Need to vent a second. At my wits end with other DMs

[90sMusic]

I DM games most of the time, usually I run 2 different campaigns at a time weekly, but I also like to play now and then but it seems all the random DMs I find on the internet just have so many problems.

The latest example is a game i've been playing for about 6 months now. The main reason I stick with the game is because I just really enjoy RPing my character and interacting with the other players, but the DM has made a game that is really... Kind of annoying I suppose is a good word for it.

He makes homebrew enemies for us to fight and they are way too powerful. The things we've been fighting since about level 8 have more stats, damage, and hitpoints than the strongest creatures in the monster manual so that is a little absurd. Most of these creatures deal 50-100 damage per attack and often attack 3 times per turn. At level 11 now, my character has 80 hitpoints. The only reason mine has survived this long is because it is a rogue with uncanny dodge and very good stealth. About half the party has died and been replaced a couple of times because everything he puts against us is stated in such an insane way.

But that isn't the worst of it. I have often commented on how I despise DMPCs and won't play in a game with one because they screw up the game every single time. This guy takes it in a slightly different direction which somehow seems almost worse. He has basically populated the world with all of these crazy powerful NPCs, all of them at least level 20 (and yeah, his special snowflake NPCs can go up to level 30) and all have ludicrous amounts of power. His solution to our constantly fighting strong enemies is to "get help" from these other NPCs. So in practice, about 80% of our combat in game is just his level 20+ NPC soloing his level 20+ monsters while the rest of us just sort of tickle it from a distance and try not to die horribly. It seems worse than a standard DMPC because we're having to find these people and convince them to come with us because we literally can't do anything without their help.

I don't know what the guy's problem is, but he has some serious "i want to be the strongest person around" issues. I don't think we have fought ANYTHING that was less than level 20 nor have we interacted with any NPCs that were less than level 20.

I keep bringing up why our little group of weaklings is being tasked to handle all this stuff when literally everyone else in the world is stronger than us but he has still not had an explanation for it other than they are all "busy". We have tried talking to him about it but his ultimate shtick is he doesn't like the idea of an adventuring party being stronger than everyone else.

He treats every character he creates like a pet DMPC and makes them impervious for us to harm them, trick them, steal from them, anything. They all might as well be gods.

Only reason I stick with the game is I enjoy the roleplay between characters, basically everything that happens outside of the DM's control is fun. Then this guy with all of his overpowered, overstated creatures had the audacity to try to tell me he wanted to remove both Expertise and Reliable Talent both because it made my character too hard to deal with. I told him if he started removing my class features straight out of the player's handbook I was going to walk, because that is just too much from this one guy. So he finally backed down about that but then in our very next session I went to pick a lock on a door, rolled a natural 20 and had expertise in thieves' tools and a ioun stone of proficiency so I had somewhere around 35 total on my roll and he said I didn't beat the DC to pick the lock. Would be literally impossible for it to be any higher, even a level 20 character without the proficiency stone would've only had a 37.

We fought a beholder and he was letting it change the direction of it's anti-magic shield BEFORE each player's turn, like a legendary action. He also made his own eye beams unaffected by the field. And in our last session we fought a shadow dragon and it has a trait that gives it disadvantage on attacks when it is in sunlight, so our druid cast the daylight spell to fill the room with sunlight. He argued that it didn't matter because dragons have blindsight so he didn't get disadvantage.

It is so infuriating to deal with this guy but there really aren't any better alternatives around on the internet. Every game I get into as a player has these kinds of issues.

[Koo Rehtorb]

It is an actual curse being an above average GM. It makes it a lot harder to enjoy being a player when other GMs are making dumb mistakes that makes the game worse right in front of you.

[Rerem115]

Huh. And to think that i used to have an issue with Tome of Beasts. I don't have much to say that can help you, though. It seems that the two of you are mutually incompatible, and at least from your description, he isn't likely to change any time soon. I probably would have walked by now, but that choice is your prerogative.

I wouldn't get too down about the future if you do decide to leave; this guy is an anomaly among DMs, and you're almost guaranteed to find a better one if you join a new campaign, especially one with a more experienced DM.

What you're feeling is an accentuation of negative examples; I bet that if you went through your list of all the DMs you've ever had, I'm sure that guys like the one you posted about are outweighed by the good and competent ones.

[JNAProductions]

*Offers hugs*

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty dang subpar DM. I'm lucky that my IRL DM is pretty good. He's got issues and areas he can improve, but I'm having a good time. If you aren't... Then stop playing. No gaming is better than bad gaming.

That being said, try talking to your DM, if you haven't already. Let them know what your issues are, and see if they can adjust. If not, or if you've already talked to them, then best of luck finding a better game!

[Deophaun]

When looking for anything online, you must keep Sturgeon's Law in mind: 90% of everything is crap. To find one passable gaming group out of a random sample, you're going to deal with nine terrible ones. To find a good gaming group, you're going to have to go through a lot more.

Since you did mention random DMs, if you aren't lining up for at least ten times more games than you actually want to play, you're doing it wrong.

[Psyren]

It is so infuriating to deal with this guy but there really aren't any better alternatives around on the internet. Every game I get into as a player has these kinds of issues.

My guess is that you're not trying hard enough if this guy is the best you've found, but even if that's truly the case - as the saying goes, no gaming is better than bad gaming.

[Maelynn]

Ask yourself just one question: is the amount and quality of the roleplaying you do worth all this?

If so, then you'll have to grin and bear it - it doesn't seem like this DM will change his ways any time soon. And if you already tried talking to him, talking more will amount to little.

If not, then give up the roleplaying - don't let the rest become an energy drain that slowly sucks the fun out of it.

[90sMusic]

I'm trying to hold out until I find something better.

Before this, I was in a game that looked very promising. Players will cool, DM seemed good, and he was running 2 groups in the same world and said our actions would influence each other in little ways and we might occasionally have basically a crossover episode with both parties at once to take down a major threat.

My group was new, we'd only played 2 sessions, but the other group had been playing with this guy for the past year so it all seemed stable and reliable. But then poof. The DM just vanished without a single word. He had this google doc with all the world lore and history and stuff and we all would occasionally look at it to reference things or plan, and it was suddenly locked and no one could access it from either group. He also played World of Warcraft with his original, first group and they informed us he removed them all from his friends list. Then when the game day rolled around, of course he wasn't there. We gave him another week to see if he'd come back, but he never did. Dude just cut everyone off without telling a single one of us what happened or why, just bailed on both groups with no explanation. Life is complicated and sometimes stuff happens, but to just sever all ties with everyone without a word and no explanation reeks of childishness to me. Even when my father was dying of cancer and I spent most of each day at his bedside, I still had time to text friends, family, etc to update them and let them know what was going on and let everyone I had previous arrangements with know I couldn't be there for the foreseeable future. But this guy? Basically just tried to delete everyone and walk away.

Before that, had a game with a DM who didn't let players have any agency in their actions. We had to approach every situation in the EXACT way he wanted us to and planned for us to and any attempt to deviate from his plan at all would lead to DM basically changing the laws of the game to make it work. He wanted us to retrieve a crown from a dead king and it was stuck on the guy's head and couldn't pull it off, dispel it, nothing, so we decided to just cut the entire head off at the neck to bring it with us until we could figure something out later but he told us, I kid you not, he told us a magical forcefield appeared around the guy's neck and we couldn't penetrate it. He did countless things like this and just couldn't accept any deviation from his grand plan, he treated the game more like he was writing a book and we were his character pawns he moved around and we had no free will. Another thing he did that I absolutely hated was whenever we suspected one of his characters of doing something suspicious or fishy, he would force us to make an insight check unprompted and then said we failed the check so we trust the guy implicitly. Even when it was leading us into obvious traps, he just forced us to go along with it and said we believed everything this guy was saying. He even did that to us when our players had natural 20s and proficiency in insight, he claimed later when the obvious trap turned out to be a trap, that the guy had also just happened to roll a natural 20 (in secret of course) and had an even higher modifier. No one passed an insight roll in that entire game, thats just some food for thought. He also had 2 DMPCs and both of them were twisted. One actually kidnapped and tortured a member of our party and we knew it, we saw it happen, but because of the way he handled insight and forced us to always fail even when common sense knew better, he forced us to keep working with them. I quit that game after about 8 sessions because I just couldn't handle it anymore.

Then I had a good campaign that lasted over a year, lots of good times, and the DM led us into an impossible situation that we couldn't escape from, he kept sending enemies and bosses at us, and no matter what we did he wouldn't let us rest or sleep. He even straight up told us when we were making plans for ways to get away from all this temporarily to get a night's rest that he, as the DM, was not going to let us rest or recover. So of course we all eventually died in the span of a couple of hours against the impossible situation he put us in. Then he blamed us for being dumb enough to go there in the first place when he practically forced us to go there. It took a couple of days of the entire party of players yelling at him for him to finally admit he killed us all on purpose because we had "become too powerful" so he wanted us to all roll new characters and he was simultaneously introducing dozens of new rules he just made up to further limit and weaken us. No discussion beforehand, no letting us know how he was feeling or talking to us or anything, he just killed our characters and blamed us for it. Everyone left that game, he lost every single player after the whole fiasco.

There was another game, but this was really a player issue than a DM issue for once, except when you consider the DM just not doing anything about it. But basically there was this sorcerer who was one of those edge-lord teenagers and his whole shtick was pretending he was some anime character or something and he would pick fights and get into arguments with other players "in character" but in reality, he was annoying everyone at the table. He kept wanting to attack other members of the party and go into combat against them but the DM kept shooting him down saying they didn't like PVP. So eventually he kept getting in everyone's face, including mine, so much that the next time he asked to duel my character, I told the DM I would do it just to shut him up hopefully. So right before we fought, I stole his arcane focus and he couldn't cast any spells. Now, i've seen some upset players before, but man... This boy raged like a 13 year old playing call of duty because he couldn't do anything but get stabbed. So after I beat him down, he went on alternating between raging and crying to the DM until the DM once again said they don't like PVP and all that so they were just going to retcon the whole encounter so it never happened. Which he seemed to like, and then he started back up with his confrontational attitude again and kept getting in my face in particular, I guess because he wasn't happy my character beat his but he could go on pretending like it never happened. Eventually 3 of the players, including myself, got together to talk to the DM about this guy to say we were all going to walk if that guy wasn't removed from the game because he was driving everyone nuts and we were all sick of it. DM instead decided to just end the game. He told us he was a furry and that psychopath was also a furry and apparently they had to stick together, so he just ended the whole thing to avoid kicking that lunatic out.

The only games i've played that I have actually enjoyed were ran by some of my own players that I DM for when they decided to DM their own games, but those are always shortlived and never long campaigns because some people just like to dabble in DMing and don't want to invest the time or energy into anything longer. Finding DMs online is crazy because places like roll20 they just seem to throw darts at the board to pick their players, seemingly with no rhyme or reason to their choosing methods. I've heard a few admit as much to simply picking at random.

Maybe one day in my lifetime AI will be smart enough to run games. I might actually be able to play as a player then. :)

[Koo Rehtorb]

Serious suggestion. Play games that aren't D&D. They generally have a higher class of player, on average. That's been my experience, at least.

[Chijinda]

Serious question (and if this was mentioned above I'm sorry if I missed it), but have you spoken to the other players regarding this? If everyone is thinking the same thing, and voices their concern at the same time, it may be stronger than one player individually approaching the GM. A reasonable GM will at least take a hint, if his entire group of players is telling him he needs to work on his encounters. And if he doesn't, well, you can always walk and look for a new GM as a group (or one of you could try GMing if one of you feels they have a desire to).

[Cluedrew]

Are any of the players in the games you are GMing for (or the game with the bad GM but good players) that might be interested in running a game? Even if they don't feel quite up to it maybe you could play an advisory role to help them out. I believe what you need to be a good GM is the same as what you need to be a good player, namely, being a good person.

... Err, I see now you have tried that. Well you could cast another net out. Your best bet is talking to other players seeing how they feel about it. If you all feel that it is an issue, then you can bring it up as a group.

Although it probably won't help, maybe just take the fact that you are underpowered and there are stronger people everywhere in stride, "Well a threat appeared, let's go find someone who can handle it." "Hello, sir would you happen to be available to fight off... Oh your busy today? That's fine, if we can't find anybody by tomorrow we'll come back to see if you have more time then." "I mean we could come with you, but honestly there isn't a lot we can do to help now. Unless you like sandwiches, I am good at making sandwiches."

It could help if they are somehow unaware of the problem. But... actually this worse than the one story the GM never clued in on how little gear he was giving the party, but not unreasonably so. So I suppose he could still have not internalized the problem. I will admit I don't think that is it though.

[Darth Ultron]

There are a lot of bad GM and a lot of bad players, and bad people...it is just how life is.

The question is: Is the role play fun worth all the other unfun stuff?

If the answer is no: Find another Game. Online, there is always a game looking for players.

If the answer is yes, then you just need to adjust your game play.

First, you might avoid doing anything except the fun role play parts. Just let the actions and fights slip by. If a fight starts just pick a foe off to the side and just do a standard attack.

Second, you could just make 20 or so characters (Bob I, Bob II, ) and just get the character killed in each fight. And then have the next Bob come over.

Third, Try to avoid fights, like if a monster is up ahead, walk the other way.

Don't think ''all'' GMs are bad. It is true that you won't agree with every single thing a GM thinks, but you can find one you mostly agree with.

[Jay R]

One simple fact that governs my willingness to play such games:

The worst game I've ever played with my friends is better than the best game I've ever played with strangers.

My friends are my friends because we get along, and tend to do things in similar ways (and/or accept each other's ways of doing things). These are qualities that are good to have in a gaming group, and that are missing from the game you are describing.

[Rerem115]

Maybe I've just gotten lucky, but some of my best D&D friends are the ones I met while trying to jump in a random campaign on Roll20. We've been running one campaign or another for almost 2 years now, and get along fantastically. I'd say take the plunge; you can always try again if it doesn't work out.

[Pleh]

With your current campaign, the obvious solution is to leave (and explain to the other players why you're leaving).

But if I were in your shoes and I decided to stay, I'd just drop my expectations through the floor and stop taking the narrative seriously. Play a sound file to the group every time the DM fiats a roll failure and pretend you're Mr Bean.

The only thing you're enjoying is the roleplaying with the party, so stop trying to fight for control of the game and start twirling a handlebar mustache every time the DM sets out a plot hook. Laugh maniacally every time another DMPC deigns to assist you and mutter softly about how, "everything is going as I have foreseen."

This way, you can embellish the roleplaying with friends that you enjoy and don't have to invest emotional energy into the game the DM is railing you into. You also don't have to be so concerned when the DM eventually kills you, because either he'll let you roll another cartoon character or you're out of the game, which was the original best solution anyway, so not much anything has been lost.

I'd stop just short of active trolling or passive aggressive behavior. No need to get toxic about it, just there's nothing to be gained by playing his game, so why not enjoy the farce of it all with the other players? Play into it.

Instead of calling your Troupe, "the Adventurer's Guild," you can call yourselves, "The League of Extraordinary Waterboys."

[bc56]

If the other players feel the same way, you could vote with your feet and one of you run a game more to your liking as a group. That way, you'd have the same group and a similar party dynamic, but no Mary Sues from the DM.

[Velaryon]

The only games i've played that I have actually enjoyed were ran by some of my own players that I DM for when they decided to DM their own games, but those are always shortlived and never long campaigns because some people just like to dabble in DMing and don't want to invest the time or energy into anything longer. Finding DMs online is crazy because places like roll20 they just seem to throw darts at the board to pick their players, seemingly with no rhyme or reason to their choosing methods. I've heard a few admit as much to simply picking at random.

So the only group you've found where you've actually enjoyed being a player and it's lasted is when you hand over the DM reins at your own table. The problem is that none of them wants to DM for very long, right?

What if you tried organizing a game with this group where the DM chair rotates from one week to the next? Everyone gets a character, but when it's their turn to DM the character just kind of moves to the background for that session. That way the burden of DMing is shared out, everyone gets to play more often than they run, and you don't have to subject yourself to crappy games just to get on the other side of the DM screen for once.

[Mr Beer]

So in practice, about 80% of our combat in game is just his level 20+ NPC soloing his level 20+ monsters while the rest of us just sort of tickle it from a distance and try not to die horribly. It seems worse than a standard DMPC because we're having to find these people and convince them to come with us because we literally can't do anything without their help.

This is extremely typical of DMPC wankism. I would just walk now TBH, especially with the conversation about him wanting to nerf your abilities, then backing down and passively-aggressively nerfing them by GM fiat anyway.

But if I were in your shoes and I decided to stay, I'd just drop my expectations through the floor and stop taking the narrative seriously. Play a sound file to the group every time the DM fiats a roll failure and pretend you're Mr Bean.

The only thing you're enjoying is the roleplaying with the party, so stop trying to fight for control of the game and start twirling a handlebar mustache every time the DM sets out a plot hook. Laugh maniacally every time another DMPC deigns to assist you and mutter softly about how, "everything is going as I have foreseen."

I might do something like this, except it would be refusing to engage the hyper-NPCs at all, just going off ourselves to kill the bad guy. When we all die, oh well, just roll up new characters and repeat. Either the DM has to teleport in assistance every time or start toning down the encounters or deal with a TPK every session.

[opaopajr]

What you put up with is what will continue.

Talk or Walk.

I'm sure you can figure it out when the pain is high enough.

Good luck! :smallhugs:

[opaopajr]

One simple fact that governs my willingness to play such games:

The worst game I've ever played with my friends is better than the best game I've ever played with strangers.

My friends are my friends because we get along, and tend to do things in similar ways (and/or accept each other's ways of doing things). These are qualities that are good to have in a gaming group, and that are missing from the game you are describing.

Huh, nope, never personally had that issue. But then I make friends fast, so we don't remain strangers for long (we rapidly become pleasant acquaintences at least, ). And behaving, thinking, etc. in different ways only made the fun more as we tried to sync in ways that stretch us from our typical patterns.

But as long as your crew is happy together! Y'all do you!

[Quertus]

So the only group you've found where you've actually enjoyed being a player and it's lasted is when you hand over the DM reins at your own table. The problem is that none of them wants to DM for very long, right?

What if you tried organizing a game with this group where the DM chair rotates from one week to the next? Everyone gets a character, but when it's their turn to DM the character just kind of moves to the background for that session. That way the burden of DMing is shared out, everyone gets to play more often than they run, and you don't have to subject yourself to crappy games just to get on the other side of the DM screen for once.

Pretty much this. It doesn't have to be just for a session, but rotating the GM after every short adventure could be a very workable solution to the problem, I believe.

[Misereor]

I don't know what the guy's problem is, but he has some serious "i want to be the strongest person around" issues. I don't think we have fought ANYTHING that was less than level 20 nor have we interacted with any NPCs that were less than level 20.

I keep bringing up why our little group of weaklings is being tasked to handle all this stuff when literally everyone else in the world is stronger than us but he has still not had an explanation for it other than they are all "busy". We have tried talking to him about it but his ultimate shtick is he doesn't like the idea of an adventuring party being stronger than everyone else.

He treats every character he creates like a pet DMPC and makes them impervious for us to harm them, trick them, steal from them, anything. They all might as well be gods.

Me and a couple of buddies once met a guy like that, but we turned it around on him, and before we stopped playing, he was actually getting better. Just like your guy, our GM would have us fight stuff that could casually wipe the floor with us, and then make us rely on his DMNPC's to come save the day. He would also DM fiat it, when he would accidentally TPK us.

.."Guess we're all dead."
--"All of you?"
.."Yup."
--"Actually, the ancient dragon misjudged the area of effect of his breath weapon, so you're not actually hit"
.."A thousand year old dragon has so little experience with his breath weapon that it misses it's targets, which merely have to be within a hundred feet cone. That sounds odd?"
--"Err... It has poor depth perception."
.."Oh, I see. Lucky it never met some adventurers who took advantage of that and killed it."

After a few times, we sarcastically started throwing ourselves in the dust and begging for mercy everytime we encountered a new NPC, and then just hid behind the NPC's whenever something happened, refusing to engage in combat or puzzle solving, and showering the NPCs with praise if they asked why we weren't participating in the adventure. If we met hostile NPCs we would just go along with whatever they demanded.

--"Very well, mortals. I shall let you pass the gate, but in return one of you have to give up his soul"
.."Roll for initiative guys!"
--"What? Are you attacking Baba Yaga?"
.."Nah, we just want to see which one of us gets to offer up his soul first!"
--"What? But if you die you can't be raised."
.."No problem. My character doesn't mind. In fact he has no sense of dignity or self preservation."
--"Erm... I also want all your magical weapons!"
.."Here you go. We have some potions too, if you want them! And Brian, give this guy that wand you found."
Then, because he couldn't let us die or his epic campaign would be ruined, we would find even better gear a few minutes later.

We eventually had to stop playing, but before we did, he was actually starting to improve. Somewhere along the line of Monty Pythonesque absurdities we inflicted on him, his ego took a hit when it became clear that we thought his campaign was hilarious for all the reasons he had imagined it being awesome. And to some extent he realized that simply using ultimate power for some mastubatory fantasy wasn't fun, and corrected his behaviour accordingly.

[Cluedrew]

One thing I am pretty sure of, if you want to show the GM the error in their ways, fighting them doesn't work well. Besides natural human defensiveness (not ideal, but I don't know anyone who doesn't get a little defensive) if you are fighting how the game is supposed to go, then that could be the reason it doesn't go well. We know it is almost certainly not, but if they knew that they wouldn't be playing with the epic-NPCs in the first place.

So if you really want to show the GM why this is a bad idea, I think embracing it and just running with the idea in character is your best bet. If the part of the game you are enjoying is the interactions between PCs doing that might not even interfere with the fun bit. Still, I haven't seen that solution tried often to really know for sure. The post above is a hopeful note but it may not work for you. Talk to the other players, see what they think.

The rotating GM idea might be a better way to go.

[ElChad]

One simple fact that governs my willingness to play such games:

The worst game I've ever played with my friends is better than the best game I've ever played with strangers.

My friends are my friends because we get along, and tend to do things in similar ways (and/or accept each other's ways of doing things). These are qualities that are good to have in a gaming group, and that are missing from the game you are describing.

You'd be surprised with what comes with meeting up with a group of strangers. I've been playing with a group since the winter (6 complete strangers, and one person who was, coincidently, a friend of a friend), and we went from complete strangers to friends who chat together every day. The campaigns have been the best I've ever played, our characters are all fantastic, it went from the best game I've played with strangers, to the best game I've played with friends. Heck, the DM's wife brought her friend in to play, and wouldn't you know it, that's how I met my girlfriend.

Not to say you'll always have that luck with a group of strangers (and I've had some rough groups in the past with strangers with real weirdos), but it's good to keep an open mind.

[Arbane]

Most of the best (and worst) advice has already been given. In order:

1: Talk to the other players. Get contact info from the ones you like.
2: Talk to the GM. Tell them why their game is bad. Ask them WHY they're doing this.
3: If they don't improve, LEAVE. Or find some way to have fun in your situation.
4: If you left, try GMing. Maybe something besides D&D? Use the info from step 1 to get players you like.
5: If you stayed, tell us about it - you could be the next Trekkin! (A fate I would not wish on anyone... )

[Velaryon]

4: If you left, try GMing. Maybe something besides D&D? Use the info from step 1 to get players you like.

It sounds like she already does GM - the problem seems to be finding a good table at which to play when 90sMusic needs a break from running the show.

[ChamHasNoRoom]

If you're playing popular games like D&D 5e or Pathfinder, then virtual tabletops like Roll20 have an essentially limitless number of games looking for new guys to join. If you can't get a rotating-GM or similar scheme working, you will most definitely be able to find a reasonably good group online if you're persistent enough.

[CharonsHelper]

Serious suggestion. Play games that aren't D&D. They generally have a higher class of player, on average. That's been my experience, at least.

That doesn't actually surprise me horribly.

Not that there aren't tons of good D&D players, but just that the bad ones tend not to branch out.

Though - I'd guess that WoD is at least as bad as D&D (pure guessing) with fewer power-hungry GMs but way more edgelords.

[Pex]

Classic case of a DM who hates his players. My sympathies.

[Knaight]

Pretty much this. It doesn't have to be just for a session, but rotating the GM after every short adventure could be a very workable solution to the problem, I believe.

You'd think that, but it turns out that actually setting up this sort of structure (in my case the One Shot Club that I administer) doesn't have nearly the effect that it should. The entire point of that structure was to let whoever GM one shots; meanwhile I've run something like 25 since starting it. Everyone else combined has run 1.

Not that there aren't tons of good D&D players, but just that the bad ones tend not to branch out.

Though - I'd guess that WoD is at least as bad as D&D (pure guessing) with fewer power-hungry GMs but way more edgelords.

It absolutely is.