As a Player...

Try to remind the DM that it's not solely his responsibility for supplying the fun. It's important that the players play an equal part in providing entertainment to the whole group. This could be through comedy, serious roleplaying, or just being respectful of the DM and the other players. Find the balance that your group needs, and try to understand when it's right to chime in with something that might be off the beaten path.

I played a PC earlier tonight, it was a good session, and I managed to get some interesting character development in. I'm finding that I make a good leader, not just because of my choice of powers, but that I understand the basic needs of my fellow combatants. I can bark out orders on my turn, and hope that the other PC's follow along. In the long run, it makes positioning for everyone easier, and I can use it for optimal survivability by being able to see everyone to heal them. Other players have different challenges to overcome though, and there ends up being a lot of reasons as to why you should be paying close attention to battles.

About DM's and fun: We're starting to find that this particular DM (who is fairly new at DM'ing) is very easy to verbally accost with questions. We find that what drives his NPC's tend to be things that are easily scrutined, and we end up ganging up on the DM in some ways. While pillaging the brains of his NPC's is fun for us, it might not be the greatest feeling for a DM to have all of his characters reduced to befuddlement by a band of swift-talking adventurers. However, this is a great opportunity for the DM to realize the direction his players want to go, and he now gets to decide if they continue down that path, or if he decides that the adventurers are not so savvy after all, and end up in some very dark and foreboding scenarios.

-Lance of the Hill People