs were relegated to the background as pet NPCs gained more prominence.
I've even brought all these issues up to the GM, he and I both have noticed the other players lack of interest in the actual story. Half the players do things that Mr. Welsh > http://theglen.livejournal.com/16735.html would be quite proud of on a session to session basis. I said it had to do with the inflexibility to the plot and the general impotence of the PCs in the face of it.
This GM has expressed a desire to fix things, he'd like to see the players be interested in the game again and actually take an active role in the story. Well, that's what he says at least. The question I'm asking is, as previously stated: Is this possible? Can this game be salvaged? Truly I hope it can. It used to be great, so I hear. We have a great group of people when they're into the game, and the campaign world is one I'd love to be able to take a hand in shaping.
So Enworldites, what should be done, if anything CAN be done, to start this gaming group down the path of recovery?
Thank you for the advice ahead of time!
