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

[77IM]

Yes. I play in a "pseudo-AL" group; we meet during AL play time but we don't necessarily play AL-legal games. So we wind up having a fairly "diverse" table with a rotating cast.

One night our then-DM flaked and announced that he wasn't showing up and in fact was no longer interested in DMing. He was having some friction with the group so this was a sensible decision, but he announced it just before the game started so we were all sitting there ready to play, but with no DM. Fortunately, one of the new guys stepped up to continue the campaign!

It didn't go well. He lasted two sessions as DM. His game-play style just really didn't fit well with our group at all, and he seemed way more interested in running the game he wanted to run than in giving his players the game they wanted to play. For example, he preferred theater-of-the-mind when everyone else wanted to do minis+grid. And he had this elaborate and bizarre campaign setting with lots of exposition and lore, when we all just wanted to go have an adventure.

We didn't actually boot him, but one of the other players stepped up to DM, and the guy stopped coming to sessions after that. I feel kind of bad about it because he was a really nice guy. He just seemed totally oblivious to his audience.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

we tell horror stories about each other from back in high school and college years...we should have been fired a few times.

We did fire the DM who ran 3 or 4 bad campaigns in a row...but he still plays with us.

I came into a campaign right after a GM got fired... he liked 'high power' campaigns and would just send hundreds of orcs at the party, and when they died just have a local cleric ress them, then put them in dept to the church...

 

[akr71]

In high school (which was quite a while ago), we had a DM that ran a Monty Haul campaign. He had a DMPC Paladin and we just happen to find a Holy Avenger... crazy amounts of magic items all over the place. At a natural story break, someone else took over and it was a more serious campaign for a while. The new DM was an obsessive, controlling jerk and would throw hissy fits when we didn't follow exactly what he wanted us to do or try to (gasp) have fun.

I stopped going and that was pretty much the end of D&D for me until 5e.

It took a couple attempts to put a group together, but I think we have a good group now. I'm DMing, but more than happy to hand the reigns over, whether its for a one shot or we trade story arcs.

 

[akr71]

Anyone in this thread self-aware enough to recognise that they might have been the problem is going to get an automatic +1 from me . I am constantly conscious I could do better but thankfully my players still put up with me, and in return I keep trying to get better

Although the group I'm part of did experience this once (I actually know I wasn't at fault for this one because it all concluded six months before I joined them), primarily for railroading.

I think I apologize after every session! "Sorry, I lost my notes on..." "Um, sorry I took so long to find..." "Uh, yeah. That didn't go smoothly did it? I'll try to do better next time."

 

[ExploderWizard]

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?

There was one time, an an ancient time (the 80's) when our group was meeting to play in a public library. We didn't boot them but we DID all quit the game and walk away from the table after an outburst from this DM that was simply unacceptable. He actually said " THIS IS MY CAMPAIGN AND YOU WILL DO EXACTLY AS I SAY!" That was the end of that campaign.

The DM in question later learned the error of his ways and became one of our best friends.

 

[Imaculata]

I've been in a group where the DM was so bad, that we booted him only about an hour into his campaign. And eventually we even started a whole new group without him, because he was just as bad as a player. He's a nice guy in real life, but he's just no fun when playing a role playing game.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I don't want to brag but I've always been the DM and nope.

 

[neobolts]

My long-running group has always let people test the waters at DMing by "guest DMing" a session. Basically, they run a short side-story that fits in during travel time or downtime in the main story. It is a great practice and way to let people try out DMing without a big commitment; I highly recommend it. However, our guest DMing policy led to one infamous session about 17 years ago...

We had one player who we were a bit wary of guest running a session, as he tended to have a very egocentric approach as a player (the DM, the story, and the other PCs existed to bolster the importance of his character). When he guest DMed what should have been a side story, he instead directly usurped and insta-resolved the main narrative, revealed his character to be an immensely powerful hero beloved by all, and had the cast of Final Fantasy IX show up to give everyone in the party Gundams. To be clear, he was not trolling and thought we would all be awed at his deft resolution of the plot, the awesomeness of his PC, and the inclusion of pop culture elements that we were interested in at the time. He never understood why the players revolted on the spot. I & my co-DM simply had to step in and take over the session, retconning that it didn't happen.

 

[Mad_Jack]

There's only been one game I was in where the DM got "fired", and it basically happened that I was forced to stage a coup for the good of humanity...


We all know one of those toxic people who tries to dominate a social group, always browbeating others into going along with them and what they want, because otherwise they'll make life interminable. So everyone eventually just goes along with them to keep the already-thick drama from increasing. They're leeches who suck the life out the group and destroy everything they touch.
In this case, that person happened to be the DM of a group that was just barely out of high school.

I absolutely loathe being a role-model for anyone, but it seems to happen with some frequency, so I at least try to take the job seriously as un-asked-for as it is. Many, many moons ago, a very young coworker at one of my jobs had discovered my interest in D&D and, as someone with decades of both gaming and life experience, had latched onto me as a mentor. They were playing in what sounded like a nightmare of a game, and it wasn't long before I got a somewhat desperate-sounding invitation to come to one of the group's gaming sessions.
This turned out to be a group of 16-18-yr-olds with no self esteem or self-confidence, and they hadn't yet learned that "inclusivity" doesn't mean you have to let everyone into the group no matter how much of a sociopath they are. So the current DM had waltzed right into it and taken over. He'd insisted that, having learned to play 2nd Ed. from his uncle as a kid, he had the most gaming experience and thus should rightfully be the DM. The original DM didn't have the backbone to stand up for himself. Pretty soon the new kid had become some bizarre enfant terrible, a caricature of that DM, the one that we all tell stories about - it wasn't a gaming group as much as a hostage situation. Even worse than all the outrageous stereotypical Bad DM crap he pulled during the game, he'd also taken over the group's social dynamic: he'd browbeaten the entire group into believing that they couldn't hang out with one of their former friends because he'd been thrown out of the game, and quite literally told the one young lady in the group that she was now his girlfriend and had no choice in the matter if she didn't want to get kicked out of the game and shunned by all of them. Apparently, after almost two years of utter hell, the group inviting me to play with them had been their first ever group decision in defiance of the DM.

Usually, my response to finding a bad game would be to just laugh at it and leave, but the situation was bad enough that I felt honor bound as a gamer and a human being to do some social engineering, take the game and the group away from the little monster, and screw their heads back on right.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Makes me think of Knights of the Dinner Table when Dave tries his hand at DMing. "Many are called, but few are chosen."

Like most here, we didn't boot a DM but rather fired him after his first session, transitioning from gamer to DM. He brought us in at 1st level to follow his NPC avatar around, killing dragons while we were along for the ride.

The other was less of a boot than just simply not coming back to the table. Was trying to find a group during grad school and tried the local game store's open table day, kind of like a bad dating service. The first DM had us make characters forced to fight in an arena, then pulled out the Monster Manual and began at the letter "A." Not joking, he confessed his adventure was to go down the list.

Table #2 wasn't much better. Deliver a letter to the sheriff. We never got to town. Random encounter combats, incessantly, all beginning with pretty much the same introduction: "you hear a rustle in the trees." When we came back the next week and it continued with "you hear a rustle in the trees" we abandoned ship.

Now, in the end, it all worked out. I took up DMing again, found some lifelong friends in the search, and now share lessons of what not to do.