D&D 5E Has anyone ever been part of a group that has booted the DM?

[David Norris-King]

I see so many stories of people who've been in awful campaigns, but has anyone ever been in one bad enough that the players decided to kick the DM, or simply not allow them to run campaigns anymore.

I know one group that won't let one of their members run games for them anymore, but he's a good guy. He just can't grasp story telling, or interpret rules properly. Are there any worse cases you've heard of or been part of?

 

[5ekyu]

I was. I took up the campaign, convinved exiting players to give it a try and the GM i replaced was a great player in that campaign and many others. Ruffled feathers were smoothed.... All was good. This has actually happened a few times. I have also just left games i was playing in that were a bad fit for me but the others liked.

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[Ath'kethin]

I have on a couple of occasions left a campaign because the DM was so bad, and had other players leave it with me, but I don't think we ever had a full defection. There were a couple of GMs among various groups of friends who a few of us just refused to play under more than once; does that count?

As a DM I have fired a full group of players before.

 

[Inchoroi]

Hm. I wouldn't say boot the DM so much as just come to the unanimous decision that the DM was terrible and that I should take over.

The DM in question was more interested with forcing his story down our throats than letting us tell a story, so everyone's character's backstories didn't get touched upon at all. A waste of some very interesting characters...

The DM is still convinced it was our fault, though.

 

[ccs]

Yes.
One guy that played/ran games with us for years got himself banned from DMing after a truly atrocious Hero system game.
Now he's always run fairly crappy D&D/PF games. But this one was the final straw. 7 weeks of pure crap where nothing made sense story wise & everything was infinitely beyond our (well built) characters capabilities.
Imagine a comics universe where the entirety of the DC univeses, Marvel univeses, independants, the Champions game & personal stuff all happened in the last 5 years....

 

[Shiroiken]

Technically, I've been a booted GM (it wasn't D&D, but the concept was the same). Everyone was new to RPGs except me and one other guy, so I was the GM. After about 6 months, the other experienced guy decided I wasn't letting him be awesome enough. He convinced everyone else to move the game to a night I had class (as we were in college), and make someone else the GM. Not only was I booted as GM, but I was removed from the game.

The story has a happy ending, however. I was able to return in a few months as a player, and I found most of the players were... dissatisfied... with the new GM. There was no real challenge, and the only deaths were the ones that were self inflicted (it was a VERY lethal system, where average life expectancy was only 6 sessions or so). Someone suggested that I take over again, and we had a competition where both of us (plus another player who put his hat in the ring) each designed and ran a one-shot adventure, allowing the group to vote for who they wanted. The only person who voted against me was the jerk that got me booted in the first place; even the other two potential GMs thought I was far superior! Unsurprisingly, the rest of the group eventually booted the jerk when he started up crap again

 

[Ed Laprade]

Not so much booted as he was left out when we went on hiatus and didn't inform him when we got back together. Different night, different place, so we could truthfully say "Nope, X night's game is still dead."

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

A couple of times. Once because they decided to use it entirely for their views on how the world really should be, and it was not something I could describe here without sickening people.

 

[redrick]

Our group has rotated DM a number of times. Often this is due to a combination of DM and player fatigue, but it's never been a concentrated coup. More just the DM getting tired of prepping material and another player starts to talk about this campaign idea that they've been working on.

If a DM's campaign were really sucking and it was more than just some tweaks, I would probably approach the DM and say that I had a campaign I wanted to run and how would they feel if I gave it a shot? (Leaving enough time for the current DM to wrap out.) Or I would encourage another player in the group to do the same.

 

[Charlaquin]

Not booted per se. But I have been in a group what was less than happy with their regular DM, offered to DM an adventure for them, and after that I became the one they would ask to run games for them instead of him.