Narrated D&D Story: How the Terrible Dungeon Master Can’t Improv, At All
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- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- I’m sure for every great DM out there, there are 10 bad ones.
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>I have a murder hobo in my group
How can the dm be a hobo when the dm desides almost everything?
Is it a choyse?
@@Ento2012 there was a fire and everyone's house burned down. And all the stuff they need to make a new house became cursed. And all the carpenters died.
@@Ento2012 Not a D&D player yet, but wasn't Gary Gygax the type of person to encourage murder hobo campaigns.
TheTSense can we please somehow hear this story.
@@zacharygadzinski3147
No, not really true. Unless you've heard something about Gary Gygax I haven't
The DM was roleplaying that module like he was in a Telltale game
Naw. Even Telltale let's you make SOME choices. Like 1% of the time
Alguien vivo will remember that
Carley will remember that
Coral will remember that.
Alovatololo 🤣🤣
This guy had been DM for ten years. Sounds like the passion is gone and he just is going through the motions .
antwan1357 at that point the dm May need to step out from running a game and just play in someone else’s game
@@wolfjack5802 good call
He sounded more like a guy going through burnout rather than a total asshole like the people we've heard about in other videos
I agree. Sounds like maybe it was someone else's turn to step up.
Antwan, it does sound like the DM was on auto pilot, yeah, OP said they had been DMing for years, not sure if they took time to be a player to recharge, but when you have a DM that you've played with for years just up and ignore any sort of advice from a friend and player who's trying to help you so its more of a challenge for them the player, yeah one of the others to reply was right, time to let someone else take the reigns for a time.
Wolf Jack yeah but considering how hard it is to find a DM maybe it was the only he felt he could play at all. I remember feeling trap into being a DM too because no one in my group wanted to step up
This dm sounds like the kind of person who would get mad at you for writing a backstory that didn’t 100% fit in with the pre written module he’s following
I mean OP made an edgy generic half angel half demon. Probably wielding a Katana with multiple belts.
@@thezerowulf507 Tell me about it, in this campain (not with the op or that dm) my character was firting with the future Empress of No Japan that appears in that game.
This dm sounds more like he never read or even opened the backstory.
@@kani75 Very true or he is very dense to go free style.
The DM works at the DMV during the week.
It sounds like dm checked out. Maybe he wanted to be a player instead.
We typically do. Always a DM, never a player
It's stories like this that we (at my Table) trade the GM "duties" around from adventure to adventure. It prevents burnout, and builds Player's knowledge of the system... Since we also end up as "Acting GM" sooner or later, we tend to take it a little easier on each other with our antics... since revenge would be so tempting.
AND yes, just for the record, we share in map-making and worldbuilding activities too. It's easier for Players to invest in an immersive experience when they really DO have some power in creating the world they play in. They (admittedly) also notice when I'm up to "the same old GM tricks", too.... BUT at least we get past that awkward "I don't know how to play" stage and right into the meaty parts of RP'ing... a LOT quicker.
It's worth admitting, too... I tend to be more lenient to fellow Players who step up to GM, especially when I know they're relatively inexperienced at the whole GM'ing thing. I think (I like to think) the whole Table is that way... just a bit more forgiving while we break in a new GM to the ropes. ;o)
@@gnarthdarkanen7464 Exactly. But since I am one of the more 'roleplaying' types of players, it would be nice to see some personality to the game other than cliches. But I am likely DMing for quite a few more months now before someone steps up to give it a go, and I am confident my players and I will be accommodating.
Hey maybe the players did not play according to the stats. DM sounds like he burnt out or he was done with this group. Maybe he wanted to be a player. No one will ever know lol
@@ArcaneSorceror I like the social interactions more than crunchy battles, myself... AND it does seem to take a bit of prodding to get some Players to take up the GM screen and try it... It's easy to overthink it.
Cliches happen, from meeting in Taverns to a-hole Paladins and murder-hoboes... It's why they became cliches.
The only "regrettable" part of trading the GM position every adventure is a drop in continuity... BUT the trade-off of keeping GM's in good GM'ing shape and inspired to run the game just can't be beaten.
Our maps get a bit "all over the place" too... BUT I've rather enjoyed that aspect. It's nice just to not be responsible for it all the time. It's fun (for me) to be able to Play, too... as a PC. When I GM, the PC turns into an NPC... and that's good enough.
We even have Table Votes, regarding questionable loot or XP dolling. Generally, a lengthy adventure with lots of enemies, can be unbalancing if a PC stays too long in NPC duties... We try to keep the party within two levels of each other... as a basic rule... but if there's a question about it, we can hold a Vote, and more of us are forgiving about it, because when we take up GM'ing later, we might prefer ourselves to be forgiven... whether it's tailoring a piece of gear to be "found" by a specific PC or accepting the "party shares of XP" when we complete a milestone.
IN any case, best of luck with your ongoing campaign. Hopefully, you'll inspire some Players to step up. I somehow always thought just about everybody who RP'ed also GM'ed from time to time at least... (lolz) Apparently that's more of a "my group thing". ;o)
This is why I have huge respect for DMs that run their own homebrew setting with all original NPCs.
I think its not that difficult to homebrew a own setting . You have almost limitless freedom to make your own world , story , setting and characters that improvising is almost a cakewalk but the preparation part is huge and can leave you overwhelmed by all the information and possible railroading that can take you out of concentration .
Let just say :
Modules: Less freedom in improv , less prep-work .
Homebrew: Huge freedom in improv , huge prep-work.
My first DM is running a creation of his own called Hellforge, steampunk and magic combined with classic DnD fun with built lore on the region. I as a writer am very respectful and as a DM in training grateful to have a friend as cool as the DM (He got me into my second campaign as well, a semihomebrew (I think it is part of a existing world but the location and politics are not) and I got to say it is great fun especially the groups from both.
The only two things a DM needs to figure out are ecology and economy. After that everything else falls into place on it's own. Like tonight's game, new game new characters, new area, new adventure. Only one nilla character, so the players will have to deal with racism and hatred from the general populace if their cover is blown. Mid rp with a suspect, in a magical bar leveling explosion that almost caused a TPK in the first 15 minutes of game play (so the characters have a reason to team up), this Merchant when questioned about any magical "accidents he may have caused..." goes into a ramble about "I told them not to mix potions, says so right on the bottle! I can't be held responsible if his sister turned into a toad... I warned them. No refunds." the players died laughing and it had nothing to do with anything.
@@Snyperwolf91 the hard part of homebrew for me is that i like to flesh out EVERYTHING and often try not to start playing in that setting til i have a good amount ready. I recently took a chance on a setting that i havent done that with, and things are going well so far.
@@dauntlessodin5648 Homebrew got nothing on creating a believable world in your mind, and writing the story of that world without messing up your own rules as you tell it. Well I suppose Homebrew is that but on a even more interactible level depending on your skill, so both are equally hard. As a writer I have great respect for anyone who can do such, Angie Sage and Doug TeNnapel are two major inspirations for me on lore building.
I mean with Doug you really got to give him a hand, he made up a entire universe from the start of time on to the creators of worlds and even gave a Garden of Eden "Temptation" story that was funny as well as places, characters, and so much more. All this told to you only if you read a wall of text, since the only character who talks before the last act is your somewhat unusual guide in Willie Trombone and that is piecemealed to you with the disks. Heheh sorry I just enjoy The Neverhood a lot and found TeNnapel's want to have his universe work as inspiration for my own lore building.
Well him and Angie Sage, I recommend the Septimus Heap series and its follow-ups for a world with Wizards, witches, magic and more that has not a thing in common with Potter besides the number 7 being important you can hardly go wrong.
AS a DM who ran this specific campaign as my FIRST TIME DM'ING, I can say he was half-assing it. While there were some levels of points that can be done for ease, I was more adaptable my first time than this guy sounds to be after running it multiple times.
He sounds like the kind of dm whose too used to the old days of dnd where everyone would shut up and do nothing but raid dungeons and kill monsters
@@gigaswardblade7261 lol right?
On one hand the DM really didn't seem to want to put effort in.
On the other hand this player sounds like he wanted to write the story himself and place his character as 'the chosen one' and inherently more important than everyone else in the party.
"I AM THE CHILD OF GOD AND THE DEVIL AND THE BBEG IS JUST LIKE ME AND I HAVE INFINITE POWAH THROUGH MY EPIC BACKSTORY WHY AREN'T YOU TAKING ENTIRE SESSIONS TO HANDLE MY STORY THAT HAS ONLY TO DO WITH ME? REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Yeah and the going away from faith part was I bit much
DM was approaching it half-heartedly, sure, but that player was setting some expectations that make me think he was seeing Matt Mercer on the other end of that table. When I'm actually rolling my eyes as this player paints out a bunch of backstory he expected the DM to pick up on or integrate there's a problem; and I normally reserve eye-rolling for the cliche tiefling/dragonborn/nothing without a horn, scales, or tail parties, lol.
They played for like 18 months, that's enough time to do something about a player.
As a GM, if I'm left stewing for even a week longer then I want between sessions, I have very crazy ideas of what I want to try.
@@Seth9809 I've crafted intricate assassination plots for players between sessions when I was a PLAYER. (still disappointed that I got a paladin to back off his WORST antics rather than enact his demise) But as a GM you literally have carte blanche to mow down idiots if they get too full of themselves. The GM was a problem EITHER for not roleplaying stuff as the story alleges OR for not protecting the other players from the storyteller.
I would agree except this was apparently not the first time the dm had run this campaign and they had over ten years experience. If those two don't force to to want to change things up maybe you would be better off as a player than a dm.
If you don’t want someone to tell stories in their background, you need to say as much. This DM just approved, and approved, and approved, and never said anything. I say that the player, who believed that his changes were being accepted and that the DM was ready to take them on because he approved them, is not at all in the wrong for expecting the DM to integrate his character and have some kind of storytelling.
@@WannabeWa1fu He basically started writing a backstory to weave into the MAIN BADDY and it was entirely ignored after the DM said "Yeah sure, that's fine".
If this player thought he was dealing with Matt Mercer, he'd also know Matt knows how to say fucking NO. If you approve everything and don't do anything with it, that's entirely your fault. Give me carte blanch to write a lot of backstory for my character and i'll write you a fucking novel. This DM sounds like they can't improvise a kenku. And they just mimic.
I feel it was a bit of both. The DM clearly had no interest in world building and the players had too much expectations of world building. They were not suited for each other at all.
The last time I had a DM like that, everything was "Homebrew" and by that, I mean all parts of the campaign were pieces of plot/setting from media he enjoyed, ripped off wholesale, hodge-podged around a railroad plot, and run into the ground within 5 sessions. Flexibility and improv skills are not an optional skill as a DM. They are an absolute essential, I would say even more than planning ahead in many cases.
i must agree . i made some mistakes on my homebrew campaign and i accidently switched names for a important plot character and i put the boss mage twice as a boss ( which they killed with A TON OF GUNPOWDER while my boss mage is untouchable only against spells and normal weapons while preparing a ritual and my pc's hid behind a rock with a torch of course ) and as a cheap twist at the end which an NPC was disguised as the real boss mage but without his op pendant . But we still had very much fun . ^^
God, i agree. Im to the point where i barely plan anything more than the world my pc's populate, some neat NPCs, and impactful encounters. Everything else, i have an outline for but am prepared to be very flexible. The group i usually draw players from is very cool and we're all good with rp so im super thankful for that, even when someone throws me the bighest of curve balls and im left speechless for a moment.
Also i had a DM who literally inserted a character from a piece of popular media into a regular dnd module for really no reason at all. He also let us use homebrew material which was a huge mistake that led to me trolling him with a broken character that deleted bosses easily. Oops.
I have to admit I've been improving to the point where I'm making up side quests bc I forgot to plan anything for the session. I had to force myself to start planning regularly again due to some awkward pauses while I flip through notes
The DM sucked, but so did the player. "So my aasimar-devil paladin has one angel wing and one demon wing. I dropped my paladin's god at the drop of a hat because it didn't affect my stats (minmaxing over RPing/making sense within the verse), and later on I started adding tons of stuff to my backstory mid-campaign just to give myself several more powerful abilities without actually earning them, and-" If I was in the DM's shoes, I would've checked out in the presence of this munchkin edgelord too. And these are just the things he admitted to and saw no problem with; who knows how much worse this player truly was.
I don't think we listened to the same story... sure the part demon angle is a bit edge lordy, but it sound like he gave reasons and even tried hard to engage the DM in more than Combat.
And as someone who has played that campaign Haunts can die in a fire.
@@Pistonrager "...as someone who has played that campaign Haunts can die in a fire."
Some of them did! :-Þ
I have noticed that in a lot of these "Bad DM stories", the player narrating the whole thing also seems very bad himself.
@usernamedkjah The DM sucked and next to never roleplayed, imo you could make any character you want at that point, if the DM doesn't try to be competent, theres no reason to treat them as such.
I'd like to bring up that a player like that can also be acting out because they're trying to get the DM to do SOMETHING. Also, if the DM is just keeping his head down and allowing the players to do every little thing they can think of, regardless of how metagame-y it is, the player is going to push and push until the DM finally says no. This is more the result of what happens when the DM never says no.
Another possibility is that the players don't feel like they're part of the world. This is something I see more often with DMs who only do modules, since modules rarely engage the players in matters of depth. You need to ask yourself, whether you're a player or a DM, is this character part of this world? Do they have parents, a home, siblings, maybe children of their own? Are they married? Do they have a home? A hometown? Where are they from? How about friends? Do they have a backstory? Is that backstory meaningful? Is it being explored? This DM was actively avoiding world building, so this player didn't seem like they got that connection they so clearly wanted. This is how you wind up with stories like the infamous airship story, where the DM was stunned that his campaign, with an airship full of DMPCs who treated the actual players like slaves and were actively hostile and threatening to kill them hourly, basically had a group of players who were apathetic, at best, and didn't want to save the world, when he actively refused to world build and constantly treated them like garbage. When you don't feel like you're part of the world, like you're not the heroes of the story, you can find yourself not caring at all.
This is problematic, since it rapidly turns a player from a hero to a complete nightmare. If you aren't part of the world, what do you care? Every villain they found simply vanishes without a trace and nobody even considered non-violent action against them, unless the book said so. Their actions were completely meaningless, as said when the party was trying to be diplomatic with evil wizards, who would simply attack them out of the blue, because the book said so. This is a nightmare of the DM's own creation, because he couldn't deviate from the module, even a little. This is what happens when you shackle your players to the plot railroad and they feel like they're only along for the ride, instead of actively steering it. You get resentful players who act out in rebellion.
This is NOT the actions of a DM who knows what they're doing. This is the signs of a DM who has been doing published modules the entire time and his version of 'quality' was to simply read the book to his players and do whatever the module told him to do. Doing modules is fine, but you need to remember one thing; the players drive the story. You may supply them with the general outline, but D&D is, at truth, a collaborative story telling medium. Half the fun is the players writing their own parts. And, sometimes, that means you need to step out of the module to improv a bit.
In one of my most recent campaigns, my character wound up staying in a fairly major city while she worked in the area for the kingdom, so I had her do something fairly simple. She wrote a letter to her family, telling them where she was, the things she'd seen, and the like. And the DM spent extra time between sessions writing replies my character would get back. My character wound up doing a bunch of things that players normally don't do without this connection. She bought gifts to send home, bought stationary to keep sending letters, she'd explore parts of the city, like parks or the like, just to write about the experiences in her letters. She formed relationships with people in the city, which caused me to do things like helping the townsfolk simply because she wanted to. Some quests would be finished up and the reward would be joining Farmer John and his family for dinner, simply because the player values the relationship they formed more than gold pieces. A DM can open up an entire world of possibility if they simply engage a player's desire to be part of the world.
Obviously, this doesn't work all the time. It depends on your players and how much they want to be engaged with the world. If you have a very RP heavy group, like my current group, you're going to want to make them feel like they're not only involved, but they live in this world. If you have a very hack-and-slash group, who just want to do dungeons, quests, get phat loot, then they're not going to care. But the mark of a good DM is being able to recognize these differences and adjust your plans, or a module, to match your group.
Trust me, nothing is more frustrating than when you spend hours upon hours on your character, from backstory to skills to social graces and personality, only to have your DM ignore all that effort just because none of it is written in his precious module.
Dnd isn't the same without good improv ;-; and good rp
Félix Villeneuve amen brother amen
I’m have never played D&D, somebody enlighten me.
I am the exact opposite. I follow no module or book, often have no idea what the party is going to do from game to game. Everyone has a good time, we kill some stuff, rp some stuff, sometimes cry/laugh when an NPC dies and try not to have a tpk. Levels 1-5, I am on the players team. After 5th... good luck. You want to hunt down a dragon? Sounds fun. I leave what I call plot threads around and sometimes they get pulled.... then the real adventure begins.
if you don't do 'real' or 'improvised' story then it's easier to replace you by some D&D DM bot, though I believe noone would use one, because it'd very boring
@@darklusare7582 The biggest problem will be when the DM bot has to understand when you say "my character propositions the cleric who gives us the mission. I am trying to learn her darkest secrets and what she is withholding from us about the evil paladin" bot explodes because it can't explain 'the cleric smiles and shyly explains she is a lesbian. Sorry."
As the author of this story, I've been waiting for this to come out for some time now! Curious to hear if anyone else has stories of their own about this campaign, good and bad alike.
Also, for folks who were interested, the original version of this story (when it was in text) had links for my "5 Tips For Playing Better Paladins", as well as "5 Tips For Playing Better Tieflings and Aasimar". I got a lot of experience over the past few years playing a character who was both of these things, so I figured I'd share what insights I had.
5 Paladin Tips: vocal.media/gamers/5-tips-for-playing-better-paladins
5 Tiefling & Aasimar Tips: vocal.media/gamers/5-tips-for-playing-better-tieflings-and-aasimar
DM for him and show him how it's done.
@@dm4life579 I did offer (one idea being hey, they have a full time job and a busy life, maybe someone else could take over the table and sort of lead by example?). We had 3 other group members DM over the years, each of them laying out a greatest hits track (personal attention to character, sensical modifications of a pre-written game based on party composition and actions, inclusion of deeds and backstory into the narrative, etc.) but it just didn't seem to take.
I don't have any past experiences with this Adventure Path, but I actually know a guy who wants to run it. But sadly this particular DM is rather infamous for running dull and imbalanced games, much like the issues described in this story. I just found it a bit ironic that another group of players elsewhere in the world is likely going to have similar issues to the ones you described come a few weeks from now, in the same adventure path no less.
Man, as a DM I could have had so much fun with that backstory, what a waste
@@theliterarymercenary1699 His heart isn't into it, and let me comment about your backstory I would have instantly made the girl corrupted aasimar a relative or a previous love interest with a sob story to actually guilt you not to murder her or even put your character in great internal strife of some kind with Dark Soul's "Nameless song" running in the background. Some people lack emotional intelligence and that is by far the most important talent a DM should posses. Great backstory wasted on a dull narrative and incompetent skill.
That wasn't half ass, that was quarter assing at best
Try not trying at all. Not a drop of passion in any of the DM's moves the player yes, DM no.
No ass.
two half asses equal a whole ass...or an ass hole
Dm: fear check
pc: bruh i trash my god the culmination of belief and you expect this paladin to fear anything?
Paladin and party enter an antimagic zone. You see a small army of well trained and heavily equipped hobgoblins through the trees. "You hear the whistle of a quarter ton of exploding rocks flying through the air right at you." Fear check for the players. Who cares about the characters?
@@davidbeppler3032 oh right.. players with an s kek
@usernamedkjah edge lord tryhard 20xx
@usernamedkjah kek
The Paladin sounded like an edgelord trying to hijack the campaign for his own would be epic story.
Yeah, this story was boring. Paladin could've just left a long time ago, and put an end to it.
While I agree about the paladin's gushing angst and edgelord qualities, the DM has a responsibility to actually *Run* the campaign instead of telling it like it's written on the back of a cereal box
Not only did he play with the same DM before, but the same path before.
I think the player just tried to provoke any sort of reaction from the DM with that character.
@usernamedkjah that's a fair point.
I have 2 questions:
1) How old the DM was at the time.
2) Were you paying the DM.
Hearing from this the DM didn't have passion for the game.
Taking no initiative or giving 0 imagination to add some flavor to the campaign is the same as memorizing something without understanding it.
Like an exam in litterature where you know a story from a book word by word but didn't care about understanding what it's talking about.
"You get paid?!"
Some dm's do but I hate doing it
@@justachillskeleton7995 yea, I hate money. Just sacrifice me a few virgin "or close to it" sisters or daughters. (Que evil laugh)
@@davidbeppler3032 like it or not he be spitting straight facts
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Hey, can i ask how likely it is for a story to get picked? I have a story about my first D&D group who turned out to very extremely toxic and the whole experience taught me a valuable life lesson. Also, is the website the only place that i can send the story too?
I just have one question: How do we get a story submitted and featured as an animated story on here? I've submitted two, and neither has been mentioned. Tips, suggestions, etc?
@Darien B you can also email it to us
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The DM probably wanted to be a player (I prefer to be a forever DM, it's fun for me)
But can we talk about that PC tho, half Aasimar dragon paladin?
@usernamedkjah I just a ask what is a mary sue, what makes a character like this a "mary sue", sorry he wanted to give a chance for this dm to rp
@usernamedkjah don't need to a jerk, I was just putting my impot, calm down
@@SoulSlugArts input appreciated. Problem with it is that one does never admit they have a mary sue character
@@kendrickrochelanzot2053 we can agree to disagree
@@SoulSlugArts sure. Though I like to see others opinions, because it gives a new perspective
That background is a meme template waiting to happen
No no he’s got a point
Not that it makes the DM good, but the player also sounds like they're the one that makes everything about them with self indulging back story
Tbf they did leave it up to the dm to fill in a good chunk of it to fit the narrative at first. It just never happened that way so they filled it in with what would make them happy.
Yeah their backstory seemed pretty standard to me. He tried to work with the dm to tie him into the story but the DM wouldn't and went through the motions.
Dm: You need to be afraid of the ghosts!
Group: We've killed Gods and Demons! Ghosts are nothing.
THE DM WAS QUARTER ASSING IT AT LEAST
*most*
usernamedkjah eh I guess so
The DM could have been better but this Player seems a bit extra
@Pseudonym naw those are all pretty standard things in Pathfinder. Pathfinder has a ton more variety than 5e. The feat path he is talking about is called Eldritch bloodline. Gives very limited sorcerer abilities and adds a ton of flavor to the character. Most of the things he listed like immunity to fear and the anti fear aura smite evil etc are base paladin abilities in Pathfinder
@@floridamancode_e2673 That's not the problem its all the racial feats that he takes while hand-waving the drawback the guy literally looks like an arch-fiend but only when he want to. Swaped out of paladin while keeping all of the benefits. He uses knowledge from playing the game though the first time to try and make the story about himself and when the DM doesn't bite just sets about forcing it.
I think there’s parties where this player can be good or bad, but I don’t think there’s really any parties where this DM would do well
100% agree, he wanted a super unique character and the story to revolve around him because he already played it, the DM wasn't really having it so the player got butthurt and tried to ruin it for everyone, that's what he meant by 'scorched ground, salt the earth' bullshit
That's what I got from that story. The DM should have stopped when they guy said 'I wanna play this paladin demon, that only looks like a demon when he fights and he has special blood that connects him to Belial, a fucking ARCHDEVIL and he even resembles him'. He should have just seen where it was going and packed up all his shit and left.
Yeah, sounds like a typical Power Player... :/
I do find it very difficult to improvise when running a module or adventure path. It's hard to let myself deviate from what's written in the books. Even though I like adventure paths in general, going forward I plan to stick to primarily custom adventures and campaigns. I also plan to mainly use custom settings, as I discovered running a custom campaign in an established setting requires excessive amounts of knowledge and research on the setting.
Most, if not all official material tells you to pick and chose and steal ideas and change them as needed.
Watch videos by Seth Skorkowski (spelling) and how he reviews classic modules and his recomendations on what to change and why, or what to steal and throw the rest away and so forth.
It help to:
1. Read the module cover to cover but NOT get caught up on stat blocks and so forth. Get the idea of the setting and plot and goals. That is what I mean about read it.
2. Once you uave the story beats and ideas, ask yourself what can be cut or moved or replaced or bypassed.
The adventure and story is what is most important.
My very first adventure (as a DM nonetheless) was the 4e Redbox and magazine extra material. My players went off the rails from the word go... or in D&D's case, the words, "What do you do?"
They were ambushed by goblins onthe road who wanted to steal the quest mcguffin out of the back of the waggon, and the first player in initiative wanted to remove the reigns of the wagon and ride the horse... so I had to crack open the Monster Vault Essentials box and look up rules for a horse. Movement speed and an anaimal handling chexk and blah blah blah and befor you knew it, they prevented the theft and quest to recover the object, forcing me to go off script. It was tough, but I was able to save that material and side quest stuff to get things back on track later without forcing/railroading them.
@Inareth I've actually never played a module more than once, so this sort of thing hasn't been an issue. I suspect I probably would be better at improvising on subsequent repeat playthroughs...
A Good tip when you are running a campaign setting when you have little knowledge about or the players may know more than you is to make a drastic change to the outside world that does not effect the module itself. Example I am Currently running Waterdeep Dragonhiest and Dungeon of the Mad mage. My players know more about forgotten realms than I do. So I move the city to a place in the Birthright campaign setting. Change the names of gods in the module to match and tell players birthright dragons scales change color based on where the lair. taking on the properties of whats around them. It breaks alot of preconceptions the characters would have known about the world gods and monster lore, and puts them back in the DM's control on what information if any players will know about a dragon they meet. And now the players like going outside the city into a completely improv area because they have no idea what to expect
@@AaronFevens And considering this DM was known to have run the module for multiple groups, you'd think he could have found a way to make it more immersive and malleable to RP in.
The player has nothing but complaints to offer and yet played with the terrible DM for a year and a half. I don't buy it. If he is that bad you leave and find a new one or bite the bullet and try yourself. Not once does the player mention specific issues the rest of the party had with this DM only issues he had. His first big issue was at lvl 5 and the next at lvl 11. That is a massive jump in time, the DM must have been doing fine at the least. The more I re-listen to this and pick at it the more it falls apart. It just comes off as a bitter player who didn't become the focal edgelord he wanted to be. I'd like to hear the DM's side of the story, likely shine a whole different light on the situation.
I agree. That's my take as well.
The backstory for the OP was a first red flag. He wanted to have a pre-written module have a special part inside of it specifically for his character. He even metagamed to make this certain character. I get part if where he’s coming from, but he seemed to be the only one having problems with this DM. There’s no mention of the other players
@@MetaGiga he said the DM complained about the entire party being op, not just the OP. Not altering encounters then is just comical.
And he communicated and asked to use his meta info to bind his character to the adventure. DM agreed and refused to use that in any way.
@@erdelf Claiming the DM complained the party was a throw away line, as I had mentioned it is vague and without substance. It could have been just as easily said in good nature due to the party rolling well and not a negative opinion the DM had. And once again it does not mention other players having an issue with the DM.
And while he discussed using meta information it is never stated the DM agreed to bind his character to the adventure. The OP assumed by copying some meta details that the NPC has to react the way he wanted to. Which is a fishy statement when you sit back and think it over. The OP is trying to forcefully insert himself into scenes by using meta knowledge (this is a huge red flag) and is upset when it didn't play out how he thinks it should. That speaks to me as a player who always has to be in the spotlight and is unwilling to share with others which echoes my prior hunch that this isn't a case of a bad DM but an edgelord player not getting his way. Which in turn makes me want to hear the other side of the story before judging if this story actually has some weight.
I suspect the GM didn't have enough energy to even write their own point of view or they are just really really into the setting.
Honestly at that point, why doesn't the DM just read out every line that's in the book, since that's practically what they're doing anyway.
Both parties were at fault. The DM couldn't improvise, relied to much on the module and wasn't a great communicator. The player seemed too...much? It doesn't help that their play styles don't seem compatible. The player was an RPer and needed RP heavy group.
It feels like the player was pushing for the DM to react to anything, to do something different.
Hmm, suspicious. Sounds more like Edgelord player backseat DMing.
@usernamedkjah True, but the DM is supposed to adapt to the players play style. As long as the table reaches that consensus. If the DM straight-up just says no that he needs to find new players, or vice versa.
@usernamedkjah All the while we never hear about the other players' reaction to edge lords shenanigans. I'd like to hear the DMs side of the story.
Exactly!
The player's character sounds way Mary Sue.
That guy sat through this for years? I never would've stayed for even quarter that long if the signs were clear that early.
As a dm I make it my mission to know the pc’s better then the players do. That way it’ll never blindside me, as the character isn’t just a self insert Mary Sue but a role in a story for a party of adventurers
usernamedkjah well that’s part of the job the other part is to respond to your players
I'm going through this AP right now (halfway through book 2) with a DM that as also run this with other players before. The difference between DMs at this point is night and day. We did interrogation and are doing all the haunts. We accidently found the mid book boss and he was torn to shreds. The party is healing but we plan to go back to the manor to finish the haunts and hopefully end them completely. I have to give credit to our DM for making this AP so fun and approachable. I'm really glad to have a group of friends/DMs that are really flexible with story. And I'm excited to see how the rest of this AP falls into place!
Honestly I'm getting some red flags from the narrator, as well. Not nearly as much as the DM. But like... I dunno... still picking up on some.
I only got one at the "wrote a dream sequence " but it was more of a " bruh?" moment then anything else.
I picked up on some of that as well. It could just be the way it was told but it does leave one wondering the other side of the story. There are rare groups that are more about the dungeon crawl and not about the role-playing. If this GM was used to those more rare groups, it would explain some things... Or even if they were one of those people and just somehow didn't get that most people like the role-playing and collaborative storytelling more than dice-rolling. I can see a person who thinks it's all about the dungeon crawl doing all of that.
So it's not just me!
Yeah, i have the feeling he spent a little too much time explaining how awesome was his pc and how deep was his background story
@@Kalakcha ...and had literally nothing good to say about the GM. Not even a blurb about him being a good guy outside of the game or anything. Sure, there were things that didn't work for his kind of GM just as he was not the right kind of player for that GM. ...but I'm left feeling like I did not hear the other side of the issue. It may be that he is spot on and the guy wasn't trying. Maybe. It feels like the confrontations with him outside the game were not really communicating what was intended. Whose fault that is, I can't say without hearing both sides... But that's the point. ...so, no, it wasn't just you.
Yeah hes an edgelord... half angel half demon blah blah blah blah... I wouldn't have allowed it at the first part.
How did these stories devolve from really cool DnD stories where peaple were creative presented great stories in their roleplaying (e.g. the grey necromancer)
to people complaining about others on their game table? This is not what I come here for!
Thanks, I just finished the playlist with all the stories a couple of hours ago.
Sounds like a bad DM and an "optimized" character mary sue-ing it up.
From an OP PC to an incompetent DM, I wonder how the other players felt about this campaign.
Especially the bog-standard angel paladin fallen from their faith shown by half their body getting demonic spikes and claws... bet the dude had a deviant art account with nothing but drawings of variations of this „OC“.
i think the op pc is the real problem as well as a player putting his ego into a character. DM wants players to like him so he feeds them magic items, makes sure they always win, helps them build op characters. So players get bored.. it's an FPS where they have invincible armor and weapons. Adventuring shouldnt be a factory job "go fight next battle you're guaranteed to be able to win fairly easily". If players make stupid decisions the consequences should be severe
You're level 5... the town needs saved from an Ancient red dragon!! What do you do?
You run like hell hoping it doesnt notice you because youre as much meat to it as the townfolk are.
Part of the fun of modules is altering encounters, playing with monster stats, and finding other ways to take players who've run the module by surprise!
if you can't make something up beforehand or in the moment i think you still have much to learn as a DM, and i've only been DMing for a year now. just take my last session:
PLAN:
-party enters town
-one PC might have background interactions or they find an inn
-other PC is confronted by the BBEG at night
-PC loses something dear to them and in told they have limited time to save the town they are in
-party tries to find demons in time
-different challenges of combat depending on if they find the demons in time.
ACTUAL SESSION:
-party enters town
-party goes to the bank (i guess the town has a bank now)
-other PC finds an inn
-one PC has background interaction
-other other PC is being hilariously horny as an old kobold
-other PC finds a bounty
-rest of party (yes they split the party) does some investigating
-one PC has more background interaction
-rest of the party fights homebrew monster
-when party goes to bed other other NPC scrys on BBEG
-most of the party other then other PC is going of to set ambush for BBEG
and i'd think the ability to do this is what makes for an adequate DM.
This is one reason why I never DM pre-written campaigns. Another is that I find players always go completely off the rails anyway, so why not improvise?
Anyway, it reminded me of the last session I DM’ed. The players, all level five, encountered three duregaur, lead by a Githyanki Knight who I’d set up to be a general in the army they didn’t even know they were fighting against. I severely underestimated the party’s capabilities and two turns later, when he was close to zero HP, he ran and plane shifted away so I could use him as a recurring character. He’s going to have a few levels of Battlemaster fighter in his stats next time they meet him.
I noted their prowess and added an additional two merrow to the group they’d be encountering on a boat ride later in the session. This proved to be the more challenging encounter. Eight ogre-mermaids climbed onto the boat. They moved slow out of water, but a boat’s pretty small, and when they actually attacked, they hit hard. The party fell back to the front of the boat, where my son’s cleric of Apollo cast Spiritual Guardians as a protective measure. Except for the ranger, who felt she was safe in the crow’s next. The Merrow swarmed it... and pulled out their harpoon guns. She fled to safety, taking fall damage to do it. But even behind the barrier, the party’s warlock was hit with a harpoon and dropped unconscious. Fortunately the cleric was right beside her and brought her back from the brink. Eventually the Merrow decided the damage they were taking from a party primarily composed of ranged combatants outweighed their chances of killing them, and retreated. But it was close.
I love improvising.
3/10 didn’t tell what the situation was when group disbanded
I am currently playing through RotR as an aasimar cleric who has taken a vow not to kill and always do good. When our party subdued the goblins in the glassworks by combined intimidate and diplimacy check to convince the last 2 goblins the battle was no worth fighting after each of their fellow friends had been decimated within seconds and them being completely unable to hit my cleric. Our DM responded by having the goblins jump into the furnaces, so we couldn't talk to them.
Why would you play a module you’ve already played with a DM you know stocks to the module as much as possible? Also sounds like the PC mains Reaper in Overwatch.
Ha i main reaper and I’m not edgy but then again I dropped over watch a long time ago
There is the complaint that the DM can't improv, yet when the DM kills off the main opponent from the first part they complain that the DM isn't following what happens in the book. Seems to be contradiction...
Yes, the DM was bad, but wow that paladin should never have been allowed to abuse those aasimar abilities, clearly to the player's advantage. Having a steel layer below one's skin and being able to manifest wings whenever desired are abuses that the DM should have never allowed. Trying to pass it off as flavor is another red flag for power gaming as those properties have certain drawbacks that player just nerfed. But then again, the DM isn't very good as the DM had the opportunity to prevent some of this rightfully cited over powered abuses but chose to do nothing.
i'm surprised they played for that long. We always try to adress things relevant for the party members fluff/narative wise, and adjust encounter composition based on previous results. I.E. if the evil bad guy sees you keep going through his minions like a Hollywood main character, he will hire some specialized help, adjust, try to negociate, play dirty etc.
My last DM not only could not improv but when the random treasure charts gave us great items he would physically get upset. As though this is a competition of him vs us.
So we have some awesome items, used a scroll of cloud ship and a scroll of permanancy to make it permanent, acquired not one but six girdles of titan strength through a dumb game of rock-paper-scissors with the DM himself, but when we were so OP he didnt know how to balance the encounters and instead nearly killed us again and again (one time literally called on the presense of a god to save us.) Rather than figuring out how to balance the encounters he then began to try to figure out how to take the items away from us.
I have a story of what made me realise is as playing in the wrong group.
We were playing a Star Wars system. I picked this class called the noble, which to those unfamiliar they basically are intergalactic ambassadors. They get a ton of money and are built for social encounters.
The GM knew this and specifically made the campaign so I was utterly useless by giving us almost not social encounters and by telling me I couldn't do what my class was designed to do because it would break his story.
I grew frustrated and didn't want to play anymore because literally all I was good at was being the party's source of income. It was starting to frustrate the party members because I couldn't really do anything in combat and they would always have to carry me.
The GM would later try and retcon the story so I could be more useful in combat, but at that point everyone was done with the game. We played maybe two more session after that point before giving up entirely.
All I can say about that DM is that the encounter you make is only as exciting as you make it to be.
I don't know what the DM's deal there was. I only ever had my first time actually being a DM, and my second foray into D&D, and I love storytelling. In the span of one year we slayed mindflayers, spiders, cultists, and even a living lighthouse. I was never confident in my writing, but hearing at the end of the campaign that my 4 players, who had all been playing D&D for around 6 years now, absolutely loved my game, it was all worth it. A good DM knows how to build a world just on improv, and that's all I did. I would write a short outline of each session, and bullshit the details; it was always well received. So yes, a good DM roleplays with PCs, and can work a story and world out of little information, but this one seems like a bad seed, like their entire experience was forced.
For anyone who isn't familiar with the rules for Pathfinder let me explain a thing or two.
1) the demon claw thing is not him trying to get extra backstory abilities. It's a feat line called Eldritch heritage. Pretty standard for soemone to take
2) the other abilities he listed were base standard paladin abilities. For a DM of 10 years to not remember that a paladin is immune to fear is like saying he forgets a rogue can sneak attack.
The haunt being so easily to avoided is a shame because it's pretty easily to have a party walk into it without knowing what's about to happen. if you open up a door to a library and you see all the bloody books and the screaming hollow shrieks of an ancient spirit of course you close the door and leave. yet if you are investigating something and you had no idea that where you're standing is an ancient murder scene. Then the dead can reenact it's ancient story of loss. As the shelves become bloody and the whole room becomes the scene of an ancient struggle, you see the spirits descend upon your heads as it becomes apparent that you stand in the exact place where many lives were taken so long ago. You know anything like that. A spirit or a haunt is only active once it realizes that you are trying to solve what it is connected too. It's like a bare trap only it can be in the form of a room in lighthouse or a place with any historical horrific bloody significance.
Had a similar situation at my local game shop playing Adventure League. Long time DM was running a Waterdeep campaign and would just read everything word for word from the book, railroading us around to combat encounters. It was so bad he'd literally just go "You go here, see this person who says xyz and now you can do ABC." No roleplaying in any of his games. I never played with him again.
When my friend ran the same campaign a few months later as her FIRST time DMing it was much more fun.
I am working on and off with Rise of the Runelords. When I found my brother working his way around the haunts because he found it boring I decide I was going to spice things up and then life got in the way. I would have loved these additions.
This inspires me to share the story of one of my failed DMs - if I can put it all into some semblance of something an audience could make sense of.
If you think this one was bad, mine was the drizzling shits
I left a group about 2 months ago due to the DM reflavoring a story line of a homebrew campaign, which was a restructuring of a popular D&D stream story line, that I played a year ago the last time we had played. He said it was 15 years after that campaign yet nothing seemed to have changed. Which was odd. This world was something he took off of another website that he renamed a few things but left it the same. Then because he didn't understand how to deal with things he brought into a world he understood better...yet still failed to structure properly. You could tell when he improved...since it was often because he didn't prep anything. He worked on amazing terrain, but it was specific...which meant we were most definitely going there no matter the "choice" we made. I don't like dungeon crawls or hack & slash style D&D campaigns which is what was happening even though he said it wasn't that way. He still believes the had a plot. I knew it was time to go when I was arguing with him at the table and questioning every hook.
This all said. I don't think he's a bad DM...I think he's just not the DM for me since I was looking for something different. Sad part about this story was it sounded like this DM was bored and they should have sat as a group and as friends to discuss what kind of game everyone was looking for and to see if he even wanted to DM. It sounds like bad players and bad DM all due to boredom and getting too much too fast. Feeling robbed because you aren't interacting isn't on him. Not prepping because you're bored or disinterested is on him. Both failed to figure it out no matter what was said or emailed...because it sounds like just massive amount of criticism without putting yourself in that persons shoes first. The more "horror" stories I hear the more I believe are just BS or people not being mature and talking to see what the actual problem is. If they don't talk with you and ignore you...which is what my DM did to me...then yeah their pride is keeping them from being better and it won't get better so move on.
He was half assing it I'm a new DM and I made my own campaign and as far as player backgrounds go I've been doing my best and I would of loved to work a story off a backstory like that
Where I feel that the DM could have done a much better job improving and including his PC's into the game, I still feel that half of this video is just an edge-lord upset that his DM didn't highlight how edgy he was.
That really does sound like a DM who wanted to be in control and didn't give a shite how their players actually felt. They sounded like they really were half assing it, too.
My biggest flaw as a DM is that I continuously have new ideas and abandon semi completed projects for the new ideas.
This story seems very fishy. Sure maybe the DM could improv a bit more and think outside the box. And not gripe as much about player choices and be more flexible.
But frankly that player was seriously metagaming and trying to be the certain of attention. Sounded like the first time they played the campaign they really enjoyed it and wanted to 'add to the campaign story' the second time around. Not in some minor ways, but in a major center of attention way. In of itself modifying a campaign like that to a degree is fine. But they were seriously metagaming and back seat DMing.
Huge mismatch because it sounded like this DM is more a do it by the book with first timers to this campaign. Maybe the DM likes the story plot as is and that is why they run it as is (though sounds like they could improve a bit).
Seems to me that the player may be the actual villain here.
Me me me me me until the dm thought "F this! If this player whines every time I dont make him the center of attention, im just gonna autopilot this campaign! Atleast he cannot whine about the story not beeing what HE wanted and if we are lucky he will ragequit!"
Listen, if this were a new DM, sure, those are high expectations. For a veteran DM? Naw son, you gotta step it up. Know the players and their PCs. Know the NPCs. Know where they are and what they're doing, and how they'll react if the party shows up to talk to them. If the party is gonna fight an enemy, know what they know and what information might be pulled out of them. And most of all, understand that most of this prep is a waste that will never see the light of day, but you do it because the ONE GUY you forget to give a name and full backstory? He's your party's new best friend EVERY TIME
Wow! I feel a lot better about my DMing skills now.
bruh that character is hella mary sue
It's a paladin fighting against undead and demons, paladins are sort of designed to walk through those types of monsters without a second thought. It's why DMs need to be able to improv and not just go by the module because a player who knows it will just create a character that breaks the game
@usernamedkjah he was a basic assimar paladin fighting a bunch of evil enemies, plus he literally said that he tried to move the encounters away from him just wiping the floor with the enemies every time. He did build an edgy character, but not any edgier than most of the enemies
@usernamedkjah the demon was from feats granting the infernal bloodline. Something pretty much anyone can take.
Remember players, your DM is a person too. Any number of things could be happening away from the table to distract them. In those cases, sometimes a DM can become complacent in their rp. This one might've shown that by leaning into the pre written story just a bit too much, so they wouldn't have to let the other things on their mind show. Or, they may have been trying to keep the campaign on track to make sure time for the sessions wasn't getting crazy. But there's always the chance that yes, this DM just had no heart or imagination beyond what another author already made for them.
so what i m getting is
"my DM was borring so i made an edgelord mary sue character but my DM was still borring."
modern problems require modern solutions
I usually use ghost as a way to tell the past and have found it quite fun to tell a ghost story. But u gotta use haunts with a reason not just to roll saves
I am a DM, and my group encounters a goblin that helps them get money, but the goblin gets most of it (it was a small fortune). I made the goblin a rouge (because it’s a goblin) but we already had a rouge in the group. A changing rouge. So as more and more of the campaign went on, the more and more the changing tried to be the goblin rouge. Oh, and I forgot to say this, they basically kidnapped the goblin into their party. Eventually when it became level three, I secretly made it the arcane trickster, to get something cool out of it. There was a cool scene of the goblin mage hand catching a fragile, important item that was falling. And after that encounter the changing rouge leveled up (they missed a session) and guess what archetype they choose? Arcane trickster. I have more story’s about this changing rouge copycat.
That's not just being bad at improv. I'm a DM who's bad at improv. I pre-write what dialogue & descriptions I can predict, and try to stay descriptive and in first person after that as I go, but I pretty quickly move into 3rd person for dialogue and start providing descriptions devoid of adjectives... That's bad at improv. I try, and I think I'm improving, but I know what I'm bad at... But I can make adjustments to things & tailor my game to the players' characters.
My game is very much about the party. The current BBEG came about due to the paladin's relationship to her deity. In the current adventure of my game (this one's a major story beat, so there's a lot more to it than usual), the party is attacking a temple to that BBEG with some of the allies they've gathered helping in other parts of the building. In the last session one of these allies, the barbarian's half sister, showed up to try to get some of the barbarian's blood from a large pool of it on the floor without anyone noticing. (She wants to repeat the experiment that created her, and has the personality of a contrarian chaotic evil PC who thinks they're chaotic neutral just because they're up front about their intentions, giving the party a bit of a dilemma on how to deal with her when she occasionally shows up.) In the next session, it'll become clear that this temple has a character hostage that's more related to the stories of the druid & the cleric. (Honestly, they have enough clues to know this now, but haven't figured it out yet.) Also, in one of the combats yesterday, I realized how poorly designed an enemy was, and after the session looked for the same flaw in later enemies in this dungeon, and adjusted them accordingly.
So you can be terrible at improv and still customize your game around the party, their story, and their abilities... Just spend a little time on it between sessions.
I have a story for you that was years in the making and quite satisfying by the conclusion. So feel free to condense it if needed, because it may be TLDR worthy. It begins with my first real experience with playing a campaign in DnD back when it was 3.5. I played a little once before on someone else's character, but it consisted of a little RP in a bar. My first REAL campaign was with a DM who I'll simply call "Tom". I was told he was a really good DM and I would have fun. Truth be told, Tom was a really good DM and I did have fun. Despite the fact it seemed like the parties soul purpose was to resurrect the nooby Human Rogue, (My first DnD character) who seemed to die constantly. For example, my very first DnD death. The Party and I show up at the Inn we are staying at and once we open the front door we are welcomed by nothing but blackness. Being the Rogue I felt obligated to scope it out, so I say. "I want to tumble in as far as I can stealthy like and see what I can see." Tom. "Roll a stealth and tumble check." Two rolls and someone dismissing a darkness spell later. I find myself in the midst of 6 figures in robes with all their fingers pointing at me. I don't mean standing around in the room but all perfectly standing around me in a circle. A magic missile from each was enough to kill my character outright. The party mopped up and spent quite a bit to resurrect me. Thanks, party. Or perhaps later after I bought my first expensive magic item (Necklace of Fireballs). Shortly after that purchase we ran into a giant in a field which I used a fireball bead on. It shrugged it off, walked across the field and picked me up. The Giant says. "Oooh, pretty." It grabs the necklace crushing a bead and me along with half the giant is blown to flaming bits. After several game sessions like this I started to notice a pattern to Toms style of DM'ing. Though skillful at setting the scene, being a staunch follower of the rules and always rewarding the Players when they achieve a tough goal. He seemed to have a sadistic undertone which reminds me of your video intros. A devious DM behind the screen enjoying the torment of the party and especially the nooby Rouge. This continued off and on over the course of several years. It also expanded to some of my family and friends joining in on Toms campaigns. It didn't take long for everyone to notice that Tom enjoyed putting us up against challenges that generally resulted in one or more Party members dying. We would be rewarded properly for completing these near impossible challenges, but we also noticed that Tom would enjoy taking awards away from us in some way shape or form as well. For example, we finally earned enough coin to commission a great fortress in the crook of two mountains with space for every party member and their hobbies. Training areas, libraries for study, spaces for crafting and just to make sure it never falls into enemy hands...we rigged the whole place with explosives. Well, we didn't even have time to enjoy it once it was finally completed. Because a vast goblin/orc army decided that they wanted it for themselves. We fought them off as long as we could but eventually we were pushed back into our escape tunnel and had to choose between leaving the fortress to the evil creatures or blow it all up along with them. We blew it all up. I could give many more examples but suffice it to say that we could always count on our sadistic DM taking away any reward given in some creative manner. Tom, for personal reasons ended up disappearing. But the rest of us, loving the game naturally continued to play, having myself and others take turns at the DM controls. We did not have the skill or experience of Tom so the games were lackluster, but we made due. It wasn't till several years later that our friend who first introduced us to Tom informed us he is coming to visit and is preparing to run a campaign for whoever would like to join. The news of this excited us and we (just the Players) got together to discuss Toms upcoming campaign. We mostly talked about how he would just take away any reward he gives us in some way that is only entertaining to himself. We agreed that investing gold into properties was a fools errand and anything that couldn't be used to crush enemies or make ourselves harder to kill wouldn't be useful in Toms campaign. So with all this in mind we met up with Tom, hashed out our characters and started playing. After our first quest and reward we all immediately went to the books for magic items and equipment. We knew that Tom was a stickler for the rules and if the books said it, he would follow it. With that in mind we asked Tom. "How many bags of holding are there in this shop?" Tom: "You only find two type 3 bags of holding, but there are fifteen type 1 bags of holding." Us: "Great, we'll buy them all. Type 3's and 1's." Tom: "Ooooo.k." Another Player ask: "How many black holes are available?" Tom: "Ah, five." Player: "Cool, we'll take them too." By now Tom seems a little confused but allows our odd purchases. We then took a job to rob a bank owned by a corrupt politician. Once inside we accidentally set off a magical alarm that awoke a large golem. One with a CR much higher than our own. I think Tom expected us to run before or after a party member or two died, but instead (as the party previously discussed) one of us moved forward with a bag of holding setting it down in the golems path with the bags opening held open by sticks and facing towards the rest of the party. Once the golem stepped within 10 feet of the bag of holding, our party members with readied range attacks let lose. One shot made it inside along with the black hole rolled up and attached to it. The Bag, the arrow with black hole and most of the golem disappeared in an instant. We not only had our run of the bank but we gained enough XP to level up. After leveling up and receiving our reward we once again went back to the books. Suffice it to say we loaded up on any magical item we could use to crush anything Tom throws at us. But miraculously, there was only two more type 4 bags of holding in the whole city and no more black holes. Oh, well. We had enough to nuke 4 more tough monsters or NPCs Tom might throw at us and we were loaded down with so much more magical items it was easy to vanquish what he threw at us. Confounded by our new strategy, Tom quietly packed up his stuff and left early that night. We celebrated in victory over Tom, the sadistic DM and from that point on Tom only played in campaigns with us as a player. But that is another story. Spoiler, he even tries to mess with the party as a player.
As a DM who prides himself on tailoring campaigns on the fly to make them fun engaging and off the wall for anyone jumping into them either through unique custom built monsters, races, feats, items, or spells with minimal 10 minute preptime before the session and tying in character hooks in a sandbox world that I built in an hour for them to make or ruin at their leisure, this sound abhorrently lazy to me. Now there is the standard I try to set for myself, this can't come close but refusing to modify it improve a module to fit a party that sounds like it's almost custom built to wreck all the checks and DCs in the module is lazy and stupid, being incapable of remembering your party's abilities or starts in any way after a couple years is beyond lazy to not even trying.
You know it's bad when playing a pre-written "choose your adventure" book is a better DM.
Honestly my entire play group is well sessioned GMs. So when a Adventure Path is pulled out we all know is because who ever was supposed to run that night didn't have time to prepare or is just to exhausted to be creative or improve. So its respected so and we just roll with the dice by numbers.
Because of a previous DM I played with I have a strict fade to black rule now
Similar thing happened to me. The dm tried, he really did. But he had some friends playing his homebrew, that he had known for years. So he was overly generous with what he allowed them to do and the gear he would give them. In the end our barbarian damn near solo'd the end boss of his campaign, while the other 4 of us stood back and sighed...yeah....
I have DM like this...eventually he gave up on story entirely and made it a murder hobo campaign
The player who wants to make the entire campaign about his obvious Mary-Sue character and admits to several ham-fisted attempts to do exactly that complains about the GM not giving him what he wanted and calls it failure to improvise. Being an experienced player does not make you special. Seriously players, stop thinking your character should be more special than the rest of the party.
exactly
For all you know, the entire party had as bizarro characters.
Just tossing rocks at the GM to make him or her do SOMETHING, ANYTHING.
So here we got an example of GM vs Players. The GM suppose to make the campainge challenging and rough if needed, but just to make it more epic and exciting for the players. The GM has the job to play with the players to set up an epic and fun interaction of roleplay. The job is not try to kill ur Player in any case to make it look like a hard compainge
Why in every one of these types of "bad D&D experience" stories, the person telling the story never does anything wrong and is consistently a victim for the entirety of the story?
Because we are humans
Wait, the haunts were OBVIOUS? Apart from a brief description of the rooms, none of them were spelt out for the party BEFORE they happened; I was running this game for friends all the way up to book 4 and know. Haunts are simple, like traps. Are players looking? No? Roll initiative and see who goes first. Roll perception to see if they see it happening. If so, let them act (holy water, positive damage to the origin point, etc). Otherwise let it happen and have fun with the chance to explain the horror happening. The "obvious visual parts' are after it triggers once, because they are RP traps, letting players figure out how they manifested and stop them from coming back the next day. Like a poulterguiest room that attacks people centered on a little doll in on the table. Once it triggers and you know what happens, you can realize that there is grave outside with a little girls name. You place the doll on the grave and the Haunt is over forever. Unless the DM goes out of the way over describing, haunts should be a surprising thing that makes players second guess clear rooms and innocent items.
I think that DM was expecting something that he never got. Also it did sound like the narrator tryed to help him out. Ive only ever had one bad DM in my life and that was because he eneded up ripping people off.
To be fair, good DM's have their 'bad campaigns' too. I had an amazing campaign with a DM, but the next one he ran was just calling it in and it was horrible!
i’ve watched so many of your rpg horror videos, this is probably the one that I would least want to be in lol, love the videos! :)
Me, someone who has never played DND or even knows much if anything at all about the game: _keeps watching dnd story videos???_
Hey man, a good story is a good story
Kimo Omik Yeah, I’ve always been a fan of fantasy anyway, so-
It's time to heed it's call. Join us. Also in all's seriousness you can join Adventures Leauge at your local game shop. And don't worry about supply's, most veteran DnD players have enough dice and sheets to supply a small army.
To be fair, the stories that are told from D&D don't realky require you to know about the game. That's one of my favorite things about it, being able to easily share the stories that i had.
CINA give it a shot, the current edition of d&d isn’t really my kind of game, but there are many other options too. Such as pathfinder.
Sounds like the player just wanted to be a marry sue. Not sure why he’d want to play the same campaign over and over again.
Bingo. All the red flags went up when he said half angel half demon.
I don't think so. He did a mighty hero with a backstory and character inspired and fitting with the setting with a good amount of effort to do something interesting for the DM to play and got nothing in return. And we see the story centered on him, but surely the other players had similar stories.
It's worth pointing out that "Sins" were committed on both sides of the GM screen in this one. Obviously if you're going to drop coin on a module, you're probably going to want to play through it more than once... It should be understandable, then that a GM with multiple runs on a Campaign would reskin a few things, and switch stuff around a bit, just to avoid monotony...
However, that does NOT excuse a Player from over-thinking a Character to the degree of this egregious abuse. Granted, if it wasn't going to work well in the Game, the GM should've objected to it in the first place. I recall at least twice the Player narrating specifically discussed his PC choices with the GM in question, offering easy negotiations around it.
I'm not sure it's a straight out case of Mary-Sue PC, here though... It does smack of a higher maintenance Player than I prefer at the Table. AND yes, half angel/half demon is the kind of contrite crap that doesn't need to be whining about a less than creative GM.
Personally, I've even created the adventures and run through them more than once... AND I've NEVER IN HELL gotten the same beats at the same moments in-game. There's always something out of place the second or subsequent terms... Something misses the timing, delivery's off, certain NPC's get killed too early, or not early enough... etc... ;o)
@owlshade This is told from the player's perspective. It's highly likely he/she is exaggerating the DM's ineptitude because the DM wasn't making him the center of attention constantly. Not only did he make the most edgelord backstory imaginable and got mad when the DM didn't incorporate every aspect of it into the game, but he referred to himself as the party leader. Who does that in DnD?
@@exqueue3813 Actually I do declare maself the Leader of the party... when I DM to avoid this kind of acts. (I make an NPC that has the job of allowing the party to not be leader as he is competent in that place, and I also kill him when they finally understand what is the job of the PL so that they also have a grudge against the BBEG)
Hmmm honestly the Dm was half assing it. Not only were they rigidly following the book thing you mentioned but they were bemoaning your party not falling for obvious traps and easily killing most of what they put in front of them. At that point a good or a dm worth his salt would of tried to adjust the encounters and traps to be more effective against the party, plus according to you, NPCs that should of attempted to express their confusion about you or offered hospitality all attacked on sight, that is laziness
One of the best times I had in DND wasn't fighting a dragon, but drinking one under the table. They're called roll playing games for a reason/
That DM was running a game for newbies with a crew of veteran players. Those are 2 very different audiences.
Kinda sounds like a session 0 was missed and player an DM had different expectations for the game. This player sounds edgelord enough though. I would have slapped those divine privileges out of the paladin after the shit he's done to his divine object
Yeah... that DM was about as energetic as a dead snail. Reminds me of kids who try and copy word for word from Wikipedia on a report and are baffled when they get less than stellar grades.
half assing is an understatement.
Dm wasn't half assing it, they were no assing it.
From all the stories I have heard from you watched on other channels and heard from friends irl that was a bad DM or rather a DM who seemed to simply not care for realism, facts or even player enjoyment. Here is a tip for all new and upcoming DM's though maybe obvious for some not always obvious to others you can be the greatest person ever at being a DM (as in remembering lore and rolls a realism and stats etc.) But if it ain't fun for a player who will play your dungeon? Not an expert just my opinion!!
The guy should just be a dm himself.
His oc is kinda cringe tho
@@wilburdemitel8468 oc? What? plz explain. I agree with Ausin, he should just GM and quit complaining about playing with a bad GM. Hell kick the GM out and run the campaign yourself. Just take him aside and explain, "Dude, it's not us, it's you. We no longer require your services. We are going in a different direction. Your position has been downsized. Please hand over your dice and DM screen and go."
@@davidbeppler3032 the guy had a mary sue oc and complains that the DM isn't taking his dumb directions. The whole story stinked of "waaah the story won't revolve around my character waaah".
@@wilburdemitel8468 without knowing your shorthand I will just say you are wrong. Even though I essentially agree with you.
Sounds like a lot of OPs problems came from metagaming. Sounds like the DM was a decent enough DM but just doesnt care for being very rp-heavy. Which is totally fine. I think maybe this group just wasnt right for him
I think this player wanted the DM to read his mind, and got mad when he didn't. The player might have something in mind for his character, but the DM is busy running the encounter and the mobs. I think the DM's only mistake was getting upset about the characters not continually walking into haunts. Once the party falls into one pit, it becomes normal procedure to prod the floor and they will never fall into another pit.
Right All my clever remarks will go to the live chat YIRBEL LIVES!