How do you deal with a bad DM?

[F5]

Of course it's not. The poison ought to go into the Mountain Dew.

Poison in Mountain Dew? Would you even notice?


To respond to the post at hand, as a DM, I'm often guilty of the opposite: giving too much description about things that don't matter. Or trying to make the description of an action more cinematic, when a simple "it bites you" will suffice. I'm not doing it to mess with the players, it's just my style, and I'm in treatemnt for it. So I can see where someone might under-describe in the same way.

Like others have said, talk to him about it, and ask if he would mind letting out a little more description for "free". It's probably not even something he's conscious of doing, and once you've pointed it out he'll probably make more effort.

If that doesn't work, he really is just screwing with you. In that case, do you know the old gamer myth about the Dreaded Gazebo? Where the DM says to his player "you see a gazebo in the middle of the field" and the player spends entirely too long sneaking up on it, attacking it, casting spells at it, etc, not realizing that a gazebo is a kind of round, covered bench. Classic case of inappropriate overreaction because of lack of description. You may need to go out and find yourself a gazebo, my friend. Start jumping to amusing and overblown conclusions based on the scant evidence you are provided. "A large, hairy creature?!?! It's an Ogre! Attaaaaack!!!"

 

[frankthedm]

I;ve had a DM who did the opposite--he described everything in such detail that by the time he was done, you'd forget what he was describing.

Ah, bullet-time descriptions. those get old, fast.

 

[Yig]

Heh.

Yeah, I see that as a tool actually. I use my player's reflexes against them.

Thanks for the warning

If we ever see a kitten we shall kill it with ranged attacks.

Kinda remind me when I CDG the "sleeping" (already dead) orc.

 

[painandgreed]

WHOA! I had a DM do something like that. He did did it because he was under-prepared for his game and wanted to drag everything out until the session was over.

When I figured that out, my PC steamed ahead through his un-designed dungeon at full speed. The DM panicked and tried to distract me with a library filled with strange books. Clearly he thought he could make me ask 100 questions about each book--slowing things to a crawl. But I set the room on fire and plowed ahead. Empty room, empty room. No listening at doors, no checking for traps, just kick in the door and charge onward. Empty room, empty room, empty room.

WHOA! Inexperienced GM. If you want to drag things out so the game drags out because you don't know what to do, you should drop into combat. PCs rarely aruge and the combat will most likely last long enough to gain some breathing room to think. If it lasts long enough, it'll finsih out the game session and you'll have to thenext game session not only to plan the rest of the dungeon but figure out why the PCs were attacked by the monsters to begin with. Even if it doesn't and they go through a couple of combats they've only gone two room into the dungeon by the end of it all.