[rant] My DM is taking his toys and going home!

[Corporal_Cupcake]

Man, whatever you do, make sure to keep some kind of game night going. All of us here know how hard it is to get and keep a good, cohesive gaming group, and even if your current (former?) DM's opinion of the gaming isn't so high, the rest of you are probably enjoying yourselves.

But get ready for the rude awakening when one of you takes over as DM. It ain't as easy as you might have thought. I bet that you'll sympathize with the old DM pretty quickly.

And it's probably best if you don't try newbie DMing with 13th level PCs. Go out, buy a copy of Terror in Freeport (some nice roleplaying), Sunless Citadel (a modern-day classic, I suppose) or the Dungeon magazine with the 1st-level Shackled Path adventure and start over. Put your high-level characters on hold. You don't wanna DM with high-level PCs unless you're experienced.

Good luck.

 

[Elf Witch]

I can see why you feel frustrated. I have seen things like this in my own gaming life.

A lot of times I think it comes from a lack of undrstanding what each person is really saying. That is often caused by people having a different defination for words like role play, powergame ect.

I play with one group who think that they role play take pride that they are not powergamers and that to them when they build a character concept they are talking more than just skills and feats.

The things is, is that they are a bunch of powergames who ideas of character concept is what class mixes works best and what little role play they do is really based on the minium needed to get infomation from an NPC.

If they advertised for a new player I am sure they would say looking for a non powergaming role player and lords help if they really got that.

The only reason I play is that my son runs the game and I like to spend time with him and it is only for a limited time every other Saturday. And I use it try out different mechnical character concepts.

 

[Delemental]

Well, thanks for the support. Sometimes you just need to have two minutes of selfish petulance before going back to being a rational adult.

Our group is meeting this Friday (our game night) to decide what to do. So far two of us have mentioned an interest in taking over; myself and another player. I'm kind of hoping the other guy runs, though, as I'd rather play, but given a choice between DMing and not having a game at all, I'll sit behind the screen again. We'll have to see; if I DM I'll probably want to start fresh with new characters, while the other guy may be willing to pick up where we left off.

Like I said, we're not mad at our former DM for quitting. If he's not having fun, he's not having fun. Hopefully he joins us on Friday and still wants to play. We'll see what happens. I think we're just going to have to be pretty clear with each other this time about expectations.

 

[Talon5]

Well, thanks for the support. Sometimes you just need to have two minutes of selfish petulance before going back to being a rational adult.

Our group is meeting this Friday (our game night) to decide what to do. So far two of us have mentioned an interest in taking over; myself and another player. I'm kind of hoping the other guy runs, though, as I'd rather play, but given a choice between DMing and not having a game at all, I'll sit behind the screen again. We'll have to see; if I DM I'll probably want to start fresh with new characters, while the other guy may be willing to pick up where we left off.

Like I said, we're not mad at our former DM for quitting. If he's not having fun, he's not having fun. Hopefully he joins us on Friday and still wants to play. We'll see what happens. I think we're just going to have to be pretty clear with each other this time about expectations.

Running with multipal GMs is best, it gives GMs time to refresh and see other ways of doing things. I recently talked my wife into taking up GMing so myself and the other GM could be in a campaign together as Players. She agreed and we have lots of fun (he plays a barbarian/Fighter Dwarf and I have the Ranger/Cleric so we are always together and always at odds).

Good luck and keep gaming.

 

[Norfleet]

What you need to do is hire a professional, killer DM. If he's worth anything, it'll be an adventure to remember....that none of you will live through.

That'll give you the perfect base for starting a new campaign. After all, death is a character building experience.

 

[BlackMoria]

I make a point of getting feedback at the end of each session. I find that helps alot in seeing if player expectations are being met (in general terms), and to head off any 'problems' that may arise. And to make sure that people are having a good time.

So, if you or the other player are going to take over the 'big chair', take a few minutes at the end of each session to see if the campaign is meeting the 'needs' of the players and the new DM. In this way, there will be no surprises, like your group just had when your DM pulled the 'eject handle'.

Remember that old truism.... 'a ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure'

 

[Delemental]

That'll give you the perfect base for starting a new campaign. After all, death is a character building experience.

Ironically, one of the issues that our group wanted to work on was that the relative ease of resurrection was taking away from the heroic feel of the game, as death wasn't really a sacrifice. We were coming up with both character-driven reasons not to come back, and new house rules.

Oh, and I noticed that someone asked about how often we play (related to my gripe about prep time). It's a weekly game, played for about 5-6 hours on average. For the kind of game that we as players wanted, 45-60 minutes a week isn't enough IMO. Now, for the type of game that the DM was wanting to run, that's probably plenty. No biggie, just a difference in style.

One reason he gave for his decision was that he didn't really want to deal with a lot of plot and sub-plot because it reminded him too much of all that Camarilla stuff (he was briefly a Chapter Coordinator, currently he doesn't play Cam at all). So part of this may just be DM burnout.

 

[Delemental]

I make a point of getting feedback at the end of each session. I find that helps alot in seeing if player expectations are being met (in general terms), and to head off any 'problems' that may arise. And to make sure that people are having a good time.

Actually, we were doing that. About halfway through the campaign, about half our group members left, and we got a whole new group of players. We were checking in pretty regularly then, as the original group was more of a munchkiny, combat-loving group, whereas the new group had more of a roleplay leaning. Unfortunately, I think that when we all agreed that things in the game were going fine, the DM took that as "all the players are are cool with things as they are" while we as players took it as "we're going to be able to turn this game around to what we all want pretty quickly". The email I sent to our DM a few days ago was the result of our realization that that 'quick turnaround' wasn't happening. So, naturally, we wanted to fix it, not realizing our DM didn't think anything was wrong.

Poor communication, all around, is what this boils down to.

 

[Nightfall]

Del,

Join me and become one with the dark side! Or better yet just play on.

 

[Lela]

You know, who says you need a DM. It'd be an interesting experiment. You could write a book about it afterwords. Asuming you all haven't killed each other of course. But then someone else could write a book and he'd get on the best seller list.