Game Discussion
Reddit post for Crit Crab:
I've been playing and DMing D&D for decades. I started with Basic D&D, when "Elf" was a character class, and have played every version since. I consider myself an adequate player and DM. Perhaps I should be an expert, but I don't always have the patience and time to memorize every rule and learn every aspect of the game. Still, I've never had any serious complaints about my playing. I'd been in several campaigns while living in the Northeast of the USA, but when my wife and I moved to Texas when she went for a Doctorate, I went through a serious dry spell.
Because of the odd schedule of my job, it was hard to find a regular game, and I had horrible luck finding reliable, and capable, players. Don't get me wrong, I have a very low bar for happiness when I game (I just want to have one) and I have a high tolerance for mediocrity, knowing that I'm an average DM at best myself.
Still, I had high hopes when I met a group of players at a local gaming convention, and they invited me to join their 3.5 D&D game, where the DM was running the Red Hand of Doom Module. This happened about 10 years ago, so some of the details are a bit fuzzy, so bear with me.
There were five of us. All except me were college students at the local university, and had been friends for years. Two of the players, I'll admit, were more in the background and I honestly don't remember much about them. But they're not the reason for the post. That's the other two people. To protect their identities, and because I've long since forgotten their names, I'll call them Bert and Ernie.
The DM, Bert, and the last player, Ernie, were roommates, and we were gaming in their apartment. No problem so far.
Bert, in fact, was a pretty good DM, and had some very interesting homebrew rules that let me make up a very interesting character, using "character points" to basically buy a variety of class features, spell abilities, combat skills, and other things from various classes. It was fairly balanced, and let me custom make a reasonably cool character.
Ernie, it turned out, was an obsessive character builder who wanted the best, most efficient, and most powerful character he could squeeze out of the rules and loopholes in all of the hundred or so books that 3.5 had to offer. I wasn't really worried about that, but it turned out to be the tip of the iceberg, as he routinely told other people how best to play or design their characters. I shrugged it off, since I had a similar, if more muted, obsessive phase when I had first started D&D.
The problem arose, though, when the interpersonal dynamic between Bert and Ernie reared its ugly head by the end of the first full game session.
After our Session Zero, we had three regular game sessions that I was part of (more on that later), and at the end of EVERY single one of them, Ernie would start arguing with DM Bert about some ruling or rule interpretation, continue to argue while the other three of us sat there twiddling out thumbs, and then, when it was clear Ernie wasn't going to get his way, he storm off in a huff to his room (since we were at his and Bert's apartment) and sulk there.
Bert then declared the session over for the night, and scheduled another session for the next week.
The first time this happened, I was a little shocked and a bit annoyed at the immaturity. I'd dealt with emotionally stunted gamers before, but hadn't usually seen them shut down a game session. But I was new to the group, so I said nothing.
It happened again in the second game: Several hours of gaming, then Ernie started arguing for half an hour about some obscure of unimportant ruling, then ran off to his room in a huff, causing Bert to call the game for the evening.
During the third session, I was really hoping for better, but it turned out I was wasting my time.
I honestly forgot what the arguments were about on the first and second game nights, just that they weren't really huge deals. On the third night, we were preparing the abandoned town we were staying in for the invasion of an enemy army in three days. The DM had been using a House Rule where spellcasters could cast their spells and then sleep for 8 hours to get them back, then cast them again, then sleep again for 8 hours, etc, to potentially be able to cast their entire allotment of spells pretty much 3 times in a day, rather than just once a day. Ernie, of course, was a wizard, and started used our 3 day prep time to start racking up protections and trapping spells, as well as other magics, piling them onto the area where the army was coming from.
Bert realized how overpowered this was, and nerfed the House Rule.
This, of course, set off Ernie in another half hour argument. This time, however, I wasn't going to just sit there. I spoke up, telling Ernie that if he wanted to talk to Bert later about the ruling (they lived together, after all), then he was welcome to, but right now the DM's rule was law, and we should just get back to the game. Visibly pissed at me, he got up and stalked off to his room as usual to sulk.
Once again, the game was called for the night.
This time however, I never got a phone call from Bert about the next game, and when I called him to find out what was going on, I got some excuse about "finals coming up". It was finals time for the local college, but a month later, there was still no call. Eventually I gave up.
I can't be sure, of course, but I strongly suspect that because I got involved in what was clearly some kind of "gaming tradition" that Bert and Ernie had of squabbling like an old married couple, I was persona non grata and kicked out of the group.
Honestly, in retrospect, it was no great loss.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:07, Thu 16 July 2020.
