The DM killed it.
Literally.
About an hour into the game, the DM announces in an offhand way (just like he did when mentioning that all the gods were dead, and replaced with one random new one, not ten minutes before this issue) that alignment didn't exist anymore.
Period.
That ment that detect evil ( something that one of the other players was planning on relying heavily on, since the DM constantly uses DMPCs that always betray the party) is neutered.
He said, and I quote; "Everyone is neutral."
"Everyone?" I asked.
"Yup."
"Clerics?"
"Yup."
"Paladins?"
"Don't exist."
"Necromancers?"
"Yup."
"You're kidding."
"Nope."
So, murders? Neutral. Bandits? Neutral. Cannibal ra- errr, Reavers? Oh, if they existed (and I'm sure they would have come up eventually) they would have been VERY neutral.
Sadly, this led to much quoting of Futurama on my part... ( What makes a man turn neutral? Power? Money? Or is he just born with a heart filled with neutrality? )
Needless to say, we blew a good two to three hours, fought two or three combats, LIBERALLY soaked with neutral jokes. ( My favorite was Tanguard, the new Blackguard variant that needed to exist without alignment. )
Sadly, the DM doesn't ever have a clue that the group doesn't like the 'exciting' experiments he comes up with. This is just like the world FILLED with xenophobic people who kill anyone but humans on sight... Oh, except for elves, for some reason... Possibly because the DM had TWO DMPCs that were elves, and the players were forbidden to play that race themselves. Did I mention that he had just okayed a spellscale adept and didn't mention the xenophobia until after the player had walked into town?
Or the time he forced the party to all be commoners. And level up as commoners. Oh yeah, my dream of being a level two commoner has finally come true. Can't wait to PrC into SHOEMAKER!
Most of the time, he outright ignores all the jokes and mockery the players rely on just to get through the session. And as you've noticed by now, it's not exactly SUBTLE mockery either.
So, am I justified in calling this a boneheaded move? Am I allowed to be upset that he pulls this crap, then has a hissyfit if the players mention that they don't like his 'brilliant' ideas?
If so, (in the interests of NOT starting another thread) how do I go about telling him that his DMing privileges have been revoked? Myself, and another player have discussed this at length for the past couple of years. We all usually take turns DMing, and have recently dropped into round-robin style DMing.
Should we, and if so, how do we go about telling him he can play, but he's screwed our night for the last time?
Keeping in mind this guy has an attitude problem. He can dish out the insults, but he can't take even constructive criticism.
Seriously, this is a problem that we want to deal with before he thinks he's gonna get another shot at DMing. I couldn't stand another night of; "Hey guys, I got a brilliant idea."
"What is it?"
"I can't tell you, just tell everyone to get ready to roll up new characters."
"Uh-oh."
Sigh.
Footnote; this guy has yet to play a campaign to an end. ANY end. He's lucky to go two games in a row in the same campaign world. One player brought up the fact that he just wanted a stable world, he didn't care if his characters died a lot, as long as there was some semblance of stability and familiarity.
Well, hope you've stuck around long enough to give me an honest answer, sorry for the dragging on there. I just needed to get a bit off my chest.
I needed it after relying on jokes like 'beige alert' and 'oh no, it's a Tanguard!' for three hours.
... I still think true tan was a funny alignment....
Also, is he the only one that can DM? If his campaigns never go anywhere and you don't like them anyways, why don't you get someone else in the powerchair and let him play as a PC for a while. He might be a bad DM, but a great PC.
Now I know how it can be, when one person is pumped to be DM, but they suck. You don't wanna shoot them down, I get that. I've personally found that the only way is to act let down, because you had a great campaign you wanted to DM. That's all I've ever gotten; either don't play in the game if you won't like it, or tell them that you wanna DM instead. Tell him that he can DM whenever yours is finished. And roll a normal campaign, so he can enjoy it, and take the hint :P
He needs to learn (and perhaps you need to tell him) that if he has a cool idea, you'll try it, but it has to be a real campaign, not just one or two sessions.
This place has seen its fair share of magic-users, so they've built all kinds of powerful magic into the arena itself to challenge even them. How do you like your chances when someone hits the right switch and the arena suddenly takes on the Impeded Magic trait for a magic type you heavily rely on? What'll you do if you if you're flying magically and evading a winged-flying opponent, and find an antimagic pocket? What if before the match, all contenders are subjected to polymorph type magic that temporarily adds a template or even changes their race altogether? Of course, being such a grand and magically enabled place, you can certainly pay to get a Raise Dead, Resurrection, Reincarnate or the like if you get dropped later in the day.
And who's the arena master? The DM with a thousand ideas and no consistency.
There's the word you need.
If his campaigns don't last long then I have to ask why worry about it? Someone else can run a longer game with more purpose then he runs a few sessions of exploration then another long session. This way everybody should be happy. He can always be a back up DM as well for when the main game can't happen. If you really give some of his wacky ideas a try it might be fun. If not then say so out right. He may think you all are joking and having a good time. In stead of realizing your not.
I kind of think perhaps a totally different perspective might be in order here. His campaigns never go anywhere. How about make this one go somewhere. It sounds interesting to me to play in an allignment free world. One day you can ****, pillage, kill and burn a town to the ground. The next day you go one town over and kill the raper, pillager burners and be heroes. OK yeah some things might suck but remeber... YOU ALL may be the reason his games suck because you won't even try things honestly for one session.
Actually, both good or evil people can do that.
Alignment isnt' supposed to be a straightjacket (most people treat it that way though).
I'd perfer a alignment neutral world: At least it is consistent.
Anyway, remind your DM that wanting attention and adoration for your actions is a normal human trait. One can only imagine he's wanting to please and impress everyone with his ideas (and probably a bit defensive after their rejection - I would be). For a person, knowing yourself (specifically your odd little human reasonings and desires) is the key to sane actions (that famous Asian tactician said something along those lines, too, I think -
for the poster who could look that one up for me). Here's the question for the OP, then: Holding that the above is true (I won't hold you responsible for my assumption, of course), what do you think would cause this DM to do this? Be specific; has your group become jaded, previous conversations sparked this idealism, the guy starved for attention, etc.Or the time he forced the party to all be commoners. And level up as commoners. Oh yeah, my dream of being a level two commoner has finally come true. Can't wait to PrC into SHOEMAKER!
This would be really funny if it didn't have the raw taste of reality to it.
I think you just need to be honest with the poor sap. You don't enjoy playing when he is DMing, and that's that. Sounds like he's had ample opportunity to try different things, and you haven't enjoyed *any* of it. So just say no. Someone else will DM, and when sad sack asks when it's going to be his turn to DM again, just be honest and say "never again".
Presumably on the other occasions when he is a player and someone else is DMing, he gets to see what a proper campaign looks like. Maybe after 6 months without DMing at all, you can let him take another shot at it, but under certain conditions.
I've got a similar problem in my gaming group. We're four blokes who ostensibly take turns DMing for a session or 2 or 3. This is in the same world, with the same characters and so on. But one of the lads horribly botched his first shot at DMing, and I'm very hesitant about giving him another go, especially since our group doesn't seem to be able to get together more than about once a month on average.
Best approach is to use liberal applications of brutal honesty.
YMMV, --- Wheldrake
I'm gonna keep that one on standby for anyone who ever thinks that a Paladin can be of any alignment, but I think Beigeguard works better.But seriously. Without knowing too much about you or your group I see a couple different perspectives here. One, is that if the DM is relatively new (and that can mean he's been DMing already for a couple of YEARS) he may just not know any better yet. One of the difficult lessons that many DM's have to learn the hard way is that being the DM doesn't mean that you get to have all the players stroke your fragile ego, or act out just your own personal fantasy and game plots. Don't just make fun of him for it. Bring the game to a halt and calmly - and politely - state to the DM what it is YOU want. Do you really think you're going to get improvement out of him as a DM by teasing, passive-aggressive actions, and outright riducule? If you do you're as big of an ass as he is. Try something like this:
"Look, we are not here to entertain YOU. Fulfilling the imaginary lives of your DMPC's is not what we are here for. Nor are we here to be guinea pigs in your at-whim D&D campaign setting experiments. What we would like, is a relatively "normal" - and most importantly a CONSISTENT game setting. Save the rules experiments for someone else some other time. We are not interested in that, and in any case what you've come up with in that regard to this point is... well let's just say it's not our cup of tea and let it go at that. Let's start over again with a NORMAL game world - and none of this changing reality in the middle of the game like the gods no longer exist. We want to see you lay out the house rules up front. ANY changes you want to make you don't just get to force on us. How about you PROPOSE them to us and WE will decide if it sounds like it'll be fun and interesting to us? Meanwhile we get to finally rely on the fact that our understanding of the gameworld won't change at the start of the next game session because you thought of a whack new way to freak things out. ... Oh and by the way, allow me to extend my apologies for being something of a jerk in my own right. While some of the things you've done as DM have been lame, my response to it was no better. So let's both stop treating each other like footstools."
In my opinion every house rule should be available to the players before character creation. It is OK to run without the alignment system (others do). It is not OK to junk it after the PCs have built their characters. Similarly, common knowledge should be available at character creation time (like rampant xenophobia). I ran a game where the dominant culture had a bounty on orcs and half-orcs. I allowed players to play a half-orc if they wanted to, but I told them about the bounty in advance.
(BTW: the Shoemaker PrC comment is very, very funny.)
You need to tell him that you don’t like this “rules ambush” gaming style. I used to like anachronisms in my game. I had a player tell me that he didn’t like them and so I stopped. Problem solved.
Have you asked him to run a “straight” game, yet (maybe a core-only game)? Have you sent him to the “what is a DM to do” page yet? Ask him to post his revolutionary ideas for review before play-testing them on you. We’ll help if we can. For that matter, has he read this thread yet?
If, after you tell him that you aren’t enjoying this gaming style and you have sent him for advice, he doesn’t make progress, then you have to say, “no.”
I just want to toss a few clarifications on to the pile, as I'm dead dog tired, and I'll get around to thanking everyone on a post by post basis.
First, he let us take the Saint template. It's from BoED for those of you who don't know that right away. That should tell a lot, even if you don't know it offhand.
Second, he allowed VoP, or Vow of Poverty. Nice yes, but what he didn't tell everyone, was that it is a low wealth game. Obviously, this would have been nice to know, as one of my fellow players gave me many a dirty look, as I had suggested a feat or two for him to take that would compliment his character instead of VoP, which he was eyeing.
There was some blame transfer there, as if he assumed that I knew that it was going to be low wealth, and did this just to screw him over. ( In reality, he knew that I didn't know in advance, and was just very mad, and semi-took it out on me. ) As I was innocent, I didn't take it too hard.
Now, as the DM openly encouraged taking Templates and races with LA, alarm bells should have been blaring. Should have.
Finally, we all have ten or so year of gaming under our belts, give or take. ( more take than give, it's probably been closer to twelve. ) He's DMed for at least half of that time. In the last oh, year, he had been abroad ( read; away, not an actual woman, ha ha ha naughty laughter end bracketed comment. ) and only just got back into D&D... And yes, we did mention that we wanted him to try to DM differently. ( Read; consistent like. )
He once mentioned to me that his game mentality as a DM was 'to kill the players'. Sadly, I am not making this up, and I know for sure he wasn't kidding.
In retrospect, it does feel like we're just playing a novel of his, only he's reading it aloud, omits 90% of the details instead reading them in his head, and we're the expendable secondary characters to his protagonists. ( Read; DMPCs. )
In my sleepy, addle-headed state at the moment, the solution seems to be snatching away his DMs license, cutting it up in front of him, and telling he's regulated to PC status until further notice. Not exactly how it will go down, but this is semi-bullet pointed at the moment.
... Knowing my luck, I'll soon be on the 'what's a DM to do?' board at the end of the month, asking for help there, as his PC skills are a close reflection of his DM skills.
But that's another rant. I'm sure you're all dying to hear that one.
But for now, I need some sleep. Again, thank you all for your words, I'll be back to give you all handshakes, and individually numbered cookies. ( Ok, the cookie thing is a lie... Like the cake. )
LAST SECOND ADDITION - He depowered all the gods, destroyed all the plains save the prime material one, and had the gods outright demand the third level party serve them to save the world from the new overgod who apparently nuked Bahamut in one shot (and that Bahamut was double-powered in this world). This included a stalker Corra-elf-goddy-guy-whatshisname, and a Wee Jas dropping a four mile long firewall infront of the party, running from said stalker. Also, to my amazed delight, Kevin Sorbo was playing Hercules, though this sprang from an offhand joke I made, and should not count as more than a half point in the DM's favor.
... Since everyone knows Sorbo-les could save the damn day on his own with one arm tied behind his well-muscled back, dammit.
We started off by being given a lvl 3 restriction that is all. Take anything you'd like. It will be hard so make effective characters he said. (Well, with much more crude language.) So we OKed saint template with him. (Note: he did not mention anything when we decided.) So we have now taken a template that takes away our lvl 3 statis and are now lvl 1 saint (blank, blank)
Still the DM says nothing. Mato decides on a VoP monk. Good choice. I finally decided on a druid thats is going for a exalted ancestral weapon and as such spend my feat related to it. (this requires lots of money....) Still the DM says nothing. Mato then get given a feat to compensate for not getting starting gear which was for me was a scimiter +1, and hide +1. (Note that by obtaining lvl 2 (or fourth Lv. Adj.) I have 5 gold. I had none to start with. Gained no items and Mato has a feat and VoP. With no sign in sight of any improvement of gold, I question the DM on it. I do not believe I got a response. So I am a lvl 1 saint druid that has a sword and hide, but cant use his saint abilities because they are alignment nesessary being chased down by gods with 12 hitpoints. A rather fruity looking god at that. Well not a god anymore just a lvl 40 NPC. that is named corre...La... (not sure how to spell it.) I was also concidering VoP and the DM said NOTHING. I would like to role with it but my PC that I ran by the DM is not really suitable for this campaign.
Mato's is slightly more suitable then mine but has the the same problem that hes lvl1 instead of 3 and the template that we both took is completely useless incomparison to two levels in this particular campaign. I use the term campaign very loosely.
If I don't make it, tell my wife 'hello'
However, in the event you still want to play with him as DM, suggest to him to make the campaign into something like "Stargate" or "Sliders". The party is a group of people who for some reason travel to many different worlds via portals. You could be mercenaries just in it for the treasure. You could be Heroes(tm) in it to Save The Multiverse! You could be members of an organization of some Government or Private Entity acquiring things for defense against enemies or to build Something. Each of these worlds has its own setting and rules such that the DM is free to experiment with many different things, each on their own world. Player characters are the same, but their abilities may be altered to reflect the world upon which they travel.
You get a consistent campaign. He gets to "experiment".