I've been playing with the same 8 or so players for the last 15 years, so we're pretty used to what to expect out of a game.
Another friend of mine recently started playing in a campaign with 3 other friends. They were told they would be in a somewhat urban area, acting as spies. They were also told they could come up with background stories if they wanted.
The group decided to all play rogues. Apparently only one of the players gave themselves and background information, so the GM changed where the came started based on that one characters background. The campaign changed to essentially start in a frozen desolate region, but they still had to play the characters they had created based on what they had previously been told.
My friend then wrote up a fairly generic backstory for himself, and the GM told him, well, your character can believe that, maybe that's what he tells people, but what actually happened is 'blah', the gm then telling him what his background story is.
They start the first session, to find out 2 of the players are slaves owned by two of the other players. The players that were the slaves had a little issue with that, and by the end of the first session, one of the slave pcs was out on his own because there had been no real reason given why he'd want to continue to travel with his owners.
Now, none of the above sounds remotely close to anything I'd ever do as a GM, but I haven't played with many new people over the years. Does this sound par for the course with player experience and how GMs handle things, or should my friend be a little skeptical on the GMs methods of running a game.
I think some GMs, especially those who have crafted their own campaign environment or story, can suffer from putting their game "on rails" if they're not careful.
They love what they've built and they have certain expectations (realistic or otherwise) of what their players should do in that world, and who their characters should be.
Unfortunately, communication is key and if it's not given very well up front, it can be a real donkey-show of a game.
There's not much I can say about this other than "really?"
My advice would be for the GM and players here to go read a whole bunch of stuff online about how to craft and run home-grown campaigns.
Okay, no, I thought it was weird, but having only played with one or two other gms, that have been players in my games, I figured I might just not be up with what a large pool of other people do.
There just seemed to be a lot of stuff that the GM didn't think would be that big of a deal and just told the players this is how it's going to be, but it was definitely a big deal to some of the players.
It takes a certain type of player to want to be a slave at all, let alone to another player. It seems like the kind of thing you'd talk about beforehand and make sure players are comfortable in the role.
Weird and wild stuff, right there.
Depending on the campaign, a GM may not make backstory details matter, and that's fairly normal. For instance, your ranger could be out to exterminate all orcs as revenge for killing his sister, but that has no bearing on their search for the Magic Sword of Fighting except that they will fight orcs from time to time.
It's also normal for a GM to adjust details of a backstory to better fit the game environment, for instance the GM telling the player that the orcs that killed his sister worshipped a dragon that guards the Magic Sword of Fighting.
But nothing that you described is okay. You cannot have players built characters based on a certain scenario and then change it without telling them so that their abilities are useless. And you ABSOLUTELY CAN NOT make another players into SLAVE without their consent.
You... just... argh. The words that I would say if this person were standing in front of me right now.
Yeah, that's bizzare.
I've run story focused games before, and had clear visions of the campaign world and what I wanted the game to reflect. I have never done done anything like that. Good luck.
Depending on the campaign, a GM may not make backstory details matter, and that's fairly normal. For instance, your ranger could be out to exterminate all orcs as revenge for killing his sister, but that has no bearing on their search for the Magic Sword of Fighting except that they will fight orcs from time to time.
JourneyQuest for the win.