So, a while ago I agreed to play some D&D, even though I'm not a fan of that game (https://cohost.org/georges/post/2026273-d-d-as-g-med-by-my-fr).
After the third session of the one-shot (yes), I'm starting to realize some bigger mismatches in my expectations (you know, bigger that just dice rolls or number of sessions in a one-shot). And they seem more about the GM and the GMing culture than just the game.
After some time, it has been revealed that this scenario was created by the GM as part of another campaign, but the players in that campaign lost interest in the middle and went to do something else (and then a whole lot of table drama at some point, as far as I can understand). We're mostly fine with it, and my initial though was that it could be nice to spend a couple of hours playing and giving some closure to our friend on this.
But this GM, she is so fond of her homebrew world that she filled this adventure with details and references (to things none of us know), to the point that everything goes slowly because of the mountain of descriptions, and because the rest of us are trying (and failing) to understand what are the hooks for the adventure we agreed to play, and what is fluff. Hence the many-sessioned one-shot.
But so far that's just me unkindly complaining about a GM who is just doing her best. The interesting part, though is when we debrief after the game, share some of these impressions around direction and pacing, and she reacts in this very self conscious way of apologizing for the poor writing of the adventure, and for being a poor storytellers. And that breaks my heart! What is it with d&d GMs that make them believe they need to be amazing writers, or even that writing for an rpg session is even possible? She compares herself with Baldur's Gate, ffs, that's bot fair on her!
So my main interrogation here is: is it just a matter of taste where I like collaborative games, or is this culture of "the GM carries everything" plain soul crushing?
This was on the ranty side. I need to think about it more, and followup with a post entitled "god save GMs who think they are storytellers from themselves" or something.
