How to Tell a GM You're Not Having Fun?

[Jd Smith1]

40' a session? Even if you're only doing two hours a session, that's awful. I broke in on brown book D&D in '79, and we never did things like that back then.

A VTT should eliminate things like discussion of party formation because it is right in front of you. I've found VTT makes tactical exploration and combat a lot faster.

 

[Retreater]

40' a session? Even if you're only doing two hours a session, that's awful. I broke in on brown book D&D in '79, and we never did things like that back then

That's in a good session. Mostly we stay entrenched in a room we first discovered several months ago or have to fall back and lose ground.

A VTT should eliminate things like discussion of party formation because it is right in front of you. I've found VTT makes tactical exploration and combat a lot faster.

It should. But the players check out or don't move their tokens in real time. Then he also has trouble with the dynamic lighting and extra features, which also slows down the game.

 

[Asisreo]

It seems your DM has fallen into the trap that challenge/adversity=fun. If they stick to the standard adventuring day procedures and carefully limit when and where you get rests, this should be the optimal gaming experience of D&D and all things will iron itself out without any need for a discerning eye for balance.

No. That doesn't work and it never had.

The argument against an easier game is that if the PC's are cruising through the game, there's no tension and no threat and a player can't buy in. But plenty of games both TTRPG and Videogame can be risk-free while also being fun to play.

Another argument is that the table's power balance might start to skew to other characters harder than others, but remind your DM that nobody really cares about that stuff as much as overall fun. And if anyone does care about it, let the DM know that they are the ones at liberty to remedy this by including magic items, houserules, and variants. Nothing in the game can't be finely tuned by the DM.

Tell the DM that you'd rather play your group's game, rather than whatever internet forum's whiteroom game they found online. Let there be deviations, charms, wonder, exotics. Let them take a long rest after the first combat encounter or let them have 3 combats in a row that reduced 0 resources. Let them avoid combat or let them break doors that the DM didn't think could be broken.

Because TTRPGS are not a list of procedures to force your players to run, it is a pastime for fun.

 

[Jd Smith1]

That's in a good session. Mostly we stay entrenched in a room we first discovered several months ago or have to fall back and lose ground.


It should. But the players check out or don't move their tokens in real time. Then he also has trouble with the dynamic lighting and extra features, which also slows down the game.

Damn.

 

[embee]

That's in a good session. Mostly we stay entrenched in a room we first discovered several months ago or have to fall back and lose ground.


It should. But the players check out or don't move their tokens in real time. Then he also has trouble with the dynamic lighting and extra features, which also slows down the game.

Well, we had the conversation tonight. I think he's going to try to lighten up on us. I told him that while the "old school" feel was fine and maybe true to the original intent, but to a bunch of guys in their 40s, with screaming kids in the next room, playing after a long day at the office, on computers on a Virtual Tabletop - we're already in an environment where the "original intent" is not achievable. So speeding past some of the tedium would be appreciated.

I'm just curious...

What system are you all playing? You said it was a new system he had found. Is he running DCC or OSE or something?

At the beginning of my current campaign, because I'm an alte kaker grognard who started off on AD&D, I asked my party if they wanted to do something old school. They said no. I asked if they would be interested in Dark Sun under 2e. No. They wanted 5e. Message received.

If I go to Dunkin Donuts, odds are pretty good that I'm hungry for coffee and/or donuts. I don't go there because I want a Big Mac. That's a different place. By going to DD, I've already pretty much stated what I do or do not want.

My players selected 5e. They don't want an old-school dungeon delve.

What system did you all settle on? Because if you picked something like 5e and he presented you with dungeon crawling, he's trying to order a Big Mac at the Dunkin Donuts.

 

[Retreater]

What system did you all settle on? Because if you picked something like 5e and he presented you with dungeon crawling, he's trying to order a Big Mac at the Dunkin Donuts.

Old School Essentials, which attempts to modulate B/X era D&D.
While I never played that edition, my "old school" is AD&D 2e. It never felt quite that hopeless.

 

[embee]

Old School Essentials, which attempts to modulate B/X era D&D.
While I never played that edition, my "old school" is AD&D 2e. It never felt quite that hopeless.

I'll be honest - my memory of original AD&D is lost in the haze of my misspent adolescence, sequestered in the basement classrooms of my junior high with the yellow "fallout shelter" signs giving mute testimony to the age of the building.

And my 2e experience, which I remember as "fun", was probably fun less because of the dungeon crawling and more because of the illicit alcohol and marijuana. After that came a whole lot of World of Darkness and Call of Cthulhu.

Here's some fun with etymology:

Nostalgia.

It's from the Greek. -algia means pain. "Nostalgia," which we take to mean "to look back on something in the past with wistful fondness," actually literally means the pain of returning to the place we left in the past.

And his nostalgia is living up to the latter and truer meaning of the word.

 

[GMMichael]

We're having no opportunities for roleplaying, character development, etc. It's all about tedious procedural minutiae - even after we've set up things like watch rotations, marching orders, he makes us specify each time.

Sympathizing, but I see a big role-playing opportunity here. I mean, what else are your characters going to do during each camp set-up and tear-down process? Gripe about the need for security, recall tales of military service past, make cracks about who fell asleep on watch, etc.

Shared trauma is bonding trauma.

The most important feedback is honest feedback. If you're not having fun, tell the GM. If you know why, include that.

It all starts with, "Hey, I'm not enjoying this (adventure/game system/playergroup/pace of play)"...

Honest feedback doesn't have to be offensive, though. "I'd prefer" is less offensive than "I'm not enjoying."

 

[Umbran]

Because...that may not be it. You may have to accept that, from their sincere point of view, the way YOU are doing it is wrong.

At a house-con I often go to, they run a lot of one-shots in systems that are new to the table. One GM has taken to teling folks, "This is where to find the fun in this game," so they can tell where the system and he expects the rewards to be found.

You can turn this around a bit, and say, "GM, this game is running a bit weird for me/us. Can you tell us where you think we should be looking for the fun here?"

If he answers, "Geeze, yeah. I didn't want to structure your experience, but you folks are being so...." Well, then maybe you resolve things.

 

[ccs]

Ah yes, the "original fun" of having hallways of gotcha traps that thief had a 35% chance to find and even less to avoid blowing the party up trying to disarm it,

We avoided blowing up the party by bringing pack mules into the dungeons.
A great # of mules have been burnt, crushed, chopped, exploded, dissolved, ambushed, vanished, & worse.

And even though the people I played those early games are long gone, mule bones occasionally turn up in dungeons I write.
One of these days I'll write one involving angry mule ghosts.....