Yeah, I had one of those DM's too. He had a set path to follow for the PC's and anything that didn't fit into that path was a "Can't do it." Of course, that DM also set a group of male characters up against a succubus at 1st level and had a nasty habit of pushing a fight with over-whelming enemies until someone was just about to die, then the bad-guys all ran off. Really pissed me off when it looked like the PC's might actually win a fight, for a change, and get it yanked from under them. We got the XP, but it's not all about XP, you know?
Almost as bad as "The World's Biggest Dungeon." That monster was built to be a TPK! In more than 30 years of fantasy role-playing, I've never lost a character a session until I tried that thing... come to think of it, those were the only characters that I ever lost...