I am looking for advice on how to handle a dm that is taking over our games with his pet npc's. He consistently creates or brings in these overly powerful npc's and then contrives reasons why we need to deal with them even when we have stated clearly and boldly that we want nothing to do with them. The first time it happened was with a chaotic neutral wizard whom was originally his pc, but the player took over as dm and brought this wizard back in after a few sessions, but much more powerful this time, and them built encounters that our party had no chance of handling without the wizards help, essentially forcing us to keep the wizard around. And he played chaotic neutral very well, not just "he picked chaotic neutral so his character can do whatever it felt like", as is so often the case with CN players. We had to resort to telling the dm out of game that we did not want his npc wizard usurping our game. Now we have switched to dnd 5e and our party got a cryptic message that a powerful being needed help to be rescued from a sorcerer/summoner, so we undertook the mission (in retrospect taking this bait was probably a bad move, but going along with the dm's hook is just kinda natural). So upon freeing this being we discovered it was an arcanoloth, and taking what little we knew of them into account we split the scene assuming we'd killed one evil for a potentially worse one, but there were three players around 2nd or 3rd level and after having fought the sorcerer already we were low on spells, hp's etc. we knew we couldn't kill it. So the arcanoloth shows up in our current base of operations, installed itself in a shop we frequently need to visit and tells us he is not going to harm us or anyone else in town he just wants to stay on the material plane. We said ok, knowing we still couldn't kill it as it is way too powerful. So we made a truce with the thing, and stated nearly verbatim that as long as it left us alone and did not harm the towns people we would leave it alone. However, the dm has used every tactic that I can think of to force the arcanoloth into our characters lives, from coercion to bribery. It has info we need for our current quest or it gave us each a minor magical item to prove it's good will, he even had it slowly affect an alignment change from neutral evil to true neutral (verified by our paladin). He's even had the arcanoloth publicly state that we ran away from it the first time we met it, twice... The trouble is (and maybe we're just gun shy after the wizard fiasco), That we stated in game clearly and unequivocally that we didn't want anything to do with it, but he just keeps making minor changes to it seemingly to make it more palatable to us so that we will keep coming back to deal with it. And, then contriving more reasons we need to have dealing with it. It's starting to appear as tho the dm is trying to set him up as some sort of patron to our party, but WE DON'T WANT IT! We've tried in game to tell it to eff off, we've tried refusing it's aid, tried refusing it's requests that we do such and such missions, tried pretty much everything in game short of getting it in writing that we never want to see or hear from it again... How do we get the dm to realize that we do not like his intrusive npc's navigating us around his world? He just doesn't seem to get it, or refuses to acknowledge it... (I realize this got very long, and apologize) We do not want our game group to fold, and the guy is a decent dm as far as story telling etc. it's just these npc's we are tired of. There are one or two more examples but I feel I've gone on long enough.
Thanks all for reading and any advice you might have.
Just as most PC problems should be directed to the player, DM problems should be directed at him, not dealt with in-game.
Speak to him, directly but politely, and basically say to him what you've said here. Or heck, just direct him to these forums and this post, you do a pretty good job explaining it here.
The further trouble is, that is how we handled the CN wizard situation and we basically had to do a reset in that game to affect the change... I suppose I could bring that up to him out of game using the wizard example. The guy was home schooled and has absolutely zero ability to pick up social ques that most of us take for granted...
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I am looking for advice on how to handle a dm that is taking over our games with his pet npc's. He consistently creates or brings in these overly powerful npc's and then contrives reasons why we need to deal with them even when we have stated clearly and boldly that we want nothing to do with them. The first time it happened was with a chaotic neutral wizard whom was originally his pc, but the player took over as dm and brought this wizard back in after a few sessions, but much more powerful this time, and them built encounters that our party had no chance of handling without the wizards help, essentially forcing us to keep the wizard around. And he played chaotic neutral very well, not just "he picked chaotic neutral so his character can do whatever it felt like", as is so often the case with CN players. We had to resort to telling the dm out of game that we did not want his npc wizard usurping our game. Now we have switched to dnd 5e and our party got a cryptic message that a powerful being needed help to be rescued from a sorcerer/summoner, so we undertook the mission (in retrospect taking this bait was probably a bad move, but going along with the dm's hook is just kinda natural). So upon freeing this being we discovered it was an arcanoloth, and taking what little we knew of them into account we split the scene assuming we'd killed one evil for a potentially worse one, but there were three players around 2nd or 3rd level and after having fought the sorcerer already we were low on spells, hp's etc. we knew we couldn't kill it. So the arcanoloth shows up in our current base of operations, installed itself in a shop we frequently need to visit and tells us he is not going to harm us or anyone else in town he just wants to stay on the material plane. We said ok, knowing we still couldn't kill it as it is way too powerful. So we made a truce with the thing, and stated nearly verbatim that as long as it left us alone and did not harm the towns people we would leave it alone. However, the dm has used every tactic that I can think of to force the arcanoloth into our characters lives, from coercion to bribery. It has info we need for our current quest or it gave us each a minor magical item to prove it's good will, he even had it slowly affect an alignment change from neutral evil to true neutral (verified by our paladin). He's even had the arcanoloth publicly state that we ran away from it the first time we met it, twice... The trouble is (and maybe we're just gun shy after the wizard fiasco), That we stated in game clearly and unequivocally that we didn't want anything to do with it, but he just keeps making minor changes to it seemingly to make it more palatable to us so that we will keep coming back to deal with it. And, then contriving more reasons we need to have dealing with it. It's starting to appear as tho the dm is trying to set him up as some sort of patron to our party, but WE DON'T WANT IT! We've tried in game to tell it to eff off, we've tried refusing it's aid, tried refusing it's requests that we do such and such missions, tried pretty much everything in game short of getting it in writing that we never want to see or hear from it again... How do we get the dm to realize that we do not like his intrusive npc's navigating us around his world? He just doesn't seem to get it, or refuses to acknowledge it... (I realize this got very long, and apologize) We do not want our game group to fold, and the guy is a decent dm as far as story telling etc. it's just these npc's we are tired of. There are one or two more examples but I feel I've gone on long enough.
Thanks all for reading and any advice you might have.
Addendum, I have found lots of advice online on how to handle problem players, but basically none on how to handle problem dm's...
Just as most PC problems should be directed to the player, DM problems should be directed at him, not dealt with in-game.
Speak to him, directly but politely, and basically say to him what you've said here. Or heck, just direct him to these forums and this post, you do a pretty good job explaining it here.
Thanks
The further trouble is, that is how we handled the CN wizard situation and we basically had to do a reset in that game to affect the change... I suppose I could bring that up to him out of game using the wizard example. The guy was home schooled and has absolutely zero ability to pick up social ques that most of us take for granted...