DM Jerk Moments

[Jergmo]

Sometimes, a DM is not so good a DM. This thread is for situations where DM's have been total jerks, for no real good reason.

This happened just an hour and a half ago. We started a new campaign, me finally getting a chance to be the PC instead of the DM with a group of folks I usually don't play with. I ended up playing a cleric, and unfortunately I also ended up having to be the party's meat shield. We were fighting two half-orcs, and I was keeping the strongest one busy while my companions, a halfling rogue and gnome wizard were taking care of the other one. I ended up being disarmed, hit, and hit again, ending up with 0 hit points. I cast defensively and miraculously the AoO missed, and I cast Cure Light Wounds. I said this, but the DM didn't notice and got angry with me asking what spell, actually cursing as well until I had to use nasty words in all caps to get him to notice. So he then said "On yourself?" so, irritated myself, I said "No, the other half-orc.", who was lying on the ground dying some distance away, then "Of course myself."

But here's the kicker; he said I healed the half-orc and that it was standing and fighting again, and due to the action, it caused me to drop to -1 and start dying, and he said he knows I meant it to be cast on myself, but he didn't really care.

Have I been saddled with the worst DM ever, or are there worse, ladies and germs?

[elliott20]

wow... that's kind of a jerk thing to do. sorry to hear that.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

Have I been saddled with the worst DM ever, or are there worse, ladies and germs?

It's a bad move on the DM's part, to be fair, but I doubt it's the worst thing in DMing history to happen. I've personally been dealing with a poor DM recently: it helps to document the stupidity and make a joke out of the general shenanigans without getting angry.

[dragonfan6490]

There was absolutely no call for that, you my friend, have just had a horrible DM. A DM's job is to facilitate and make sure everyone is having a good time. He's just being a jerk.

[Nai_Calus]

Run. NOW. You think you can stick it out and it'll get better but it will not and you'll just get bitter and come to hate the game and the guy DMing.

RUN.

Doesn't matter if anyone else's is worse, get out now.

[Tempest Fennac]

He sounds pretty awful. I've heard of worse ones, though (eg: 1 person on here came up with a Rogue/Cleric who needed to make a potion in order to ward off a curse which he came up with as part of his characters backstory, the DM was fine with him having Skill Focus (Alchemy) to help to counteract this curse, then he went of out his way to stop the player making and storing the potion to the point where he was having villagers accosting the guy with villagers (apparently the DM decided that the player only came up with the curse for the free feat).

I think my worst experience was an attempt to use a Killoren Shapeshifter Druid in a solo game. The DM is prone to over-the-top Tolkinesque descriptions at the best of times, but things were worse here due to my character growing up on his own thanks to the other Killorens being wiped out by a plague (the DM came up with this because I never see any point in making backstories, and the idea was that nature cared enough about my character to bring him up from being a baby dispite his family being killed off). I come across some human lumberjacks who are in the area, so I hide to observe them. I then look around for an escape route due to being outnumbered and the DM requests another Hide check due to somehow thinking I stuck my head out of cover dispite me specifically saying I was looking around without moving.

Then the lumberjacks see me and start advancing on my position, but I can't react due to the "they are heading for you" part being at the end of a huge paragraph of needless description (this was achat game). I then try to find out if the forest behind me is thick enough to hide in due to thinking the humans were only coming my way, but the DM seemed to ahve problems with telling me or using propper measurements of how far away the people were. He ignores my Hide check and a comment about staying low and 6 arrows get fired at me. 2 hit and bring me to 0 HPs. My plan is to shift back out of Panther form, cast Lesser Vigour and keep running, but the DM suddenly announces I need to remove the arrows with Heal checks to avoid taking ongoing damage. I get KOed before waking up in a hit where a Hobgoblin guard immedietly rushes in. I try to heal myself but I then get KOed again (even if the DM-inspired backstory didn't make communication impossible, the DM's decision to eliminate Common would have made it futile).

I then decide to quit altogether after a cople of people in chat who were 3 levels higher then me joined.

[Doc Roc]

Banning tome of battle but allowing incantatrix.

[Jergmo]

That is rather messed up.

[mistformsquirrl]

Oh dear... the ranting I could do!

I've already mentioned these before in similar threads though, so I'll keep em brief:


I had one DM, over the course of several campaigns (long story as to why I stuck with him) -

1) Kill my first character over something trivial. (A centaur was annoyed at our camping on his lands. My character, after arguing with him, turned to go back to the camp... and had his head bashed open with a greatclub.)

2) Pay the party XP to kill my second character the instant they were introduced.

3) Offer another player XP to toss my 3.0 Psionics handbook into an oven (this resulted in a relatively short physical altercation and some extremely harsh words - not to mention a long hiatus of gaming)

This in addition to railroading, rarely giving us loot, heavily playing favorites, and generally speaking being an arse.

A Shadowrun GM I had seemed to think the game was essentially a story he was telling us. Which resulted in a huge number of godmode villains.

Enemies you unload a HMG on, and they would not flinch, despite not wearing armor.

This might have been OK, but we rarely even got paid for the jobs we were doing <x.x> and found ourselves scrounging ammo most of the time. (Eventually we asked the obvious question "Why would our characters be doing extremely dangerous work when it's *costing them money* to do it?" Because every Johnson we'd meet would find some method of avoiding payment.)

/ramble-rant.

The third bad DM wasn't bad in the above ways really. He was just kind of a poor storyteller prone to bouts of my way or the highway; which understandably makes for a lackluster game. (You can lead me by the nose if you have a good enough story; but doing it when you're boring me to death? That's a cardinal sin!)

And heck, I'll share one of my own jerk-arse moments as a DM; because I've done some really, really stupid things at times myself.

This sounded like a great idea at the time, but is possibly the single worst thing I've ever done in regard to DMing. I gave the players WAY too much wealth for their levels. <T_T>

Something to the tune of 500,000gp for a party of 3 at level 7.

This made the game boring, stale, tiresome, and aggravating, because even when the story itself was set up well (and it wasn't always), the encounters would have to be either ludicrously inflated to account for character stats... or they'd be over in an instant. Neither of which is very satisfying.

So this forced me to do the jerky thing - magic eating demons sent in the night that drained the PC's equipment down to more reasonable levels. (I discussed it with them beforehand; but still, I know if it were me I'd be really irritated if that happened.)

My crowning moment of suck as a DM <>.<> and one I hope never to repeat.

I also had a period which, although somewhat excusable due to a RL illness, I ended up cancelling on my group more than actually gaming with them. I should have simply bowed out... but yeah >< stupid move on my part.

I like to think I've learned from those lessons, and others though; but oi...

*edit*

And in regard to the OP situation...

Gads that is pretty bad. <x.x> Not the worst DM ever, but... definitely bad call.

[Doc Roc]

I'm...... fairly famous for cursed items. Lots of them... :(

[Jergmo]

I'm...... fairly famous for cursed items. Lots of them... :(

I occasionally throw things in just as a test to see if my characters have good common sense or are creative. Sadly, they don't, and to be honest, it's a friggin' hoot.

One of my players, playing a level 12 paladin/pikeman decided it would be a good idea to challenge an Adult Fang Dragon out in the open on horseback in a small canyon. It swooped down, pulled him and his celestial mount into the air, dropped them, launched his character through the air with its tail, killed his mount, and then proceeded to use its tail to disarm him and send his weapons flying, then it decided to play with him like a cat and merely batted him around for a while. Then, his companions who were on the top of the cliff started shooting at it with ranged weapons, so it landed on the opposite cliff and launched large rocks at them with its tail. (The party survived, though, because "the dragon got bored." I didn't want to take things too far.)

Oh, hehe...my players, same party, were going to take on an Elite-arrayed Adult Green Dragon in its lair, and while they were on the way they took it to another chat window to plot and figure out their strategy so I wouldn't see what it was, and they spent like an hour doing this. When they got to the dragon's lair, they were foiled by a deep pool of water sitting in front of the cavern entrance, and despite having three different magical items that could have conceivably gotten them across, they were stumped and had to turn back. Suffice to say, I cackled my head off. Those are the only things I've really done that are a little jerky, though, that I can think of.

[elliott20]

there's a bit of difference of being tough on players in game through in game mechanics and being outright jerk just because the GM is socially inept.

I know a guy who runs games that have a HIGH turn over rate. When I played in his game, my average character lasted about 2 sessions or less. That's fine though. He played by the rules, played well, and if we managed to survive it, we get boons for it. And most of all, he didn't make it personal. It was just the game being deadly.

and then I knew a guy who basically used his game as a means to power trip. he lasted about 30 minutes before we gave up and never called him again.

[Morquard]

Wow that DM sounds like a jerk really.

Yeah a DM should make a game challanging, but seriously that is just being an ass. Especially the "I knew you wanted to heal yourself and not the ENEMY, but I don't care."

What's next?
Player: "I swing my sword and attack - 20 - 18, yeah its a crit"
DM: "Good, you swing your sword and cleanly cleave your clerics head off, he's dead. Oh, or did you mean to attack the orc?"
Players: "WTF?"

[Kylarra]

Stories like mean it is time to find a new DM/group.

[Haven]

I think one of my favorite Jerk DM stories was from these boards, the OP of a topic about horrible wish granting. They wished to be teleported back to the inn they started their adventure in...but they didn't specify that the inn not be on fire when they made the wish, so that's the state they found it in, and they all burned to death.

Since reading that post, I have come to the conclusion that I will give out wishes to players solely so I can twist them in that manner. Though this might end up helping them out--if they wish for the BBEG to be transported in front of them without any of his defenses, hey, they also get the bonus that the BBEG is on fire now. On the other hand, if they do something like wish all the little orphans have better homes...

[mikej]

I cast Cure Light Wounds. I said this, but the DM didn't notice and got angry with me asking what spell, actually cursing as well until I had to use nasty words in all caps to get him to notice. So he then said "On yourself?" so, irritated myself, I said "No, the other half-orc.", who was lying on the ground dying some distance away, then "Of course myself."

But here's the kicker; he said I healed the half-orc and that it was standing and fighting again, and due to the action, it caused me to drop to -1 and start dying, and he said he knows I meant it to be cast on myself, but he didn't really care.

lol

somethings should be obvious.

* Orc charging in from the distance*

PC: " I cast fireball."
DM: " were do you aim it at?"
PC: "myself, were else would I aim it?
DM " ... "
PC: " of course I fired it at the Orcs!"


Offer another player XP to toss my 3.0 Psionics handbook into an oven (this resulted in a relatively short physical altercation and some extremely harsh words - not to mention a long hiatus of gaming)

Wow, just wow. You're pretty high on the list ( except for the player that had the psycho DM ) for winning this thread. Most My friends loathe everything about the Druid class, joking about burning my Faiths of Eberron ( Planar Shepherd ) book, but never actually did it.

As for myself, idiotic uphill battles when you're playing the caster. The DM that usually runs things is a melee fanatic. Hates caster with a passion for being more powerfull than the Fighter and Monk. If it wasn't for his flaw of not putting much effort into making a campaign...it would be all 100% low-no magic world. I was once in a campaign with a full centaur fighter ( reincarnated ) and werewolf monk. Of course no level adjustment and no level lose. Just my humble half-elf druid ( at the time I was still just a newbie ), when I asked about this, or reguested a little balancing out, I was ignored. Of course I've repeating this same rant of few times here before. It's just very annoying.

[Sir Homeslice]

So this one time really really long ago I was playing in a 3.5e game. DM said, and I'm quoting him word for word. "If you want, you can come to the game with a character you made beforehand, instead of rolling on the spot. Sixth level, standard wealth by level, all books allowed and don't be cheesy, 40 (HOLY BATMAN ON A POPSICLE STICK) point buy." Also a bunch of other minor houserules that I didn't bother to remember, each of which were minor and didn't affect the following, since they were setting houserules.

Of course, since I have an allergic reaction to nearly all spellcasters due to my laziness and not wanting to be a terrible human being by using my kung-fu, I made a Wild Elf Crusader 6 I was planning on swinging into Eternal Blade. To remind myself, I wrote it (W.Elf Cru10/Etrnl Bla 10) in a margin. So it didn't take me long to make it, and I double checked everything with him. Backstory made, good item selection, nothing insane, et cetera.

Oh. Dear. Lord.

Alright, so I come over to his place with the character sheet, since he was running it there.

To cut a long story short, for the next hour I was derided as a munchkin, a baby eating satanist, and the death of the roleplaying hobby as a whole for daring to:
a.) come to the session with a character pregenerated (see b how this is ridiculous)
b.) using a TOME OF BATTLE CLASS (OH NOES. Mind you, I snuck a look at someone else's character and they were playing some sort of anthropomorphic bat druid minmaxed to Krypton and back. Also featured were clerics and wizards, oh my. Their characters were pregenerated too.)
c.) having a 'mary sue' background (THIS MADE NO SENSE NOBODY ELSE CAME IN WITH A BACKGROUND AND MY CHARACTER ACTUALLY HAPPY WITH HIS LIFE AND HIS ELF PARENTS WERE ALIVE AND HE HIMSELF WAS A FAIRLY NICE INDIVIDUAL.)
d.) I repeat, I was using a Tome of Battle class. And a Tome of Battle PrC. The man repeated this three times as crimes against humanity. I was probably the only non-spellcaster melee character in the group. Everyone else was a cleric, druid, or wizard.
e.) I used point buy. He didn't remember ever telling me that he authorized point buy, despite the fact that two days before I asked him if he was using point buy.
f.) He mentioned that I should have brought along a pizza, when two days prior he said he had it covered, and thanked me for being considerate enough to ask.
g.) Also, I attempted to defend myself. This got even more ranting from him, and he attempted to hit me with what appeared to be a spare chair leg lying around. Who the hell keeps spare chair legs around? Nevertheless, he had shoddy accuracy despite being inches from my face. I left and never looked back.

Met him again the following week in the FLGS I found him at. While I was putzing around there as usual, he acted like I personally stabbed his favorite family member in the chest and began frothing at the mouth in my general direction, almost repeating himself word for word when he ranted at me the previous week for being a munchkin and the death of roleplaying games.

He joined the FLGS' Wall of Banned People.

It was satisfying.

[Kylarra]

I think one of my favorite Jerk DM stories was from these boards, the OP of a topic about horrible wish granting. They wished to be teleported back to the inn they started their adventure in...but they didn't specify that the inn not be on fire when they made the wish, so that's the state they found it in, and they all burned to death.

Since reading that post, I have come to the conclusion that I will give out wishes to players solely so I can twist them in that manner. Though this might end up helping them out--if they wish for the BBEG to be transported in front of them without any of his defenses, hey, they also get the bonus that the BBEG is on fire now. On the other hand, if they do something like wish all the little orphans have better homes...Man, that sounds like a pain.
:belkar:"You didn't wish that you weren't on fire, so you're now on fire"
:elan:"wha? We wished to be healed..."
:belkar:"Too bad! Didn't wish to be not on fire. BTW, it's magical hellfire, you're dead now."

[Morquard]

"I wish to be healed and not being set on fire in the process"
"Alright, you're healed, and you've not been set on fire. But you didn't wish that herd of bisons shouldn't magically appear right behind you, so you're stampeded to death now."

Sorry this is going offtopi, will stop now :)

[Kaiyanwang]

I'm...... fairly famous for cursed items. Lots of them... :(

:smallconfused: This remembers to me to ad more cursed items.

OP, a players shouldn't choose carefully each word to avoid weird things at table. Unless you are

- Casting a Wish

- Dealing with Baatezu

This is a very bad DMing. Talk to your DM asking for a more relaxed gamestyle, allowing to enjoy more the game.

If doesn't work, flee.

I feel lucky I alwayis had good DMs. Maybe one a little bit tight on magic items, but that's all. And I'm quite tight too until epic.

[kamikasei]

Unless you are
...
- Dealing with Baatezu

I'm confused. Is the player speaking to a DM, or not?

[Origomar]

"I wish to be healed and not being set on fire in the process"
"Alright, you're healed, and you've not been set on fire. But you didn't wish that herd of bisons shouldn't magically appear right behind you, so you're stampeded to death now."



I think someone should make a foolproof list for making the wish spell, something that is like 500 pages long.


(i took out part of the quote because it makes me look bad)

[Kaiyanwang]

I'm confused. Is the player speaking to a DM, or not?

I meant that, playing, these are the only two situations coming in my mind you have to choose carefully what you are saying.

If the entire gameplay is about speaking as a contract, the game becomes a mess.

[kamikasei]

I meant that, playing, these are the only two situations coming in my mind you have to choose carefully what you are saying.

If the entire gameplay is about speaking as a contract, the game becomes a mess.

(The joke I was making was that speaking to a DM is dealing with a Baatezu, even if he's not portraying one at the time.)

\/ Don't worry about it, I felt as I wrote it that I wasn't wording it clearly enough.

[Kaiyanwang]

(The joke I was making was that speaking to a DM is dealing with a Baatezu, even if he's not portraying one at the time.)

:smalleek: I feel.. feebleminded.

:smallredface: Apologies.

[Myshlaevsky]

"I wish to be healed and not being set on fire in the process"
"Alright, you're healed, and you've not been set on fire. But you didn't wish that herd of bisons shouldn't magically appear right behind you, so you're stampeded to death now."

Sorry this is going offtopi, will stop now :)

Man, I would be really pissed off at this. At the very least the bison should be on fire.

[Haven]

I think someone should make a foolproof list for making the wish spell, something that is like 500 pages long.


"Upon completing the spell, you feel exhilarated as you bend the forces of the cosmos to your will! There is a small 'pop' as a tiny scroll comes into existence before you. Written upon it, in an ancient, flowing arcane script, are these hallowed words...

Too Long; Didn't Read. -cosmos"

"..."

"You're on fire."

[Fiendish_Dire_Moose]

Bad Dm moments? Okay, I'll give you the worst, worst within reason of course. Some DMs get pissy and kill the cat, no, some kill the entire group for one player's actions, well, the worst are the ones that punish the group for one idiot.


The group blows into town like a hurricane farted out by Satan himself. Having been on the road for far too long they made their way into the local tavern. Turned out they were a little short on money type stuffs and needed work. So, the Wizard, a gnarled angry fellow begins asking around the bar for any news of work.

"I know where ye can get some work, if'n ye be lookin' fer work." Spouted the old man huddled in the corner, leaning over a grimy frothy mug.

"Do you goo-

Okay screw it, long story short we had to go into the well to hunt down, kill and bring back proof of the kill. So, me (paladin) and my friends (wizard, barbarian, and cleric) go into the well.
We kill guy, and cut off his head. Coming out of the well the wizard randomly decides that he wants more money for this job. He proceeds to yell, "Hail me for I am god!" Whilst waving the head around he demands either more money or he will personally kill everyone. The rest of the group goes, "We're not with him." And we back away. Two seconds later we're killed by a fireball. A dirt poor town that didn't have a guard to speak of had enough wizards to kill a level 7 party. No reasoning with the DM, he says, "You came out of the well with him!" We say, "We even said we were not with him on that one. We were backing away!"
And three years later, the DM stands by his actions. Needless to say, he got several stern talkings to about proper D&D conduct.

[Morquard]

Man, I would be really pissed off at this. At the very least the bison should be on fire.
You're of course absolutely right, they should be.

"You take 6d8 damage from getting trampled, now the bison set you on fire too, you take another 4d6 damage. Make a reflex safe to see if the bison that just died from its fire damage lands on top of you for another 12d12 damage. Oh you managed to roll away... right under the next bison, you take 6d8 damage from..."

[Fiendish_Dire_Moose]

You're of course absolutely right, they should be.

"You take 6d8 damage from getting trampled, now the bison set you on fire too, you take another 4d6 damage. Make a reflex safe to see if the bison that just died from its fire damage lands on top of you for another 12d12 damage. Oh you managed to roll away... right under the next bison, you take 6d8 damage from..."

I'm..... I'm going to have to use this on the group I DM. They might never stop laughing, turning 30 minutes of material into a 6 hour game.

[arguskos]

"Upon completing the spell, you feel exhilarated as you bend the forces of the cosmos to your will! There is a small 'pop' as a tiny scroll comes into existence before you. Written upon it, in an ancient, flowing arcane script, are these hallowed words...

Too Long; Didn't Read. -cosmos"

"..."

"You're on fire."
Here's the question: what if you simply wished to set everything in sight on fire? Would the fire be on fire?!

[Kaun]

First session.. lvl 1 chrs about 5 of us.

DM starts us in combat with just shy of a dozen ogres... Needless to say we didn't get past the first encounter. He bragged about every decent damage roll and crit the whole way through aswell.

The irritating part was the time lost to chr generation.

[Myshlaevsky]

Here's the question: what if you simply wished to set everything in sight on fire? Would the fire be on fire?!

In the spirit of the wish, I suspect nothing would go on fire. Then, hundreds of years later, when a small village has been established by your descendants on that spot... then comes the doublefire.

[Haven]

Here's the question: what if you simply wished to set everything in sight on fire? Would the fire be on fire ?!

Yes! (http://i684.photobucket.com/albums/vv205/haven_bucket/flaming_fire.png?t=1250158597)Just a quick little sketch I did in paint last time someone asked me this. Yes, it's come up before.
Ninja'd. Sharikov, I like the way you think.

[Fiendish_Dire_Moose]

Here's the question: what if you simply wished to set everything in sight on fire? Would the fire be on fire?!

I've had this discussion with my group before:


"The fire promptly sets on fire dealing 5d6 damage to the fire. But the fire sets itself on fire dealing 5d6 damage to itself on top of the damage being dealt by the fire-"
Ten minutes of explanations later they were fighting a colossal Living Fireball, and I was very confused.

[powerdemon]

Man, I would be really pissed off at this. At the very least the bison should be on fire.

Haha, that's great!

[Kris Strife]

can I get a link to the list for making a fool proof wish?

[Lord Loss]

An army of Grell was attacking a village, and The Lawful Good Half-Dragon .This player atttepted to screw up my campaign despite the fact that I let him play a Half-Dragon with Stormtalon as a base class. Overpowered.

So then, he started ranting at me because I had left a book that another charcter needed to level up at my house. So then he went about the fact that until I brought the book back , the charcter would get (bunch of overpowered stuff) for free! I said no. He refused to play. He tries to break my arm. I rip his charcter sheet in half and tell him to get away from me.

Later, he joins the game, promising to not screw it up. We finally finish ONE FREAKING ENCOUNTER! when the PCs arrive at a portal. They have a vision of another dreadfully dangerous land, where they must go to save the land. One of the players knew his parents were trapped there. (This led to Norskull, for anyone who heard of it) The Pc w trapped parents leaps in. The paladin leaps in. The Samurai Leaps in. The other player rants about it being a trap, and we argue with him for forty-five minutes, him going on about what a crap DM I am for...

Railroading (I actually don't. the only railroad so far in this campaign is the portal)

Not Making Encounters Hard Enough (This may be true)

Not describing what's happening (I write long descriptive passages, whenever i start one, he sais. Screw that, just what the hell is attacking us)

He always metagames. Guys this monster is from fiend folio. He tells hp, special attacks, name, etc... Then sais it's due to his charcter's past.
WITH NO RANKS IN KNOWLEDGE!!!

My friends and I inform him that the Grell caught up with his charcter and killed him. Then we leave.

Just making sure it's not me being a bad DM. This was a long, long time ago.

[The Dark Fiddler]

This isn't a great huge jerkiness, and it might be for a reason (not a great one, but still a reason).

Our DM gave us a Fighter in our group, and he's 9 levels above the party average. He told us he's there to keep us alive, and I told him that there's on danger anymore if he's there. So now Fighter got arrested and our DM is all but forcing us to get the money to release him from jail. The way we're supposed to do this? Fight a blue dragon. This is the entire group's first game (DM included), with a level 5 Ranger, level 3 Cleric of Pelor, Level 4 Fighter, Level 4 Barbarian, and Level 4 Rogue. The Barbarian and Rogue have never fought before, and none of us are optimized.

Although, I don't quite see why we need to free him. It'd even be in character to leave him there.

[loopy]

He sounds pretty awful. I've heard of worse ones, though (eg: 1 person on here came up with a Rogue/Cleric who needed to make a potion in order to ward off a curse which he came up with as part of his characters backstory, the DM was fine with him having Skill Focus (Alchemy) to help to counteract this curse, then he went of out his way to stop the player making and storing the potion to the point where he was having villagers accosting the guy with villagers (apparently the DM decided that the player only came up with the curse for the free feat).

I tried looking up the thread(s) where Xallace's story was originally told, but it looks like they are gone. Anyone got them archived?

[random11]

We kill guy, and cut off his head. Coming out of the well the wizard randomly decides that he wants more money for this job. He proceeds to yell, "Hail me for I am god!" Whilst waving the head around he demands either more money or he will personally kill everyone. The rest of the group goes, "We're not with him." And we back away. Two seconds later we're killed by a fireball. A dirt poor town that didn't have a guard to speak of had enough wizards to kill a level 7 party. No reasoning with the DM, he says, "You came out of the well with him!" We say, "We even said we were not with him on that one. We were backing away!"
And three years later, the DM stands by his actions. Needless to say, he got several stern talkings to about proper D&D conduct.

The wizards came out of nowhere which makes is stupid.
But for the DM's defense, the villagers knew you were in the same group, so they acted to what they saw as a threat. Maybe not the smartest or the most moral choice, but they did act "in character".

Which comes to show us that NPCs acting as people in real life, isn't always the best thing for a role playing game. Sometimes, things are cliched for a good reason...

[Tempest Fennac]

Sadly, I don't have it archived, Loopy. I remember something about the police being called when Psycho DM refused to leave the house of the person telling the story. I just remembered another story from a similar thread to this one:

DM: "You're all sitting in a tavern when a man dressed in black leather comes up to you and puts a gold coin on the table."

Paladin: "Thanks. What's this for?"

DM: "You fall for associating with an evil character."

Players walk out.

(This is how that particular game started.)

Regarding FDM's story, I'd say just having the Wizard arrested would have been a better solution being as you can't blame the other players for 1 person acting like a moron.

[Skeppio]

Sadly, I don't have it archived, Loopy. I remember something about the police being called when Psycho DM refused to leave the house of the person telling the story. I just remembered another story from a similar thread to this one:

DM: "You're all sitting in a tavern when a man dressed in black leather comes up to you and puts a gold coin on the table."

Paladin: "Thanks. What's this for?"

DM: "You fall for associating with an evil character."

Players walk out.

(This is how that particular game started.)

Regarding FDM's story, I'd say just having the Wizard arrested would have been a better solution being as you can't blame the other players for 1 person acting like a moron.

HO-

LY-

CRAP! WTF? That is completely insane! I hope you found a better DM pretty fast.

[mikej]

b.) using a TOME OF BATTLE CLASS (OH NOES. Mind you, I snuck a look at someone else's character and they were playing some sort of anthropomorphic bat druid minmaxed to Krypton and back. Also featured were clerics and wizards, oh my. Their characters were pregenerated too.)
-
d.) I repeat, I was using a Tome of Battle class. And a Tome of Battle PrC. The man repeated this three times as crimes against humanity. I was probably the only non-spellcaster melee character in the group. Everyone else was a cleric, druid, or wizard.


I get a laugh out of those reaction from ToB all the time. Extra amusing if a far worse class is in the same party. It's like sending in SWAT team & full police force into the home of some kid that steal a pack of gum while a bank robbery was taking place a few blocs down.

This thread reminding me of the psycho DM story. The one were he got himself arrested and return later to throw a brick into that player's house. I can't seem to find the link. :smallfrown:

Edit: nevermind

[kamikasei]

I tried looking up the thread(s) where Xallace's story was originally told, but it looks like they are gone. Anyone got them archived?

Well it's not Xallace's, but the story Tempest Fennac was referring to is here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23784). Thread also contains various other horror stories contributed by other posters (Gamebird's are particularly entertaining).

And there was a follow-up (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93633).

Oh, and one of my favourite "crazy DM" (though with player help) stories, from an entire thread about them: Part I (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=284231#post284231), II (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=284356#post284356).

[Tempest Fennac]

Skeppio, that didn't involve me (someone else posted it on another "worst DM" thread).

[Fiendish_Dire_Moose]

The wizards came out of nowhere which makes is stupid.
But for the DM's defense, the villagers knew you were in the same group, so they acted to what they saw as a threat. Maybe not the smartest or the most moral choice, but they did act "in character".

Which comes to show us that NPCs acting as people in real life, isn't always the best thing for a role playing game. Sometimes, things are cliched for a good reason...

See, that's thing thing though. The NPCs didn't react. There WAS no wizard powerful enough to kill us before. My friend said what he said, and DM killed was with a fireball that literally came out of the crowed. No NPCs, just a hidden wizard.

[FlawedParadigm]

This got even more ranting from him, and he attempted to hit me with what appeared to be a spare chair leg lying around. Who the hell keeps spare chair legs around?

You're...apparently not familiar with Spider Jerusalem, are you?

Google "Chair Leg of Truth."

Then have fun making it an artefact in your next game.

[random11]

See, that's thing thing though. The NPCs didn't react. There WAS no wizard powerful enough to kill us before. My friend said what he said, and DM killed was with a fireball that literally came out of the crowed. No NPCs, just a hidden wizard.

Okay, ignore my previous post, fireball out of nowhere is just stupid.

[kemmotar]

Okay, ignore my previous post, fireball out of nowhere is just stupid.

Could be a living fireball of lawfull doom sent out by those mechanus thingies that go around the planes upholding the laws to scour the world for annoying adventurers that try and usurp the gods.....?

[random11]

Could be a living fireball of lawfull doom sent out by those mechanus thingies that go around the planes upholding the laws to scour the world for annoying adventurers that try and usurp the gods.....?

Well, it can also be a wizard hero who just happened to get there on the same day, saw the scene and decided to react.

But more likely it's just a version of "rocks fall, everybody dies" :smallsmile:

[Myshlaevsky]

Yes! (http://i684.photobucket.com/albums/vv205/haven_bucket/flaming_fire.png?t=1250158597)Just a quick little sketch I did in paint last time someone asked me this. Yes, it's come up before.

That picture made me crack up. That is epic.

[kamikasei]

Could be a living fireball of lawfull doom sent out by those mechanus thingies that go around the planes upholding the laws to scour the world for annoying adventurers that try and usurp the gods.....?

You're going to tell me that the forces of ultimate law decided that the best way to promote order and harmony in the multiverse was via a living ball of fire which sets things on fire?

That's... worryingly plausible...

[kemmotar]

Sometimes even cosmic enforcers of law are just...in the neighbourhood...

[Myshlaevsky]

You're going to tell me that the forces of ultimate law decided that the best way to promote order and harmony in the multiverse was via a living ball of fire which sets things on fire?

That's... worryingly plausible...

There are two states: Burned and not-burned. That which is not-burned is chaotic. That which is burned is still.

[Blackfang108]

Years back, my friend decided to DM a Dragonlance game.

In order to participate, your character had to draw at least 3 cards from the Deck of Many Things.

I drew:
1: Lose X Xp, putting me back at level 1.
2: Get out of any bad thing once.(decided to save it instead of gaining the XP back, as this was my second character, as the first one died during the draw.)
3: THE SUN! I'm now level 10, and I have a Necklace of Adaptation.

The very first thing to happen to my character is to gro very old, very fast.

The character was a Silvanesti Noble. I went from ~ 125 to Nearly dead in minutes.

I was pissed about that. We still tell that story. (The campaign was unremarkable and short. after our first quest, the DM lost all of his notes, and all interest.)

EDIT: note that I'd already promised the DM to not screw up his story with the "undo one bad thing." I was planning on saving it for a rainy Death.

[KazilDarkeye]

DM: "You're all sitting in a tavern when a man dressed in black leather comes up to you and puts a gold coin on the table."

Paladin: "Thanks. What's this for?"

DM: "You fall for associating with an evil character."

Players walk out.

(This is how that particular game started.)


That might be the start of this thread here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57805

[Random832]

Well, it can also be a wizard hero who just happened to get there on the same day, saw the scene and decided to react.

Then you have to justify him attacking the entire party for the actions of one person, since you no longer have "they know you're all in the same group"


That might be the start of this thread here: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57805

Yeah, that's stupid. If you don't want someone to play a Paladin, just ban the class. And it's even more stupid because by the rules you don't even actually fall for that unless you "knowingly" associate with an evil character. And this wouldn't count as association, either; it's pretty much spelled out as meaning "in an adventuring party with".

[DiscipleofBob]

Very first game with a new group, I'm playing a 3.5 Ninja. First encounter we go through some time travel thing and get ambushed in a crowded hallway, to the point where I really can't do anything. Final bad guy's about to go down, I finally get a shot. Ghost Step up, take out the nunchaku. Natural 1. Not only did I hit myself with the nunchaku, the DM ruled I dealed Sudden Strike damage to myself as well. I did more damage in that one attack to myself than anyone, friend or foe, in the entire encounter.

Next session the DM made up for it though, as it basically turned into a snatch-and-grab solo mission for my character, whether he meant for it to be that way or not.

Final session though was the kicker. We were fighting a group of spellcasters and a warforged titan. First of all, they get the drop on us through an illusion, when the DM had given me a Ring of True Seeing just last session and conveniently forgot to tell me it was an illusion. Then, seeing as the battle was going pretty badly with all the spellcasting and reach AoO's from the titan, I decide to grapple one of the spellcasters. Mind you, for the past week, the DM and other members of the party are telling me that it's the thing to do against spellcasters. The spellcaster's teleport goes off, and I'm teleported into a room with Merrix d'Cannith and a bunch of other artificers. The DM rules that I'm too disoriented from the teleport to offer any resistance as they capture me, strip me, flay my aberrant dragonmark, and torture me. The only rolls I get to make during this process is three Will Saves (my only bad save) to resist torture. I fail the third one and supposedly blab everything about the aberrant house. Next session, when I finally get to make actions again, I immediately trounce the Open Lock check to get my bonds loose, grab my Belt of Hidden Pockets as it hasn't been opened and contains all my throwing daggers and acidic fires. After the encounter, I find out that Merrix, the big bad artificer who tortured me, already left the building, and when I ask the DM about it, he tells me OOC that he'd never let us (the party) kill a major setting NPC. This was the final session, by the way.

[Lord Loss]

WOW! you stayed that long...? You're much more patient than I am...

[valadil]

I don't know if this is the worst, but it's the one I'm most bitter about at the moment. I was playing a cult leader in a Mage game. The GM didn't know what to do with my character so he threw me in jail and let me manipulate my way out. This was cute at first and could have been a fun running gag, except that I was in jail for 3 hours each session and barely got to play. I really wish he told me to roll up a different character instead.

[kemmotar]

Well, worse session i've had was partly due to DM and a player that was a really big jerk, but the DM let him be one...anyway, i'll explain.

I'm playing a goliath halberd fighter, for some reason I was bored and decided to play with a huge halberd...I asked the DM if strongarm bracers and goliath stacked and he said Ok...so pretty huge halberd and other armor and stat enhancing items. The DM tells us this is going to be a low magic thing...we learn after we've completed our characters that this means that we lose all but one magic item selected randomly. Guess what's the ol fighter's left with...that's right...strongarm bracers...and none of us have any money. Meanwhile the jerk player is powertripping since he can kill us all with his mighty spells:smallfurious:

Enter the dungeon...we find a huge pile of discarded weapons and after a little bit of searching I find a halberd, granted not in a good condition but I still have a weapon and which my feats can actually synergize with so I'm ok with it...We kill some undead thingies that rush us. Surprise surprise...halberd breaks right after the encounter...*sad panda*

Next thing to enter the room? Ethereal monsters...and we only have mundane weapons. I should also say that my character is very very ugly...6 charisma ugly...but he's also humanoid, wears a holy symbol of selune (of whom he's a follower), is NG and is very calm and mild. The 6 charisma came from 8 base (damn rolls) and a -2. After a small talk with the DM we agree that's I'm normal except from some very ugly burns and scars from several battlefields, which if fine with me. I wear a long cloak with a hood to hide my ugliness but I have to sometimes remove it to eat or to not prevent me from fighting very well (field of vision etc, which is of course reasonable).

The jerk wizard decideds he hates me because I'm a monster...I explain that I'm pretty much normal apart from extensive scars and burns. The DM says nothing. He goes invisible and while i'm being his personal meatshield because by this level (10th) we know that ethereal creatures can only be damaged by magic and magical weapons and the random mundane sword I picked up just went through it. I'm getting strength drain from 3-4 while the wizard goes invisible and then casts a save or suck that targets fortitude...ON ME...thankfully I shrug it off. Next round I am fireballed even though he could have avoided me...next round I'm fireballed again....naturally I become a mass of burning flesh on the floor. I start getting pissed off. Wizard says that its only natural that he would kill me beacause he's a human and I look like a mosntrosity...I look at the DM who knows the story..he says nothing, I continue to explain that I'm just very scarred and in fact look much like a human and never did anything to harm him...if anything...I protected him.

besides, he's a 10th level wizard with knowledge planes and arcana...and gets weird about an ugly goliath!?...the annoying part came after I died...the DM says nothing and continues the game as if nothing happened...the wizard then proceeds (i dont' remember exactly how) to summon a demon wanting to get a demon cohort...I tell the DM that the wizard is supposedly good, as per his character sheet, that he just killed a goliath whose only crime was being ugly because he looked like a monster...and now he's going to let him summon a DEMON to become his COHORT!? The DM says it's fine, his alignment got change to CE and we can all continue.

I am then told by the DM to make a half fiend character of level 12 and be the wizards cohort! Needless to say that I tore up my character sheet and all but left. Though the DM is a dear friend of mine, I will think very hard before letting him DM for us again...

Now granted, this may look more like a jerk player story, the DM allowed him to do anything he wanted while completely destroying my fun...railroading is one thing, but allowing this kind of blatant stupidity to take place on a table is different...besides, fighting ethereals monsters with mundane weapons and only one caster in the party? I really wanted to hurt the table by hitting it with the DM's head many many times very very hard...

[kamikasei]

The DM tells us this is going to be a low magic thing...we learn after we've completed our characters that this means that we lose all but one magic item selected randomly.

That's the single dumbest approach to low magic I've ever heard of.


The jerk wizard decideds he hates me because I'm a monster... Wizard says that its only natural that he would kill me beacause he's a human and I look like a mosntrosity...

How had you guys ended up in a party together? Was this wizard's wisdom score somewhere in the <5 range, such that he cannot prioritize between "that' dude's ugly" and "those guys he's fighting off are trying to kill me"?

[kemmotar]

How had you guys ended up in a party together? Was this wizard's wisdom score somewhere in the <5 range, such that he cannot prioritize between "that' dude's ugly" and "those guys he's fighting off are trying to kill me"?

more like 12 but he was pun pun in the area of being an absolute jerk and destroying everyone's fun...he was more like the extra in the group that day because everyone knows he's a jerk...the bad part was that the DM knew all this and just let him do anything he wanted...

[Woodsman]

My DM did pull something on me, but it was mostly my fault (It being my first character, I couldn't think of a history, so the DM wrote one up, we both agreed I'd be amnesiac, and I have barely any clue as to his history still).

So, we're fighting this big battle against Deadly Dancers (ToM), and my character gets split off and brutally sliced to pieces. My DM PM's me (it's PbP) and asks for a Will save. I hand him one, and he responds in the actual topic with my characters longsword getting shoved into a stone wall and some sort of frightful presence.

Well, as it soon turns out, my character is apparently a Yuan-ti. The rest of my group proceeds to "kill" me (And by that I mean kill the Yuan-ti, which reverts back into my character, who comes back asleep), and then tie me up and question me after the battle is over.

So the group decides to turn me in to the authorities, in which case I am tried (with the party gnome bard/rouge/chameleon (house-ruled in) as my lawyer) and it's decided I am to wear a "kill collar," set to the conditions that if I turn into a Yuan-ti again or I perform any sort of hostile act towards my group, it blows and separates my head from my neck.

We're currently on a quest to turn my character into a full human. After we attempt to negotiate with the Dancers, though, as insane as that seems.

So, yeah, I though my DM was a jerk at that point, but I'm alive (Much to my and think his) surprise. And as I said, it was my fault for not writing a history.

[Myshlaevsky]

My DM did pull something on me, but it was mostly my fault (It being my first character, I couldn't think of a history, so the DM wrote one up, we both agreed I'd be amnesiac, and I have barely any clue as to his history still).

So, we're fighting this big battle against Deadly Dancers (ToM), and my character gets split off and brutally sliced to pieces. My DM PM's me (it's PbP) and asks for a Will save. I hand him one, and he responds in the actual topic with my characters longsword getting shoved into a stone wall and some sort of frightful presence.

Well, as it soon turns out, my character is apparently a Yuan-ti. The rest of my group proceeds to "kill" me (And by that I mean kill the Yuan-ti, which reverts back into my character, who comes back asleep), and then tie me up and question me after the battle is over.

So the group decides to turn me in to the authorities, in which case I am tried (with the party gnome bard/rouge/chameleon (house-ruled in) as my lawyer) and it's decided I am to wear a "kill collar," set to the conditions that if I turn into a Yuan-ti again or I perform any sort of hostile act towards my group, it blows and separates my head from my neck.

We're currently on a quest to turn my character into a full human. After we attempt to negotiate with the Dancers, though, as insane as that seems.

So, yeah, I though my DM was a jerk at that point, but I'm alive (Much to my and think his) surprise. And as I said, it was my fault for not writing a history.

This is probably something that differs more on the attitude of the player. Some people I know would welcome this kind of character-altering change, whereas others (like yourself) would be more likely to be annoyed or shy away from it. It maybe would have been better for him to approach you about this beforehand, but some players, again, would prefer the surprise.

[Woodsman]

This is probably something that differs more on the attitude of the player. Some people I know would welcome this kind of character-altering change, whereas others (like yourself) would be more likely to be annoyed or shy away from it. It maybe would have been better for him to approach you about this beforehand, but some players, again, would prefer the surprise.

Yeah, well, it was certainly interesting. like I said, I'm alive, and that's all I care about right now.

[jmbrown]

Yeah, well, it was certainly interesting. like I said, I'm alive, and that's all I care about right now.

Your players are jerks. Are there any good aligned members because forcing death upon someone who's afflicted with a curse they know nothing about is pretty much not good in any way at all.

And this "kill collar" is pretty stupid as well (not to mention borderline evil). Geas exists for a reason.

[The_If]

My worst was going from sessions with the DM as DM to a session with him as a fellow player. The DM was too caught up with the rules to allow Rule-of-Cool, and too unimaginitive to provide any hints into the plot hooks without us asking the "perfect" questions. My friends were in the game, so it was still enjoyable even if equally maddening.
The real problem was his Cleric in a different game. It controlled via Save-or- Suck spells. Particularly Hold Person. Most notably, Hold Person mixed with Coup de Grace. Its hard to enjoy a game when someone who's memorized the rulebook and is prone to light hissyfits can say "will save or your dead." to almost everyone in the party.

[kemmotar]

This is probably something that differs more on the attitude of the player. Some people I know would welcome this kind of character-altering change, whereas others (like yourself) would be more likely to be annoyed or shy away from it. It maybe would have been better for him to approach you about this beforehand, but some players, again, would prefer the surprise.

Well, I find those instances to be quite fun as long as the DM doesn't literally hand you another character sheet.

For example, my DM once made my goliath (not the character from the above story) a failed experiment of a high level cleric of nerull who was posing as the head of the monk order from which I had originated...I was turned into a human with the ability to turn into a goliath 1/day...that was fun...then I was trying to find my past screaming I wanted to see my son...I had no reason to believe I actually had a son...but it was fun nevertheless:smalltongue:

[Woodsman]

Yeah, well, it was actually one player who did it. The rest of the group decided I should live, but he still decided to turn me in.

The collar was security. I mean, the whole society is run by Orcs and hates Yuan-ti, and Geas is rather hard to come by.

I'm not sure the player's logic was sound, anyway. He's playing a duskblade with a high Int, but his character's logic is so influenced by prejudice I'm amazed his Wis isn't in the crapper.

[mistformsquirrl]

Gotta agree with jmbrown >.<

Well and hell - even if you really are a Yuan-ti, not cursed or anything; it's obvious you've been helping the players this far - at least some should have a moral compunction to say "Wait, this guy's been with us this entire time, has he done anything even remotely suspicious? Are we going to kill him *just because he's green and scaly*?"

And that of course is assuming the character were in fact a full fledged Yuan-Ti, not just cursed, which seems rather readily apparent from the description.

[Erts]

2) Pay the party XP to kill my second character the instant they were introduced.

3) Offer another player XP to toss my 3.0 Psionics handbook into an oven (this resulted in a relatively short physical altercation and some extremely harsh words - not to mention a long hiatus of gaming)


Number two is being a idiot, number 3 is being a complete jerk who does not understand the game. Did you leave the party? I would if someone thretened to throw my stuff in an oven!

[Woodsman]

Gotta agree with jmbrown >.<

Well and hell - even if you really are a Yuan-ti, not cursed or anything; it's obvious you've been helping the players this far - at least some should have a moral compunction to say "Wait, this guy's been with us this entire time, has he done anything even remotely suspicious? Are we going to kill him *just because he's green and scaly*?"

And that of course is assuming the character were in fact a full fledged Yuan-Ti, not just cursed, which seems rather readily apparent from the description.

Like I said, the player who turned me in's (And his stupid cohort who shouldn't have even had a vote, according to my lawy- ah, fellow player) logic is so influenced by prejudice it's amazing his Wis isn't in the toilet.

[jmbrown]

Yeah, well, it was actually one player who did it. The rest of the group decided I should live, but he still decided to turn me in.

The collar was security. I mean, the whole society is run by Orcs and hates Yuan-ti, and Geas is rather hard to come by.

I'm not sure the player's logic was sound, anyway. He's playing a duskblade with a high Int, but his character's logic is so influenced by prejudice I'm amazed his Wis isn't in the crapper.

Well, yuan-ti should be running an orc society but I won't question the DM's societal food chain. My point is that a "kill collar" magically enchanted to blow up when a specific set of actions is met requires some sort of contingency spell.

The conditions are also too broad and complicated. What constitutes a "hostile action?" Dealing direct harm in the form of hit points? Dealing indirect harm in the form of a poison or mind affecting spell? You could charm everyone or slip scorpions in their bedrolls. Contingency's with complicated rules should fail.

[Woodsman]

Well, yuan-ti should be running an orc society but I won't question the DM's societal food chain. My point is that a "kill collar" magically enchanted to blow up when a specific set of actions is met requires some sort of contingency spell.

The conditions are also too broad and complicated. What constitutes a "hostile action?" Dealing direct harm in the form of hit points? Dealing indirect harm in the form of a poison or mind affecting spell? You could charm everyone or slip scorpions in their bedrolls. Contingency's with complicated rules should fail.

The Yuan-ti run their own little thing. The Orcs are Yuan-ti free (except for myself, of course).

The broadness of the request troubled me as well. If it comes down to it, I'm just going to end up trying to strangle the character who turned me in and hope the resulting explosion kills him as well. I'm a barbarian, though, so I'm not exactly known for spells.

[The_If]

I'm just going to end up trying to strangle the character who turned me in and hope the resulting explosion kills him as well.
This is a good plan. I wholeheartedly support it. You should get some more info from the DM, just to be sure.

[Brauron]

Alright, get comfortable as I tell the tale of the Campaign With The Dragerns (TM) In It.

After watching Conan the Barbarian, a bunch of us wanted to play a low-magic campaign. Well, most of us were already running other games. So we turned to my roommate and asked him if he felt up to running a game. He said sure.

So it was decided that in his world, magic was outlawed and practitioners burned at the stake for heresy, because wizards were responsible for bringing about the end of the previous Age.

So our characters have no magic, no magic items, etc. He then begins to throw disgustingly overpowered encounters at us -- 11 Hieracosphinxes, for instance, or 5 Purple Worms, or a Nightmare, etc. He also had us inadvertently crash the world's economy by telling us to go on a quest to overthrow the merchant's guild for bad practices.

Our Ranger received a magic Returning Flaming (kinda, there was a 50% of it doing fire damage to any opponent) javelin, which was magical because there was a demon trapped inside that was constantly forcing him to make will saves against throwing it at fellow party members.

He tried to force a level of Commoner on us at 12th level, citing that we'd spent time living as civilians after killing and looting a villain, thus destabilizing the world economy even more, only relenting when we said, "OK, whatever, it's 12th level we still get a feat and an ability boost."

It was a DC 35 Spot check to see the giant chimera flying at us head-on. Because our Spot checks were so high that nothing could sneak up on us, or so he said.

He banned the feat Spring Attack as overpowered "I mean, there's nothing I can counter it with!" (at which point I said, "Uh...Archers.")

He was open with us from the beginning that the last session would be us fighting one dragon after another until we were all dead. His initial plan was to use Great Wyrm Gold Dragons since they had the highest CR. We told him in no uncertain terms that if he did this we would feed him his dice bag.

We were all trying to help him improve as a DM, gently advising him and making suggestions, most of which caused him to lash out in anger at us. I suggested, if he wanted to throw dragons at us, take Wyverns and replace their poison sting with a fire breath weapon every 1d4 rounds.

It was the only piece of advice he took all campaign. We managed to kill three. And he was smug about it. When describing them, he said point blank, "They're not real dragons, but you don't know that" leading me to caution him, "We could do without the condescension, thanks."

He took especial pleasure in butchering my characters, since he was angry that his characters kept dying in my Call of Cthulhu campaign (they would have survived if he didn't try to play them as D&D Fighters). My final character (a gladiator-type) ended up in a one-on-one battle with a Dragern. I pressed the attack, kind of hoping my character would die so I could get up and leave, and he smirked and said, "You're going to die."

I replied, "Yeah, but I'm going to die on my own terms."

He laughed and said, "Pfft, good luck with that."

I proceeded to kill the Dragern by repeatedly stabbing it in the groin while clinging to its leg as it flew around. I then declared that I was going to try and swing over and grab the other leg as well, so I could ride the Dragern down like a hang-glider. He told me to make a Reflex save. I did, getting a natural 20. Apparently, auto-success wasn't high enough, because I fell and died upon hitting the ground.

[comicshorse]

This happened in a Dark Ages Vampire game. I'd been butting heads a bit with the G.M. over his god-like NPC ( an ex character of his).
Anyway my character ( a Toreador Knight) has accepted an invitation to the house of a nobleman he was cultivating. I walk in the door and discover 10 men-at-arm and Sir Lucas Thierry ( a robber knight I'd taken as the lowest enemy flaw) armed with a crossbow. My character dives for the exit and Lucas lets me have it with the crossbow. No problem I think I'm wearing chainmail, have pumped my stamina and have a good Fortitude. I roll and do very well,
" Okay " says the GM " you take 5 damage"
"What " I say ( as the crossbow just did more damage than a siege engine)
" Aggravated " he adds. " Its a holy crossbow bolt "
Due to a minor miracle of luck my character shrugs off the gaurd blocking the exit and runs away
" Take another point of aggravated damage from the bolt still lodged in you" he adds. I pick up my dice " unsoakable " he points out.
I can see the way this is going as he lovingly describes how my flesh is rotting way. So " I'll use Presence to summon lebirch " ( a Nosferatu I knew frequented this part of the city)
" You can do that " says the G.M. in astonishment. Takes my character sheet and checks that I could. Reluctantly agees to let me make the roll, which I succedd in.
He decides to make a random roll on a D10 to see how close help is, high is good low is bad. He rolls a 10 so I only take another 2 aggravated damage before help shows up.
He informs me Lebirch will pull the bolt out and I must make a random roll on a D10 to see how well he does it. " Anything more than a 3 and you're dead" he casually informs me.
I roll a 2 so am just in torpor for months and lose a permanent point of App



Or of course there was the time with the same GM where a random lucky 'what happens to you tonight' roll had a 4th generation who murdered her lovers decide she liked my character. But that's another story

[Xallace]

I tried looking up the thread(s) where Xallace's story was originally told, but it looks like they are gone. Anyone got them archived?

That story wasn't mine, but links to mine are following:

The Prince (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6330333&postcount=59)
In Which Everything Goes Horribly Wrong (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6332995&postcount=90)

There's actually one aspect of that second one that I forgot to mention. The fighter (among others) was taking on a group of trolls that had -of all things- taken residence at an important bridge. The following exchange takes place:

Fighter: OK, I attack the troll! *Rolls dice* ...does a 20 hit?

DM: No. The troll's AC is 21.

Me (thinking): ...is it wearing armor?

DM: Troll's turn. *Rolls dice* It hits you.

Fighter: Really? Because my AC is-

DM: It hits you. *Rolls damage dice.* 34 damage. Are you unconscious?

Fighter: No, I still have-

DM: *Rolls damage dice* 22 damage. How about now?

Fighter: ....no?

DM: 30 more damage. Are you unconscious yet?

[kemmotar]

I then declared that I was going to try and swing over and grab the other leg as well, so I could ride the Dragern down like a hang-glider. He told me to make a Reflex save. I did, getting a natural 20.

man...just for the audacity of the idea and the dice agreeing by giving you a natural 20 you should have been allowed to do that...

but the DM being out to kill you in any campaign is bad enough...being the DM's personal target is worse...I would understand if you constantly annoyed him...but a character dying in a CoC game?...its not only expected to happen, it's standard procedure isn't it?:smallfrown:

[Brauron]

man...just for the audacity of the idea and the dice agreeing by giving you a natural 20 you should have been allowed to do that...

but the DM being out to kill you in any campaign is bad enough...being the DM's personal target is worse...I would understand if you constantly annoyed him...but a character dying in a CoC game?...its not only expected to happen, it's standard procedure isn't it?:smallfrown:

With CofC, it depends. If the GM and the players treat it like it's D&D, then there's going to be a TPK every ten minutes. In that particular campaign, which ran from September 2007 to March 2008, there were maybe eight character deaths total. Three of them were this one player, the guy who ran the no-magic D&D, one character lasting only a single session (much to that player's chagrin -- he'd figured the elephant gun his character was carrying would help him).

When I run CofC, monsters are fairly rare -- and if one shows up, most of my players understood that running was a very good idea. Killing monsters is not the key to victory in my CofC games -- solving puzzles, finding clues and putting together the disparate aspects of the mystery are.

[kemmotar]

he'd figured the elephant gun his character was carrying would help him).

because the alien and ancient evil spawn of cthulhu the bane of everything that was, is and ever will be will be phased by a gun...I can see his point...

CoC as far as I know (read a few things here on the boards and elsewhere but haven't played) is about player ingenuity...shooting a CoC monster won't and probably shouldn't do anything to it...

[Woodsman]

That story wasn't mine, but links to mine are following:

The Prince (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6330333&postcount=59)
In Which Everything Goes Horribly Wrong (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6332995&postcount=90)

There's actually one aspect of that second one that I forgot to mention. The fighter (among others) was taking on a group of trolls that had -of all things- taken residence at an important bridge. The following exchange takes place:

Fighter: OK, I attack the troll! *Rolls dice* ...does a 20 hit?

DM: No. The troll's AC is 21.

Me (thinking): ...is it wearing armor?

DM: Troll's turn. *Rolls dice* It hits you.

Fighter: Really? Because my AC is-

DM: It hits you. *Rolls damage dice.* 34 damage. Are you unconscious?

Fighter: No, I still have-

DM: *Rolls damage dice* 22 damage. How about now?

Fighter: ....no?

DM: 30 more damage. Are you unconscious yet?

Good God, man, those stories are horrible!

[Keshay]

Worst DM experience I've had was the first game I played when I got to college. In what I thought was a turn of luck there was a good-sized group of guys on my dorm floor who were D&D players. One of them volunteered to DM and asked us all to see our old characters, apparently he was cool with letting us play our old guys. He borrowed the character sheets (and half my books) for a night, and our first game was the next day.

I'll not draw out the description of event with a long-winded encounter-by- encounter narration. Suffice to say, what followed was three and a half hours of the DM placing our characters in situations where we were systematically stripped of our possessions. No roll, impossible to alter or escape or influence encounters where one by one all our weapons, armor and equipment were taken from us.

For example: My Paladin's sword was taken by some statless giant giant as payment to pass his chamber. Statless, we were not allowed to even try and fight it, with no explanation, no save, we could not approach, could not target it with spells or ranged weapons, were not allowed checks to negotiate any other arrangement. This wasn;t much of a problem though, since the sword had an enchantment that made it appear in the hands of its owner if called. Well, instead of appearing in the Pally's had as the ability was described, it instead flew to my hand, at which point the giant guy used super breath or something to propel it faster than it "usual flight speed" (even though it was just suppoed to teleport). I was dealt 50 damage when it struck me. No attack roll, no save, no sword behaving as intended and clearly described on the index card I had for the item description. Amazingly in the very next room the sword was rendered mundane by a some sort of ray from a statue of an evil god or something. No save, no attack roll, it just happened.

After we'd been stripped on any relevant equipment, to add insult to injury, the remaining living characters were all killed by 100+ archers from extreme range with what amounted to no chance to survive. (Oh yes, whatever dungeon we were in apparently had very heavy anti-teleport enchantments, so we could not escape that way. I forget what the actual setup of the adventure was supposed to be, it was weak whatever it was.)

He then tells us, "Your old characters are dead, roll up new ones." Strangely enough the other guys at the table didn't seem have a problem with this and started rolling for stats. When asked why he'd felt it necessary to go through this exercise of systematically destroying our old characters with no regard for the rules of the game we were playing, he tells me it was so that we understood that as DM, his authority was absolute, and that if I had a problem with it, I could leave. I did, but not before letting him know that I had come to play a game, not watch some jerk masturbate while deficating on other people's creations. I also asked if anyone else had had any fun whatsoever. They had not, we all left without rolling new guys.

Thankfully there were still enough of us left to play without the powertripping egoist. I ended up DMing for most of that year, even let the kid in as a player. His terrible DM performance could have been explained by his total lack of rules knowlege. Apparently he'd only played Basic before. (yes Basic, College was awhile ago for me.) Still ignorance of a ruleset does not excuse being a egomanical jerk.

He didn't last long as a player, anytime he failed a save, attack, or whatever else due to a hairbrained plan he called prejudice because I was still upset he'd killed my character. He was genuinely shocked to discover I was still playing my Paladin when I visited home. Claims of "You can't do that!!! Its against the rules! He's dead!" and whotnot. Clearly not the most stable individual.

[Yukitsu]

I once told my group that if the DM ever did one of those really jerk moves, I'd either derail the campaign, or respond with extensive OOC violence. This was well into one of the games, as opposed to early on and they had never actually done anything like the above, but I have noticed they never do any jerk moves that they know I won't find funny. I think it may be in part because they are a decent group, and partly because physical violence. I do know they have thrown arbitrary "screw you"s at other players.

Sometimes a DM will arbitrarily screw over my character A) by accident, or B) because it's funny, and they know I'll find it funny. For example, I hold the group record for male characters assaulted by women, generally with non-lethal attacks (mix of accidental, because targets are random, and because it's funny). This generally leads to the question of, "Well, you're unconcious. What was his charisma again?" to the general downhill depravity afterwards. Generally to my detriment in some sense (hag phobia, a yandere following me, a jealous devil out for my blood, inability to use my unicorn mount, lich loved as a free feat...) but always to the party's (and more importantly my) laughter about it. Some of these in retrospect came along with fairly huge nerfs that were largely arbitrary (for example, I have a -2 AC, -2 to hit due to a person literally clinging to my face) but I find them funny, so ultimately, it works out well for us.

[Random832]

Some of these in retrospect came along with fairly huge nerfs that were largely arbitrary (for example, I have a -2 AC, -2 to hit due to a person literally clinging to my face)

Shouldn't you also have partial cover? And maybe homebrew something up to where if they miss by less than the cover bonus, they hit the cover (and the person clinging to your face might get pissed off enough to join the fight)

Or is it the enemies get -4 to hit with ranged weapons due to firing into melee?

[Blackfang108]

You're...apparently not familiar with Spider Jerusalem, are you?

Google "Chair Leg of Truth."

Then have fun making it an artefact in your next game.

Why do I keep forgetting about that Comic?

Spider J is my God, after all.

[Skorj]

"Upon completing the spell, you feel exhilarated as you bend the forces of the cosmos to your will! There is a small 'pop' as a tiny scroll comes into existence before you. Written upon it, in an ancient, flowing arcane script, are these hallowed words...

Too Long; Didn't Read. -cosmos"

"..."

"You're on fire."


This is the funniest thing I've read on this forum in a long time. :biggrin:


Here's the question: what if you simply wished to set everything in sight on fire? Would the fire be on fire?!

'Sup Dawg? I heard you like fire so ...

My favorite "twisted wish" story. The player Wishes for his character to be transported to the rest of the party (he had been seperated for a while). This was a "wish from a devil" situation, so twisting the wish was IC. The player spent the week between sessions preparing a multi-page written wish to make sure he would arrive safely. The DM took that as a challenge.

The player had included a lot of "and not on fire" cluases, and was pretty smug. The DM realized he had never specified the velocity at which he would arrive. The party heard the traditional sound of incoming artillery, followed by the arrival of the PC at just under the speed of sound. Hillarity (and multiple PC deaths) ensued.

[Uin]

Banning tome of battle but allowing incantatrix. OR allowing ToB but being a **** about it. Like allowing you to play a Crusader but then letting a Kobald rolling crit (yeah I know, he made that up) you with a spear.

[BigPapaSmurf]

First, stop playing on a computer. Problem solved.

Second many of you seem to think that the word 'Jerk' means 'a-hole', it actually means 'a stupid person'.

[Cristo Meyers]

The player had included a lot of "and not on fire" cluases, and was pretty smug. The DM realized he had never specified the velocity at which he would arrive. The party heard the traditional sound of incoming artillery, followed by the arrival of the PC at just under the speed of sound. Hillarity (and multiple PC deaths) ensued.

I must shake this DM's hand. This is the first thing I've read today that even made me crack a smile :smallbiggrin:

[Eldariel]

First, stop playing on a computer. Problem solved.

Second many of you seem to think that the word 'Jerk' means 'a-hole', it actually means 'a stupid person'.

In the case of English, words practically always have multiple meanings, many of which are quite vague and tied to the exact dialect being spoken and speaker's own background.

"Something an a-hole does" is often something observers find "contemptibly naive or foolish, often without realizing it himself" which is pretty much the definition of the slang-use of "jerk". So while they aren't synonymous, there are connections. For the record, the definition of "a-hole" is "stupid, mean, or contemptible" so it's just a milder variety of "jerk" with a hint of added meanness.

[The Glyphstone]

He didn't last long as a player, anytime he failed a save, attack, or whatever else due to a hairbrained plan he called prejudice because I was still upset he'd killed my character. He was genuinely shocked to discover I was still playing my Paladin when I visited home. Claims of "You can't do that!!! Its against the rules! He's dead!" and whotnot. Clearly not the most stable individual.

You didn't name your Paladin a variation of Black Leaf, did you?

[Woodsman]

The player had included a lot of "and not on fire" cluases, and was pretty smug. The DM realized he had never specified the velocity at which he would arrive. The party heard the traditional sound of incoming artillery, followed by the arrival of the PC at just under the speed of sound. Hillarity (and multiple PC deaths) ensued.

That is definitely hilarious.

[Keshay]

You didn't name your Paladin a variation of Black Leaf, did you?

Nope, named him the same way I named all my characters back then. Random sting of typed letters, look in there for a decent name-like set of 5-7 letters, modify as necessary to make it pronouncable and Viola, you have yourself a fantasy name.

I think the Paladin was something along the lines of "Letruki" or somethign to that effect. I don't recall exactly, it was ~15 years ago.

[Belobog]

My favorite "twisted wish" story. The player Wishes for his character to be transported to the rest of the party (he had been seperated for a while). This was a "wish from a devil" situation, so twisting the wish was IC. The player spent the week between sessions preparing a multi-page written wish to make sure he would arrive safely. The DM took that as a challenge.

The player had included a lot of "and not on fire" cluases, and was pretty smug. The DM realized he had never specified the velocity at which he would arrive. The party heard the traditional sound of incoming artillery, followed by the arrival of the PC at just under the speed of sound. Hillarity (and multiple PC deaths) ensued.

You obviously wanted to post that in this thread: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121418 :smalltongue:

[powerdemon]

Random sting of typed letters, look in there for a decent name-like set of 5-7 letters, modify as necessary to make it pronouncable and Viola, you have yourself a fantasy name.


Ironically that is the same way I make character names :smallbiggrin:

[Starscream]

This thread is just making me realize how lucky I've been over the years; nothing I've experienced has even come close to most of these stories.

Only thing I can complain about is one DM I had who was very fond of using his old PCs as NPC enemies when he DMed.

This isn't bad in itself, but these characters generally had a very high degree of optimization; much higher than the amount he allowed from us (he actually thought a monk with VoP was too overpowered if that gives you any idea).

So whenever we faced such characters we'd inevitably get trounced. In the event that we didn't get trounced, he'd go into a snit and seek revenge later on.

Irritating to be sure, but doesn't hold a candle to most of the posts here.

[Random832]

He didn't last long as a player, anytime he failed a save, attack, or whatever else due to a hairbrained plan he called prejudice because I was still upset he'd killed my character. He was genuinely shocked to discover I was still playing my Paladin when I visited home. Claims of "You can't do that!!! Its against the rules! He's dead!" and whotnot.

The answer if you feel like reasoning with him at all would be "unless both you and the other DM are running (and, as you certainly were not, adhering to the rules of) a shared setting like e.g. Living Greyhawk, there are no rules that give your actions as DM any legitimacy in anyone else's campaign."

[powerdemon]

Only thing I can complain about is one DM I had who was very fond of using his old PCs as NPC enemies when he DMed.


That does remind me of one bad campaign. The DM is a good friend of mine, but he has a bad habit of wanting to show off his characters, so every NPC we ran into was a level 20 something character that he made who could kill us with a sneeze. Something to the effect of 4 vampires that were impossible to beat but we still needed to "rescue" them and ask for their help.

For the first 5-7 levels we were very much railroaded because if we went off the path, we would be eaten by a grue....

[Kurald Galain]

Second many of you seem to think that the word 'Jerk' means 'a-hole', it actually means 'a stupid person'.

A person with unlikable or obnoxious qualities and behavior, typically mean, self-centered or disagreeable

[Kylarra]

That does remind me of one bad campaign. The DM is a good friend of mine, but he has a bad habit of wanting to show off his characters, so every NPC we ran into was a level 20 something character that he made who could kill us with a sneeze. Something to the effect of 4 vampires that were impossible to beat but we still needed to "rescue" them and ask for their help.Yeah it's a pretty easy "New DM" mistake/trap to fall into. You have all the creative freedom and no restrictions so you make up really cool characters, but can't really show it to anyone unless you put them into a game and... yeah. :(

[Jergmo]

Eh, well, to be fair on the whole using old PC's/etc. as NPC enemies, I have put old PC's/adapted characters from WoW (so glad I quit) to D&D and put them into the campaign, and two PC's from the campaigns of friends in villain campaigns are showing up as villains, but while I like these characters and want to give them a chance to really be experienced (well, I might need to start writing again, though it's much easier for me to use my characters with roleplaying), but the thing is, while I have become attached to these characters, there's still the fact that they are NPC's. Unless they somehow manage to make those villains make a Heel Face Turn (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeelFaceTurn) - *cackles madly*, they will be killed. If any of the more heroic characters stand beside the PC's in a fight, I wouldn't give them the upper hand just because they're my old characters. They're able to die just like anyone else. Who knows, maybe if they die helping them it'll make them memorable.

(Not that they'd go down without putting up a good fight first, though. :smallredface: But I have villains act intelligently in general.)

[Yukitsu]

Shouldn't you also have partial cover? And maybe homebrew something up to where if they miss by less than the cover bonus, they hit the cover (and the person clinging to your face might get pissed off enough to join the fight)

Or is it the enemies get -4 to hit with ranged weapons due to firing into melee?

To be honest, it's far too hilareous to worry about that, in my opinion, even with the penalties.

[Alejandro]

So this one time really really long ago I was playing in a 3.5e game. DM said, and I'm quoting him word for word. "If you want, you can come to the game with a character you made beforehand, instead of rolling on the spot. Sixth level, standard wealth by level, all books allowed and don't be cheesy, 40 (HOLY BATMAN ON A POPSICLE STICK) point buy." Also a bunch of other minor houserules that I didn't bother to remember, each of which were minor and didn't affect the following, since they were setting houserules.

Of course, since I have an allergic reaction to nearly all spellcasters due to my laziness and not wanting to be a terrible human being by using my kung-fu, I made a Wild Elf Crusader 6 I was planning on swinging into Eternal Blade. To remind myself, I wrote it (W.Elf Cru10/Etrnl Bla 10) in a margin. So it didn't take me long to make it, and I double checked everything with him. Backstory made, good item selection, nothing insane, et cetera.

Oh. Dear. Lord.

Alright, so I come over to his place with the character sheet, since he was running it there.

To cut a long story short, for the next hour I was derided as a munchkin, a baby eating satanist, and the death of the roleplaying hobby as a whole for daring to:
a.) come to the session with a character pregenerated (see b how this is ridiculous)
b.) using a TOME OF BATTLE CLASS (OH NOES. Mind you, I snuck a look at someone else's character and they were playing some sort of anthropomorphic bat druid minmaxed to Krypton and back. Also featured were clerics and wizards, oh my. Their characters were pregenerated too.)
c.) having a 'mary sue' background (THIS MADE NO SENSE NOBODY ELSE CAME IN WITH A BACKGROUND AND MY CHARACTER ACTUALLY HAPPY WITH HIS LIFE AND HIS ELF PARENTS WERE ALIVE AND HE HIMSELF WAS A FAIRLY NICE INDIVIDUAL.)
d.) I repeat, I was using a Tome of Battle class. And a Tome of Battle PrC. The man repeated this three times as crimes against humanity. I was probably the only non-spellcaster melee character in the group. Everyone else was a cleric, druid, or wizard.
e.) I used point buy. He didn't remember ever telling me that he authorized point buy, despite the fact that two days before I asked him if he was using point buy.
f.) He mentioned that I should have brought along a pizza, when two days prior he said he had it covered, and thanked me for being considerate enough to ask.
g.) Also, I attempted to defend myself. This got even more ranting from him, and he attempted to hit me with what appeared to be a spare chair leg lying around. Who the hell keeps spare chair legs around? Nevertheless, he had shoddy accuracy despite being inches from my face. I left and never looked back.

Met him again the following week in the FLGS I found him at. While I was putzing around there as usual, he acted like I personally stabbed his favorite family member in the chest and began frothing at the mouth in my general direction, almost repeating himself word for word when he ranted at me the previous week for being a munchkin and the death of roleplaying games.

He joined the FLGS' Wall of Banned People.

It was satisfying.

Wow. I commend you. I could never, ever have tolerated that much for that long. The chair leg would have been an excellent excuse to splatter some of his brain material on the wall, as it is obviously not being used.

[evisiron]

Hmm, what can I contribute to -OH YEAH!

So, this game was run by a long timer player, and was run pretty poorly - as in, pausing the game for two hours to find something that would be a good encounter fairly consistently. Zero prep.

But the jerk thing comes from my character death. Ultra short backstory is my character was bulking humanoid magically disguised as a drow in this drow campaign.

Essentially, in the middle of a drow town, for no apparent reason, demons appeared, grappled my character ("Cool, I'm an awsome grappler" - "Nah, don't roll for it") and beat me into unconsciousness ("No need for this roll either"). The demons then disappeared. No reason given, no attacks on other characters, nothing. :smalleek:
Another PC who I had accidentally hit once before then went up, and killed my character as 'vengeance'. :smallfrown:

Thankfully, last session I played in that campaign.

[Korivan]

Wow, after some of these my terrible dm experiences seem trivial. As for the whole chair leg thing???? Saying he went too far is an understatement.

The worst I seem to get saddled is is with inexperience and faveratism. Though there is the one guy. He went out of his way to make adventures miserable. Wishes were terrible. Every wish came out worse then casting nothing. Some examples...Replicating lower level spells disintegrated the wisher, using teleport always teleported you into solid mass or into burning buildings. He favord casters and thieves. Thieves gained 1-5xp per gold piece or gold piece value of item (not uncommon for thieves to steal 30k in one night), casters were given 50xp per spell level cast, didn't matter the circumstance. We learned to quit the campaign once he started handing out the magic items by the handfulls, that ment the characters were all gonna die. The last thing he did was worse though. Our rule is what happens in one campaign stays in that campaign, grudges don't cross over. Anyone that slighted him as a dm, we took personal vengeance on as a dm and player. He did his best trying to keep us from working together, trying to claim that we don't have any reason to trust each other, let alont work together...not sure if he ever got the point of the game.

[Eon]

not mean but annoying.


So we walk into this room where there is another room in the middle. I figure that since it has an open ceiling i could fire an arrow in and see if they made noise or if I hit one. So I say that's what I'm going to do and the DM looks at me and says okay but you have a -10 to hit. so I roll. I roll a natural 20. he takes away the crit making it a 10 without mods. i say since I have a +8 to hit that's 18. seeing as they are probably kobolds just like the rest of the monsters in this dungeon, thats enough to hit. he then decides that since I didn't specify a target square nothing happens and combat moves on as normal.

like i said it wasn't cruel compared to the rest of them but still...

[Thurbane]

Back in the old days, one player literally beat another bloody at the table (imagine a football player vs the most anaemic library lurker), but this was very little to do with the actual game... (For the record, the guy that got beaten seriously provoked the other guy, and ignored multiple warnings about the consequences).

Also in the old days, there were a few players that were a couple of years older than the rest of us (I think they would have been about 17 or 18, and most of us were about 14 or so). They used to team up, especially when one was the DM, to make the game miserbale for the rest of us. Great things like Charming our characters, setting the city guards on us for falsified crimes, locking us in dungeon rooms with monsters etc. At one game, a PC got butchered in his sleep simply for having the audacity to get lucky and roll up an 18/00 STR Fighter!

I really don't miss those games much. My current group is inifinitely more harmonious...

[holywhippet]

I retired from a 2nd edition campaign recently. The DM had advertised it as an "old school" game. I think he considered old school to be a difficulty setting rather than a style of play.

To start with we were using his custom world which was low magic. I mean really low magic, unless you are in a major location you can't even find a temple with a cleric that can cast healing spells.

At the end of the first dungeon we sprung an bomb trap that was set on a chest. It did 10 damage per person - and most of us were still level 1. Only the rogue made his saving throw and stayed in positive HP so he bandaged us up and managed to get us to safety. Soon after the DM decided he wasn't going to be killing us often enough with a -10 tolerance so he decided we could only go down to -1/2 * level HP. Also, any drop below 0 HP would incur a roll on his "maiming" table which meant permanent stat damage.

Sometime later we were travelling to a different town. Just as we broke camp one morning an overly large wolf began charging towards us. Only the half-elves in the party (my ranger and a druid) were able to act in the surprise round. I went first and fired an arrow into the wolf. The druid cast entangle in front of it (note that we were in open plains basically). The DM decided the entangle spell failed to stop or even slow the wolf. This is 2nd edition which means even if it saved against the spell it would be slowed to 10 feet per round for movement. Apparently he decided that this wolf, which was a 5-8 HD creature would be strong enough to ignore the entangle spell. The arrow I fired also falls out - apparently it has damage reduction or whatever the equivalent in 2nd edition is.

It bites the druid in the surprise round, then kills him in the next round. It only takes off when my ranger pours oil over it and has it set on fire. The DM rules that we get no XP for driving off the wolf - I think he decided it's "recurring enemy" status means we only get XP for actually killing it. Note that we are a mostly level 2 at the time - with the rogue being level 4 (aside from the druid, ranger and rogue we had only a fighter). We have only one magical weapon and a couple of silver weapons (a dagger and the druid had a sickle) so the DM decided we were ready to handle the wolf.

In the next session, we get ambushed by 12 level 0 guys with shortbows who've been sent by a political enemy of the town chief we are working for. To our favour The DM was really surprised when we managed to survive that battle - he expected it to be a TPK.

[Elm11]

If a Dm is expecting it to be a tpk, something is almost always wrong. Sounds like your Dm was being a total jerk to feed his own ego. Did you leave the group? or just stop participating in that campaign.

[holywhippet]

If a Dm is expecting it to be a tpk, something is almost always wrong. Sounds like your Dm was being a total jerk to feed his own ego. Did you leave the group? or just stop participating in that campaign.

I left the campaign and the group. It was the only game we were running. To be honest I don't think it was an ego trip, I think he just believe that was how a game should be run - kill off players when you get a chance.

This same DM dropped a side comment about how he should run his next game in the Dragonlance setting as there are no clerics there at all. As I understand it, there is a period of time in which Krynn is without clerics. However, the original modules for Dragonlance match up with the novels. They might not have had a cleric, but they had Goldmoon and her blue crystal staff.

[Kylarra]

I left the campaign and the group. It was the only game we were running. To be honest I don't think it was an ego trip, I think he just believe that was how a game should be run - kill off players when you get a chance.The key is to do it subtly. He just ran roughshod in his attempts to kill you. :smallamused:

[powerdemon]

The key is to do it subtly. He just ran roughshod in his attempts to kill you. :smallamused:

Get as close to killing the party as you can without actually doing it :smallwink:.

[Kylarra]

Get as close to killing the party as you can without actually doing it :smallwink:.I aim for being strong enough to kill 1 while leaving the others thankful that they're not dead. :smallamused: Usually I'm mistaken and my players pull something innovative to save themselves. It makes them think.

[Susano-wo]

Thurbane: I am very interested in what caused your IRL PVP match, there. I've have a couple of situations where violence was possible, but refrained from. (stuff stemming from events/rulings/etc about the sessions, but, really, not about the game itself--if that makes any sense ^ ^) but I've never actually had a physical attack occur.../boggle

[Thurbane]

Well, even though it occurred at a game, it had very little to do with the game itself. These two guys just didn't get along, and one insisted on needling the other over and over. It also involved hangovers and a very hot day.

Long story short, after repeated warnings to stop doing so, the agitator kept turning the other guys hat around backwards. Eventually, the other guy had enough, and punched him repeatedly in the head.

What made it worse was that the "victim's" girlfriend was at the game, and in hysterics during and after the incident. He and his girl never played in our group again...

The other guy is still part of my group over 15 years later, and there have been no repeat instances. Not excusing what he did, but the other guy was excruciatingly annoying to basically everyone who knew him...

[Susano-wo]

thanks for the overview...and though I can't make an absolute judgment without being there, really, I can really see how I wouldn't fault him for it.
Honestly, I think we are far too willing to allow people to get away with things, simply because 'you can't stop me.'

But yeah, like I said, I don't know how much of a jackass the guy was really being ^ ^

Kudos, though on all you here any anywhere, that stood up to player(to include GM's ^ ^) BS

Man, its hardly as bad as some of these, but I have to find this story I read about a guy who makes a character (is told to make anything), makes a mariner, then has the GM tell him the nearest ocean is hundreds of miles away

[Jergmo]

I aim for being strong enough to kill 1 while leaving the others thankful that they're not dead. :smallamused: Usually I'm mistaken and my players pull something innovative to save themselves. It makes them think.

I find it best to throw situation after situation at them that forces a SAN check and makes them die a little on the inside until they're at the breaking point before I finally end it by having a randomly chosen action have arbitrary consequences! If I'm going to kick that puppy, I'm going to make sure it's kicked thoroughly! :smallwink:

[Kylarra]

I find it best to throw situation after situation at them that forces a SAN check and makes them die a little on the inside until they're at the breaking point before I finally end it by having a randomly chosen action have arbitrary consequences! If I'm going to kick that puppy, I'm going to make sure it's kicked thoroughly! :smallwink:
Good old, old school-style DMing. :smalltongue:

[horngeek]

Man, its hardly as bad as some of these, but I have to find this story I read about a guy who makes a character (is told to make anything), makes a mariner, then has the GM tell him the nearest ocean is hundreds of miles away

Ahhh... that is the fault of them both, really.

The player, because "make anything" doesn't really mean that all the time. At the very least, check the level distribution before making the rest of the sheet.

The GM, because "make anything" should mean that.

[Kurald Galain]

I think he considered old school to be a difficulty setting rather than a style of play.

Ah, but it is (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NintendoHard)...

[kemmotar]

difficult=/= interesting

A game can be easy while being extremely interesting or a game can be extremely difficult without being interesting at all. The point is to make it only so difficult as to make the players sweat a bit, think and come up with something...even if its a movielike harebrained scheme (which sometimes you must be lenient on...) so they can get out of it...

[Glass Mouse]

Wow, there are a lot of horror stories on these boards. I suddenly feel very lucky for not having had any thoroughly mean DMs, just mildly annoying.

Worst I've had was pretty annoying, though. He would let you try most things if it's within RAW, but then horribly screw you over without warning. Also, he would pull off "No, your highly-distressed-has-just-had-her-worldview-shattered PC can't blast the BBEG yet! Don't you want to hear what he has to say first?". (answer: No. Actually not. We guessed the plot two hours ago, let's just break the guy.). Man, I really should have just had my fun in de-railing his stupid pre-made adventures. Next time, I guess.
(No, he wasn't really that bad. We just had very different ideas on how much roleplaying is enough - I, believing credible player reactions to be a priority - him, giving the plot highest importance).


But the worst blunder is probably myself. Wasn't even malious or anything, just stupid.
I was playing a 1 to 1 one-shot for my boyfriend who made a goody-two-shoes illusionist gnome with positively NO combat abilities. Thus, I stretched as far as possible to avoid combat and did pretty good for a long way.
At least until the "boss fight". In which I suddenly find the room swarming with four NPCs (FOUR!!! NPCS, all engaged in the battle) and ONE non-combatant PC. Oh boy...
At least I was sensible enough to provide a non-combat challenge for the gnome (preventing even more NPCs from entering), and I think he had a lot of fun knocking over furniture and using Grease to move it around.

But the NPC-to-PC ratio? Not pretty. Not pretty at all.

[Forbiddenwar]

The DM was really surprised when we managed to survive that battle - he expected it to be a TPK.

Every DM who plans a TPK is a poor DM. TPKs are the ultimate sign that a DM screwed up. (take a look at the TPK thread for evidence) To intentially set up a party for a TPK is either railroading the plot or else is playing Against the party rather than with them.

[Haven]

I find it best to throw situation after situation at them that forces a SAN check and makes them die a little on the inside until they're at the breaking point before I finally end it by having a randomly chosen action have arbitrary consequences! If I'm going to kick that puppy, I'm going to make sure it's kicked thoroughly! :smallwink:

You used to write Fighting Fantasy books, didn't you?

This is actually not all that much of a joke, as that's pretty much exactly how those books worked...

[Twilight Jack]

Wow, there are a lot of horror stories on these boards. I suddenly feel very lucky for not having had any thoroughly mean DMs, just mildly annoying.

Worst I've had was pretty annoying, though. He would let you try most things if it's within RAW, but then horribly screw you over without warning. Also, he would pull off "No, your highly-distressed-has-just-had-her-worldview-shattered PC can't blast the BBEG yet! Don't you want to hear what he has to say first?". (answer: No. Actually not. We guessed the plot two hours ago, let's just break the guy.). Man, I really should have just had my fun in de-railing his stupid pre-made adventures. Next time, I guess.
(No, he wasn't really that bad. We just had very different ideas on how much roleplaying is enough - I, believing credible player reactions to be a priority - him, giving the plot highest importance).


But the worst blunder is probably myself. Wasn't even malious or anything, just stupid.
I was playing a 1 to 1 one-shot for my boyfriend who made a goody-two-shoes illusionist gnome with positively NO combat abilities. Thus, I stretched as far as possible to avoid combat and did pretty good for a long way.
At least until the "boss fight". In which I suddenly find the room swarming with four NPCs (FOUR!!! NPCS, all engaged in the battle) and ONE non-combatant PC. Oh boy...
At least I was sensible enough to provide a non-combat challenge for the gnome (preventing even more NPCs from entering), and I think he had a lot of fun knocking over furniture and using Grease to move it around.

But the NPC-to-PC ratio? Not pretty. Not pretty at all.

That's not necessarily a DM blunder in a one-on-one game. I'm currently running a one-on-one game for my girlfriend in which she insisted that I both DM and play a permanent DMPC. That's two of us, but I routinely introduce NPCs for our characters to adventure alongside at various points in the story. So far, she's loving it and has developed a vast array of "friendships" with the various NPCs I've introduced.

The problem with NPC allies is not their existence, or even their ratio (in fact, the fewer PCs, the more NPC allies with which you can manage). The problem crops up when NPCs become the stars of the story at the PCs expense. Please note that in a game in which the PC is a strict noncombatant, an NPC who outshines him in combat doesn't cause a problem, so long as the PC is still provided with critical ways to contribute to the challenges that are faced.

The example you've given is one of a DM doing it right. The very fact that your player had a good time is proof enough of that, regardless of what some arbitrary guidelines of "good DMing" might say.

[Jergmo]

You used to write Fighting Fantasy books, didn't you?

This is actually not all that much of a joke, as that's pretty much exactly how those books worked...

Er, I haven't really started yet if I'm going to. I'm just now about to start my first year of college. But my creative writing teacher told me I should do it professionally, so who knows, I may juggle three different careers when I'm out of college! (Because I hate myself! :smalltongue:)

Edit: Oh. I misread that. No. >_>

[Voshkod]

Also, he would pull off "No, your highly-distressed-has-just-had-her-worldview-shattered PC can't blast the BBEG yet! Don't you want to hear what he has to say first?". (answer: No. Actually not. We guessed the plot two hours ago, let's just break the guy.).

I'll throw in a good GM story that counters this nicely. Werewolf: the whatever it was, by White Wolf. We've been battling the BBEG for a while now, and it's clear the final battle is coming. We're preparing to take the fight to him when the BBEG steps into our cairn. Yep, the final battle is going to be on our home turf. He starts his villain monolgue, and I say "I attack him." The GM double checked with me, and said "OK." The battle is joined, his minions come out of the woods, a good time is had by all.

After the session, the GM told me that the BBEG was using his monologue to get his minions in place behind him. When I attacked, they hadn't had time to encircle us, giving us an advantage of not being flanked.

Good GM.

As for bad GM stories, those are too easy.

[Glass Mouse]

That's not necessarily a DM blunder in a one-on-one game. I'm currently running a one-on-one game for my girlfriend in which she insisted that I both DM and play a permanent DMPC. That's two of us, but I routinely introduce NPCs for our characters to adventure alongside at various points in the story. So far, she's loving it and has developed a vast array of "friendships" with the various NPCs I've introduced.

The problem with NPC allies is not their existence, or even their ratio (in fact, the fewer PCs, the more NPC allies with which you can manage). The problem crops up when NPCs become the stars of the story at the PCs expense. Please note that in a game in which the PC is a strict noncombatant, an NPC who outshines him in combat doesn't cause a problem, so long as the PC is still provided with critical ways to contribute to the challenges that are faced.

The example you've given is one of a DM doing it right. The very fact that your player had a good time is proof enough of that, regardless of what some arbitrary guidelines of "good DMing" might say.

I hadn't actually thought of it that way, but I guess you're right. I just started sweating when I realized there were five NPC turns for every PC turn in that battle (four named NPCs, one held-back group of hostiles), but of course, if the player cares about the NPCs, then it would feel like a regular battle in a regular group. I guess.

Thanks a lot for your last paragraph, actually. Makes me feel a bit more secure about starting GM'ing for a new group this monday. (yeah, I'm still a huge DM newb, which is why I'm plowing through threads like these. Luckily none of my players are on these forums, so I'm fairly safe from harm :smalltongue:)


Voshkod, that's a cool DM. Non-railroading ftw :smallsmile:

[Twilight Jack]

I hadn't actually thought of it that way, but I guess you're right. I just started sweating when I realized there were five NPC turns for every PC turn in that battle (four named NPCs, one held-back group of hostiles), but of course, if the player cares about the NPCs, then it would feel like a regular battle in a regular group. I guess.

One option when you're feeling that the NPCs are getting too many turns is to ignore the mechanics of their combat in favor of storyboarding it. Who hits whom on which turn is irrelevant to your player. All he needs to know is whether his allies appear to be holding their own, how much more danger is coming, and what he can do to improve their (and his own) odds. You might assume that the four warriors will manage to fight off the initial wave of the enemy, bloodied but unbowed. Everything that the gnome PC can do to prevent more badguys from coming will contribute to their continued survival. Every illusion or obstacle he can throw into the enemy's path decreases future fighting and increases the chance that everyone makes it out alive.

Perhaps the best way to do that is to determine the course of the battle if the PC weren't there at all (it should end in the defeat of those four NPCs, by the way), then allow the PC to figure out how best to contribute to turn the tide of the fight.

[theMycon]

"What do you mean, we fought one CR 16? We fought a huge-dragon after we got disjunctioned, with no downtime to heal or rebuff."
"Well, that wizard cast Wish to turn into that dragon upon his death, and he technically lost enough XP to lose a level."

[Arakune]

Stuff

He joined the FLGS' Wall of Banned People.

It was satisfying.

It's those little things that made this forum worth visting :smallbiggrin:

[Glass Mouse]

One option when you're feeling that the NPCs are getting too many turns is to ignore the mechanics of their combat in favor of storyboarding it. Who hits whom on which turn is irrelevant to your player. All he needs to know is whether his allies appear to be holding their own, how much more danger is coming, and what he can do to improve their (and his own) odds. You might assume that the four warriors will manage to fight off the initial wave of the enemy, bloodied but unbowed. Everything that the gnome PC can do to prevent more badguys from coming will contribute to their continued survival. Every illusion or obstacle he can throw into the enemy's path decreases future fighting and increases the chance that everyone makes it out alive.

Perhaps the best way to do that is to determine the course of the battle if the PC weren't there at all (it should end in the defeat of those four NPCs, by the way), then allow the PC to figure out how best to contribute to turn the tide of the fight.

*copy-saves your posts into my D&D folder*
Thanks a lot for the advice, it's highly appreciated! If I ever receive praise for a combat like this, I'll let the credit go to you :smallwink:

[PLUN]

I had a GM who was proud of his ability to disgrace the rules with their imbalance, though to 3.5s merit, it's one leaky, leaky boat, but he stretched definitions something stupid, and it was clear that wasn't what was meant, because numbers don't bend. When he was a GM, all aboard the express line to DMPC plotville.

I was caught in a room with a DC35 first round ko poison, with a wall of force in front of me. A wall of iron was cast behind us. I think to myself we're boned. I was the Paladin, so I told the wizard to grab everyone he could and he obviously couldn't do much with that poison leaking in. So, I think to myself, go for the path of least resistance.

I put everything I have into that wall of iron. Stupid, maybe? But by this point i'm stuck on the choo choo so I think why not.

He declares it's about 40ft thick. Another player produces a calculator and tells me the caster level i'm facing jokingly. I'll admit that was hilarious. We decide i'm not much of a match for a level four hundred and something wizard fairly quickly.

So I make my save. Somehow. I'm a Paladin. I rolled high.

The DC goes up by 5. Per round.

I drop and am 'recruited' by the bad guy. Presumably by his triple digit necromancer. They fairly quickly work out i'm team evil and off me for good.


For the record, this DM is a great guy, and I respect him. This isn't badmouthing him, this isn't 'getting back', I just thought it was an entertaining and crazy moment of railroading goofiness. Some stories don't have a sadistic sociopath behind them and this is one of them. That at least is reassuring.

[Arakune]

I had a GM who was proud of his ability to disgrace the rules with their imbalance, though to 3.5s merit, it's one leaky, leaky boat, but he stretched definitions something stupid, and it was clear that wasn't what was meant, because numbers don't bend. When he was a GM, all aboard the express line to DMPC plotville.

I was caught in a room with a DC35 first round ko poison, with a wall of force in front of me. A wall of iron was cast behind us. I think to myself we're boned. I was the Paladin, so I told the wizard to grab everyone he could and he obviously couldn't do much with that poison leaking in. So, I think to myself, go for the path of least resistance.

I put everything I have into that wall of iron. Stupid, maybe? But by this point i'm stuck on the choo choo so I think why not.

He declares it's about 40ft thick. Another player produces a calculator and tells me the caster level i'm facing jokingly. I'll admit that was hilarious. We decide i'm not much of a match for a level four hundred and something wizard fairly quickly.

So I make my save. Somehow. I'm a Paladin. I rolled high.

The DC goes up by 5. Per round.

I drop and am 'recruited' by the bad guy. Presumably by his triple digit necromancer. They fairly quickly work out i'm team evil and off me for good.


For the record, this DM is a great guy, and I respect him. This isn't badmouthing him, this isn't 'getting back', I just thought it was an entertaining and crazy moment of railroading goofiness. Some stories don't have a sadistic sociopath behind them and this is one of them. That at least is reassuring.

But it's incredible weird and a serious case of Deus Ex Machina.

[PLUN]

I find it odd I was subverted to such an obviously OP enemy, and they just sent me out there with my old gear and stats, without my paladin class features...

...what did they actually expect to happen?

[penbed400]

Umm tell me if this is bad DMing. I ran my players through a dungeon the other day. I was happy with the group, mildly annoyed because earlier they had a chance to roleplay to introduce themselves to one another and they didn't which was fine I know not everyone likes to roleplay.

One of them happens to be a ranger, they were running through a puzzle dungeon to their delight. They are actually quite good at these and found it greatly amusing and even got through them quickly. So the ranger rushes forward because it is a race to the end for the prize. He makes a left, runs through a door, searches, fails, runs across 3 traps, gets hit by one and reaches the door at the end of the hallway, opens it and finds a brick wall. So I guess that got him kind of annoyed at first. That was actually a planned dead end though and he just happened to choose it.

He also made a few random search rolls which was fine because he took the time for them, stated them on his turn, rolled in the open and let the dice stay there for all to see. But when he got to a door he rolled a 3, then asked to make another roll. I said no and he said that was fine because he would just make another one on his next turn. I proceeded to talk to him about metagaming while another one of the players chimed their agreement. He's played for a while now and should know the rules. He didn't argue much but looked quite down trodden at this point.

Later in one of the rooms there is a pressure plate to unlock the door, as soon as the person gets off the pressure plate the door closes and locks again. A couple NPC's were running the dungeon with them so that they could try and get to the end for the prize as well. The NPC convinces the ranger to step on the pressure plate, walks through the door and closes it on him. All the other party members had gone a different way which meant he was stuck there thinking for a few turns until he came up with the idea to put his sheild on the pressure plate since there were no rocks around. I let him do it, made sense to me. More aggravation. (The NPC wants to win too though right? Seems like a legitimate strategy to me....I hope)

Later in the dungeon they drop into a room. They unlock the door, the rogue runs past the ranger but then he bars the door making sure no one else can move through until his next turn. Justification? "I want to go first because I only look out for myself because I'm Chaotic Neutral." Which is kind of a sideways glance red flag for stuff in the future I suppose.

This is where I think I went wrong though. Some of the other players looked at me and I just rolled my eyes and told the other guys to just go ahead and hit him for nonlethal or something. Was that wrong?

I mean it's not as bad as some of the things on the board but I know that sometimes encourages players to attack others is a big no-no.

[Kylarra]

Chaotic stupid should be nipped at the bud.

[powerdemon]

If the characters just met, then a Chaotic Neutral wouldn't give two craps about the rest of them and It would be good role-playing.

As for the ranger, It seems the player was just frustrated that he wasn't winning.

[Kylarra]

If the characters just met, then a Chaotic Neutral wouldn't give two craps about the rest of them and It would be good role-playing.

As for the ranger, It seems the player was just frustrated that he wasn't winning.It's more of the "because I'm Chaotic Neutral" justification that I'm putting a cautionary eye towards.

[powerdemon]

Well, IMO that is how a CN character would act to someone he doesn't know. The alignments have always been a DND debate topic.:smallwink:


To add to the thread:

Whenever a DM pulls Rule 0 I get upset. If you're going to do something outside of the rules, i'd rather you made a custom rule to go about it. Just a personal pet peeve. I'm a rules Lawyer and I know it :smallbiggrin:.

[Kylarra]

Well, IMO that is how a CN character would act to someone he doesn't know. The alignments have always been a DND debate topic.:smallwink:Just saying that "because I'm CN" is a very slippery slope.:smallwink:

[powerdemon]

Just saying that "because I'm CN" is a very slippery slope.:smallwink:

Agreed. You have to play it right. So penbed400 keep an eye on that player, but thus far, they seem ok :smallsmile:.

[Kami2awa]

He tries to break my arm. I rip his charcter sheet in half and tell him to get away from me.

It's a bit disturbing how many stories of attempted physical assault there are on this thread.

[Sir Homeslice]

It's a bit disturbing how many stories of attempted physical assault there are on this thread.

It's great, isn't it?

[KillianHawkeye]

It's great, isn't it?

I'd say that depends entirely on what definition of "great" you are using. :smallamused:

[Ravens_cry]

"What do you mean, we fought one CR 16? We fought a huge-dragon after we got disjunctioned, with no downtime to heal or rebuff."
"Well, that wizard cast Wish to turn into that dragon upon his death, and he technically lost enough XP to lose a level."
If I remember correctly, you can't cast wish, or other xp losing spells, if the xp loss would make you lose a level. Which, if true, just makes that story worse.

[Glass Mouse]

This is where I think I went wrong though. Some of the other players looked at me and I just rolled my eyes and told the other guys to just go ahead and hit him for nonlethal or something. Was that wrong?

I mean it's not as bad as some of the things on the board but I know that sometimes encourages players to attack others is a big no-no.

In my group, we occasionally have in-group fighting, and a few times we've straight-out killed each other. This, of course, only between the group's mature gamers who walk knowingly into death when their characters do something insanely stupid or cruel (even, and especially, if it's good roleplaying).
It works, no hard feelings, because people know that's the odds. Also, if you don't want your character to die, state it OOC, and he won't (no guaranties from the DM's side, though).

I don't know your group, of course. But in my group(s, actually), it works. Be careful with it, though.
Have a talk with the guy about alignment vs. personality - and the logical (in-game, of course) consequences of pissing off guys who sling around spells and beat stuff up for a living. Maybe just accept that this group consists of gamers, not roleplayers (if the not-wanting-to-roleplay-introduction is to be understood that way).

Or, if he continues on the same track, wait until he goes Chaotic Stupid on a NPC - and have the NPC react accordingly. No in-group fighting, lots of consequences.
Just, y'know, don't be a jerk about it :smallsmile:

[Lord Loss]

Is this obviously some strange use of the word great that I wasn't previously aware of.

- Arthur Dent

[powerdemon]

Is this obviously some strange use of the word great that I wasn't previously aware of.

- Arthur Dent

Ford, you're turning into a penguin.... stop it. -Arthur, Arthur Dent

[Yukitsu]

He also made a few random search rolls which was fine because he took the time for them, stated them on his turn, rolled in the open and let the dice stay there for all to see. But when he got to a door he rolled a 3, then asked to make another roll. I said no and he said that was fine because he would just make another one on his next turn. I proceeded to talk to him about metagaming while another one of the players chimed their agreement. He's played for a while now and should know the rules. He didn't argue much but looked quite down trodden at this point.


I don't agree with this decision. In general, when I hear this I simply take 20 on all my search checks, which bogs down the game a little, irritates my DM because now the only traps I don't find are the BS ones that cause me to slap him, and it also leads to the slippery slope of "I advance 10 feet and take 20 in search.", as the DM desperately tries to design a trap in a location that I normally don't, and as such forces me to check everything, taking 20.

[Roderick_BR]

3) Offer another player XP to toss my 3.0 Psionics handbook into an oven (this resulted in a relatively short physical altercation and some extremely harsh words - not to mention a long hiatus of gaming)
Now, THAT's not being a bad DM. That's being a bad friend. I don't know what was done, but I would have told their parents that they are destroying your property, causing danger in the house, demand a refund, and maybe never talk to them again. Yeah, I'm that bitter when people REALLY mess up.
About the excessive treasure, that's not a DM jerk momment, just not a good decision. Something easily fixable with experience.

For the OP: Yeah, that DM was an idiot. I'd have just got up and left.

Lemme see. I never had jerk DMs, only unexperienced or overexcited ones. This one used to make ridiculous situations, believing that it would be easy to solve, and sometimes made up rules thinking they were raw.

And other that threw a sea monster out of nowhere when me and another friend's character tried to flee a stupid battle on a ship between six 6th level characters and over 40 enemies. Railroad much? He did recognize later it was a desperate move, and the first battle was poorly tought out.

[Tyrmatt]

Not a particularly bad jerk moment (I've been lucky) but I was in a diplomacy challenge to get us some mounts and from the DM's descriptions I felt that the orc mount-master was hiding something (Warcraft setting), so I mustered all the scary my undead form could take and made an intimidate check. I reduced the poor orc to tears. The DM described in great detail how the orc cowered on the floor, blubbering and weeping, clutching at my robes and generally being terrified because he had no mounts to give me because they'd had to eat them during the particularly harsh winter they had just endured and please not to kill him oh mighty undead cleric. In front of the entire town square. In a town I was supposed to be friendly with. While I was being the "party face".


I felt SO bad...and we didn't get any mounts. I later learned that the rolls the DM was making were actually her rolling on a chart to see what we were going to encounter as we traveled out mountless. I effectively ruined any chance of resupply or hospitality with one diceroll.

Oh and the goblin player got an STD from the barmaid at the tavern we were staying in. Never seen anyone get punished for attempting to roleplay before :/

[AshDesert]

Wow. I've never had anything quite as bad as any of the posts here, but I have a couple of stories.

One was about a year ago. The party was me (cleric), along with a barbarian and a paladin. The paladin decided that "Chaotic" and "Evil" meant the same thing, even though both me and the barbarian were CG. Which was especially annoying considering one of the first plotlines was overthrowing the NE baron of a township that was bribing Kobolds to attack so he could declare martial law. After we found a message from the baron, the Paladin rips it up to avoid implicating the baron because, "He's the law, and we can't do anything about it."

Despite all the warning signs we continued to play with that person, who got progressively worse and worse. Turns out they had quite the ego to, and nearly physically attacked me because "it's not fair that your better at turning undead."

Never played with that person again. I haven't had a problem with any DMs, other than a guy who was obsessed with WoW and made all of his Kobolds say "You no take candle."

(BTW, First post yay!)

[Jergmo]

Oh and the goblin player got an STD from the barmaid at the tavern we were staying in. Never seen anyone get punished for attempting to roleplay before :/

Hey, every adventurer gets it on with the busty, naive barmaid, don't you know? They're festering with disease, he ought to have known better. :smallamused:


One was about a year ago. The party was me (cleric), along with a barbarian and a paladin. The paladin decided that "Chaotic" and "Evil" meant the same thing, even though both me and the barbarian were CG. Which was especially annoying considering one of the first plotlines was overthrowing the NE baron of a township that was bribing Kobolds to attack so he could declare martial law. After we found a message from the baron, the Paladin rips it up to avoid implicating the baron because, "He's the law, and we can't do anything about it."

Corrupt law is invalid; it's a paladin's duty to see that justice is done.

[AshDesert]

Corrupt law is invalid; it's a paladin's duty to see that justice is done.

Eh, sometimes people are dumb, what can I say.

[Gorgondantess]

Hey, every adventurer gets it on with the busty, naive barmaid, don't you know? They're festering with disease, he ought to have known better. :smallamused:


That's actually true; you can't sacrifice a modicum of realism just for "good roleplaying". If a level 1 player wants to attack a great wyrm red just because it's "good roleplaying", then he's going to get his ass handed to him. Simple as that. I, personally, have a table I roll on for STDs- it's rather funny. One of my players recently went to a cheap brothel (when he could've gone to a nicer one) and got syphilis.:smallamused:

[powerdemon]

I don't agree with this decision. In general, when I hear this I simply take 20 on all my search checks, which bogs down the game a little, irritates my DM because now the only traps I don't find are the BS ones that cause me to slap him, and it also leads to the slippery slope of "I advance 10 feet and take 20 in search.", as the DM desperately tries to design a trap in a location that I normally don't, and as such forces me to check everything, taking 20.
Good DM way around that is wandering mobs. Taking 20 takes a lot of time.

[Yukitsu]

Good DM way around that is wandering mobs. Taking 20 takes a lot of time.

You mean timer based EXP farms? :smallamused: Really, random trap deaths are dumb and anti climactic for players. I'd rather waste the time as opposed to dying to some dumb trap just because I rolled low.

[Kylarra]

You mean timer based EXP farms? :smallamused:Yeah... :smallbiggrin:

[Mikeavelli]

This guy... THIS GUY...

The silly moments:

The DM in question was obsessed with the idea of overland travel and random encounters.

- We were given a quest by a mysterious benefactor (who turned out to be a Great Wyrm Silver Dragon) - and he took us to the area were were supposed to go. Only we had to walk another three in-game months on foot from the place where his magic carriage left us off. We spent two entire sessions on random encounters, and lost the same party member twice (we wasn't very good at optimization).

This included one memorable encounter with a band of Plains giants that snuck up on us in an empty field

- Later on, we were given another ridiculous overland distance to travel. We had been given an amulet by a (different) mysterious benefactor which was supposed to allow him to stay in touch with us. Instead, it allowed the bad guys to sneak up on us and ambush us. I have rarely had to resort to sleeping in Rope Trick, but this is one game where I started.

[hr]

The bad:

This guy had a very 2nd edition mindset of how things should be done. There were a couple things he did that didn't make sense until I remembered all the crazy **** the 2nd edition DM's guide would specifically recommend.

- We became noblemen at one point, gifted with a huge tract of land, and spent an entire gaming session learning about medieval tax codes. This, combined with the fact that our land was entirely unproductive was supposed to be a cash sink and an incentive to keep adventuring. Instead, it actively got in the way of adventuring, and our main cash sink was resurrecting comrades on account of his campaign being so deadly because of the second point.

- He restricted magic to the point of ridiculousness. The worst of it was getting new spells for a wizard. We were in one of the larger cities of his homebrew world, in a town explicitly said to have a Wizard's guild, and it still took weeks of in-game time to track down any wizard willing to sell you a spell.

This wasn't just for rare or powerful spells here either, we're talking things like shield.

- We died, a lot. He didn't seem to grasp that encounters that were "the same CR as the party" weren't appropriate for a party that had perhaps half their wealth by level in equipment.

The Ugly:

He DM'd with us for quite a while, and most of these calls were near the beginning of his tenure. He realized how stupid they were after a while:

- When we were first building our characters, he considered having max ranks for your level in any skill to be "min-maxing."

- When casting beneficial spells on fellow party members, if we didn't announce what we were doing beforehand (say it in character) - he'd require everyone affected by it to roll a saving throw.

Yes, he once forced the meat-shield to roll a saving throw against a cure moderate wounds spell.

- I'm a pretty notorious optimizer in our group, so I went ahead and made a Bard so as to use all my knowledge to help out everyone else, rather than stealing the spotlight all the time. I also filled in my niche as a stealth-monkey, and went around scouting out challenges. He hated me doing this, and so arranged for one "trap" in a dungeon that consisted of three large earth elementals simultaneously appearing from the ground and smashing me into oblivion. I went from full health to around -30 in one round.

He later straight up admitted that he just wanted to kill my character.

[FinalJustice]

- When casting beneficial spells on fellow party members, if we didn't announce what we were doing beforehand (say it in character) - he'd require everyone affected by it to roll a saving throw.


Yeah, a very good DM did this to me once. Only struck me now how ridiculous it was. That plus preventing my char from casting underwater, on the grounds that I could not 'hear myself' (which was pointed by a fellow player, nonetheless), even if I could move freely and breath underwater (FoM and Water Breathing). That was a great one shot we had, but, in hindsight, these episodes annoy me. I guess my Opto-fu and playstyle are irritating for the rest of my ex-group...

[FlawedParadigm]

Never seen anyone get punished for attempting to roleplay before :/

Hmm. You've certainly not played in some groups I've seen, then. I was actually reading this post when I realised that, in twenty-some-odd-years of playing, I've never had a character get involved in sex or romance. Not even once. This seemed a bit shocking, until I considered three things.

* Every time I've ever seen anyone else where I used to live DMing, any attempt to get sex'd up would end horribly. Either you'd get one or more diseases, the victim of your lusts was actually an assassin sent to kill you, the wench was someone's wife/daughter/favourite cook or whatever and you've earned yourself an enemy, and so forth. Basically, it was never a good idea.

* I myself indulged in something similar, once. It's the only time I ever directly punished it, but we were nearing a climax in the story and the players picked an incredibly plot-inappropriate time to go wenching. So one of the players was trying to charm the dress off of the barmaid. Now, the guy they were chasing down was supposed to be hiding under a church not too far away, and was known for summoning outsiders. They'd even indirectly encountered his succubi lieutenant before. Both of them were supposed to be about six buildings away, but I was annoyed at the sidetrack this close to the end of the adventure. I don't normally get edgy about some things, but I was going on a trip for a month the next day, and it was getting late.

Anyhow, so Studly McStuderson ends up charming the barmaid (or so he thinks) and getting her alone in a dark alley behind the tavern. Yes, a dark alley. Alone. At her suggestion. This was the big, fat, red flag. But no, Studly McStuderson continued traipsing right along. Yeah, the barmaid ended up being the succubus. And studly McStuderson? Left his weapon hanging on the wall inside. This was 2E. GG, sir.

* Which brings me to my last point. We play in a world where succubi, erineyes, nymphs, lamias, and various other such temptresses/seductresses exist. Chances are, you're best off being a eunuch or a female. Frankly, the latter's not an entirely safe bet either, depending on your DM.

So having reflected on these things, I begin to understand why none of my characters have ever once felt the need for companionship of the intimate variety. Mayhap my next character *will* be a eunuch. Heh.

[Yukitsu]

I generally go along with those situations, when cued to, and have yet to have a problem. :smallconfused: Other than the ones mentioned above, but never death.

[penbed400]

I don't agree with this decision. In general, when I hear this I simply take 20 on all my search checks, which bogs down the game a little, irritates my DM because now the only traps I don't find are the BS ones that cause me to slap him, and it also leads to the slippery slope of "I advance 10 feet and take 20 in search.", as the DM desperately tries to design a trap in a location that I normally don't, and as such forces me to check everything, taking 20.

Problem? They were racing through a dungeon. Search already takes a full round action for one square. Imagine taking 2 minutes for the 20 on each square in front of you. Even if you're just walking down a 30' hallway thats 12 minutes, or 120 rounds, have fun catching up with the guy who just ran by you, took an arrow to the side, drank a potion and kept going.

[Otodetu]

What horror I see here..

[FoE]

It's a comfort to know that even if you aren't the greatest DM, you're not as bad as some of these guys. :smallbiggrin:

[Jair Barik]

Yeah, a very good DM did this to me once. Only struck me now how ridiculous it was. That plus preventing my char from casting underwater, on the grounds that I could not 'hear myself' (which was pointed by a fellow player, nonetheless), even if I could move freely and breath underwater (FoM and Water Breathing). That was a great one shot we had, but, in hindsight, these episodes annoy me. I guess my Opto-fu and playstyle are irritating for the rest of my ex-group...

Actually there is a feat (LoM) that specifically allows underwater spellcasting without concentration checks so long as you can breathe. it makes sense as like in bad weather or while riding a horse you do have hindered movement and reduced hearing.

[FinalJustice]

Cool! I could not find anything about it anywhere, thanks. ;)

But, as you've pointed, the feat allows spellcasting underwater with no concentration. I did not have the option of rolling concentration, I simply could not cast, period.

[Omegonthesane]

Did you have any Silent spells prepared? Technically that should get around not being able to cast due to not being *glub* able to *glub glub* say the magic words clearly.

[Jair Barik]

I'm sorry but I must apologize. I remembered LoM had a feat (aquatic spellcasting) that prevented problems but I incorrectly remembered how it worked. What it does is remove the cover of casting into and out of water and means you no longer need spellcraft checks on casting fire spells into a body of water. This odes however imply that spellcrafting is possible in water. At a guess I would say it is impossible if you have no means of breathing/swimming efficiently. If you can breathe underwater I would assume you have a concentration check to make but if you have still spell/free movement+water breathing I don't see any need for concentration checks (though you may possibly still require silent spell if you have a pedantic DM)

[Ice&Fire]

Might not be as bad as some of the other stories, but my group and I still found one particular incident with our DM pretty annoying/railroday

(For those that have played it, the DM was running Red Hand of Doom, and this was during a sniper attack of some kind on someone, we didn't really get it that well explained)

DM: Alright well the shot came from over.. that way. Roll a spot check
Other Player: 20
DM: Ok, you see someone over there in a thing
Other Player: What thing?
DM: It's a thing in a place, over there
Me: ...
DM: A coffin store!
Other Player: Right

After fighting our way up to the top floor of the coffin shop, we came across the sniper, a Half-Dragon Ninja. Pretty annoying fight ,where i think one person did any damage to the enemy, in what we got described to us as a pretty nondescript room, until


DM: Alright, you see the wall over there? Yea that now has windows in it
Me: What!?
DM: Yea, the sniper turns invisible and jumps out the window
Me: .. Why didnt you tell us there where windows?
DM: Yea.. well.. You guys wouldve done something about the windows if I'd put them in earlier
Me: We should've gotten the chance!
DM: Too bad, stop complaining douche


Things got abit heated after that, since it was late, and we had realised he was just trying to waste all our high level spells slots, and I'm pretty sure I got a few physical threats for voicing an opinion about it

[Glass Mouse]

DM: Alright, you see the wall over there? Yea that now has windows in it
Me: What!?
DM: Yea, the sniper turns invisible and jumps out the window
Me: .. Why didnt you tell us there where windows?
DM: Yea.. well.. You guys wouldve done something about the windows if I'd put them in earlier
Me: We should've gotten the chance!
DM: Too bad, stop complaining douche

He actually admitted it? That's spine, right there.


Interesting thing is, actually. Many things mentioned here would be easily forgiven if the players genuinely trust their GM. I've had a GM railroad us around, have NPCs steal from us without allowing rolls, almost spoil an OOC secret (mine) to the other players, break rules to our disadvantage, and a lot of other stuff that would really peeve me if it was anyone else.
We allow it because he never crosses the line, and because he makes up for most of the things with something cool.
Mostly, though, I think it's because we all trust him. Mutual respect.

Amazing what you can get away with if you're generally cool, heh :smallsmile:

[Drevius]

This thread got me so motivated to share a bad dm story I just had to make an account and tell it.

I had recently finished playing with my primary group at University and had headed back home for the summer where my friends wanted to get into dnd too. I gave them the basic core books and told them to read the rules on combat skills feats etc and to pick a class they liked and learn more about it. They learned a great deal about the game fairly quickly but something still seemed off.....

Finally we got a game going and one of my friends decided he would try his hand at dming even with little to no dnd play experience beforehand. Many a cardinal sins were broken that day......

He invited his girlfriend to play, who is a gamer but very odd and non
responsive to anything, but insisted she loved dnd and wanted to play alot.
The party consisted of me, a human druid, a human wizard, and the dm's npc
a crazy "epic" level character without a character sheet based on a dota
character of all things. (facepalms aplenty) Then there was the dm's girlfriend, a elf paladin who was the "healer" of the party, oi vey...

Alright so we begin our adventure investigating a mine corrupted by some sort of plague and are assailed by a few traps and kobolds dispatched easily but then we come across some zombies.....kobold zombies.... we begin the fight with pally winning initiative and promptly and I quote "running away because I don't like zombies".....(more facepalms). The pally's retreat was cut short by her being ambushed by ropers and promptly ripped in two, to which the girlfriend got up and stormed off with dm in pursuit arguing. The game ended around there for a time...... I will post another bad experience once I regain my composure....Pally's immune to fear my ass lol...

[Jergmo]

This thread got me so motivated to share a bad dm story I just had to make an account and tell it.

And now you can never leave! *Cackles madly*


kobolds dispatched easily

Kobolds? Dispatched easily? Clearly this was a poor DM! Kobolds should be your players' worst nightmare!

[Jalor]

In a 3.5 PbP game on this forum, our DM asked for level 21 evil characters. I created a Dread Necromancer using my homebrewed epic progression. Normally I go Incantatrix after level 8 with a Dread Necro, for metamagic cheese, but he said he didn't want broken characters. Meanwhile, someone made a Wizard/Incantatrix/Halruaan Elder.

The game started, and we formulated some ridiculous Xanatos Gambit. The first phase of the plot involved capturing a high-level adventuring party. We did so in about three rounds, and the DM completely flipped out. Apparently, he wanted a fair fight. Another part of our plot involved killing some metallic dragons. Someone had the bright idea of scrying on them with True Sight, and we saw that they were actually illusions of metallic dragons. The cave actually contained Force Dragons (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/dragonEpic.htm#forceDragon). One Ancient, two Young. Keep in mind that we were level 21.

Mister Incantatrix prepares a bunch of overly metamagic'd Rays of Stupidity and several Assay Resistances, teleports over, and drops the CR 43 dragon in the surprise round. Our other wizard, an Enchanter, proceeds to mindrape the unconscious dragon while 'Trix renders the young ones catatonic. DM is now frothing mad that we've mindraped his dragons into invincible servants. We gain a level, and all but one of the XP needed for another. Because you can never gain more than one level at a time. Our fighter talks about taking a level of Swordsage, and our DM is horrified, trying to talk him out of it. 'Trix starts on the Incantatrix epic progression. DM hints that we won't win our next combat.

Back at our evil lair, some guy shows up. He identifies himself as Lord *long, grandiose name* the Omnipotent. He radiates a magical aura of massive proportions, according to my familiar with continuous detect magic. 'Trix blasts him with Maximized Empowered Twinned Enhanced Orb of Force, which reflects back at him. The orbs would instakill him, so he uses his swift action to Instant Metamagic Quicken a Disjunction, with the edge of the area an inch away from him. The orbs vanish, but the Disjunction reflects off of the mage and back at 'Trix. I win initiative, cast Magic Jar, and find out that the guy is a lich, like me. Luckily, Magic Jar is not a mind-affecting spell and explicitly does affect undead. I hit him with it, but he saves. We all try a variety of inconsequential things, and he hits us with "Epic Dimensional Anchor with buffs". Also of note is the fact that our fighter shot at it with his bow and had the arrow reflected back at him for full damage. I try to summon some Troll Skeletons to grapple him, but they can't hit his touch AC. The fighter tries as well, but neither can he. The Cleric tries Heal, which reflects back at him, and the Sorcerer tries and fails to disbelieve the lich. 'Trix Shapechanges into a giant, opens a Gate to the Positive Energy Plane, and bull rushes him into it. This kills him.

We all gain a level. My epic progression gives me a feat, so I take Epic Spellcasting. DM does not protest. I go to check on my phylactery, which is hidden through a pitch-dark, underwater tunnel infested with deadly sea snakes, and buried underground in a tiny, heavily trapped room which also contains a fake phylactery. There's a note, and DM makes a point of telling me that the note is dry. It is overly dramatic and written in blood, being from the lich. He tells us that not only will he not kill us, he wants to take us to the King of the nation we're in. Strange, because any of us individually could eliminate the king's entire court. 'Trix uses Wish to find the lich's phylactery, and it's apparently in the stronghold of Wee Jas (deity of death and magic).

Cue a week or two of waiting for the lich to come and kill us. I make a Shadow with Create Greater Undead, and send him off to make an incorporeal death squad. DM doesn't care. DM vanishes without a trace.

The Enchanter was the one who suggested that the "Invincible Lich" should become a meme. "This one time a lich reflected my teammate's Disjunction, the game slowed down after that."

[waterpenguin43]

Kobolds should be your players' worst nightmare!

I'm making a kobold sorcerer 18 for my high level players to face, so they likely will.

[Mordokai]

*Crazy and funny story here*

I'm not familiar with Epics(hell, the biggest level our party ever got to was 6 :smalltongue: ), but that sounds awesome :smallbiggrin:

Poor DM...

[FinalJustice]

Did you have any Silent spells prepared? Technically that should get around not being able to cast due to not being *glub* able to *glub glub* say the magic words clearly.

Not really, I was playing a Sorcerer and made the mistake of not buying a Silent Metamagic Rod, serves me right. Anyway, let's not derail the topic any further, don't you agree? =)


I'm sorry but I must apologize. I remembered LoM had a feat (aquatic spellcasting) that prevented problems but I incorrectly remembered how it worked. What it does is remove the cover of casting into and out of water and means you no longer need spellcraft checks on casting fire spells into a body of water. This odes however imply that spellcrafting is possible in water. At a guess I would say it is impossible if you have no means of breathing/swimming efficiently. If you can breathe underwater I would assume you have a concentration check to make but if you have still spell/free movement+water breathing I don't see any need for concentration checks (though you may possibly still require silent spell if you have a pedantic DM)

Saw this post after posting myself, should've paid more attention to the rest of the topic. Anyway, nooow I remember seeing this feat. I, myself, would not request concentration if one could breath and swim underwater. Failing one or both this conditions would call for a concentration roll. I most certainly wouldn't make it impossible, I would not nullify a character because he fell in a swimming pool.

I also tried to use planar bubble beforehand to simulate a bubble of survivable environment, which would include air, but that did not work on the grounds of 'you are still in your plane'. There was some mild embarassment when I asked if it would have worked in the Plane of Water, but in the end I could not get away with it. =/

It was a pretty good game though, the group overall had a blast and I was able to ignore such nuisances, so it's all good. ;)

[Drevius]

Yeah the dm kinda underestimates the true fearsomeness of kobolds especially dragonwrought and the like.

Anywho, I think I will post the one story that really got on my nerves due to the complete disregard for the rules and focus fire on my character as well as tossing around the word "powergaming" and "munchkin" far too much.

The game started out with, luckily the absentness of the dm's girlfriend from gaming sessions past, and the party was level 7 or so and consisted of a aasimar soulknife, a cleric, a rogue and me, the "powergaming munchkin" who was playing a fighter designed to take hits with high hp and the feat "roll with it" from savage species which i decided to take a few times coming out to around DR 8/- or something iirc, which made him "broken". After realizing I had high DR (but nothing else going for me) the DM decides that the starting location is a prison and we all have amnesia which I thought was fine if a little cliche. After talking to the rest of the party we search our cells and manage to break out and take down some guards fairly easily. Then the game went downhill..... a swarm of guards attacked us when we were nearing escape and then the dm says a "wizard appears behind the guards yelling 'ENOUGH'" and you wake up back in your cells remembering nothing...... NO save, NO chance to react, just back in our cells where we are tortured, which includes hold persons and a "flaming whip" that bypassed my DR and dealt 4d6 fire damage a hit, said whip was later obtained by me on our second attempt at escape which also failed because the whip made of magical fire somehow broke on an iron door and that same wizard came along and "cast" another spell putting us all to sleep including the elven rogue AND elven cleric. The next time we wake up the DM explains through another prisoner (although it could have just as easily been an OOC f you to the face) that the guards are human looking constructs negating the rogues combat abilities, everything gets through my DR forever, and there are inhibitor crystals or some other bs implanted in us that stop casting of spells as well as manifesting mind blades for the soulknife thus completely nerfing the entire party completely, i think he said something like the rogues "powers" and my fighter "powers" were gone too except I have no clue wtf he meant by that.....suffice to say we escaped the prison after a bunch of unsatisfying trial and error and i quit walked to the other room and played some ps3 with the rest of the group following suit.

[Elfin]

Wow, that's truly awful.
And the DM called you a powergaming munchkin? When you played a fighter, of all things?

[Jair Barik]

Hey I'm running a game with the amnesia cliche don't mock it!
Also we probably should stop talking about underwater spellcasting regardless of how intriguing it is

[Drevius]

Yeah it was supposed to be a "lesson" that powergaming would be met with dm's wrath, or in this case put in a near impossible situation with no gear and stripped of powers with an impossibly strong caster guarding the exit and a nonexistant spell that was essentially a reset button. Although it was near impossible we tried a few times and the last time before we walked out we did manage to escape with a combined rush toward the wizard (who miraculously didn't act out of turn, thank god the dm didn't know anything about spells or celerity for that matter) grappled him and steven segalled him (broke his neck).

[Roderick_BR]

(...) i quit walked to the other room and played some ps3 with the rest of the group following suit.
*claps* well done. For some power hungry DMs, that's the only solution.

[Jalor]

I'm not familiar with Epics(hell, the biggest level our party ever got to was 6 :smalltongue: ), but that sounds awesome :smallbiggrin:

Poor DM...

Heh, we actually had a great time right up until the DM abandoned us. Never underestimate the value of fun players. Even Incantatrix was fun to game with, due to his Affably Evil character and general cleverness.

[Serpentine]

Not a particularly bad jerk moment (I've been lucky) but I was in a diplomacy challenge to get us some mounts and from the DM's descriptions I felt that the orc mount-master was hiding something (Warcraft setting), so I mustered all the scary my undead form could take and made an intimidate check. I reduced the poor orc to tears. The DM described in great detail how the orc cowered on the floor, blubbering and weeping, clutching at my robes and generally being terrified because he had no mounts to give me because they'd had to eat them during the particularly harsh winter they had just endured and please not to kill him oh mighty undead cleric. In front of the entire town square. In a town I was supposed to be friendly with. While I was being the "party face".Is it bad that I think that that's actually reasonably good DMing? <.< At least... It would be for a natural 20, or very high result... If it wasn't an exceptionally good check, then it probably shouldn't have been so debilitating (well, unless the poor orc had some issues, which is entirely possible). Did you have a chance, though, to repair the damage afterwards? There should have been some way to fix the situation...

Oh and the goblin player got an STD from the barmaid at the tavern we were staying in. Never seen anyone get punished for attempting to roleplay before :/My first ever DM gave females something like a 50/50 chance of getting pregnant. She wasn't bad, but she did suffer from a lot of the typical problems people have with DMs: Poor understanding of the rules (she came from a game so heavily houseruled that it may as well have been a different system altogether, and thought that they were RAW); obsession with sex (people had to do opposed Charisma checks or be enamoured of each other. Or something like that.); Uber DMPCs (an incredibly gorgeous and strong half-giant); uber treasure (my character had a weapon that could turn into any other weapon, I think pretty much as a free action. I liked it, and it suited her (she was big on being adaptable), but still...).
Oh, and she pitted us 15th level characters (this was our first ever game, mind) against a dread wraith... and thought we'd be thrashed :smallconfused: Same with the smallish swarm of stirges :confused:

I had more, but the forum backup ate my post when I posted it. Fortunately this much was saved in another tab... and I can't remember what I said before :smallsigh:
Oh, the "LG" Paladin who had it in for Chaotic characters and no problem with LE rulers: I don't really mind that sort of thing. There's no reason why Law and Chaos shouldn't be as diametrically opposed as Good and Evil, or for a character to emphasise one aspect of his alignment. If it's done in such a way that disrupts the party dynamic, though... that may be good roleplaying, but it's bad playing. "It's what my character would do!" is no excuse for being a douche - you decide what your character would or would not do, and you are responsible for making that work with the party.

I hope I haven't done any this-thread worthy misdeeds :smallfrown: I think I mostly just have issues with preparation and getting my players together to actually play the damn thing :smallsigh:
I did have a prison problem... A player was away for a game, so I had his character kidnapped by the kobold maze-builders, and had her escape as a solo adventure. She woke up naked, in a cold little cell, with her spell component pouch in the room outside with her guards. And That's How I Learned How Many Spells Require Spell Components :sigh: What was really annoying was, instead if talking out his predicament, the player just sat there, presumably pondering, with no more than the occasional "hmmm". It took me way too long to realise why he was having so much trouble coming up with escape options :smallsigh: I ended up ret-conning some details, to make it a bit less tricky.

[Otodetu]

This is horrible, keep it coming.

[lyko555]

Hmm had a dm put me up in a arena with an Ettin with a cleric lvl. So cr7 ettin vrs lvl 2 swordsage. All because i started a bar fight when he railroaded us into a bar that was regionaly renown for barbrawls.
I beat the ettin by being smart enough to use AoO when he tried to cast his 1st lvl spells (lol). So game wraps up as evry one stands stunned that I won. Game ends every one goes home. next week game starts I ask dm "So how much xp did I get"? He laughs and turns to his wife and starts talking about a completely diffrent subject.
Meanwhile some how every lvl 1-2 binky in the game world manages to crit my poor swordsage every attack. He does it because hes upset over an ac of 23 came by completely through rolls that were observed, and ignores the fighter who is duel weilding with a shield...

[Tough_Tonka]

This is my biggest jerk moment as a DM

One of my players decided to steal from a magic item vendor despite mine warnings that it could be dangerous. Unfortunately he decided to half the party to help him on his heist. In order to avoid a TPK I pulled my punches as they got away with a box of magic rings, but I made the first ring the thief put on a cursed Ring of Clumsiness.

I told him the ring made his Dex 1 and he could only get it off with a remove curse spell. Since the party was only lv. 3 and the only divine caster was a druid they had to sell the rings to a smuggler in order to get the money for a remove curse scroll from that vendor.

When the player ask why someone would sell a cursed ring, I told him it was probably for very elaborate piratical jokes.

[FoE]

When the player ask why someone would sell a cursed ring, I told him it was probably for very elaborate piratical jokes.

I didn't know pirates had such a sense of humour. :smalltongue:

ATTENTION DUELISTS! No matter how much of a jerk your DM can be, nothing justifies beating him with a hammer. (http://www.sltrib.com/justice/ci_13146563)

[powerdemon]

I didn't know pirates had such a sense of humour. :smalltongue:

ATTENTION DUELISTS! No matter how much of a jerk your DM can be, nothing justifies beating him with a hammer. (http://www.sltrib.com/justice/ci_13146563)

Yeah, that's going to be great for our reputation...

[Tyrmatt]

Is it bad that I think that that's actually reasonably good DMing? <.< At least... It would be for a natural 20, or very high result... If it wasn't an exceptionally good check, then it probably shouldn't have been so debilitating (well, unless the poor orc had some issues, which is entirely possible). Did you have a chance, though, to repair the damage afterwards? There should have been some way to fix the situation...

Oh, it was my own fault for metagaming really but when you hear like 20 dice being rolled in between every single check you make you start to get a bit leery of the situation.

It wasn't a huge issue for the party (the fighter had been shopping while I was doing this and got some fresh cure potions) and we were on a pretty strict deadline with an invading army attacking our homeland and the Horde army routed (of which we were technically members/deserters. Technically, both sides could've been hunting us) and a pressing need to warn high command that a sizeable and capable force was coming, we were running anyway. In the campaign we never made it back to that town but I bet something interesting to us if we had returned.

I just feel that it was strange for the DM to roleplay what was quite an extended session when it could've been summed up as "The mount-master tells you that he has no mounts left so it looks like you're hoofing it."

It would've also made me prepare more Endure Elements for the poor goblin player if I'd known that we were gonna be in a fair stretch of artic tundra on foot. I assumed we'd mount up and make it back within a single use of the spell....not dragging a gobsicle between us for the final stretch into the forest :p

*EDIT: Suppose I should clarify that as Endure Elements has a long duration: We were legging it from pursuing assassins and basically force marching ourselves. No time to stop and prepare new spells and I'd stocked myself for combat on the run and a load of inflict spells that I could spont into heals, hoping to run across the night-elf who gave us such trouble in the mines beforehand. The DM, unfamiliar with the geography of the game-world, had us travelling for over a day in an area that's easily coverable in a daylight march. Goblins dying of exposure became an unfortunate reality as we alternated between us carrying and guarding the rear.

I think she was also maybe a bit ticked that me and my friend played Forsaken, who are immune to nearly everything, it made a lot of her usual strategies useless. So she took the fight to us, making me use our low reserves of inflict spells to keep me and the fighter alive and wearing us down with good old fashioned beatings. The threat of Forsaken also being unrezzable(under the original rules) kept us scared and fleeing when we should've probably plotted an ambush or poured my spells into killing our pursuers. Still, we survived and turned the tables once we got back towards our homelands. Crazy mad campaign that one.

[PId6]

Yeah, that's going to be great for our reputation...
What reputation? :smallwink:

[Dust]

The following is absolutely disgusting. It goes far beyond 'DM Jerk Moments' and into the 'Utterly Demoralizing for Humanity Moments.' I recommend it not be read by anyone, ever.
I was playing in a 3.5 dungeon crawl game with a new DM, who, to his credit, actually ran a pretty spectacular game for the first bit. It was easily the most looked-forward to campaign of my week, and it was only because we spread his reputation as a great DM that the problems arose.

Our gaming group is normally split 50-50 male and female. As fate would have it, New DM got the luck of the draw and wound up with 4 male players. After hearing about how much we enjoyed his campaign, several of the female gamers whipped up characters and joined in.

We were traversing the Elemental Plane of Chaos at this time, which was as dangerous as you might expect. Within fifteen minutes of starting the game session, we came across our first challenge.

Rapegrass. Of raping.

You read that right. The blades of grass beneath our feet grew suddenly, which the DM described as going up the pant legs of the female PCs and violating them.
You can imagine how shocked we all were. At this point, I stood up and said hell no, and walked out. I'm proud to be able to type that honestly, because I had doubts when I was driving home about possibly overreacting. I suspect that...had I not known the female players as well as I did...I might have continued to experience the horrors to come. As it is, another player filled me in the following day.

Apparently all the remaining players, females included, proceeded to find a Wizard's fortress, which, while was apparently described in great detail and hanging half-off a limitless precipice, I can't go into here because it would give New DM credit.

When they encountered the Wizard, he cast Maximized Enlarge person on one of the female characters (despite the fact that he was level 21+). The DM ruled that this tore the character's clothing right off, and the character was immediately subjected to skeletons trying to crawl in any orifices they could get to in order to make 'attacks from inside.'

Remarkably, the female gamers STILL put up with this, all the way until the BBEG Wizard cast magical compulsions on them to strip down and walk back and forth while he and his skeletal army apparently...threw tomatoes at them. There was something about casting the tomato-throwing enchantment on the other PCs as well, but the other players were cursing him out and getting their coats by this time.

[powerdemon]

The following is absolutely disgusting. It goes far beyond 'DM Jerk Moments' and into the 'Utterly Demoralizing for Humanity Moments.' I recommend it not be read by anyone, ever.
I was playing in a 3.5 dungeon crawl game with a new DM, who, to his credit, actually ran a pretty spectacular game for the first bit. It was easily the most looked-forward to campaign of my week, and it was only because we spread his reputation as a great DM that the problems arose.

Our gaming group is normally split 50-50 male and female. As fate would have it, New DM got the luck of the draw and wound up with 4 male players. After hearing about how much we enjoyed his campaign, several of the female gamers whipped up characters and joined in.

We were traversing the Elemental Plane of Chaos at this time, which was as dangerous as you might expect. Within fifteen minutes of starting the game session, we came across our first challenge.

Rapegrass. Of raping.

You read that right. The blades of grass beneath our feet grew suddenly, which the DM described as going up the pant legs of the female PCs and violating them.
You can imagine how shocked we all were. At this point, I stood up and said hell no, and walked out. I'm proud to be able to type that honestly, because I had doubts when I was driving home about possibly overreacting. I suspect that...had I not known the female players as well as I did...I might have continued to experience the horrors to come. As it is, another player filled me in the following day.

Apparently all the remaining players, females included, proceeded to find a Wizard's fortress, which, while was apparently described in great detail and hanging half-off a limitless precipice, I can't go into here because it would give New DM credit.

When they encountered the Wizard, he cast Maximized Enlarge person on one of the female characters (despite the fact that he was level 21+). The DM ruled that this tore the character's clothing right off, and the character was immediately subjected to skeletons trying to crawl in any orifices they could get to in order to make 'attacks from inside.'

Remarkably, the female gamers STILL put up with this, all the way until the BBEG Wizard cast magical compulsions on them to strip down and walk back and forth while he and his skeletal army apparently...threw tomatoes at them. There was something about casting the tomato-throwing enchantment on the other PCs as well, but the other players were cursing him out and getting their coats by this time.

He watched toooooo much hentai.... That's freaking wrong...


Though it does remind me of

porn golems

[Jalor]

The "creepy sex GM" stories reminded me of this lovely tale I read on Livejournal:
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/2879/worstgameever.jpg

[FoE]

The "creepy sex GM" stories reminded me of this lovely tale I read on Livejournal:
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/2879/worstgameever.jpg

DO NOT WANT!

[Dust]

Augh! My brainmeats!

[Jalor]

I wish I could find the original LJ post that that guy was commenting on. It had a great story too, and one with less gender-bending homoerotic incest at that.

[Tengu_temp]

The "creepy sex GM" stories reminded me of this lovely tale I read on Livejournal:
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/2879/worstgameever.jpg

That's possibly the funniest thing I've read today. And I had a pretty entertaining day.

[Clementx]

ATTENTION DUELISTS! No matter how much of a jerk your DM can be, nothing justifies beating him with a hammer. (http://www.sltrib.com/justice/ci_13146563)
Now, simultaneously blaming the old-idiot excuse of EVIL D%D and the new sleeping-pill-psychosis scare? That is journalistic talent. If he only managed to involve Twinkies, that would be a Pulitzer right there.

[AshDesert]

This one isn't so much a GM jerk moment so much as an easily distracted GM. My friend was telling me the other day about a campaign he was in before he moved into my area. The DM was apparently a fairly good DM with a good campaign going, but his sessions always ended up taking well over 6 hours for an average, 4 encounter game. How you ask?

Apparently he played music at the games. Now, normally, this isn't bad, in fact I took the advice from Rich's Villain Building Article and think up a song for all of my BBEG's, and play the song whenever they're "onscreen". But, with this particular DM, every other song he would stop gameplay entirely to play air guitar during the solo, or sing part of it (with air-mic included). The music was also so loud that the players could hardly hear each other without nearly yelling. So, not so much a jerk as annoying.

[JadedDM]

I didn't know pirates had such a sense of humour. :smalltongue:

ATTENTION DUELISTS! No matter how much of a jerk your DM can be, nothing justifies beating him with a hammer. (http://www.sltrib.com/justice/ci_13146563)

I'll say! Hammers are hardly optimal weapons!

[Shademan]

He watched toooooo much hentai.... That's freaking wrong...


Though it does remind me of

porn golems

what? you can never watch too much hentai!
Thing is, this guy fail because if you are going to include rapegrass the grass don't care what gender you are! It takes anything lukewarm with a hole.
and you really should be civil about this and put up a sign "warning: rapegrass ahead!" a fun and potentially scarring challenge!

second: enlarge person don't work like that. that just fail.

Third: need more rapers. I MEAN ROPERS! yes... ropers..

[Otodetu]

My bad dm experiences includes the basic super railroading or a super powerful dm'pc, or ignoring rules to railroad some more

But I have never been involved with any truly horrific events.

[Odentin]

One of my very own. Not sure if I was being a ****, or just playing everything out fairly. Maybe you all can tell me...

I once DM'ed a party that came to be very pyromaniacal. To the point where 9/10 of the Sorcerer's damage spells were Fire spells, and he had the Energy Substitution (Fire) for the ones that weren't. I never tried to penalize them for it, though I did throw a few fire-resistant or -immune challenges their way every now and again, just to give them a little fun.

For one such encounter, I placed the BBEG on a pirate ship. They' been trying to follow and corner him for at least 5 sessions, so the ship seemed like a good idea. They tracked him down to a room, where he was meeting with the pirate captain. Lemme break this down into two parts.

I had placed the BBEG and the Captain in the Weapons Storage. With the gunpowder barrels. I figured the party would have to think twice before using any fire effects (fire spells, Flaming Burst swords, etc.) for the sake of not blowing themselves up.

Here's what happened: The group rogue managed to look through the keyhole and see the BBEG and hear him talking to the Captain. Just as the party was fixing to break the door in and attack, the Sorc has an idea: "Hey! The keyhole! I can launch a fireball through it and scorch the bastard before we get in there!"

The group agreed, since they didn't know how big the room was, and didn't know if they could cast it in there. I couldn't deny it, since it WAS technically possible, so I asked him to make the ranged touch attack, hoping silently that he would fail...

He didn't. He made the attack with ease, and the fireball detonated in the room. I hadn't made the room so as to explode, just so certain barrels would explode if hit with a fire spell. Guess what, the fireball hit EVERY SINGLE ONE. I sighed and played it straight, the fireball blew up all the barrels, which took the entire ship (and the ship sailing alongside) with it. The party had no way to survive the blast. There was too much damage rolled. An unintentional TPK, but a TPK nonetheless.

Should I have played it differently, or did I do the right thing? The group re-rolled characters, and I started them on the third ship from the sailing group, though the group broke up soon afterwards...

[Lord Loss]

Pyro Players? I personally believe you ran the encounter fine. As long as the players knew what was in the barrels, they were acting in a very stupid matters and needed to learn that maybe another type of charcter would be interesting.

[kamikasei]

As long as the players knew what was in the barrels, they were acting in a very stupid matters

They may have not even seen the barrels, and it'd still have been the height of foolishness to casually throw fire around on a wooden sailing ship which they could surely expect to contain, if not gunpowder, then at least plenty of unpredictably flammable material.

That call was fine, it would probably have been an idea to try to rein in their "burn everything and sort through the ashes later" approach a bit before.

[Glass Mouse]

Heh. I wouldn't say you were being anything near whatever **** means. What your story doesn't tell, though, is whether or not they knew about the gunpowder barrels. If they did, sure, they only had themselves to blame (and that is one epic TPK, by the way). If not, hmm, you could have demanded the Sorcerer be able to see the BBEG (which, I guess, was the case when he had to make a ranged touch attack) and in the same instance described the room, along with the barrels. That would've made way for a second thought, and they wouldn't feel tricked afterwards.

It's not dickish or anything if you decided to blow everything up without "warning", but it does suck for the players. Now, if they make an informed choice - then it's their own silly fault, isn't it? :smallbiggrin:

[Kizara]

Pfft, that was awesome. I bet they'll be talking about that with fond memories for years to come.

You can't ask for a better end to a pyro campaign then blowing up a harbor and going out in your personal little mushroom-cloud.

[Keshay]

So your pyromaniac party were being pyros without the benefit of Fire Resistance/Protection/Immunity? Yep, totally not your fault, that's just the players being foolish. After all, what's the point of starting aglorious fire if you can't enjoy it up close and personal?

[powerdemon]

Should I have played it differently, or did I do the right thing? The group re-rolled characters, and I started them on the third ship from the sailing group, though the group broke up soon afterwards...

No man. Deaths happen and you players need to realize that. You can't baby them through everything. From what you wrote, weather they knew the barrels were there or not, kamikasei is right, they deserved to be blowed up!

[cenghiz]

Me! Me! My turn...

I hadn't played many role-playing games before university. There was an older friend who delighted preparing free-form games to play while we chilled after basketball matches and they were simply awesome. He would produce a paper for each of us, to tick a note when we improved in something, say using a sword or manipulating fire. He would instantly describe a new plot after another, only asking for five minutes when we did something very unexpectable. He only used two d6's from a backgammon in the cafe we sat, too. But they were still awesome.

In the uni, a friend told me he would introduce me to 'the DM', the best game master in the area after I showed a nice skill in my D&D 3.5 game with him and a few other players. I'm not calling him 'the DM' because I want to keep his name secret. He was actually called 'the DM' by his.. err... followers? The DM? I was intimidated and excited. I was looking forward to the best game of my life.

Then we met, the game has begun. We didn't know anything about the system - 'Vampire the Masquarade' so we had characters already prepared by the DM. I was a Malkavian - then I didn't know anything about it - and I was told to play a semi-lunatic vampire who spends his days in his laboratory. I also had an obsession with my gun. The other players were introduced to their characters, too, but I was way too involved in examining my character sheet. Then the game started....

Let me call other players X and Y. X was - I guess - a tremere, with possibly a gangrel friend because if I remember right he had incredible soak and he could produce claws possibly because of 'protean' power.

X comes in, demands aid, while I speak, orders Y to grasp my gun. I declare I have succumbed into frenzy and attack Y with my gun, backing away. Y soaks the damage and his hands transform into claws as he approaches. The DM stops the game and tells us "You suck at playing.". He restarts the game.

This time we cooperate fully, in fear of pissing off The DM way too much and having the game cancelled. We prepare for the journey. The DM rolls, says one hour left and there's only half an hour to dawn. I say "Hey, didn't we know it was nearly dawn when we started the journey? My character would not do such a stupid thing." He says we didn't ask, so he didn't tell. He starts describing the open forest, where we will never be able to keep away from the sunlight. His eyes say: "You're gonna die." We try in vain to hide in a cave, where X started attacking me for no apparent reason.

My hopes were crushed. It was stupid. I felt I was facing someone who was proud of his superiority and... Let's face it I was used to being the superior in social interactions. I was pissed off. I started saying "I breathe, I breathe..." continuously. When the DM asked why, I stopped just for a moment to say that I didn't know if vampires breathed in this setting and I didn't want my character to suffocate, so I would remind him when I breathed because when I didn't, he would possibly die. The game quickly breaks down.

This was way too stupid, compared to the past games I played. It was half-an-hour's ride back to the campus and I felt I'm starving to read the new novel I got. I make up an excuse and leave, insisting I'm about to have a migraine attack and my pills are at the dormitory.

Later I learned a few more 'gems' of that particular DM from a few.. err.. ex-followers.. (Damn.. How in hell may someone become so adept in finding socially crippled folks and make them his bitc.. followers? I couldn't ever find it out but his cult lived on till I graduated.)

Player: I throw a greenade out of the window.
The DM: The greenade hits the glass and falls beside your feet.
Player: ???
The Dm: You didn't say you opened the window first. It was closed.

.....

Anyway.. I also would like to chime in for something. I'm started to get disturbed. "DM kicked the table, kicked my puppy, kicked my mother, kicked my heel, kicked ........ I tried to negotiate again and again till I gave up."

Most stories go on like this. WHY, people, don't you stand up when the DM socially crucifies you for the first time? Why do you endure the stupid strain over and over till you can't take it, sometimes then a bit more?

It's because he's the only DM? Learn to DM and set up your own group. Or play via internet. Or join a RP-enforced MU*. It's because DM's your RL friend? Even better.. Kick him in the nuts and tell him not to be a string of '*'s. It's because it's a social activity of your friend group and you're the only one that's disturbed? Then say: "Gah.. RP games are not my thing. You play, then let's cruise a bit and maybe play some billiards?" and stop playing with them. You can remain friends with folks whom you don't play RP games with.[/steam]

[Forbiddenwar]

My hopes were crushed. It was stupid. I felt I was facing someone who was proud of his superiority and... Let's face it I was used to being the superior in social interactions. I was pissed off. I started saying "I breathe, I breathe..." continuously. When the DM asked why, I stopped just for a moment to say that I didn't know if vampires breathed in this setting and I didn't want my character to suffocate, so I would remind him when I breathed because when I didn't, he would possibly die. The game quickly breaks down.

This was excellent. "I breathe, I breathe" Seriously any character with an ounce of wisdom would check the sky, or open the window.
This takes the cake of jerkyness and I am glad that to hear that you didn't take it. The whole thing sounds like a set up hazing of the newbie, which, obviously, should never be done.

[Arakune]

This was excellent. "I breathe, I breathe" Seriously any character with an ounce of wisdom would check the sky, or open the window.
This takes the cake of jerkyness and I am glad that to hear that you didn't take it. The whole thing sounds like a set up hazing of the newbie, which, obviously, should never be done.

Is too much for the DM to ask "are you sure? the windows are still closed."

It is? It is? It IS? IT IS? :smallfurious:

[powerdemon]

Is too much for the DM to ask "are you sure? the windows are still closed."

It is? It is? It IS? IT IS? :smallfurious:

Agreed. That's just stupid. Why would anyone enjoy doing that to someone? I can see this happening, but only followed by the words "Just kidding".

[Umael]

You know, I read all of these stories about how DMs will take what you said literally, and it seems like they completely miss one of the great funs that can be held by a DM.

"Are you sure?" *grin evilly*

With my father, he was always grinning evilly, so he just skipped that step. He just kept asking "Are you sure?" and other questions to clarify just exactly what your PC was doing. Toss in a few deadly traps, bring to a boiling paranoia for four hours. Serves six.

[Drider]

Player: I throw a grenade out of the window.
The DM: The grenade hits the glass and falls beside your feet.
Player: ???
The Dm: You didn't say you opened the window first. It was closed.


Depending on the glass, it would probably break when the grenade hit it, grenades are about as heavy as fair-sized rocks, unless it was re-inforced glass or something high-tech/magic(magic and grenades in the same setting is a little rare, but awesome) he should at least roll to see if the window breaks, but depending on the grenade, might explode on impact.


...what? :smallconfused: If the DM is trying to be a douche by being more "realistic" and give the PC a difficulty, he should be able to take it a little.
Also, I agree with the last part of what you said,

[Starshade]

Anyway.. I also would like to chime in for something. I'm started to get disturbed. "DM kicked the table, kicked my puppy, kicked my mother, kicked my heel, kicked ........ I tried to negotiate again and again till I gave up."

Most stories go on like this. WHY, people, don't you stand up when the DM socially crucifies you for the first time? Why do you endure the stupid strain over and over till you can't take it, sometimes then a bit more?

It's because he's the only DM? Learn to DM and set up your own group. Or play via internet. Or join a RP-enforced MU*. It's because DM's your RL friend? Even better.. Kick him in the nuts and tell him not to be a string of '*'s. It's because it's a social activity of your friend group and you're the only one that's disturbed? Then say: "Gah.. RP games are not my thing. You play, then let's cruise a bit and maybe play some billiards?" and stop playing with them. You can remain friends with folks whom you don't play RP games with.[/steam]

Thing is, the RPers and DMs ive met usually are both socially adept and intelligent. Having a life, and often quite extrovert.

Ive personally not sat at a RPG table for years, since ive not found anyone who'd like to be there, or id like to RP with. So, even id id LIKE to, quite much, atm, i simply dont do it due to lack of a gang to play with, who id like to play with, or DM for.

Id not RP with anyone who abuse or hurt people/pets, thats for shure.

[Akisa]

making a comment glad I could find a 3.5 game as I hate 4e and the responds with he understands as he doesn't see many 3.5 games anymore. I show up for the first session and said he forgot to tell me they were switching to 4e that day. I stayed for 2 more sessions hoping my pass experiences were unique, but sadly it wasn't the case I left an e-mail that I wasn't going to continue.

[expirement10K14]

Note that I am in highschool and this occured in ~8th grade (we were all ~12-13, but had a strong grasp of the game).

Our DM was good for a while. He ran us through the sunless citadel to start, then a custom dungeon, and then we reached Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, which we all loved. After going through about half of the module when he stopped organising games. We asked him about it but he ignored us. One day in homeroom some one from the group asked him if we would play again (about a month after we stopped) and he exploded claiming that he was "too cool" to play DnD and that all of us were [insert derogatory term for homosexuals here] for still playing. He then claimed he had never played, after DMing for almost a year, and refused to talk to any of us.

Now almost everyone in the school calls him "the power tool."

[FoE]

Wow, that is really weird. Was he trying to get in with the cool kids or something?

[Forbiddenwar]

Note that I am in highschool and this occured in ~8th grade (we were all ~12-13, but had a strong grasp of the game).

Our DM was good for a while. He ran us through the sunless citadel to start, then a custom dungeon, and then we reached Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, which we all loved. After going through about half of the module when he stopped organising games. We asked him about it but he ignored us. One day in homeroom some one from the group asked him if we would play again (about a month after we stopped) and he exploded claiming that he was "too cool" to play DnD and that all of us were [insert derogatory term for homosexuals here] for still playing. He then claimed he had never played, after DMing for almost a year, and refused to talk to any of us.

Now almost everyone in the school calls him "the power tool."

oddly enough, in high school, I wasn't cool enough to play D&D. funny old world.

[Elfin]

Funny old world indeed.
These are pretty awful tales, by the way.

[Skorj]

The following events happened about 30 years ago. I wasn't part of the group in this story, but they still tell the tale - it's a tribal legend now, our shorthand for "DM jerk moment" in gaming discussions.

This was a low-magic fantasy campaign. I think the game was Chivalry and Sorcery. The party had encountered a gnoll scouting party. Now, in this game, gnolls were a real pain as scouts, because they could leap 30 feet. This made it quite difficult to prevent one gnoll from getting away and warning whoever they were scouting for. This exact 30 foot distance was well established.

In this case, the party had planned their assault well, and knew to expect gnolls. They had worked out an elaborate ambush in great detail to ensure that a 30 foot leap would not allow any of the gnolls to escape, so that the party could reach their target without an alarm being sounded. That did not fit well at all with the DMs plans. The gnoll scouts were part of the railroad tracks, and the party reaching the objective by stealth would ruin much of the DM's planning.

So, the party executes their ambush, followed by most of the gnolls. The round comes when there is only 1 gnoll left alive, and he has lost a leg! The party is jubilant. Then the gnoll jumps 50 feet and escapes, running (well, hopping) off to sound the alarm. The party is outraged! "Gnolls only jump 30 feet" they shout! The DM explains with a straight face: "two-legged gnolls only jump 30 feet; one-legged gnolls jump farther."

[Ravens_cry]

The party is outraged! "Gnolls only jump 30 feet" they shout! The DM explains with a straight face: "two-legged gnolls only jump 30 feet; one-legged gnolls jump farther."
I almost want to applaud the shear chutzpah of such undiluted, one hundred percent, bull****. What an absolutely asinine piece of DM'ing.
I pray to all gods of past, future, and present, that if I ever DM, I never do something quite that bad.

[Kylarra]

Maybe he had a boot of striding and springing. :smalltongue:

[The New Bruceski]

Maybe he had a boot of striding and springing. :smalltongue:

Just springing, I think. Striding takes two boots.

[Skorj]

I almost want to applaud the shear chutzpah of such undiluted, one hundred percent, bull****. What an absolutely asinine piece of DM'ing.
I pray to all gods of past, future, and present, that if I ever DM, I never do something quite that bad.

Indeed it was legendary. But I've taken comfort from the story over the years, knowing that however badly I might screw up as a DM, I wouldn't be the worst this group had gamed with. :smallamused:

[powerdemon]

Indeed it was legendary. But I've taken comfort from the story over the years, knowing that however badly I might screw up as a DM, I wouldn't be the worst this group had gamed with. :smallamused:

Haha! That is a great way to look at it! :smallbiggrin:

[Strawman]

I can never understand why a DM would take a passive-aggressive stance towards enforcing railroading. Why not just tell the players "I like to tell a linear storyline, so please do not interfere with the plot" when organizing the group. DM avoids people who are not okay with that approach, and players avoid a nasty pointless suprise.

I'm going to use the phrase "fifty foot gnoll jump" instead of WTF from now on.

[Katana_Geldar]

I don't think here's nothing wrong with telling a linear storyline as long as you are willing to think on your feet and be willing to use Schrodringer's Gun.

I had the GM come after me in a Star Destroyer once when I went off his plot rails. Even for railroading, this was a bit much when we were in an uncharted region of space which we purposely went to to avoid his predictable straight-forward fetch quests.

[Random832]

I don't think here's nothing wrong with telling a linear storyline as long as you are willing to think on your feet and be willing to use Schrodringer's Gun.

Or just, you know, be mature about it. I mean, people play videogames with linear storylines all the time without any tricks like that.

[Katana_Geldar]

You can have several alternatives to a problem, but be ready for them when they come up with an entirely new option that is better.

Another way is to give the job, give the clues and parameters, then go out of the room and let them plan. I did that once and it was the best session so far.

[Saph]

Well, just to amuse you guys, here's one I'm actually responsible for. I inflicted this one on my party . . . oh, about two years ago, I think.

I was DMing a Phantasy Star campaign, based pretty much directly off the plot of Phantasy Star 4 CRPG (it works really well for D&D). The players were aware that it was on the railroady end of the spectrum, and I'd actually given them all a quiz during the campaign-planning phase asking what they wanted on a scale of 'directed' to 'sandbox' and they'd picked 'directed'. So that's my excuse. Well, sort of.

Ever since the first session, the party had been dealing with trouble caused by someone called "Zio, the Black Magician". He'd been blackmailing and threatening people, petrifying anyone who got in his way, and generally making a nuisance of himself. The party got a quest that sent them into Zio's fortress to steal a MacGuffin from him. They managed to infiltrate the fortress, got into his study on the top of the fortress tower, and stole the item. In the process they set off an alarm ward and Zio showed up five minutes later.

You know the "Hopeless Boss Fight" theme in computer RPGs? The one where you have to fight an opponent who you simply can't beat, and you're scripted to lose against? Yeah, it was that. In the computer game, Zio kills one of your party members in this battle (as in, permanently) and is completely untouchable to your weapons. To represent that, I gave Zio the following stats:

• High ability scores, high saves, boosted further by a template.
• Magical barrier that gives +10 deflection bonus to AC and SR 22.
• Ranged Slay Living and Flesh to Stone as at-will SLAs, save DC 18.

Opposing him, the party was a crusader, a swordsage, a psion, a ranger, a psychic warrior, and a druid. All were level 6.

I expected somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 deaths. It turned out to be an accurate guess.

I felt kind of bad about it afterwards, so I went out of my way to make sure that all the PCs killed in the battle had the opportunity to be resurrected a few sessions later (getting linked into the plot in the process, and picking up a bonus or two to make up for it). Still, several of the players told me after the game that it was one of the most exciting sessions they'd ever played, so I guess being a jerk isn't always bad. :)

- Saph

[The Mentalist]

Then the gnoll jumps 50 feet and escapes."

This is what a nat 20 looks like.

[Katana_Geldar]

You scripted PC death? Did the players know it was coming up?

That can open a can of worms and players think they can kill themselves in dramatic fashion.

[Myshlaevsky]

You scripted PC death? Did the players know it was coming up?

That can open a can of worms and players think they can kill themselves in dramatic fashion.

I've chosen dramatic suicide before, when there was no pressing need. What is your problem with it?

I'm assuming of course that we're not talking about everyone doing it all the time.

[Serpentine]

I'm being stalked by a whitetail spider.

That said, I'm afraid I'm a bit bad at railroading. I'm pretty sure it's just because of my (also bad for the game) poor preparation skills - I have enough trouble getting the plot (such as it is right now :smallsigh:) done, much less everything around it. But I try to make it clear to my players that if they go off the rails, as it were, that's entirely my problem... though they should be willing to wait a little while for me to work something out. For example, I came up with two ways the party could get home, each with its own associated quest (I know, that "crossroads" variety of railroading) - and to find these out, we had to go find an oracle. If the party decides to figure out their own way home, I'm happy to work with that, but these are the two I came up with... Mostly I try to set up a situation, with a more-or-less specific goal, and provide the resources for the possible solutions I can think of, but let the party work out their own. My big railroad comes with moving the party from one situation to the next...

The BIGGEST railroading I've done... well, it went off the rails for different reasons. Basically, a clockwork... ninja-thing (forget what they're called) collected our blood and took it to its employer Wizard (Lord Sutchensuch, owner of the Sutchensuch Magic Emporium franchise) who then sent for us through a hired knight (my DMPC). We all signed a contract to deliver several letters across the continent. Unbeknownst to us, our blood was mixed into the ink, and the contract effectively acts as a Geas. Fun bit here: I had already decided that Lord Sutchensuch would be murdered by the time we got back. Part of the conditions of the contract was that part of the party's reward would be a discount at his Emporiums for... 10 years or something like that. Our genius Rogue decided to negotiate it... for his lifetime. The wizard's. I just shrugged and said "okay, he's fine with that" :smallamused:
Then a magical tsunami pushed our ship into a wild magic zone and we were shipwrecked on a very foreign shore, cue aforementioned double-railroad.
'course, now that's all gone down the crapper... All but two of the contract-signing characters have left the game, and of the two that remain one's my DMPC and the other was dead for several games. I don't know what to do about the letters now :smallsigh: Open to suggestions...

[Saph]

You scripted PC death?

Pretty much. Oh, I didn't actually script it, but I knew the chances of them getting through the fight without at least one or two deaths were close to nil.


Did the players know it was coming up?

Nope. Gave them quite a shock, as the campaign hadn't been too difficult up to then.

[Arakune]

Awesome stuff

- Saph

It only counts as a jerk if they: didn't wanted to be railroaded (they agreed with it) and if they didn't like the overal results (they liked it).

So far the only thing you failed miserably was to be a jerk. :smalltongue:

[Katana_Geldar]

There is a difference between gently nudging players back onto the railroad with the illusion they have a choice and throwing a star destroyer at them.

And Shar, it WAS happening all the time. I considered House Ruling, "you kill your character, you play a mediocre one of my choosing until you can behave."

[Alcopop]

Biggest jerk moment? easy. I had decided to run something a bit darker and more "real" for a change so I ran them through "corrupt paladin city". Suffice to say that after some stupid firebal’n they found themselves in a jail owned and run by the corrupt town guard that hated them.

So, within one week of jailing them I;
Cut out the vow of peace bards tongue, which made him essentially useless.
Broke the gishes arms and had his 90% of character wealth weapons confiscated.
And gave the others a good ol’ regular beatings.

All very mean :) though if I was to go into more depth, not undeserved or at least not unrealistic for their situation.

most satisfying session i've ever run. yup.

[Choco]

Or just, you know, be mature about it. I mean, people play videogames with linear storylines all the time without any tricks like that.

That indirectly gave me an awesome idea... I will handle railroading in my games just like a lot of video games do it: INVISIBLE WALLS!!

Not just the invisible walls that you physically cant get past, but also the kind where if you have a major quest in <x> city, and you try to leave, one of the party members will remind you "oh wait, we gotta do <y> first!!" and you involuntarily turn around :smallamused:

[Random832]

And if you say you don't want to do the quest, they say "But thou must!" and ask again.

[Umael]

You know, I think the concept of "jerk" is getting unfairly automatically associated with "railroad", as well as the concept of "railroad" getting muddled and confused. This is double true because players can be jerks just as much as DMs.

So let's start with "railroad".

When I think "railroad", I think of an obvious situation set up by the DM such that there is such a limit of choices throughout the entire game. Furthermore, I believe that the limit of choices is made by the whim of the DM instead of a well-designed world reflecting unfavorably on the creativity of the PCs. The overall effect often makes the players feel like their characters and their input is disregarded unless it goes in-step with the DM's telescopic vision on how the game should be run.

Examples of things sometimes associated with railroading:

"You all start in an inn...": While cliche and often boring, it is a traditional way to start the game. Starting the game with all the PCs in a single designated location is not railroading, just taking a shortcut.

"An old man in a cloak approaches you and offers you a quest...": Having a NPC approach the PCs is, again, cliche, but often a traditional way to get the PCs off to the adventure. The key is that the chance for adventure is offered and the PCs have the right to refuse. This is the DM way of saying, "Adventure starts this way, here is your map!". There should be a thin, but believable illusion of reality and choice here; responsible players either accept the quest or find another way to make the game interesting and entertaining for everyone. Irresponsible players refuse the plot hook and set about entertaining themselves at the expense of others.

"There are only two ways to get to the island, by sea or by air...": As long as the world is consistent and believable, you can offer the PCs a limited number of choices on how to proceed. But even if you limit the style to one choice, two things should remain uneffected; the style on how the PCs proceed (which should be taken into account and impact the world) and whether to proceed at all.

And the big one...

"Your mighty blow slides off the even mightier armor...": "Rigging" a fight or other detail is not necessarily the mark of railroading or even poor DMing. Again, the key is having a believable and consistent world and giving the PCs as much choice as possible given their current situation in said world. A good DM decides that if he or she wants a villain to be too tough for the PCs to stop at this point in the story, then he or she designs the villain that way. A bad DM designs the villain to be tough and then decides that the villain will be too tough for the PCs to stop.

If the PCs still manage to beat the design, the DM has two options; allow it and roll with the punches; or hastily re-design the villain to stop it (possibly by adding plot armor). The second option can be considered railroading unless the DM is good enough to incorporate the re-design so smoothly and logically that the players never realize the villain was re-designed to defeat them AND the re-design seems like such an obvious fix that it has larger ramifications that enhance the enjoyment of the gaming experience.

Yes, re-designing is "cheating", and yes, players usually object to cheating DMs, and yes, I am saying that you can "cheat" and still be a good DM. I know this is a bone of contention and a lot of people will not agree with me, but I believe (from both sides of the GM screen) that if someone is very skilled, they can pull it off. "Cheating" in this case is playing with fire, and if you aren't careful enough and aren't good enough, you'll end up getting burned. GMs who railroad are GMs who often cheat and do such a poor job of it that it exposes the lie - it's not unlike seeing a magic show being done by a magician who isn't just bad, but insists that he is the greatest and that the people don't understand his art are idiots -kinda like Uwe Boll - and of course, you paid money to see the act and now he won't refund it.

Even if a GM railroads someone, it doesn't mean he or she is a jerk. Sometimes it is a lack of confidence, bad judgement, or blind ignorance to the rules. A GM can be so obsessed with telling a good story and wanting to tell a good story that the fact that the story is a railroad plot doesn't even step onto the mental radar. In cases like this, the GM might even be surprised and hurt to find out that the players are upset and angry with the game.

A "jerk" is someone who tramples social niceties out of a sense of apathy and entitlement. A lot of GMs can be jerks without railroading. Sticking to bad rules calls, making inappropriate comments or throwing out unbalanced encounters, doing things for his or her own personal enjoyment at the expense of the players' enjoyment, deriding and mocking the players when they are uncomfortable... and that's just in-game. Coming to game late, refusing to pay his part for the pizza... you get the idea.

And as I said, players can be jerks too.

[Sinfire Titan]

I think my current 4E DM is a bit of an idiot. He enforces Crit Fail rules on everything (even Initiative!), and assigns treasure randomly (instead of picking out useful things for the party). He always throws high CRs at us (just last session he threw a CR 11 at an EL 5 party of 4 with no Controller to speak of).

How the hell do you fail initiative? Well, rolling a Nat 1 on it means you get no actions that round and have to reroll again (apparently, you stand around doing nothing), offering Combat Advantage to anyone and everyone who decides to attack you (for my Paladin, it's usually me). Next round, you reroll your Init. And you can keep fumbling.

Fumbled an Arcana/Religion/Nature check? You go blind for 1d4 rounds, no save. Not "you get misleading information". You go effing BLIND.

Fail an Insight check? Yet to happen, though I'd loathe to see it.

Apparently, he enforces this well into Epic levels. Because it makes sense that someone capable of literally talking the enemy to death can go blind from a failed Arcana check. :smallfurious:

[Mr. Mud]

Sinfire: What if the Monsters/Villains Crit Fail? I hope he has them sit around aimlessly for a round.