My mild frustration - an evil party

[Tuzenbach]

Bottom line though is that if the DM isn't happy- bye bye game. Why spend time on something you aren't enjoying? Being Dm isn't a public service, you spend more time setting up and preparing between sessions than players and you have a right to enjoy it as well. if you aren't, then you are likely to stop the campaign and that ends it for everyone!

But if the players ARE happy, only a truly selfish DM would have to find reasons NOT to be happy.

Being a DM involves a lot of personal sacrafice which ultimately should culminate in the players enjoying themselves. This should be the reward for the DM. S/he puts on a good show and the players are happy.

Now if the players ARE happy but the DM isn't, then that DM has missed the point of DMing. It's not about taking a World and concepts and plotlines and shoving them down the throats of the players in some mad attempt to prove that you're the next Gygax/Monte Cook incarnation, but to make the players happy. You've got to be receptive to their wants and needs and to ignore that is just plain horrific.

I'll lastly say this. If a DM's players are truly enjoying themselves yet the DM is not (due to "inappropriate" jokes, problems with the DM's concepts of "verisimilitude" not being whole-heartedly embraced by the players, alignment squabbles, meta-gaming, etc.), then that DM is in the wrong business. That DM is a control freak to end all control freaks and would be better suited directing theatre/films. That way, the participants won't really have a choice but to act in accordance with the DM's desires.

Bottom line: If the players are happy but the DM is not, the DM has a helluva lot to learn.


SIDE BAR: Not too long ago, myself and a few of my brothers were playing some 4-player Super Nintendo thing. Three of us were having tremendous loads of fun, despite the fact that we were all losing very badly to the fourth. The fourth, incidently, owned not only the gaming device, but the game and all four controllers as well. Everything was his and he was totally owning us in the virtual world, as well. The problem? He was completely and uttering miserable. It was almost as if he was upset that, despite the fact that he was beating all of us silly, we were all incredibly happy. Why? It made absolutely zero sense. Could it have been that we were all happy that this control-freak clown was even allowing us to play his game/system/controllers? Or perhaps he expected us to be extremely frustrated in that we were losing to him and could not comprehend a happiness-in-the-face-of-defeat attitude? Or perhaps he just WOULD NOT accept it? Were we "not playing right"? Who knows. It remains a mystery to this day. I guess the point is, games are for fun. And if everybody is having fun except one person, that person doesn't seem to realize that games are for fun and needs to stop playing until this realization becomes apparent.

SIDE SIDE BAR: I've a friend who once informed me that some people "didn't play right" as a child. "What do you mean?", I asked. "Well, they'd take Star Wars guys or GI Joe guys and somehow combine them with Matchbox cars. It just wasn't right (the size differential, you see). Those kinds of people must have been really screwed up as children".

Can we say "control freak"?

 

[Jim Hague]

*snippage*

*minor hijack*

It's about fun for everyone, Tuz. If you're making huge sacrifices as a GM/DM, then it's much more likely the game is going to suffer. The GM/DM is not the hostage of the players - rather, they're a sort of 'meta-player', IMO. As such, it's the players' responsibility to not only work with each other, but towards the DM/GM's enjoyment as well. If the person running the game isn't having fun, then there's a problem, yes...but not necessarily with the GM/DM.

Example: In my former D&D game, there was a serious conflict between two players that spilled frequently into IC squabbles. One player was from the 'low power, low magic' school of thought, and the other was, to be frank, a powergaming munchkin. Several attempts by myself and other players were made to resolve the problems, but in the end, they were simply irreconcilable player differences. Following a particularly nasty outburst by the powergamer, that person was asked to leave, because it had gotten to the point where everyone was miserable, including me.

Lesson: If it's not fun for everyone, don't do it. But it's also ok to have a bit of selfish fun occasionally.

*unhijack*

Now, back to the thread at hand.

 

[Cerubus Dark]

Bottom line: If the players are happy but the DM is not, the DM has a helluva lot to learn.

Ha, I might get temp banned or even permabanned but screw you.

I have been DMing a great game with great people for the last 5 years of the 13 I have been DMing. Lately though I have had less and less fun since the party seems to want to kill not only everything that moves but some times turning on each other. So accourding to your twisted logic its my fault that I am not having fun?

I normaly run an Open game, meaning that yes I have a few dungeon ideas and hooks, but sometimes the PC's go look for their own hooks. I try to allow them to find some, but the last few months my party has gone off the deep end slaughtering everything they could find. I don't want to use a TPK or some god level npc to "teach" them a lesson. They know where I wanted the game to go, they also know where they want it to go. It seems our two paths only meet at the end, stranger fates have happened upon us before.

But afterall its my fault for being a DM, a good one at that. I actually scared my players in a D20 modern game when I first described the undead to them, and the first time they saw a werewolf transform. But then again I am selfish since I for being depressed, afterall who cares how I feel at the end of a session as long as they get thier +5 doohicky right?

 

[BlackMoria]

I am in disagreement, Tuzenbach. It is not my job as DM to spend my time and energy to cater to the whimsy of sociopath players, because it is 'fun' for them, but not me.

A campaign success is dependent on a collaborative effort between the players and the DM. I, as the DM will make every effort to accommodate the players' desire for what style of campaign they want. But only so far. If it comes to whether the campaign goes ahead or ends over differences in 'vision', I, as the DM, holds trump - if I am not happy the campaign doesn't go. And frankly, I don't care if every single one of the players is brimming with enthusiasm for playing evil or sociopath characters. It is not my style of play and if they want that style of campaign, then one of them can DM it. I have absolutely no obligation to provide them a campaign with which I would be uncomfortable or unhappy to run.

 

[TheEvil]

Rangerwicket, you have my condolences on your game, but I have nothing to add that hasen't been said. Let me be another to say that you deserve to have as much fun in the kind of game you like as the players.

Tuzenbach, if your statements actually reflect your attitude, I would say you have some pretty serious issues yourself. The way you are talking makes it sound like the GM is there for the convenience of the players. A GM is neither a parent nor a slave. As several other people have said, the idea of the game is for EVERYONE to have fun, not for one person to martyr themselves for the fun of the others.

 

[RangerWickett]

After a few hours of sleep, I return to the thread.

Please read the title I put on this thread. It's a mild frustration. I can keep running the game easily because the players are my friends and we still have a lot of fun action-movie-esque moments. But I'd like to consider possibilities for making the game a little less murderous.

I don't like waving the DM stick around anymore. At this point of my GMing career I'm more interested in taking what comes up in the game and seeing the type of story that grows out of it. I might consider asking the players to not be quite so bloodthirsty (they're not all EVIL; they just mostly tend to think everyone's out to get them), but I think that might be too shallow of a solution. I've GMed games before that had the tone I like, and that wasn't too hard, so I wonder what I'm doing differently this time around.

Egh. It's a steampunk fantasy setting, low magic, no ressurrection.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Question for you: Do they realize that they are bad guys?

It might be handy to have them come to a realization about this.

For example, they come to a new town, and stopping in the local tavern, they hear about the reward being put out for a batch of new bad guys. Have them tell some kind of variation on what they did, but not close enough that the PC's realize its them. No descriptions - no one here has seen these guys, but hey, the sheriff said he was getting in some posters so if you're interested in going after teh reward, they might be up by now.

Of course, when they go look, it's them.

The goal of the setup is to make the players think you're giving them "the next adventure" setup. They think they're looking for the next opponent to kill - then you spring this on them (with a full listing of their crimes, and probably a better price on the head of your lead sociopath). With luck, they'll see how what they've been doing has been perceived.

Or you can try the Spiderman route, where the villain they didn't stop goes on to do much worse - and the PC's come to the realization that if they weren't so selfish, they could have stopped it.

Eventually, they'll do something worth hunting them down for. If they want to be villains, eventually, they'll need to learn that society doesn't just frown on that, it stomps it with its heavy, heavy boot.

 

[Ashrum the Black]

RangerWickett, is this a new setting for you? Have you ever run steampunk, no res, yadda yadda before? I ask simply because some folks walk into s certain style of setting with certain preconceived notions about the way those settings work. It may be that folks are looking at the setting and think steampunk huh, cool moraly gray and I can be a little nastier because it's not a "dragon and fairy" setting.

But the biggest thing I can suggest would be to talk to your players and see what is making them tick right now. If you're worried about pulling the "Big Stick O' DM" (patent pending) and them feeling like you're whomping them, then talk to them each individually. Ask them what they're thinking right now. Heck you could just be looking at mob mentality and they're all "just going along with the others".

I think at this point I think you just want to know how they've arrived at their character motivations. So asking is the best solution. Keeping it individual, and low key is the best way to keep them from thinking you're upset or unsatisfied. Armed with that information you should be able to some up with a way to steer things back to ground you're more comfortable with.

-Ashrum

 

[Hand of Evil]

...so I wonder what I'm doing differently this time around.

Must have been the kick-off, dark world where everyone looks after themselves. Could be just the players, combo of classes and players feel for what they see their players being.

 

[Sado]

The party didn't bat an eye when the scientists started tossing halflings into the ocean to "check their buoyancy."

Sorry, I know you have a problem and this is a bit off topic, but damn! That's funny!

You also gave me a good idea for a plot with that bit about the island. Have a bunch of bad guys land on some out of the way island village and try to take over, only to find out that it is inhabitted not by mere peasants, but is a retreat for retired heroes.