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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kelimar" data-source="post: 6144996" data-attributes="member: 6747402">OK, It has been just short of a week since the end of the campaign and Majoru directed me to this thread earlier today, I am the DM of the campaign in question and felt after reading all twelve pages that I should create an account and weigh in here on my opinions both regarding the situation, and the opinions brought up in this thread.First off I would like to clarify that while at times playing with Jim (hereafter referred to as Fortune) can be frustrating I largely feel that his frustrations are often at least rooted in understandable complaints, such as my rather loose grasp of the rules. Fortune can be at times a colorful character and can bring even more colorful characters to the table, as such he will always have a welcome chair at my games, though I admit he may not be particularly interested in rejoining us for my up coming campaign. My major frustration with Fortune beyond his at times excessive rules lawyering is his insistence on power gaming, an aspect of tabletop games which I find most deplorable as it forces the rest of the party to do so as well, or risk feeling like the sidekick to the vastly more impressive other player. These things said I don't want to paint Fortune as a villain and feel that many of our disagreements are simply rooted in our drawing enjoyment from vastly different aspects of the game. He likes to bend the rules and feel like a king, I'm there to create flavor in my characters, RP as much as I can, and watch the story unfold, and both are completely legitimate aspects of these types of games.I fully admit my faults as a DM, in that I don't have a fantastic grasp of the mechanics of the engine we are using to run the game, and at times my on the fly decisions can go beyond the realm of "just outside the rules" straight into the land of "I just made this up". This is because I have had little in the way of motivation to read the library worth of play books which would be required to sufficiently satisfy Fortune in particular. In addition I decided roughly halfway through the campaign that I don't particularly enjoy 4e as an engine and only ran the rest of the campaign in it because I wasn't eager to change systems halfway through and also because I knew I wanted to run a game of Next once it was able to handle a non-boxed campaign and felt it would be better to bide my time. In addition I would like to add that when I came into 4e it was already entering its twilight, Next however is still in its youth which will allow me to learn the rules as they grow and form.My complaints with 4e are rooted in the dichotomy between my expectations and experiences with the system. My expectations are that I would like to run a campaign where the characters represent exceptionally talented individuals who are in no way super heroes much like how the main characters of the Lord of the Rings are. Whereas the engine itself encourages the "I'm a super hero" point of view. I heavily dislike that the engine encourages high level players to combat gods, and reinforces the concept that they are demigods themselves, which is why I chose a mid level campaign in the first place, though I admit that I ran it more like an endgame campaign, what with the players taking on exceedingly powerful beings and witnessing the death of gods etc.Now to give a bit of background regarding the campaign, or at least flesh it out somewhat from what my friend Majoru has outlined. Don't worry I will try to keep things brief and use as little campaign centric jargon as I can.The campaign revolved around the conflict between the Demon Allupion and the party members. The demon, whose race had diverged from the race that also birthed the gods at some point in the distant past largely due to the actions of those who became gods, intended to slay the goddess Maisha and steal her power thus becoming a god himself. The party was in direct opposition to this, but events transpired and they found themselves in a final showdown with Allupion who had already activated an artifact of his design intended to draw out the power of a god and was in the process (with the aid of several wizards) of draining away Maisha's power.Note: I had intended for this to be the culmination of the campaign since very shortly after my introduction of the Allupion character. Sometime after that I came up with the concept that Maisha would die and one of the party would become a recurring god in the universe. My way of leaving a lasting mark on the world for future campaigns to touch on.The party combated the Demon and the combat was beginning to drag, the players had already wiped out all of the minions in the fight and were down to just going around the table beating on the demon who, as you may know had an excess of hit points due to his being a solo. I decided to have the goddess use the last of her power available in a last ditched attack against the demon, throwing a haphazard beam of energy out before dying. More Notes: As per my dislike of the gods having stat blocks, the gods in my campaign universe exist outside the rules. While they do have limitations their limits are so far beyond what any mortal or even demigod could hope to accomplish that to the eyes of mortals they may as well not have limitations. They also operate outside of the normal laws of magic, as such they can bend said laws in any way they wish. A god could in theory snap his/her fingers and bring back everyone who ever worshiped them, however the gods mutually prevent each other from interacting with the world on a large scale, thus hobbling each other and preventing events from getting out of control. A war between gods would likely leave mortals out in the cold so badly that they wouldn't even know what happened.The beam did have a roll to hit against reflex (my rational being they could try to jump aside) but in all fairness the roll wasn't a fair one and there may as well have been no roll at all. And yes Majoru did guess right, I pulled the number out of thin air. If I remember correctly my thought process went something along the lines of the following;DM: (Internal) *Rolls a random number of d12 coming up with 50ish damage, which seems appropriate. I'm going to have to hit some players so I don't want to do anything silly. DM: (Internal) but wait, Majoru did 100 damage earlier in the fight, and this is the last gasp of a god. There is no way a mortal would outdo a god. 150 seems more appropriate.DM: (speaking) 150 damage to everything in the beam, that's Fortune, Bruuf (also a player), Allupion, and several NPCs, some of whom were semi-important. (leaving Allupion at less than 30hp)Fortune and Bruuf: Well were dead.DM: (speaking) huh?!Dm: (Thinking) damn I figured they would have more HP than that, they usually brush off mountains of damageAround this point the contention started but I'll sideboard that and continue with the play, largely because most of it was ranting that I tried to tune out in order to wrap up the session. The party's nany NPC who had been around from the beginning but not there for the oath made to the Demigod earlier, shouts to the party to grab the artifact before Allupion can. Allianna our Warden goes to grab it but is convinced by the party to stay and deal with the now very badly injured Allupion, instead Meva our resident Warlock runs over and grabs the artifact, becoming a god. I take Meva into the other room and RP a short event where she meets with the other gods who have returned to the moon upon noticing the distress of their sibling/compatriot. They inform Meva that according to their self imposed laws she cannot affect the world in any major way (Ie: blink the events of the campaign away, or disintegrate Allupion etc.) and must instead act through the actions of her followers. However they will make an exception in that Meva can resurrect her fallen compatriots regardless of if they are her followers. We return to the room and Meva has a short discource with the party during which one member and an npc convert to her and she resurrects Bruuf and Fortune against their wills. Bruuf, having been a zealous follower of Maisha and completely gobsmacked that she would in his eyes kill him so offhandedly swears against all gods. Fortune turns on the party, siding with Allupion as by this point Fortune is probably more interested in being disruptive. Fortune the player is by this point actively denouncing the campaign as well as Meva's actions claiming they were against the rules etc. Meva revokes the gift of life for Fortune and Bruuf but returns it to Bruuf after learning that in the confusion Bruuf doesn't actually have a problem with being brought back (rules wise), just a problem with the gods and their actions. The party sans the now dead Fortune flee the crumbling city and the campaign ends.I feel that my failure was also in part due to my not sufficiently communicating the universe of the campaign to the party. I had always intended the gods the be far above and beyond the players and the rules, and had shown this to a lesser extend by introducing the party earlier in the campaign to a demigod (not the one who made them swear about the artifact) who was capable of acts far above and beyond what even the stat block D&D gods could accomplish. Again though I do feel that the failure was as much in my court as Fortune's over the top reaction to it was in his.I think that's everything I wanted to say but I may have forgotten something.</blockquote>

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