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

[ergeheilalt]

I know what this is like an more. Two DMs in particular have begun games only to end them two or three months into the game. First time was total disaster, one character with whom a majority of the story decided to quit and the DM had broken up with his girlfriend, who also happened to be a player. Oi.

A year passes, and the DM says, "Hey, I've been working on a game. I'm ready to start running it." I was hopeful, I liked his style and the time fit into my schedual, so I signed up. Once again, 2-3 months into the game, we see problems emerging. Some stuff from a L&L book with a broken pc race shifted the party balance from the humans and the elf (2 and 1 respectively) fighting equally, to the cat-people just dealing with any encounter before we had weapons drawn. So the elf player quit after bringing this up to the DM and getting snubbed and the other human player got in an out-of-game fight with the DM and quit. So, here we are 4 of us (I'm the last human, a fighter/sorcerer) and then the DM's campaign note-book got taken by his friend's kid at a party at his house. So one week goes by, where the game is cancelled - as he still hadn't found it and then the next we're told the notebook was left outside and rained upon - ruining all his campaign material.

Disgrunted, I decided it was time I ran a game. My game went along pretty well, and eventually we decided that once I started college this past fall, I would hand the reigns over to the old DM by letting the PC's warp over to the DM's world via a campaign plot I had planned. Half-way into my stint, the old DM got angry with a ruling I had made (would a horse get scared if you were waving fire at it - I subjected the warhorse to a will save and it got a 20, old DM said that was not how it worked in the real world.)I stood by my ruling and he walked out of the game then and there.

So, I've come to the conclusion that while I like the guy, he's too unstable to be a particularly good DM. Mood swings and blowing things out of proportion does not a good DM make. I've had one DM (in a completely separate game) who has run a fairly coherent and believable FR game (and now a separate homebrew) for a while (3 and 1 year respectively). It's all a matter of finding the right person to play with.

Erge

 

[Acid_crash]

Oooo the Dark Side. I wanna join Nightfall...pick me, pick me. Together we shall rule the multiverse and show that the Dark Side is almighty and the Light Side is weak and dumb.

sorry, couldn't resist.

No matter what you do with the group...don't split up and go seperate ways...don't do it, that's a no no...if that happens you can never join the Dark Side and help rule the multiverse with us.

we won't let you join.

 

[Lela]

Was it a war horse? Those would be trained to handle fire and wouldn't automatically bolt. Especially if they were carrying their regular rider.

He sounds unstable to me too. My players haven't always agreed with my ad hoc rullings (and there have been several) but they all agree to follow them (at least until something better's found). Otherwise there is chaos and arguing and hurt feelings and sputtering and bad grammar and run-on sentences.

It's just hard to rule the dark side with bad grammar, after all.

 

[der_kluge]

We play every other week, and I am the current DM. If we played every week, I'm certain that I would get completely burnt out. I'm running game to game right now (kind of the equivalent of living paycheck to paycheck), so once one game is complete, I go back home and begin working on the next. Fortunately, I do have some purchased modules in the works, and will be able to utilize those in a few levels, and that will save me some work.

But, I'm really anal about my DM'ing. I admit I'm not the greatest at adlibing stuff (it really comes and goes), so I like to be prepared. I probably spent 80 hours over two weeks for the last game. Yes, seriously. I worked on it probably a little every night. And you can see the maps of that work in the Cartography area. The story involved the PCs interacting with Modrons, and was probably one of the most intricate, complex things I'd ever put together. The execution was *ok*, but nothing special. This week, I'm working on a big dungeon-delve into an ancient dwarven stronghold. I've got lots of maps (5 levels deep, and a side map into a cavern) so 6 full pages of maps that I created. Only problem for me now is that I haven't had time to populate any of the rooms, so I'll probably get to adlib a lot of that stuff, but it might be kind of fun, who knows.

But I have committed to myself, and I will have to inform the players of this, that I'm not going to spend as much time preparing, since I have recently begun an online master's degree program, and that's where I need to be spending some portion of my time. So, when I start adlibing, things get kind of weird, and they should just expect that.

But, that raises an interesting topic about how much time DM's prepare between sessions. I spend far too much time, I suspect, and probably working on things that are ultimately not that important (like the contents of chests), and tactics of monsters, etc.

 

[Belen]

Well, GMing is hard to do. Maybe he is burnt out and the campaign really hasn't been going the way he likes. Maybe one of you should run a few sessions with him as a player.

Trust me. It helps.

 

[Delemental]

Well, just to update the situation, our group met last night to discuss our options. We did ask our former DM to join in the discussion, but he neither came nor did he reply to the email inviting him. Thus at this point we're unsure if he wants to game with us at all.

The group voted on whether to recruit an internal DM or an external DM. We had candidates for both; myself and one other player were willing to DM, and one of the other players talked to a friend who wanted to start a D&D game. Ultimately we decided on bringing the new guy in. I was a close second choice, but what decided it was that a few of the other players wanted to still have an opportunity to role-play with me on a PC to PC level rather than on a DM to PC level. They also wanted me to focus my energies on keeping the campaign journal and maintaining our website.

We're starting in on character creation next week. It's a homebrew world, and we're starting with 2nd level characters. Quite a shift from average of 13th level, but we all agreed that a fresh start was best.

We will extend one final invitation to our former DM, I think, to join us as a player. If he accepts, great. If he doesn't accept, or if we never hear from him, we'll assume that he's taking a break from all RPGs right now and leave him be (if such is the case, however, I at least hope he tells us this and doesn't just ignore our emails).

 

[MarauderX]

Or give your DM more time between sessions. Instead of every week, make it every two. I need that time as a DM to get things done, think about it, revise and then run it. I can't come up with complex stories to throw at the PCs with only 1/2 hour per week, I need more along the lines of 2, and that's for gaming every other week. See where the game takes you from there once you give your DM some slack to back away from the stress of pleasing the players.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

Honestly, I think that you already provided part of the solution--have the former DM be a player.

My girlfriend was very keen on running a game or two of her own, but it never really worked out. For one, there was a lot of poor communication form the other players. And, there was a general lack of enthusiasm overall for the games she wanted to run (one of them being the Indiana Jones RPG).

However, another key problem is that she really didn't prepare for the games ahead of time, and that hurt the flow of the game (it also didn't help trying to "sell" the players on the game).

I think that it's very important to note that, while RPGs are games, they are not board games. You can't just "pick up & play" an RPG like a board game--the DM has to at least be familiar with the module's material, or basically jot down enough notes & prep material to run his/her own module (essentially), & have it ready in time for the game.

True, some experienced DM's can pull off a good game via improvisation, but more often than not, the DM's run enough games beforehand (with considerable prep work) before getting comfortable enough to improv a game. essentially, they've often had enough time & practice to pull it off. Not something for a beginning DM.

It's one thing to want to run/DM a game--it's an entirely different thing to actually do it.

Now, as for a new DM, I think that the suggestion that's been offered the most is the best one--find someone in the group to take over the DMing reins. However, they'll have to be willing to invent the time & effort in running the campaign that the previous DM either couldn't or wasn't able to.

Quick question--does everyone in your group have the same rules/game style preferences (generally), or are there some pretty extreme differences in opinion between the players?

 

[KenM]

I was just wondering, how long was he running the game before he decided to stop? How many sessions? I do think that if you are going to do a decent roleplay campiagn you need to have more prep time then he was doing, and you need player input.