Of course one complains about one’s DM in private, but it is not often that one gets the opportunity to complain about a DM in public. Today I joined a new role-playing group (one of these pub-based ones) and went along for my first ever session, proudly clutching my newly-created character, and my session was completely ruined by the DM-ing. So badly ruined, in fact, because the DM kicked me out after 2 hours.

In a nutshell: our party went the wrong way through the dungeon and ended up in the final battle way before we were ready. My character was the first to be attacked and died instantly. After the survivors ran away and the battle was over, I was told that, since I had died, I should leave.

No shit.

Of course, it didn’t happen quite this simply. The DM had 2 opportunities to prevent us reaching the final battle early, he had an opportunity to prevent the battle going quite as badly as it had, and he had ample opportunities after the battle to provide me with a new character to play. But he didn’t, because he was completely unwilling to deviate from the adventure-as-written. That is shitty DM-ing!

In detail, the mistakes ran in this order:

  1. I suggest searching a little shrine outside our target, the main temple, thinking it might have a secret tunnel to the temple. It doesn’t, but has a teleportation room behind the altar which teleports anyone who steps into it to the most deadly level of the main temple. Even though I did a really good search check and I’m an elven wizard, I get no hint of magic or risk, and there is no triggering device. You just step into the alcove and you’re gone. The DM doesn’t bother changing this to include a triggering device, of course – why should he care if a 1st level elf character gets teleported to the Room of Death? The obvious triggering device – a holy symbol of the religion in question – would have been sufficient for us to know that  there was a secret route there but that we couldn’t use it…
  2. So everyone followed me through the teleporter, into the deepest level beneath the temple (we didn’t know this of course) and we were immediately attacked by 2 Ogres who we slew very tidily. To slay them, our Half-Orc Barbarian had to go into a frenzy so, being a Half-Orc barbarian, he decided to charge off to make the most of his frenzy after he had killed the Ogres. This is good role-playing, folks! While everyone else looted corpses, I followed the barbarian in case he ran into trouble. We reached a trapdoor in a side corridor, which (unbeknownst to us) was the escape trapdoor from the room where the Head Priest of Evil and his Bastard Skeleton Construct were hiding out. Again, here the DM could have stopped our Progress to Destruction by making the escape route locked from above (hardly unusual!) He didn’t, so the Barbarian did what a frenzied barbarian would do, and hauled himself through to attack the occupants. I did what any stupid elf would do, and followed to try and help…
  3. Instead of finding a way for the other characters to join us immediately, the DM followed the adventure-as-written and had them all stop in the middle of the previous room  to communicate with a ghost that provided some helpful clues. This delayed them all long enough for our Date with Doom to proceed casually…
  4. Back in the Room of Destiny, the Barbarian had managed to haul open the trapdoor and climb into the room, in the process  knocking over the Head Priest, who was standing on it (incidentally, another very good way to prevent us entering in the first place…) He followed this up with a good solid blow to the head, but even though prone and stabbed the priest managed to reel off a (successful) Hold Person, paralysing the only fighter in the room. Seeing this, I cast my only offensive spell (Colour Spray, which hurls lots of bright colours everywhere) and ran behind a pillar to avoid magic. The DM asked me if I would like to hide but, seeing I had just brought attention to myself with a big rainbow spell, I said no. Of course my spell failed (stupid ADnD spell rules) so the Priest wasn’t stunned, so he called forth his Emergency Guardian, a massive four armed skeletal construct that was in the pillar I was hiding behind. With nobody else in the room or moving, this construct naturally attacked me first, and since I was a level 1 wizard it sliced me and diced me.
  5. Now, of course, the remainder of the party reached the room but because some were in plate armour they couldn’t climb through the trapdoor quickly and took some rounds to gather. In the meantime this crazy Construct stalked around the room and killed off both NPCs. The Barbarian escaped his paralysis and killed the priest, and we discovered that the only weapon which could harm the construct was in the possession of one of the dead NPCs. So, having nothing else to do, the Rogue looted the body of the Priest while everyone else desperately tried to find a way to deal with the Construct. Here were 2 more opportunities to end the battle  early – the Priest’s death could have disabled the construct, or he could have had a magic control device on his body which the rogue could destroy. But neither condition was in the adventure-as-written so… everyone fled, in 2 different directions
  6. Once everyone was safe out of the room, I asked the DM if I might have another character to play. The other players pointed out to him that since the Priest had died, all of the monks from the temple who he had specially enchanted to be his prisoners would be free of his spell and I could play one of them. He said no, and I said  ”so what? I just go home now?” and  he said “Yep”. 
So I left, 2 hours into a 4 or 5 hour session. I have never seen a player kicked out of a game for dying before. I had barely taken part, this was my first session in this new group, and multiple plot junctions where my (and the NPCs) deaths could have been averted were ignored because the DM refused to change the adventure-as-written. I can’t imagine that he conceived of such a poor opinion of me in just 2 hours that he really needed to work that hard to get rid of me. He went against the wishes of the whole party in denying me a new character (he even said “I don’t accept your argument” as if it were a debate about the damage a longbow does or something). Everyone else was getting along fine. I really do think this was just a case of bad DM-ing, combined with a good dose of good old-fashioned bullying control freak.
This is the second pub-based rpg group I have tried in London, and the other one is hardly going much better. It is a sad irony to me that having arrived in a city where I will finally get an opportunity to experience a variety of role-playing, I can’t because the nerds in question are so horribly socially maladjusted. I suppose there is, however, no option but to persevere…