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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SigmaX0" data-source="post: 4980898" data-attributes="member: 83346">We have a problem.  As a group, we are very reliant on our DM of the last 10 years or so.  Now someone else is running a campaign, and the weight of expectation itself is hindering his performance.It's not a bad campaign, i've seen worse.  It lacks the kind of artistry, creativity and personality our group takes for granted these days, but the combat is a lot of fun (4E usually is) and the encounter balance and set up is spot on.The main problems lie in the NPCs, and the apparent 'free-roaming' nature of the campaign. The problem with the NPCs is that they're pretty much non existent.  There's one captain who gave us our first quest, whom I think the party is supposed to have some kind of connection with, but since he stopped giving us any more direction we have just been getting frustrated with him.Which brings us to the second issue, the DM seems content to let us flounder without any leads or clues about what to do next.  Now, i'm not against an open-ended campaign, but I think they're very hard to pull off, and not for 'amateurs'.  I appreciate that it's always a fine balance between  open-ended and story driven and that balance is difficult to achieve.To give an example of how we seem to be seeing things from different perspectives, we were fighting a group of fanatics and the high priest escaped into a side room (of the underground chapel) whilst we defeated his summoned elemental.  We decided on a short rest afterwards, then proceeded after the priest.  The DM described a long corridor leading into darkness, and we promptly followed in pursuit.  After about half a mile we reached a cave-in, so we backtracked and found where the tunnel came out of the hillside, and followed the priests tracks on horseback, which led into wooded area.  We continued to follow them to a log cabin, opened the door to find an aggressive dwarf minion, and no sign of the priest, after further tracking it seemed he had stolen a horse and ridden off, though the direction was impossible to ascertain since there were too many tracks.  We gave up and headed back to town.All through that sequence of events, I though the DM was basically saying, 'back off guys, you're not going to catch this priest', putting as many obstacles in our path as possible.  I felt like we needed to continue because i'm stubborn and I wanted to prove a point. But it turns out, he actually wanted us to capture him! That was what was 'meant' to happen, which I find pretty incredible.  I guess we're just looking at things from different perspectives.Does anyone else have any similar experiences and advice for how either our DM or us players can change the way we're playing to make this campaign run a little smoother?</blockquote>

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