Thursday, February 2, 2012

It puts the D20 in the basket.

Is that thread title a great line or what? "It puts the D20 in the basket" was just too darned good not to put in a blog post. It brings up lots of gaming horrors to me.

1. Oh no the characters we just rolled up are trapped in a dungeon...
This is one of the lamest scenarios to launch a D&D campaign with (beyond a bunch of murder-hobos meeting in bar). Its smacks a true control freak of a DM who just can't even let players start with a decent set of equipment or any choices of note. Worst of all, just how badly are the players going to work at having the characters escape. I know the best way to escape that dungeon...quit playing that campaign.

2. It was all a dream...
What, the past three sessions were all a dream, Lord Dark isn't dead, we don't have the sword of fire and ice? We're all back at the prancing Peryton where we met, bob isn't dead? So thanks mr DM you just told all the players everything they did was meaningless. Why would the players suspend disbelief at any point in the future or bother investing themselves at all? RPGs are already cerebral and things of the imagination.

3. Everyone starts out as a Tarnsman...
Nevermind the Gorean reference (which in itself should be a sure sign to stay away) but it is really annoying to have one of the first choices you get to make for yourself made by the DM at the very start of the campaign. It gets even worse if the arbitrary uniformity of starting character doesn't matter one damned bit. If I'm playing a Tarnsmen I better be riding a damned big bird pretty soon after rolling up a character. I've been in games where we all have to start out as Samurai, Demons or Tarnsmen and then it was pointless to be saddled with this seemingly arbitrary starting type of a character. Removing the ability to make such a significant decision as to what type of character one will start with is a great way to tell people you don't want them playing interesting characters in your campaign.

4. Prequel...
It might as well be a dream sequence, the characters you and everyone else rolled up aren't meant to be the characters play the rest of the campaign with, those characters you just rolled up are doomed to be destroyed or forgotten. You've just been playing a six hour long intro scene...

5. This campaign takes place in 11th Century China...
Or so you were foolishly led to believe. The DM setup the campaign to you weeks before, got you excited. Encouraged you to learn about the era, helped you roll up a character in advance and then decided to scrap that idea on the first night of game play just before you got there. That's a DM telling you to never get invested in a campaign, it's not going to last long enough to matter.

6. This campaign takes place in 11th Century China...
and the DM has decided to remove every possible bit of fun possible. The DM setup the campaign to you weeks before, got you excited. Encouraged you to learn about the era, helped you roll up a character in advance and when yuo got there yuo discovered your character was trapped in a campaign so over designed that nothing you did could matter. You could make choices but all of them involve being a dick and ruining the campaign or having nothing important happen.

7. No your character wouldn't do that, she does this instead...
Sure the red button was an obvious trap, that's why you didn't have your character push it, too bad the DM doesn't respect you enough and decides your character pushes it anyway. the DM is so in love with his creation that he just has to expose it to you at every chance to the point your ability to make decisions for your character will be removed if they don't allow the DM to spring his creations on you.

8. Book 1, Chapter 1...
Your DM is also a frustrated author and want to use you and your fellow players to work out some difficult points in the novel she's been working on for 8 years. The end of the story is already written, there's just a few points in the middle the author...oh, DM needs to work out...
well the DM can work that out on her own.

Those are just a few examples of players being trapped in a campaign and the DM setting the whole thing up for failure. I'm sure many of you gentle readers have experienced some of these situations and others but for some odd reason came back for more, at least for a session or two.

3 comments:

  1. As Master I used:
    - The first point, but not at starting campaign, but after a great battle that goes very bad.
    - A kind of the second point. In a ONE-SHOT session in which they discover their Characters are a part of an alternative reality (like Matrix but fantasy).

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  2. mostly agree, although I don't mind the tried-and-true tavern meetup, especially in games that let people make very disparate characters, like D&D. As DM, I start with a similarly arbitrary starting point (bar, adventurers' guild, road).

    I did play one campaign that ended with 'it was all a dream, the stuff you did in that valley didn't happen, you all froze to death climbing the mountain to get to the valley' and that sucked, but the DM just wanted a clean ending to the campaign. :(

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  3. One of my favorite campaigns I ran years ago had the players all start as jaded young members of the aristocracy. All classes and races were allowed, but all the players started with not only money, but also npc allies in high (and low) places. It made for interesting characters, and removed the need for several intro adventures where the players just try to grub enough gold for equipment. Instead the players were able to start out right away in games of political importance, as well as quests for really obscure treasures. It was fun.

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