GM to GM Candids

[Quickleaf]

The party was railroaded into him and his 'apprentice', and they both... <snip>

Were it anyone else, I'd leave nothing but the smell of burnt rubber in that house, but I don't get to play if I'm not DM'ing.

Yeah, that's my point (and my question). What you describe in the OP is a killer encounter, but it was unclear what kicked off that encounter. Now you're asserting it was the DM railroading the players. That may very well be true.

I'm saying, since you are a DM with an ongoing game, put yourself in this DM's shoes. Could the "railroading" be this DM responding to something the party did that alerted these high level threats? Could there be some kind of logic to the encounter besides a DM throwing pet NPCs at the party because the power-gamers ticked them off last time (or whatever)?

I'm saying, take a breath and given the specifics only you know, and your own experience as a DM, what might this DM of yours have been thinking?

You may come around to the same conclusion that this DM sucks and the game isn't for you, but by reflecting on it and putting yourself in his shoes you'll come up with a way to approach the topic from the side without triggering anyone's defenses.

Make sense?

 

[Zourin]

I'm thinking the first order of business is to get rid of his myriad of 'house rules' to start and get him back to a 'vanilla' that's more sweet than bitter.

The second order of business is to convince him to remove the munchkin gear from play. There's no reason to have to play a power race of overcompensation with nobody but himself.

The second is to run monsters out of the book with a maximum CR of our level minus one, rather than pimping out PC's to run as our nemesis. Adjust as necessary to keep combat short and sweet, and to use description and ambiance to make things seem worse than they really are. The secret is that the numbers work in our favor, the dice work against us, and the DM just makes it -seem- impossible, not -actually- impossible.

Third will be to actually run prep for his encounters. Plan it ahead but don't take player abilities into consideration unless we lack tools to deal with it, and ensure that if things go hostile, that there's either a fair shot of winning or a way-out that doesn't seem contrived.

The last is to stop fighting the vets during the downtime. I came in under 3k on my character creation and decided to throw down for partial ownership of a bar and offered a good back story. He rolled a d20 and said I owned a bar-stool (2%). He's also been playing the 'infinite runaround' game with the vet Wizard over lab and library access, and all but starved him of item rewards.

Considering he's racked up a heavy laundry list of necessary improvements, it's going to be a bitter pill for him to swallow, and a lot of work on his part that he's going to have to care about if he wants to improve.

 

[Zourin]

You may come around to the same conclusion that this DM sucks and the game isn't for you, but by reflecting on it and putting yourself in his shoes you'll come up with a way to approach the topic from the side without triggering anyone's defenses.

Make sense?

As his former DM and only sitting in on two sessions (24 hours total time), I see him making the same mistakes he made four years ago as a player and not reading up on what he's trying to do. Instead reading half and making assumptions about the rest. Such things ranged from casting an evil spell as a good cleric to applying sneak attack damage to prone opponents. It's obvious he didn't learn what I tried to teach him back then when I would prod him about this particular flaw.

This gets him in trouble with the 'vet' and I, since we're sitting there correcting his misapplications on a regular basis. This just opens him up to more heat when he does something in an already stacked combat that defies the core rules and we catch him (or more commonly, announces it to everyone at the table, since he doesn't *see* it as a misapplication)

He is going somewhere with all his railroading (railroading can be properly handwaved or lampshaded and isn't necessarily bad), and he developed some capacity for a coherent story-line.

The CR balancing issues stems from his need to present a series of 'epic confrontations' that only results in more unconscious and dying players. If nothing else, I see him seeing himself in competition with us to keep his story more important than our motivations (which he is not prepared to deal with at even a fundamental level), thus needing to establish some kind of 'house edge' that he can't keep intangible. Instead, he makes it very tangible by giving NPC's ridiculous gear that the PC's (once completely bailed out) wind up picking up and setting the power struggle up again.

It's not just mechanical, but deeply embedded to how he thinks somewhere. Not sure how anyone would react to having their own brain spelled out for them like that.

 

[Fooly_Cooly]

I agree. Like I said earlier. Get him back to basics. Maybe he should give the begginer box a try? Pittle with it a little then do a low lvl pre made campaign. Its a good way to work out those kinks for new DM's.

 

[Zourin]

I arrived in on the middle of a grandiose homebrew campaign of his design, so I'm leery about doing an Intervention and top it off with shelving his arc. That would very easily be misconstrued as sending him to the kiddie pool when he just needs to use the guidance set for DM's and do his homework.

Finding a story arc to destroy/remove the munchkin weapons with 5-6 encounters of fights that don't last more than 30 minutes would probably be the first bit of homework I'd give him. The vet and I are already conspiring to find a way to do it, we just need the DM to facilitate the path.

Correcting the power curve will be the next piece, where he must level us once using nothing but 30 minute encounters, textbook xp gains, and minimal textbook rewards. Bonus if he can still add in items of interest and value without an actual mechanical value (story-line items, for either his arc or relevant to our personal backgrounds)

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6695312]Zourin[/MENTION]
Sounds like you have a good pulse on this DM. What you describe sounds like a stylistic difference. For example, this DM's railroading might work for more casual players, whereas for you more hardcore gamers it is stifling. That seems like the core point to bring up. The other stuff (proficiency at running combat, time management, etc) will come with practice. It can be hard to be an experienced DM - like you are - and play thru the early stages of a campaign while a new DM cuts their teeth.

 

[The Red King]

It really seems like he needs some hard core lessons in how to make the game fun.

 

[saundby]

It seems like the offer to get with him offline and go over some things is most likely to be productive. I'd recommend picking specific objectives for each get-together.

He's probably aware he's got some problems, but is hoping they'll come out in the wash--particularly when he feels like he's handing out huge loot to compensate (never mind that it's not being spread evenly.)

For example, maybe offer to run through some mock combats with him to "help him play through combat faster." That will be one objective, the other will be to get him to read through some rules about combat in a non-threatening situation ("just practice") and play through properly, getting used to applying the rules.

He may just be applying the "better fast than right" rule--way, way too much (and not studying up between sessions on missed calls.)

On treasure--I'd want to address that as a party issue. Perhaps the caster needs to start putting a monetary value on spells. Especially heals and buffs. Scroll value plus some might be a decent starter value.

I was in one game where my caster and another player, less experienced than the others, were getting no appreciable treasure while the others were coming up with stuff that was amazing for our level and spending money like drunken sailors while we were scraping for inns and food.

Finally I called for 100% common loot at the start of one session. If anyone wanted something out of the loot they bought it out of their pocket at the price we could sell it. I stated basic rules for collecting and dividing fairly and penalties for breaking them.

They went with it, because they each felt someone else was leaving them behind, but I was holding out the threat of no buffs for anyone who didn't buy in or held back loot (and potential active interference with looting, like grease, slow, etc. with, e.g. cat's grace on those I did want getting first loot, etc.) Anyway, it didn't come to that. And once we had a player's agreement the DM enjoyed taking a hand in enforcing it.

Good luck!

 

[Zourin]

Got a chance to chat with him on Friday, it went well overall. Turns out he did want some DM-level feedback, and I hope I managed to chisel through some of his bad habits and clued him in on some good DM habits to replace them with. We aren't going to get to run another game for almost a month.

More hazardous though, will be the DM's wife, who is a more delicate matter to address. In the three planned sessions, she's tried to get him to cancel twice because she wasn't going to be around to play or other impulsive reasons with less than an hours notice. Some of us are considering another venue, possibly public, so that if we have to, we can cut her (and him by proxy) out and find someone else to DM. I really don't want to have to DM, since I hardly ever get to put on my players' hat as it is.

 

[N'raac]

Got a chance to chat with him on Friday, it went well overall. Turns out he did want some DM-level feedback, and I hope I managed to chisel through some of his bad habits and clued him in on some good DM habits to replace them with. We aren't going to get to run another game for almost a month.

Emphasis added - that's a huge plus in my books. Looks like you were also able to take it offline and provide feedback in a nonthreatening environment, which really helps. If it's "we all want to do better - here's what you did well and here's where I think you can build on that" rather than "here's where you really suck", it gets a lot less confrontational.

More hazardous though, will be the DM's wife, who is a more delicate matter to address. In the three planned sessions, she's tried to get him to cancel twice because she wasn't going to be around to play or other impulsive reasons with less than an hours notice. Some of us are considering another venue, possibly public, so that if we have to, we can cut her (and him by proxy) out and find someone else to DM. I really don't want to have to DM, since I hardly ever get to put on my players' hat as it is.

A group discussion on game session scheduling may be in order. I know we had a similar issue some years ago, with some players who were more committed (obsessed?) than others. The solution was to reduce the frequency of the game, with a commitment to x sessions per month, and setting a de minimis number of absences which meant rescheduling.

The more hardcore portion of the group scheduled a smaller game which would run most weeks when the larger session was not running, so everyone was pretty OK with the result.