catsclaw227 said:
I agree that it seems that the DM is inexperienced with 3.5, felt the encounters getting out of hand and did a terrible job winging it. His plan for the outcome wasn't happening the way he/she expected and choked a bit.
Elf Witch, I wouldn't worry about it. Talk to the DM openly with the other players in a friendly manner in an effort to make the game better and I am sure that you'll get the whole story and the game will improve.
But to play the devil's advocate for a smidgeon of a sec here....
Reading this thread, I wonder why so many players feel like every encounter is supposed to be CR appropriate? I mean, if a party dashes over the hill to respond to cries, and then get mad if it's Hill Giants and they are 2nd level PCs, it's not the GMs fault if they take on the monsters and get their asses handed to them.
Not every thing a party meets will be an evenly match CR appropriate encounter. Try GMing/playing a Necromacer Games module and you will know what I am talking about.
Maybe in this scenario, there was suppposed to be ANOTHER way to save the PCs from jail, or maybe even find out the sentencing for their crimes and wait it the jail term or something else other than taking on the 13th level sorcerer/assassin.
So many players seem to think that if their PCs are caught breaking the law, and are put in jail, then it must be time for a jail break.
I don't know, if I am wrong about this, then never mind.
[/rant]
EDIT: OK -- Just read Elf Witch's most recent post. The DM is a Bozo. I can't believe that all this "DM roleplaying the PC" crap was happening! I would have stopped him and said. "WAIT... I am not driving 90mph OK! And when I notice the 100 other cars going in the other direction I realize the problem."
Why is the DM roleplaying your PC for you? Maybe it is time to leave the game. Are there other places you can play?
I wanted to add that as player I don't expect every encounter to be tailored for our level. There are some things that should make you go "oh crap" and run away.
I also agree that a jailbreak is not always the answer. You can do a lot of things, bribe the guards, wait it out, use diplomacy with the city magistrate.
But when your DM send trusted allies and tells you that if you don't move and get you party members out of jail they will not live through the night and that the city guard has been infiltrated by a powerful assassin's group and that they know the way in then I think it is pretty clear that he wants you to follow this. That he has planned for the session to be a jailbreak and he had some encounters planned for.
So I would think given all that he would plan a CR encounter that we can possible overcome. I can just imagine if we had chossen not to do this then we would have a had DM going on a board complaining that no matter what hooks he puts into his game the players refuse to follow them and they end up spinning their wheels.
I don't consider this railroading sometimes a DM has to do things like this to plan out the session or get the plot moving.
I did tell him I had no problem with this and that I had no problem with the BBEG teleporting away. But I did tell him that it kind of sucks the fun out of the game for me when the monsters or BBEG breaks the rules and that ends in my character's death. If you kill me fairly I may be sad about it but I don't feels as if the DM was gunning for my character.
He did admit that he did not understand the whole movement issue and that he looked it up and realized that even with te monsters special abilities he should have not been able to reach me and that he had forgotten the whole movement and full attack rules. And he asked if we would tell him if we thought it was not being handled right in the future.
okay that was a postive thing.
But one thing we disagree on and we have talked a lot via email last night was that sometimes he feels that he needs to mantipulate the PCs to get the plot going he needs us to do something or he needs to show us something.
An example is we have special necklaces that we wear in Shadowrun to prevent this one group from using blood magic to target us they have our freaking DNA. So out of the blue one session he tells me to make a perception roll and I find out that I am being targeted magically. It turns out I didn't have my necklace on.
But I had never said I had taken it off. My character is the mage and experienced with the dangers of blood magic. I really felt that it made my character look stupid. If he had done it in a diffeernt way like say it had come off while I was sleeping I would be cool with that.
I told him I don't like bad things happening to my character or having bad things things happen to the party because of something my character did if I had no say in it no control over my PCs actions believe me I can get in enough trouble all on my own.
He feels that there should be more trust between us. He ponted out that we had been playing Shadowrun for a long time without these issues popping their head up.
And he is right. I think why this has become such an issue for me in Shadowrun is that before our team knew each other trusted each other and knew that we could count on each other. The four orginial players always had a blast. But we lost a player who had been playing the team leader and the DMs oldest friend joined the group.
This guy is a role player he refuses to ever metagame so he has been role playing that he finds my character to be incompetent because of the necklace issue and now the driving issue. And so there is a lot of tension between party members over this. I pointed this out to the DM that in all the many sessions we played before I never felt incompetent or that I had to prove myself to the team.
If it had been the old group with the motorcyle incident it would have been handled differently. The team leader would have been like lets pay off the MP or lets break into the system and doctor the files before it goes to court and we would have joked about how Jag (my character) thinks she owns the road. But not once would it have been brought up that my character could not be trusted or would my character have been told off by the rest of the party.
So I realize that in Shadowrun at least it is not that the DM is doing anything different it is the new dynamic at the table that is really coloring things for me.
I told the DM if the new player was going to play his character so judgemental then the only way I could continue to play was if the DM does not but me into situations that I have no control over my character decisions. That it is not that I don't trust him it is that I don't enjoy having to deal with this new issue.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
