What the hell is wrong with me???

[Oryan77]

I've met gamers that played with adversarial DM's and were ruined by it. They couldn't grasp what it meant to play in a storytelling campaign because they were so used to trying to play against me rather than my NPC's. Man they were annoying people to play with.

All I would hear from them were complaints. Things like, "Man, you really suck at running wizards, you chose all the wrong spells for him because that guy should have done this to us instead of that". So I have to explain to them that this wizard doesn't know that the PC's have protection vs that, or that the minions don't know that the party likes to use Evards tentacles followed up with a barbarian with freedom of movement on him. I understand the DM knows these things, and might know what spells a wizard should have to thwart the PC's every move...but that doesn't mean every single NPC is going to be as strategically perfect.

Or if I'd spice up an encounter by sacrificing a tactical advantage in order to do some roleplaying. Like, having an NPC that just got his sword sundered throw the hilt at the PC rather than dropping the hilt, taking a 5' step, pull out his mace, & take 1 attack. At the end of the encounter, the adversarial players would actually laugh at at me about how I could have taken him to 0 hit points if I attacked with the mace instead of wasting my action, because he was low on hp's. They don't talk about the NPC getting frustrated and hitting a guy with the hilt...they talk about how I'm not as tactical with the rules as they are.

Whenever they forced me to explain my actions, they'd always reply with, "oh...well our last DM was always out to get us, so we're not used to thinking about what the NPC's are doing instead of what the DM is doing".

 

[billd91]

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.

It's natural to want things like this. After all, you spend hours making up your villains, lairs, and diabolical plot under the assumption that the PCs will eventually prevail. Who doesn't want to just cut loose every once in a while?

But, ultimately, DMs have to get used to being the primary punching bag. Who's going to lose more characters, the players who make up the party or the DM? The DM. Whose work is more likely to end up unheralded, unknown, and unused in the game? The DM's. The players will almost never fully know and appreciate the motivations of the BBEG and his lackeys or any of their backstory, and yet you have probably made up at least some of that information to make sense of the villain and his plans. Meanwhile, your players just write up some notes (or even an expansive short story or epic poem) on their own narrow little slice of the campaign and, undoubtedly, make sure everyone remembers it by bringing it out every session in their role playing ad nauseum.

So you're not alone in your feelings. It's quite alright to want to see the PCs writhe in your BBEG's clutches as everything they hold dear is destroyed in front of their faces. It's OK to want to do the dance of triumph over your players' mangled character sheets just to see the look on their faces.

But then, it's also natural for your players to want to get back at you by bringing the pizza loaded with pepperonis that they used as Tuck's medicated pads. And so we come to detente.

It's OK and valid to have these feelings. You just have to master the impulses, play the part of monologuing arch villain, and take your lumps. It is, however, still OK to cackle with glee from time to time when you get a good hit in.

 

[Gundark]

Did you post here asking for help because your players are getting frustrated over your DM'ing style and you want to change it? Or are you just bragging that you win D&D all the time? .

None of the above. I explained further down the thread that my games are quite fair (I take pains to make sure they are balanced). So death happens, but not at a rate that some where suggesting they thought it happened. Our table is very "let the dice fall where they may", this goes for both the players and the NPCs. As a matter of fact our campaign death totals are really quite low (about 2-4). It's only been lately since I have been running the AoW that we have seen the death count race past that (we're at 8 included our first ever TPK), however the adventure path is nasty tough.

However, I for some strange, sick and twisted reason I kinda find pleasure from player character deaths. I was wanting to know, a) is this normal? and b) if not then how do you get over this mehtod of thinking.

 

[blargney the second]

One shots = good for relieving homicidal impulses.

 

[ronin]

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.

I laughed so hard I almost started crying when I read this one.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I want to play in your SpyCraft campaign. "Start the unnecessarily slow dipping mechanism!"

Nah. Expect my Villains to know the Evil Overlord List by heart!

If they want to kill someone they go and kill him, or try to. They won't first lock them into a cell with a sleeping jailer and barred windows that won't keep the ranger's cute animal companion from slipping in with the keys.

But they usually won't try to kill them (not at first). They'd rather make their life hell, and, while the heroes are busy fighting off the rest of the world, the Villain will execute his (still secret) plan at his leasure.

My last campaign featured Shar as a big player. She made the players inadvertantly do her bidding all the time. Only in the final fight were they able to defeat Shar's champions and prevent the whole of creation from being sucked into the plane of Shadow.

 

[William drake]

Maybe this is the kind of DM I should be. Believe it or not I don't fudge rolls for my benifit, if my BBEG rolls a one to save I play it as rolled. I craft appropriate CR encounters for the PCs. Yeah I know that if I was a totally $%*&@# and threw way overpowering stuff at them they would stop playing (and I might end up with a bag of flaming dog poop on my step ) Should I be neutral? Is that the best way? Well even though I craft apprppriate CR encouters for the PCs and don't use knowledge about the players that the villians wouldn't have. I still secretly glory when they have a hard time, and when they are shaking in their boots. I kinda like it when at high level play the voral bastard sword weilding BBEG criticals the party fighter and the rest of the party goes oh &*$#!! This is tha attitude I'm talking about. I'm fair with the group (I work very hard to make sure everything is fair for the group, it's just I really like it when the BBEG kicks their butts. I'm the kind of guy that roots for the villian in movies. I love the Empire strikes back cause luke gets his hand lopped off and Han gets frozen in Carbonite, and I'm like "ha! take that upstarts".

So while I'm fair and do the best to keep a poker face, I really want PC destruction. I think that I get to attached to my BBEGs.

Well, on that hand, I agree. I too like good dark villians, I was thinking you were just killing the players left and right cause that was within your power. Wanting the Villian to win is fine, why dont you set up the game where the world is evil....take this, what if Hitler had won WW2, what would the world be like, let the players be the refugees, the upstarts...the "rebels" since you like Starwars, show then what an Evil world is like, and that way, you have somethign to say when they argue that the world is evil. If the world was in the hands of the Skin Heads, the world would be an awful place...

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Have you tried Midnight? It's a world where evil will win - has already won, in fact - and the heroes will only delay the inevitable, which is the whole world being destroyed. The best heroes can hope for is bringing some temporary respite to the poor souls who have to live under the shadow.

 

[Hussar]

None of the above. I explained further down the thread that my games are quite fair (I take pains to make sure they are balanced). So death happens, but not at a rate that some where suggesting they thought it happened. Our table is very "let the dice fall where they may", this goes for both the players and the NPCs. As a matter of fact our campaign death totals are really quite low (about 2-4). It's only been lately since I have been running the AoW that we have seen the death count race past that (we're at 8 included our first ever TPK), however the adventure path is nasty tough.

However, I for some strange, sick and twisted reason I kinda find pleasure from player character deaths. I was wanting to know, a) is this normal? and b) if not then how do you get over this mehtod of thinking.

Don't sweat it. Running the World's Largest Dungeon has been a real eye opener for me as well. 22 confirmed kills. Wahoo! I've got players on their 6th PC in 2 years. Granted, he went through like 4 in 6 weeks due to some unbelievably bad luck and poor choices.

However, no one can ever accuse me of not being 100% honest. All my die rolls are 100% in the open and there are records of them (helps playing on OpenRPG) so anyone can check.

Sorry, throwing the hilt of my broken sword instead of using my mace is just stupid. Hrm, Mr. Experienced Warrior, who has likely had more than a few swords break in the heat of battle, pulls a hissy fit in the middle of mortal combat. Yeah, that's believable. Snort. Naw, I play my baddies as being as tactically proficient as they should be. That means that yes, the ghoul WILL coup de gras the paralyzed cleric instead of moving on to another target. That means that yes, the Bugbear WILL use tactics with his buddy to down the PC and finish him off. That means the Giant Turtle WILL swim away after swallowing whole the monk who tried to run on his back and got tagged by the Attack of Opportunity.

I've played with more than a few softball DM's who figure that the PC's should win no matter what and I can honestly say that I would much rather roll up a new character than be "saved" by the DM.

 

[Oryan77]

Sorry, throwing the hilt of my broken sword instead of using my mace is just stupid. Hrm, Mr. Experienced Warrior, who has likely had more than a few swords break in the heat of battle, pulls a hissy fit in the middle of mortal combat. Yeah, that's believable. Snort.

And that's why you have 22 confirmed deaths in 2 years
I believe the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves threw a sword hilt at Robin Hood which made for a pretty comical moment (or maybe it was Robin that threw it). I'm sure there's plenty of other examples of similar actions in plenty of movies. Like the old "handgun jams and badguy throws it at the hero" routine.

One of my players once reminisced to me about the time he cast Warp Wood on a Wererats X-bow & the Wererat threw the crippled bow at him...he liked that scenario. I'm sure that is a lot more memorable to him than the time his 22nd PC died in the same Dungeon....to me, that's "just stupid" too. But hey, if emotionally frustrated NPC's aren't believable in your world, keep on killing those PC's with your tactically perfect chess playing NPC's