The "bitch about your GM" thread

And that's a difference of play style. You can't just declare railroading and then the argument is over. Not every campaign is designed around "verisimilitude" or whatever the typical argument for "the P Cs can roll initiative unless there's a magical force field" is. Obviously, if the villain's plot sucks and he wants the crux of the campaign to be about the villain's plot, then the campaign sucks and you find a better campaign. But this isn't a cut and dried you're right he's wrong thing-it's a mismatch of player playstyle to DM playstyle.

Now, if you want to bitch, the right thing to do is to bitch about the fact that your DM is oblivious to this mismatch of playstyles, and isn't taking steps to remedy it. But monologues are part of the game, and different people have different takes on them. I mean, I had a player in my game recently who absolutely hated that kind of thing; we eventually went our separate ways, but the rest of the players are doing alright. If your fellow players also hate the monologues, I recommend getting together to ask collectively.

Like I said before; Talking Is a Free Action is a valid storytelling ingredient. But with any trope, there's a right and a wrong way to use it. My beef isn't that he's doing it, it's that he's doing it badly, both with the whole "timeout" thing and with the canned monologues that lead nowhere.

And yes...forcing players to do something "just because" is railroading. As I understand it that's the definition of the term.

If you're just saying his story is uninteresting, sure-though, at that point, it's likely more helpful to explain to your GM in what ways the stories are uninteresting. I'm sure if he has villains monologue, he enjoys villainous monologues, so the ideal situation isn't for him to stop monologuing, it's to help him make his monologues better.

In short, I recommend giving your GM positive feedback.

As for railroading, I am firmly of the position that Railroading is not bad, as long as the players are open to that model of game. Like I said, if you're dissatisfied with the game, I recommend checking with the other players to gauge their reactions as well.

edited 13th Jul '13 12:40:47 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

I've talked to the other players already, and all of them agree...simply forcing us to wait "just because" is irritating. If he wants to create a scenario where sitting and listening is what we choose to do (and there are ways to do this, easily) that's fine.

To use an example from video games, it's the difference between finding a wall and hitting one of those stupid knee-high fences that you can't jump over.

I plan to, but I doubt he's gonna listen on this one.

That's fine, but I've been gaming and storytelling for nearly twenty years at this point and I've yet to meet a player that prefers being railroaded to being given an open sandbox to play in.

There's a strong self-selection bias. It probably also has a lot to do with which game system you're running. I would hazard a guess that systems that tend to play to the verisimilitude crowd tend to appeal more for the explorer and simulation types, whereas games that are more narrative driven may appeal more to the "let us experience the story" type.

I recommend offering to GM for your group.

I personally don't mind insurmountable waist-high fences, for instance. Every town just happening to be surrounded by mountains in order to avoid gratuitous endless expanses of wasteland is just silly. So, feel free to count me as the first player you've ever met that prefers railroading to an open sandbox.

edited 13th Jul '13 1:02:42 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

My God. The last time I read this thread was nearly two years ago.

And Tomu is still having the same argument.

I suppose I have to give him some credit for stamina.

Just keeping up the good fight, like any reasonable person does.

Obviously, if things were merely a shouting match, that'd be one thing, but I would request you remain respectful rather than sniping, just because you disagree with me on some fundamentals.

edited 13th Jul '13 1:12:25 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

I just love how Tomu has taken it upon himself to rush to the defense of all these G Ms. XD

Considering how much time and effort it takes to be a DM. I consider all criticisms to be ingratitude of the worse sort.

edited 14th Jul '13 1:16:18 AM by joeyjojo

I'm not sure what "sniping" you're talking about. I'm merely making an observation.

I suppose you must be referring to the fact that I'm especially neat and precise.

edited 13th Jul '13 11:05:16 AM by Ezekiel

Zeke, the issue is that you basically try and dismiss what I'm saying not by addressing it, but by acting as though I shouldn't have the right to say it.

If anything, a "bitch about X" thread is against the rules of "no complaints threads" that was instituted after they closed down It Just Bugs Me (it's just been grandfathered in). All I'm doing is ask that players try and keep some sense of perspective-if everyone is conscious about what the players and G Ms want out of games, they can either come to an understanding or realize that they're not compatible play styles, and thus come to an understanding with different players elsewhere. Of course, I grant this ignores the social element-that it's not the campaigns that matters but the group. Still, the fact that I'm encouraging understanding where one's DM is coming from is somehow considered unwelcome is just rather astounding. I get that some people just want a place to vent where they won't be questioned on their venting, but the forums have been pretty explicit they don't want those kinds of threads, because they tend to turn ugly rather fast.

If you're going to make tongue in cheek comments about someone, at least know the dynamic of what you're making tongue in cheek comments about. If you just jump in to say "Oh hey person X is still saying things lulz" that's just trolling.

I'm doing nothing of the sort and I'm offended you're suggesting I am. My observation is just that, an observation, in this case of the fact that everything is still exactly the same as it was two years ago. No value judgement was intended or implied.

Then you have my apologies. I interpreted it as a "Pfft. Will everyone look at this? It's still Tomu, saying Tomu things. This is HILLARIOUS because, c'mon Tomu, no one's buying what you're saying. Why don't you get out of here Tomu? TCH!"

After all, saying "My god!" tends to be an implication of absurdity, and the tongue in cheek about stamina was presented as a counterbalance to the earlier point. But, if you say you were just making an observation without any implications of values or what have you, I will believe you.

For the record, the TCH is silent.

In any event, enough of this back and forth. A pseudo-complaints threat will be permitted. Turning this thread into a dueling ground will not be.

So, I'd bitch about my DM putting our sunday game on hiatus until around Halloween, but I can't really blame him. He's in the military and going away for a while. I can bitch a bit about his encounter design. He designs these brutally hard enounters that seem outright impossible at first, but then gives us say, a pseudo-short rest mid encounter. But we don't know what the short rest bonus is going in, so it's like "did Drew (the name of our GM) design an unwinnable fight because he's been throwing escalating stuff at us all the time and this time he stepped too close to the sun?" It's basically made the group really mad on a regular basis, including me, but he prefers the tension to not having the tension, even with the encounters being the same. I personally am for full transparency, and as thus would prefer to know what the long fight bonus is going in, as I prefer to avoid ragequits, but whatcha gonna do.

edited 13th Jul '13 11:57:09 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

Fine by me, I don't want to get into any fights so soon after getting back.

Fucking railroading sonofabitch with no creativity whatsoever.

First, he recycled his old tricks I saw twice already. Okay, he changed some details, so it wasn't the exact same old bullshit. But seriously, when he railroaded us through a demon-summoning ritual for the third fucking time, with Ass Pull stalls no less, I blew a fuse. Seriously, throwing a literal wildcard just as we were about to off the Big Bad for good (or not, to off the Big Bad for good we'd have to declare the fight as all-or-nothing one) and making him fly off through a fucking window just as we managed to blast him to shit with the toys GM handed us two sessions ago is a dick move of the highest order.

GM rule number 53: never put the P Cs and the Big Bad in the same room at the same time unless you are prepared for the possibility of someone dying.

My GM got away with that. Granted, we were level 4 and is a Denizen of Leng/Sommoner, who was very intent on escaping.

Dude, I rolled around 30 on the better of two exploding D10, and had a +12 skill and gear bonuses on top of that. And to hit that fuckwad, we needed 20-something. And I specifically declared a finishing blow, so he should have been fucked up, packed up and on the way to where he came from.

And let me guess, we'll need one of the wondrous NP Cs to get rid of the Big Bad, even if I specifically took a power to do just that.

Lord British Postulate in full effect.

More like Lord Bullshit Postulate. Let's start with the fact that we were supposed to kill that fucker by any means necessary, got stupidly railroaded by getting stalled on the first try (seriously, we'd blast the shit out of the guy if not for an obvious unwinnable roll), got stupidly railroaded by getting stalled on the second try (with a GM Fiat), shot all of his HP off and applied a finisher on the third try, whereby the GM threw a wildcard at us (playing a Joker card makes you pass any roll with a TN below 30 automatically, give you +10 bonus to any roll above that and increases the exploding die threshold by one - from 10 to 9, from 9 to 8, etc.) and the Big Bad just exploded into black smoke and flew out of the window.

Seriously, in this case any sane person would ask "Why don't you just let them SHOOT HIM?!"

Heh, yeah, that sounds pretty ridiculous, even by my somewhat pro-railroading standards.

My current DM once set us up against this giant monster-the Colossus of Bones (a name I came up with and we've been using in our campaigns for decades) that we basically had to just run away from until midway in the fight some NPC tosses a big ol thing of dynamite, at which point it was no longer invincible. I liked the dynamics of the fight but it's like, okay, so, why is a big thing of dynamite that much more able to pierce through the thing's protective armor than my fireballs?

We explicitly had anti-demon weaponry since two sessions, and made terrifying use of it (we had four attacks per turn, anything that beat the Big Bad's TN to be hit by five or more dealt two damage instead of one). Three turns, in which the Big Bad consistently ended up last on the initiative, and his 9 HP (each one of us had only 4) were gone, with me dealing the finishing blow ("You just did the duuuuumbest thing in your entiiiiire life. You walked into a party chock full of mages, spies and us." BAM!).

Sounds like you need a new GM to me.

I mean, if I run into a situation where I screw up epicly, I level with the players and say "hey, I messed up, if this guy dies here the entire adventure gets derailed" but just ignoring the rules entirely when there's not even a story reason why that should happen is bad form.

And this is why I said I'll be G Ming next.

Let's see how they deal with a scandal involving a mentally retarded dwarf (note: a cross between a dwarf and a troll in Wolsung: Steam Pulp Fantasy is called a kobold, and it's usually mentally retarded) who got made smarter by a Mad Scientist, akin to The Lawnmower Man.

edited 15th Jul '13 2:12:35 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

Sorry, musta missed that part.

G Ming is hard. I've found it's generally a pretty thankless job. I wish you luck.

That being said, I'm really annoyed at my Monday GM. We're in this low level campaign with lots of custom rules and crap, and the sorcerer is just ridiculously twinked out on custom shit beyond all belief, and when I bring up that I'm falling behind he basically just rolls his eyes and says "you're fine."

How am I supposed to compare on the basis of AOE damage, when the sorcerer gets ALL of her damage bonuses on her AO Es, whereas I only get flurry 1/turn? Not to mention that she has no less than three minor action attacks (including her Dragon Breath, which is another blast 3), whereas I have only one. Oh, and did I mention Dual Implement Spellcaster? So the enhanced rate of progression of implements (+1 every 3 levels instead of +1 every 5; this replaces feat bonuses. I actually originally came up with the idea, so I don't mind the idea, just ignoring some of the implications) is doubled on her, so I'll only get even FURTHER behind as she levels.

My defenses are a lot better, but it means jack shit because defenses-unless you can pull aggro somehow (read: are a defender)-only matter against AO Es, because the enemies will just go after squishier members.

edited 17th Jul '13 11:47:14 AM by TheyCallMeTomu