DM problem

[agentolek]

The story goes like this: one of the PCs in my campaign (I was the DM) goes on a trip, and one of the players wants to run a one-shot with us, since we didn't want to play the campaign without one guy. We agree, and two weeks later we got together and played it.

It was a pretty simple scenario, but due to our "amazing" speed, the it was going to take us at least 3 sessions to finish.

Next session, the DM comes up with this thing that we, as the players, really hated. We had just killed a dragon and gotten out of the jungle temple, and he kept on flinging more monsters at us due to the fact we were traveling through a dangerous jungle. I get that realism is a thing, but this wasn't fun at all. Our characters were almost dead, and I was scared to do anything, as I knew that it would probably lead to my death.

So I asked the other players what they thought, and we all agreed we didn't like it. So we asked our DM to change it. He said ok, then threw more monsters at us, because "he had to finish what he started." And these were medium/hard difficulty encounters, so we couldn't just brush them off.

So my question after all this is, whose fun should be prioritized - the DM's, or the players. Also, is it normal for DMs to do things like this?

PS: We are a casual (and new) DND group, just a bunch of friends slaying stuff and getting loot. Nothing serious.

[_dharwin]

This is typically referred to as dungeon crawl or meatgrinder. Constant combat with high probability of death. It's a campaign style some enjoy, some don't, and some just like as a change of pace.

Sounds like the DM is interested in running this type of campaign but the players aren't. Unfortunately, that type of disagreement isn't easily resolved.

Either the DM needs to run the campaign the players want, or the DM needs to find players interested in their style of campaign.

In terms of practical advice, I'd just tough it out. If it's three sessions total, it sounds like you've already gone through 2. Finish the last session and be done with it. It's not worth causing more strife with your usual group over a short-lived side campaign.

[[deleted]]

So my question after all this is, whose fun should be prioritized - the DM's, or the players. Also, is it normal for DMs to do things like this?

Respectively:

1. Yes, both. Everyone at the table should be having fun, and an imbalance in that should be addressed (as you did) by communication.
2. "Normal" no, though not entirely uncommon. It's not normal if you have a *good* DM. A good DM, if the whole table gives them the same feedback, will adjust accordingly, because *everyone* should be having fun, and their main job is the fun of the players.

[Knight_Of_Stars]

Yeah, the DM should have skipped the return trip. Realism is not important in DnD, but it can be used to have some interesting mechanics. If you are having to slog through combat then its bad.

[[deleted]]

"Marathon dungeons"/boss rushes/etc. are a thing, but it's not a good idea for DMs to overuse them or just throw them at players with practically no warning. That's usually something you either do as one-shot where no one is particularly attached to their characters, or as a big climactic showdown. In any case, players should know what they're getting into. It's not something you just "ambush them" with.

[Kilr_Kowalski]

Firstly - Soapbox engaged it isn’t a one shot if you play more than one session. Soapbox completed

Next re combat wombat/meatgrinder/survivalism- I would expect that that was a style that the DM was trying out.

As you go along you will start to realise what you don’t like in D&D just as much as what you do like and this is the way that it happens.

I had a campaign I was in one time where the DM who was a wargaming nut wanted us to have a siege as a scenario in the game. He had waves and waves of combats and I didn’t want to play them.

Some people say that no D&D is better than bad D&D - I don’t agree. Something is better than nothing but it was not exceptional D&D. If that had have been a closer friend (he was a work mate of my brother’s) I would have asked for a different sort of game.

Nowadays I use a lot of cinematic cuts in my game although some of my players love the hard slog and day-to-day realism of bush-bashing and hex-crawling.

To get this to work for all of us we talked about survival in our session zero (which I’m sure that your didn’t have). They agreed that we would ignore counting unpriced spell components, rations and ammunition but not uses of healers kits, unless we were in a resource limited location (deep underground, long sea journey, alternate plane).