Stupid Dungeon Master Syndrome

[Samuel Leming]

Who else here has encountered Stupid Dungeon Master Syndrome(SDMS)? This condition, though rare, is encountered more often than it should be.

I was reminded of a disasterous game of a few years ago by this post in Diaglo's rat bastard DM thread:

Tip #1: If you're standing in the dark, you're safe. Anti-magic merely suppresses that daylight spell, it doesn't dispel it. And he can't shoot his rays at you through his own anti-magic.

Our party had encountered a band of urds being lead by a beholder. We were trapped in a narrow corridor with a tall vaulted ceiling so the beholder caught us all with his antimagic eye while the urds flew in from the other side and above us. The beholder then opened fire with all ten of his other eyes... right into his own antimagic cone!

We tried to tell the DM the beholder's eye rays wouldn't work in the anitmagic field(it's right in the book), but the DM said that was stupid and a beholder's other eyes should be immune to his own antimagic effect. SDMS!



We decided to drop it and get on with the game. I forget how many of us were killed, but my character failed a save against a stoning ray and spent most of the game as a statue. Everyone else managed to break through the urds and run.

The party came back to rescue me, but not before the urds had treated me as pidgeons usually treat a statue. They also removed all my gear even though it was all turned to stone. SDMS!

I've removed any names to protect the guilty.

Sam

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

How long has the DM being DMing for?

I'm suprised it wasn't a total party kill in that situation. Feel lucky. He probably realised his mistake if you managed to get out alive in the end.


Everyone makes mistakes. I expect that he wanted the battle to be rather epic, but it got out of hand.

 

[Telperion]

This would be one of those good reasons why I stop my campaigns when the party reaches 10th level, or so. There's too much details you have to start taking into account and challenging a party after 10th level becomes considerably harder.

BTW: what if the Beholder wasn't shooting you with magical rays once its big eye had caught you in its Antimagic Field? What if they were psionic rays, which are unaffected by Antimagic Fields under the Psionics Are Different variant. Maybe the DM decided to make the encounter a little more interesting by changing the Beholders description a bit?

As for the "robbing stuff off a statue", I can't explain it, but anything is possible in a world filled with magic . If you are otherwise enjoying yourself maybe you should give your DM a break and try to help him out in a way that doesn't hinder / slow the game? Like giving him advice, suggestions and opinions outside of the game, and just running with what you get when you are playing. Over time he will most likely get better, and that's a near certain fact. Bad-mouthing and second guessing his judgments all the time isn't going to help anyone.

Well, except by putting someone else on the DM seat, and if that person isn't any more experienced as a DM than the last fellow then you have to start all over again...So, you probably see where I'm going with this?

 

[Algolei]

My DM did the exact same thing, Sam (except for the urds). He decided a beholder's eye rays shouldn't be countered by its own anti-magic ray. Plus he told us--and we all knew this beforehand--that we shouldn't base our characters' knowledge off of our own Real Person knowledge that we acquired from reading the Monster Manual (which was a good point, but still: Ouch).

It still wasn't as bad as the time his big bad guy used a time stop spell to strip the entire party of all weapons and magic items before creaming us with golems. Ever been forced to go naked against a dozen stone golems? I can't remember how we got out of that situation, but I do remember all the spellcasters flipping through the books looking for spells that didn't have material components (because those were gone too). Uh, I also remember permanently losing all our best magic items.

I guess that was ultimately his intention.

 

[Jolly Giant]

The following story is not my own, it happened to a friend of mine, back in the days of AD&D:

A group of 5 friends runs one campaign each. They play 2-3 nights a week, DMing on a rotation. A 6th guy, new in town, joins the group. On his first night as DM he gives a short introductionary speech to the players and their newly rolled-up lvl 1 characters. This is part of it:

"You've been travelling across plains, deserts and rolling hills for 2 weeks when you spot a mighty fortress-town on the top of the next hill... <long, melodramatic description of mighty stone walls, towers, turrets and flickering torches> ...spread out around the town is dozen chained guard terrasques."

At which point my friend gathered his dice, got up and left.

 

[der_kluge]

*slaps forehead* A DOZEN Tarrasques, huh? Wow. That is stupid.

I'm sure I have something to contribute, but nothing as stupendously stupid as these come to mind.

 

[Henry]

I've been fortunate in that I've seen fewer bad DM's than normal-to-good ones. Maybe I need to attend less Gamedays and more Conventions. Very few DM's have been so bad to me that I couldn't stand to play with them again - even ones not familiar with the rules get better. Like all sports and hobbies, there's only one way to be a better DM - run games.

 

[Li Shenron]

At which point my friend gathered his dice, got up and left.

Honestly I think your friend sounds a terrible player if he really left at that point It's obvious that a DM can't seriously gather players, make them play 1st level characters and prepare a CR 50 (or whatever) encounter... but why couldn't he try play the game and THEN tell the DM that it wasn't nice/appropriate?

I agree that a megalomaniac DM is very likely to spoil the fun of the game, but that's exactly what your friend did, and it was very unpolite for the other players. Just because he knows the Tarrasque in the MM is an impossible challenge, what made him think it was the same in this game? Eventually the DM wasn't really going to have them work as in the MM (already because the MM one is said to be "unique"), what if they were completely different, what if they were illusions? And even if they were exactly like the MM entry, I guess they weren't going to be part of the game, but rather a display of power to warn the characters not to think they can take on the NPC they're going to meet (a lame choice I agree, but I don't know the story and your friend didn't as well, how can one judge beforehand?).

After all, the DM was probably kind of megalomaniac, but IMO that's a lesser fault if the game goes otherwise well.

 

[Li Shenron]

Who else here has encountered Stupid Dungeon Master Syndrome(SDMS)? This condition, though rare, is encountered more often than it should be.

Well, everyone has something which she doesn't like as it works by the RAW

In general I have so far resisted changing how things work, or using HR. I tend to say to myself it's not so important, it's just a game... and as long as there are no serious problem in game situations, I tend to play monsters (and everything) as written.

But this forum itself is full of people who like to tinker with how things work, and I'd like it as well, only that I'm usually afraid that changing something can have consequences I didn't think of

I wouldn't say your DM is "stupid" because he didn't like how antimagic works and tried to change it. If he did the change without seriously taking some time and think of the consequences, he was definitely reckless, which is not good for a DM.

OTOH, think of the bright side of it... a DM who changes monsters here and there (definitely his own right in general) is helping you not to metagame which can mean more unpredictability and therefore more fun!

 

[Bihor]

I had a Gm told a paladin to make a will save for a fear effect.

It was the last game of a long and realy boring campaign.
My bard was the last alive, asking is poseste friend to kill him befor he was poseste too.