How should I respond to my DM?

[Jimlock]

I agree with the majority here... Still if you want to insist playing your demigods without restrains, you and your buddies can always show up wearing these at the next session:

 

[Naoki00_]

If the Dm you have now wasn't involved in the originating of this storyline/campaign, it may just be that more difficult for him to "get into it". Most DM's I have known, including myself, take a lot of pride in creating their campaign worlds, story lines, and the challenges therein.

Also, despite the fact that much of the info you have given regarding your character and the story is very interesting and unique, was all the power you have just basically given at the start of the campaign? I don't know how long you've been playing this particular storyline, but if the PCs started out as basically demi-gods, that's a very difficult situation for a DM to step into. If this was all earned through a long campaign, then that's one thing, but to start with it is quite another.

I agree with the majority here... Still if you want to insist playing your demigods without restrains, you and your buddies can always show up wearing these at the next session:

to jimlock: not so much without restraint, as i said, gods can still end us, but even still I'd love that shirt XD


Now to RoryN: well it's a bit complicated, but in the beginning we all made the story based on my character (since I'd made it years ago and yet we still hadn't done something centric around it when we all agreed it would be cool to do) and the current DM was a player as well. he took the DM title because we liked the idea so much we wanted to continue.

And in technicality, yes, my character started with near that level of power, however as I said she was made years ago with a lot of time in the spotlight with our group with numerous appearances and cameos to add her flare to the game, (and always having too much fun watching and laughing to do much other then appear, thus why her power is evened out- she's nigh impossible to beat unless your a god, but she'd rather just watch you take out minions or flounder about killing some other more advertised threat all while sipping blood from a juice box waiting for her mortal enemies to get old and kick it)..so in a sense, yes she was handed her power being as she's the daughter of the god of gods and god of all magic, but has had so long in this group that everyone knows it and knows how she does things and become well loved partly because she IS so broken. (I like to think of her in the same sense why the Hellsing anime is so fun to watch..the main guy could end civilizations on his own, but the focus isn't always on him rofl-stomping things in a fight, usually it's on the others)


by the way thank you all so much for your input! replying makes me think about things and hopefully I'll be albe to talk with the others in my group to help this problem..

 

[BlackMoria]

I have been DMing since 1977 so I have considerable experience in DMing but if a group approached me with wanting to run a campaign like the one you are in, I would run away screaming.

Frankly, in my assessment, the DM is well over his head and it not up task at hand. Really, think about it .... how to you challenge someone who has the entire negative plane in his body and has a demigod for a familar?

The campaign is in rough water and it is only going to get worse. The only way the DM can cope is telling you 'no' and giving some bull**** reason to support the 'no'. Trust me, my friend, it is only going to get worse, not better as the campaign unfolds.

It is better to chalk this one up to a good idea with huge problems in implementation and start a new campaign with more realistic expectations.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Welcome to EnWorld!

I am a bit confused here. In your posts you state that:

1 - Due to your own artifact, the only beings in the world able to challenge you are unable to perceive you..meaning you have to seek out the challenges and you only want to do that when you are ready to.

2 - The DM, as part of his task to challenge you, has to break some rules to challenge the broken characters you run..... and this surprises you?

Honestly, If I were your DM and thought I could step up the pressure on you ** ... I would. Heavily. Brokenly. And then I would take your stuff. Ao would have her own voidstone. Death himself would come hunting for his negative energy and turn it against you. War would come to get you out of his entertainment with the nations. In short order, you would be the most hunted and scared group of 'deity assassin contenders'.

My favorite house rule is that anything the players get, I get. Binding the negative energy plane to you allows you to control undead? Sure!
I would *love* to have a player ask me for that amount of power... and I never have, exactly because they never want me to have that amount of power. {I had a group destroy a ring of Wishes.... awesomeness }

Is that what you want out of the game? Cause that is where it looks like it is going. {If the DM can keep up, that is}

The other option is for the DM to get aggravated and hate running a game where he has no control and the rules hold no safe harbor.

Talk to the group about where you want this to go. Perhaps it is best to restart from low level and work back into it.


** : See note from [MENTION=424]BlackMoria[/MENTION], he has more time as a DM than I do.. but I run CP2020 and Paranoia, so I could see running this kind of game as a fun, albeit very short term, challenge in which I would expect the PCs to die off from too much curb-stompage. You have set it up so that you can reasonably only encounter those underneath your level or those massively over your level... and nothing in between. All while giving those over your level a very good reason to stomp you before you get to the point of being a danger to them.

 

[Mark CMG]

You almost don't even need a GM for that game.

That was my initial thought. I say let the DM make a similar character and everyone can run the adventures/setting together, by the book, with random encounters of diefic levels to trounce. I know a group in earlier editions who would take the deities books and make awesome characters just to go through the whole book and see if they could build character to beat them. If you're playing RAW with no adjudicating for any incidentals then there's no need for a DM.

 

[Naoki00_]

That was my initial thought. I say let the DM make a similar character and everyone can run the adventures/setting together, by the book, with random encounters of diefic levels to trounce. I know a group in earlier editions who would take the deities books and make awesome characters just to go through the whole book and see if they could build character to beat them. If you're playing RAW with no adjudicating for any incidentals then there's no need for a DM.

Welcome to EnWorld!

I am a bit confused here. In your posts you state that:

1 - Due to your own artifact, the only beings in the world able to challenge you are unable to perceive you..meaning you have to seek out the challenges and you only want to do that when you are ready to.

2 - The DM, as part of his task to challenge you, has to break some rules to challenge the broken characters you run..... and this surprises you?

Honestly, If I were your DM and thought I could step up the pressure on you ** ... I would. Heavily. Brokenly. And then I would take your stuff. Ao would have her own voidstone. Death himself would come hunting for his negative energy and turn it against you. War would come to get you out of his entertainment with the nations. In short order, you would be the most hunted and scared group of 'deity assassin contenders'.

My favorite house rule is that anything the players get, I get. Binding the negative energy plane to you allows you to control undead? Sure!
I would *love* to have a player ask me for that amount of power... and I never have, exactly because they never want me to have that amount of power. {I had a group destroy a ring of Wishes.... awesomeness }

Is that what you want out of the game? Cause that is where it looks like it is going. {If the DM can keep up, that is}

The other option is for the DM to get aggravated and hate running a game where he has no control and the rules hold no safe harbor.

Talk to the group about where you want this to go. Perhaps it is best to restart from low level and work back into it.


** : See note from @BlackMoria , he has more time as a DM than I do.. but I run CP2020 and Paranoia, so I could see running this kind of game as a fun, albeit very short term, challenge in which I would expect the PCs to die off from too much curb-stompage. You have set it up so that you can reasonably only encounter those underneath your level or those massively over your level... and nothing in between. All while giving those over your level a very good reason to stomp you before you get to the point of being a danger to them.

I have been DMing since 1977 so I have considerable experience in DMing but if a group approached me with wanting to run a campaign like the one you are in, I would run away screaming.

Frankly, in my assessment, the DM is well over his head and it not up task at hand. Really, think about it .... how to you challenge someone who has the entire negative plane in his body and has a demigod for a familar?

The campaign is in rough water and it is only going to get worse. The only way the DM can cope is telling you 'no' and giving some bull**** reason to support the 'no'. Trust me, my friend, it is only going to get worse, not better as the campaign unfolds.

It is better to chalk this one up to a good idea with huge problems in implementation and start a new campaign with more realistic expectations.

I think that I might want to clear something up, what it seems like is that the vast majority of people here aren't in the same mindset that my group is. to us, a DM shouldn't so much say "this happens because I said so" as much as "this happens because of the actions you took and because of the things happening in this world"...the DM more or less plays 'the world' and everything in it, while we play the main guys. now we understand that that isn't how everyone is of course, but for most of our games that how it is, we can do whatever we could physically do, but the DM tells us of it's results and therefore consequences..

In response to the over posts, as we all discussed at the time of this campaign's creation (including the DM as he was also part of it's making) the point of this campaign isn't to be challendged combat wise until we actually secured enough power to take on gods, first it would be getting rid of their epic level priests and whatnot, using the voidstone to hide from the gods afterwards....we've barely been able to get going because we're hitting challenges far too early story wise, not many even know we're around yet.

Also I had to ask, is the DM's job really to just challenge the players? challenge alone and a bunch of combat is nice but I prefer a game with more mental challenges, combat is rare in most of them, this one included..it's about the experience and figuring out how to do the things we want to do. The DM is the one though for us that is the responder, the one that is the beings we aren't playing and like I said, the one that tells the consequences.

and to Primitive screwhead: we expect things like to happen eventually, hell we plan on cohorting with some of the gods in order to gain the power we need anyway, before backstabbing them of course. from the very beginning though? the story hasn't even gotten off that far...that would be like a book reaching a conclusion in the 2nd chapter.

 

[Agamon]

I understand where you're coming from. Some poeple see sandbox play as, dot a map with interesting locations and let the players loose on them. I see it more like you, give the players an idea of the setting and then let them do whatever they want and tell them how it turns out (I've heard called both improv or lazy GMing).

Criticizing your group's play style doesn't help you any, so hopefully there'll be less of that. The point, regardless of the setting, is that the players and GM decided how things were going to go in the beginning and he's changed his mind in the midst of it, right? So basically, there's three choices. Tell him to go back to what was agreed upon, keep playing under his new rules, or play a new game.

We've come up with a couple ideas on how you might confront the GM, but it comes down letting him know that the game's not living up to expectations because he's not playing how it was initially agreed by everyone. It's not unlike a GM adding a house rule in the middle of a campaign that nerfs a PC without discussing it with the player, that's not cool either.

Really, you just have to ask him to let things go the way they were intially planned if he wants it to continue. If he doesn't want to , then there's no way to make him. And if the players don't want to play the game the way it's been changed, there's no way to make them, either. Maybe a compromise can be worked out, I dunno, but everyone needs to agree if they want to enjoy the game.

 

[Naoki00_]

I understand where you're coming from. Some poeple see sandbox play as, dot a map with interesting locations and let the players loose on them. I see it more like you, give the players an idea of the setting and then let them do whatever they want and tell them how it turns out (I've heard called both improv or lazy GMing).

Criticizing your group's play style doesn't help you any, so hopefully there'll be less of that. The point, regardless of the setting, is that the players and GM decided how things were going to go in the beginning and he's changed his mind in the midst of it, right? So basically, there's three choices. Tell him to go back to what was agreed upon, keep playing under his new rules, or play a new game.

We've come up with a couple ideas on how you might confront the GM, but it comes down letting him know that the game's not living up to expectations because he's not playing how it was initially agreed by everyone. It's not unlike a GM adding a house rule in the middle of a campaign that nerfs a PC without discussing it with the player, that's not cool either.

Really, you just have to ask him to let things go the way they were intially planned if he wants it to continue. If he doesn't want to , then there's no way to make him. And if the players don't want to play the game the way it's been changed, there's no way to make them, either. Maybe a compromise can be worked out, I dunno, but everyone needs to agree if they want to enjoy the game.

thanks Agamon, i think I just about have the plan, we'll probably just talk to him and tell him whats going on and hope for the best..I was hoping this would help us figure out a way to approach him about it, but this is the best I can hope for I suppose lol

 

[rkwoodard]

I think I could run this

At first, I thought you were out of your mind. Then I digested it.


I think this could work, I think I could even run something like this.

First, I would chuck the actual D&D Mechanics. Keep the cosmology stuff though.

Since I don't know the other characters...yours would be challenged by the other bastard children of AO. They are not gods, so your stone, is not a big help. And I think one would be in service to entropy.

Then, the sessions would span actions of weeks and months. You would be stymied without knowing how or why, and you would have to figure out who/how/why.


And if you ever. ever. wound up in Sigil, the first person...the very first person you see would be her greatness the Lady of the Blades herself.

I would not run this to be mean or hostile to the players, this is just what I see as a good campaign focus.

So, to the point of your question, I think your group has to have a big sit down. I think you are either using the wrong system, or the DM is not suited for this (And he could still be a great DM in general), or a bit of both.

But that is just my 2 cents.

 

[Mark CMG]

Also I had to ask, is the DM's job really to just challenge the players? challenge alone and a bunch of combat is nice but I prefer a game with more mental challenges, (. . .)

Sounds like he's already doing that, and I don't think anyone here suggested that challenging the players is restricted to combat. The books are guidelines and if he has found that, because of the nature of the campaign and character builds, he needs to make some adjustments, then the players won't always know just how things are going to turn out by knowing what's in the books, and I think you're being well challenged. I'd suggest less quoting the rulebook to the DM and more player of characters to figure out what to do when knowing the rules doesn't get you what you expect. Of course, we only have a limited amount of information on which to based the advice we give in this thread.