Player versus DM

The nature of D&D is a little weird. The DM is essentially a host. His job is to set up the game, tell the story, and make sure people have fun. In this sense the DM is playing together with the players so they can all have fun. But a large part of D&D is tactical wargaming. The DM creates battle scenarios and takes on the role of the enemies. In this sense the DM is playing AGAINST the players. This leads to a little confusion about whose side the DM is on.

In battles, a DM is supposed to make it fun and challenging and not to just crush the players. He has to make it tough enough so that there is challenge, but not so hard that the PCs have no chance. You want to occasionally fudge things so the PCs can survive, but you don't want them to feel like their are no consequences and they can't lose. In a fight they should be struggling to win and being forced to think. A lot of time my players think I am out to get them because I naturally take on the side of the monsters I am controlling. I remember one time playing Champions and a character was attacked on the sewer. I rolled the damage, 4d6. I got a 23 which is an amazing roll so I yelled out "Yes!" and players reported a look of glee on my face. I then realized that 23 points of damage was enough to instantly kill the poor character...

But this adversarial relationship can be dangerous and can infect other parts of the game. Some players go take playing against the DM outside the realm of just combat encounters and engage in excessive complaining, rules lawyering, power gaming, and even attempts to cheat. Now there is a place for complaining, rules lawyering, and power gaming (though not cheating), but any of these behaviors taken to an extreme can be problematic. A player might feel triumph at tricking the DM on some rules point or trying to out argue with a DM or even wear one down with complaints to get their way. A player feeling like they are competing against not just the DM, but the game designers can seek out rules exploits as a way of showing how smart they are and how they can easily disrupt a game. Some DMs may enjoy this kind of behavior since it is something they can 'play against', but as the rules have solidified and grown more defined from first to fourth edition and general rule of "the DM is always right" seems to have weakened in many peoples minds, and the notion of 'beating the DM at the rules' seems to have strengthened.

My personal style is non-competitive. It is one of the reasons I like D&D. I play games to have fun with other people and not to crush or dominate them. So as a DM I don't like having an adversarial relationship with my players. I am working so that you can have fun and having a player complain or try to mess up my game makes it not fun for me. In the past I have let players reduce my enjoyment, but as I have observed myself over the last decade of DMing I realize that one of my chief weaknesses is losing energy. In the beginning I put in a lot of work, but later on I slowly run out of steam and do less work. One big culprit in this is any reduction in enjoying the game. Basically players who I feel are trying to compete against me make it not fun and make me less interested in playing.

In the past I have not been proactive about dealing with this. I would let people stay who weren't enjoyable for me to DM because I needed players and didn't want to be a dick by kicking out people, but I now understand that this doesn't really work. My biggest DMing gap in my post college life was partially due to just being worn down by a player. He wasn't a bad guy, but he made it less fun. Maybe I should have talked to him about this, but I am not sure what I would have said. I think it would have come down to me saying, "Stop complaining, it is making it not fun for me." And he probably would have said that I should stop doing things that made him complain.

Anyway, my post college gaming has been about finding people to game with and becoming friends with them instead of finding friends and gaming with them. This reduces the complications of 'you can't kick out a friend' so I have freedom to say who is in my game and to not use this power to exclude people who aren't going to be fun to play with is something that I have to do to make the game something I will continue to want to do.