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Why The Terrible DM Should Just Write A Novel Instead of Running Games
While in college, a couple of years back, I was invited to a D&D 5E game.
It had already been underway for a few sessions and so I was coming in at level 11, mid campaign.
The DM gave me notice that he likes to run fairly high powered games, so to help me "catch
up" he gave me a "budget" of two common, one uncommon, one rare, and one LEGENDARY magic
item with lore flavoring to make it more unique to my character.
I pride myself on running high level games and always enjoy being a player in them.
I have often run gestalt 5E games as a homebrew.
So, excited, I show up with an 11th level Wild Mage.
Who all was at the table doesn't matter a GREAT deal.
It was a larger-ish party but the only person who really affects this story is the GM, and
by relation a rogue who had started out as a regularly attending member but whose schedule
now saw him coming and going as life allowed.
Red flags start to pop up early.
The GM is theatrical.
And not in the good voices, roleplaying theatrical.
He would roll a fistful of d20s and make a show of perusing them, tapping his chin as
if doing some complex math.
And this was from everything ranging from a bar maid's sexuality to whether our wizard
could find components in the city we were in.
I find out in my third session that five sessions back they had all been jumped up 4 levels,
in a single session.
But the catch?
They didn't get to choose in what.
This came up when the party fighter and I talked and he said he was jealous I was such
a high level in a single class and that he had been planning to do the same as a Fighter
before he was "given" four levels in Ranger.
The DM apparently gave out these levels based on how he "felt the characters were progressing."
He at one point tried to talk me into rolling for my character's sexuality on this ridiculous
table he had.
It included things like if you rolled that you were straight; you would then roll to
see if you were hetero-romantic and things like that.
I cut that one off at the pass by just telling him my wild mage was pan.
Plain and simple.
Not a slut by any measure, another thing I had to cut off once or twice was when he would
vaguely try to allude to it by telling me how attractive my character thought everyone
else in the party was.
One of the final red flags came the first session I had with the rogue.
He showed up, we chatted and snacked a bit before session, and he told me the general
idea for how his rogue was justified to come and go, and I thought it was really cool.
Basically he was a tiefling and at one point the party had somehow got themselves in the
Nine Hells.
His character had gotten further lost, captured, and had struck a deal with a mighty powerful
fiend to allow him to return to the surface periodically acting as his messenger.
Three guesses what his "given" levels were in, and your first two don't count.
Part of the deal was a thorned armband that dug into his arm.
It basically let the Fiend know where he was at all times, and could be used to compel
him or call him to the Fiend at any time.
It should be important to note that when dressed, it is hidden under his clothes completely,
something he specifically brought up.
I thought it would be a GREAT source of drama for a Chaotic Good robin hood-type in a mostly-good
party to deal with long-term.
We are spending that session shopping at a one-stop-shop magical shopkeeper.
Another thing the DM did where every major town would have one caster of some sort who
had literally anything we might want short of livestock -- I checked.
The caster suddenly looks at the rogue and asks, "Would you like me to take care of that
for you?"
He is somehow able to sense the thorned armband hidden beneath the rogue’s clothes.
He must have had the Eldritch Invocation "Cus DM said so."
It is revealed to the party now, and the rogue refuses his offer.
The shopkeeper insists.
The rogue refuses, saying he doubts his new Fiend master would appreciate such a blatant
act of rebellion and would likely come for him or kill him.
And yet the shopkeeper insists.
This goes back and forth, multiple times over ten minutes of just these two arguing back
and forth.
I finally butt in, asking if I can make an Arcana check to determine anything overtly
dangerous about its nature besides its more obvious purpose.
Basically to help the Rogue's case that there would likely be more harm than good in removing
it.
The DM specifically says if I roll a natural 20 then I can.
I roll a nat 20.
Plus modifiers, that brings me to 27.
I rolled REALLY well on Intelligence, plus my background proficiency.
Cue grabbing so many d20s that he can't even hold them all in both hands, dead-ass dropping
them in his dice tray behind the screen, and a 30 second spectacle of chin-tapping and
pondering.
No.
I can't discern anything about it.
It's beyond my scope of knowledge.
I remind him that I rolled a nat 20, for which he said would give me something.
Nope.
He insists that I can’t tell it’s anything other than an ornament.
A bit exasperated now, I ask why he even let me roll if there was mechanically no chance
of me making it with a perfect roll.
He ignores the question by turning to one of the other party members who had asked about
some components before the whole incident occurred.
I didn't want to fight with the DM about it and left it be.
A few minutes later he asks the rogue what his passive perception is.
It was something pretty high but I don't recall what.
"Yeah, you don't notice anything."
Later that day, in game, we are bedding down for the evening when the rogue notices that
the armband is missing.
In a panic he rushes to the storekeeper and confronts him.
The storekeeper then informs him that he cast some DM magic to "show that Fiend where it
stands" that removed the arm band.
Essentially stripping the player of a plot device crucial to his schedule allowances
in real life and in spite of both in and out of character that he wanted to keep it.
The rogue, in character, asks if there is any way to get it back to avoid drawing the
ire of the fiend.
All while out of character reminding the DM that this was a plot device they had worked
out together to enable him to stay in the game in spite of his real life scheduling
issues.
Another fistful of d20s are rolled.
Another 30 seconds of pondering.
"No."
And that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
There were enough red flags here that things were starting to look like a parade in the
People's Republic of China.
Partly afraid of just how much more railroady and bad this was going to get as things went
on, and partly afraid of being a personal target of such crappery, I came up with a
reason to avoid much in the way of conflict (we were still good friends away from the
table) and dropped out.
He should really start penning that novel now if he doesn’t want his players to have
any kind of agency in his games.
Have you ever been held prisoner by a tyrant DM?
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