I know this is the Dungeon Masters Only forum but this seems like the best place to get advice from Dungeon Masters.
I've been playing in a game for about 6 months now. I'm a player with 5 other players. We've been playing together for about 3 years now with this being our 3rd campaign.
Now for the issue at hand.
Most of us are not having any fun doing this campaign. It was fine for the first few sessions but now it's really not enjoyable for us. Our characters don't really mesh well together (probably because we didn't do a session zero) but most of our issues lie with the story. It's a homebrew setting about a fertile land that three races (dwarves, men and elves) have been fighting over in a war lasting a thousand years. Interesting, right? Our dungeon master isn't running with any of that for the main story, despite the fact that he wrote it. Recently our characters came across a tower and when we entered it we where met with a wizard dude who said our future selves paid him to teach us about Elder Gods.
Sure, an Elder God story is fine but the way it's set up it has nothing to do with the interesting parts of the setting. It seems completely unconnected.
A minor issue is that it feels like our DM is favoring certain players. Now, one is his wife and that's completely understandable. But for another example one of our players just got his first magic item and another player has so many he is trying to combine them to attune to them all, two of those items being custom ones the dm made for him.
We feel at a loss. Everyone except for the DM's wife isn't having any fun but they don't see any problems. How can we bring this up to them? We all just want it to get better.
There’s a bit to unpack here. For the first issue, do you trust the DM to be a good storyteller? Could be he’ll be able to tie the threads together, or could be the war was only ever supposed to be background noise for the real campaign.
You say there was never a session 0. The good news is it’s never too late for one. If the group is up for it, you can all take the first little while of the next session and have a session 0 to get yourselves back on track.
As far as the favoritism, I’d say first talk with the other players to see if it’s their perception as well. If there’s a few of you who agree about it, then best thing is to say something to the DM out of character (like during that session 0). Could be he doesn’t realize he’s doing it and mentioning something will get him to stop. Also, could be he’s got big plans to give the rest of you cool loot, and it just hadn’t come up yet.
It's not at all that we don't trust our DM to tell a good story. Its hard to explain but the general way this campaign feels (general play, difficulty of combat, social encounters, ect) feels more like where playing Call of Cthulhu. Combat is heavily discouraged, the strength stat is basically useless because of his extra nerfs to heavy armor (disadvantage on dex saving throws being the big one). Even with combat being discouraged there's never any danger because where always getting saved by someon far stronger than we are. And suddenly, out of nowhere, this group of nobody adventurers are supposed to save the world from the Brother Moons from Deadspace. (Not exactly that but it's clearly his inspiration)
I guess the TLDR is that our DM wants to play Call of Cthulhu and we don't.
I know this is the Dungeon Masters Only forum but this seems like the best place to get advice from Dungeon Masters.
I've been playing in a game for about 6 months now. I'm a player with 5 other players. We've been playing together for about 3 years now with this being our 3rd campaign.
Now for the issue at hand.
Most of us are not having any fun doing this campaign. It was fine for the first few sessions but now it's really not enjoyable for us. Our characters don't really mesh well together (probably because we didn't do a session zero) but most of our issues lie with the story. It's a homebrew setting about a fertile land that three races (dwarves, men and elves) have been fighting over in a war lasting a thousand years. Interesting, right? Our dungeon master isn't running with any of that for the main story, despite the fact that he wrote it. Recently our characters came across a tower and when we entered it we where met with a wizard dude who said our future selves paid him to teach us about Elder Gods.
Sure, an Elder God story is fine but the way it's set up it has nothing to do with the interesting parts of the setting. It seems completely unconnected.
A minor issue is that it feels like our DM is favoring certain players. Now, one is his wife and that's completely understandable. But for another example one of our players just got his first magic item and another player has so many he is trying to combine them to attune to them all, two of those items being custom ones the dm made for him.
We feel at a loss. Everyone except for the DM's wife isn't having any fun but they don't see any problems. How can we bring this up to them? We all just want it to get better.
There’s a bit to unpack here. For the first issue, do you trust the DM to be a good storyteller? Could be he’ll be able to tie the threads together, or could be the war was only ever supposed to be background noise for the real campaign.
You say there was never a session 0. The good news is it’s never too late for one. If the group is up for it, you can all take the first little while of the next session and have a session 0 to get yourselves back on track.
As far as the favoritism, I’d say first talk with the other players to see if it’s their perception as well. If there’s a few of you who agree about it, then best thing is to say something to the DM out of character (like during that session 0). Could be he doesn’t realize he’s doing it and mentioning something will get him to stop. Also, could be he’s got big plans to give the rest of you cool loot, and it just hadn’t come up yet.
It's not at all that we don't trust our DM to tell a good story. Its hard to explain but the general way this campaign feels (general play, difficulty of combat, social encounters, ect) feels more like where playing Call of Cthulhu. Combat is heavily discouraged, the strength stat is basically useless because of his extra nerfs to heavy armor (disadvantage on dex saving throws being the big one). Even with combat being discouraged there's never any danger because where always getting saved by someon far stronger than we are. And suddenly, out of nowhere, this group of nobody adventurers are supposed to save the world from the Brother Moons from Deadspace. (Not exactly that but it's clearly his inspiration)
I guess the TLDR is that our DM wants to play Call of Cthulhu and we don't.