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View Full Version : Story Time: Annoying Players and Annoying DMs [All]



DabblerWizard
2009-12-12, 09:29 PM
As a shoot off of the "My players are REALLY frustrating" thread, I was thinking people probably had lots of stories they could share about times when their fellow players, or their DM, did something (or maybe lots of somethings) that was / were incredibly annoying.

Feel free to vent your current, past, and still-lingering-years-later frustrations.

The experience is quite cathartic. :smallsmile:

Lord Thurlvin
2009-12-12, 09:35 PM
While my old group of players and I got along just fine the great majority of the time, it was slightly annoying to me when the LG dwarf wanted to kill the shopkeeper and steal everything. I know alignment isn't supposed to be a straitjacket, but that seems like it pushes the boundaries a little too far.
In my new group, I find it frustrating whenever the sorceress wants to have sex with another PC/monster.
Thankfully, these situations didn't/don't arise very often.

Solaris
2009-12-12, 09:38 PM
In my new group, I find it frustrating whenever the sorceress wants to have sex with another PC/monster.

"Schnepp, why aren't those two guys allowed to play female characters?"
"Just... because, okay?"
As it turns out, there is nothing a sufficiently-determined perv won't try to sex up. Nothing.

pffh
2009-12-12, 09:42 PM
Eugh my first DM hated me. I have no idea why but he killed me about every other session and played favourites. For example he wouldn't stop hitting on another players girlfriend and gave her stuff, allowed her to play any race/template she wanted to without the LA, oh and lets not forget about his awesome dmpc a vampire blackguard that followed our level 3 party everywhere. Eventually it got so bad that we all left and formed our own group without him.

Xallace
2009-12-12, 09:50 PM
Ha, so, I had this time where I tried to start a campaign with a car chase. Open up with some -excitement- and -pizazz-, not some lame old "you all meet in a bar" trope.


"Your van races down the highway, clocking at over 120 MP-"
"Wait what?"
"Why is this?"
"Well, if you'll let me finish, you'll find out."
"Anyway, clocking at over 120 MPH. The mob-"
"We're being chased by the mob!?"
"Why are we being chased by the mob?"
"Wait, are we chasing the mob?"
"If you let me finish, you'll find out."
"The mob chases-"
"Wait, why is the mob chasing us?"
"Weren't you-"
"This is weird."
"Why can't you just tell what's going on?"
"Well, I'm trying-"
"What'd we do to the mob?"
"You can't just tell us?"
"I'm trying to pace-"
"What kind of mafia?"
"Are they gnomes?"
"Are there gnomes in this world?"
"No, they wouldn't be able to see over the wheel."
"Guys, can I-"
"What are we driving, again?"
"A moving van, we discussed this before the campaign started."
"Remember, I'm going to take the Speed Demon class on our moving van?"
"Oh yeah, that's awesome."
"Guys, could we really...?"
"Oh yeah."
"Right."
"Where were we?"
"In a car chase."
"Oh yeah!"
"Right. You still haven't told us why, though."
"Yeah, why are we in a car chase?"
":smallsigh:"

Paraphrased, but you get the point.The reason was a failed drug-ring bust.

Platinum_Mongoose
2009-12-12, 10:01 PM
Had a GM a while back, New World of Darkness, who fully encouraged us to make unique, unusual characters... then took all of our sheets at the beginning of game night number one and changed dots around to make us all cops with roughly the same merits and skills, requiring us to have certain minimums in Firearms, Resources, and other things cops would have.

Then he borrowed a bunch of one of the other player's books moved to another town (state, even) before giving them back. I do not look back fondly on this era of my life, even if it was only three or four weeks at his table.

KurtKatze
2009-12-12, 10:19 PM
Ohhh yeah that one encounter with the flying thingies... dont know the name, they grapple you and drain 1w4 Consti per round while they are still attached to you... lowlevel encouter... nevermind.

The situation:

Our party decents a staircase in a dungeon my scout/ranger makes a spot check.
There were 4 of these insects approximatly 80ft away.
I shoot them with my bow. I roll 1, roll 1w4 3, hit party member, ok so i hit our thief in the back. The insects notice this and all 4 attack my char over a distance of 80 ft without initiative roll or anything we could do about it... I was ending up with 4 of the beasts in the face being unconcious...

dunno what i have done to him to deserve this xD
But we sorted it out and something like this never happaned again so far.

Assassin89
2009-12-12, 10:32 PM
Ohhh yeah that one encounter with the flying thingies... dont know the name, they grapple you and drain 1w4 Consti per round while they are still attached to you... lowlevel encouter... nevermind.

The situation:

Our party decents a staircase in a dungeon my scout/ranger makes a spot check.
There were 4 of these insects approximatly 80ft away.
I shoot them with my bow. I roll 1, roll 1w4 3, hit party member, ok so i hit our thief in the back. The insects notice this and all 4 attack my char over a distance of 80 ft without initiative roll or anything we could do about it... I was ending up with 4 of the beasts in the face being unconcious...

dunno what i have done to him to deserve this xD
But we sorted it out and something like this never happaned again so far.

You mean Stirges? Those creature stay attached until dealing 4 points of con damage without killing the target. Also how could those things grapple after taking a full move action and not having initiative.

I once had someone DM who did not show up for most of the sessions for a module he planned on running. My regular DM had to take over, but I can somewhat forgive him because he did have some external problems.

The there is the story of the rage quitting swashbuckler. Due to being hit with several rays of enfeeblement and hit by strength draining Lamias, "rage quitter's" strength was reduced to 2. He then decided to leave due to this drain, but if he stayed, he would have been healed.

Lord Thurlvin
2009-12-12, 11:14 PM
"Schnepp, why aren't those two guys allowed to play female characters?"
"Just... because, okay?"
As it turns out, there is nothing a sufficiently-determined perv won't try to sex up. Nothing.

What you may find to be interesting is that the player is a girl. The only reason she hasn't cast Charm Person on the Fighter is because he threatened real-world violence.

Scoot
2009-12-12, 11:24 PM
An awful example, but one that still comes up among the group.

DM trys to make up for ignorance of range increments by giving enemies wristband shuriken launcher, (He did not know this pre-fight, and only gave this explanation after we spend 10 mins reading the PHB with him, and after he takes out a good chunk of the party).

In the loot-fest at the end of the fight, he forgets all about these devices, and they do not appear on the bodies. He gives no explanation other than, "What Shuriken?"

These were also low CR enemies, I belive it was 2-4, and they were spewing out 3-4 shuriken a round, dealing a good 20+ damage a round, hitting with every single shot.
...

Other needless complaining

This was a while ago, he's learned a bit since then, but he's still got a ways to go.

valadil
2009-12-12, 11:33 PM
I knew a player who didn't like rolling low. Any time his 20 came up 4 or less, he'd declare "that's BS" and reroll. The GM ruled that this was an automatic failure, even if the original roll had succeeded. I eventually told the player we were playing d20, not d16+4. Don't think he got it.

Sir_Elderberry
2009-12-12, 11:46 PM
I knew this guy was an idiot before I walked into his homebrewed Living FR module. I should have seen this coming.

"Alright, so, there's this river that's all polluted and acidic, and the skill challenge is to cross the river."
"Oh, ok, well, I have the Adventurer's kit, so I'll pull a rope across."
"Uh, you can't."
"Why?"
"The fumes from the river vaporize the rope."
"Oh...so do I take acid damage?"
"No, it's just the rope. You got across with that Athletics check."

That was one player. I, being the charisma-heavy socialite sorceror, could tell that this was going to go badly--no way was I jumping across ten feet of river. So...

"Uh, hey, can I use Insight? Try and see if I can, you know, figure out a better way across or something."
"Sure. You uh...you find a sheet of metal nearby which you place across the river and walk across."

The rest of the party walked across the metal, which apparently suffered no damage from the super-acid.

Ganurath
2009-12-12, 11:49 PM
Our party Cleric has 14 Int, 18 Wis, and I think 15 Cha... In character.

Cleric: "Hey, assassins, which death cult do you follow?"

This said while walking into the center of them with arms spread to offer hugs. Combined with their wizard employers and the golems they brought, a third of the party was wiped out. The worst part is that these guys were our employers.

Vitruviansquid
2009-12-12, 11:54 PM
So for a long time in my Savage Worlds campaign, the primary antagonists were two eight foot tall, black cloaked Vikings with bird-motif masked helmets named Huginn and Muninn.

Being cheap college students, we don't use mini's or anything, just the packets of numbered tokens that came with a DnD 4e box. Up until now, nobody has had any trouble with things like bandits being represented by tokens of zombies, wolves, and orcs. So naturally, I think nothing of representing the eight foot, invincible warriors with tokens depicting a DnD cleric and a DnD rogue.

All hell breaks loose as the players start wondering what kind of cleric beats people with a 2-handed axe and what kind of rogue wears heavy armor. :smallsigh:

In any case, after being beaten up by Huginn and Munin (now referred to as the Cleric and the Rogue), the players find out that they're completely invincible unless they break a taboo - one can't refuse a gift from a woman, the other can't accept a gift from a woman. Naturally, I expect players to just roll with it or even to realize that I specify woman because everybody in the party was male. Instead, I get: "Damn, one of us should roll female!" and "Can I make my hireling a female?" and when a player bit the dust "Wait, now I can roll my character female!"

Mystic Muse
2009-12-12, 11:59 PM
My one player.

"I want to make a moon."
ME. "Okay. if you get through the campaign you character can make a moon" (I was going to find some way to make this work.
"no. I want to make heavenly bodies and attack them"
Me*facepalm.* "no just no."
"well can I use heavenly bodies to spy on the world?"
"NO!"
"can I get a clone of myself every ten levels?"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
"this game is stupid I"m quitting."

Keep in mind. This is 4TH edition. yeah.

(don't worry. I got him to be reasonable.)

Temet Nosce
2009-12-13, 12:04 AM
Lets see here.... I have a few gems (warning, after I typed these up I realized they weren't very clearly written).

1. A game had died off (due to various situations including an argument between the DM who ran it and the guy who owned the IRC network), and I was the only remaining player (rest had vanished, so I killed their characters by using them as bait near a powder train then blowing it up) so the DM switched it over to a site called Rondak's Portal and recruited four more people. Well, the game begins again and the DM describes us as being in the desert, and eventually an acid rain starts. Now, we all *specifically* had tents proofed against this kind of weather so I go to set one up. The other players? They panic then start trying to dig a hole in the sand to get away from the rain. Well, the DM points out the acid is starting to pool in the hole... so they dig faster. Eventually he gets furious at them and declares they all take a massive amount of unsaveable acid damage for being waist deep in it. After that, he gave up.

2. DM tendencies infect players. I learned this recently, when I got involved in a really interesting game of Spirit of the Century. Well, first session we wait a bit to start (ask the DM what's up) no response. So we wait another ten minutes or so, then suddenly a paragraph pops up in the main channel on the game so we figure he was AFK and start playing. Well, we all state where we are, what we're doing, etc then ask the DM for some descriptions/responses... another ten minutes then *one* response to one of our descriptions (he ignored several of the others though he did eventually respond to most). This continues for the entire campaign (which finally ended through player attrition/DM disinterest), however before the end most of the players were doing things like cooking dinner in between DM responses. We'd play five hours and get maybe 1/4 of a session done.

3. I'd been told horror story of the DM from the dark pits who would often not even show for games because he was playing WoW (without warning the group he wasn't gonna be there), and who screwed up constantly when he did show (this was by my regular group at the time). So, I get involved in a new game and roll up a Druid (something I rarely play), I actually anticipate the game even though I'm not that fond of Druids. Meet one of the other characters... who coincidentally shares a similar nickname with the DM of doom and rather like him and think (this can't be the same guy). So, we start the first game and one of this other players "friends" show up (apparently it was his girlfriend or something). Well, he spends like ten minutes trying to stop her from freaking out over nothing (I don't even recall what this argument was about) then we start. Well, the game starts out well enough with me meeting the DM of doom, and the only other player (besides his GF) after I'm informed there's some kind of heretic/criminal in the forest and agree to hunt him down and kill him and they swear to come along. Then one of the other Druids (we're in a Druidic stronghold) finds an injured girl outside and brings her in (the DM of doom's GF). She then gets healed, and explains she's on a quest to recover her families kingdom (standard stuff) and the DM of doom's character swears to help her. Here's where the problem comes in. We spend the next hour getting treated to her capslocked rant on how he can't play a LG character, and how he was doing all this just to annoy her, and how she warned him, etc, etc. Well, eventually she freaks out at the rest of us and quits (after the other player had already left due to her)... and finally me and the actual DM ask the DM of doom "but... you aren't playing LG are you?", he wasn't but he quit to humor her... Game fell apart with only me left as a player.

Forevernade
2009-12-13, 02:15 AM
Well, the game begins again and the DM describes us as being in the desert, and eventually an acid rain starts. Now, we all *specifically* had tents proofed against this kind of weather so I go to set one up. The other players? They panic then start trying to dig a hole in the sand to get away from the rain. Well, the DM points out the acid is starting to pool in the hole... so they dig faster. Eventually he gets furious at them and declares they all take a massive amount of unsaveable acid damage for being waist deep in it. After that, he gave up.

That one is HILARIOUS.

I haven't had much experience as a DM, but one session I ran I wanted to pop another of my friend's roleplay virginity, so I invite him along. I whip up a character sheet for him, and everyone agrees he will most likely play an evil character, so I stick him as Lawful Evil, and he is a diplomatic rogue.
The friend decides he wants to be a CN character who was evil and is redeeming his evil ways. So I say fine.
A few hours later, after becoming the informant for a PC police officer, he has slept with and killed a circus contortionist, stringing her body to the undercarriage of a trade cart. Having figured that a Bard, the leader of the circus is up to something he cant prove, he convinces the policeman to beat up the bard, killing another acrobat when the officer isnt looking, then he FRAMES the Bard for being part of a notorious gang, and burns all the belongings of the Circus company to ashes when no one is looking. He then steals the officer's badge so he can dish out some Identity Fraud, takes the money and leaves the party, but not before framing the officer PC for the murder of the contortionist :smallamused:

I thought it was a pretty epic one-session Anti-Hero, so I am going to be running separate sessions with the new friend, so he can be a Secondary BBEG. A few people in the group now hate him for being so evil and against the party.

That was all at level 2 :smallbiggrin:

golentan
2009-12-13, 02:26 AM
My player groups weren't bad. The problem was they were too good at thinking outside the box. They managed to kill NPCs who were supposed to be recurring foes before the encounter began. They used simple techniques to break out of very tricky problems. They one hit KOed an NPC who was more than 10 levels higher than them, through a brilliant teamwork combination, careful planning, and use of surrounding objects.

After our third session, I gave up preparing anything more than a hook, on the grounds that even if I had tried to railroad them they would have bent the tracks into a piece of modern art. So I winged it, and bizarre times were had by all.

GoodbyeSoberDay
2009-12-13, 02:55 AM
Way back in high school I had some annoying DnD times, but I suppose that's to be expected. Looking back, though, I'm not sure why I was so persistent in sticking through these annoying times.

There was one DM who very much liked monks from when he played them as a kid, and so he wowed the group with a monk DMPC quite a few levels higher than the party ECL who had keen vorpal wrist daggers whose plusses, damage, crit chances, and inexplicable head-removal were tacked onto the monk's unarmed attack/damage when he flurried. That campaign was very short lived.

Another time he was DMing a super high level arena PvP. I was interested in joining and even started making a drow bruiser (didn't know much about optimization at that point) until I realized he was also making a character - a werewolf whose LA didn't count because his character 'had acquired the template while adventuring.' I stopped making a character after that; later I learned from a player who stuck it out that the arena was a wild magic zone that somehow didn't affect any of the werewolf's enchantments or abilities. Tough luck for anyone who rolled a mage.

The same DM was then a player in another arena PvP. After his first fight, he wanted to acquire a custom item of use-activated major creation to fool vendors into buying large quantities of gold so he could afford more gear for the next fight. The DM of that tournament was going to allow it. The tournament fizzled out before it could happen, though.

At a later date, the same DM (apparently my motto was "any port in a storm") was running an entirely different campaign with no DMPC, yay. We were middling level, but we were very restricted in the way of gear; my fighter was wearing half plate and wielding a bastard sword in two hands because he couldn't get a greatsword or full plate, for example. It wasn't too bad until the party came across a group that was essentially our linear guild, except with better gear. The DM went into quite a bit of detail on how their gear was super shiny with lots of plusses. My opposite obviously had magic fullplate + greatsword among other goodies. Worse yet they attacked without word, and instead of rolling initiative, the DM said "You know what? We might as well skip the fight. You all end up unconscious, stripped of your gear and imprisoned."

That's when I finally found other things to do. I don't think there are good DMs in high school to be honest.

Thajocoth
2009-12-13, 03:07 AM
I ran a campaign in which one of the players planned too much and spent a lot more time killing catgirls than monsters, if you know what I mean. Luckily, this was balanced by another member of the party who, whenever the first player started to overdo it, would say 2 words that made everything a lot easier for everyone: "I charge." Of course, this wasn't always an option, like the time he was calculating how hard the primordial (who's also a mountain range) would have to throw the evil orb thingy to put it into geosynchronous orbit... To see if doing so should strain it's arm... Nothing there to charge.

The first player mentioned played a Half-Elf Bard with a ridiculous Diplomacy skill. The second played a Minotaur Barbarian with a Berserker's Badge, Vanguard Executioner's Axe and a Horned Helm. If it weren't for the Minotaur, we probably would not have gotten passed session 3.

Vitruviansquid
2009-12-13, 03:44 AM
Speaking as both DM and player, overly paranoid players annoy the hell out of me.

We don't need to spend a half hour inspecting every bad guy's lair before you walk inside :smallfurious:

Mahtobedis
2009-12-13, 04:59 AM
You do if it is the Tomb of Horrors

The Tygre
2009-12-13, 05:04 AM
My player groups weren't bad. The problem was they were too good at thinking outside the box. They managed to kill NPCs who were supposed to be recurring foes before the encounter began. They used simple techniques to break out of very tricky problems. They one hit KOed an NPC who was more than 10 levels higher than them, through a brilliant teamwork combination, careful planning, and use of surrounding objects.

After our third session, I gave up preparing anything more than a hook, on the grounds that even if I had tried to railroad them they would have bent the tracks into a piece of modern art. So I winged it, and bizarre times were had by all.

Welcome to my world. Honestly? These days I just keep the campaign book out for show. God help me though, I love my over-powered PCs.

Kaun
2009-12-13, 05:06 AM
Speaking as both DM and player, overly paranoid players annoy the hell out of me.

We don't need to spend a half hour inspecting every bad guy's lair before you walk inside :smallfurious:

Amen to that.


Ok here is one..

Start of a Midnight game i was running, i like to start on the fly so i described to my three players (a fighter, a caster and a rogue) that they were in combat fighting of an orc patrol in the middle of a torrential rain storm at night out in the main street of an old ghost town they had been passing through.

Caster and fighter type get right to it and start doing there thing but when it came to the rogues turn it went a bit pear shaped from there.

First he announces he is going to try hide which is cool he rolled and with out to much trouble managed to hide. Then he decides whe is going to find a rock and throw it off to the side to try and destract the orc sgt who is currently trading blows with the fighter.

I explained the situation again in detail.

He told me once again that he wanted to throw the stone and try and distract the orc.. sooooo we played it out then got pissed at me when the orc failed to be destracted by the rock landing off to the side somewhere while locked in mortal combat in the middle of a torrential rainstorm.

major face palm.

Katana_Geldar
2009-12-13, 06:13 AM
Sometimes you just have to say yes.

PhoenixRivers
2009-12-13, 06:31 AM
I had a player once... First reaction to any encounter was to charge.

Level 1, see a squad of orcs? Charge. One drops, the rest of the party takes a round to catch up, and he takes a beating.

Level 3, round a bend to find a well-laid orc ambush. Twenty orcs with heavy crossbows at the ready (aware of the PC's approach). Surprise round, they all ready to fire at the first person to approach within 15 feet. Their leader (in the back), tells the party that they've entered the territory of clan Greyfang, and that they would be expected to pay a tribute to continue. Now, they had a very diplomatic bard in the group, and could have easily talked down the level 2 orc warrior commander... But...
Charge. Twenty shots later, 4 of which hit, 1 of which crit, he was bleeding out.

Level 7: Party is tracking down an undead creature (vampire). He catches a glimpse on watch. He could have waked the party.... But...
Charge. He hit, hurt it some, and then it dominated him.

At this point? He starts yelling at me for singling him out.

Ryumaru
2009-12-13, 07:01 AM
Hmm, I've only had one IRL game sadly, and while I enjoyed it a ton... my DM seemed to have the issue of great amounts of creativity. And a horrid lack of game balance or ability to Just Say No.

So, guy is a fan of Diablo. We're playing in a campaign similar to Skies of Arcadia; world is all in the air, floating islands which constantly move, ships which sail through the clouds. In it, one of the recent inventions was, wait for it, firearms.

Now, we all know the DMG firearms suck. So, he tweaked them... 1d12 rifles, not bad. Two full actions to reload? O... kay. Constitution damage equal to damage dealt? Wut?! And the topping... touch attacks.

This was 'balanced' by the fact they were expensive, exotic weapons which were going to be very rare outside of elite factions.

... cue three sessions of Warrior4 kobolds dropping my Rogue twice, -and- the Troll Barbarian. The only one who survived was the Half-Dragon with LA+1/Half-Ogre Monk/Ninja/Cleric/The Cleric Warrior from Oriental Adventures...

Oh, did I forget to mention that? Yeah. The game started with four players; my Elven Rogue, a Half-Giant Psychic Warrior, a Human Ranger and the Half-Dragon/Half-Ogre Monk. But with people dropping out, flaking, new people joining... we soon ended up with a party which rapidly changed each week, including the girlfriend of one of the new players and her Troll Barbarian/Frenzied Berserker, who's crowning moment being to frenzy... and then complain and hide because she took damage, and expect my Con 12 Rogue to 'tank' for her.

In the end, the DM stopped running and the group broke down soon after, but the crowning moment? When an evil artifact gave the already munchkin Half-Dragon... gave him the Vampire template. For free.

We were level 13/14... now with a LA+1 Half Dragon (he dropped the wings and claws for lower LA)/Half-Ogre Vampire Monk/Cleric/Ninja/WarriorMonk with an ECL of 22. Who while we all died with ease thanks to these guns, he was the only one who could avoid being hit thanks to his touch AC, ontop of about 200hp, and punching for about 6d10+something ridiculous thanks to a Dragon Conpendium spell.