So we started this homebrew game last weekend. The DM wanted to run a low magic game in 3.5 and a setting he wrote himself. I warned him on the message group that he'll have to keep things low level or the setting will break. He comes back with he doesn't want any rules lawyering about an edition he hasn't DMed for yet in his games. Already uneasy feelings.
So the first session is about a fire in the city. A city on top of a mesa next to the sea. We help with the bucket brigade and wander around until we get commissioned to investigate the death of the councilman whose house burned. Long drawn out investigation of the fire later, we end the game about to storm the tower of the guys we think are responsible.
Last night we pick up and start busting down the place. Combat combat combat. Much quicker than the first session. Things are rolling, we're kicking ass. He gets a little confused on Take 20 rules, but we find what we're looking for. Moving on to further floors, things are going great. Then we're on the final floor and we try to figure out how the Light spell works on the copper piece I wanted to slide under the nailed shut door to see what I could see beyond.
Something about the way we're referencing the rules has been bugging him the whole time. He blows a gasket. "I don't this shit, with all this junior DMing.' Table is kind of quiet, we move on, finished up the session. My wife isn't engaged anymore since she had been speaking when he blew.
The guy askes for a Bitch and Complaint session afterwards. My wife tells him she's done, she isn't having fun anymore, because this is the second time he's gone off the deepend. (The previous time was because someone had grabbed too many miniatures for the DM. He wasn't DMing.)
He basically says, "Ok. Well, that's game." Group is still quiet, starts clearing the table. My wife moves to the other room to calm down, and he starts making comments. "Some people need to grow up." Shit like that.
She comes out and tries to explain a bit more. He asks why she is lecturing him, and that was it. Everyone goes home, we crash for the night at our friends house. I post this before sleeping, after a long discussion of what happened.
Since I will be leaving in the next two weeks, and Shanna does not
feel comfortable gaming after tonights session, we will not be at any
games for the foreseeable future. For those who were not present, I
will let someone else fill in the details as I do not feel capable of
describing it objectively.
Pat, I want you to know that the game ran quite well up until the end.
I think there were a lot of good character interactions between the
combats. If you choose to continue, I'm sure David and Jon would enjoy
continuing their characters, and Chris, Larry, and Erik will enjoy
getting into it. But we cannot participate in any more games alongside
you. When I return, I am still willing to run Shackled City. We can
work out an alternating schedule of weeks between that and whatever
game is running at the time.
I do think that it would be best for the game you participate in be
held at Jon's house rather than Erik's. My reasoning is that if you
continue to blow up as you have done these past few times, you should
not be around Finley, possibly setting a bad example for him. I'm
going to end this here for now, because I cannot think of anything
more that I can say in a civil manner. Thank you all.
P.S. I want it clear to the group that we in no way expect you to
choose to game with Pat or us. Just that we cannot game with you and
Pat at the same time. My apologies.
As it is, however, you make the classic blunder of trying to garner sympathy for your plight under the ludicrous guise of outraged angst, all the while conveniently leaving out the lurid details of your own transgressions. So desparately do you gamble for a larger slice of the moral pie than you are entitled, that you have to bring anecdotal references to children into it. Since you have left me the task of filling in the missing details, allow me to happily do so...and you can hardly blame me for taking this course, since you were the one who asked someone else to do it in the first place.
To begin with, It is clear from the tone of your early emails as well as your conduct in these first two sessions that you were not at all interested in the game plot I came up with. Instead of coming out honestly and stating such, you took it upon yourself to subtly lay the groundwork for your own campaign before you even arrived in Texas, in effect saying to the group, hey guys, lets just humor this guy who doesn't know D&D 3.5 until I return from my deployment so we can play in a real campaign. Please don't insult my intelligence and the integrity of this group by denying it. From the beginning, to sought constantly to push me into the background.
To your patronizing, holier-than-thou approach to my gamemanship - which I was content to completely blow off in the name of domestic tranquility until today - I can only counter that at least my material was entirely original and of my own design. Shackled City even has a Wikipedia entry. In any case, you don't approach new people and the material they have to offer from a position of presumed superiority; if you do, you've failed yourself from the beginning, and all the apologies and concessions made in your direction aren't going to fix it.
Second, and perhaps more significant, I believe I made it unmistakably clear before I ever started my game how I feel about advice that I solicit versus having someone's own vision of how I should be running my game rammed down my throat. Clearly, you and Shanna utterly ignored this posting - which was stated in writing, I might add. At several points in the game, I attempted to reitierate what was happening in the game, only to have Shanna, who certainly was not alone in this, actually correct me and tell me No, this is what's happening instead. That is not advice, people, that is stepping over the line. Exactly what part of "My game, my rules" you do not understand remains a mystery to me.
As to your inexplicable analysis of my actions last night as a "blowup" - you fall laughably short of reality. Now, my yelling at Jon a few weeks ago, that was a blowup and an inexcusable one at that, and I apologized for it before the entire group. On the other hand, here's what the overly-sensitive called a "blowup" last night: Having a bellyfull of being told how I should conduct my game, which no self-respecting GM should have to contend with, I stated levelly - albeit in a tone of poorly-suppressed anger - "Alright, thank you, but I can run my own game, and I don't need this assistant-GM shit" or something very similar. I did not yell, and you cannot say I did without being branded an outright liar.
If this single line is what you and Shanna would brand a "blowup", if this lone utterance constitutes the core of your prima facie evidence on what an absolute tyrant I am, then I spit upon it. You folks don't know me well enough to offer forth that level of judgment, not even close.
And to which I must add: Grow the hell up, Skeezix. If the expletive "shit", stated in an angry observation brought about as a result of your own browbeating, offends you to the point where you feel you have to start severing relations, then I am compelled to question why in God's name you are even serving in the military.
I can respect your decision not to game with me anymore, although I will never understand it. I mean, it's not like you folks ever gave me any kind of chance from the beginning. On the contrary, you came here fresh from North Carolina with your opinions and your biases set in stone and proceeded to measure me against them. I'm quite sure I wasn't the only one you were doing this to, but I just happened to be next in line to GM, and unlike Erik, who has far more patience, I do not suffer the actions of prima donna know-it-alls gladly. But it has been said that it takes all kinds, to which I would amend, just not in Steve and Shanna's world. My usual tac when I meet people who I am not entirely compatible with is to give things time to iron out - certainly longer than a month, in any case.
I would have been glad to talk things out and make amends and apologies and whatever I needed to do to keep things going, but you don't work that way. Three strikes and I'm out. Or is it two?
And one more thing - you have considerable nerve playing the role of child protective services before this group in a frantic attempt to improve your own standing and stitch together your own damaged egos by parading Erik's kid forth as a poster child for my excesses. I freely admit surprise, as I would never have even considered doing something like that to anyone and would have never expected anyone who thought of themselves as civilized to stoop to that level. Obviously my first impressions of you were mistaken...until today, I thought of you and Shanna as cold, distant types who never pushed a noun against a verb except to force your unacquainted opinions as to how the world should work onto all and sundry, but in fact - you're really quite the closet emotionals, aren't you?
Pat
1. Asking for feedback in a "Bitches and Complaints/Gripes" session at
the end of the game, and not being able to take Shanna's complaint as
criticism.
2. Stating the campaign was ended after Shanna told you she did not
want to play in it any more.
3. Calling her immature and needing to grow up after she left the
room, directly after effectively saying "I'm taking my game and going
home."
4. Letting the irritation you felt at questions and statements we made
about the rules build up until you stated loudly "I'm tired of this
shit, I don't need junior DMing." rather than calmly and rationally
telling us "I'm not comfortable with your input on my game, we're just
going with my ruling."
5. Using any form of derogatory terminology to reference us. Skeezix,
Pat? Seriously? How about Four-eyes? Bitch? Is it more mature to use a
term I have to Google to understand your reference rather that just a
run of the mill insult? Excuse me, you did use 'prima donna know-it-
alls' as well.
6. Using the fact that you took the time to write out a campaign and
that I prefer to use the printed module as a measuring stick for how
much better you are than me.
7. Thinking that your use of expletives is the reason we don't want to
associate with you and not the manner in which you try to resolve
situations that anger you.
8. Using the vocabulary you have from your work to layer your
communications with so many overly verbose statements that the
arguement you are trying to validate is obfuscated and lost in the
transmission.
Pat, I posted to the group because Chris, Larry, and Erik needed to
know that we were not getting along. I'm not sure how if I had
directly addressed you first before, that a reply would not have been
necessary. We cannot resolve this without a discourse, so of course
you would have to reply. Perhaps you meant you wouldn't have had to be
outraged and called me names and the like if I had just wrote directly
to you. But wait Pat, you didn't have to do that anyway. You chose to
insinuate that I was attempting to persuade the group to my side. You
chose to claim I was using the 'for the children' fallacy. You were
the one to suggest my grip on reality was slipping.
As to your claim that I have been subverting the group away from you,
perception colors reality. My character was the archtype of a woodsman
out of place in the city. Perhaps I did not make that clear enough,
and you mistook my playing of a quiet spoken man as disinterest in
your game. I did not come up with enough ways for my country bumpkin
to interact with your city by the sea. I apologize. However, you are
going to take me to task for doing the exact same thing you did with
your campaign? How many months prior to starting A Land in Peril did
you start posting information? 18 Feb. Which I'm lucky to know thanks
to the discussion page, the only thing you couldn't delete, as you
have taken all your toys down from the group. I merely began posting
world information and character options, the same as you. But somehow
this was undermining your campaign. If I truly did not want to play in
your game, I would not spend the gas to drive an hour to Austin.
As to our interference with the running of your game, I do not recall
at any one point saying that you had to do something a certain way. As
far as I recollect, Shanna and Jon were trying to explain what they
wanted their characters to do. I admit I felt it dragged out a bit
more at those particular points. But rather than letting the pressure
build up like you did, a better response would have been to call for a
break, walk it off and determine what exactly about the situation was
angering you, and returning to explain that calmly. Not try to bull on
by the moment and let the irritation fester until you just can't take
it anymore.
Yes Pat, it is (was?) your game. But if we are not having fun, we
certainly aren't going to play. And we cannot have fun when we are
walking on eggshells trying to do just what you want so you don't fly
off the handle. Shanna and I are not going to drive the aforementioned
hour to game in a group like that. And this is not baseball. There are
no three strikes. You should have been out after the explosion on Jon.
We accepted your apology. And you turned around and did the exact same
thing.
Again, this is a game. There is absolutely no reason to get upset over
how many miniatures were grabbed, or that someone is reading from the
book. It is not worth me raising my blood pressure over anything that
happens at the table. So if you cannot hold your temper and discuss
things civilly, we have no business gaming together. You're right Pat,
we don't know you, and you don't know us. All we have to judge each
other by is our time at the table. And we've decided that what you've
shown us is not what we want to be around.
I look forward to enjoying your long and measured reply about how
we're entirely to blame and you are so much better than we are.