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Message: <blockquote data-quote="helium3" data-source="post: 2338339" data-attributes="member: 31301">Things I've seen that are the hallmarks of a bad DM: (1) Creating scenarios that are designed to pit players against other plays. Mind you, I'm not confusing players and characters here. This one DM I know would design scenarios that would create major conflicts between characters that were clearly intended to foster actual animosity between players. (2) Crafting a plot that involves the heavy use of a large number of very powerful NPC's that are impossible to oppose and are destined to release an unbeatable foe (IE a GOD). Essentially, the party spent two years playing a campaign not knowing that the final outcome of the game was predetermined from the start. When we finally did realize what was going, it was very near the end and we all just went along with what we knew the DM wanted, even though we knew it was a hopeless situation that our character would never really have participated in. In this case, it was worse than railroading since our actions had no effect on anything in the end. (3) Holding some players to a higher standard of game play simply because they had a better strategic sense than others. In essence, some players got the benefit of "do-overs" and strategic help from the DM because they were more likely to get themselves killed by making dumb decisions. Players that weren't likely to do this got less "assistance" and were subsequently more likely to die, since their deaths were from random criticals and the like and not subject to "do-overs." (4) Another DM I played for was seriously under-prepared for any kind of encounter. He had a list of NPC's and monsters we would interact with during his games, but when it came time for combat, he'd have to roll up their stats, hit points, etc. He was a big fan of e-tools, but his idea about being able to use them on the fly to create encounters was seriously wrong. We'd literally have 30 to 45 minute breaks in play in order for him to prepare encounters. (5) The same DM would make relatively significant changes to the way a character class worked only after a player started playing said class. After my first character died, my new sorcerer discovered that magic worked via ley lines, and I'd have to take a bunch of feats if I didn't want to suddenly "run out of magic" after travelling off of the lines. A player running a ranger suddenly discovered that the nature god was neutral good, when his animal companion abandoned him for committing an evil act against another nature oriented character. The same player running a cleric suddenly discovered that the cleric spell list had been trimmed back to about five spells available per level. (6) This DM also had a problem with the opposite of rail-roading. He wanted us to feel free to take any actions we wanted, but provided us with very little material related to the plot. Our characters never had any clue what was going on around us, and we'd encounter all these weird random attacks that we figured were related. Unfortunately, we'd never get anywhere. As soon as we were about to capture someone and beat some answers out of them, they'd just barely manage to get away. It was like he didn't want us to succeed at anything we tried to do.</blockquote>

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