Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Achan hiArusa" data-source="post: 1872903" data-attributes="member: 2597">Its not just mechanicsI 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).</blockquote>

Verification