Dealing with an "oldschool" DM

[Ariosto]

The "berate players for exploring" characterization oversteps a bit, I think. As I recall, the DM mentioned that the players did not have to investigate every room. What occasioned that? I do not recall being given any context.

It would be a sensible matter to bring to players' attention if they were accustomed to a scenario like that in many video games, in which "clearing the level" and "beating the boss" may be normative assumptions -- or even hard and fast prerequisites -- before moving to the next level.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Sometimes, when the adventure is over, it's over. After the orc king is dead and the treasure looted, the remainder of the orcs have fled into the hills or been slaughtered by the pcs, exploring every nook and cranny of the dungeon is boring. I had one guy who insisted every odd room be searched for any tiny bit of silver the party might have missed. I hated it and the players - including him - were bored out of their minds, yet they continued to search every nook and cranny, as if they had to FINISH the level. I blame computer games for this methodolgy. There's nothing wrong with a dm discouraging this kind of play. But there's a cure for it. The wandering monster chart. When the pcs spend 200 gold in healing potions and loot 30 silver, they'll get the point. I'm here to game, not map a dungeon out to the last little isometric triangle.

 

[roguerouge]

He called it "videogamy" as a slur on their playing, which is an odd thing to do as "old school" modules actively encouraged exploration.

 

[Orius]

From the OP it sounds like a combination of two problems:

1) The DM doesn't fully understand the RAW, and is running them poorly. The other players are new to D&D, so they don't know what he's doing wrong, and maybe they're having fun and don't care. The OP knows the rules and feels frustrated that the DM keeps fumbling them.

2) The DM is approaching the game from 1e assumptions which may no longer apply. The OP has played from the black box Basic set through 1e, 2e, and 3e, so he's seen how the game has evolved over the last 20-25 years. It may be that the DM isn't using tactics for the monsters becuase he's running them like 1e monsters who don't have feats or powers like 4e. The problem here is that the players will walk all over the monsters by using 4e PCs against monsters from 1e. That's why monsters have changed during 3e and 4e, it's to keep them challenging while PCs get more powerful. Plus the DM is probably looking at things like XP, treasure, and monster stats are for the DM's eyes only.

So I don't think it's a matter of killer RBDMing. More like the DM is just running things clumsy, or is learning the rules as he goes. Or he's the type who doesn't bother to reread the rules every now and then, which is always helpful. In any case, only the OP seems to be bothered by it.

Like several other posters, I think the OP should volunteer to run a campaign. If the DM just has a poor grasp on the rules, it may help him to improve.

As for DM's eyes only: probably this started out so the DM could keep things mysterious to the players; if the players know eveything ahead of time, it's harder to maintain a sense of wonder and discovery. But it's not practical; players even in the old days read the DMG and MM out of the game to learn what the DM was hiding. The whole DM vs. players attitude didn't help either. And there are plenty of people who play and DM, so naturally they're going to have access to DM-only material. The only realistic solution to this is that players can't read DM only material like monster stats during the game itself, and instead of banning access to the material, the rules need to be about not metagaming instead.

 

[Ariosto]

Having just gone through a (2e) session in which the DM clearly did not have a grasp of the magic system, I can sympathize with the frustration that lack of grounding in the rules can cause. Arbitrary over-ruling due to lack of understanding is a bit different from someone making carefully considered changes (and making those appropriately clear). In that case, the problems involved material -- such as descriptions of character classes and spells -- normally considered part of the information available (in the PHB) to inform players' decisions.