DM Pet Peeves
DrHappyAngry
Member Posts: 1,577
in Off-Topic
Not sure if this makes sense to be here or in the Role Playing board.
What are your pet peeves or annoyances as DM or Storyteller? I'm running a Vampire: Dark Ages game and thankfully everyone's mature enough to not be a munchkin or min/max.
To get the ball rolling mine is splitting up the group. I definitely die a bit each time I hear somebody say "Let's split up." The progression stalls and everything takes twice as long and generally only one of the paths is relevant.
How about when you get that player that just refuses to go a long with the story. They deliberately seem set on breaking things and going off on some random direction. Don't get me wrong, I expect characters to have an agenda, but occasionally you just get someone dead set on sabotaging things and trying to derail the game. Fortunately it's not something I've dealt with since I was a teenager.
So what really cheeses you off when you're group does it?
What are your pet peeves or annoyances as DM or Storyteller? I'm running a Vampire: Dark Ages game and thankfully everyone's mature enough to not be a munchkin or min/max.
To get the ball rolling mine is splitting up the group. I definitely die a bit each time I hear somebody say "Let's split up." The progression stalls and everything takes twice as long and generally only one of the paths is relevant.
How about when you get that player that just refuses to go a long with the story. They deliberately seem set on breaking things and going off on some random direction. Don't get me wrong, I expect characters to have an agenda, but occasionally you just get someone dead set on sabotaging things and trying to derail the game. Fortunately it's not something I've dealt with since I was a teenager.
So what really cheeses you off when you're group does it?
1
Comments
My biggest pet peeve at the moment is that i'm part of a game that is simply too big. I found a friend from work who runs a 5E campaign with over 10 people and so there isn't enough time or consistency to really get the ball rolling. I suppose that's a minor complaint however.
If one person in particular is becoming a problem sometimes i'll just start throwing more obstacles in their way, but nothing unfair. If they are dead set on a particular path against the wishes of the group I could just throw a "we'll split up then, see ya later" at em and continue DM'ing the path the rest want to take.
In general, though, I try to maximize freedom. If they want to burn the village down instead of doing the quest, well i'll just have to roll with it.
One thing I wish for one day is to get a group together knowledgeable about the game enough to really pull off some Planescape or Spelljammer content.
It does mean that when somebody does min/max you can mess with them by throwing social/mental situations at a combat oriented character, which is fun.
luckily with the group i have at the moment in our epic campaign ( which is 4 of all altogether ), its been quite consistent on fridays, and we usually start at 6pm and go until 12am which is a nice play session
but if i try and get a bigger group together, it almost seems to be impossible because everyone has different schedules and it can be such a mess to get a date and time that everyone can do
why can't everyone just be like me and be able to play basically any time pass noon
and perhaps i have another "small" peeve, since its not too much a peeve per se, because im pretty good at ending it, and that is "group A.D.D." where people start going off on random stories and tangents and especially if you have a bigger group and can become even more outrageous
i remember one time there was 6 of us players plus 1 DM and the explanation was; you are in a stone corridor 5 feet wide, 10 feet tall and you see that in 20 or so feet it goes to the left, what do you do?
and literally it took us 45 minutes to decide what to do, and then we turned the corner for nothing to happen, so thats bad, but with smaller groups, its much easier to control that, and plus i dont add to anyone's A.D.D. story, once it's done i basically make it seem like it never happened, and ask what they do next to cut the A.D.D.
Then your players create their characters and call them Bob, Jeff and Terry.
I generally don't have much issue with party splits, partially because my players are wise enough to know that "you NEVER split the party".
I try to be very free and open with my players, finding a way to say yes as often as possible. My biggest pet peeve is when a player decides to act willfully stupid or against their own interest because the player thinks it would be funny. I dont mind people working against their own interest, but it needs to be because it makes sense... not because "I think it's funny".
This isnt a pet peeve, but my other big issue with DMing right now is time constraints. Back in the day (~20 years ago), I'd try to have a game ready every weekend. Now, I'm lucky if I have time to get only ready every 2 weeks, and my players generally cannot sacrifice a day every week or even every two weeks. We end up playing every 3 weeks. It's just soon enough that I can keep things cohesive, but not quite often enough that my players remember all the salient details to the game (Forgetting NPC names, locations, times, etc).
thats the problem you get when you use too many books and allow characters full use of obtuse building, because in 3.5 core, clerics cant use polymorph or permanency for that matter and it even states in the permanency spell that polymorph is not an option ( unless the DM allows, so that one is on you )
hence the reason why i hate all those books, if you want to add more flavor to your campaign to spice it up a bit a good rule is; core books plus 1 maybe 2 more books ( that match the campaign setting ) and thats it, or the rule must be; you must actually possess the book in real life if you want to use the rules from it, instead of all this pdf and dragon lance magazine nonsense to make characters truly OP
for our group of friends this started becoming a problem about 5 or so years ago, where some of my friends would take HOURS to make their level 5 character looking for all the best feats/abilities/classes/races ect to become unstoppable gods of destruction, ( the time they reached level 10 they could kill epic monsters without breaking a sweat ) and then our DM would only use say 5 of the books and when we would start playing there was huge power swings; the players who took hours to make their unstoppable characters were annihilating everything into oblivion without breaking a sweat, while the other half of our group would just use core books and were completely useless
and then the players who had the OP characters would complain that the game was too easy and our DM said; look, it takes you hours to make one character, for me to keep the game fair, it would take me hours to make each creature, hence dungeons would seriously just take months to make, and then the OP players didnt like that and wined some more, so we stopped playing with them
i find it funny really, what is the point of making characters so mind boggling strong that there is almost no point in playing? if you cant possibly lose, why make such characters? or if you are a wad like our other group was, and demand everything be OP and stupid, what is there to be gained? you go from using 3 core rule books to do 10s of damage against enemies who have 100 HP to doing 100s of damage against enemies who have 1000s of HP, its the same result in the end, just with way more tediousness
but luckily for me, some of the players just want to play the game and dont have to use 150 books to play the game, a good DM can easily make any game fun with just the 3 core rule books ( 4 if you include epic like our campaign ) and i have players who have been playing this game for more than 20 years
and especially for epic, the epic world is a much different world as apposed to the non epic, the power scaling increases dramatically for the baddies, but even with the 3 core rule books PCs can still match their power if they dont do silly things
even in my campaign right now, how we did ability scores was the nwn 2 point buy system where if you really wanted you could have two 18s, but in the epic world, that is really going to hurt you hard, and especially when the PCs only had 975000 gold to buy items ( which sounds like a lot, but its not as crazy as it sounds once you finish buying stuff ) you have to be very careful on how you do ability scores
but so far its been pretty good, the characters are all level 23 and there has only been a party wipe once, and the mage died an additional 2 times, which is pretty good for epic level, since the campaign is realistically made for 4 characters and they are only using 3
Fundamentally I don't object to additional supplement material; I do think that they can do a lot in terms of injecting new flavour and inspiration into campaigns. And I do feel bad if I institute a policy of "only *I* can make use of new monsters, spells and magic items from these books. Players Not Allowed!" And likewise, I readily acknowledge that for some players, building uber-powerful characters that are unstoppable beasts of destruction IS part of the fun. Right here on these forums, we have players who like solo runs/challenges, after all. I think it mainly just comes down to a conflict in the type of game people want to play, which is why these days I just do some interviewing beforehand to make sure that any new players are a good fit for the type of campaigns I normally run.
That isn't to say you can't shake things up once in a while, either. Sometimes, it can be fun to roll up epic level characters from scratch and go "OK, let's see if you guys can beat Thor!"
It actually seems a little easier now that we're getting older. A lot of us aren't going out every Saturday night, so we have most Saturdays free to play.
Oh man, I think my number one pet peeve is lying about showing up and ghosting when the time comes, or just dragging out a straight answer if they're coming or not. I won't invite one guy anymore because he keeps saying he'll come, never shows up and then won't answer his phone when we're all "Where are you?" Another guy dragged out giving me a straight answer if he wanted to play for months, which was more annoying because I would have invited someone else he doesn't get along with and could have gotten started a lot earlier.
I think I've done a decent job of not saying no to things with this group. One guy had wanted to know a ton of languages, clan education and status, so I flipped through the Salubri clanbook and was like "Sure you can have that, but it's a 7 point merit." So he had to spend almost half his freebie points on it. I was also open to a lot of the players being lots of different things, but put the stipulation on them it's up to them to come up with a reason (which has to be approved) for why the hell they'd be in the backwater of Lundenwic (London).
Maybe I should do something nastier to the group next time they split up. They had been tracking a priest who had taken a ritual dagger and ring that had been used by a demon worshipper and were trying to retrieve it. One person that snuck into the church found them and retrieved them on her own. The rest of the group was following the priest. I had thought when one of his guards caught one of them tailing him and started questioning him, they'd get the idea and back off, but still kept trying to shadow them. I even ran the scene of sneaking around the church before I switched back to them tailing the priest.
This guy deserves a medal. That is some hilarious game-breaking shenanigans.
If it gets to that level, I can see why you want to put the breaks on it.
However, I am almost positive the permanency spell has strict limitations, and can not be used on a polymorph spell. I'd have to double check though.
in 3rd edition it indeed cannot be used on polymorph, unless there is perhaps some other feat/prestige class of some sort that can make it happen
I will give them credit where credit is due though; they came up with a very novel method of beating Vlaakith (the Lich Queen of the Githyanki), when for once I was playing alongside them as a fellow player. This time around the Cleric was playing a Mage, while my brother was a Monk. Their method for dealing with the immortal Lich Queen? Cast Anti-Magic Sphere on the Monk who proceeded to grapple the Lich Queen. Stripped of all her magical defenses, her pathetic Grapple check could never, ever beat the Monk's, and so we just pinned her and took coup de grace attempts round after round until the DM just threw up his hands in frustration and said "OK, you win." XD
what do you think about extend spell and timestop?
and im talking epic levels here
unless you use OP broken books so you can somehow make it that metamagic spells can somehow cost 0 ( or guess even the greater metamagic rod extend spell i suppose )
what are your feelings about it?
in the epic player's handbook when you look at the transport seed ( which is used to make a "timestop" effect ) they even state that you can't make it happen for more than 5 rounds
while extend spell timestop is just a measly level 10 spell and it can give you the possibility of 10 rounds of free time to dump your entire spell arsenal on said enemy if you can cast multiple ones
although in my campaign we made it so you cannot target creatures during a time stop so my wizard player can't use chain lightning ( since it needs an initial target ) or polar ray ( since it requires an attack roll ) but he can use spells like delayed blast fireball or quicken cones of cold because they are just radius effects
what be your thoughts?
In short, the Mage got the message of "It's a legal tactic, but don't abuse it."
Don't get me wrong, in a video game high level stuff can be loads of fun. The high level stuff in Throne of Bhaal and Hordes of the Underdark was great. But, in a table top game, I just think it gets way too complicated and group stories on a table top seem more personal when at a comprehendable level.
That said, the White Wolf games had ways to deal with the time manipulation powers sort of like how Zaxares mentioned. Vampires would take damage for defying such ingrained laws of physics and Mages took paradox and could face a really nasty backlash for doing stuff like stopping time or trying to change history.
so far its been pretty good, in the party that i am Dming we have a wizard type, a monk type and a cleric type
and luckily the player playing the cleric type has been playing this game for over 20 years and he knows exactly what he is doing, and his play style is very similar to mine, so i dont have to worry about him doing any sneaky tactics
with the monk, its pretty straight forward, sometimes he struggles to hit because epic monsters have ludicrous ACs even at challenge rating 21, but at the same time, his monk is pretty hardy, right now he is level 23 and his AC is close to 60 with all of his saves in the 30s, and so far the only abilities he has really used for his monk class have been abundant step and the "monk lay on hands" ability
and the mage even is pretty straight forward, luckily the only thing saving monsters is that a) the damage cap on the mage spells for the most part is 20d6 ( until he eventually gets enhance spell feat ) b) spell resistance blocks some spells some of the time, and even though its some of the time, it can be the difference of getting at least 1 more turn in, and c) because epic monsters have obscene HD 90+% of the time they will pass their saves, even though this mage has 40 INT and spell focus/greater spell focus evocation, so that works out
and so far, death wise, the mage has died twice while the whole team has been wiped out once, so there is still plenty of scare out there, epic monsters in the epic players hand book are nasty as hell, in hordes of the underdark, those monsters are just basically juiced up versions of normal baddies, but based on the fact that you dont have a full party in HotU that is probably why baddies are much weaker in that game than they would be in a table top session
infact i cant wait for tomorrow, the party might actually make it to the "last boss" of this dungeon and this boss is quite nasty, that will probably be team wipe number 2 for sure on that one, and this boss is only 4 challenge rating higher than the party
I just personally prefer the lower to mid level stuff myself, it feels more relatable for table top. Plus it helps keep all the math and dice rolls easier.
I'm worrying my group my have just fallen apart after only 4 sessions of actual play. One player's Dad's in hospice and getting worse fast and she's in a relationship with another player, so they're both out for the foreseeable future. I still haven't heard back from the other 2 if they want to keep going. Damn, I've been looking forward to the next game, too, since that's where they get to vote which of two very different directions they want the game to go. I've really found myself looking forward to these game nights now that I've been back into running a game again.
This is probably my fault, but I always seem to be off with my pacing. It always seems like it takes at least twice as long to get through content I write than I expect. Even this time around I cut some stuff and tried to tighten things up a bit, but then had to restore some cut content because they picked clans/bloodlines that tied into that cut content nicely. It's always so hard to know how fast people will get through something, will they be diverted by some shiny inconsequential thing? Maybe I should just assume really short sessions and write up some trash encounters to stretch things out if I run out of stuff? I guess technically some of the things I threw at them were trash encounters, but it was just to run them through some easy combat and rolls and get people familiar with the rules.