So, after a disastrous endgame of Rise of the Runelords in which our 15th level characters we were wiped out by Karzoug in three rounds, and Varisia is most likely now doomed, one of the players mentioned he wanted to DM the Age of Worms adventure path.
We started the first module and finished the 2nd with a lot of excitement.
But we were marked by something we call "The Incident" at the end of module II (which is a huge dungeon crawl), I was making calculus on the loot and rounded out something beetween 40 to 42k gold pieces (needless to say we were all happy), right at the end when we were returning to town he mentioned me:
GM: Roll perception please
Me: 21
GM: Ok
(Afterwards at the inn)
Me: Perfect, we need to go to a near city to sell some of this stuff because in this town we are not going to...wait a minute...were is my Bad of Holding!
To sum up, the perception check was because my bag of holding with all of our loot from the last part of the first module and the second one, the party pool (a pool of money we did to pay for regeneration, cures and assorted things), and Magical Items was stolen.
We roleplayed trying to find it from casting locate object, and trying to look for local thieves and seeing if anyone was expending extra money.
The day after, the party monk found 8000 GPs in his bed. And the exact money that the party pool had.
We were WTF!. Afterwards we managed to find the bag of holding with books relevant to the plot and nothing more. The animal companion tried to do a scent check to follow the thief but only pointed to me one of the party wizards. And the GM just pushed us to the start of the next module, and yes we were very upset our search for the thief was not sucessfull at all.
And well that was our sad sad story so far. We were starting level 4 in that time and we are 2 Wizards, Cavalier with a Wolf Animal Companion, Four Winds Monk and Druid with Beetle Animal Companion.
This caused a lot of drama within the group. When we confronted the GM about this in our next session he said he was roleplaying how the villians would have acted. And that in the future we will be able to get the stolen loot back. I just told him its not fun for me to have everything taken away (my personal opinion), my main concern is that he gave us all that loot and after I calculate how much it summed up he freaked out and took it from us in what I think is an immature way.
I'm still freaking upset!!
And to crown all that, I dont really think he wants to play anymore. Its been already 2 times that he skips our weekly sessions because "I have a shot at winning the MtG tournament this saturday" (he confirmed this to me at sunday 2am, and we play at 10am).
Ugh I needed to get that out of my system. There.
So:
- Should I open the drama-can-of-worms?
- Should I/we talk to him again?
- Should I ask him if he wants to keep Game Mastering?
You should definitely ask if he still wants to GM your group. Maybe he's just burnt out. That happens to GMs. When was the last time he got a chance to play a character?
As far as the loot thing goes, I think you should chill out. If this hasn't happened a whole bunch in the past, let it slide. I mean, it's not like you're hurting for equipment, is it? I'd understand being upset if you were under equipped for your level and therefore things were a challenge for you. It doesn't sound like strong DMing to me, but it's hard to make a judgement on it without having been there. Give it a week and see what happens. I'd say not to give up on the search for the thief. If he's a decent DM, your efforts should pay off sooner or later, and that might actually be a rewarding encounter.
So the GM is freaking out over 40k worth of loot for the second module of a rather difficult adventure series? Is that before the sell off penalty or after? Not that it really matters. If its at the end of a crawl where you leveled (most likely) then that haul should be the lions share of your wealth by level. WBL for 4th lvl characters is about 6k, so if you had 40k divided by 5 it would be 8k, with is a little high, but not so much to be unbalancing TBH. I mean from lvl 4-5 you are expected to gain 4500 more, so definitely not a problem. Also the old AP/dungeon mag stuff is based off of 3.5 leveling, so rewards are on fast track.
The wealth you had was most likely appropriate for your level or close, even assuming sell off total was 40k. Now your party is going forward most likely a level behind WBL. Good luck, its going to be harder, but not unmanageable.
The real problem is he was hamfisted and obvious about the wealth adjustment. If he wanted to adjust party wealth, just give out fewer rewards, make the PCs dump wealth into money sinks like strongholds, taxes, charities, heck family upkeep (it looks bad if Lord Fancy Pants anointed of (gods name here) has an uncle or brother who can't even afford cure disease to save his life, yet Fancy Pants flies around the inner sea with his super friends having adventures and acquiring piles of loot). Sure that seems almost as obvious, but its also cool if a PC has a detailed enough background. Some people have background stories to be used after all.
I chalk it up to inexperienced GM, running an old adventure, not knowing the rules for rewards very well, running out of enthusiasm for running rather than playing. Cut him some slack, but perhaps give him some positive feedback followed by concerns, followed by how excited you are to continue. Its an old trick but it works. Most GMs love feedback, as long as its not delivered in an ego bruising or publicly humiliating manner. Nothing is more annoying thinking that your players are happy, then show up and you are down to 2 or fewer players.
The only logical reason for that to happen would be if he threw out more loot than he should and you ended up with more wealth, if that didn't happen and he took you the loot the adventure gives you.....well i suggest restarting the campaign because from what i have heard the age of worms is one of the most difficult adventures and with less wealth you just dramatically increased your chance of dying.
Provided the other player did not infact steal the party's items, not inconceivable that the wizard did it, it might be a kneejerk reaction of the GM it might have been smoother to wait and see how you are going to spend the money and increase prices of popular items or just restrict the items available, which is an easy thing to do at low level.
I can somewhat understand if the wizards are crafters which would effectively be able to double wealth of choice items, just have an honest discussion about it.
Thanks for your suggestions guys. He is in fact a beggining GM and knew 3.5 to the heart and is now learning the Pathfinder system, he keeps mentioning that we are all surviving and expected us to die more but we keep pulling our weight.
I just hope it gets better because its not being fun and specially when we dont play.
ugh, "expecting" pcs to die is not a good sign. I prefer the style of expecting the PCs to survive, but death is just around the corner if they mess up. Like how my PCs took down a master monk (from the game mastery guide, should have been a very hard/epic encounter by the CR rules) with no trouble, except the fighter died when he thought it was a good idea to end his movement one 5 foot step away from a flurry of blows, 2 turns in a row.