Yeah, I've been in some situations where an entire group has "fired" the DM.
The last one was a 3.5 game very late in the 3.5 life cycle, early 2008. Basically, I made some time to play 3.5 and joined the first group that I found at the FLGS. I didn't know it at the time, but the DM had been in several groups in the area and pissed off everyone that he'd ever played with so bad that they actually scheduled their trips to the game store specifically to avoid him. He was pretty much the epitome of every horrible gamer stereotype ever: poor hygiene, marginal social skills, a strong "alpha geek" complex, and poor knowledge of the rules. Alas, as the new guy in a new city and all, I went into this mostly unaware.
I've actually discussed the DM a bit in the "walking out" thread, it's the same guy... Anyways, he made up rulings on the fly based solely on either what he wanted to happen or on stripping the characters of their abilities. For example, we fought mobs of low-AC and low-hp enemies until our ranger went two-weapon. The player figured that multiple attacks in a round would be useful since we kept fighting mobs of things. The DM was surprised that he picked two-weapon over archery and it stayed a point of contention throughout the campaign. We kept fighting things in trees, across chasms and so forth... To which we always heard, "Bet you wish you had an archery ranger now, huh?" He'd also use high-AC critters whenever we did melee and basically forced the ranger to stick to single attacks because he had to keep hit bonuses high enough to hit the things. Yep, suddenly every gnoll and orc in the entire continent got plate mail as soon as our ranger hit 2nd level.
I was playing a reasonably stereotypical cleric of Pelor in this game, he'd survived an undead attack on his monastery during his youth and sought every chance to battle undead. Another good example of this sort of "balancing" things was how I remarked that we didn't encounter any undead in six levels of play. His reply? "Why would there be undead monsters? You're totally optimized to fight undead, so there's no challenge. You're playing a cleric, so you just use turn undead and the encounter is over. It wouldn't be balanced to fight undead for you guys."
This guy also liked to harp on about how he "cooked," and insisted that people pay him up front for the privilege of "cooking" for them. Whenever he hosted at his apartment (which smelled like rotten milk and old gym socks), he would toss cheap steaks on a little hibachi grill out on the back deck and cook a box of rice-a-roni. Now when I say that I "cook," I make ice cream, beef bourguignon, coq au vin, and pulled pork barbecue from scratch--I've even done some homebrewing of beer and wine. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed and informed him that I wouldn't be paying to partake in these meals. After going back and forth for a few minutes (he apparently thought I was trying to weasel out of paying, not turning down his food), he seemed confused and taken aback at the idea that I'd rather eat before I came if it meant saving $10 on a pink steak with rice-a-roni.
Then there were the women.
My girlfriend at the time came to play with us and he promptly informed my girlfriend that he would be glad to meet with her outside of game to explain the rules and the game to her. I promptly told him that I meet with her out of game, in a tone that I thought was pretty damned obvious that I understood his intentions. Unfazed, he leered at her throughout the game and made some not-so-subtle attempts to touch her hands by picking up her dice and the like. She saw right through it, of course, and every time he tried to hand her something, she'd pick up my dice or pencil or whatever. She decided to not game with us, unsurprisingly.
There was also a lesbian couple that gamed with us. He kept trying to pick them up. "Alright! Two single chicks joined my game!" We couldn't figure out if he was kidding or not... But by the end of the first session, it was obvious that he wasn't. A few of us gently explained to him that they weren't "single chicks" and that he wouldn't be successful, to which he insisted that "they aren't like that." He kept inviting one or the other of them over to his place to watch anime and it pretty much instantly that he brought it into game. For example, he tried to pick up one of them, and when she shot him down (and explained her preferences to him... directly), he had her character immediately captured by the local thieves' guild. She was playing an elf druid and someone cast sleep on her in the middle of the night to keep her from waking up while they tied her up and absconded with her in the middle of the night. That's right. Cast sleep on an elf with no save and without waking up the rest of the party. The other girl was playing a rogue, so she obviously had to go negotiate with the thieves' guild to have her released. We were 4th level and the rank-and-file thugs were 10th-level rogues (in a city with a population of about 10,000), some also had multiple fighter, sorcerer, or barbarian levels. It ended up that the rogue had to sneak into a warehouse by herself to sneak out the druid. As soon as the druid's gag was removed, she started to scream, hoping to get the character's both killed. The DM's reply? "She wouldn't un-gag you if you're going to scream." So... She never was un-gagged in the first place. The druid lost all of her gear while the rogue looted the thieves' guild willy-nilly and the table had to sit around and watch all of this play out for two hours with nothing to contribute.
It all came to a head one day when I offered to host at my house. I cooked a huge spread and this jerk was going into the house from the grill to tell people when food that I was serving was done, helping himself to stuff in my refrigerator, and pretty much making a jerk of himself in every possible way. The day concluded with a heated exchange with our ranger's player, him dog-piling the ranger with a mob and knocking him into negative hit points, and three people almost punching him right in the face. The ranger's player stepped outside to cool off--the DM chased him out right on his heels and chewed him out, giving him an ultimatum to either rebuild his character or stop playing.
I told the to get his stuff and get the hell out of my house. He was actually so dense that he didn't seem to understand why we'd actually want to quit his game. A spate of emails followed where nothing good followed except for hurt feelings on his part and frustration on the part of the players--but he eventually understood that he was out and that we didn't even want to play with him any more.
Right before 4E came out, this guy went on the messageboard of our FLGS and was telling the store's owners to refuse to carry 4E products (yeah, right) because... He had downloaded the 4E core rulebooks from a filesharing site, was willing to share them with anyone at the store that asked for them, and that 4E was so horrible that he would not run the game. After getting ostracized by pretty much everyone in the county that played D&D, he dropped off the site for a while. No one heard from him until I posted something to the boards about looking for a 4E group. He had the nerve to invite himself to join the 4E game that I was running.
Some people never learn...
The last one was a 3.5 game very late in the 3.5 life cycle, early 2008. Basically, I made some time to play 3.5 and joined the first group that I found at the FLGS. I didn't know it at the time, but the DM had been in several groups in the area and pissed off everyone that he'd ever played with so bad that they actually scheduled their trips to the game store specifically to avoid him. He was pretty much the epitome of every horrible gamer stereotype ever: poor hygiene, marginal social skills, a strong "alpha geek" complex, and poor knowledge of the rules. Alas, as the new guy in a new city and all, I went into this mostly unaware.
I've actually discussed the DM a bit in the "walking out" thread, it's the same guy... Anyways, he made up rulings on the fly based solely on either what he wanted to happen or on stripping the characters of their abilities. For example, we fought mobs of low-AC and low-hp enemies until our ranger went two-weapon. The player figured that multiple attacks in a round would be useful since we kept fighting mobs of things. The DM was surprised that he picked two-weapon over archery and it stayed a point of contention throughout the campaign. We kept fighting things in trees, across chasms and so forth... To which we always heard, "Bet you wish you had an archery ranger now, huh?" He'd also use high-AC critters whenever we did melee and basically forced the ranger to stick to single attacks because he had to keep hit bonuses high enough to hit the things. Yep, suddenly every gnoll and orc in the entire continent got plate mail as soon as our ranger hit 2nd level.
I was playing a reasonably stereotypical cleric of Pelor in this game, he'd survived an undead attack on his monastery during his youth and sought every chance to battle undead. Another good example of this sort of "balancing" things was how I remarked that we didn't encounter any undead in six levels of play. His reply? "Why would there be undead monsters? You're totally optimized to fight undead, so there's no challenge. You're playing a cleric, so you just use turn undead and the encounter is over. It wouldn't be balanced to fight undead for you guys."
This guy also liked to harp on about how he "cooked," and insisted that people pay him up front for the privilege of "cooking" for them. Whenever he hosted at his apartment (which smelled like rotten milk and old gym socks), he would toss cheap steaks on a little hibachi grill out on the back deck and cook a box of rice-a-roni. Now when I say that I "cook," I make ice cream, beef bourguignon, coq au vin, and pulled pork barbecue from scratch--I've even done some homebrewing of beer and wine. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed and informed him that I wouldn't be paying to partake in these meals. After going back and forth for a few minutes (he apparently thought I was trying to weasel out of paying, not turning down his food), he seemed confused and taken aback at the idea that I'd rather eat before I came if it meant saving $10 on a pink steak with rice-a-roni.
Then there were the women.
My girlfriend at the time came to play with us and he promptly informed my girlfriend that he would be glad to meet with her outside of game to explain the rules and the game to her. I promptly told him that I meet with her out of game, in a tone that I thought was pretty damned obvious that I understood his intentions. Unfazed, he leered at her throughout the game and made some not-so-subtle attempts to touch her hands by picking up her dice and the like. She saw right through it, of course, and every time he tried to hand her something, she'd pick up my dice or pencil or whatever. She decided to not game with us, unsurprisingly.
There was also a lesbian couple that gamed with us. He kept trying to pick them up. "Alright! Two single chicks joined my game!" We couldn't figure out if he was kidding or not... But by the end of the first session, it was obvious that he wasn't. A few of us gently explained to him that they weren't "single chicks" and that he wouldn't be successful, to which he insisted that "they aren't like that." He kept inviting one or the other of them over to his place to watch anime and it pretty much instantly that he brought it into game. For example, he tried to pick up one of them, and when she shot him down (and explained her preferences to him... directly), he had her character immediately captured by the local thieves' guild. She was playing an elf druid and someone cast sleep on her in the middle of the night to keep her from waking up while they tied her up and absconded with her in the middle of the night. That's right. Cast sleep on an elf with no save and without waking up the rest of the party. The other girl was playing a rogue, so she obviously had to go negotiate with the thieves' guild to have her released. We were 4th level and the rank-and-file thugs were 10th-level rogues (in a city with a population of about 10,000), some also had multiple fighter, sorcerer, or barbarian levels. It ended up that the rogue had to sneak into a warehouse by herself to sneak out the druid. As soon as the druid's gag was removed, she started to scream, hoping to get the character's both killed. The DM's reply? "She wouldn't un-gag you if you're going to scream." So... She never was un-gagged in the first place. The druid lost all of her gear while the rogue looted the thieves' guild willy-nilly and the table had to sit around and watch all of this play out for two hours with nothing to contribute.
It all came to a head one day when I offered to host at my house. I cooked a huge spread and this jerk was going into the house from the grill to tell people when food that I was serving was done, helping himself to stuff in my refrigerator, and pretty much making a jerk of himself in every possible way. The day concluded with a heated exchange with our ranger's player, him dog-piling the ranger with a mob and knocking him into negative hit points, and three people almost punching him right in the face. The ranger's player stepped outside to cool off--the DM chased him out right on his heels and chewed him out, giving him an ultimatum to either rebuild his character or stop playing.
I told the to get his stuff and get the hell out of my house. He was actually so dense that he didn't seem to understand why we'd actually want to quit his game. A spate of emails followed where nothing good followed except for hurt feelings on his part and frustration on the part of the players--but he eventually understood that he was out and that we didn't even want to play with him any more.
Right before 4E came out, this guy went on the messageboard of our FLGS and was telling the store's owners to refuse to carry 4E products (yeah, right) because... He had downloaded the 4E core rulebooks from a filesharing site, was willing to share them with anyone at the store that asked for them, and that 4E was so horrible that he would not run the game. After getting ostracized by pretty much everyone in the county that played D&D, he dropped off the site for a while. No one heard from him until I posted something to the boards about looking for a 4E group. He had the nerve to invite himself to join the 4E game that I was running.
Some people never learn...
I ended up running for two years straight, so I guess that I did a better job of it than he did.
