Re: What's the worst DM bad habit you've encountered
Changing the rules in the middle of the [CENSORED] game.
Seriously, a friend that I used to game with (haven't seen him in a while) would all to frequently make a rules-change in the middle of a session, sometimes in the middle of combat, and claimed that he couldn't GM without doing that. Not so bad if you don't know the rules very well and are just participating in the collective story and riding along with those that do know the game pretty well, but very frustrating if you know the rules and realize that the change means that your character is now significantly less useful in some important way. It's not malicious, he's not trying to screw over any character or player, he just can't help himself when he gets an idea for a new or modified rule.
A different (very different) GM I gamed with a few times had kind of the opposite problem: Insufficient imagination, a habit of rollplaying and ruleplaying, and a tendency to belittle roleplaying. He once mocked a socially-focused PC by calling him a 'weak character,' and implying that someone who plays characters that aren't combat-focused is deluding themself about being a better rollplayer. It may have been due to being fairly young (in his twenties), but I've played with young roleplayers (I was one for quite some time) and most of them didn't have that problem.
|