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

[Rod Staffwand]

I played in a 3e campaign for three sessions which had a different DM for each session. I kid you not. They were friends of friends and I was looking for a game while our group was on hiatus. This other group was then in their 30s, but they exhibited a true cross-section of poor gamer archetypes:

1. The first DM was a smug control freak, becoming a passive-aggressive dick as a player.

2. The second DM started as a high-strung rules lawyer and min-maxing power gamer infamous for his antisocial, homicidal maniac PCs. As a DM he was punishing and capricious.

3. The third DM started as a gambler/trickster player that wouldn't take anything seriously and lived to throw everything in disarray. As a DM he was just nonsensical.

4. The fourth player was distracted, completely unprepared, didn't care about the game and just wanted to hang out.

Everyone was trying to do their own thing. There wasn't any party unity or plot buy-in. No one seemed to even like each other. I had no idea how they ever managed to game together for 15+ years. I didn't bother to go back and, I as understand it, the game broke up after that and I stopped gaming with unfamiliar groups.

As a DM, I've never been fired from a campaign. There was a 2e game in college that I ran and didn't get to complete because some of the players wanted to play Vampire or some such. Such was gaming in the 90s.

 

[5ekyu]

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.

That last point deserves repeating.

Oft times folks seem to take not good fit as gm or not goid fit ascplayer as a sign of bad friend or bad person.

I have friends i do movies with, other i rpg with others i mmo with others i go drink with and some i watch sports with and while these sets do have intersections not one is wholly contained within any other.

Someone who dms in a way you dont like may still become your best friend... My best and longest most got my back no matter what friend of four decades plus is a really bad GM whose games i have had to leave in the past.

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[Henry]

Never done it or been party to it. I was once part of a group a few years back where there was one guy whom we didn’t let run a game however, because every time he was the GM he was VERY antagonistic; as GM he played within the rules, but played to “win” which as a GM is not a good strategy for long-term happiness. He lived for TPKs, so we always found reasons to have another player run. Had to give that group up after a while, but it was probably for the best.