Greetings and Falicitations!

I have been a big fan of 4e since it was released and it is my favorite out of all of the editions! I would like to ask you all for some advice concerning a current discord 4e group I am in and you some of you are in it, great as you can hear my concerns. Sorry for the long post ahead!

So I am a part of a online D&D 4e group which is quite well run and has a large number of people. I have been with the group for two and a half years now, and I noticed that I am unable to play most of the time when the group's DMs run games. Most of the players and DMs on the server, I would say about 70% (just a rough estimate), live in Europe while I live in U.S and thus timezone differences really make it difficult to play often. I have a level 9 cleric and it is disconcerting that after two and a half years, I have not reached paragon tier compared to some new players who joined in the past few months and already have two or more paragon characters or even an epic character.

Now the way game sessions work is that everyone who can play rolls a d20 and the highest six get to play and those who did not get higher enough get a bonus to their next roll that stacks with future bonuses. This is a fair system, but the issue is that given the time zone differences, a few games are ran on weekday mornings and afternoons when I am unavailable to play and and thus I often miss out on heroic tier games. When games are ran on Saturday or Sundays when I am most free, they often times get many people and many times I cannot get in due to bad luck or just I am not free that day. So I was told by a veteran DM that I could request a game with three other people in order to play during times when I am free. This would give me and other players priority for that game.

Well I did this and it caused several issues. When I requested with six other players on a Saturday, I was told that requesting with six denied other players a chance to play since we were given priority. I informed them that we did not need to get priority as long as someone ran a game. They told me to stick with just four people and I decided to do that. But then when I requested again on a Saturday I was told that since Saturday is a "prime time" slot for games, me requesting a game is pushing other people out and it is not necessary since there should be a guarantee that two games will be ran that I can roll into. I explained that the only reason me and others were requesting game on the weekend, was because that was the best time for us given the timezone differences. Also, in the past there were few games being ran on the weekend.

I explained I can request weekday games, but only after 6:30 pm EST and they would have to end within 4-4 and a half hours. That is an issue because most of the players and DMs are asleep at those times and the few American DMs likely will not be willing to run anything so late. Another issue is that since the game has to end around 10-10:30pm EST on weekdays, most will refuse to run given most sessions run anywhere from 4-6 hours long and only "arena" style sessions can run for 2-3 hours.

So the other option I was told I can do is start DMing my own sessions in the group. I was told by the group's leader that if I want to play more games, I should run my own. The idea being this would encourage more games to be ran during times I am free and available. I also can game trade with other DMs so I can get priority in their games. My issue with this is threefold: 1. I am a very narrative and Lawful Good Monty Haul DM. I like running games that are a little "preachy", short (no more than 2 or 3-4 hours max if it includes combat), heavily narrative, very little and/or easy combat, puzzles/philosophy challenges, and I always like to give the maximum amount of gold, exp, and items to players. I find only a few within the group would like my games. 2. I do not like the idea of running a game just so I can get priority for another game for my character. I see that as no different than requesting a game as a player. The group is full of game trades between DMs and this seems to be the way most of the DMs and veterans view as an acceptable way to get priority for a game. 3. DMing does not help my character level up faster. On principal I DM because I want to tell a story and not just to trade games.

Because of all of these issues and the constant headache I am getting from the unspoken "evil eye" the DMs are giving me. I am considering being a DM for the group and hope that will encourage the few American DMs to play during times I am free (weekday nights) and to run shorter games. If this gets me yelled at or few people are interested, I will save myself the trouble and just leave. What do you all think? If any of you guys are in the U.S and love to DM I can send you the discord invite!

So I decided to leave the group for my own sanity sake. If I decide to run any games, I will be sure to if anyone here wants to join any.

Sorry things are so stressful there. But greetings and welcome. This board is pretty inactive but good. (Picture stitch talking about his family being small and broken but good)

Garthanos wrote:

Sorry things are so stressful there.  But greetings and welcome. This board is pretty inactive but good. (Picture stitch talking about his family being small and broken but good)

Thank you for welcoming me! I am glad there are still enclaves like these that are still loyal to 4e even if they are a little inactive .

Greetings! I've got a 4E game group on Thursdays that might suit you. Most of us are east coast NA and we do a rotating DM thing where several of us take turns running a game for 4-8 sessions or so and then change. Two of the DMs are doing a serialized campaign type thing. We have the "Ghostbreakers" a Supernatural horror/comedy/ parody game. And an Elemental Chaos mercenary game.

LMK if interested and I'll check with the rest of the group.

GF

Generic Fighter wrote:

Greetings! I've got a 4E game group on Thursdays that might suit you. Most of us are east coast NA and we do a rotating DM thing where several of us take turns running a game for 4-8 sessions or so and then change. Two of the DMs are doing a serialized campaign type thing. We have the "Ghostbreakers" a Supernatural horror/comedy/ parody game. And an Elemental Chaos mercenary game.

LMK if interested and I'll check with the rest of the group.

GF

Thank you for letting me know! My experiences with D&D last years have been terrible however and it has killed my mood to play in any games for the time being. But I will keep your offer in mind .

Well that was a depressing end to this conversation!

I'm sorry that things fell so badly for you. I was a member of that group, at least I think it was the same group, for a while last and ended up never getting into a game. I was told to run something too, but what I wanted to run didn't suit itself to having every session have possibly different players and PCs and the restrictions I wanted to put on what choices the players could make in chargen wasn't okay with that group.

The structure of constantly changing player base is too... um weird. LOL

DMSamuel wrote:

Well that was a depressing end to this conversation!

I'm sorry that things fell so badly for you. I was a member of that group, at least I think it was the same group, for a while last and ended up never getting into a game. I was told to run something too, but what I wanted to run didn't suit itself to having every session have possibly different players and PCs and the restrictions I wanted to put on what choices the players could make in chargen wasn't okay with that group.

Yes, the fact that your party can consist of so many different character types made it interesting and hard. There were times where we had no controller or no defender and it made certain session longer or harder than it needed to be.

Garthanos wrote:

The structure of constantly changing player base is too... um weird. LOL

It causes issues as I noticed that most of the sessions the DMs ran were on the harder side combat wise and took at least an hour and a half to finish. The DMs often overbuild combat because they did not know what the make up of the party would be and the fact that the server encourages that people min-max their characters. So most combat encounters would last for several hours and have multiple high damage and/or HP/AC monsters. The fact it could not be balanced for different party types, I often hated combat encounters because I found them too hard unless we had min-max strikers or controllers in the party.