The Gaming Den

Because it's fun to complain and see who's had it worse...Here's a story about my first DM for an online gaming group.

His name is Mark.

Mark has ego problems.

He can be pretty tolerant of you experimenting with a build/class/character in his game. But Mark insists on having a DM PC, and he usually structures the game around them, I presume to make it easier to nudge or, failing that, railroad the plot along.

I honestly don't mind that. A friend and I both once had characters that made it clear they didn't feel particularly sorry for his little CG Druid's sob story about the evil alchemists costing her most of her family.

That in itself requires explanation. Mark is very much against Lawful alignments. He likes Druid, too. The campaign that broke the camel's back involved a conflict between Druids and Alchemists, with the Alchemists being the agressor and the party ending up on the Druid side.

We actually didn't get that far. I'll share the story later when I can do it justice. Let's just say I quit and haven't talked to him since.

It really was about him making arbitrary decisions to make us temporarily ineffective. Like...one of the PCs had a movement speed of about 90 feet a round. And couldn't catch an ordinary thief, an encounter which set us up to be found and attacked by 7 Alchemists who all miraculously beat my character's initiative of 24, and claimed we were evil because my character had covered the price of the stolen bread.

And this is in what was explicitly said to be Neutral territory in this BS Druid/Alchemist conflict.

Oh, and the same speedy character later got mind controlled with no will save, and started trying to drown himself in the river.

I can see understand some of the stuff he was doing was useful for the plot or whatever, but he was just really, really graceless and transparent with it. Oh, and us three characters who weren't being sympathetic to the hopeful CG DM PC? Well, one was trying to drown himself in the river, and the other got nailed with some spell for 50 HP before combat even started. (He had over a hundred, but, still.) The third was hit with an antimagic field dropped on him that nullified all of his Psion abilties and dropped him on the ground (a creakily old Elf)

After a few of us quit. The third member of our little trio of sarcasm, call him 'Mike', eventually tried to go in another game of Mark's. The first couple of sessions had good reports. Mark wasn't be as obnoxious, and his character (again a CG female spellcaster) was doing a good job of just being one of the group. I think, hey, cool. But it's still not going to get me to RP with him again.

Then I get this IM. It's a little edited, of course.

Mike: You were right about mark
Mike: He hasn’t changed a bit
Mike: I yelled at him and quit last night
Me: What happened?
Mike: He didn't know the rules.
Mike: When my character threatened to derail his precious storyline
Mike: Because he didn't know the rules.
Mike: His enemies suddenly became omnipowerful
Me: Of course.
Mike: No, seriously, I was about to rape his entire encounter.
Mike: By myself.
Me: Katie could give you a dissertation about how he can be all decent and charming, but if pressed will revert to his worse self.
Me: What happened?
Mike: They were little sling-using humanoids
Me: And?
Mike: I figured out their stats basically through trail and error
Mike: Expanded myself to threaten most of them with my 30-foot-diamater reach
Mike: But suddenly they're all not within 30 feet of any of each other
Mike: Right, ok.
Mike: I make a trip attempt. Eh, it's cool, they only have a strength of +1
Mike: I have +8 to trips, it's-
Mike: ...
Mike: oh, so they have a strength of 18 now?
Mike: Fascinating.
Mike: They break out +1 Longbows and slam my first level character for 13 damage.
Mike: And hit my 19 AC
Mike: on an 11.
Me: ...
Mike: Funny how they missed my FF AC of 15 with a 10 last round


So, yeah. None of the individual things Mark does is bad in and of itself. It's the sum and total of how obvious and petty he can be when he does them, along with the graceless 'plots,' annoying DM PCs who are always the SAME FREAKIN' PERSON (CG, female, full spellcaster, against some lawful people who have wronged her somehow and expect everyone she meets to be good blokes and take pity on her and travel with her and help her get revenge. Possibly overpowered by some house-ruled junk.), and how bad things happen to characters who are inconvenient. I think I could stand him if he were just a player and not the DM, but he wants to DM all the time. And gets openly nasty when you question him, because he's the ringleader of that RP group and makes all the dumb organizational structuring.

Would you tough it out, or go looking for a new group?

The DM is petty, unoriginal, & a railroader. I say look for a new group, or at the very least a game with someone else as the DM.

DMPCs are retarded.

The solution, other than leaving, which was certainly a smart thing to do, is to get the other players to support you as DM and after that run a cmapaign that makes his look like hell(shouldn't be hard, given what you've told us). Now you;ve done the one thing that could really hurt him, other than physical violence, you've taken away his power, his title, and his toys. If he wants to be effective or have people interested in his character he'll have to earn it; he'll either improve or fail, and if he keeps failing he'll end up leaving or kicked out.

That's what I would have done, but leaving is easier and just as effective at ending your main problem.

MrWaeseL at [unixtime wrote:1194636219[/unixtime]]DMPCs are retarded.

DMPCs are RPG masturbation. You're playing with yourself: at least have the good grace to do it behind closed doors, and not in from of your friends. Nobody wants to see you do that.

Catharz at [unixtime wrote:1194637542[/unixtime]]

MrWaeseL at [unixtime wrote:1194636219[/unixtime]]DMPCs are retarded.

DMPCs are RPG masturbation. You're playing with yourself: at least have the good grace to do it behind closed doors, and not in from of your friends. Nobody wants to see you do that.

"No, Dark Helmet! I did not see you playing with your dolls again!"

I don't understand DMPCs at all. Why have them? Why not just make the cleric NPC an NPC instead of someone who must ally with the PCs for no apparent reason? I mean, really, if the group needs an NPC cleric why not just give them a cleric with his own agenda instead of an icky hybrid DM-PC agenda? What's the appeal?

Thread Title wrote:
Worst. DMs. Ever.

Dustin.

Game On,
fbmf

So... You went into a campaign where the plot was 'help the sob story druid' and you didn't want to? Why were you there at all?

And you're complaining that you didn't get to use your weenie powers to solve every encounter? How should you have been trumped, instead of finding that you weren't the only one with that trick?

Bad DM stories need to include not only what went wrong, but how it could have been handled better. Otherwise, it's just 'bad game stories'.

-Crissa

fbmf at [unixtime wrote:1194653913[/unixtime]]

Thread Title wrote:
Worst. DMs. Ever.

Dustin.

Game On,
fbmf

Tell us a story Mr Fbmf.

Yes, please, tell us a story.

Crissa wrote:Bad DM stories need to include not only what went wrong, but how it could have been handled better. Otherwise, it's just 'bad game stories'.

That's actually a very valid point. Okay, here's my analysis based on what I remember:

1) The controlled-character-with-no-save was just BS, as was having him take a couple of swipes at people on his way to drown himself. There's some lines you just don't cross without first forewarning the party to not sweat and just roll with it.

2) 7 frail magic-based people miraculously all beating 6 or so people on initiative? Especially when one of them got a fairly high number on it. He claimed he'd rolled it with real dice just before combat, and I challenged (fairly confrontationally, I confess) him to roll the dice again in the chat where we could see them, and I'd stand by how they fell. I sorta had a vested interest in this, because they slightly outnumbered us, and the leader had just nailed my character (one of the main melee people) for quite nearly half his HP and combat still hadn't started. He got nasty and said he didn't have to justify himself to me. (Lesson for DMs: Sometimes just compromise. Lesson for me: Sometimes just roll with things. And don't have your character shake out his spiked chain while snarling assorted blasphemies.)

3) Singling out the characters who make it clear that they'll help your DMPC because they don't like the DMPC's enemies is just BS. It's childish and petty.

4) Players get ticked when the DM is obviously and clumsily altering the rules in mid-fight.

There's probably more I could pull out of it, but that's something.

I learned pretty well over the ages that DMPCs are bad. That said, they can have a use or two...like in the first adventure for my new group, we were down a player...enter the DMPC! He was black; he spent a feat and all his skill points in being black. Meaning, he died at some point in the adventure.

If your DMPCs are run like that...then there's really not a problem. But otherwise...

It's a mistake every DM has to make once

I want to know about this Dustin fellow too.

I'm lucky. I haven't actually had any terribly DMs. My worst would have been one guy who did a bit of railroading now and then ("the air disappears from the room." "We hack the door down." "It's adamantine." "Fine, we hack the wall down, it's only stone." "Okay, the corridor also has no air." "It's all good, we do the same to the front door. We have stupid good Con scores, we can hold our breath for ages.") and invented his own unbalanced monsters on occasion.

But nothing truly bad - and when we stubbornly fought the railroad just because he was shunting us towards it (the "leader" player who was teaching the rules to the rest of us is the DMs best friend, and they constantly antagonise each other), he rolled with it and we had a good laugh.

There is seriosly nothing wrong with DMPCs. At its core, it's the DM telling you that the NPC assistant you get is playing by the same rules that the rest of you are. And while the temptation exists to drop artifact swords, high born lovers, and special mecha armor on the DMPC, that temptation exists for NPCs who don't have a character sheet as well.

Everyone has a story of a DMPC gone power mad. But how many more stories do you have of transient or recurrent NPCs who show up and slap you with a virtual penis?

DMPCs are not only a requirement of a rotating DMing system - they are at the core a system of checks and balances on the DM's actions. The DM giving a name and a character sheet to the party cleric or decker is the DM's way of promising that that character won't whip it out on the table as some sort of stupid power trip. Now, he's the DM, he can break a promise. But there's nothing wrong with him making it in the first place.

-Username17

If any NPC with a character sheet is by definition a DMPC, then I agree.

When I think of 'necessary hole-filling character', I think of an NPC, hireling, or cohort (played by a DM or PC, with or without a full character sheet). A DMPC is there because the DM wants to have his cake and eat it too.

I've played with my brother and friends in the rotating DM setup for years, and can confidently state that the only requirement for being one of the many DMs is to first be a good player.
If you don't know the rules, can't share, can't put yourself in the viewpoint of another, and have a selfish streak, you won't be a good DM.
So while the title may pass between other players in the group, certain immature or less-knowledgable members might be passed over even (at times) when they protest. There have been times when these sub-par DMs have a shot or two at running a game but it's not pretty; cite these examples when they "get the urge" and hope majority opinion is enough to keep them out.
If they raise a ruckus, kick them out or find/start a new group. You can change a game but you can't change people.

Catharz at [unixtime wrote:1194735563[/unixtime]]If any NPC with a character sheet is by definition a DMPC, then I agree.

When I think of 'necessary hole-filling character', I think of an NPC, hireling, or cohort (played by a DM or PC, with or without a full character sheet). A DMPC is there because the DM wants to have his cake and eat it too.

and what's the problem with that when the DM prefers to be a player and no one else ever dms?

(*raise hand* yes, that's me...)

I actually can't think of any dms I've had that were outright bad... some poor ones, some ones who didn't exactly know what they were doing, and some that just wanted a different game than I did and thus dissallowed evil characters... but none that were truely bad...


edit: I lied, I just remembered Nick.

Now, usually Nick ran Werewolf, but he would, on occasion, run All Flesh or D&D. He's not the greatest GM, he has a tendancy towards favoritism (his Gf, and I'll own up to the fact that I've done shit like it too.) and he has a tendancy to rule such that it helps the npcs and hinders the players, or at the very least, helps the npcs and hinders "the weird kids" (myself, and my girlfriends, plus one or two other people I've brought to the game). Lets see... oh, he never believes anyone, like when talking about guns and a young woman who's been shooting since she could hold one contradicts him... Nor will he take my word on how certain things work when I've read those specific rules and he hasn't(although I do have a tendancy to remember things wrong...). There's other stuff, but it'd just be me complaining about perfectly valid decisions he's made.

There's also Don... He wrote a d20 modern game where the party would have been unable to advance if I hadn't been fortuitous enough to write up a character who knew about shadowkind and thought to look for magic afoot...

I have DMPCs.

I just... forget to use them in combat. Mostly b/c I was running the monsters.

Or I use them to tank a monster when there are only 2 PCs that are better damage dealers than soakers.

That or I have them do stuff like "break a magic circle"; while the PCs go and kill monsters.

I really hate having to use my DMPCs alongside the PCs, unless I have 3 or less players and they need extra muscle b/c some PCs should be there, but their players aren't and I don't want to reduce the number of monsters so that the encounters seem less dangerous.

I have a DMPC whose job it is to UMD most of the time. He closed the portal, he held the gate, he purged to tomb, so far. He is a partially earth elemental Spherelock (Warlock that doesn't suck) with intelligent feat selection. However, I promised this campaign to be a "purge the evil" style campaign (undead, demons, devils, primarily), and his "I can do fire damage, hhhrrr" is pretty insignificant. The party considers him to be sub-par, and treats him like an equal to his face, but as a henchmen behind his back.

Now that they are on the fire plane trying to close another portal, he is going to make himself scarce (he cannot damage 90% of monsters, and obscuring mist/web become fairly useless).

"Worst. DMs. Ever?" Me! Me! Pick me!

No wait, that's not true, my players once said they liked me. (Boy did I have some odd players.)

I have no problem throwing an NPC to help "fill out" a party. When the two greatest rangers in the history of D&D, Death and Destruction needed a cleric because the ranger with the hammer of thunderbolts (destruction) didn't have a ring of regeneraion as his companion (death) had with his vorpal sword, the temple of Thor easily sent a cleric known on as the HHHM (Holy Hammer Healing Machine) to assist the holy holder of the holy hammer. (And of course he who heals the holy holder of the holy hammer is likewise highly holy.)

I do have a problem with creating NPC characters who are supposed to steal the show. The whole show is about the PCs! No matter how uber spiff the NPCs are (and I used to run Lankhmar) the goal is to have the PCs shine (but they do have to work for it). Farhrd and the Mouser may be the greatest heroes in Nehwon but it's the PCs who save their fat from the fire or who at the end of the encounter prove their own worth on their own.

On the other hand, I've seen the best abuse from the FPC, the "Former PC," typically a PC from a previous campaign. They either make great BBEG (say whatever happened to that wizard that once traveled with us ... oh yea the last item we asked him to identify was that helm ... never saw him since) or helpful friends who throw plot points around like it was water.

Hmm. I'm probably a pretty bad DM. I have a tendency to underchallenge groups pretty badly. Also, I've been known to fall asleep for half an hour in the middle of DMing. Of course, I do the same when playing. Or reading, working, watching tv... That usually isn't that big a deal when I DM because I demand character-driven plots from the players (if you don't have a significant back story, you simply aren't going to play in a game I run, and you'd be bored if you tried), and they can interact with each other in pursuit of their goals most of the time.

Prak_Anima at [unixtime wrote:1194817392[/unixtime]]

Catharz at [unixtime wrote:1194735563[/unixtime]]If any NPC with a character sheet is by definition a DMPC, then I agree.

When I think of 'necessary hole-filling character', I think of an NPC, hireling, or cohort (played by a DM or PC, with or without a full character sheet). A DMPC is there because the DM wants to have his cake and eat it too.

and what's the problem with that when the DM prefers to be a player and no one else ever dms?

(*raise hand* yes, that's me...)

I've also often DMed when I would rather have been a player. I've even had DMPCs. For me, it was a bad idea.

Basically, I'm in agreement with those who say that nobody played by the DM should be constantly upstaging PCs, or even sharing the spotlight.

Catharz wrote:Basically, I'm in agreement with those who say that nobody played by the DM should be constantly upstaging PCs, or even sharing the spotlight.

Forever and ever. Amen.

Really, that's why I'm leery of DMPCs. It's just too easy and too tempting to make a cool character who'll be a major player... I can understand having one in a skill/story based campaign where you can have someone give the party a nudge when they get stalled, and you have an extra hand when it comes to the fighting. That worked out fairly well when we tried it.

But, to pull another example of Markery out of the air, having your character be some CG houseruled crap called a "Dancer" that can emulate any spell she wants (as near as we could extrapolate from observational evidence) provided she could make a dance check... (And, oh, believe me, she did. Every time) being 'second in command' (meaning she did all the talking) of some guerilla army to restore her to her rightful throne...

And the worst part was she was doing stuff like conducting a band to welcome new recruits and trying to jolly people into wearing black and white IN A [blasphemies] [more blasphemies] [beepity-beep-beepbeep] [complicated and obscene rebus] FOREST!
My character was wearing full plate armor and when he refused to don the colors, 'recruiting officer' gave him a magical paintjob, all shiny and fresh. My guy promptly found a patch of dirt and gravel and rolled around until he'd taken the shine off the armor and turned the white into something...not white.

In retrospect, it's just as good that 'campaign' died after three sessions.