Update: thanks all for the very helpful advice! I think it’s really special that not one of you dunked on my DM. You all seem very supportive of a broad range of play styles and that’s a sign of a very healthy community.
I reached out to one of the more experienced players in our party, and I’ll be pinging our DM at some point over the next week. I’ll see if we can switch gears or if not leave peaceably. Thanks again.
Recently got into DND. Watched two seasons of Dimension 20 and loved them. A friend of mine offered to try DMing for our friend group. We meet every two weeks for 3-4 hours. We’re playing Pathfinder using the Foundry online interface so we can play remotely.
Apologize if I mess up any terminology, I’m new.
I am two hours into this week’s game right now (in another tab), and I’m so fucking bored. We’re in some underground tunnel system, and just getting bombarded by completely arbitrary enemies.
Last round we spent three hours fighting a mimic and a gelatinous cube, and there was no explanation for why they were even in the cave in the first place. We haven’t had a conversation with an NPC in three sessions. End of the round we come across some weird tunnel system with giant moths on one side and giant larvae on the other. No explanation for why they’re there. We start coming up with a plan on how to kill them so we can get the loot they’re guarding, but it was the end of the session.
This week, right when we start and try to do something about the moths, we get attacked by morlocks that came up the tunnel behind us, fight them for an hour and a half, and the remaining ones just run off. So now we’re finally dealing with the moths.
Anyway, we’re doing this on a giant map in Foundry. Nothing is theater of the mind. It’s all very literal, and it feels like I’m playing an incredibly slow PC game just sliding my token down tunnels. Nobody is really roleplaying. We rarely get any details during our battles beyond “they look really hurt.”
I don’t expect anybody I know to be at the level of Brennan or whatever at DMing, but there is just no entertainment value for what we’re doing here, we’re constantly in combat, none of my skills are useful (because we’re just fighting mindless monsters), and it’s like a solid 10 minutes between my turns.
Like end of last round, I floated the idea of trying to mount and tame one of the moths (I’m a halfling, and they’re big), and my DM just said “I mean, that’s pretty dangerous. If you’re ok rolling a new character, you can try it.” Like geez, sorry for trying to make it interesting. At least give me an in-game reason for why I shouldn’t do it.
I really want to quit. Any advice?
That table is not for you.
No dnd is better than bad dnd.
Even someone running a pre-made I think you’ll like more because some of them are super investigation or research based.
So yeah, not for you. Maybe some of those players have fun trying to maximize damage each turn, and that’s okay if it’s for them.
I would look for a new group personally. Don’t be afraid to politely leave groups that aren’t for you. A dnd group is a huge time investment so shouldn’t just be “first group I join I’m stuck with”.
Like my dm isn’t top tier, but like we got attacked by a lesser kraken… because we “may” have stolen eggs on a whim, and we were running around manning cannons and yelling at one another and it was chaotic and fun being on that ship.
Before that we were at a carnival and we thought we were slick because we cheated and won a boat… then after leaving we realized that while we did cheat with spells to win that, the tame owl bear we bought was a druid bear covered in illusion that ran away and we just ignored the million red flags. Why was it so cheap? Why did all the animals in that stall seem almost human intelligent, reacting to the salesmen almost like they were anticipating what he was going to do?
Someone who wants to min max damage would hate a session that was about scamming carnies then protecting our stolen boat from a lesser kraken because we stole its eggs on a whim and are now looking for a place to hatch them. But to me it’s fun that we get a chance to use all our abilities in a fun way.