if the players don't want to play in a game, the GM just did a whole lot of work for nothing.
It's your game as much as his. If you don't like the idea, you're free to walk, and his 'inventiveness' can rot in the wind. You might want to let him know that.
==Aelryinth
If the GM desires to write a novel, he can do so.
You are under no obligation to play a campaign that isn't fun for you.
This is a game first and foremost.
I'd walk. This sounds like a poorly thought out game, with an ineffective DM who seems more interested in telling his story rather than letting the story develop with everyone's input.
Unless it's something like the first few sessions you guys are errand boys, then during a routine delivery you get dragged into a global catastrophe (Fallout New Vegas, or Oblivion for example), but if all you guys are going to be are errand boys, then the game sounds unappealing.
But talk to the DM, ask if there's anything more in the works, offer feedback, and maybe let him rehash things, or at least give him a motivation to try to make the world more involved.
Yeah, it sounds like that group needs a new GM.
Glad you were able to make a clean break from a game that wasn't fun for you.
I've had trouble in the past with storyteller GMs instead of game referee GMs.
I was in a group with a couple GMs. One was good at fantasy and bad at d20 Modern and one was good d20 Modern and bad at fantasy.
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This sounds eerily similar to another DM I used to game with, He made a world; pretty much named after himself "nicknameized" it. We made PC slaves to the race of "nicknameized" that inhabited and controlled the planet. All other races were inferior and to be used as slaves to the 'basically human, but lawful evil' "nicknameized race". It was so laughable, I could barely get past character creation.
I did manage to play an Elven Wizard from another world, the DM was fine with us playing anything from anywhere, he had a VERY loose grasp on the rules of ANYTHING, I mean he didnt really follow any set rules, he used them as a VERY VERY basic guideline and even then, changed things on the fly to suit his needs; almost like "Gravity NOW works differently" when your used to normal gravity, ALL along in the game. It was maddening. Its HIS game and all but it was infuriating.
Basically, he NEVER gave us information, we had to 'stumble' everywhere and HOPE we did something right, no maps of locations or where we were, the ONLY memorable thing I even remember of the locales in that game was a random forest, where it rained ALL the time (another mystery we never figured out, or at least I dont think we did?) the capital city of the land "nicknameized-ville" and the mythal I created. Thats it... I couldnt even TELL you where anything was, or even point out anything on a map, one of the things that 'grinds my gears' when playing in a game is not knowing where I am in reference to anything else. It ruins my immersion, also not something the DM was very known for.
At the risk of coming off sounding as if I am better, I am not. I told the DM in the nicest words why I was leaving the group and that I found his game simply "not fun, I couldnt get immersed, there was NO reason to use dice half the time, things just happened when he said. I was simply not interested in the story he was trying to tell, it felt disjointed, no reason for us to be involved or rather how WE could make a difference when other ULTRA powerful beings including one of the PCs who was made a rank 20 Diety (another mind blowing, non compelling long story), could do nothing.... -pulls hair out just thinking about that game-
Bottom line, is I get being in a game where you dont "get" why anything is happening, or how the DM doesnt set any kind of precedent; nor follow ANY rules, nor tell us the rules beforehand. I imagine if I was high as often as the DM was I would make some sense of it, but for now I cannot explain why his game was like that, Ive been uber careful to avoid his games since then, so far to good effect.
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I was in a group with a couple GMs. One was good at fantasy and bad at d20 Modern and one was good d20 Modern and bad at fantasy.
The DM who I no longer game with, did a GREAT D20 Modern game at first, it was set in World War 2 with us playing various character in Poland/Germany behind enemy lines, very realistic, that is until we found out that the nazis were working with the occult and being controlled by Devils from within, that wasnt the oddest part, we then got ahold of Nazi Super "Captain America" serum, and used it on my character, then apparently one of the OTHER characters, knew/created/applied fusion reactor technology in a plane, which apparently when I crashed it, I wiped out Libya (yeah, as screwed up as this sounds) We awoke ALL in different bodies; same minds/consciousness in Vietnam, no explanation... At that point, the players had all pretty much lost interest, so the game was scrapped...(happily) DMs explaination was we were in hell. doomed to live through wars over and over.
Personally for me, I dislike running endlessly on a Hamster wheel.
"It was a great game, then this happened..."
1, Spellcasting is limited with player character races, only 1 in 500 to 1000 can cast any type of spell (Divine or Arcane).
2, Monster races are limited to 1 in 6 can cast spells.
3, All PC races are super pacifists, to the point of evacuating a whole CONTINENT because orc's are there.
4, It seems that all races are divided into small sections of the planet, any crossing borders is a major invasion.
5, The PC's are the cannon fodder in a campaign that we will not be allowed to win.
(...)
To me, All of the above seem like they should have been disclosed at the start of the game. Any opinions?
1 to 4 could be not told if the PCs don't know that. Maybe the characters didn't know about magic at all, maybe they came from the hidden, isolated village with larger than usually concentration of spellcasters, etc. It would be better to inform players about such ratios, however, as it gives better feel of the world.
5. Should be told at the start as it sets the theme and mood of the campaign.
Then asked the question,
What, you don't want to play in a game you can't win?
Correct answer: "You haven't told us this will be Call Of Cthulhu campaign!"
I have no problem with the first few points (maybe with 3 & 4 if the GM force this to my char too)
but at this point:
I would quit the game, I play P&PRPG to be the "hero" of the story, not to be cannonfodder #234122
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I would quit the game, I play P&PRPG to be the "hero" of the story, not to be cannonfodder #234122Again, some people like the gritty "Black Company" style of play.
Indeed, but this is one of the basic information about the style and theme of campaign that should be available before starting the campaign.
5, The PC's are the cannon fodder in a campaign that we will not be allowed to win.
Then asked the question,
What, you don't want to play in a game you can't win?To me, All of the above seem like they should have been disclosed at the start of the game. Any opinions?
You don't win the game. You finish the game.
You're right that the GM should have disclosed this information at the start of the game. Though 1 and 2 could have been inferred from what you were told already.
However with the right GM that could be an interesting setting if you want to play in a low magic world.
That said it doesn't sound like you feel this is the right GM. The game is about having fun and if you aren't having fun I'm sure you have other activities you could do to occupy your free time :).
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The players and GM should work together to make a campaign. When I GM, I even let PCs invent NPCs. For example, in 3.5, one player wanted to buy a horse, and he invented "Crazy Hazeem" to buy horses from. That NPC added a lot of flavor to the game. Back in the day of 2nd Edition, high level rangers got followers and 1 player made a bunch of fun NPCs to be his followers. We still talk about the day his dwarf rogue Skraan got into his first battle, rolled 2 natural 1s, and so fell down and lost his weapons, getting his dagger in the butt and had his handaxe cutting off his beard.
Also, I'm pretty flexible with my cosmologies and geographies. If someone wants to be a worshipper of the Goddess of Cloud Horses, there is a Goddess of Cloud Horses. If a player wants to from the Island of Smoking Blades, there is an Island of Smoking Blades for him to from. If a player wants to be an unusual race, they can be that unusual race (within reason).
The game belongs to everyone. The campaign belongs to everyone. Everyone should be working together so everyone has fun.
5, The PC's are the cannon fodder in a campaign that we will not be allowed to win.
Is that something the DM said verbatim, or is it your interpretation of things?
Settings where the PCs aren't likely to save the world have always existed, but the "cannon fodder" thing can be insulting.
But yeah, the "PCs are going to be set against a force too strong for them" can be made into an interesting setting, but the players should have known the this was the game's theme from the top.
'findel
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I feel like to make people here happy, the GM has to disclose all of his notes prior to making characters.
"If an enemy will have SR, the GM should disclose that fact."
"If NPCs will be similar level / less level / more level, this fact should be disclosed."
"If the party will every be ambushed, this fact should be disclosed."
"If NPCs will ever lie to the party, the players should be told when it will happen."
"If the players won't get the magic items they want, the GM should tell them."
Do you guys ever play or just talk about playing? I don't think I could sit through your pregame GM grillings.
There are two questions here, which may not have been previously stated well. First, what would the characters know vs. what the players have been told? AFAICT none of the items you've listed are things that could be considered background knowledge for a character. OTOH, the majority of the items the OP listed are things that a character native to the game world would be expected to know.
The second question is likewise not unreasonable: What sort of campaign is this going to be? Presumably, we're all playing to have fun, and something that's really not fun for a lot of people is to have their general expectations be wildly different from actuality. Thinking you're going to be playing Call of Cthulhu when the GM is actually running Toon! could be an amusing once-off (as could the reverse, in the right hands...), but it's tough to make a campaign out of something like that. IMHO, though, that level of expectation violation is a minor annoyance compared to the big one: what is the role of the PCs? The expectation is that the PCs are going to be the center of their own story. Events may push them around, but at some point they can look forward to their actions being significant, even if all they're doing is trying to survive in a hostile world. If they won't be, that's definitely something to tell the players up front. It's possible to have fun playing in a campaign where the PCs are peripheral to the main action (the late Mike Ford wrote a lot of very entertaining stories in which the main characters are peripheral to the major plot), but that's something the players should know about in advance.
It's the cannon fodder thing that would drive me away.
Sure, there are settings where you just can't win, like the already mentioned Warhammer and Call of Cthulhu, but even on those games you're playng the hero, or closest thing around anyway. You fail because the world is a horrible place, but at the same time you're the only ones in a hundred miles around who even had a chance to win. But doing menial tasks to NPCs, while they go on adventures? *Shudder* Even in Scion, where you're a mortal Hero being cannon fodder while the Gods wage war, your tasks are still suitably heroic and epic stuff like "go and kill that dragon or band of cyclops or go close that gate to hell", and you can hope to rise all the way to God yourself.
Maybe it would be a nice way to start a campaing, if it were only for the first couple of sessions so you could rise up and save the NPCs or win where they failed?
Still, that kind of idea is something you need to tell the players beforehand, so they know that the initial drudge is just a prologue for the real campaign.
I used to play with a DM who always wanted to run DarkSun campaigns where you started out as slaves in a cage, wearing 2nd handed loincloths and possibly possessing a mid-size pebble.
A sharp stick was too valuable for a slave to own.
Then we had to plan an escape attempt, often failing miserably, getting TPKed and having to roll up brand new characters for a new campaign, hopefully with a different DM.
It was less than fun.
To the point where he wasn't allowed to run DarkSun anymore.