Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

[Weldun]

Every time you award XP, at least half the players look towards raising their defences, DCs or both.

[Adventus]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

you have to keep getting new players as the 'old' ones keep leaving. And they only played 2 sessions.

[fiducia]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

You doggedly insist the adventure is not overpowered despite the none too suble hints of your RP group. These 'hints' usually involve the PC laying down before the current 'reasonable encounter' with a conjured apple in their mouths so as to speed up the combat.

[Remjin]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

.... *crickets* ....

[Spence]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Before every session the players spend a few minutes working on their "replacement character".

[Darkfire]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

The PCs are on a first name bases with the hospital staff and have reserved rooms.

 

Before every combat the PCs call the JLA and ask for superman to come rescue them.

 

Every single PC has bought regeneration with resurrection which they loudly point out they use every session they play.

 

The PCs wonder if they can take a less dangerous hunted like Dr. Destroyer instead of your normal villains.

[Psybolt]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Your players take catnaps in-between action phases... and miss nothing(actually happened with us)

[Comic]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

You GM an all-are-welcome campaign every week.

 

Every week you get double the players.

[David Blue]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Your player characters know everybody in court on a first name basis, and spend more time defending themselves there than on any other activity in the game.

 

Players discuss during combat what they're going to be charged with this time, and their defenses and extenuating circumstances. They know and discuss your favorite charges and civil damage suits.

 

Player characters have psychologists routinely updated with any changes to their psych limits or life circumstances in anticipation of the next court-ordered evaluation.

 

Nobody bothers to keep track of how much more "community service" they have left to run, as (a) they know they'll be sentenced to more before this runs out, and ( they agree that the group has become in effect a system of court-ordered self-incrimination anyway.

 

Also, nobody bothers to buy Wealth as they know the court will take it.

 

Both players and player characters loudly discuss why Agent Max Justice doesn't do some fighting himself before the rest of the team is unconscious, humiliated and / or up for more property damage charges again.

 

(Agent Max Justice, or your equivalent, is the NPC government agent team leader with off-the-shelf foci who can take out any two team members simultaneously, and can probably take out the whole team himself if he wants to. His regular keen observations on player character frailties and failures under fire are vital in influencing the court in the direction of sufficient leniency to keep the game going.)

[David Blue]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

The player characters keep track of how many years it's been since you said you were going to start enforcing the focus disadvantage.

 

You keep the players who don't already have focus-based characters from retiring their loser non-focused-up characters and bringing in focused based winner characters instead ... by banning the practice and insisting that they wouldn't be happy if you let them do that anyway, because you're going to start really enforcing the focus disadvantage real soon now.

 

This story has not changed in two or more years, and the players can tell you, at least to the month, when each anniversary of your first telling of that story comes around.

 

The gadget-based characters get a total rebuild with each new addition of experience, always reconfiguring themselves to become ever more invincible. Meanwhile, the players of the non-focused characters spend their points indifferently, but they each have a replacement character sheet for what they want to play if you ever relax the ban on new focus-based characters, and that is the character sheet that gets updated with loving care every time experience is distributed.

[Magmarock]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Players show up to the game with a laptop computers and play CoH in between turns.

[Matt Frisbee]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Players show up to the game with a laptop computers and play CoH in between turns.

 

Ouch. This one's actually happened to me -- but only once. After my complete meltdown on the person who was doing it, the situation has not been repeated.

 

Yeah, I occasionally have issues and yeah, it was a newbie.

 

Matt "If-you-want-to-play-video-games-instead-of-real-role-playing-then-just-stay-home" Frisbee

[Magmarock]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Ouch. This one's actually happened to me -- but only once. After my complete meltdown on the person who was doing it, the situation has not been repeated.

 

Yeah, I occasionally have issues and yeah, it was a newbie.

 

Matt "If-you-want-to-play-video-games-instead-of-real-role-playing-then-just-stay-home" Frisbee

 

 

Yikes. Really? And I was only joking. Man, I am so sorry... I know I always prefer real life RP to online.

 

Mags

[nexus]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Every time you award XP' date=' at least half the players look towards raising their defences, DCs or both.[/quote']

 

Wait, you mean they can spend on them other things?

 

[hfergus]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Your players find more and more "other things they have to do" during gaming days and don't show up.

 

You spend half the time (or more) during gaming time doing something else. (My group comes close. I am the only guy (GM) with 2 women players. They tend to chit-chat a lot, and I don't mind and even contribute to it. However, it is not half the time and when I start with "When we last saw our intrepid heroes..." they stop immediatly and start gaming, and the chit-chat does not normally start again.)

 

They start buring effigies of certain villians - or you.

[Darkfire]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

your players grumble that you're adventures have two flavors Railroading or TPK(total party kill).

 

your players ask if you can just E-mail them summaries of what their characters did during the adventure, since havening a choice might mess up your story.

 

every NPC in the campaign seems to have 20 points of power and mental defense...hardened! (as player this actually happened to me, the GM spent twenty minutes explaining why it was "logical" a Viper janitor and secretary would both have such defenses.)

[Cygnia]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Your GM gleefully lets the dumbest player play a Sorcerer Supreme character solely so he can take advantage of the fact the player can't handle a VPP (let alone ANY multiple choice combat).

 

Your GM gleefully looks for loopholes for his villains. Like Density Increase coupled with Strength Drain or having a PC's NND (Defense being target is an "innocent" ie has a Code vs Killing) not work on someone whose CvK is only against sealife.

 

The GM's uberpowered NPCs take out the villains and you're just sitting around twiddling your thumbs.

 

The only person's "critiques" your GM appears to listen to come from the spouse/significant other.

[Cancer]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

(1) Your players BEGIN their character construction with campaign-limit SPD and defenses, and try to wheedle your permission to exceed the limits.

 

(2) The PC team tries to get game-world money by being a logo advertisement for Target.

[jtelson]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

(1) Your players BEGIN their character construction with campaign-limit SPD and defenses, and try to wheedle your permission to exceed the limits.

 

(2) The PC team tries to get game-world money by being a logo advertisement for Target.

 

 

hmmm, I'd have said that number 1 indicates an issue with the players rather than the GM.

[Darkfire]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

your players wounder why every henchman is equipped with at least a 4D6 RKA 2xPenatrating attack and enough CSLs to hit even the speedster...when he's Martial dodging.

 

when watching reality TV is more entertaining than the campaign.

[casualplayer]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Your GM gleefully lets the dumbest player play a Sorcerer Supreme character solely so he can take advantage of the fact the player can't handle a VPP (let alone ANY multiple choice combat).

 

Hey now! I resemble that remark.

 

Actually it wasn't that either of the players was dumb. One was indecisive and one was more hedonistic than agressive. The indecisive player had a series of elemental based Multiforms and could have completely dominated the screentime if he had been a little better at mixing and mingling. The laid-back player had a laundry list of powers, either through or enhanced by foci, and there is no way that I would have greenlit the character for a combat wombat style player.

 

One game I got to the climax (gladiatorial combat against Firewing, Quazar and Herculan in Angels Stadium) and I told the players to pass their character sheets to the person on their right. No mind switch or anything like that, just walk a mile in their shoes and stay in character for the character you now have. All the pent up ideas and frustration at squandered potential each of the players had for the other's characters spilled out with a vengeance and they kicked the living snot out of the Malvans.

[matrix3]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Al Bruno III has a whole list of stories of games gone wrong, including a lot of random/evil GMs. From a game of FASA Star Trek:

 

(paraphrased)

 

Ol' Yellowbelly: "I go to my ready room and start making plans."

 

Psycho Dave: "Roll to see if you trip on the step and knock yourself unconscious."

.

.

.

Psycho Dave: "Did you fail your Dex roll or not?"

 

Ol' Yellowbelly: "Yes."

 

Psycho Dave: "All right then let's get out those damage tables."

 

Me: "You know this whole 'roll to see if you trip and fall down' thing is kinda mean-spirited."

 

Psycho Dave: "Gaming is a simulation of life. Are you saying people don't trip and fall down in real life?"

 

Me: "No, but -"

 

Psycho Dave: "No. Realism is what I am aiming for here and realism is what you are getting. OK Yellowbelly your character hits his mouth on the deck shattering his wisdom tooth to the gumline."

 

Weasly Crusher: "Ow!"

 

Ol' Yellowbelly: "Now I see why Bones was always on the bridge."

 

Psycho Dave: "You're knocked unconscious by the pain."

 

(His site appears down, I had to go through the WayBack machine to get a link that worked: http://web.archive.org/web/20050106231559/http://www.albrunothethird.com/homepageframe2rpgnet7.htm)

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Your players take catnaps in-between action phases... and miss nothing(actually happened with us)

You too, huh? Excrutiating.

 

I believe the GM has the responsibility to keep things moving, so if it's that slow it is most likely the GMs fault. That being said, why is it that some players wait until it is actually their phase to even start to think about what they want to do? If it's been thirty minutes since your last phase, couldn't you at least have an idea?? (It's like watching the little old lady at the grocery store who waits until everything is scanned to begin the five minute hunt for her checkbook. ) And if you take up twenty minutes to decide "I'll punch him" then you should be pummeled and often.

[yamamura]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

How about in the oppisite direction...

 

The player takes more time deciding which Ultimate weapon he has acquired during play to use against the enemy then actually fighting or roleplaying.

 

The players lets the new guy go up against your villains as that is the only way the fight will be interesting.

[Korvar]

Re: Top Signs that you need to rethink your GMing.

 

Let's see... There was the Star Wars campaign, where I actually wrote "Bacta Bath Toys" on my character sheet, due to the amount of time we spent there...

 

And I think it was the same GM who decided to use Star Warriors for some of the space combat. That was a "catnap between phases" situation. Oh, yes.