What the hell is wrong with me???

[Gundark]

Hello, my name is Gundark and I'm a killer DM.


I say things to my group like "the heroes should win" and "I'm not playing against you", I lie through my teeth and say that DMing isn't about me vs. the players.

Bull#@&*. I want to see the players defeated at the hands of the villians. I want TPKs and PCs shaking with fear at the prospect of facing the BBEG. I wanna say "suck it up princess!!!! Go put on your big boy/girl panties and deal with it like a grown up" when the players complain and say "what CR was that?" or "Wow that CR was off". I want smart villians who aren't just sitting around in their strongholds waiting for the PCs to kick down the door and hack them to death. Damnitt I want villians who are going to send assasins to kill the PCs who are actually going to get the damn job done, not lower level jokers who meet the appropriate CR. I want the bad guys to grind the players to powder and sow their remains over a farmers field and then burn the field just for daring to even try to defy them.

Sigh :\ . I don't get why I'm like this. I mean shouldn't the players win? Isn't it about all of us having fun rather than be the Gundark slay the players show? I get annoyed when the PCs beat the boss in 2 rounds...I love playing Descent cause I can kill their pasty @$$ heroes and it's all part of the game. *Sigh* Is their treatment for a guy like me?

Edit: Part of what I wrote above was also for humour sake as well as for advice. I make sure that the games I run are fair and have appropriate challenges for the PCs. However since the starting the AoW campaign I have been really taking pleasure in player character deaths. This is what I'm tlaking about, is it normal? And if not how do I get out of that mindset?

 

[Sound of Azure]

Play to win

It's the DM's job to play against the PCs. To play a believable (and like, ruthless) opposition, and to have excitement and intrigue. The DM can root for the PCs, but it's still an opposition. As long as you're not antagonistic or competative toward the Players (as opposed to their PCs), there'sno problem.

You want the PCs to work for it. That's fair enough... I don't see a problem.

 

[Treebore]

Take "facilitator" classes?

Personally I would rather continue to revel in your "adversarial" DMing style.

You just need to learn the joy of letting them win more often, so the pain, and reward, is that much greater when they are finally slaughtered.

When you kill them frequently they become numb to the loss. Have them dance the "edge" many times, but only kill them rarely. That way their pain is much deeper and satisfying.

Its like the difference between eating a plain hamburger on plain bread, or eating a top sirloin burger on great bread with excellent spices and condiments.

You have obviously arrived at the point in your DMing life where your ready to finely tune your adversarial ways to the level of a fine quisine instead of fast food.

Then you can pass your self off as a "Facilitator DM" and only the finest trained of eyes will ever be able to tell what you really are.

 

[Harmon]

I find slaughter GMs to be boring. The advasary type GMing style, not what I would call fun, so when a GM does it I cut things like role playing and go for roll playing. I make disposable characters, all named "Joe" "Joe, the Fighter," and "Joe, the mage," it makes no difference the GM will kill the character and I will make up "Joe, the Monk."

When the GM bores of my roll playing then he can ask why- "why do you role play in Dave's campaign and not mine- all your characters in his campaigns have back grounds, different voices, and attitudes, but in mine, all of your characters are the same. What is up with that?"

"All your villians are all knowing, all powerful, and frankly not believeable, I make up a new character and you kill it without thought and with a little smile and I just find myself not caring- kinda like you."

Its nothing personal, I rather like the feeling that a good GM can take you to the edge and make you feel that you are about to die- "think! Or Die!" but when I think the GM is just plain out for blood, nah, I lose interest.

Thanks for your honesty, its nice to see someone talking about it.

Peace, all

 

[Nightfall]

Gundark,

Don't worry. It's supposed to not be "sing along time with the PCs." Some times, you just have to be mean to be good.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

There are two kinds of DM.

There are the DMs who think this game is all about the characters, and want the characters to survive and achieve like heroes in stories. Maybe they'll face a bit of a challenge from time to time at climax points, but most of the time, they're facing enemies that can't really challenge them. Groups with a DM like this tend to be very concerned with characterisation and plot and deeply into role-playing. Quite often the characters will have detailed backgrounds, sometimes with complete family trees, and, in extreme cases, the players will actually speak in their characters' accents. Often it's practically un-heard-of for the player characters to run away.

And there are the DMs who think this game is all about the players rather than the characters, and want to test the players' ability to play D&D. Maybe there will be the occasional challenge they can easily overcome, but those mostly get handwaved because there aren't any interesting decisions for the players to make; why bother rolling it out when any fool can see who'll win? Such DMs want to minimise the interval between each meaningful decision the players make that actually affect their characters' destiny. Groups with a DM like this tend to be very concerned with tactics, intelligence-gathering, scouting and infiltration. The players will hide from, or run away from, groups of monsters frequently and will choose their fights with great care. Nobody round the table knows, or cares, whether his character has a sister, but it's a safe bet that someone's got a 10' pole.

It's only a problem if you're running one kind of game and your players want the other.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Try to see it this way:

Death is a release from suffering. Thus, only long-lived PCs will learn what suffering really means. Thus, keep them alive for your own enjoyment.

Spoiler

Half-kidding there. But really, if I slaughter the PCs regularly, then the players will stop caring about them. The emotional impact of problems will be much greater when those characters have existed for a long time...

 

[Holy Bovine]

It's not really the job of the Dm to kill the PCs - only to make them wish they could die to release them from the torment that is life.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

There's a third kind fo DM ... the referee. You don't take a personal stake in the game; you let the players take their actions, have the opposition take reasonable actions, enforce the rules, and let the dice decide. You can root for the players, or the monsters, but it doesn't change the outcome -- you let the chips fall where they may.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Letting the players win is easy. Killing the PCs is also easy. Neither will be any fun in the long run.

The trick is to challenge them. They should always have a chance to win, or at least to realize that they're overpowered and flee, but it shouldn't be a cake walk.

If the characters are lazy, they're going to croak. If they get careless, they'll meet their creator way ahead of schedule. If they think they can win all the time, they'll find out the hard way.

It takes some effort to do things right, but noone ever said this was going to be easy.

It's no problem using only "appropriate encounters" and playing every enemy like an attack drone. It's also no problem to build all-powerful enemies that just know everything, including the characters' strengths and weaknesses. The challenge lies in creating proper enemies. Memorable ones. Smart, but not all-knowing. Powerful, but not unstoppable for the players.