Bad, Weird, Failed Games

[RelentlessImp]

Well, I think it might possibly be time for another thread for those of us shell-shocked to share our bad gaming experiences - and I've got a Weird/Failed Game to share with you all.

Keep in mind, this happened roughly 2 years ago now, and the game started with a small group of six characters. There were four of us with a firm grasp on D&D 3.5 rules, all starting at 1st level, with a lot of homebrew in order to allow the players to play what they wanted. I'm not going to name any names, just use letters denoting the first letter in their names.

Let me first say that I absolutely LOVED the DM. He had a crazy damn style, and was one of the best DMs when it came to roleplaying. Unfortunately, the players - not so much. Here's the total group make-up, both the beginning and those who came later.

Me: Draconic Gnome Warblade/Warmage (aiming for Jade Phoenix Mage eventually)

Z: Human Warmage - Relative 3.5 newcomer at the time, I think, but a good roleplayer.

B1: Old Elf Bard. The player is an awesome roleplayer (I think it has to do with the fact that he has done some serious acting in his life).

B2: Half-Vampire Elf Ninja, unbeknownst to her that she is B1's bard's daughter.

C: Bugbear. C plays big, violent characters, but is a pretty cool guy and roleplayer, and frequently has crazy ideas that wind up working eventually. Also has acted in a number of plays, and it shows in his roleplaying.

J1: Mephling something-or-other. She joined late, so only participated in one or two sessions before the end.

H: Another Mephling. Her and J1's characters were sisters, I think. She also joined late, so I can't comment on either of their playstyles or roleplaying abilities.

J2: Human Cleric. Also joined later on, but was so quiet that a few of us kept forgetting he was there.

A: He was playing some sort of demonic character - I think. J2 and A didn't get a lot of screen-time; as will become apparent towards the end.

S: Half-Celestial Fighter. I love this guy, I really do, though I haven't talked to him in forever.

The Location
A house that was inhabited by S, J2, J1, and another female that mostly worked nights. This was the 'party house' of this group of friends, so there were people coming and going at all hours - until 2am when the door locked and nobody was allowed in or out except for smoking. This led to a lot of disruptions, but we were (mostly) cordial to each other, if not outright friends, so the disruptions weren't that bad.

The Game
The game started out pretty well. Me and Z's characters were traveling together; B1 was traveling alone; and B2 and C's characters were in the forest. Me and Z were traveling down a forest road, heading toward the city in the distance, when we hear a disturbance; C's character had just bashed a deer apart and started eating it, and offered B2's character some. This was primarily an introduction for most of us.

Shortcut through a lot of dialogue (the RP was pretty to start with), and B1's character has just finished playing at an inn, at which point the innkeeper's daughter invites him up to her room. We all got a laugh out of the DM, playing the innkeeper, saying in a very serious voice (with a grin) "Take care of my daughter".

So, eventually we all (individually) reach the city, find lodgings in the same inn as B1's character. Eventually, we all hook up (as a potential adventuring party), and B1's character has gotten the innkeeper's daughter pregnant. That's as far as the first session got, and I was feeling pretty good about my first group in years.

Then, over the course of the next few sessions, more and more people started drifting in. As the number of players increased, the amount we got done in the storyline decreased. I originally intended to chronicle the adventure, but the side-plots and everything happening made it difficult to keep track of. Add in the fact that I was usually drinking while gaming (and got 'weird', so they say, though I was never any weirder than normal) and a lot of the sessions were hazy a day or so later.

Suffice it to say, a few of us didn't mesh well. The game eventually imploded due to the number of players. I think the high points were the fact that my and C's characters got on a somewhat friendly level (being straightforward bruiser-types), B1 and B2's characters realized their familial ties, S's Half-Celestial absolutely owned the Fighter's Guild entrance exam, and the city was razed to the ground except for the church we spent the night in (long story).

Then we were practically forced down a well into a dungeon, where J2 and A's characters were incinerated by three shocker lizards that appeared after we wrongly answered a riddle, which was required to open a door by entering an answer to a riddle into a series of rotating dials.

And then there was Fizsprocket, one of the DM's old characters that came into the game, a hilarious kender-like thief that was friendly as hell and actually helped us out some - but never really getting us out of things brought on by our own stupidity. (A well-played DMPC, a rarity from what I hear.)

We had to call it quits because the group had grown too large to support a dedicated game session, so the group broke off into smaller splinter groups. I haven't played with them since (except for a few one-shots with a few members, and one campaign only containing B1, B2 and Z of this group), but we'll be starting a Shadowrun 4E game today with me, C, one person I've gamed with, one person I've never gamed with, and one person I've never gamed with but is a friend I've recruited into playing. B1 is going to be our GM, and with the smaller group size, we'll hopefully have several awesome games together.

Anyway, this isn't so much a horror story, I suppose - it was just weird with all the continual running subplots, the general lack of group cohesiveness, and the steadily increasing weirdness of our party. One example of a nightmare game that failed, not due to bad players or GM, but just to its sheer size.

Anyways, anyone have any bad, weird, or failed games to kickstart the thread with?

[Scarlet Tropix]

I think I can oblige with a yarn. This was a campaign we played with my older sister's ex-boyfriend while she was out of town and couldn't DM for us.

In this game, the party consisted of a Half-Orc Barbarian, a Tiefling Sorceror (me), and two Human Rogues. We had a backround together as a mercenary unit who was in it only for the money, and would gladly kill/betray/maim anyone for the right amount of cash.

So the DM started us all out on torture racks. We never did figure out why, but we woke up after all being horribly tortured in this room. We were all restrained in weird ways that didn't prevent total body movement for any of us, so between the four of us we were supposed to work something out to escape.

The Barbarian immediately ripped himself out of the wall with his abominable 20 strength and a natural twenty. He set about freeing everyone else, and we all restocked our equipment because it was right there in the room. We head out the door, and we're suddenly in this King's throne room, where this old geezer is sitting there by himself. We immediately ask if he's the guy that imprisoned and tortured us. He says yes, and now that we've broken out we're going to do exactly as he says.

We pondered that for all of a second before having the barbarian rage and split his head open with an axe. The DM decided he was done immediately afterwards because we weren't acting "In Character."

[Mauril Everleaf]

I've got a similar story to Nascent Corona.

I was playing a hobgoblin paladin in a 4e game last autumn. There was a human fighter and a doppleganger warlock in the party also.

We go on our various quests and end up working for the High Excelsior, a mighty paladin of some religious order that was never really explained. We are saved from some big demon thing and taken up to the surface city where a plague is ravaging the people. We are told that we needed to journey into the "black wastes" to find some mystical herb that would cure everyone. (The explanation was less lame than that, but for the sake of brevity I am synopsizing.) We get the mystical flower and trudged back and saved the whole city.

We get back and while the clerics and such go around healing the sick, we help rebuild some of the city that was destroyed. Being good citizens and such. We then head to the inn where we are staying and rest.

We are wakened by some pounding on our door and on opening it, are promptly arrested. Very confused, we decide not to resist, hoping to work things out with the authorities. We were the heroes. Did they forget that?

We get marched into the prison and locked away, all of our gear stripped from us. The human sat dumbly in the corner of the cell and the warlock amused himself while my paladin (a paladin of Tempus) is furious. He is trying everything he can to get out, even attacking the guard that entered to try to haul him out of the cell. You see, we were all informed that we were slated for execution. No trial, no crime. Just execution. Two guards entered and were able to subdue me (mostly by DM fiat). We were paraded into a large gathering room were three gallows stood. We were hauled up to the front and placed in the nooses.

By this time I am getting annoyed, verging on angry, and my paladin is furious. The executioner comes up and a priest recites us our last rites. The lever for the trapdoors is pulled....and nothing happens. A paladin from the city walks forward and removed the nooses from our necks while laughing. He then tells us that we have been initiated into their order and offers us some blue cloaks. My hobgoblin punches the man in the face and storms out of the room. The DM is shocked and asks why I did that. I told him that my character was furious at the mistreatment he just received and would never work for this order. In fact, given the opportunity, he would work against this order. (Unaligned hobgoblin paladin of a god of storms, remember.)

The DM balks at my reaction, claiming that my character wouldn't react that way or even feel that way, but I stood my ground. I knew what Hadrik would do and I knew his reaction was appropriate for the character I had built for the last seven levels. The DM ended the session because everything he had planned assumed that we would blithely accept this initiation. The game soon dissolved since my character was unwilling to work with the only sect of "good guys" in the DM's world.

[Scarlet Tropix]

Ouch. Mauril, that's pretty awful. Why did he think you'd even go along with that?!

[Mauril Everleaf]

I still, to this day, have no idea. The other players went along with it because a) the fighter doesn't pay attention during the role play sections and just waits to hit stuff with his sword, and b) the warlock metagamed his reasoning, concluding that this was just a DM device to move them along in the plot. I, on the other hand, paid attention to the events and wanted to stay in-character. The result was rightful indignation and character appropriate reactions.

I haven't played with this DM but one since that game. I should tell that story too...

Second story:
DM from above has a bachelor party and decides to have a big DnD session. (I could have thought of a dozen better things to do, but that was his choice.) We roll up new characters and I choose a Lizardfolk Thaneborn Barbarian who is the prince of a backwater clan of lizardfolk who are trying to bring their people into the modern age.

There are five other players, another lizardfolk (this one is a sorcerer), a dwarf paladin, a human rogue, a human warlock and a minotaur fighter. Anyway, we start in some sort of diplomatic meeting and are rather quickly attacked. For reasons that can only be described as metagamed the rest of the players grouped up to fight the bad guys. I stayed on my side of the room and, with some help from my sorcerer friend, defended my side of the room.

For more reasons that I just accepted as being necessary, the six of us are sent on a quest to find the guy who orchestrated this attack. So we follow some clues and head east to a large mining complex. This is where it gets annoying.

The warlock decides that we should pretend to be merchants looking to invest in the mine to give us an excuse to explore it. (This part is fine.) We then spend the next four hours bartering with the guy at the mine over reasonable prices for whatever they were mining, the general business structure of the mine, the treatment and acquisition of labor and all the annoying stuff that would be important if we were playing Entrepreneurs & Office Workers and not Dungeons & Dragons.

My character, who was required to stay outside of town for all of this (which took four days, in-world), was getting frustrated that he wasn't being allowed to pursue the man who had slaughtered his comrades. So he started to head out on his own (the sorcerer decided to keep waiting) to find the man. A trail goes cold very quickly and sitting in the woods was doing him no good (if he had entered the town, he would have been instantly killed).

Everyone starts yelling at me that I was being unreasonable and that I should just wait for them. I explained that their characters didn't know I had left, if they remembered I even existed, and that I had every reason to pursue the killer by myself if they weren't going to help me.

The DM told me that he was not going to run a separate campaign for my character and that I should just wait. I told him that Ixta Ka dun Kin'Roth (my barbarian prince) continued into the forest to try to find the trail of the man he was sent to pursue. He told me that I could roll up a new character if I wanted to "play nice". I left the game and started playing Left 4 Dead on the xbox in the other room.

[sofawall]

#1 rule of D&D: Don't ever split up.

[MichielHagen]

I still, to this day, have no idea. The other players went along with it because a) the fighter doesn't pay attention during the role play sections and just waits to hit stuff with his sword, and b) the warlock metagamed his reasoning, concluding that this was just a DM device to move them along in the plot. I, on the other hand, paid attention to the events and wanted to stay in-character. The result was rightful indignation and character appropriate reactions.

I haven't played with this DM but one since that game. I should tell that story too...

Second story:
DM from above has a bachelor party and decides to have a big DnD session. (I could have thought of a dozen better things to do, but that was his choice.) We roll up new characters and I choose a Lizardfolk Thaneborn Barbarian who is the prince of a backwater clan of lizardfolk who are trying to bring their people into the modern age.

There are five other players, another lizardfolk (this one is a sorcerer), a dwarf paladin, a human rogue, a human warlock and a minotaur fighter. Anyway, we start in some sort of diplomatic meeting and are rather quickly attacked. For reasons that can only be described as metagamed the rest of the players grouped up to fight the bad guys. I stayed on my side of the room and, with some help from my sorcerer friend, defended my side of the room.

For more reasons that I just accepted as being necessary, the six of us are sent on a quest to find the guy who orchestrated this attack. So we follow some clues and head east to a large mining complex. This is where it gets annoying.

The warlock decides that we should pretend to be merchants looking to invest in the mine to give us an excuse to explore it. (This part is fine.) We then spend the next four hours bartering with the guy at the mine over reasonable prices for whatever they were mining, the general business structure of the mine, the treatment and acquisition of labor and all the annoying stuff that would be important if we were playing Entrepreneurs & Office Workers and not Dungeons & Dragons.

My character, who was required to stay outside of town for all of this (which took four days, in-world), was getting frustrated that he wasn't being allowed to pursue the man who had slaughtered his comrades. So he started to head out on his own (the sorcerer decided to keep waiting) to find the man. A trail goes cold very quickly and sitting in the woods was doing him no good (if he had entered the town, he would have been instantly killed).

Everyone starts yelling at me that I was being unreasonable and that I should just wait for them. I explained that their characters didn't know I had left, if they remembered I even existed, and that I had every reason to pursue the killer by myself if they weren't going to help me.

The DM told me that he was not going to run a separate campaign for my character and that I should just wait. I told him that Ixta Ka dun Kin'Roth (my barbarian prince) continued into the forest to try to find the trail of the man he was sent to pursue. He told me that I could roll up a new character if I wanted to "play nice". I left the game and started playing Left 4 Dead on the xbox in the other room.

Though you are correct on the "what would my character do". I can completely understand the point of the DM, it makes his life much more difficult. Not every DM is a brilliant man who can plan everything perfectly and improvise to every decision players make.
It also seems to me that your were mostly annoyed yourself by the roleplaying the other players were doing, which you (and seemingly only you) felt was boring.
I have never DM-ed myself, but i guess in this situation i would have you face a challenge worthy of the party as a whole, should you decide to venture of by yourself. But obviously this would be overpowering for you alone, then let you create a new character to fit the story.

Though you have a stronger point in the first story, you seem to have a tendecy to "not follow the intended route". Which can be troublesome for a not so experienced, ill-prepared DM. Try to be a bit more lenient towards him when you play, it will make the game more fun for the both of you.....seriously....it will.

[Auroragriffon]

The worst experience I had was when a friend of our barbarian joined our campaign.
The guy was basically a jerk, but in a way that was really hard for anyone to confront him about, kind of “If you’re offended by what I said, well I was just joking! You have no sense of humor, do you?!” Ugh.

He would hit on the women in the group (including me), again using the “you don’t like it? I was just kidding!” tactic (which, by the way, he always had to resort to), and in-game do things like try to start a crossbow fight with the other players, by shooting one of us while the DM readied the next part of the game. He made it rather difficult to progress the game and story.

This all ended when a few of us were playing a videogame while waiting for the rest of the group to show up. The barbarian was as master at the game, and after one particularly impressive move, Mr. Jerk asked me if that was my character that had pulled if off, and after I told him it had been the barbarian, he looked rather disappointed and said “Oh, well I can’t grab his boob in celebration.” :smalleek:

He left after the barbarian talked to him in private about his inappropriate behavior, because, according to him, he felt he had been insulted. :smallannoyed:

The group was rather relieved when he left.

[Mauril Everleaf]

MichielHagen, while I would otherwise agree with you that I should be lenient, this was a case where I was being actively excluded from playing. Whenever I would try to let the DM know what my character was trying to do while being stuck in the woods, I would get cut off, either by one of the players, or the DM himself.

At one point during the four hour slog of minutiae that were actively detracting us from our intended purpose, I wandered into the other room to mess around with something to keep myself from falling asleep. I'm pretty sure the only player who realized I had left was the other lizardfolk player who had stepped into the attached kitchen to look for food.

So I decided to actually do something so that I could be included, or remove my character from the game so that I could go do something else.

EDIT: Also, this DM has been running campaigns since he was 12. At this point he was 21. I consider him to be rather experienced.

[TheCountAlucard]

I was in a game that dissolved due to too many players. A real shame, too, because I'd been having fun with it.

We were playing SWSE. There was a Twi'lek crime lord (me), a Mandalorian soldier, a human Jedi, an assassin droid, a Bothan scout, a Duros pilot, a Togorian soldier, a Wookiee pilot, and a human pilot.

Originally there were just four of us, but as the game progressed, we picked up more and more players. It was rather fun, but toward the end, the GM said, "Y'know, prepping for you guys isn't easy. Perhaps if we split it up into two groups, four of you guys on Tuesday and four of you guys on Thursday..."

That was the death sentence, right there. My group hung on for one more session, and the other group just gave up. :smallfrown:

[Nai_Calus]

This is long. Be warned.


Core only, start at 7th level. Swashbuckler is OKed as a class when I ask. I make up the character, Bard 4/Swashbuckler 3(Mechanically ass, but it's what the backstory dictated. I should have gone straight wizard, druid or cleric, but I didn't know at the time).

I type up the backstory, lay out the stats, come up with a possible equipment list that's about half of the suggested Wealth By Level because I don't know yet how DM wants to do gear. Non-magical elven chain, I figured that since Swashbuckler was OK weapons from the same book were OK, so suggested Masterwork Elven Thinblade and Elven Lightblade since I was doing TWF. Handy Haversack. Suggested Elven Courtblade as a possibility for having a slashing weapon in case such was needed. Provided alternatives in case. DM nixes this, doesn't want us having magical gear, can't use the elven weapons even though I'd need a feat for them because he wants us sticking to core as much as possible. Should have gone wiz, cler or dru right there but stuck with character.

I go with mundane Studded Leather, a Rapier, a Shortsword, a Composite Longbow with +2 STR bonus to let me take advantage of my 14 STR, and a longsword. I make the weapons masterwork because the DM didn't say anything about that part of it and provided no further guidelines to me.

We start at a crossroads. My Bard/Swashbuckler, a lolita paladin who doesn't speak, and a rogue. There's a no-show so it's just us three. We're all supposed to be looking for this sage guy but learned he'd been kidnapped by goblins, so we're all seperately arriving near this goblin fort. We're all suddenly well within spotting distance of them even though we all wanted to try to sneak up, and are of course spotted. The rogue bull****s his way in with us by claiming he's a slaver and selling women. (My character, incidentally, is a man, but is a prettyboy androgynous half-elf.) We're allowed in, and before long of course a fight starts with us versus a crapload of goblins, who are thankfully all about L2. We also have to stop them from getting to their cannon and firing it at us, so the Paladin splits off while me and the Rogue take out the rest. Then the boss suddenly comes out on an ogre and we fight that, it almost kills the rogue before he ruins its **** finally with a sneak attack that does like 50 damage. We rescue the sage guy, some wizard shows up while we hide and kills the boss of the goblins who'd been hiding around, we go on.

Next session, Paladin isn't there and never is again. We gain a sorceror and a dwarf fighter. Dwarf is new between sessions. I help him with his character and tell him what little I know about equipment. DM IMs me later and gets cranky because I had all my weapons as Masterwork which he'd found out from Dwarf player, but he wanted us to only have a single Masterwork item. Telling me this might have been useful. Actually looking at my character sheet at some point during the first session to make sure it was right would have been useful as well and would have revealed this.

Sage guy reveals that someone is plotting to TAEK OVAR ZA WARUDO using three MacGuffins and tasks us with finding them. So we set out and the first place we're going to is a monastery.

The boss of this guy is this monk dude who, despite being a Monk, could kick the **** out of the entire party and can't be hurt when the rogue tries. We end up in his basement after some guys attack the monastery, which is otherwise full of little kids(The DM gets cranky because we didn't rifle through all their rooms for stuff. We're not going to steal from friggin' kids). Sorceror uses Tenser's Floating Disc to move a bookcase to block the door, which the DM allows.

We find a Babau who we talk to and then it goes away. The DM can't figure out why my Chaotic Good character who's spent several years living in the Outer Planes and just recently came back to the normal world is pissed at the thing for merely existing and doesn't want to play nice with it. Gee, I wonder.

And then we have a bizzare puzzle which involves ignoring the laws of reality and how big squares are to basically play sokoban with zombies. The hallway is ten feet wide and they're on diagonals from eachother, but we're 'not comfortable moving between them'. Even though we are comfortable pushing them around, and pushing them past each other. The sorceror tries to move another bookshelf to try to come up with some other method for getting past it, but he isn't allowed to.

We eventually get past it, find a +1 Cold Iron Longsword on the way that my character ends up with(This is the only thing he gets all campaign), get past some more stuff, and get to where the MacGuffin book is. And hey guess what there's the Babau. Take a couple moments to look up Babau in the SRD and come back here and tell me why this isn't going to work as an encounter for us.

We all have d8 at best weapons which other than my longsword have virtually no chance of overcoming the thing's DR. They're masterwork at best except for my Longsword. All the Sorceror's attack spells are Lightning and don't do anything to it. We're getting ripped up, nobody but me can attack the thing because it just melts our weapons besides the longsword, and while I have by far the best Reflex save I'm probably going to fail it enough to melt the sword before it dies. The rogue was absent and the DM actually brought him in to try to help. We say screw it, the sorceror grabs the book with Mage Hand, we both cast Mirror Image and we throw the DM off by running, passing the book back and forth to confuse it. He actually allows this and we're eventually able to use the book to un-summon the thing. There was a succubus too, but she didn't do anything except drain the fighter a couple levels during the unsummoning, before getting unsummoned along with him.

We never did get to figure anything out about why this guy has demons in his basement, zombies, or the torture table for pulling people apart with the ghost of a kid in the room.

The rogue goes off with the book and is never seen again obviously, which was pretty much forced into happening despite my character not trusting him and not wanting to let him go off alone.

So we next go to this warrior city, which has been taken over by... More goblins. We fall into the most obvious trap ever that we know damned well we're going into that we don't see the solution to because it requires being moronic - The goblin we've been marching through a cave that the sorceror's small earth elemental's familiar had held was suddenly free, and shot something on a pillar that collapsed the cave behind us before she jumped down into this conveyor belt that's a good ten feet down from floor level. The left and right are blocked off with mine carts with barrels that apparently have like gunpowder in them, other goblins shoot the barrels which are now on fire and going to explode.

Unsurprisingly nobody wants to go near flaming barrels that might explode at any moment(We were supposed to do just that, *pick them up*, and throw them down on the conveyor belt). So we jump down and surprise surprise we soon find ourselves in a large 10 foot deep pit, the goblins push rocks down from above the ladders leading out of it and we're trapped in an ambush. More flaming barrels are thrown, they explode for large amounts of damage and we're all knocked unconscious. No attempt to get out of the pit works at all by dm fiat, all we could do was try to throw the barrels away from us, which didn't really work unsurprisingly but whatever.

So we awaken in loincloths, chained up and being used as slaves. Most of us are annoyed because yeah obvious trap was obvious but we were probably going to end up unconcious regardless. Oh well, no big deal.

We lose the sorceror to this who was annoyed by having his attempts to do stuff shut down. (Someone sitting on his elemental was supposedly keeping it from moving, for example) The rogue's player's new character is here, also enslaved. New character and my character don't get along at all, no surprise.

We escape eventually, pick up one of the goblins that comes along with us for some reason, and start going through this warrior's trial thing where we get seperated forcibly.

Fighter and the new Marshal go one way. I and an NPC archer go the other way. You can already tell this won't end well, I hate puzzles and I'm terrible at them.

My first challenge involves my greatest pet peeve, a giant lake of lava that despite being a mere few feet above I am not burned by. I hate lava that doesn't act like lava. There's a bunch of small islands, one to three squares, and three cannons that aim each round and shoot the next. One of them is hooked up to a series of islands with pressure plates that aim the cannon down the row of them automatically that's the only 'valid' way to go. There are two other islands that can reach the exit area. One has a cannon on it and the other is cut off from the series of islands that reach the exit by one square with a wall of flames. My mind, always one for thinking sideways, immediately thinks to use one of those and the hells with the puzzle, I have +10 to my Balance check, I think I can manage to land on a cannon. Or just jump through the fire and take some piddly little fire damage, since the cannons have shot holes in the walls that are filling the chamber with more lava and I have like sixteen rounds to figure this thing out.

Both are shot down, without any reason given as to why I can't other than that I can't. While moving around randomly trying to figure out what to do, I manage, in the best 'screw you, DM' moment ever, to have managed to stand in the one spot that solves it, and accidentally solve the thing. Oh, but our troubles aren't over. I had cast Expeditious Retreat on myself so I could move around faster, so I was ahead of the NPC by several squares, when a cannon shoots the wall between us. This causes... A wall of the same fire that was blocking that one square! I'm annoyed at the DM because he's like 'save yourself or save your companion' and I point out that I *can't* because of the fire. Except no, for no readily explicable reason this fire can be jumped through once I talk the guy into it. We get out just in the nick of time and my hatred of puzzles is reinforced because that one frankly sucked in its execution.

Next puzzle we're briefly reunited. We get past it, it's annoying, DM doesn't give us the information we're supposed to get to let me make a decision about what I'm supposed to do. Eventually I do get it for my character and my choice is clear because my character knowing this would only do one thing.

We're split again, we both skip identical optional puzzles none of us wants to touch, and we enter these elevators with huge gears in each corner, and six golems standing around the room. We're still split. As far as we know the pathway has been perfectly straight thus far, thus not giving us an important clue that might actually give this thing away in-character.

Two of the golems move to attack for each group. We fight but nobody is getting anywhere. I consider trying to shove them into the gears but dismiss it because knowing the DM, it'll probably just jam the gears.

So none of us have really seen the others fighting in their usual manner before. So none of our characters have any hope in hell of realising what's going on via noticing familiar tactics from the others, and none of us get it out of character either because we're not looking at eachother's battle maps and I can't even see the tokens on theirs anyway(We were using Fantasy Grounds, and the golem tokens hadn't loaded for me, so my map was marked with red dots to show the positions, but the other map wasn't marked with anything on my screen). None of us care what damage the other side is doing or taking because we're, as far as we know, seperate.

We are, of course, fighting each other. Specifically, I'm fighting two guys in plate armor with much better AC than me. So I can barely hit these things, but with my terrible AC I'm taking damage like mad since I've wound up fighting the Fighter, who is of course Power Attacking.

And oh! The DM apparently has it in for me! Suddenly, the spear the fighter was using at the time(It was some stupid thing where we had to use certain weapon types for the challenges) did an extra 1 damage a hit for being masterwork. My protestations that that isn't how masterwork *works* are ignored. The spear he's using is tipped with a diamond, he picked it up from a puzzle they'd had earlier where two perpendicular rows of clay and obsidian golems with diamond and ruby tipped spears had advanced and destroyed each other at the overlapping corner each round. So he asks if it does any extra damage against the golems, and the DM decides that yeah, you know, it does. So it suddenly does four extra damage as well for being tipped with diamond, for a total of five extra damage.

Unsurprisingly, it isn't long at all before I go down. I fall to a critical hit with the spear that does a total of 33 damage. The damage roll for the hit was a 1. I go to -6. In fact, if it had been any other roll but a 1 on the damage die, I would have died. 2 would have taken me to -9 where I would have died before I could have been stabilized, 3 or more would have killed me outright. We broke off for the day then. Wound up getting into a fight on AIM with the Marshal's player later that night when I pondered what we weren't seeing. (Part of the in-character conflict came from his out of character conflict with me, in fact his character had earlier attacked my character. Non-lethal, but still Not Cool.)

Next session resumes with me making and failing the stabilization roll. The Marshal's player is mocking me during this and I have an urge to simply quit then and there, which I really should have, but I hang in. NPC archer(Who by the way the DM kept forgetting to take his turn) triest to stabilize me, fails. My turn comes by again, another failed stabilization throw. I'm down to -8, archer gets me stabilized his next turn. I'm out for the fight, of course, he has no way to heal me. He unsurprisingly dies soon thereafter. Around then is when the Marshal's player finally realises what's going on, and makes the obvious comment that he sees it, but his character wouldn't, since, yeah, this entire thing is massively metagamey since there's no way for our characters to tell this thing. The other golems attack them then, and two are knocked down quickly before the farce ends and it's revealed that the 'golems' are party members and NPCs(The Marshal has Leadership so we have to put up with his eight or so followers). The two dying guys get healed, the Archer was knocked below -10 and is just plain dead and someone finally remembers to heal me so I can not be unconscious five minutes later.

We go through more puzzles, involving more friggin' lava, and finally come face to face with more NPC opponents. They're the group we've heard abotu that had gone through one of the parts of the trial ahead of us and their crazy leader who had an amulet we needed had declared himself the boss of this thing and was generally apparently being crazy. They're described to us as any one of them being a difficult fight for the three of us(A recurring theme of this campaign is NPCs we can't touch), and there's six of them. Gee, are we going to try to convince them to work with us to stop their crazy leader, or are we going to try to convince them to work with us to stop their crazy leader.

So we start talking to them, and the next 45 minutes are spent trying to convince them to help us. In character. I ask finally if I can roll Diplomacy to see how well my attempt has gone over. My Diplomacy mod is +18(It was actually hilariously +20 but I'd forgotten one of my skill synergy bonuses) so I should have a pretty good chance of influencing their attitude positively. No, I can't! :D Wait, what. If you didn't want us using social skills why didn't you tell us this before the campaign, I would have put cross-class ranks in Perception instead. *facepalm* Session ends for the week. I spend the week thinking of what I'm going to say to try to finally get these guys on our side.

By next week though, I'm just plain annoyed and don't even care anymore, so I just say some of the stuff I'd pondered and quit and leave it over to the Marshal guy to try. He says a couple of things that are basically what I'd said the previous week, takes off his helmet he's never taken off to reveal that he's sort of 'kind of undead' and suddenly they're working with us. What the flying hells was I even trying for, then?! Argh! (Yes. Kind of undead. This makes no sense and isn't possible, but there it was.) I asked about this later and was told 'well he's better at diplomacy than you are so I had to give it to him'. Referring not to the character's Diplomacy skill, but to the actual player. Uh. DM. That's what social skills are for, because no, I am not a charismatic diplomat like my character is and I cannot use body language or voice tone via a chat program. Sigh. Basically the thing came off as the Marshal being the only one who could have affected things and I shouldn't even have bothered trying.

I'm done with my character here. The DM obviously has it in for him and he doesn't get along with the Marshal and in fact has no actual in-game reason to work with this jerk who had attacked him earlier in this very dangerous dungeon. I want a new one, stat, and had brought it up before this session, in fact, after the DM had refused to let me actually make a Diplomacy check. I make up a CN human cleric of Olidammara. I like him a lot. I'm jonesing to start using him. Even I hate my old character at this point, because he's useless and I'm tired of the in-fighting with the Marshal.

This session... We start a plotline that finally involves my Bard/Swashbuckler. We pass a secret door going further into this complex and the DM has my half-elf make a check to notice it. Yeah, my half-elf. Then he remembers to have the Marshal, who's an elf, make it as well. I notice the door.(Marshal fails his check, which is amusing) We sent an NPC through to scout, he comes back with news that he saw these goblin guys, one of whom turns out to be the boss from the first fortress, who apparently has a grudge against me. He's hired this band of uber-assassins to send after my character. The DM assures me that I might have a chance to avoid these guys. Oh thanks.

This of course is going to force me into either using my character I'm sick of for a while longer, or to just let him get killed, which, I like the character, just not using him in this campaign, and I don't want to do it. So yeah, this is a really bad time to suddenly decide to actually pay attention to my character that had been ignored and shut down over the course of the campaign.

We do another puzzle which actually goes well, we break for some holidays, and we thankfully never have another session.

Asking the DM what would have happened later on, he tells me about the boss of that dungeon's 200 HP, how he would have recharged after reaching 0 and we would have had to fight him even MORE after that, and then tells me exactly how the rest of the train ride would have gone, he had the exact events of the campaign planned out to the end. The sage guy, unsurprisingly, was the guy who wanted to take over the world, though we never got any hints to that, of course. The dungeon we didn't get to do for the third MacGuffin sounded like it would have actually been really fun even with the railroading and shutting down, which was a shame.


To this day I cannot explain even to myself why the hell I stayed in the campaign until its death. <_>;

Maybe someday I'll get to use that cleric. I still want to use him. :<

[Jair Barik]

This is long. Be warned.


Core only, start at 7th level. Swashbuckler is OKed as a class when I ask. I make up the character, Bard 4/Swashbuckler 3(Mechanically ass, but it's what the backstory dictated. I should have gone straight wizard, druid or cleric, but I didn't know at the time).

I type up the backstory, lay out the stats, come up with a possible equipment list that's about half of the suggested Wealth By Level because I don't know yet how DM wants to do gear. Non-magical elven chain, I figured that since Swashbuckler was OK weapons from the same book were OK, so suggested Masterwork Elven Thinblade and Elven Lightblade since I was doing TWF. Handy Haversack. Suggested Elven Courtblade as a possibility for having a slashing weapon in case such was needed. Provided alternatives in case. DM nixes this, doesn't want us having magical gear, can't use the elven weapons even though I'd need a feat for them because he wants us sticking to core as much as possible. Should have gone wiz, cler or dru right there but stuck with character.

I go with mundane Studded Leather, a Rapier, a Shortsword, a Composite Longbow with +2 STR bonus to let me take advantage of my 14 STR, and a longsword. I make the weapons masterwork because the DM didn't say anything about that part of it and provided no further guidelines to me.

We start at a crossroads. My Bard/Swashbuckler, a lolita paladin who doesn't speak, and a rogue. There's a no-show so it's just us three. We're all supposed to be looking for this sage guy but learned he'd been kidnapped by goblins, so we're all seperately arriving near this goblin fort. We're all suddenly well within spotting distance of them even though we all wanted to try to sneak up, and are of course spotted. The rogue bull****s his way in with us by claiming he's a slaver and selling women. (My character, incidentally, is a man, but is a prettyboy androgynous half-elf.) We're allowed in, and before long of course a fight starts with us versus a crapload of goblins, who are thankfully all about L2. We also have to stop them from getting to their cannon and firing it at us, so the Paladin splits off while me and the Rogue take out the rest. Then the boss suddenly comes out on an ogre and we fight that, it almost kills the rogue before he ruins its **** finally with a sneak attack that does like 50 damage. We rescue the sage guy, some wizard shows up while we hide and kills the boss of the goblins who'd been hiding around, we go on.

Next session, Paladin isn't there and never is again. We gain a sorceror and a dwarf fighter. Dwarf is new between sessions. I help him with his character and tell him what little I know about equipment. DM IMs me later and gets cranky because I had all my weapons as Masterwork which he'd found out from Dwarf player, but he wanted us to only have a single Masterwork item. Telling me this might have been useful. Actually looking at my character sheet at some point during the first session to make sure it was right would have been useful as well and would have revealed this.

Sage guy reveals that someone is plotting to TAEK OVAR ZA WARUDO using three MacGuffins and tasks us with finding them. So we set out and the first place we're going to is a monastery.

The boss of this guy is this monk dude who, despite being a Monk, could kick the **** out of the entire party and can't be hurt when the rogue tries. We end up in his basement after some guys attack the monastery, which is otherwise full of little kids(The DM gets cranky because we didn't rifle through all their rooms for stuff. We're not going to steal from friggin' kids). Sorceror uses Tenser's Floating Disc to move a bookcase to block the door, which the DM allows.

We find a Babau who we talk to and then it goes away. The DM can't figure out why my Chaotic Good character who's spent several years living in the Outer Planes and just recently came back to the normal world is pissed at the thing for merely existing and doesn't want to play nice with it. Gee, I wonder.

And then we have a bizzare puzzle which involves ignoring the laws of reality and how big squares are to basically play sokoban with zombies. The hallway is ten feet wide and they're on diagonals from eachother, but we're 'not comfortable moving between them'. Even though we are comfortable pushing them around, and pushing them past each other. The sorceror tries to move another bookshelf to try to come up with some other method for getting past it, but he isn't allowed to.

We eventually get past it, find a +1 Cold Iron Longsword on the way that my character ends up with(This is the only thing he gets all campaign), get past some more stuff, and get to where the MacGuffin book is. And hey guess what there's the Babau. Take a couple moments to look up Babau in the SRD and come back here and tell me why this isn't going to work as an encounter for us.

We all have d8 at best weapons which other than my longsword have virtually no chance of overcoming the thing's DR. They're masterwork at best except for my Longsword. All the Sorceror's attack spells are Lightning and don't do anything to it. We're getting ripped up, nobody but me can attack the thing because it just melts our weapons besides the longsword, and while I have by far the best Reflex save I'm probably going to fail it enough to melt the sword before it dies. The rogue was absent and the DM actually brought him in to try to help. We say screw it, the sorceror grabs the book with Mage Hand, we both cast Mirror Image and we throw the DM off by running, passing the book back and forth to confuse it. He actually allows this and we're eventually able to use the book to un-summon the thing. There was a succubus too, but she didn't do anything except drain the fighter a couple levels during the unsummoning, before getting unsummoned along with him.

We never did get to figure anything out about why this guy has demons in his basement, zombies, or the torture table for pulling people apart with the ghost of a kid in the room.

The rogue goes off with the book and is never seen again obviously, which was pretty much forced into happening despite my character not trusting him and not wanting to let him go off alone.

So we next go to this warrior city, which has been taken over by... More goblins. We fall into the most obvious trap ever that we know damned well we're going into that we don't see the solution to because it requires being moronic - The goblin we've been marching through a cave that the sorceror's small earth elemental's familiar had held was suddenly free, and shot something on a pillar that collapsed the cave behind us before she jumped down into this conveyor belt that's a good ten feet down from floor level. The left and right are blocked off with mine carts with barrels that apparently have like gunpowder in them, other goblins shoot the barrels which are now on fire and going to explode.

Unsurprisingly nobody wants to go near flaming barrels that might explode at any moment(We were supposed to do just that, *pick them up*, and throw them down on the conveyor belt). So we jump down and surprise surprise we soon find ourselves in a large 10 foot deep pit, the goblins push rocks down from above the ladders leading out of it and we're trapped in an ambush. More flaming barrels are thrown, they explode for large amounts of damage and we're all knocked unconscious. No attempt to get out of the pit works at all by dm fiat, all we could do was try to throw the barrels away from us, which didn't really work unsurprisingly but whatever.

So we awaken in loincloths, chained up and being used as slaves. Most of us are annoyed because yeah obvious trap was obvious but we were probably going to end up unconcious regardless. Oh well, no big deal.

We lose the sorceror to this who was annoyed by having his attempts to do stuff shut down. (Someone sitting on his elemental was supposedly keeping it from moving, for example) The rogue's player's new character is here, also enslaved. New character and my character don't get along at all, no surprise.

We escape eventually, pick up one of the goblins that comes along with us for some reason, and start going through this warrior's trial thing where we get seperated forcibly.

Fighter and the new Marshal go one way. I and an NPC archer go the other way. You can already tell this won't end well, I hate puzzles and I'm terrible at them.

My first challenge involves my greatest pet peeve, a giant lake of lava that despite being a mere few feet above I am not burned by. I hate lava that doesn't act like lava. There's a bunch of small islands, one to three squares, and three cannons that aim each round and shoot the next. One of them is hooked up to a series of islands with pressure plates that aim the cannon down the row of them automatically that's the only 'valid' way to go. There are two other islands that can reach the exit area. One has a cannon on it and the other is cut off from the series of islands that reach the exit by one square with a wall of flames. My mind, always one for thinking sideways, immediately thinks to use one of those and the hells with the puzzle, I have +10 to my Balance check, I think I can manage to land on a cannon. Or just jump through the fire and take some piddly little fire damage, since the cannons have shot holes in the walls that are filling the chamber with more lava and I have like sixteen rounds to figure this thing out.

Both are shot down, without any reason given as to why I can't other than that I can't. While moving around randomly trying to figure out what to do, I manage, in the best 'screw you, DM' moment ever, to have managed to stand in the one spot that solves it, and accidentally solve the thing. Oh, but our troubles aren't over. I had cast Expeditious Retreat on myself so I could move around faster, so I was ahead of the NPC by several squares, when a cannon shoots the wall between us. This causes... A wall of the same fire that was blocking that one square! I'm annoyed at the DM because he's like 'save yourself or save your companion' and I point out that I *can't* because of the fire. Except no, for no readily explicable reason this fire can be jumped through once I talk the guy into it. We get out just in the nick of time and my hatred of puzzles is reinforced because that one frankly sucked in its execution.

Next puzzle we're briefly reunited. We get past it, it's annoying, DM doesn't give us the information we're supposed to get to let me make a decision about what I'm supposed to do. Eventually I do get it for my character and my choice is clear because my character knowing this would only do one thing.

We're split again, we both skip identical optional puzzles none of us wants to touch, and we enter these elevators with huge gears in each corner, and six golems standing around the room. We're still split. As far as we know the pathway has been perfectly straight thus far, thus not giving us an important clue that might actually give this thing away in-character.

Two of the golems move to attack for each group. We fight but nobody is getting anywhere. I consider trying to shove them into the gears but dismiss it because knowing the DM, it'll probably just jam the gears.

So none of us have really seen the others fighting in their usual manner before. So none of our characters have any hope in hell of realising what's going on via noticing familiar tactics from the others, and none of us get it out of character either because we're not looking at eachother's battle maps and I can't even see the tokens on theirs anyway(We were using Fantasy Grounds, and the golem tokens hadn't loaded for me, so my map was marked with red dots to show the positions, but the other map wasn't marked with anything on my screen). None of us care what damage the other side is doing or taking because we're, as far as we know, seperate.

We are, of course, fighting each other. Specifically, I'm fighting two guys in plate armor with much better AC than me. So I can barely hit these things, but with my terrible AC I'm taking damage like mad since I've wound up fighting the Fighter, who is of course Power Attacking.

And oh! The DM apparently has it in for me! Suddenly, the spear the fighter was using at the time(It was some stupid thing where we had to use certain weapon types for the challenges) did an extra 1 damage a hit for being masterwork. My protestations that that isn't how masterwork *works* are ignored. The spear he's using is tipped with a diamond, he picked it up from a puzzle they'd had earlier where two perpendicular rows of clay and obsidian golems with diamond and ruby tipped spears had advanced and destroyed each other at the overlapping corner each round. So he asks if it does any extra damage against the golems, and the DM decides that yeah, you know, it does. So it suddenly does four extra damage as well for being tipped with diamond, for a total of five extra damage.

Unsurprisingly, it isn't long at all before I go down. I fall to a critical hit with the spear that does a total of 33 damage. The damage roll for the hit was a 1. I go to -6. In fact, if it had been any other roll but a 1 on the damage die, I would have died. 2 would have taken me to -9 where I would have died before I could have been stabilized, 3 or more would have killed me outright. We broke off for the day then. Wound up getting into a fight on AIM with the Marshal's player later that night when I pondered what we weren't seeing. (Part of the in-character conflict came from his out of character conflict with me, in fact his character had earlier attacked my character. Non-lethal, but still Not Cool.)

Next session resumes with me making and failing the stabilization roll. The Marshal's player is mocking me during this and I have an urge to simply quit then and there, which I really should have, but I hang in. NPC archer(Who by the way the DM kept forgetting to take his turn) triest to stabilize me, fails. My turn comes by again, another failed stabilization throw. I'm down to -8, archer gets me stabilized his next turn. I'm out for the fight, of course, he has no way to heal me. He unsurprisingly dies soon thereafter. Around then is when the Marshal's player finally realises what's going on, and makes the obvious comment that he sees it, but his character wouldn't, since, yeah, this entire thing is massively metagamey since there's no way for our characters to tell this thing. The other golems attack them then, and two are knocked down quickly before the farce ends and it's revealed that the 'golems' are party members and NPCs(The Marshal has Leadership so we have to put up with his eight or so followers). The two dying guys get healed, the Archer was knocked below -10 and is just plain dead and someone finally remembers to heal me so I can not be unconscious five minutes later.

We go through more puzzles, involving more friggin' lava, and finally come face to face with more NPC opponents. They're the group we've heard abotu that had gone through one of the parts of the trial ahead of us and their crazy leader who had an amulet we needed had declared himself the boss of this thing and was generally apparently being crazy. They're described to us as any one of them being a difficult fight for the three of us(A recurring theme of this campaign is NPCs we can't touch), and there's six of them. Gee, are we going to try to convince them to work with us to stop their crazy leader, or are we going to try to convince them to work with us to stop their crazy leader.

So we start talking to them, and the next 45 minutes are spent trying to convince them to help us. In character. I ask finally if I can roll Diplomacy to see how well my attempt has gone over. My Diplomacy mod is +18(It was actually hilariously +20 but I'd forgotten one of my skill synergy bonuses) so I should have a pretty good chance of influencing their attitude positively. No, I can't! :D Wait, what. If you didn't want us using social skills why didn't you tell us this before the campaign, I would have put cross-class ranks in Perception instead. *facepalm* Session ends for the week. I spend the week thinking of what I'm going to say to try to finally get these guys on our side.

By next week though, I'm just plain annoyed and don't even care anymore, so I just say some of the stuff I'd pondered and quit and leave it over to the Marshal guy to try. He says a couple of things that are basically what I'd said the previous week, takes off his helmet he's never taken off to reveal that he's sort of 'kind of undead' and suddenly they're working with us. What the flying hells was I even trying for, then?! Argh! (Yes. Kind of undead. This makes no sense and isn't possible, but there it was.) I asked about this later and was told 'well he's better at diplomacy than you are so I had to give it to him'. Referring not to the character's Diplomacy skill, but to the actual player. Uh. DM. That's what social skills are for, because no, I am not a charismatic diplomat like my character is and I cannot use body language or voice tone via a chat program. Sigh. Basically the thing came off as the Marshal being the only one who could have affected things and I shouldn't even have bothered trying.

I'm done with my character here. The DM obviously has it in for him and he doesn't get along with the Marshal and in fact has no actual in-game reason to work with this jerk who had attacked him earlier in this very dangerous dungeon. I want a new one, stat, and had brought it up before this session, in fact, after the DM had refused to let me actually make a Diplomacy check. I make up a CN human cleric of Olidammara. I like him a lot. I'm jonesing to start using him. Even I hate my old character at this point, because he's useless and I'm tired of the in-fighting with the Marshal.

This session... We start a plotline that finally involves my Bard/Swashbuckler. We pass a secret door going further into this complex and the DM has my half-elf make a check to notice it. Yeah, my half-elf. Then he remembers to have the Marshal, who's an elf, make it as well. I notice the door.(Marshal fails his check, which is amusing) We sent an NPC through to scout, he comes back with news that he saw these goblin guys, one of whom turns out to be the boss from the first fortress, who apparently has a grudge against me. He's hired this band of uber-assassins to send after my character. The DM assures me that I might have a chance to avoid these guys. Oh thanks.

This of course is going to force me into either using my character I'm sick of for a while longer, or to just let him get killed, which, I like the character, just not using him in this campaign, and I don't want to do it. So yeah, this is a really bad time to suddenly decide to actually pay attention to my character that had been ignored and shut down over the course of the campaign.

We do another puzzle which actually goes well, we break for some holidays, and we thankfully never have another session.

Asking the DM what would have happened later on, he tells me about the boss of that dungeon's 200 HP, how he would have recharged after reaching 0 and we would have had to fight him even MORE after that, and then tells me exactly how the rest of the train ride would have gone, he had the exact events of the campaign planned out to the end. The sage guy, unsurprisingly, was the guy who wanted to take over the world, though we never got any hints to that, of course. The dungeon we didn't get to do for the third MacGuffin sounded like it would have actually been really fun even with the railroading and shutting down, which was a shame.


To this day I cannot explain even to myself why the hell I stayed in the campaign until its death. <_>;

Maybe someday I'll get to use that cleric. I still want to use him. :<

Sounds like your DM has a hard time differentiating video games from D&D. Some of those puzzles sound incredibly like the type of thing you get in LoZ games and the fact that he was so obviously opposed to people skipping his puzzles also seems to support this (bar cheating most VG puzzles can't be skipped), also the whole "boss that regenerates at 0HP" is incredibly VG style with multiple stage bosses who you have to kill only to find they have multiple forms that must be fought once the previous one is beaten