So, my team sits down for our event, DM gets set up, and has NO maps. NONE. We end up using the DM maps from the module, and tiny dice and scraps of paper for minis.
Heres a list of rules/things that DM had NO concept of:
- Initiative. I find it highly unlikely that all monsters in every encounter ended up with the same initiative every time.
- Turn order, saves go at the end of the turn, not the beginning. Even after being corrected on this, she still couldn't figure it out.
- Bloodied. Going by DM's interpretationed, apparently bloodied means they have only a handful of hitpoints left. Basically, they werent bloodied until the turn before they died.
- How to describe a room. We would get a barebones description...then do a full search...and then after the combat that maybe ensued, we would be told of an exit to the room that was in plain sight.
- How to describe a monster. We would be told "oh, you're not sure what it is" We then ask, well whats it look like. Answer: "You're not really sure" A great example of this, a balhannoth was in the second or third encounter. It was described to us as a furry, hairy humanoid. (We didn't find out it was a balhannoth until we talked with a different group afterwords)
- Forced movement. DM would pass on taking any actions for a monster that we had pushed or slid, or anything like that, saying "it was pushed, so it cant do anything" She continued this even AFTER we explained that wasnt true.
In the end, we basically had no idea, what we were fighting, why we were fighting it....or even what the hell happened once the encounter was over, and we were doing a quick review of what just went down.
These arent things that you can excuse and say, "Well its only been out for a few months, so she's not an expert", these are basic tenets of the game. This was the D&D championship. This is unexcusable.
So, after spending the last hour and a half of the round TRYING to get ourselves killed....and failing, we find out that we were advanced to the second round. How this is possible, I have no idea. (As a side note, DM had no idea how many surges or HP we had left, so I have no idea how she was scoring us)
We withdrew from the tournament, as we felt that we had no business being in the next round, since the other tables actually had to fight the monsters using the D&D 4e rules, while we did...umm...I have NO idea what we were playing. We also complained to the head judge, who told us that the other group who had this DM had also complain, and complained about pretty much the exact same things.
Guess what? This DM was DM'ing in the 2nd round and the FINALS as well.
SHAME ON YOU, RPGA. You have NO excuse for this, and those on the forums who would defend this with half assed excuses should be ashamed as well.
1. Table inconsistency. This is the core problem. A standardized format MUST be adhered to from table to table. I was absolutely stunned when I looked around in the Final Round to see that about half of the tables playing had TWO DMs while others had only one. The lack of fairness in this seems so patently obvious I can't believe it was not realized as a bad idea from the start.
2. Miniatures & Maps. This ties into the first point, but bears mentioning on its own. Why didn't these DMs have a kit of some kind that supplied them with everything they needed to run the event? The games being played in the hall were so sloppy and horrible looking I felt like we were back in 1978 when miniatures were a rare commodity and D&D combat was less likely to be represented on a battlemat. Heads up Wizards: you guys actually make miniatures now - why did you not actually USE THEM for the D&D Open? In the final round our DM used a six sided die and a giant stag beetle to represent a pair of giants.
3. Encounter Solutions. This one is a little less obvious, and has more to do with the adventure writing than anything else. Encounters that consist of mechanics that are counter to how the tournament participants understand the game to work are very bad, in my opinion. After all, this is the D&D Open; shouldn't the event reward excellent play and firm understanding of the rules and game mechanics? Rooms that have unclear "infinite spawn" mechanics are entirely counter to how players expect the game to work. It's nice to surprise groups and make them think creatively, but there are very rarely clear goals in any given encounter. This doesn't encourage or reward good play. I spoke with the group that won the Open after it was all over. They were a really nice group of guys and I'm very glad they won it. Their table was near ours and they clearly knew their stuff and worked together well. However, they told me that they "defeated" the first encounter by essentially ignoring the monsters that were attacking them and simply running across the map and out the other side. This, in my opinion, is counter to the spirit of D&D, which is to face and defeat an encounter. Hell, the game designers themselves come right out and say that this new edition is all about killing the big, nasty monsters and takin' their stuff. Running though an encounter should earn no points (or possibly detract points).
4. DM speed. This is a big problem. It really sucks that the best possible combination of players can be brought low by a weak DM. Likewise, a weak DM could also allow an inexperienced or poorly performing group to excel in encounters that they should have failed. In the early rounds, weak DMs are sure to be unavoidable, but the final round only had twelve teams - there is no excuse for the terrible DM that we were seated with. As an example of how bad our group had it in the finals I present to you an UNEXAGGERATED sample of our initiative placement before EACH encounter we entered:
DM: Okay everyone, roll for initiative.
[players roll]
[DM shuffles papers and reads encounter to himself before proceeding]
DM: Okay... did anyone get a 29? How about a 28? ...27? ...26? ...25? ...24?
[perplexed players look at one another]
PLAYER 1: Um... I got a 20.
[DM looks at player 1 blankly before continuing]
DM: 23? ...22? ...21? ...20?
[player 1 raises his hand]
PLAYER 1: Yeah. I got a 20.
DM: You got a 20?
[DM scratches down note that player got a 20 and then shuffles papers]
DM: 19? ...18? ...17?
[player 2 raises his hand]
etc...
I am not lying when I tell you that the group nearest us (the one's that won the whole event) were completely through the first encounter BEFORE our DM had even finished sorting us into initiative order. Essentially, we knew we had no shot at winning in the first 10 minutes of the 4 hour event. It's my guess that we lost approximately 20 minutes of our event to initiative sorting alone.
5. DM Skill & Personality. DMs for the final round of the open should have good personalities and a firm grasp of the rules. They should be capable of describing an encounter and the adversaries the players must face. In the final round, our DM put 10 or so six-sided dice on the table and asked us to roll for initiative. I asked him what the dice represented. His answer? "This is a ship. The deck is very wet. It's stormy. Roll for initiative." As it turns out, the dice represented pirates, I think. One of the dice-pirates was a dice-wizard and one was a leader-dice-pirate-captain. At least, I assume that's what they were, as they were never described in any meaningful way.
6. Reporting Round Winners. This, in my opinion, was perhaps the most unacceptable gaff of the whole D&D open. At 10 pm on Saturday night, I went to the RPGA HQ booth in the RPG Hall and asked them when the finalists for Sunday morning were going to be posted. I was told - point blank - that the postings would probably go up at around 1:30 AM WHEN THE STAFF GOT BACK FROM THE BAR!!! I'm not kidding. That's what I was told. A group of my friends were playing in an event that was scheduled until 2:00 AM so I waited around to see the postings go up. When they never did, I asked again at the booth and was told that I would have to wait until 7:30 AM - A HALF AN HOUR BEFORE THE FINAL ROUND WOULD BE STARTING!!! So, this meant that our whole team had to wake up at 6:00 AM to get our stuff packed up and put into Hotel storage because if we were lucky enough to make it to the final round, we'd be playing during check-out time at 11 AM. I found this to be so deeply inconsiderate to every participant of the D&D Open that I had to come here and write this long-winded smack-down of this EPIC FAILURE of an event. I can't think of any reason why those results weren't posted on Saturday night. This particular issue is what I think the RPGA should be most ashamed of. They should probably apologize and explain the reason for the delay.
I think these are the big issues that need to be addressed before next year. It's sort of a shame that the year 4th edition is released should be run as badly as it was this year.
Please note that this review should in no way reflect on the good or great DMs who volunteered to run the event. The DMs we had in our first two rounds certainly met the criteria as an RPGA judge. Our final round judge had no business behind the screen at an event of this scale.
OK, let me open up with this. I DID volunteer to judge, so don't throw that one back at me.
So, my team sits down for our event, DM gets set up, and has NO maps. NONE. We end up using the DM maps from the module, and tiny dice and scraps of paper for minis.
Heres a list of rules/things that DM had NO concept of:
- Initiative. I find it highly unlikely that all monsters in every encounter ended up with the same initiative every time.
- Turn order, saves go at the end of the turn, not the beginning. Even after being corrected on this, she still couldn't figure it out.
- Bloodied. Going by DM's interpretationed, apparently bloodied means they have only a handful of hitpoints left. Basically, they werent bloodied until the turn before they died.
- How to describe a room. We would get a barebones description...then do a full search...and then after the combat that maybe ensued, we would be told of an exit to the room that was in plain sight.
- How to describe a monster. We would be told "oh, you're not sure what it is" We then ask, well whats it look like. Answer: "You're not really sure" A great example of this, a balhannoth was in the second or third encounter. It was described to us as a furry, hairy humanoid. (We didn't find out it was a balhannoth until we talked with a different group afterwords)
- Forced movement. DM would pass on taking any actions for a monster that we had pushed or slid, or anything like that, saying "it was pushed, so it cant do anything" She continued this even AFTER we explained that wasnt true.
In the end, we basically had no idea, what we were fighting, why we were fighting it....or even what the hell happened once the encounter was over, and we were doing a quick review of what just went down.
These arent things that you can excuse and say, "Well its only been out for a few months, so she's not an expert", these are basic tenets of the game. This was the D&D championship. This is unexcusable.
So, after spending the last hour and a half of the round TRYING to get ourselves killed....and failing, we find out that we were advanced to the second round. How this is possible, I have no idea. (As a side note, DM had no idea how many surges or HP we had left, so I have no idea how she was scoring us)
We withdrew from the tournament, as we felt that we had no business being in the next round, since the other tables actually had to fight the monsters using the D&D 4e rules, while we did...umm...I have NO idea what we were playing. We also complained to the head judge, who told us that the other group who had this DM had also complain, and complained about pretty much the exact same things.
Guess what? This DM was DM'ing in the 2nd round and the FINALS as well.
SHAME ON YOU, RPGA. You have NO excuse for this, and those on the forums who would defend this with half assed excuses should be ashamed as well.
As someone who volunteered in RPGA HQ, I hope you made a full report of your judge issues to HQ (not sure who you mean by "head judge" - that could be your marshall, someone at HQ, or the Senior GM).
The only way we learn about judges who need a quick refresher of the rules, or can weed out "bad" judges (if it comes to that) is if we're made aware of who they are.
On the other hand, if people don't alert the HQ staff to judges who need a little work, the RPGA has no reason to not accept them when they volunteer for the next convention.
While I empathize with you having a bad judge, coming here to complain a week after the fact, and trying to shame the organization as a whole - as if we deliberately set out to assign a bad judge to a table - doesn't make any headway to solving the problem.
As for having/needing excuses, if you did, indeed, volunteer to be a judge, you know full well that we take who we can get unless/until we have a reason not to. WotC/RPGA doesn't have a paid army of judges that are professionally trained, and if nobody has made mention of your judge being a bad judge, the excuse is simply ignorance of the problem.
If you happen to recall who your judge was, I'd recommend getting in touch with either Greg Marks (Championship organizer), Dave Christ (GenCon Senior GM), or Chris Tulach (RPGA content manager, and all-around good guy).
Then I see this same DM running the second and third round of the tournament. And from talking to another group who had her as a DM, if anything was said to her in between rounds, it didn't have any effect.
If I had been a part of the group responsible for assigning these judges, I would be ashamed of myself, no question about it. There are NO EXCUSES for this, so stop trying make any.
This was a pay to play event, in the D&D championship in the year of the launch of their 4th edition of rules, the most advertised, and hyped launch of any RPG anywhere. You'll have to excuse me if I had even moderate expectations of quality. I wasn't going into this with the hopes of playing in the greatest game of D&D ever....just with the assumption that my DM would at least know how to play the frickin game.
2. Miniatures & Maps. This ties into the first point, but bears mentioning on its own. Why didn't these DMs have a kit of some kind that supplied them with everything they needed to run the event? The games being played in the hall were so sloppy and horrible looking I felt like we were back in 1978 when miniatures were a rare commodity and D&D combat was less likely to be represented on a battlemat. Heads up Wizards: you guys actually make miniatures now - why did you not actually USE THEM for the D&D Open? In the final round our DM used a six sided die and a giant stag beetle to represent a pair of giants.
I am rather surprised at this. I have DMed the Open in the past and both times they supplied me with full color battlefield maps and minis. To say the least, I am a little surprised they aren't still doing this with the Championships.
Re: Linus
First thing: The modules from the Championship are available for download/play in local gaming tournaments at this point. If you are a GM and you can sanction events, you can download them and read them. I did.
That's how I found out about...
- Initiative. I find it highly unlikely that all monsters in every encounter ended up with the same initiative every time.
The Championship mods specify that all monsters have an initiative of 11+their init mod. If by "same initiative" you mean "they always went in the same order" that could be (a) the monsters had similar initiative mods or (b) the DM read it wrong and thought it meant that the monsters had an initiative of 11.
Guess what? This DM was DM'ing in the 2nd round and the FINALS as well.
I may be wrong--I don't want to seem sexist--but as we had a female GM and there was only one at the Con that I *saw*, we may have drawn her for the final round. During the final round, she made some slight errors, but nothing so noticable as to draw outright commentary from us that we were *certain* of. On reading the module later, I *believe* she may have run some things counter to tactics, but that's not all that important.
It seemed to me that she knew the 4E rules pretty well (there was one minor question about Opportunity Attacks--she was running them similar to 3.5 ones--but when we looked it up, it got fixed). She was polite and noncommunicative as she had to be throughout. I believe she brushed up on the rules before running the round.
The situation at the Championship was such that I believe they were looking really hard for judges. I don't know if she would've volunteered for this of choice (I can't speak for her). I do know that she was known to one of my players from a Championship several years ago (in 3.5), that he had nothing but praise for her, and that at least one of the other judges was also praising her (and surprised we didn't die, because she tends to be very good tactically with the monsters).
We took third in the Championship. She did score us properly as far as healing surges were concerned.
One thing to keep in mind is that if she had taken the time to deal with all of the "mistakes" made, she would've been stealing time from you. While the organizers could have pulled her, it's also possible they simply did not have enough judges.
Re: Mad Zagyg
I agree with 1 , 2, 4 and 6.
As far as encounter solutions are concerned, I didn't have a problem with the infinite spawn (and you can read about that in the mod to get an idea of how that worked...not quite infinite). The first encounter in the Final round--well, we considered going past it...the GM didn't tell us if it would net us a successful defeat of the encounter (and she shouldn't have)...the module said nothing about moving through the encounter as being a successful defeat. This is sorta a problem because in the semi-final round the module says (in the infinite room encounter) that the PCs should know that their goal is to get the heck out, lest they get caught up in fighting the guards. So...I don't know about this one. I could see, as a judge, treating a run-through either way--and that's a problem.
As for #5, tracking for judge personality is a bit of a difficult criteria to go by. My local judge--who didn't judge the Championship, but was at GenCon and had judged before--is a really cool and nice guy...when he isn't judging. When he is, he is a stickler for rules and keeps things as fair (and is as poker-faced as they come) as they have to be according to (old) RPGA rules. I am looking forward to playing with him in the new 4E system with its relaxed rules on such things! By that token, he would likely fail your "open personality" criteria, even if he is an excellent and fair judge.
It WAS brought up to RPGA, My group went right up to the big table, asked to speak to the guy in charge....he took many notes on our complaints, thanked us for bringing it to his attention, and said that quality experience was their number one concern.
Then I see this same DM running the second and third round of the tournament. And from talking to another group who had her as a DM, if anything was said to her in between rounds, it didn't have any effect.
If I had been a part of the group responsible for assigning these judges, I would be ashamed of myself, no question about it. There are NO EXCUSES for this, so stop trying make any.
This was a pay to play event, in the D&D championship in the year of the launch of their 4th edition of rules, the most advertised, and hyped launch of any RPG anywhere. You'll have to excuse me if I had even moderate expectations of quality. I wasn't going into this with the hopes of playing in the greatest game of D&D ever....just with the assumption that my DM would at least know how to play the frickin game.
Well, if the number of complaints was that high, what will be done will (I'm speculating here, as only Dave C knows for sure) she likely won't be allowed to run the championship again, and possibly may not be allowed to run ANY cons for us (for a limited time? forever? who knows.)
Unfortunately, with the Championship, the scheduling of judges, and the number of judges to use is a fairly small pool. (Many judges who would likely qualify (like myself) simply aren't interested in the added level of difficulty/stress perceived to come along with running the Championship).
I can only assume that she was scheduled early on to run all three "tiers" of the championship and it was too late, at the show, to make changes.
That doesn't make the net result any better for this past GenCon, but it will likely be noted and improved upon for future shows.
The Championship mods specify that all monsters have an initiative of 11+their init mod. If by "same initiative" you mean "they always went in the same order" that could be (a) the monsters had similar initiative mods or (b) the DM read it wrong and thought it meant that the monsters had an initiative of 11.
I Wish it were that. What I am speaking of it pretty much your latter description. Im pretty sure looking back, all monsters went on 11, period, regardless of init modifier.
Did I mention before that a creature we found out later on from another group was a balhannoth, was described to us and behaved like a "Tall furry humanoid"?
I've participated in the D&D Open/Championship for the last 2 years. Both times my team made it to the 2nd round. Both times my team was assigned ******* ****** as a GM. It is no exaggeration that she is the worst DM I've ever seen in the 18 years I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons. The first year I was upset, but assumed she was volunteering because there was a lack of judges. I made no report. Instead, I signed up as a judge at GenCon for the first time, seeing firsthand that there was a need for competent judges. When I saw that my new team had her as a judge this year, I grew despaired, but told myself that the new 4th edition rules were more DM-friendly than the 3.5 rules. Alas, she was even more incompetent this year. What follows is a list of some of her mistakes:
- She refused to draw a map for the first encounter and forced us to draw it instead. She provided inaccurate descriptions which she failed to correct at first. After 30 minutes into the slot, she finally admitted that our crude drawings were inaccurate. She even let a character wonder around an inexistent room for 2 rounds before telling him he was walking around in a wall.
- She failed to provide accurate descriptions of events. What were originally creatures teleporting in later turned out to be creatures stepping through a portal, a mistake which cost the lives of 2 of our PC's. When asked for a clearer description, she responded that it wasn't her job to do so.
- She had little knowledge of the 4th edition rules, such as not knowing how opportunity attacks worked. Even the creatures we were fighting used nothing except the basic attacks since she didn't know how powers worked.
- In a tournament where finishing on time was a factor, she was about as slow as she could be, preventing her players from having any chance of even getting halfway through the adventure.
In a standard RPGA event I would have been disappointed to have her as a DM, but in the D&D Championship? Two years in a row? I will do everything in my power to make sure she never judges an RPGA event again so that others don't have to endure what we did. Don't get me wrong, I love the RPGA and applaud all the hard work they put into it. And I don't blame the RPGA for the occassional bad judge. But if I see the same judge again next year I admit I'll be sorely disappointed that my efforts were in vain.
It really, honestly does no good to post this here.
Seriously.
Talk to the judge coordinators for the con. There's nobody else that can actually do anything about it.
As for why a 'bad' judge keeps getting picked to run events, I would suspect with a 90% probability that it's because despite complaints, they're short on judges. It's either the problem judge or a table gets to not play at all.
And in the stress of trying to get everything running at a massive convention, it's not hard to see why a coordinator might take another chance that the judge in question might have improved since the last time.
-karma