Boring boring games

[Jon_Dahl]

There have been lot of discussion here about bad players and firing your DM and so on, but the worst thing imaginable is yet to be discussed:

Those soul-breakingly boring games, where one minute feels like an hour.

In my current group the two alpha-males basically always run their own games. They are avid wargamers, and it has a heavy influence on their games. The pattern always goes like this:
- Clever idea.
- Completely home-brewed rules, that are mostly about weapons.
- Basically no plot whatsoever.

NPC's put players hold meetings, sell things and buy things. Sometimes entire sessions can go with players selling weapons or buying weapons. Everything about weapons and armor are highly detailed. NPC's however rarely have names and you really don't care about them at all. Or about the adventure. The main-point is that the gamemasters are great experts and great men and they know every detail about military tactics and weapons, so the game has to be good.
Players are encouraged to bring out their ideas, but GM always advices them so much, that they are basically forced to do what the GM wants. GM uses lot of time to show players why it would be a better idea to do something else. I never remember that any of the ideas that I had with my PC were accepted.

PC's are also forbidden for dying, because it's unfair to have your PC die.

I don't know what to do. I've been thinking that when I manage to [FONT=&quot][/FONT]rehabilitate myself from the injury I've been suffering for two years now, I will concentrate on doing sports and forget RPG's, because this is the only gaming group this small town has.

Of course talking about the issue would help, I've tried that. However the more I try to bring my own ideas forward, the more defensive one of the GM gets. Also trying to agitate some sort of rebellion would be futile, because it's a students group and I'm the only non-student in the group, I'm total outsider. I'm not even suppose to be in the group, because it's not my school's club. I really can't take any initiative.

So please share your horror stories of the dull, tedious and sleep-inducing games you've played.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

An amazing railroad in a HERO Supers game...

Skipping to the chase, the party had hired some agents to provide fire support in a battle against a BUNCH of agents of EVIL MERC GROUP™. The combat- which was NOT brief- was over before the trained snipers had even managed to get into shooting positions a mere 20 yards from their starting points.

 

[Sutekh]

I was in a game a fairly long time ago which was a Shadowrun 1st ed game. I was new to the 'group' and pretty much feel like the outsider. The group consisted of 5 other guys and the dm and they all knew each other fairly well. After spending about 2 hours waiting for an entrance, I was brought it only to have one player and the dm go off for about 30 minutes to talk in secret about what their character was doing.

After they returned, I was welcome in. I quickly found the group was almost going backwards in terms of story because 90 percent of the game players were just joking around, making really bad puns, quoting simpsons lines and generally talking about what they had been doing during the week. I found getting into the story/plot was really hard. One guy in particular kept talking about segues ruining the game, but then segued himself most of the time.

The game folded after the dm got married, but Its not a game I really ever missed.

Some of the games Im in now can segue a bit, but never ever to that extreme. I guess what Im saying is that it was boring to me because i didnt share a 'friendship' really with the other guys who all knew each other pretty well so I couldnt get in on their jokes and stuff.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

Jon Dahl:

No gaming is better than bad gaming, so I'd recommend getting out now. Don't wait for the injury to heal--find another passion. Or make new friends and build a group from that.

My most boring game was one in which there was nothing to do. No plot, no real characters, nothing. My PC spent a good portion of the adventure asleep.

 

[thejc]

Well you have few options. But you could suggest to the DM (in an email) as fun as RPGing in "haggle-world" or stimulating the fantasy economy is that the game may go smoother and progress easier, if all buying/selling/inventing is done "off camera" or outside the game in email form.

Tread lightly be nice and civil as you said its the only game in town. Be the DMs friend suck up their buying selling scheme and try to advance the plot. Ask other players how they feel. You can't be the only one at the table that doesn't enjoy watching this?

Consider dming your own campaign. No matter how small your town people are always interested in playing games. Use your library. Start your own club at your school. I would bet you'd be suprised.

 

[invokethehojo]

oooh, I know!

1. keep this thread going for awhile to generate lots of advice

2. send a link of this thread to those guys

 

[CuRoi]

I just about always run games. I prefer it to playing, and yep, I've run my fair share of games like that. Entire campaigns? Wow, I hope not, but game sessions, absolutely. It just happens sometimes.

I've mentioned this many times, but a game I finally left included about a dozen players each playing 2 PCs. Combat was ridiculous with something like a couple hours between your turns as we fought literally -seas- of kobolds. We were never given numbers just rough estimates in the form of descriptive names. So a "gang" a "mob" and a "sea" I think were on the list. Luckily this was back in college and luckily I was pursuing a Philosophy degree so I had plenty of reading material....

I also played in a game where the constant interruptions got way out of hand and often ground the game to a screeching halt. It was a "co-DM" situation. One DM seemed very interested in actually running a good game. The other DM...I never figured out what he did. His job seemed to be to play snobbish NPCs and incessantly interrupt the game with movie quips, songs and other random sound effects from his laptop.

 

[airwalkrr]

...

PC's are also forbidden for dying, because it's unfair to have your PC die.

This here breaks my heart. Part of what makes RPGs involving combat exciting is the threat of death. The loss of a character can be a truly wondrous thing, especially if the death is noble and selfless. It can also be incredibly instructive. There are some mistakes that I simply will NEVER make again because in the past they have caused my characters to die. Character death teaches you your character's limits, your character's weaknesses, and your character's strengths in a way that could never happen in a "characters never die" campaign.

 

[Macbeth]

Maybe offer to run something different, in a system that won't support that kind of play? That way you're offering a solution, and you can phrase it as "letting the DM take a break" or something. Maybe offer it for just a session, like a filler, and hopefully people will have fun and latch onto doing something else.

You could go for a game that actively works against minutiae in gear, like Dogs in the Vineyard or Danger Patrol.

Or you could go with something that's still very gear based, but still moves around the buy/sell cycle and gets to the action, like 3:16.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I gamed in a group that often got sidetracked off on extended trips to the market for the purchasing and bartering whims of a pair of players. The DM seemed to enjoy this so it was indulged. After one particular session when nothing was accomplished but 4 hours of shopping, those of us who were politely/silently waiting for something to happen with our characters protested the evening as a waste.

The DM replied that we should have chimed in telling him what we wanted to do in the market.

We conspired for the next session that those of us who were bored out of our mind with the monopolizing of the game with the shopping expedition roleplay, we invented "vigilante personas" for our characters. Next session before shopping could resume again, we chimed in that we were putting our disguises on and went out to catch criminals in the alleys surrounding the market. Intentionally excluding the characters who we felt abused our time with clothing and food and jewelry shopping last time, we kept the DMs attention on doing stuff we wanted to do for hours. One of us pretended to be defenseless while the other vigilante characters waited in the shadows, teams of lowly thugs would pounce the "defenseless" character and the hiding characters would jump out and turn the balance into a route on the thieves. Lots of roof-top chasing, alley combat, tons of fun.

The players who were left out of this protested that we were doing all this fun stuff and didn't include them. We pointed out that the DM told us last session to say what our characters were doing while their characters were out shopping their earned treasure away.

They shopped. We were heroes.

We never spent hours roleplaying shopping expeditions again. We also never had to break out the vigilante personas again.

In retrospect, I kind of feel our response to the shopping was a tad petty and I wouldn't do it today. But I was young then.