How do you deal with this kind of GM?

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I'd like to ask and discuss how we should react when meeting with a GM that is:

1) passive-aggressive
2) hates OOC conversations
3) yet has not started the IC in nearly 1-2 months

I tried asking subtly "How's the IC coming along? :)" these exact same words, in one of my posts. Let's just say, she got offended.


I'm usually a very patient person, though 1-2 months of waiting time with no chatting in the OOC (fuss will be kicked up if you mention anything remotely not related to the roleplay, like say even welcoming new members) is a bit much. I'm even holding off going into other roleplays because of this (I don't like being inmultiple roleplays, feels like cheating :/. I'm weird, I know.) , sometimes I think I should just pack up and leave.



Which is why, if any of you have experience with this, how do you ask such a gm to start the IC before everyone in it looses interest? Without stepping on their toes or something? Comments and suggestions of all kinds are welcome. :)
 
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You don't. You leave the RP.

If what you say is true then you're probably not gonna have a good time if/when the RP does start. The easiest move is to take your ideas elsewhere. Maybe start a new RP and invite players to share their ideas there. You could try to talk to the GM, but from the sound of it that will very probably lead to a major headache and not much else. I mean, I could tell you to ask open questions with a positive annotation in it like "Hey, we're really looking forward to the IC. Let me know if you need any help getting it up!" But personally if I'd have to do that before the IC even gets off the ground, it'd just be lolnope. I mean seriously, having to motivate a GM to make the IC to me sounds identical to "Abandon ship!"
 
The short answer is that I deal with such GMs by writing them off as not worth my time.

The longer answer is that this combination of traits shows me that the GM is not a person that I care to work with. Someone being passive-aggressive can be tolerable on its own. Someone taking a long time to put up the IC can be tolerable on its own, to a point. However, disallowing chat in the OOC that isn't rigidly about the roleplay is stupid and not worth putting up with at all, especially in a circumstance where the main topic at hand is "so when's it gonna start" and the GM gets angry about such questions. An OOC is meant for talking about things out of character, which includes talking about things that aren't the roleplay. Trying to ban amiable chatter between players is a pretty solid way to drive them away, because the roleplay will feel unfriendly and perhaps even hostile rather than something fun and enjoyable.

As for the long time to create the IC, I'd say it means one of two things. The first possibility is that the person is far too busy or distracted by other things to get it done, which means that they probably won't be able to effectively run the game whenever they get around to actually putting up the IC, so that's a big red flag for a roleplay destined to die quick. It's possible that it's an unfortunate but temporary period of being busy or distracted, but if they're not clearly communicating that and giving the players an estimate for when it'll clear up and they can get the ball rolling then it's a pretty good indicator of the kind of poor GMing you'll get when/if the IC gets put up, which is a red flag in and of itself. The second possibility is that they actually don't care very much about the roleplay, which is why they're not working on it despite having people clearly eager to get started, and that's another red flag for a doomed game. I can understand taking a few weeks, especially if there's something like the end of a school term or holidays going on, but getting to the point where months are the unit of time involved is way overboard. If they haven't given a clear reason for the delay and a clear goal point for when it'll be resolved after a freaking month then you should consider the roleplay stillborn and move on to something else.

Having both the OOC-Nazi activity and the excessive delays is enough that I would have already washed my hands of the GM. The passive-aggression would just be the cherry on top. It doesn't matter how neat the idea was, it's not going to go well with that kind of person at the helm. Gather up the other players and try to start a different roleplay with them and you'll be far happier for it.
 
I was going to say something different, but then I checked out the thread I'm assuming you're talking about, and if it's not, ignore everything I write from now on.

First of all, the Sign-ups thread was posted December 15th, meaning the GM has had roughly 19-20 days to post the IC, not 1-2 months, as you put it. Before that, there was no interest check, so the idea hasn't been in motion here on Iwaku for longer than those 19-20 days. I understand that it seems to have started over on RPG and has since been moved here, but because that means it has been opened up to an entirely different pool of interested RP'ers, and a lot of adjustments have to be made. I understand that it's frustrating for you who have been waiting for longer than that, but from what I understand the GM has specifically stated that she is a very busy person, and that she doesn't have time to work on it as often as she would want to. That, and it appears to be a very intricate RP with lots of worldbuilding details, so I understand that it takes a lot of time to iron them out. Also, I couldn't find any post about her finding offense in you asking how the IC is coming along, unless she said so via PM, in which case I wouldn't know.

Secondly, I see nothing that indicates the GM 'hating' (which is a very strong word) OOC conversations at all. In fact, she's frequently participated in them herself. However, I understand that she doesn't want to clutter the thread with it, and she gave a perfectly reasonable argument as to why. Besides, it's not as though she forbid you guys to talk to each other. There's still PM's, with a nifty group function, and a readily available chat box.

I also see no traces of the 'passive aggressiveness' you spoke of. All I see is a GM trying to run their RP without having it crash and burn. Again, she might have said something personally via PM, which I couldn't possibly know about.

Think carefully before you post things like this, and under no circumstance should you lie/modify the truth to get sympathy from others. I understand that you're anxious to start, and have been holding off on other RP's because you only like to focus on one at a time, but if the GM of said RP found this she would most likely be very hurt by some of the things that have been written here.
 
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Hah, okay, I took your stuff at face value at first because I didn't feel like digging. The above post changed my mind. I went and poked around in what appears to be the roleplay you're talking about, same as @Lady Bernkastel did. If you are in fact referring to Deus Ex Artificium with these complaints, then you seem to be going a bit overboard.

If it has actually been over a month since the original OOC went up, then it's still a bit on the slow side. However, if you go take a look at the GM's profile page, you'll see the only thing in their profile posts includes and explanation of the delays. Getting more than the usual amount of shifts at work plus various holiday things is a totally valid delay excuse for someone who already had only sporadic free time to begin with (which she seems to have been pretty open about to begin with).

The restriction the GM recently put on OOC conversations is actually extremely reasonable: throw non-RP stuff in spoilers, and avoid posts that are just non-RP stuff, because the OOC is already getting cluttered and it'll be a pain for any new people to get up to speed if they have to dig through a bunch of unrelated stuff for hundreds of posts. That's not hating OOC conversation, that's prioritizing the RP over socializing, which is totally fine. Start up a group on the site for irrelevant OOC banter between players in the game if you care about having it so much.

As for passive aggression, I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm not sure if you just don't understand what being passive-aggressive actually is, or this is something happening only in private chat settings, but from what I've seen the GM appears to be totally reasonable and not passive-aggressive. Cruising through the OOC a bit I've seen some places where they could have made extremely passive-aggressive remarks if they so chose, but instead they offered constructive criticism. From what I can see, the GM is totally fine.

All that said, my advice is still the same as when I was giving blind advice based on your post: leave the roleplay. If you're so impatient with the wait and don't like the GM's rules and have some problems with the GM on a personality level, then cut your losses and go. You're probably not going to have much of a fun time if you feel horribly restricted and attacked all the time, and odds are you'll bring down the mood for everyone else. I suggest you take a hike and go find something that you don't have tons of problems with instead.
 
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1) passive-aggressive
2) hates OOC conversations
3) yet has not started the IC in nearly 1-2 months

I tried asking subtly "How's the IC coming along? :)" these exact same words, in one of my posts. Let's just say, she got offended.
Such as person isn't ready for that responsibility if they get offended by being asked in a friendly manner when their IC is going up.

Bail and join a different RP.
 
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I'm not going to say if that is the roleplay or not, because I'm not trying to get people to rally around me. No.


There's alot of things that make me feel the way I feel, but I am in no way trying to frame or defame anyone. If that were not true, you'd be seeing names left and right by now. So get those ideas out of your head, jorick and bernkastel. I don't want anyone else to misunderstand my intentions any further because of what you two said (looking into my profile and making your own judgements is very uncalled for and very unfair to Deus Ex Artificium). Nonetheless, I appreciate your comments.


I asked this on the premise of trying to get ideas on how to work around an issue I met, maybe from experience or having the same issue yourselves. It's why I'm here, and not in the Rant section.


I appreciate your inputs very much @Brovo and @Kestrel, really do. :) But I don't want to rule out that there may be a side I am not seeing (I don't know if there is). Like writer's block hindering? I don't know. But when I attempt to ask, all I get is some remark that makes me feel even more unwelcomed. So I've got to get past this hurdle of "How do I ask and find out, without being even more disliked/brushed off?" first. :/




Once again, I'd appreciate it if no one went looking through my profile and started making assumptions based on the random things they've read. It is unfair to any parties involved because this is a topic of social interaction, a topic that has more sides than a d20.
 
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So I've got to get past this hurdle of "How do I ask and find out, without being even more disliked?" first. :/
Well first of all, it's been 1-2 months. I'm notoriously slow, but even I tend to call an RP terminal at that point.

Second of all, it's been 1-2 months. If you have writer's block for that long, maybe you're just not cut out for writing. Which is fine, not everybody is.

Third of all, it's been 1-2 months. Your attempts to discover what's going on no matter how friendly result in said GM spitting at you. There's no respect there, so trying to find a different way to inquire won't work.

The best thing you can do, in all earnest, is leaving and finding a different RP, or making your own RP. If the GM doesn't want to treat you respectfully, and doesn't care to tell people what's going on after 1-2 months, good sign that RP isn't going anywhere, and it's time to go.
 
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