is this GM bad or am i just a wuss?

[Herobizkit]

It could also very well be that the players are wanting to play an old-school, basic "hack/slash/loot" style of game, where the experienced DM is used to running a "play smart or die" type of game. The latter assumes a lot of rules knowledge that the novice players may not yet have.

I mean, 3.x is pretty numbers-heavy. Learning the basic math of combat (which is the second-largest section of the PHB next to spells) is heavy enough, then trying to understand how each of the skills works on top of that... it's a lot for someone who just wants to kill things and take their stuff.

Re: Archer Rogues. Gotta say, I don't like them. Getting your Sneak Attack bonus with Archery is tough unless you go first in the round. Normally I'd echo the Weapon Finesse, but most of us forget you need a +1 BAB to qualify for it and Rogues don't get that at first level (which is sad). If the DM is open to alternate character creation, I'd almost suggest the Rogue take the UA Rogue Variant that trades Sneak Attack for Fighter feats, then he could get WF for free at 2nd level.

 

[Celebrim]

on the bright side, he's always able to come up with a good scenario (for as long as i've had him as a GM) and he's great at NPC acting.

now, for the flip side....

Hmmm... for a second there I was scared you were one of my players.

also, when we're taking a long time to figure out a solution to problems (for whatever reason), he tends to get mocking and sarcastic because HE (and/or his other experienced friends) would have long solved that situatition.

Great, it's not me. I was taught how to DM by a guy in college when I was yet a dumb kid in middle shool, and he was far more patient and encouraging with me than that. So, yes, that attitude on the DM's part is non-constructive.

It's sounds like he's doing the DI reutine, and coming off as completely arrogant and out of touch. Sad thing is, he may be arrogant and out of touch. Trick here is going to be figuring out whether he's just autistic and hense insensitive to the damage he's causing, or whether he's a just a jerk and doesn't care. Former case he'll probably be apologetic. Later case, well, that's harder... especially since he sounds like he's got a lot of the qualities of a great DM.

and, sadly, he likes to go on several minute monologues even now and then about stuff that has no immediate relevance (if any to begin with). the most frequent of which i know of is about the average population of different towns. he must've mentioned this one at least 3 times since i've played with him

in combat, he's nitpicky about pointless stuff. for example :

DM : Which Goblin do you attack?
Me : (with my bow) The closest one.
DM : That's not specific enough.
Me : fine...Goblin number 1.
DM : Dude, i shouldn't have to tell you that you have to choose betwen the melee Goblins and the ranged Goblins. you have to make sure you know this and if you can't understand my subtle hints, it's your problem.
Me : (to myself) are you ing serious???

The autistic theory is looking more and more credible.

the rest of the fights, we almost always start toe-to-toe with the enemy, making my archery Rogue entirely POINTLESS. i can only depend on my Rapier and hope i get criticals because i have no AB worth talking about.

Well, archery rogue is a tough build to play. There are two possibilities here, and they both may be true to a certain extent. First, your party might not be being proactive enough. If you want to adjust the range, then you are going to have to dictate the range to the monsters. That may mean going, "Ok, we know the monsters are here, therefore we are going to wait over there and ambush them when they come out." Don't just charge straight into situations if you expect to be able to dictate the terms of the combat. Secondly, you may be dealing with more DM ego. DM ego allows monsters to have perfect knowledge of party actions at all time and gives them the supernatural ability to move at infinite speed when you aren't looking at them, thereby allowing the monsters to counter any plans you have perfectly.

first campaign, he takes over some of my roleplay moments. i ell him that even if i blow at it, i'd like to do my own roleplay so i can hopefully improve. pretty much ignored.

Hmmm... ok, so now the jerk thesis is starting to have more weight.

the party meets up, we get out of town and about two encounters in, we get chased by Frost Giants...at level 1.

Sounds like my kind of DM. I always feel it is very important to establish in a clear and unambigious manner that sometimes you have to know when to approach an encounter with some other tactic that straight up combat, whether evasion, stealth, parlay, or bribery.

luckily, we escape....

My guess is that it isn't lucky that you escape. My guess is that the DM has constructed the encounter or is running the encounter in such a way that despite the ++EL, escape is the inevitable outcome if you take it.

again, luckily, the prison we were in was falling apart so we got out.

Again, not luck.

later, in the main city, we learn (too late) that we need a pass to even BE in there. it's possible we should have not told them we didn't have a pass but still, we had no way of knowing this at ALL. no one told us and we had no reason to suspect we needed one...until the innkeeper called the guards on our ass.

the rest of the campaign was us getting carried to jail and publicly executed. he also spent a few hours on this sequence.

Err... yeah. I'm curious to hear his side of the story here. He's seemed perfectly content to let you guys get away from any difficulty to this point. I'm wondering why he lets you escape frost giants and drow elves, but not the city gaurd. There seems to be some serious lack of communication here.

Let me ask you a seemingly tangental question. Does this guy do all or most of his stuff extemporaneously, or does he seem to have a lot of prepared notes and maps?

Finally, while I think your not giving this guy as much credit as you should, its also clear to me that he's not as experienced as he thinks he is and should be trying to learn from you as much as you need to learn from him. Any time a DM's players aren't having fun, he's failing at some level. And it seems to me that your failure to have fun isn't surprising or entirely your own fault. I can see what he's trying to achieve, but it's pretty obvious where he is failing to win your trust and why.

 

[pemerton]

To Kzach and pemerton, the city pass was not for a Drow society but for a DWARVEN city. Sorry if I was unclear. The Drows were a simple sidequest. Also, about the pass, that Drow fight was a rescue mission for the Dwarves. I think getting us a pass as a reward would have been reasonable. Because there sure as hell was no hint we needed one beforehand.

If I've got this right, the GM set up a situation in which your PCs went on a mission for the dwarves, and then, as a followup, had you arrested and executed by those same dwarves for not having a pass for their city.

Have I missed something here?

If not, that only reinforces my earlier view that this sounds like a crappy game with a crappy GM. I mean, what exactly is the role of the players meant to be in this game?

It could also very well be that the players are wanting to play an old-school, basic "hack/slash/loot" style of game, where the experienced DM is used to running a "play smart or die" type of game. The latter assumes a lot of rules knowledge that the novice players may not yet have.

Talk to your DM and see if he's aware that the challenges being thrown at beginner players without context to his world are a bit rough.

This may be part of the issue, but (similar, I think, to [MENTION=67]Rune[/MENTION] upthread) I see the fundamental issue as something deeper, namely, that this GM does not seem to have any interest in setting up situations that the players can engage with via their PCs.

It looks like classic GM power-tripping to me, where the GM sets up situations that are more-or-less guaranteed to lead the PCs to failure/death, unless the players press whatever buttons the GM has in mind in order to be granted some sort of dispensation.

Like I said, not a game that I'd have any interest in playing.

 

[jimmifett]

The DM is a tool. Plain and simple. It doesn't matter if the players are experienced or beginners.

DMs should be enabling. If a player can come up with a plausible solution to an obstacle, even vaguely plausible (yet cool) solution, the DM should be rewarding the player with creative thinking.

He should be giving clues throughout the game.

If the party goes stomping around the underdark w/o trying to be quite... "You hear the sounds of your passing, footsteps, shuffling of robes, jostling of metal, reverberating off the cave walls. You hear something like distorted conversation ahead..."
allow a perception or dungeoneering check, meet DC: "You recognize the words as your own from not but a moment ago. The distance your sounds have traveled during thier echo must be quite far."

The DM has not only clued the party into the fact that they may want to be more quite, that sound travels far, but also given rich flavor to the experience.

Like someone else said about the pass thing: The party should encounter a checkpoint or something where they see citizens presenting passes. Now it's up to the players to figure out how to deal with the pass situation.

I'll presume that you're not using minis from the asking of which enemy you want to attack. You're response of "the closest enemy" should have been sufficient. You attacked the closest enemy to you. If DM wanted to be such a nitpick about it, he should have layed out the scene as such:
"As you travel down the road cutting through the forest, you approach a large fallen tree blocking the path. Several goblins with crude weapons, ranging from clubs to spears rush out from the forest between you and the fallen tree, as well as rushing to your rear to prevent escape. Several more goblins, armed with shortbows, take position behind the tree, using it as cover. The meanest looking of the goblins, carrying a makeshift piece of steal called a Dogslicer calls out in his gutteral speech "Well well well, look what we have here. Fresh meat! Get 'em!"

Now you know there are melee and ranged combatants, and that you are boxed in by the tree, the forest, and the rear combatants. You have some flavor to the scene. For good measure, a DM might include other interesting pieces of terrain that could be useful on a nature or perception check if the player decides to look around. May an old dead tree being held up by vines that you could slices and drop on enemies, or at least drop across the road for your own cover. Again, not immediately available info unless a player asks. On a battlemat, it might be drawn and catch a player's eye, otherwise, it's up to your imagination. Player: "I look around to see if there is anything on the side of the road or forest that could be usefall, like a large rock or something." DM: "ok, give me a perception or nature check"


You really should DM for your group of beginners. Don't worry about being inexperienced. If something comes up that you are not sure on, offer the player a hi-low roll or flip a coin to resolve what happens, and explain you'll look up that thing in detail after the session. You keep the game moving, you learn, and you set precedence for the rest of that session until the rule can be clarified. Next session, at the start, you bring up that one thing that happened, let them know the go forward ruling, and your players will respect you and appreciate the game more.

 

[epicbob]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]

The mission was at a Dwarven mine away from the city. Once at the city, we got caught without passes and were thrown in jail, awaiting inevitable execution.

[MENTION=55006]jimmifett[/MENTION]

He did mention the difference between weapons. Some of the goblins had darts and they were aiming at me while one of my friends was tanking them. The melee goblins were focusing on him so in theory, they should have been at different distances from me.

Heck, even if they WERE at the same distance from me, I feel it would have been perfectly fine for the DM to tell me : "their formation puts them all at the same distance from you.".

As for the fights in general, it's not really DM ego because he also rolls a dice to see who the enemy attacks. So yeah, the enemy just aims at random with no purpose.

 

[jimmifett]

As for the fights in general, it's not really DM ego because he also rolls a dice to see who the enemy attacks. So yeah, the enemy just aims at random with no purpose.

For your own knowledge for future DMing, this is absurd. Sure, random targeting has it's place, but as the DM, you have to be in the mind of the monsters. Does the enemy know anything of the party? Have they heard rumors of a group of 4-5 traveling with a cleric/mage in the past week?

Consider the intelligence of your monsters. Are they goblins, random unorganized humanoids, or a company of some sort, whether rogue or military, that would have some tactics.

They may target random after the first round, but if a caster starts casting or casts before that monster's initiative, it only makes sense for them to attack the caster. If they see someone healing, or a straggler in the party, you target them.

If an enemy is unthinking, such as wild animals, they naturally attack whatever is closest or most recently hit it, unless, based on what you know of that creature, they may try to attack a weakend character to finish it off and drag off a meal.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

As for the fights in general, it's not really DM ego because he also rolls a dice to see who the enemy attacks. So yeah, the enemy just aims at random with no purpose.

Does he do this for ALL fights, or did you observe it in a specific one?


I WOULD do this as a dm with zombies, rats, most insects, and perhaps other things so mindless, insane (gibbering mouther, allip), or large (godzilla, who assumes things are dead, and can't really track which "ant" he squished already or not).

But I'll agree that this is a silly way to determine who attacks who for intelligent, especially crafty, opponents.

There's also the difference between doing this once at the beginning of combat (when the opponents can't tell the classes of the players, especially if they have similar armor/gear) versus doing it every round, versus never doing it (if the opponents can clearly tell that character A. is a mage and character B. is a plate wearer).

 

[CuRoi]

Sounds like some seriously old school DMing going on And I don't mean "old school" in an entirely positive way. I'm just echoing much that has been said I think, but if you are interested:

For the DM's side I haven't heard - I like the way he operates to some extent. He sounds like a seat of your pants sort of DM like myself. He probably has a fairly detailed world in mind that he is giving you some latitude to explore.

Bad news though, it seems like he can't communicate his ideas very well at all. Ok, so let's say there is a death penalty for forgetting your hall pass. I'll gloss the obvious "WOW I wonder what the heck happens if you spit on the sidewalk?" sort of questions. Just killing off the entire party for not having knowledge of this seems bizarre. I'm a bit dumbfounded and feel like I MUST be missing part of the story there. You mentioned Drow, are you in an underground city? Are these Duergar or some sort of evil dwarves? Was your cleric prancing around with an LG holy symbol in the capital of Lawful Evil Dwarf land? There was -probably- some nuanced "problem" that led to the extreme situation which the DM was not explaining to you (in or out of character). Why he chose to gloss over that info is beyond me.

At any rate, it seems like he is having trouble communicating the details of a potentially very old campaign world (with all the baggage that goes along with that.) It would explain how his "buddies" who are familiar with the campaign sort of dominate they table when they are there.

Frankly, I don't think he ever will accommodate the newbies and if you don't want to put up with this "shock and awe" intro to his errr...special campaign, I'd just join a new group. Move on and have fun! I'd dump any game where the DM decided to TPK was a valid response to a minor paperwork oversight (if that is indeed what happened). Heck, I -know- you have at least one rogue in the party; it's nothing to throw the group a bone and say "You've heard of this place from some shady counterparts and they take their laws VERY seriously. Best you keep a low profile or avoid that city altogether."

 

[epicbob]

sadly...we didn't have a rogue in the party at that time...

 

[Kzach]

The DM is a tool. Plain and simple. It doesn't matter if the players are experienced or beginners.

Not plain, nor simple. I see a lot of "badwrongfun" in your post about how a DM 'should' run a game. Hate to break this to you, but there isn't ONETRUEWAYTODM.

I, for instance, would be curious to hear the DM's side of things as I find a lot of what he did, even from the perspective of the annoyed player, something I might enjoy as a player.