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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jbear" data-source="post: 5222174" data-attributes="member: 75065">I might be missing something here, but didn't you say the guy was your friend? Friends usually talk problems out when they arise, or at least they should if they intend on being friends for very long. Snarky remarks at the table aren't going to get you any where. Not anywhere you want to go. it will just create tension. You'll feel bad. He'll feel bad. Everyone will feel uncomfortable. As for tricking you into provoking a 'whatever' from 'whoever'... well, lesson learnt, and he's unlikely to pull that off twice now isn't he. As for second guessing a plot.... be flexible with your 'plot'. A story can grow in quite a dynamic manner. Take comments, suspicions and the fears of your players and turn them into a reality... only even worse. Have fun with it. I remember a night when two of my players got together to try their hand at DMing. The other players weren't accostomed to their authority and were second guessing them a lot. I bit my tongue until I couldn't anymore. They had written a big 'intro' into the adventure whereby we were taken onto a slave ship. Only they tried to do it in a way that our characters could 'act'... only they couldn't really act, because everything we tried was met with an obstacle. I even wounded myself to fill my mouth with blood. All I wanted to do was spit on the captain. I asked them to tell me if he came near me. Strangely he didn't... it felt like an opportunity missed out of fear i was going to come up with something that was going to mess with their story that they wouldn't know how to handle. One of the other players however was out of line with her second guessing. I didn't interfere because they had to be able to sort it out themselves. When the battle came around ( a monstrously over powered woman riding a kraken, accompanied by some other nasties... far above our level 1 capabilities), I suspected, and rightly so, that we weren't meant to fight these people, that they wanted something that had nothing to do with us, an idol of a goddess we found in the cargo hold. Our cleric worshipped the same god and so when our captors forced us up onto the deck to fight we ran out singing praise to this goddess and declaring our loyalties.  So, as we had guessed far too early what was going on, the novice DMs conferred and decided since they didn't have any other material prepared, they needed to make it harder than that. The woman decided we were mocking her goddess and began shouting unintelligible words at us. We were balsted for a round. The enemy was so powerful that in one round our cleric was reduced to dying and we couldn't hit anything, and the few of us who did hardly caused a scratch. So totally frustrated my character picked the idol of the clerics dying body and marched to the edge of the boat, dropped my weapons, bared my chest and offered the idol up to the woman. Of course she accepted it and their attacks ceased. Suddenly she started talking about doing her a favour. Well, neither, nor my character felt like listening to her spiel as the cleric lay with her head mangled and dying on the ship's floor. I interrupted at this point, and demanded if she wanted to beg any favours then she would have to heal our dying companion first. They were offended by me cutting them off, decided that she was too. And off she went, leaving us to battle our captors. It was tense from this point out and noone was having very much fun. It was a mistake on my part. i wasn't sympathetic enough to the difficulties they were facing. The other player was totally out of line, and had already created earlier tensions. Their inexperience was part of the problem too, an inability to take the players input and create a game with it.  That is a very important part of a DMs job. If your player goes to the effort of making a successful stealth check to secretly wound his own wrists and take blood into his mouth without the guards notice, at least provide him with a chance to spit on someone. Would it have changed anything... yes, I would have felt like I was playing a game and not stuck in a movie. As for setting up unlikely scenarios where massive amounts of suspension of disbelief is required... well, your players can only do so much. Throwing encounters at them where there is only one solution (which is then changed if the pcs hit on it too quickly) is not a good design either.  It is difficult to know exactly how problematic your player is, the information offered is a little scarce. 8 months of experience is not a lot, but not little either. You can learn a lot in 8 months. My suggestion would be to have a friendly chat with your mate, tell you'd like him to ease off. Tell him you are making an effort to improve your DMing but you'd appreciate his support at the table during that learning process.  Then I'd get hold of some modules, even from earlier editions, and rip out all the parts of them you like (especially storywise). Readjust them to fit into the system you are playing, put them all together with your personal touch. This will give you a lot more confidence than running stuff that you have made yourself.</blockquote>

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