Stupid Dungeon Master Syndrome

[Talmun]

I had a moment like that recently...

The new villain in the game I'm running is a white dragon dracolich with the swarm-shifter template (Blizzard of undead snow); when the PC's first met her she appeared as beautiful pale-skinned white-haired women by virtue of a magic item she has that allows polymorph (Human forms only). It was only after running her in two sessions that I realized Dracolichs are immune to polymorph effects...now I'm trying to find some way of rationalizing it before someone in the group asks. I may just go with 'Every rule has an exception, and she's it', but I dislike that.

Oh well...SDMS, I guess

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Its not just mechanics

I have no problems with hosing characters (the beholder thing I can see the player's shouldn't know everything; losing magic items because of a time stop, I can see that too, your uberpower sword is just too uberpowered, I solve that by not giving out too many magic items except as plot points; and the dozen chained tarrasques, for petes sake, they're chained its not like you couldn't walk around them, maybe they were there for a reason, and that reason wasn't because of fighting). My players have come to expect it. My litmus test for bad DMs are:

1) Excessive combat because he couldn't think of a story or because he's mad at us for not following his storyline.
Example: We were playing in a Mezzoberrazan (sp?, ah, who cares it a ficitional city anyway) and were told to make what ever we wanted as long as it was ECL 6, but that it was going to be a political game. The guy then never read the boxed set and they just put us in combat after combat. We were using character trees (modified from Dark Sun) and my first character was not a combat monster (He was a Drow Sorceror Drug Push..er..Apothecary), so I went to make two combat characters, of course, with the excessive combat I abused the rules a little bit (I made a combined Tanarukk-Orog crossbreed and showed him the rules, the other character was a Nezumi Psychic Warrior/Bladedancer, man he could book). At that point he just turned up the combat meter.

2) Railroading us into HIS storyline
I've had a DM (above) and a Storyteller (different guy) do this. He has loving crafted a story that he wants to run and no matter what we do we can't get off the rails, to the point of him rewritting our actions to conform to his game. Might as well read a book at that point.

3) The UberNPC
Oh, I really hate this one. The DM (same one above) creates this guy and our job is to get him to the climax and let him save the world. Not that he couldn't get there himself, we just end up being his flunkies. After a point we just started wasting entire sessions try to convince the guy to stay home and let us do this ourselves, or plotting to kill the uberNPC. In the end it doesn't matter, because we can't handle the task ourselves. The Storyteller also suffers from the "I'm mad at you guys because you don't think my story is the coolest" and the excessive ST talking to himself syndrome (while we sit there).

4) Favored Player Syndrome
Usually applied to the Significant Other, but it could very well just be a friend. Instead of the UberNPC we have the UberPC which happens to belong to the DM's SO/Best Friend. Without him/her the game doesn't go.

5) The DM doesn't want to run
This is a problem I suffer from. When I don't want to run or I am having an off day the game suffers. So we usually take a break from Kult or Vampire or D&D and we let some else run. We have short pick up games of Exalted or Paranoia XP that allows someone else to run.

We have a Storyteller (different from the above) who has a definite plot, but has mapped out Washington DC enough to allow us to explore, and then laughs at us as we follow rabbit trails. He will then give us bread crumbs to get us back on track (our smack us on the collective heads and then tell us what we have so obviously missed). I need a minimum of preparation and then I can go extemporaneously with a good story seed (I tend to blow true Impromptu and If I have a canned game I always go off track).

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Hm... I have a couple of stories, some my own, some from friends.

The very secret secret of the parry: In an AD&D game, they encountered some enemies (I think it was gnolls, or orks - some savage humanoids anyway) who had the ability to parry. One of the party rolled a natural 20, the DM said "nope, it's parried". They made another good attack, and "nope, it's parried" and so on. But the vexing thing was that the DM didn't allow anyone to learn or use that parry thing (should be easy enough), it was a perfectly mundane manouver only some enemies could do.

Then I had a couple of bad cases of railroading. 1st: Our party is in an alley where they encounter some sort of rogue'ish character. The others drew their weapons and faced him, my archer (dex 20 I think) trained his bow on him, string pulled back, arrow pointing straight at his heart. After that rogue said a couple of words, "he just lets himself fall backwards through a window, you can't do anything". No initiative, nothing. I could not even let loose my arrow, which would have been a matter of milliseconds. It's not as if the DM in question was totally new to D&D, either.

Same DM, same game, we were guarding a caravan. There was a river we had to cross, and miraculously, none of the caravan leaders seemed to know of it, because we had to look for way to cross it (of course, there were no bridges). We searched for a ford to cross, with the water being maybe knee-high for us humanoids - and one of the carts was caught by the current and driven downriver.

The DM in question seemed to have problems with travel magic, either, but instead of just putting up with it, or banning it outright if he couldn't deal with it, he decided to railroad us. He gave one of the players a vision via nightmare (nevermind that the player was an elf and therefore immune to that spell, and that he should have gotten a save which he didn't get) which showed some kind of island where we had to go. We knew the general location and proceeded to search the whole area via wind walk. But of course, we didn't find it - we HAD to go there by ship in order to get there. Of course, as the nation was currently in war, and none of the ships were available (never mind that the whole thing could have been more important four our side than one ship more or less in the next naval battle), so we had to find one first (which was of course in a halfling village - and I might mention that one of our characters was assigned a halfling phobia by the DM, so we had even more problems)

 

[Samuel Leming]

The events described in the start of this thread happened over three years ago. I'm only reminded of them now because of what I read in another thread. I suppose my brevity obfuscated that information. I haven't seen any of these people in over two years, so it's way too late to make any corrections now.

I'm really not talking about house rules, bad DM's, player knowledge, etc. I'm talking about the kind of DM that comes to the table with a bad attitude and the wrong kind of mind.

I'll elaborate on the rescue of my poor stoned rogue. I don't remember this game as well as many I played, but the dialog went something like this. Feel free to substitute the rude words that were actually used.

Wizard: "I cast stone to flesh on the rogue."

Me: I reach for my d20.

DM: "The rogue returns to flesh unharmed..."

Me: I pull my hand back quickly. If the DM cheats, I'll cheat too.

DM: "But he's covered in urd crap and all his equipment has been removed."

Me: "Urd crap?"

DM: "They purched on you while you were a statue."

Fighter: "We would have cleaned him off first."

DM: "You didn't."

Wizard: "I would have noticed."

DM: "You didn't ask."

Wizard: "It should have been flipping obvious."

Me: "Do I still have my lockpicks?"

DM: "No."

Me: "These urds removed small stone tools from inside the stone vest of a stone statue?"

DM: "Yes."

Me: "Let's go find these urds. I want to learn how to REALLY pick pockets!"

Actually I've been in far worse games than this. This DM was just the most stupid I remember right now.

The worst game I was ever in was with a woman DM and all the players were men. We encountered a roper that had some rather extreme anatomical modifications... I suppose she wanted to teach us men about rape. This DM wasn't stupid at all, she just had... issues.

I had a moment like that recently...

The new villain in the game I'm running is a white dragon dracolich with the swarm-shifter template (Blizzard of undead snow); when the PC's first met her she appeared as beautiful pale-skinned white-haired women by virtue of a magic item she has that allows polymorph (Human forms only). It was only after running her in two sessions that I realized Dracolichs are immune to polymorph effects...now I'm trying to find some way of rationalizing it before someone in the group asks. I may just go with 'Every rule has an exception, and she's it', but I dislike that.

Oh well...SDMS, I guess

Obviously not SDMS, mainly because you realize you're about to do something inconsistent and you're looking for a way to correct it.

Sam

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Note that a base lich is immune to Polymorph effects other than those it casts on itself.

Thus, a lich can polymorph or shapeshift itself into a human, but you could not baleful polymorph it into a hamster.

It wouldn't surprise me if dracoliches acted similarly.

 

[Doug McCrae]

What are urds?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Universal Resource Denominations.

Kind of like a meta-henchman.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Our 9 strong party got trapped in a 15'x15' room, unable to move, by 2 spectres. You know, the guys that are immaterial, and therefore cannot be tripped, bullrushed or grappled - because obviously you cannot touch them, but they can nonetheless stop anyone without a tumble skill from moving through their square...

The other day my DM readied actions out of combat. His bad guy apparently had an action readied to grapple the first guy that moved. I tried to show him the absurdity of this by posing the example of readying an action against him, and then having someone else start the triggering chain. He attacks, but I get my action first, so I go before he moves and we escape... His response was "well, why don't you try that then, but you'll probably get everyone killed". Yeah, great. Not only that, but we were only IN the situation because he pulled his usual "despite having equivalent visual capabilities, the bad guys can see you at 60', and you only get a spot check at 30'". We were ambushed by a kraken standing in the open.

A kraken. Standing in the open.

I've lost track of the amount of times that a monster, standing in plain sight, has been sufficiently difficult to see that I cannot get a knowledge roll on it.

He disallows knowledge checks if I cannot currently see the thing I'm making a knowledge check on.

Archers fire arrows at us without becoming visible. And I'm not talking invisible archers either - I'm talking about him being unable to realise that if a creature can see and shoot at me, I can see it too, barring magical or otherwise unusual effects. If a guy hiding behind a stone wall shoots me, he's become visible for a bit.

Beholders get away without having to make move silently checks - because they float. I'm pretty sure my all-day flying wizard still gets asked for MS checks.

I'm pretty sure that every time we're surprised by monsters, he assigns a natural 20 to the monster's initiative. Note the same thing doesn't apply to us.

And then he bitches when I argue rules with him.

 

[LostSoul]

One of the maxims I try to use when I DM is that, when I'm unsure about how things should go, advantage goes to the PCs.

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

As a DM who has made questionable decisions at times, I am not one to complain too much. However, years ago I had a DM who did the following (which I am calling foul on):

1. Perception checks equated to rolling a d6 and if you were human you needed a 5 or 6 to notice (elves and rangers were 4 to 6 and elven rangers were 3 to 6). This was never an adjusted check, so when the hill giants attacked the party as we walked along the path, my character and two other characters were unaware (until, two rounds later when I was hit by the one standing in front of my character, hindering my movement)...

2. Random placement of attacking monsters based on rolling a d8 (i.e. points of the compass) and placing the creatures 10 feet away from the party (yes, we were usually surrounded - even when not surprised)...

3. I had to roll to hit vs. a party member's fully armored AC to throw a rope to him (he had just fallen in quicksand)...

I will stop there (reminiscing is fun), but I just wanted to point out that even though a DM may have good reasons for decisions, there are "lazy" (or maybe just "anti-PC") DMs out there - "stupid" is a bit harsh...

Later...