Do you have or had GMs that can't adjust their secondary plot hooks worth a damn?

Man, that encounter could've been awesome if the GM actually gave hints when you guys investigated.

>I-I didn't see anything, but I heard a sound...
>Rangers were investigating the forest on reports of an unknown entity murdering travelers
>Damaged branches indicate that something heavy was traveling through the trees
>Arrows were used by a certain group of bandits the players previously encountered

No one said that they had to be successful. It's just dangling an accidental plot hook, having the players bite, and not following up is a wasted opportunity.

>"While gathering information, the mayor meets up with you, over hearing more interested about the legend of the haunted house. He ask you to meet him at his house, because the locals don't like to talk about the legend."

Is that really so hard? AND it helps justify why no one else told you anything even with such a high GI check.

>Fellowship success.
>... Intimidate?
>That GM was apparently continually whining to one of the players that we never did any actual roleplaying
Did you actually talk to the guy or did you say "I roll to intimidate, what does he say?"

I think too many GMs think that having completely pointless events happen around the PCs creates the illusion of a "living world."

After all, there's a whole world carrying on around the PCs that has nothing to do with them or what they're doing, right? So naturally they'd meet people just doing other things, right?

Wrong.

Chekhov's Gun. Don't add details to the story unless it will matter to the story. This applies just as much to GMing as it does to writing. Just trust your players to assume the world has its own stuff going on, because the only thing they're concerned about is their story and the stuff they have going on, so all that other stuff doesn't matter.

>Implying it's the players fault
7/10 Nice bait

We went through ten minutes or so of attempting to act it out, verbally, then resorted to hand signals and simple diagrams, before flat out asking if we could roll skills to receive info.
But no, that arrow in the gut apparently fried dying ranger's brain.

Admittedly, that was not very clear in the first post.

>If you want a good story, read a book

If you want to keep gaming with this group you'll tell a good story.

I'm just checking, yo. Skepticism is important.
Fair enough, that GM doesn't seem too good from what you said.

>>No hints at all about where the thief went.
>>Gave up, went back to main story.

WHY DO PLAYERS DO THIS

WHY THE FUCK DO YOU PEOPLE ONLY MAKE ONE ATTEMPT, AND WHEN IT COMES UP RAW, YOU FUCK OFF AND LOOK FOR SOME OTHER QUEST?

NIGGER, JUST BECAUSE THE ONE SINGLE IDEA YOU CAME UP WITH DIDN'T WORK OUT DOESN'T MEAN THAT THINGS GO AWAY. ARE YOU REALLY FUCKING INCAPABLE OF ACTUALLY CARING ABOUT SOLVING A PROBLEM THAT ISN'T JUST HANDED TO YOU?

Jesus fuck, yes I mad. If your ONLY FUCKING PLAY is to Gather Information with no fucking ranks or ability, you're literally staring the DM in the face and saying "Hey asshole, I'm gonna make sure that I attempt a check that I can only beat with a Nat 20, so you better fucking make this DC so low that I could beat it without rolling.", because if you don't make the roll, you're going to drop the whole plothook and expect the DM to either force-feed you a success or shoehorn it in somewhere else.

YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

This. I literally ripped the "rock that looks like a grinning face" traveling line from the phb and now the guy won't stop asking every wizard we find about it.

On the other hand, I was just given a campaign hook on a silver platter

>few days = one attempt

Weak bait. Try harder.

"A few days gathering information" in D&D is one roll.

>Action
>A typical Gather Information check takes 1d4+1 hours.

d20srd.org/srd/skills/gatherInformation.htm

You couldn't even do a Google check first. Your new fag is showing.

>Spent a few days gathering information, on a character with no CHA or ranks in Gather information.
>on a character with no CHA or ranks in Gather information.
I think I found your problem. Side-quests have no obligation to be completable by every character type, only the main plot should be "I don't have the right skills." proof.

Why didn't you just go grab your party's face and have them ask around for you?

>reach a town where suspicious activity by locals lead us to believe something's up
>look around, ask around, know something's up now but have no leads about it
>I want to continue trying to figure out what's up since we have nothing better to do
>another player gets impatient and starts whining about not wanting to dig through trashcans for leads so we the skip town and the quest
Sorry.
We could have staked out some building during the night, set up a trap for the guy who ran away from us, gone looking through back alleys for suspicious dudes in trenchcoats... Nah, asked the mayor and he didn't know anything, fuck it we're leaving.

Being a newfag to 3.5 is a great thing. In fact the only thing that's better is never being introduced to it at all.

We had no party face. It was a meat shield, a sharp shooter, and a maniac doctor.

Yes, let that sink in.

>Nah, asked the mayor and he didn't know anything, fuck it we're leaving.

The thing is, this is how players are.

They complain for days and days about how "railroading" is the worst thing ever. And then, when they actually get in a game, if the DM doesn't hand them a complete, plot-progressing success after one single d20 roll, they just fuck off and assume that it's an unsolvable mystery.

Is that the God Worm of Dune?

To be fair user its very easy to get some signals crossed if nobody is explicit. For every thing thats actually important and gets mentioned by the DM there are at least a dozen other things that are completely irrelevant and that the DM may have no desire to devout effort to.

If your plan is to make every inane detail that someone latches onto important, its just as strange that everything you investigate winds up being relevant. Sometimes thieves get away, sometimes the guy that got murdered on the road wasn't important. Sometimes that strange never-before-seen monster is not a harbinger of things to come.

Chekovs gun says otherwise
You're a bad gm dude

No, this is not about the DM mentioning a detail that he didn't intend to elaborate on. Don't pretend it is.

This is about players being fucking retards. This is about players saying "No, I'm sorry, I do not want to complete this quest because I didn't succeed at the first check." This is about people taking the first path that comes to them, and if they THINK that it's a dead-end or can't understand the clue, they throw up their hands and have a tantrum.

Let me ask you; Is there a reason to ever roll a Perception check to search a room? If it's possible to miss the clue needed to progress due to failing the check, why have rolls in the game?

You answered your own question in a way. Not all players are geniuses. They can't read your mind; what you THINK you're telling the players can mean something else entirely because they have a different mindset. Lord help if players have to somehow figure out something from the mind of an autistic DM.

Hell, if the players are smart, doesn't that technically mean you're fucked since they'll breeze through your campaign, figure out the bad guy before your intended reveal, or out-think your encounters so no one suffers causalities or use minimal resources?

>Not all players are geniuses. They can't read your mind

All human beings are capable of critical thought. If something they try does not work, they are capable of saying "Hey, why did this fail? Should we try something else? What else might work here?"

If they do not do this, it is their fault and no one else's. Period. End of conversation.

The DM is not there to make you make the right choices. He is not there to say "Hey, wanna come up with another idea? Please?". That's your job. If you refuse to do it, please exit the hobby and let someone who isn't so completely brain-dead have your seat you waste of space.

...

>If you want a good story, read a book, sempai.

I'm at least 70% simulationist in my tastes, and even I think you're a colossal fuckwit.

Eat a dick.

Made me fart when I laughed, yer cheeky coont.

I like this idea. The information is still gathered, but it explains why only the major gives you the information, and really starts to play up that creepy house since no one actually wants to talk about it.

>Let me ask you; Is there a reason to ever roll a Perception check to search a room? If it's possible to miss the clue needed to progress due to failing the check, why have rolls in the game?

You can have an easy way and a hard way, and all points in between.

OK, I am going to say you aren't a very good roleplayer at all and you love to metagame.

>Let me ask you; Is there a reason to ever roll a Perception check to search a room? If it's possible to miss the clue needed to progress due to failing the check, why have rolls in the game?

If your character searches a room and you (the player) roll poorly, you have no way of knowing you rolled poorly. You don't think there is anything left to find in the room, because you turned that place upside down already, and to assume there must be more just because the DM mentioned is DEFINITELY metagamey as fuck.

And you know what? Thats fine. You can just explicitly ask your DM "Hey, is this going to lead anywhere so we aren't all wasting our time?"

Don't pretend that its what everyone should do though. Not everyone likes to metagame, some people like to keep there characters... well, in character. If they don't find anything its not because they suddenly doubt themselves because of a low roll. If they can only think of one lead and it runs dry, ITS NOT THEIR FAULT.

There's a difference between adding extraneous details and not adding important details. Not everything has to be a story-important prop, some things are just decoration, but if you leave those out you get a much more barren scene.

Generally I'd gauge it by group. If your group has a habit of latching onto random stuff, like "THAT STATUE IS TOTALLY GONNA COME ALIVE, IT HAS TO CUZ THE DM MENTIONED IT EXISTS!" then keep details pared down.

Then, stfu and piss off?

>I was only pretending to be retarded guise!

>>If your character searches a room and you (the player) roll poorly, you have no way of knowing you rolled poorly. You don't think there is anything left to find in the room, because you turned that place upside down already, and to assume there must be more just because the DM mentioned is DEFINITELY metagamey as fuck.

If you think ANY player ON THE PLANET is capable of rolling a 1 on a Perception check and then actually, physically roleplaying that 1, and not metagaming so they get more searching attempts, or the rest of the party can come in and try, or they double-check on the way out, you're beyond retarded. ALL PLAYERS METAGAME. The only way to prevent it is to not let them have that information at all.

>Not everyone likes to metagame,
Yes, yes they do. It's not a conscious choice all the time, but they always do.

>If they can only think of one lead and it runs dry, ITS NOT THEIR FAULT.
It absolutely fucking is. The only one to blame for you giving up is yourself. No one else is responsible for your actions.

>stfu

My point stands you passive aggressive sperg.

>stfu
Oh he mad

user, it's one thing to assume that players are like animals in a cage with a button to dispense food. Eventually that animal will, by doing random things, learn a method to press the button to get a reward of food, and will press that button even when food is not forthcoming.

But we are talking about an entirely imaginary world here, one represented through at best miniatures and at worst paper and imagination. Something that a GM may think is obvious is just something they aren't directing the player's attention properly to, because they're just assuming they'll magically get it. Someone who knows what's going on will have difficulty understanding how someone could possibly be confused at what they think are obvious hints.

That was literally my first post in this thread, I just wanted to mock you for being underage.

Good lord, what was actually so obvious? What was he waiting for?

Oh he soooo mad

It's not about being confused.

When you try and piece together a mystery or solve a puzzle, you do it clue by clue. But those clues aren't just handed to you. You don't just walk into a room and instantly know every clue there is to find, and then just make one or two cursory attempts to fit them together in your head.

If you want to solve the problem you put in FUCKING EFFORT. If you refuse to put in effort, if to you "progressing the story" should be as simple as rolling a die and having the DM say "Yay! You found the next checkpoint!", then why the fuck are you even playing?

Why are you advocating for things to be fucking brainless and cater to those who refuse to actually make any attempt to think even slightly?

That's a good point. The problem is, I don't know what group wouldn't latch on to random stuff, no matter how used they were to lots of detail. I've been a player in a game where a character was set up as obviously being important, but everyone focused on a random courtesan.

But when you're solving a jigsaw puzzle, the puzzle is right there. You can see every piece.

You can't just hand me a single piece of the puzzle and to go find the rest and complete it. And no, no matter how many pieces you think you give me, I may not ever figure out how to properly match them together because, metaphorically speaking, I have no idea how they fit together or even if they do fit together.

If you're going to set up a puzzle or a mystery in a game that's entirely imaginary, you have to at least give a sense of progression. Think of how most mystery novels are written - one clue leads to the next, one pieces of evidence sheds light on another, ect. And often that's only done by having a good understanding of background information that allows someone to tie the clues together. Sherlock Holmes would never be able to do what he does if he wasn't given a good account of events surrounding his mysteries. And on another note, players aren't trained detectives - they have no procedure to follow starting from one unconnected clue, aside from doing some rolls to search and gather information. And before you say 'why don't they roleplay out asking for evidence,' you can't guarantee there's always someone to question or talk to.

>You can't just hand me a single piece of the puzzle and to go find the rest and complete it.
Have you never read a fucking mystery novel?

You absolutely can do that. You have to solve the fucking problem of where the next piece of the puzzle is hidden. That's what pads out the story, adds challenge and tension, and makes it rewarding.

Why the fuck would you want to play a game that consists of just fucking putting together puzzle pieces when they're all right in front of you? That's not a game, that's not a challenge, that's busy work.

>And no, no matter how many pieces you think you give me, I may not ever figure out how to properly match them together because, metaphorically speaking, I have no idea how they fit together or even if they do fit together.
100% your problem. You have critical thinking and reasoning abilities. Try using them.

Again, no matter what you THINK you're advocating for, what you're ACTUALLY advocating is that DMs just hand out candy and pats on the ass every time the players decide it's time to make their one single attempt at moving the plot forwards.

If you think ANY player ON THE PLANET is capable of rolling a 1 on a Perception check and then actually, physically roleplaying that 1, and not metagaming so they get more searching attempts, or the rest of the party can come in and try, or they double-check on the way out, you're beyond retarded. ALL PLAYERS METAGAME.
I don't so this is wrong.

>Not everyone likes to metagame,
>Yes, yes they do. It's not a conscious choice all the time, but they always do.
I don't. So once again, you are wrong.

>If they can only think of one lead and it runs dry, ITS NOT THEIR FAULT.
>It absolutely fucking is. The only one to blame for you giving up is yourself. No one else is responsible for your actions.

Maybe I should I have made this clear. If they take what appears (to them) to be the correct path to the answers and its not, its not their fault if they don't want to play a game of "What have I got in my pocket" with the DM.

I love latching into details as a player. That's when you put your DM's skills to the test.

>I don't so this is wrong.
Sure, I totally believe you.

>If they take what appears (to them) to be the correct path to the answers and its not
But this makes no sense. They could literally think ANYTHING is the "correct path", even if it's fucking obviously not. So why should that matter? If they hear that there's a killer loose in a town, and their first action is to find the nearest merchant and punch his teeth in until he tells them where the bodies are hidden, you're really telling me it's the DMs fault for them throwing their hands up and saying "Fuck this game" when that yields jack shit?

Why exactly are you speaking?

I just don't think there's a better way to do it. Your way means the players are blundering around blindly for 30 minutes because it wasn't made adequately clear to them that the this old statue has the same animal as on the noble family's crest, allowing them to realize this family has been around for hundreds of years and are in fact vampires.

And how are you supposed to figure out where the next puzzle piece is hidden, if you aren't given any clues as to where it is? Am I just supposed to guess? Search around? Oh, guess what searching requires - rolling. Because I can't physically see what's going on in game.

This. I don't metagame even when the DM fucks up.

>"I get close to John's father's table to talk about his son"
>my DM stops me to tell me that isn't his father. He is from the Y family, and lives across the street. Just because he is also a ginger doesn't mean they are related.
>I reply "Oh...well my character doesn't know that so I will proceed with my action anyway"
And we talked for a bit and became bros with that NPC.

Sounds to me like it was just the odd event that's poorly matched to your party skillset.

I don't think there's anything wrong with occasionally throwing a situation at your players which they don't have the skills to directly deal with on their own; it just forces them to use unorthodox solutions.

For instance, instead of using a big burly fighter to hustle for information I'd have him lean on a few beggars, information brokers and pickpockets until one of them pointed me in the direction of the local black market.

>We had no party face.
Then stop blaming your GM for you and your fellow players not having all the bases covered.

You're the protagonists, you determine how the story turns out. Not the GM's problem.

>If you think ANY player ON THE PLANET is capable of rolling a 1 on a Perception check and then actually, physically roleplaying that 1, and not metagaming so they get more searching attempts, or the rest of the party can come in and try, or they double-check on the way out, you're beyond retarded.
Plenty of players just open the door and walk into the trap, because to do otherwise would be openly pissing on the game mechanics.

I always love it when stuff like this happens.
>"We're doing this to help her, right?"
>"... Yeeees."
>"Good thing I have 1 Intelligence, otherwise that would've sounded very suspicious!"

If he knew they didn't have a face then why did he bother involving social shit? It's pointless.

>Okay, all martial party with little to no intelligence, solve this magic-based puzzle

Man, the snark I would not be able to stop myself from giving.
"That's the local legend huh? Interesting, because we've asked darn near every man woman and child on the way over here and they didn't have the darndest clue on any of that."

DMing like this frustrates me to no end. Was in a game that began with the small town we were in started to succumb to a plague. We went to talk to the sick and those that cared for them, made a medical knowledge roll to determine what we could get from this information, got the name of the disease and nothing else. Didn't know anything on how the disease manifest itself, even though we saw the victims of the disease, didn't know how it would progress, didn't know how contagious it was. As far as I could tell we got the name from a really amazing guess.
Of course, the next story important NPC that we found and talked to was able to give all the info that we've been needing.

I know DMing's not an easy job, but this is just frustrating to see.

To the people arguing about failing checks and shit.

If my players fail a check that would have let them progress the story further and it's important for the main quest and shit, then I will improv another way to pass that information to them, perhaps at a later time, or in the form of some "punishment" like getting ambushed.

If my players fail a check that would lead to a sidequest I much prefer they don't metagame like shitheads and try to squeeze out of me the rewards of if they had succeeded. If I, as the DM, want them to succeed, they will. If there's a possibility for failing, as the DM, I should expect that they might fail and I need to be okay with that. I should never get pissed at my players for their failure to complete a challenge I placed before them. That's ridiculous.

I don't give my players plothooks since I am not a story-centered dude.

Just giving them quests to kill x combat encounters worth of y is enough.

The players can invent a narrative framework around it. Or not. Either way it's irrelevant so long as dice get rolled and something drops.

I get the feeling like sometimes a bad DM because I can't convey why things are failing to my players without spoiling things.
Like the town they're staying at has been harried by gnolls who have been using rangerous magic (namely Pass without Trace) to aid their attacks, but they don't know that, and the only information I've really been able to give them is that scouts from the town have failed in trying to track down their attackers.
So having to explain that their attempts to track the gnolls failed when they have some pretty strong trackers in the party felt really hand-wavey at the time, maybe I'll have them find the material components and let the plot thicken for them?

Make it clear that it's abnormal that they were unable to track them and was probably the result of some form of magic.

This >"You fail to locate anything remotely resembling a trail."
>"What? Seriously, nothing at all?"
>"Right."
>"That's bullshit. We're, like, the best trackers in the county."
>"Yes you are. Odd that even YOU, the best trackers in the land, can't find a hint of a trail...Unnatural even..."

That's a shame, though does bring up some points.

When I gm the only way to guarantee a plot hook is dead is for a new campaign to start in an entirely unrelated setting. But the only way to guarantee a loose plot thread runs its course is to bring it up from time to time.

Sometimes I forget, sometimes things are low key, and sometimes I think it would be inappropriate to revisit somethings after the narrative takes off in some other direction, and sometimes that thief was murdered by their partner in the woods and the magic guff sold off to a foreign dignitary because they believed returning it to a still living god would gain its favor, but it turns out the god was into running a small town restaurant now and didn't really care.

Point is maybe ask around for rumors and stuff in the future.

Is the magic-based puzzle required to advance the main plot of the game? If so, that's bad planning on the GM's part. If not, then that's a side-quest, which is completely different.

Side-quests are extra, they're special bits above and beyond the main plot of the game. If your players have no method to overcome a challenge in the main plot, then your game is over, which is a terrible outcome. If your players have no way to overcome a challenge in a side-quest, then they just move on and go back to the main plot, no big deal.

>It's the party's fault they didn't form their team around my requirements.
>Not having a lower level NPC tag along to fill the gap.

This sounds either like laziness, or arrogance.

Now see here's the thing. You really do need to have things happen. There's a difference between book plot, and rpg plot and that is interactivity.

Now giving someone too much detail on some random thing is is certainly the rpg equivalent to that gun. But describing scenery both living or otherwise certainly isn't, it gives the player ideas and allows them to more easily interact with the world they're in.

Also if literally the only things you have happen in an rpg are specifically plot relevant that's a bit rail roady. Think about what you just said for a second.

>I think too many GMs think that having completely pointless events happen around the PCs creates the illusion of a "living world."
Who defines pointless here? Well if they're to avoid doing it the gm. Which means the only things that can happen in a game are those the gm deems meaningful. The players do not have the option to give things meaning, because every event has already been given the gm's meaning.

To all the Chekhov people.The gun applies to non-interactive static media. It does not apply to games regardless of type, rpgs especially due to the sheer amount of actions available to any given character.

Now if you were writing a module for an rpg, yeah you should probably apply Chekhov's reasoning, but in a fluid game where you as the gm probably cannot actually determine the exact actions of the players. Yeah, that rule doesn't apply. Fuck it the players can just ignore the gun and kill the guy with a lamp.

The gun's there, its fine as an option, but Chekhov's audience had no say in what happened, yours should.

But why would you include something where you, as the GM, know beforehand that it won't go anywhere without some Nat20s? Wouldn't everybody be more entertained by something actually happening instead of the Players failing for an hour and then giving up on it?

It's kind of like asking questions of a rape victim though, you need to ask the questions, if the story doesn't check out then it's harder to build a case. Still might seem like you're out to victimize them again though.

I think you are not wrong, but with the way this thread is going i am not sure if you are right, either:

Random things in the Background are nice, gives a depth and can be inconsequential but as soon players interact with something it should either lead somewhere or be over quick (Gross stupidity excluded)

>Let me ask you; Is there a reason to ever roll a Perception check to search a room? If it's possible to miss the clue needed to progress due to failing the check, why have rolls in the game?

I've played with DM's who assumed that someone would make the roll, and would jollily tell you to "roll again". Given that this was the first DM for a group that had never played before, that very handily created this idea that you can just keep rolling ad nauseum until you reach a desired result.

Not him. But as another user has said, it depends on the players. I've had players latch onto little things, so I decided to make them big things. But I've also had players blow past obvious clues to the point of having to rework the entire quest I had planned into a weird, seat-of-the-pants DMing style. In that case, it all worked out in the end, but it easily could not have.

I guess there's something to be said for having plot hooks be non-optional. Or rather, a thing on the side. They can allow the players some sort of advantage or forewarning in the upcoming adventure, but if they miss it, things still happen.

I will try to transition to this style of DMing. In the past, we've had a lot of dead time where players refused to sort things out, and the DM (sometimes me) didn't know how to get things rolling again after having counted on the players doing stuff.

...so why roll in the first place?

It depends on your group and your players. If you have a gamist group, one where the players are from a very videogamey mindset, then they're going to be much happier with the approach you suggested.

If you have a more narrativist group, they're going to feel railroaded when every little thing they find turns out to be surprisingly plot relevant. It breaks some people's sense of disbelief that the world their characters are in is actually a living, breathing one and not just a stage for them.

Grow some thicker skin, it's just a bit of rape. It's not like the GM railroaded the players into failing without rolls.

I think you misunderstood me, i didn't mean to say that such things have to lead back to the main plot, or that it has to lead to something big, but i think it should lead to *something*.

For example: Something was stolen from a merchant and he mentions it to the players.
If they want to get involved, this could go many different ways, and if the GM doesn't want to elaborate the merchant could simply say "Don't bother. This isn't the first and won't be the last time this happens."

It's not that i say "Player characters should always succeed". But if they make a reasonable effort they should get something to show for it, even if it's not exactly what they want.

This.

This whole thing started when one user said he mentioned "a rock that looks similar to a face" and his players started questioning the entire continent about it when it meant nothing.

I think I speak for everyone when I say the user should let the players get what they want and should receive some clues about the rock. Even if it leads them to a geologist that simply says nature is crazy and moves on. Giving candies to the players isn't a bad thing.

> Ther person running the game has no responsibility or agency over the game's story
...well that's certainly a very passive attitude for a DM to have. One that I have literally never experienced. You and/or your DMs are very strange and I would not want to play with you.

Yeah did that once in an L5R game.
There was a hag making evil spirits of hunger using a ritual involving burying a dog, putting food in front of it, starving it to the edge of death and then killing it. I knew this, my militant warrior character didn't.
Following some messed up murders we were exploring the swampy area near the village our party came across a dog buried up to it's neck. The shugenja tried to help and got bitten. Fearing 'The Bad Juju TM', my character reacted immediately by killing the dog. It turned into an evil hunger spirit and attacked us.
I knew that was probably going to happen, but that's how my character would have reacted to an unprovoked animal attack, so they did.

I was thinking the same thing. That GM really dropped the ball on that one.

>No, this is not about the DM mentioning a detail that he didn't intend to elaborate on. Don't pretend it is.

Well, I guess you know the personal situation of OP better than he does himself then.
Thank you for your insight on what this is REALLY about

>we're in a small town
>the town priest is killed by a doppelganger who tries to kill us
>afterward, we find the real priest's body
>I suggest that we put the body in a barrel, take it downriver to the big city we're going to anyway, and see if we can get a higher-ranking member of his church to bring him back from the dead
>The DM looks at me like I'm from Mars
>the other player just kind of aren't paying attention
>Okay, fine we let the guy stay dead because choo choo

same DM as >playing a ranger because everything good is either played by someone else or something I'm bored with already
>party's in town, shopping and stuff
>DM asks me if I want to do anything
>can't buy healing potions "because they're magic items"
>I'm bored as fuck, so I try using Primeval Awareness, the ranger radar that tells me if any of a long list of monstrous creature types are within a mile of me
>I ask the DM if I sense anything
>DM stammers
>he's being forced to use his brain instead of the shitty published adventure he's reading off of
>in this situation, a superior DM would take the chance to say "yes, and..." and make something up that might lead to future adventures
>a middling DM would just say "no" and leave it at that, plain and simple
>this DM is worse than either of those
>he avoids eye contact and says, with clear strain in his voice, "um, yeah, but it's faint"
>I ask him to elaborate. "Okay, faint signs of what kinds of creatures?"
>He gives another non-answer "Um, you can't tell, because it's right around the periphery of the area."
>This is a downtime day, so I spend all day and the rest of my spell slots physically walking around the city with my ranger radar on, so that whatever was on the edge of that 1-mile radius will be closer to me so I can sense it
>I get exactly the same answer as before
>I was really hoping he'd find the courage to give me a straight answer

Why do I have such a fuckup for a DM?

But you healed him. He shouldn't have been bleeding out at that point.

>For every thing thats actually important and gets mentioned by the DM there are at least a dozen other things that are completely irrelevant and that the DM may have no desire to devout effort to.

That reminds me of a DM I had in college

>We're lost in the woods
>eventually we find some tracks, and we ask what they look like
>"They're like horse tracks, I guess. Except, wait, no, they have toes."
>The DM was probably just failing to describe the tracks of a giant or a bear or something
>Everyone starts laughing about the fearsome Toe Horse
>The bard writes a song "Beware the Horse with Toes"
>It becomes a running joke of the campaign
>Later on we run into some human nomads
>The bard tries to win their good graces by regailing them with "Beware the Horse with Toes"
>They get enraged and run out out of their camp because, by sheer coincidence, a horse with toes is some kind of insulting cultural reference to them

The DM was just salty that we made fun of his poor description of some tracks.

I've had a GM do that kind of stuff. When asked about it later, half of the cases didn't even have a point to being so drawn out, they just were 'realistic'.

Party barbarian proceeds to throw things at the puzzle till it works. Literally throwing things. EVERYTHING.

When or if the GM asks what they think they'll accomplish, ask what they expected of the martial to do on this puzzle.

>Wouldn't everybody be more entertained by something actually happening instead of the Players failing for an hour and then giving up on it?
How long do you think it takes to fail a few Gather Information checks?

And just to be clear, we have no idea if there was an alternate way to find the thief, all we know is that the guy gave up after doing nothing but trying the checks he sucked at.