[4e] Looking for advice to try to deal with a bad DM

A few other players and I are at our wits end and we don’t know what to do. Throw away for obvious reasons.

A little bit of background information. I play with a group that has played through a few campaigns now together, some of us have known each other for most of our lives and the current DM falls into that category. We are currently playing 4e and are just past the 20th level and most of the group has lost motivation to continue for a number of reasons.

Firstly the campaign is EXTREAMLY railroaded, to give an example last session we had apparently an important thing happening yet one of the players spent the whole night starting at a wall perking up only to roll for something. The player is playing an opinionated character and has played with players who don’t pay attention and hates it. I honestly can’t remember a time where our characters haven’t been just lead on a leash and have been able to make a choice for themselves.

There’s also huge disconnect between the campaign and characters. As players we created interesting characters that we were excited for. I honestly believe that this campaign could have been done with robots, there have been no relation to our characters backstories and the backstories have not even come up except when our characters are talking amongst themselves during downtime. When I’ve brought it up to the DM about wanting to see about a secretive characters back story the DM told me that “it isn’t the DM’s job to get into characters backstories.” We still have our characters personal little goals that we’ve had since their creation, and we haven’t been able to even try to fulfill in 20 levels because we’ve been led around by the nose.

Lastly the DM hasn’t read the books. They haven’t given out loot in well over four sessions and anytime we have gotten loot it not at the correct level. Currently our group is working with items that are +3 and +4 and we would have +5 if not mostly +6 at this point. The DM has nearly TPK with unbalanced encounters many times and we have nearly lost a character a few times unjustly (no chance of saving them or even after careful planning to be able to resurrect them the DM cheated a way out of it. They seemed to want to kill that character rather than to give us a chance to save them) even though we showed them the experience budgeting section in the DM manual. They argue about rules all the time against a group where most of us have DM’d before and even one of the players has memorized all the books (crazy, but he’s proven it).

Now I know most of the advice will be to talk to the DM about it and here is the issue with that, we’ve tried. We even had one player pull the DM aside and went out for coffee. The DM gets vicious and mean about it. One time when an encounter was killing us and he was getting frustrated about us complaining I just casually suggested he double check the experience budget and they tore into me yelling at me in front of the group saying that they know what they was doing and I needed to butt out. Later on after the session ended I looked up the creatures we were fighting and it was well over twice the amount allowed for that level not including any of the additional things going on. Other times the DM ignores us or rolls their eyes when we try to approach them or even make suggestions to help us get more involved. We’ve talked to them about loot since around the 5th level and they just ignore it even though right now it’s killing our characters. If we try to approach them at all about anything they just turn into the vicious person that I don’t recognize.

We’ve tried subtle hints like ‘oh we need more gold to be able to do this’ to outright nominating a person we think that can explain in the most diplomatic and gentle way about a couple issues we’ve been having and it’s all ended up with the DM going into attack mode. They will compare their campaign to others that we’ve done or poke holes in other people’s campaigns and short one month adventures that aren’t even relevant.

Outside of DnD they are an amazing person if anyone has any problems and need something they will drop everything and run to help. Personally they’ve been there to help me out through my darkest times and I can’t imagine not having them in my life (they’re like a sibling to me). It’s just I know if we do grin and bear it though the rest of the campaign eventually they will find out we hated their campaign they will be hurt and we’ll lose a friend. Right now if we try to explain that we don’t want to continue since we’ve been playing for over three years and just can’t take it anymore we’ll lose a friend right away. Both options don’t really seem appealing. They’ve taken the joy out of DnD, I really just want to have that back I really miss it. Also I’m tired of feeling as angry and frustrated at the end of each session, which I don’t think should ever happen with DnD.

We just don’t know what to do..... Thanks for letting me rant. Advice would be greatly appreciated.

Tl/DR: Our DM has turned our characters into robots and they turn into a vicious monster whenever we even try to give constructive criticism. They also don’t read the manuals or full grasp the rules of the game.