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<blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 3173455" data-attributes="member: 22424">Sadly, being a &quot;great guy&quot; and an &quot;excellent storyteller&quot; don't necessarily make you a great DM, or even a good one. And, if your description of the campaign is accurate, it seems to me that the DM just isn't that good.Heavily changing the system is a warning flag for me, but not a deal-breaker. It can be done, and work well. More often than not, though, it works really badly. The most common outcome I've seen is that the DM sacrifices 90% of the fun of the game in favour of a 2% increase in 'realism' as he sees it.Not publishing the house rules, especially in a heavily house ruled game, is a deal-breaker, however. The players have an absolute right to know the rules of the game as they relate to their characters, and they have that right before they create the characters. If, for example, casting defensively is disallowed, the player of the Wizard needs to know before he selects Combat Casting as his feat.(Plus, I'm not sure I accept the assertion that the DM should create the house rules, and the players then meekly accept them. There should be some sort of debate there.)Additionally, using a DMPC is a deal-breaker for me. I've seen it go badly wrong on several occasions, and I've never seen it add anything to the game. The only time I've seen it even add to the DM's fun is on those occasions where he's used the DMPC as a vehicle for his own wish-fulfilment fantasies, which automatically makes it a game I want no part in.I have no recommendations for how to deal with this, though. The only options I see are to have a quiet word with the DM to get him to publish the house rules (and enforce all the rules evenly) and retire the DMPC, or leave the game.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="delericho, post: 3173455, member: 22424"] Sadly, being a "great guy" and an "excellent storyteller" don't necessarily make you a great DM, or even a good one. And, if your description of the campaign is accurate, it seems to me that the DM just isn't that good. Heavily changing the system is a warning flag for me, but not a deal-breaker. It can be done, and work well. More often than not, though, it works really badly. The most common outcome I've seen is that the DM sacrifices 90% of the fun of the game in favour of a 2% increase in 'realism' as he sees it. Not publishing the house rules, especially in a heavily house ruled game, is a deal-breaker, however. The players have an absolute right to know the rules of the game as they relate to their characters, and they have that right before they create the characters. If, for example, casting defensively is disallowed, the player of the Wizard needs to know before he selects Combat Casting as his feat. (Plus, I'm not sure I accept the assertion that the DM should create the house rules, and the players then meekly accept them. There should be some sort of debate there.) Additionally, using a DMPC is a deal-breaker for me. I've seen it go badly wrong on several occasions, and I've never seen it add anything to the game. The only time I've seen it even add to the DM's fun is on those occasions where he's used the DMPC as a vehicle for his own wish-fulfilment fantasies, which automatically makes it a game I want no part in. I have no recommendations for how to deal with this, though. The only options I see are to have a quiet word with the DM to get him to publish the house rules (and enforce all the rules evenly) and retire the DMPC, or leave the game. [/QUOTE]

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