One thing that got really annoying for me was that my GM made you throw your weapon at a roll of 1. This game ran for over a year with this. I was the only melee character in a party that consisted of a shield fighter (me), 2 druids, a rogue/sorcerer/arcane trickster, a witch, and a wizard. When we eventually got to higher levels (11-20) and me having around 5 attacks, then I found that I can go barely 2 straight rounds without rolling at a 1. I would throw my weapon (wasting that round), move to pick up my weapon the next round (also wasting that round), and then having possibly run back and attack with only one attack (not making much use of that round.)It got to the point that I had to complain several times to my GM that this was no fun at all, and it even got to the point where I had to get several people to side with me on this to have it changed. I didn't want to be the type to complain, but it got too frustrating to the point where the game was losing some of its fun for me.
Anybody got things like this to share? I still have more to share like this in the future.
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Personally, I don't find complaining on a public messageboard about someone who has taken the time and effort to come up with a campaign and run it for me a valuable use for my time.
If I had a DM that did something that bothered me that much, I would just quit playing in his game and find another DM. If you can't appreciate what your DM puts into your gaming experience (compared to the time and effort you as a player put in) enough to overlook the things you don't agree with, then I suggest you find another DM to play with. Or run a game yourself.
What you're trying to do here just spreads negativity.
Or he is trying to advise other GMs about things that drove him crazy, thus ruining his gaming experience.
Sort of a don't do this thread.
I once had a GM that would make us roll to search for every surface of every 5' square. One time we were convinced that there had to be a secret door in this large cave (everyone knows, trolls don't teleport). He made each of roll the d20 over 300 times and tell him the total score every single time.
Every other GM I've known would have had us roll a couple of times then said, "ok you blew through the afternoon and found nothing."
He was actually angy when the group pooled funds to by 3 wands of detect secret doors.
Meatgrinders are never fun.
The DM of one campaign I'm in has unquestionably mentioned that he plans to kill us as many times as possible come 5th level (we're at 4th right now), and we've already had one character die. Bonus points for the fact that he charges the group money every time a player dies for his 20th-level Wizard NPC to come and resurrect people (via some weird magic items that I've never heard of, possibly homebrew).
I stay in the campaign because a number of my friends are in the campaign as well and I'm one of the few melee people in the group and probably the only viable tank...
[EDIT] I suppose I should correct myself. Meatgrinders are fun for the people who like the concept of a game so horribly hard that you will die and frequently due to the challenge. For casual players like myself and my friends, it's not fun.
Our party once had to start the game in a midden.
Oh, wait, I was the GM for that one. >:D
I had a 3.5 DM that would decide when my barbarian was mad enough to rage or not. There were often key battles where he didn't rage, or roleplaying scenes where he would with no combat. It lasted about 6 months this way before I was able to get him to relinquish control of my rages... Quite frustrating!
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GM had us start a campaign in the woods. We went to sleep for the night. Woke up in a cave with some other people. Turns out we were captured by Goblins and now all our gear was gone. We break out of a barricade and have nothing to fight the goblins with but a board with a nail in it. GM kept throwing Goblins at us until we were overwhelmed then had an NPC come save us.
Personally, my DM always tries to intorduce fortune cards into the game as a chance to increase roleplaying opportunities. However, some of them tended to be more than a little confusing. ESPECIALLY with the fact that when you have an 8 person group where everyone gets 2 it can turn combat into a mosh pit rather quickly with everyone throwing down what they have.
Having allies turn to enemies, enemies turn to allies, factions that where once stalwarts suddenly fall into a brawl, turrain changing on a whim all on a free action and twice on each players turn...it was more than a little irritating...
Personally, I don't find complaining on a public messageboard about someone who has taken the time and effort to come up with a campaign and run it for me a valuable use for my time.
If I had a DM that did something that bothered me that much, I would just quit playing in his game and find another DM. If you can't appreciate what your DM puts into your gaming experience (compared to the time and effort you as a player put in) enough to overlook the things you don't agree with, then I suggest you find another DM to play with. Or run a game yourself.
What you're trying to do here just spreads negativity.
Maybe I made it sound like I had no fun with the game at all, or I was being a pansy and whining to my GM all the time. The game was being played by a group of friends, and the GM was also a good friend of mine. I was civil about it and pretty much saying "hey, great game, but this thing that you're doing in it just isn't working." I appreciated the game enough that I didn't want it to be hindered all of the time because of some random thing he felt like putting in, instead of just throwing my hands in the air and giving up. I don't see what can be beneficial by putting in rules to a game that pretty much kills the next 1-2 rounds for a martial character by rolling a 1. I enjoyed the game very much, tossing my weapons like I had constant butter fingers wasn't.
One thing that got really annoying for me was that my GM made you throw your weapon at a roll of 1. This game ran for over a year with this. I was the only melee character in a party that consisted of a shield fighter (me), 2 druids, a rogue/sorcerer/arcane trickster, a witch, and a wizard. When we eventually got to higher levels (11-20) and me having around 5 attacks, then I found that I can go barely 2 straight rounds without rolling at a 1. I would throw my weapon (wasting that round), move to pick up my weapon the next round (also wasting that round), and then having possibly run back and attack with only one attack (not making much use of that round.)It got to the point that I had to complain several times to my GM that this was no fun at all, and it even got to the point where I had to get several people to side with me on this to have it changed. I didn't want to be the type to complain, but it got too frustrating to the point where the game was losing some of its fun for me.
Anybody got things like this to share? I still have more to share like this in the future.
Did you offer alternatives? Because I sort of agree with both you and your GM.
If a 20 means you get a chance for a crit then I think a case can be made for a 1 being a fumble. Maybe have to roll to confirm a fumble or something similar? A fumble coudl be a drop or the weapon turns oddly in your hand and you hurt yourself, etc,
BUT I also agree that a bad attack roll on one round shouldn't lead to having to chase your weapons around every single time.
I don't have all the books but are there rules for fumbles and failures other than a natural 1 always fails?
.Did you offer alternatives? Because I sort of agree with both you and your GM.
If a 20 means you get a chance for a crit then I think a case can be made for a 1 being a fumble. Maybe have to roll to confirm a fumble or something similar? A fumble coudl be a drop or the weapon turns oddly in your hand and you hurt yourself, etc,
BUT I also agree that a bad attack roll on one round shouldn't lead to having to chase your weapons around every single time.
I don't have all the books but are there rules for fumbles and failures other than a natural 1 always fails?
Yeah. My alternative was for it to just be an auto-miss, or at least have something else happen other than tossing my weapon.
Unless I missed something when I read the rules, a 1 is just an auto-miss as far as melee attacks go.
I don't mind fumbles or doing anything funny/creative for the most part.
The only problem I would have with that is the higher level a martial character gets, the more of a chance that you screw up. This doesn't make sense to me, but that in particular I didn't really bring up with the exception of me throwing my weapon more at higher levels. I wouldn't complain about just having crit-fails, but making me waste 1-2 rounds in an already slow moving, high level game every time is a little too much.
As a bard, I'm currently rolling UMD checks for my wand of CLW because I did not choose said spell as one of my known spells.
I also had a ranger/rogue who had the ability to transform into a rat as a spell-like ability. (My DM and I both decided a were-rat would be too much trouble at the time.) The issue was that without my knowledge, all critters larger than I in my rat form gained the Titanic template when dealing with me. I was in less danger fighting a glabrezu then a housecat!
I had one GM many years ago (back in the AD&D 1st-ed days) that incorporated a random background generator for all new characters. Stuff would come up like "You were charmed by a dryad and spent a year with her," or "You were press-ganged and spent a year as a galley slave." Each of these items gave you a little conditional bonus ("+1 on saves. vs. charm effects," or "-1 AC bonus when aboard a ship" for above examples). He created the system for players who never bothered to think up a backstory, and I guess it was kind of okay for that, but it was really annoying for those of us who put a lot of thought into backstory at character generation. We then had to shoehorn the random background stuff into the background we'd come up with. Basically, I didn't enjoy having the character design details taken out of my hands: I felt that this rule meant that he didn't trust me to be sufficiently creative on my own. It was kind of insulting.
I occasionally play with a GM who's of the opinion that most modern RPGs have "too many rules." He's great on the creative side, but doesn't like to bother with tactical combat, movement and positioning, etc. You never know when he'll hand-wave something or decide that a given tactic is "too complicated." For example, he ran a 3.5 game for a while, but never bothered to learn the skills system, and always had PCs make ability checks instead of skill checks; he frequently pulled old 1st- or 2nd- edition rules out of the back of his head as well. It made play frustrating: you never knew what your character could do on a given session. I'd play in an Amber DRPG or a World of Darkness games he ran, because he is a really good storyteller, but never in another crunch-heavy game like 3.5/PF or GURPS.
Finally, I get frustrated in games where the GM lets random tables determine a large portion of the plot, treasure, encounters, etc. There was one GM who had us crossing through the wilderness, and we encountered a minotaur as a wandering monster three times in three days. And what did it have for treasure? A large alabaster statue that weighed 500 lbs. And magic items? We got all kinds of weird stuff-- some interesting and useful (a folding boat!), some just weird. The character with an unusual weapon never found a magical one (the weapon wasn't on the "random weapon" table the GM used.) A little randomness is fine, but nothing was ever tailored to the PCs, and rolling for random magic items at the table is tedious.
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We use a variation on the crit rules.
If you roll a 1, you miss, then roll again at the same Attack Bonus. If the second roll would miss as well, it becomes a critical fumble.
If you hit with the second roll, it is just a miss. This allows for a fighter who is good at what they do to roll a 1 but still recover from it easier than someone who has a worse attack bonus, thus working around the "experienced warrior shouldn't fumble as much as a novice one" idea.
I once had a gm that when I said that I wanted lots of loot made me go adventure and fight for it!
We use a variation on the crit rules.
If you roll a 1, you miss, then roll again at the same Attack Bonus. If the second roll would miss as well, it becomes a critical fumble.
If you hit with the second roll, it is just a miss. This allows for a fighter who is good at what they do to roll a 1 but still recover from it easier than someone who has a worse attack bonus, thus working around the "experienced warrior shouldn't fumble as much as a novice one" idea.
Good rule. It makes 20's and 1's pretty much on an equal spectrum.
Maybe he wanted to make monks viable in combat?
Lol, with no monks in the party?
But seriously, this wasn't the case either. I asked him at a time and he said he would make them trip if they had no weapons. Yeah, I was not touching that class.
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We use a variation on the crit rules.
If you roll a 1, you miss, then roll again at the same Attack Bonus. If the second roll would miss as well, it becomes a critical fumble.
If you hit with the second roll, it is just a miss. This allows for a fighter who is good at what they do to roll a 1 but still recover from it easier than someone who has a worse attack bonus, thus working around the "experienced warrior shouldn't fumble as much as a novice one" idea.
I'm a big believer in confirmation of fumble, just like confirmation of critical. The downside to your approach is that the confirmation is dependent on the difficulty of the creature, not on the skill of the fighter, which means it never gets easier for fighters to *not* fumble, even though they're clearly more skillful at higher levels. The one approach I saw online that I actually like a lot is a test of fighting skill more than a test to hit the creature. It works like this (I can not take credit for this - these rules are based on 3.5ed):
Your target number is DC20. If you fail to beat DC20, then you have confirmed the fumble. You may only fumble once per round. It is possible to fumble on a 2 (hey, if you can crit on a 19, why not?), but only in certain circumstances.
To beat DC20, you get use the following modifiers:
+BAB
+Dex Bonus
+1 for combats feats as relevant, such as: (Imp) Wpn Focus, (Imp) Wpn Spec, Wpn Finesse, [Gtr/Imp] TWF, Imp Bull Rush/Disarm/Trip/Sunder/Overrun, Mtd Cbt
- any penalties for multiple/offhand weapons, wrong-sized weapons, non-proficiency in weapon or armour, mounted archery
-2 if Charging
+1 for Masterwork non-magic weapon
+2 for a +1 to +2 magic weapon
+3 for a +3 to +4 magic weapon
+4 for a +5 or better weapon
+1 for a 2-handed weapon (not a double weapon)
-2 to -10 for an Improvised weapon (eg -2 for a chair leg, -10 for a sofa)
-4 for a flail, spiked chain, nunchaku or other flexible weapon
-2 to -20 for situational penalties (eg slippery or treacherous ground, water, strong wind, steep slope, darkness, etc)
If your modifiers are less than 0 (as might happen for a clumsy 3rd level wizard fighting stirges on an icy ledge in a high wind), you may fumble on a 2 or on other attacks in that round. In this case the DC is 0.
==================
So, that's a lot of modifiers, but it's not nearly as problematic as it seems. Most of that stuff is able to be predetermined as a separate confirmation number for fumbles. Figure it once and set it aside as a "fumble avoidance number" and then all the DM has to do is provide a situational penalty, if appropriate. I find it works fairly well. It scales with improved opportunities. It scales with improved skill.
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I have had several DM's have 1's do horrible things from hitting allies to broken weapons, and yes weapons that go flying. When I run I usually dont have anything horrible happen unless its a unique experience or something that would be humerous.
The worst I have experienced. A friend decided to run a "Low Magic, Low power, gritty" game. Was absolute crap. We rolled 3d6-2 or something and we rolled for each stat. we all had to start as a NPC class. Only one character was allowed to start as an expert, and the rest where commoner or warrior.
I got the expert because I ended up having a 3 con. We started the game with our town being burned to the ground and we where broke and had zero gear. The game lasted all of 2 games before the group revolted and we told our friend thanks... but no thanks.
When I play PF/D&D I want to be the hero... not a commoner with a 3 con.
I don't have all the books but are there rules for fumbles and failures other than a natural 1 always fails?
I know somewhere there are tables out there for different critical failures (and critical successes). I rather like the GURPS approach as its table is heavily weighted towards normal miss for critical failures and normal hit for critical successes, rather than assuming that an experienced fighter is going to throw their weapon once every minute.
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One time, my DM made me actually play my character, and do things he would do, instead of what was most effective. He wouldn't let me play the game right!
I had a GM that thought that a melee attack provoked an Attack of Opportunity. He didn't believe me when I told him that wasn't so. I was playing a sword fighter. God, that was annoying!
Did you take Combat Reflexes and let the enemies attack you and provoke?
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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"The dragon breathes fire on you. Save vs. breath weapon."
"Wait, WHAT?! What dragon?!"
"A dragon just flew down and breathed fire on you."
"We're outside, it's a clear day, maybe did we notice A BIG FREAKIN DRAGON headed toward us?"
"You didn't SAY you were looking for dragons."
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What you're trying to do here just spreads negativity.
It's not a negative thread, unless you're 'one of those GMs'.
I think the forums are a perfect place to vent.
I'm not sure 'finding a new GM' is the 1st thing you should do (most GMs try to please) or the easiest thing to do, but if you're not enjoying yourself and the GM really wants to run things this way, it's probably the best idea.
I don't feel too bad for GMs that take the time and effort to come up with campaigns if that GM also doesn't listen to his players. It's a two way street. If it's all about you as the GM, you might find yourself without any players.
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What you're trying to do here just spreads negativity.It's not a negative thread, unless you're 'one of those GMs'.
I think the forums are a perfect place to vent.
I'm not sure 'finding a new GM' is the 1st thing you should do (most GMs try to please) or the easiest thing to do, but if you're not enjoying yourself and the GM really wants to run things this way, it's probably the best idea.
I don't feel too bad for GMs that take the time and effort to come up with campaigns if that GM also doesn't listen to his players. It's a two way street. If it's all about you as the GM, you might find yourself without any players.
I agree. Firstly, it can be funny to see some of the silly things us GMs do. But, secondly, and more importantly, I'm getting criticism without it being about me. I like to think I have a pretty non-existent ego, but I know I do have some. I think other people will agree with me that non-attacking criticism is kind of nice. If someone does something that I also do and I find it irritates people, well, I can learn from that.
Thanks OP.
Any time a DM gets a brilliant idea from a book, and wishes to recreate that book as a campaign. It gets worse when you don't do exactly what was in the book and throw the campaign completely off the rails. lol. I can't believe how much time we wasted creating PCs that only played one session, not to mention the time it took for him to create a framework for a campaign that only lasted a few sessions.
Any time a DM gets a brilliant idea from a book, and wishes to recreate that book as a campaign. It gets worse when you don't do exactly what was in the book and throw the campaign completely off the rails. lol. I can't believe how much time we wasted creating PCs that only played one session, not to mention the time it took for him to create a framework for a campaign that only lasted a few sessions.
Hehe, you think that's bad? I once had an old DM who's campaign was basically Fable 3 and full metal alchemist put together.
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One thing that got really annoying for me was that my GM made you throw your weapon at a roll of 1. This game ran for over a year with this. I was the only melee character in a party that consisted of a shield fighter (me), 2 druids, a rogue/sorcerer/arcane trickster, a witch, and a wizard. When we eventually got to higher levels (11-20) and me having around 5 attacks, then I found that I can go barely 2 straight rounds without rolling at a 1. I would throw my weapon (wasting that round), move to pick up my weapon the next round (also wasting that round), and then having possibly run back and attack with only one attack (not making much use of that round.)It got to the point that I had to complain several times to my GM that this was no fun at all, and it even got to the point where I had to get several people to side with me on this to have it changed. I didn't want to be the type to complain, but it got too frustrating to the point where the game was losing some of its fun for me.
Our DM uses a modtified version, for players and monsters- on the roll of a '1' to attack, roll again, 10 or less your weapon gets thrown or other possible bad things. 11+ you hold on to it and just miss.
Our DM is very very good. However, one really annoying thing is learning languages- you need to take lessons from someone, depending on yoru INT and their INT will determine the number of lessons. PLUS you need to find someone to teach you. All for 1 skill point spending. It was rather frustrating.
Our DM uses a modtified version, for players and monsters- on the roll of a '1' to attack, roll again, 10 or less your weapon gets thrown or other possible bad things. 11+ you hold on to it and just miss.
Our DM is very very good. However, one really annoying thing is learning languages- you need to take lessons from someone, depending on yoru INT and their INT will determine the number of lessons. PLUS you need to find someone to teach you. All for 1 skill point spending. It was rather frustrating.
In a homebrew setting where the game is more about the characters and their role in the story, I'm actually very ok with this kind of thing. Like spells in a spellbook - they don't just magically write themselves. But when working through an AP where people gain new levels by the days, not weeks or months, I tend to handwave these issues.
I like this thread. Since my focus in Pathfinder is usually on the GM side of things, I saw the thread title and thought "Hmm... things I should avoid doing" so opened it to see suggestions on things I should avoid.
I do use the Critical Hits and Critical Fumble decks from Paizo, and on a roll of 1 I make the player to roll again with all the same modifiers to confirm the fumble. In the past it has been against the creature's AC but I haven't started my new campaign yet so I may decide on a different way to determine the target number to beat for the next campaign. I'll have to think about it.
One time, my DM made me actually play my character, and do things he would do, instead of what was most effective. He wouldn't let me play the game right!
I had a GM that thought that a melee attack provoked an Attack of Opportunity. He didn't believe me when I told him that wasn't so. I was playing a sword fighter. God, that was annoying!Did you take Combat Reflexes and let the enemies attack you and provoke?
But TOZ, wouldn't your opportunity attack provoke an opportunity attack, and so on and so on, in an infinite feedback loop? Oh, the humanity!
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I had a GM once back when I played a Druid in D&D who had every single animal I ever summoned or spoke with attack me. When I asked him why, he said "I hate Druids".
Personally, I think something like that shoulda come up during character creation, I felt ambushed by it.
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Having my alignment shifted away from good because I spared the lives of goblin children.
Having every attempt to show mercy or redeem beings like the above or even just bog-standard human criminals backfire in the worst possible way in an attempt to show me "how the game was meant to be played".
Having every attempt to do some good and make a difference in the setting through means both heroic and humble turn into misery porn. Having nothing I did matter at best and blow up horribly at worst.
Regular make-the-paladin fall "heads you lose/tails I win" situations.
Having my characters thoughts, feelings, and actions hijacked by the GM.
Those early years getting into the game were absolute crap.
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Any time a DM gets a brilliant idea from a book, and wishes to recreate that book as a campaign. It gets worse when you don't do exactly what was in the book and throw the campaign completely off the rails. lol. I can't believe how much time we wasted creating PCs that only played one session, not to mention the time it took for him to create a framework for a campaign that only lasted a few sessions.
Could you expand on why you dislike when a DM gets ideas from other sources? Is it just that he/she runs short sessions and railroads you?
Reason I ask is that I frequently take snippets of ideas from various media, and I want to make sure that doing so isn't compromising any of my players' fun.
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Back in 3.5 days, a friend ran a game where we fought a lot of Drow, with equipment comparable to ours, if not better. But we never got it. They ALL had contingent delayed blast fireballs on them for when they were looted. I had a rogue at the time and the DM hand-waved my death 3 times, saying I was merely almost dead. He said it was to prevent us from getting too far ahead by wealth, yet needed to throw us a challenge. FYI, we were level 7 at the time, and he had thrown one player a 120,000gp magic item to start with. We were all jacked up on magic items as it was, but rather annoying.
Any time a DM gets a brilliant idea from a book, and wishes to recreate that book as a campaign. It gets worse when you don't do exactly what was in the book and throw the campaign completely off the rails. lol. I can't believe how much time we wasted creating PCs that only played one session, not to mention the time it took for him to create a framework for a campaign that only lasted a few sessions.Could you expand on why you dislike when a DM gets ideas from other sources? Is it just that he/she runs short sessions and railroads you?
Reason I ask is that I frequently take snippets of ideas from various media, and I want to make sure that doing so isn't compromising any of my players' fun.
It'd be like running a game "based" on Lord of the Rings when your goal is really just to run verbatim Lord of the Rings. Instead of splitting the Fellowship, they stay together and just go to Rohan or something. The DM wanted to run the splitting and etc and doesn't know what to do. Gollum appears to the whole group and Gimli kicks him in a well. Campaign derailed and the GM quits.
I once had a GM who rounded all fractions in my disfavor, while rounding in favor of the other players. Reason? "You are playing a girl, and in my world, women just aren't as cool or heroic as men."
At least two GMs I have played with did some obvious favoritism... strange how the character played by the GM's SO gets most spotlight, succeeds in her tasks withot even rolling, and, miraculously, the lion's share of any treasure fits into her concept just perfectly, so of course she will get the bling.
Reason I ask is that I frequently take snippets of ideas from various media, and I want to make sure that doing so isn't compromising any of my players' fun.
We all take snippets and ideas from various media (heck, the last adventure I GM'es (not D&D) contained snippets of some PF hooks, two books, a film and a couple anime)... but they should remain snippets.
Some GMs actually try to re-create chapters, or whole stories from books, films or the like. Problem is, the story arc in these media is pretty much fixed in place, while an adventure usually is a tad more fluid, and, unless by some miracle the players make the same choices as the characters in the film did, will quickly veer off-target.
Improvising at that point is not exactly easy, so most GMs who wanted to play that exact story anyway will resort to heavy railroading to bring the players back on track.
Now, railroading is not necessarily a bad thing... as long as you do it subtly enough that the player don't notice it. Unfortunately, in the above situation, they will.
Having every attempt to show mercy or redeem beings like the above or even just bog-standard human criminals backfire in the worst possible way in an attempt to show me "how the game was meant to be played".
Having every attempt to do some good and make a difference in the setting through means both heroic and humble turn into misery porn. Having nothing I did matter at best and blow up horribly at worst.
My condolences. I had a similar GM, as well, one on a personal crusade to demonstrate that the world is a darrrrrk and eeeeevil place.
Gave the players morally difficult choices galore... and, in glorious detail, described what misery porn resulted from the choice you took (effectively, your choice only affected the flavor of misery you unleashed). Went to lengths to show the players, all players, that the personal ethics of their characters are the one thing that stands between them and what they wanted to achieve.Now, I am not averse to dark, gritty adventures; but if these things become your daily mainstay of adventures, and you are not playing a World-of-Darkness-esque type of game, things grow less than fun, eventually.
(This having been said, I might have slightly moved your alignment as well, Mikaze... though, if I did, it would have been a tiny bit away from Lawful, and a tiny bit towards Good)
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(This having been said, I might have slightly moved your alignment as well, Mikaze... though, if I did, it would have been a tiny bit away from Lawful, and a tiny bit towards Good)
Also, my condolences as well. Damn. Seriously, all of it.
Referring back to past experiences, things are much better now than they were back in the Bad Old Days. Current group is made of @#$% and Win. :)
Our DM is very very good. However, one really annoying thing is learning languages- you need to take lessons from someone, depending on yoru INT and their INT will determine the number of lessons. PLUS you need to find someone to teach you. All for 1 skill point spending. It was rather frustrating.
I had a DM That made you do that but with gaining levels also. You had to find someone higher level in the class you wanted to level up, then you had to convince them to train you and pay them for the training. He also only let you gain one level at a time so even if you had enough xp to go up 2 levels you could only train up one level. We had to go adventuring to 'gain real world experience' before we could level up again.
...
Could you expand on why you dislike when a DM gets ideas from other sources? Is it just that he/she runs short sessions and railroads you?Reason I ask is that I frequently take snippets of ideas from various media, and I want to make sure that doing so isn't compromising any of my players' fun.
As others have said. The problem isn't getting ideas from other sources. The problem is trying to recreate the novel.
Have you ever read a novel and agreed that you would make exactly the same choice as the main character every single time? Can you imagine all 4 people in a party making exactly the same decision as all the main characters in a novel every single time?Very, very, quickly you are off the original story line. Usually with no obvious way to get back onto it.
Now it is very good to set up the situation environment from a book or movie. Let's say I'm going to set a campaign in a place like Dragera city from the Jhereg novels by Steven Brust. {{Awesome series by the way!}} I'm even going to start them running the 'Organization' in a couple of blocks area for the crime lords. The guy running the neighboring couple of blocks is trying to muscle in on their territory. Neither the guard nor the organization care as long as things don't get too out of hand. This is all great.
But if you expected the party to respond just like Vlad and don't have any anything prepared to handle anything else, everyone will be disappointed.
Another thing that I see plenty of GMs do, which I'm sure plenty of early DMs do, is throwing in high level monsters that they think is really cool in a currently low level campaign. Usually it ends up being a sort of chase scene that many DMs make because they are so eager to use the powerful monsters that they can't wait until later in the game to make better use of them. Now if you just want their presence to be known, that's fine. I just wouldn't have them interact with the party in a threatening way if they have no real way of dealing with it.
I've had different DMs also make super high level NPCs that undermine the party of players. The kind of mary sue NPCs that do all of the cool things when the low level players are supposed to sit and watch in awe or something.
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my players and i have a mutual understanding....they hated rolling to confirm crits and miss a chance to draw that cool card from the crit hit deck. so we all agreed to houserule that a nat 20 is always a crit hit, no confirmation needed. but the same goes for a fumble....a nat 1 is always a crit miss and i get to draw a nifty card from the crit fumble deck. mwahahahahaha!