Warning: Some excessive language has been used in this post. Please excuse my foul mouth.

Ok, so I was never really into D&D. I don't own a single D&D book in my RPG collection and I was doing fine without it. A couple of months ago, I got back with an old gaming group and the current GM said he would start a new campaign based on a book he picked up, Races of the Wild.

We would play 1st-level Raptorans (plainly put, Bird people) on their quest to 5th level ability flight. I borrowed the book and became really interested in the setting and these Raptorans. The following week, I built a Raptoran Ranger and began playing.

I surprised myself having fun with this very straightforward quest and adventure. The GM is fairly new and kept things simple and fun. My monday nights became filled with enjoyable D&D fun and I became more and more interested in the system and the races and all the things that make D&D what it is. I was having fun with it! I was considering getting the player's manual, for crying out loud!

What started out as a quest for something meaningful in the eyes of my character (a rite of passage, a quest for adulthood for my lil' raptoran ranger) turned into a quest for power in the GM's eyes.

Before I knew it, we were questing to gather pieces of Weapons of the Gods. With three people in our party, I didn't expect to start gathering things for 5-7 weapons, combining our efforts to please many gods, some who were apparently opposed.

I got the impression that the GM thought getting stuff and advancing (litterally burning through levels) our characters would make his game more enjoyable. It didn't.

Soon enough, my cool small bow had turned into this crazy crossbow of multiple attackedness and my character became twice as powerful as it was at the beginning.

Then some spaceship crashed from beyond reality's time and space and plane and we were questing for spaceship pieces that contained symbiotic body parts that made our rogue a monster of science fiction with incredible stats and retarded poisonous tongue whips and whatnot.

I mean WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?

Now, at 11th level (in the course of 9 fucking sessions mind you) our quest for godly weapons of the gods has come to an end so we basically have no choice but to associate ourselves with the owner of the same fleet of crazy I-can-make-your-character-more-badass spaceship kit. This is the direction the GM wants to go? Are you kidding me???

He expects me to go through with this? The 'suit' I will apparently be benefiting from will apparently raise all of my physical stats by 8 points... Each. Not to mention the insane AC I will be getting.

What was so wrong with my cool Raptoran Ranger who aspired to become a Storm Talon? (And did when he met the prerequisites way too early, and the GM practically skimmed over the roleplaying aspect in favor of speedy character enhancements and bonuses).

What's so wrong about many sessions and side-quests before going up a level?

Who the fuck even plays D&D like this??? I guess I wouldn't know, since I can't compare it to past experiences... But I stopped enjoying the game when I realized that the GM was a rail-roading lunatic with visions of powers for this campaign when he got bored with the challenge of making it a great character building game.

What the fuck do I do now, mind you?

I've asked the GM about it and why the game seemed to speed up and his answer was that he was bored with the concept and was taking the game in a new direction... which is the only reason why I would let my character go through with this spaceship shit-quest for more leveling and ungodly powers... As a favor to the GM's boredom. I'm done being bored though.

I'm tempted to leave the group again... (I sometimes leave that gaming group until I miss those guys and get over my "problem". This seems to happen on a semi-regular basis.)
But I'm even more tempted in teaching the GM a lesson. I don't mean being a dick. I mean actually pointing out the things he's doing right and the things that he's doing wrong.


Ok... This was a longer rant than I anticipated, and a bit more animated than I'm used to but I guess I needed to get it out.

Let me know what your thoughts are. Anything can help at this point.

That does sound pretty ick. I mean... I heard about the raptorans trying to achieve flight in one of your other posts a while back and it struck me as a cool idea. But... man... those Xendrik dudes? And the weapons of the gods? And the eleven levels in nine sessions? That is a bit much.

Depending on the circumstances, there may not be much you can do. If he and all the other players are enjoying it, I wouldn't say he was doing it wrong. And to an extent he should be having fun too. If it's just that he doesn't know what his players are in to, by all means tell him and see if you can iron out the details. Otherwise, it may be better to quit... if you're going to "teach" him that what you're into can be really fun, my advice is to run your own game.

Quote from: beejazzmy advice is to run your own game.

Yup.  You're probably not the only dissatisifed player at the table. It doesn't even have to be D&D.

Pete

Interestingly enough, when things started getting funny, I proposed alternating with a game of Cthulhu and I received a yes!, a sounds cool, and a no way, I hate the mythos.

Last week I proposed making characters for an Amber game, and again, got a weird response: two enthusiastic ones and one that was kinda like 'ugh, can I play some kind of beast man', which was the player's way of turning his character into one that could not properly interact with the setting.

Both of the negative responses I got were from the GM. I confronted him about it and said that I didn't mind not GMing if it was gonna interfere with his game. We talked about it for a bit and I let him borrow the rulebooks because he did not 'feel inspired' at the moment.

The thing about the game is that it was really enjoyable at first and became less and less enjoyable as things felt really rushed.
I suspect that he got bored with an idea and went onto the next. The quest for godly weapons sounded cool and was cool at first, then again, things were handed to us without any conflict so that we would end up getting a bunch of bonuses etc...

I don't mind the game becoming a weird quest for uber, but my character feels less and less mine because those things weren't 'earned', they were just handed to me.
Besides the fact that my character did not feel comfortable with the symbiotic bullshit (which granted, can be really cool, if that's the sort of game that you started out with), another player had trouble with that route.
I could tell the GM wanted to take the game in a new direction. I thought, alright, it's like making a character for a new game. I can even give it a new personality etc...
Another player didn't feel like it was the right direction for him, but the GM whipped up a BARD suit to fit his character better.
By the end of the session, we reluctantly agreed, deciding that yes, the game was changing into something new and that we were essentially saying goodbye to the great setting he had created at the beginning of the game.

Now the character essentially cannot be hit, cannot properly die and if 'it' does die, it can come back as a cloned version of itself with his original memories...

Where the fuck is the challenge is that?? Where's MY heroic death?!?!?!

(I still need to rant a bit apparently)

In the GM's defense, he gets bored easily. Wait, that's still part of my rant.

Quote from: Nihilistic MindIn the GM's defense, he gets bored easily.

Well, look here.  I'm going to put on my PR hat here and suggest you check out Dreamwalker Revised.  I created the game for exactly that reason--I get bored with most settings fairly quickly.  Dreamwalker allows you switch genres from night to night but still play the same characters.  

The game supports several different campaign models to help facilitate this:  
The Guardians of the Real - This is modern occult horror.  The characters begin as otherwise normal people who have begun to fight nightmares that cross over into the real world.  Many of these nightmares create little dream pockets in the real world and these pockets can span any genre.  So, a nightmare who crosses over near a VFW headquarters might create a pocket that resembles a WWII battlefield.  Inspired by Call of Cthulhu, Silent Hill, Frailty, etc.  

Project Dreamwalker and the Clinic - The characters travel into dreams to combat nightmares.  All of these dreams have goals that must be completed to pacify the Dreamer and these goals can also span any genre or theme.  Inspired by the Matrix, Dreamscape, the Cell, Sliders, etc.  

The Sword of Gaia - The characters combat nightmares in the real world and in dreams.  This is sort of a combination of the other campaign models.  

The Lost City of Revead - This is a "fixed" dream island with a lot of fantasy trappings.  It is surrounded by everchanging regions of "flux" known as the Outlands which can also span any genre (there's a built-in reason for this).  The characters defend Revead and routinely travel into the Outlands to collect dream energy in order to keep the realm from devolving into flux.

This is just a basic overview.  The main thing is the Dreamwalker Revised PDF is free (check my sig).  Read over the concepts and campaign models and see if it might fit your group.  The dream design guidelines use a structured format so they're easy to create, and you're already familiar with the d20 system so that's no barrier.  

If you guys like the game, be sure to buy the print version from lulu which is much more visually impressive!

Hope that helps,

Pete

Dude! Thanks, that's great! I'm gonna check it out when I get the chance

Hey, just a quick update. More for myself really, but anyways...

I talked to the GM about my concerns and he admitted he was taking the campaign in a completely new direction and that was why he was burning through levels like wildfire etc, etc...

Knowing where the campaign is heading (as opposed to what it was when it started), we got into it a lot more tonight.
It'll be fine. It was just a very weird two-session transition period into a new unexpected genre...

Good to hear that the talk went so smoothly and that all differences were so easily settled. It's not a matter of course that such discussions work out without resulting cracks and strife.

Quote from: SkyrockGood to hear that the talk went so smoothly and that all differences were so easily settled. It's not a matter of course that such discussions work out without resulting cracks and strife.

It kinda surprised me too... I guess I shouldn't have invested so much in a character concept I thought I would get to play for a long time. This occurrence is a lesson for me, to make things very clear at character creation what the players should expect from the game, and to let players know if the scope of the game changes abruptly for no other reason than the GM's whim. I believe that's where the GM failed us.

But no matter... I can hold off on ranting for a while more now.

I'm still reading through Dreamwalker Revised, btw, and it looks very promising for my own purposes.