Killer GM

[TheLaughingMan]

A question to my fellow playgrounders: What is the evilest thing your GM, yourself, or your players have ever done?

[TechnoScrabble]

The dungeon collapses, everyone dies.

[miibtp]

i once forced my players to go through the tomb of horrors...

[Octopus Jack]

"As you exit the dungeon you look up and see a dark object falling from the sky, as it gets closer you can see it resembles a large ark falling directly ontop of you. Before you can act it hits the ground right next to you, just missing...then it explodes"


Also I've set an owlbear on a party of level 1s and 2s but they had several ways around fighting it and they chose to run in unprepared

[FelixG]

Scaring my party out of an abandoned building in a fallout type game with nothing more than a broken vending machine and some flickering lights

[Saph]

Had one just yesterday. As a result of some decent investigation work combined with some poor strategic choices, the PCs ended up storming the main base of a mind flayer cult.

There were two CR 8 Mind Flayers, and a CR 6 Voidmind Troll. The PCs were 4 level 7s, and two level 6s. That's about an EL 10 encounter for an APL 8 party, which is doable in theory . . . but the PCs split up and let themselves be surprised. Also, I was using the Psionic Mind Flayers from the XPH, which are way nastier than the Monster Manual ones.

One PC got his brain eaten, and two more were captured. The last three only managed to escape because one of them just happened to have the Quick Recovery feat from Lords of Madness, due to being a Wilder. :smallbiggrin:

[Rasman]

Kitten in a Box ALWAYS = Trap + Ice Devil

Anyone wearing a Monocle is a POWERFUL Wizard and must be killed on site. The person putting monocles on street bums is an ass.

[Aroka]

An encounter with EPH mind flayers with fully augmented vigor and defensive spells, using dominated umber hulks as tanks, dimension dooring in at will and using just enough psionic powers to be able to dimension door out (that is, a crapload).

I say "an encounter", because it was a whole mind flayer dungeon but half the party got wiped in the first encounter and retreated and never came back.

[potatocubed]

The party is invading the home of a gnome illusionist (who is, in all fairness, a sadistic little monster).

They encounter a door, firmly locked but with a sizable keyhole. Party thief goes to get a look through the keyhole.

It's got an invisible needle stuck to it.

*pop*

(The needle was poisoned, too.)

[Tengu_temp]

Fooling the players into thinking that the one who came to their rescue during a hard battle was a beloved canon character. It turned out to be their perverted, creepy and incompetent boss instead.

Actually, making the PCs subordinates of that guy counts too.

[Closak]

Setting Hesheit on the PC's.

That...thing...is freaking impossible to beat.

100 tentacles that acts as independent entities from the main body and get's their own turns as a result, and can cast Vengeful Gaze Of A God.

Result: The tentacles each cast Vengeful Gaze Of A God, killing themselves because of the backlash damage but regenerating a few rounds later because the main body is still alive.

100 Vengeful Gaze Of A God spells to the face before you can act because the damn monster won initiative.

That's what we get for picking a fight with a Cosmic Horror.
Note to self: Lovecraftian Horrors from beyond reality are overpowered.

[Cealocanth]

Forcibly teleporting them to an alternate dimention where they are the villains and the main villans are the protagonists. The world hated them for exsisting and the main villains wouldn't stop raiding their homes, killing everyone, and stealing their stuff. They almost didn't make it.

[JaronK]

I open one of my adventure scenarios with "rocks fall, everybody dies." Of course, in that scenario you all have infinite "lives" to work with and it's just part of the fun.

JaronK

[Yora]

i once forced my players to go through the tomb of horrors...
Our dm decided to put the party into the tomb of horrors once. Thankfully, I didn't play that day. The next session was suposed to continue with the dungeon, but the players decided there's no reason for the PCs to be there anyway, and so practically walked out of the game. :smallbiggrin:
I heared the dm hat to reset the game for about 10 minutes, as everyone thought the Sphere of Annihilation is a teleporter.

Nostalgia may cloud peoples minds, but those old adventures were really just garbage! :smallbiggrin:

[Satyr]

As a gamemaster, I am usually at my best when I am in the worst and foulest moods, and run games with a significant bleak and horrific atmosphere.

So, the worst thing I did? I made players cry. For example by including a children's toy in a facility which was obviously used for tests on humans. Or by running horror scenarios based on my personal nightmares. Or when I introduced a small town where everybody developed psychoses after a time and the whole picturesque little town went mad (thanks to LSD-based combat gases dumped near the town which poisoned the water supply).

As a player in a Vampire campaign, I played a Tzimisce who used his vicissitude powers to replace the significant body fat parts of a captured human with semtex, turned said human through psychological and physical torture and using the mind-controlling and highly addictive qualities of my blood to form the victim into a brainwashed zombie who was eventually sent out to destroy a rival's lair.

[BobVosh]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132181

Alternatively: Ran a PF module that pits a shadow vs a level 1 party. They managed to kill the shadow before the member it killed raised. I decided that without the corrupting influence of the first shadow he keeps his alignment etc. He could talk enough for verbal components on this spells. However he could not speak with the party, and I told him to pantomime everything. Fun session, and I was impressed with my groups ability to play charades.

[Lyra Reynolds]

2 things:

1) have the npc the party stayed with for several months (out of game) turn out to be the Dragon and betray them all. They kept Detect Evil and Sense Motive'ing NPC for a while, after that. :p

2) have the Cleric, the Morality Pet/Team Mom/Heart of the party, possessed by a ghost, which forced her to attack the party. The only way to appeace the ghost was by killing her baby, which was an Unholy Scion. The Fighter had to fight a baby that looked the same age as her (PC's) own baby. The Paladin eventually ended up chopping it to bits.
Best end session I ever had, everybody was incredibly involved, and they were all VERY happy it was over. :smallbiggrin:

[Kalrik]

The party was escorting on of the PC's "Grandfather" to the elvish city as part of a death ritual. "Grandfather" was a title given to the Clan's Speaker of Legends, a man who knew the most useful things about the surrounding world. Anyway, the morning dawns and the party exits their rope trick but Grandfather wants to talk to his PC grandson. He asks the PC: "what is the most important thing to you?" and my player responds:"My friends and family." As they are talking, I make all the other party members roll fortitude saves. A booming voice rolls over the land: "I know you are there! Bring out the old man or your friends are forefit!" Through the viewing screen the PC sees his friends and the other NPCs kneeling before a NPC they met and disliked earlier in the session and a troupe of guards. Then, one of the NPC's throat is cut and I described it in detail. By this time, my player is squirming. After killing two more NPCs they were down to the other PCs. I didnt' allow any OOC talking. My player left the house to have a smoke...and glared at me on the way out.

I told the others in the room that his character was being tested. He had to choose what was more important thing to him. I found out that my player did not handle choices well...he was so frustrated he was near tears. When he chose to sacrifice "grandfather" to save his friends. The master Illusionist NPC dropped the illusions and the PC was rewarded grandfather's blessing and position of Speaker of Legends.

[MightyTim]

I played a campaign where the DM pretty much railroaded us into a TPK against a red dragon. Not for any real story reason either, since the next session he brought us back to life with a deus ex machina and continued on in the quest (didn't get a chance to get revenge on the dragon either). Needless to say, we felt cheated.

[WarKitty]

Cursed item that drops gold on the bearer. It was kind of nice at first, when he was getting hit with gold coins. Then we got to the solid gold carriage dropped on his head...

[Tyrmatt]

Cursed item that drops gold on the bearer. It was kind of nice at first, when he was getting hit with gold coins. Then we got to the solid gold carriage dropped on his head...

That sounds hilarious. I may have to remember that.

The nastiest thing a GM has ever done to me...

We had just legged it from our first badly failed encounter and were back in the town. I went to the stables to try and procure some mounts for us to head back to civilisation with ahead of an invading army. I was dealing with the stablemaster and he wouldn't give me any mounts. So I Sense Motived and it was a reasonable roll. The GM told me he looked shifty and evasive. So I decided to start yelling and intimidating him. It escalated until the GM suddenly tells me the brawny man broke down in tears in the town square and I was informed, rather tersely by an NPC that the man had lost his family and mounts in the recent harsh winter. The entire town refused to help us after that and I believe the army steamrollered the place we were going to.

So, to summarise, the nastiest thing ever done to me was to remind me that non-quest NPCs are people too :p

[Dairun Cates]

As a GM, one of the evilest things I ever did was last session in the Pirates vs. Ninjas Ongoing Beta Test. The PC's found out that there's essentially a feykinja (Illusionary tricksters) that's part of the four personalities that make up a legendary evil sword they broke up is running amok in one of the towns they frequently visit. So, they go fast to keep there to see what horrifying horrors are happening...

To find an empty town. Turns out that the person they left the fragment of the sword with had some problems and promptly handled them. Worst damages was a blown out wall. However, having seen how bad the thing that was in the box was says that he can't let the PCs have it back (they want to merge the sword back together. Long story) because it will inevitably trick them and cause danger to the city.

Well, my players, being what they are immediately suspicious, and they have an NPC that can feel the person they're tracking's presence. Said NPC confirms that she's still in the box though. Well, the PCs do some investigating, and while checking out some prisoners they sent to the city, said NPC feels the bad guy in two locations at once. Indicating shenanigans. They send the NPC in at night only for her to be chased out by guards, but she comes across an interesting point. The prisoners aren't there. Furthermore, they get the boss and instead of the sword fragment they need, there's the hand of the person it turned into. Thus, why their NPC's readings were off.

So, they bust in, ask their government acquaintance what's up, and end up fighting his body guards.

Now, my players aren't stupid, they suspected their old friend the entire time, but they could make the Will checks to see through the illusion. Well, they fight 4 body guards at their powerful level with 4 party members and 2 NPCs that are following them around. One of them rushes on ahead to find the sword fragment (she's one of them too). So, by the end of that fight, essentially 2 people are standing, and they're exhausted. So, they need to rest for about 15 minutes before they charge in or they're going to get absolutely wrecked.

Well, here's where it gets fun. They gave a trickster 15 minutes to set up. They're expecting traps, but...

They find their friend holding up the NPC that charged ahead unconscious. They talk a bit. The boss spends an awesome point to go first, activates True Last Illusion (a massive deadly buff), and then takes the party buffer and uses welcome to my world (which forces said person into a one on one fight). The boss then uses Me, Myself, and I to create mirror duplicates and proceeds to do nothing. While the support character tries to take out the mirror clones, the boss sits there and gains back more than half of the massive life drain they took for last illusion. Yeah. Turns out the point was to stall. Support character uses a suicide move to stop it from going on.

So now they have a boss at 3/4ths of its life, massive life regen, massive damage bonus, stupid high stats, stupid high DR, and one of five party members down.

The player controlling the NPC party member activates True Last Illusion as well, because they've been saving up the 6 awesome points to activate it. Charges forward, and takes 5 traps to the face before reaching the bad guy and feeling the bad guy SNAP in half from an attack. They fail to see through the illusion again, but it's obvious that this isn't the bad guy and just another illusion.

One of the party members spots the actual bad guy under a bench in the prison behind them. Once again, someone charges forward and takes 5 traps to the face (keeping in mind these are doing 20 damage each in a system where average man Life is between 80-100 Life.

So, one person attacks and misses, another person does the same with a REALLY strong attack. The boss then uses Looking for Me (an ability where you switch places with another target when someone misses you so that target takes the attack) and essentially forces said PC to go unconscious.

Well, the players then start to beat on the boss and using a LOT of awesome points, they essentially beat her down to weak. She uses change of scenery to put 2 of the conscious party members of the wrong side of a chasm and then tries to run away. She gets hit one more time and goes down. At this point, 3 people are up but almost all of them are near unconscious.

The PCs literally won this fight by activating a LOT of their "in case of emergency tricks". They had to buy in an auto-crit with awesome points, activate an insanely expensive buff, and had to use some really devastatingly powerful attacks.

The illusion drops and they realize the fake bad guy they hit was a broom holding up their NPC friend. Dead man trigger, a lot of traps go off but don't do much.

Now here's the funny part. The 11 awesome points the boss had and the time to set up did a lot to help here, but this boss had only 25% more character points than the PCs. In D&D terms, that's kinda like a group of level 8 PCs getting taken down by 1 level 10 bad guy.

Oh, by the way, their actual friend was hidden behind a fake wall that the bad guy created when the hole earlier in the week was blasted in and used their job of fixing it to hide evidence of their identity... and another line of traps. Needless to say, the PCs were not happy.

Fun session though.

[The Dark Fiddler]

Trying to end the campaign early cause everyone was sick of it (except me really, I was just sick of the attitude everyone else had), the DM made us all die. Some explosion or something, a nuke maybe, and we all took 2d%. My halfling sorc survived, but the other two died. And then my guy died anyway for no real reason.

[valadil]

This. (http://gm.sagotsky.com/?p=75)

Long story short, I decided that one of my PCs had a combination of schizophrenia and MPD not unlike the unnamed protagonist in Fight Club. I managed to run his insanity in such a way that nobody figured out what was going on until the climax of the game.

[Psyx]

I once shot the party's 'leader' character in the head with a musket while he was unarmed, unescorted, and walking home through town. His only chance of seeing it coming was to pass a notice check that it was impossible for him to actually make.

It was one of a long string of attempts on the PCs lives that they had generally not realised were deliberate, or discarded as 'one off attacks'. The same string of events had included blowing up and burning the inn they were staying with and causing an avalanche [a classic 'rocks and snow fall on your head' moment] that nearly killed most of them and killed all of their (very expensive) horses.

The character miraculously survived the head-shot. He later died 2 days from home, where he was returning to marry his sweetheart with a mind to retiring the character.

[The Big Dice]

The Donkey Bomb.

One donkey, laden own with treasure as a reward for a job well done in a GURPS game. With just two spells cast on the saddlebag. Reflex, with the trigger condition of the saddle bag being opened. And Explosive Fireball.

[DarkSetzer]

Let's see...worst I can think of was when one of my fellow players had created a really intricate background for their character, including a whole civilization and details as to how the culture functioned and what not... and then the DM went and destroyed said civilization... halfway through the first session.

[Bharg]

Let's see...worst I can think of was when one of my fellow players had created a really intricate background for their character, including a whole civilization and details as to how the culture functioned and what not... and then the DM went and destroyed said civilization... halfway through the first session.

In a good epic prologue kind of way?

[DarkSetzer]

In a good epic prologue kind of way?

Sort of... I mean, it worked out in the end. It ended up being the sole reason said character continued on with the rest of the party, to find vengeance. But first we had to jump through hoops to keep her from charging headfirst into an army all by herself in a fit of rage (She was a barbarian).

It just makes me angry when a DM goes and destroys all the hard work that a player put into their character, even if it is for good reasons.

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention, the character's wife showed up shortly thereafter...as a zombie. That was fun to deal with.

[Bharg]

He only made up the civilization, right? Not every village idiot to be killed? It's nice if he would have been able to enjoy it for some time... like a day with his buddies before hell breaks loose.

Zombie wife... not... nice...

[DarkSetzer]

Yeah...the zombie wife was a bit overkill, though it did generate some great role playing.

[Pokonic]

In my homebrew setting, rasing the dead is more risky than normal, but the pcs at the time did not know why at the time . One of the NPs I made was a small human girl around five or six. When the villege my players were in was raided by hobgoblins, she was one of the ones killed.When the pcs managed to raise her, the girl started flinging high level spells! It was later explaned to them that her soul was corupted by raising her , and her body is now inhabited by a demon.

Now the PCs are paranoid about anybody dying,ever.

[Umael]

Worst thing I ever did as GM?

Probably it was the attempt to seduce a selkie (the PC) with a zombie. Did such a good job at it that the player (a CNA) got the creeps from it.


Worst thing a GM ever did to me?

Smile.

...*shudder*

[fortesama]

sent a group of house cats surround a group of level 1 arcane casters. the warlock lasted the longest among them.

[TechnoScrabble]

sent a group of house cats surround a group of level 1 arcane casters. the warlock lasted the longest among them.

I don't get it. Housecats?

[Smiling Knight]

Are stealthy, hard to hit and deal significant damage if you only have 1d4 hit points. One cat can take down a Commoner 1.

Off-Topic Edit: Ooh, it's widdle Archerkins. Squee!

[ghost_warlock]

As a DM, I've deprived the PCs of XP by confronting them with near-endless waves of summoned creatures while they continued to fail the checks to locate/confront the summoner.

As a PC, well, I've played some evil S.o.B.'s in my time, so take your pick of
rape (once involving bondage "fun" with a captive medusa in the BBEG's lair...party paladin was not amused :smalltongue:)
cannibalism (lots and lots of cannibalism :smallsigh:)
ritual torture (sometimes involving children)
human trafficking (sometimes involving other party members or their significant others)
using human test subjects for magical/technological research
intentionally infecting a community (technically a space station) with something like a cross between zombie plague and Borg assimilation (DM: "you realize this place is going to be overrun if you ever come back, right?" Me: "I'm immune, what do I care. Just more test subjects").

Edit: Oh, and not telling the rest of the party that the experimental hyper-space drive I installed on their space ship has a chance of destroying the universe every time they use it. :smallbiggrin:

[Dralnu]

My players (four lvl5's) had to recently fight through a dragon's lair inhabited by Tucker's Kobolds. I threw at them every reasonable trap I could find from the DMG, DMG2, and the races of the dragon web enhancement. All while CR 1/4 kobolds do hit and run tactics on them, whittling them down.

They finally reach the vast amount of treasure after being dropped multiple times into a chasm with a Black Pudding due to topsy-turvy bridges and a hold person catapult trap that threw them back into it.

The treasure was a persistent major image with a Will save that they all failed until they interacted with it.

They found the secret door to the real treasure eventually. :smalltongue:

[Autonomy]

This. (http://gm.sagotsky.com/?p=75)

Long story short, I decided that one of my PCs had a combination of schizophrenia and MPD not unlike the unnamed protagonist in Fight Club. I managed to run his insanity in such a way that nobody figured out what was going on until the climax of the game.

That is truly awesome. Blurring the out of character divide and using out of character information to build and enhance the story is one of my favourite tricks but I've never come close to something this cool. I shall be robbing the non-attending player to insert my next plant NPC.

My Killer GM contribution, took place in a sort of CoC setting. It was an introductory game and for ease the PCs played as themselves. I was running it and simultaneously NPCing one of the main villains, a member of the players social circle. I lure a player aside for a sly cigarette break and just as he's finished his smoke, shoot him in the face. Amusingly enough, I'd caught the the gun on pocket and hadn't been able to draw it smoothly on him whilst he was distracted and rolling it. The evil plan was saved when he asked me to fetch him the ashtray from the other room. Thankfully he was cool with being the first PC to die and we had put enough oblique hints that he didn't feel it was totally without warning.

[Ponderthought]

Most of the times ive dm'ed my players have been the evils ones, routinely killing npcs ment to guide them fro the sole purpose of robbing them or due to their paranoia. Well, that is until their kindly old mentor turned out to be a 20th level monk, then they began to behave a little more.

As a DM:
Nyarlathotep
undead aberrations
exploding zombies
dissolving magic items
cursed drawers
mindflayers
animated armor (only after donned)
sentient cattle

as a player:
Eating the hearts of the enemy
Grinding the village holy man into a fine powder, then selling the result as a cure-all medicine to the villagers (he was an ass)
deliberately keeping enemies alive for future "use"
Collecting the tips of elf ears for souvenirs.
Running a rigged shell game (eviler than it sounds, took all of their money, when they accused me of cheating and begged for their money back, intimidated them into fleeing, and one elderly gambler suffered a heart attack)
Premium Halfling Leather Goods.
Capturing enemy minions and tying them down with wet leather in the desert.
Spreading rumors that ground unicorn meat increased virility.
Religious pamphlets containing Explosive Runes
planting evidence of demon worship in the high priests quarters
sovereign glue+ unconscious enemy+ floor

And none of these acts were preformed by evil characters...

[Dust]

Level two party of thieves who sought refuge in the sewers after a successful heist. The sewers were filled with hundred of permanently invisible Wights.

INVISIBLE WIGHTS has since been a euphemism around our table for any impossible-to-survive situation.

[Ormur]

My most literal killer DM moment was only two sessions ago when I had an assassin slit a PC's throat in his sleep. His damage on the coup de grace and the move silently checks were virtually impossible for the group to defeat. But it was there fault for being asleep in the first place. :smallbiggrin:

My DM did something similar to my character once (and his was the dead character above) when he had a succubus trick the party barbarian into believing that my wizard was an impostor. After she beat my character unconscious in his bed the succubus made the coup de grace.

He also TPKed our party in our first session ever but that was because neither of us knew the rules properly.

That's however not the reason he's making us fight an epic level dragon on 13th level now. My friend survived an implosion by pure luck before I could teleport us out of there on the first round.

[Yahzi]

The party was looking for the fabled dwarf city; so I had them stumble across a well-armed dwarf that offered to lead them in. But only if they wore blindfolds, of course.

Naturally it's not a dwarf; it's a mind-flayer in disguise and it's going to lead them into a trap with a beholder and a bunch of spiders. One of the players actually suspected... but the rest cast Detect Alignment and then tossed on the old blindfolds willingly. So the smart one had to go along.

They were pretty cheesed off. But not as cheesed off as the time they killed the Djinni king for his super-valuable crown, and then spent the next 5 rounds slaughtering his followers for fun... in the middle of a smoke cloud. When the smoke cleared, the Djinni king's crown was gone, stolen by one of his not-completely-retarded retainers.

Many, they were really cheesed off about that.

:smallbiggrin:

[Psyx]

"And none of these acts were preformed by evil characters..."

CN? *rolleyes*

[KiltedGrappler]

Our group and garnered the attention of some Gods, and were invited to Heaven to rest and dine with them to give them time to explain what our Most Sacred Mission the Save the World!(tm) would be.

Being bored with the details, my rogue wanders off insearch of entertainment and comes upon a like-minded angel. We chat it up for a bit when the angel offers to play some cards. My rogue, who fancys himself as a great gambler and cheat, readily agreed.

The angel then proceeds to produce a deck of cards, and has me shuffle them. We'll each draw a card, high card wins. If the card color is different, the result stands. If it';s the same, the loser can demand double-or-nothing, no backing out. Tripple-or-nothing if the cards are the same suit. Awesome, I thought. This should be easy.

The first card I draw is The Void. What...what?

Yes, I was playing "cards" with a Deck of Many Things. After the groups laughter dies dawn, the angel shape-changed back into the God of Mischief and walks off, leaving my rogue without a soul.

[Ponderthought]

"And none of these acts were preformed by evil characters..."

CN? *rolleyes*

You can very rarely swing some of these as Lawful Neutral, if your persuasive.. and dammit i was justified!

(never let players worship gods of vengeance)

[Kurald Galain]

A cursed amulet that, while worn, makes you immune to damage but instead ages you per damage taken. Since this was not a combat-heavy campaign, this can last several months of playtime. I'd given several hints that the character wasn't feeling well and that perhaps he should see a cleric. The player ignored all those hints on grounds that his character was tough and wouldn't complain. So this ended with him aging himself to death.

[TechnoScrabble]

I sent my players through one of my old Dwarf Fortresses, a 112 layer beast with multiple different mines not all of which led to the top. At the bottom of the main mine: a hollowed out adamantine tube that lead to HELL!

[Hawriel]

I locked an eight player party in a room with four iron golems. Only 2 or 3 peaple had a weapon capable of hurting them. This was 2nd ed. 2 characters made it out alive. No I didnt gass them.

I blew off the mouth of the wizard. He couldnt cast any verbal spells for rest of the adventure arc. The lesson learned, dont take a big bight out of an apple from an orcherd that is mutated by demonic influence.

I had a group of kobolds grab the cleric and throw him into an iron maiden. Exilent! Best part was the player didnt know what an iron maiden was.

I humiliate the half orc barbarian in my party when ever he rages. At first it was a running gag because it just happened naturaly. The last two times I got crafty. Rolled ones when he sprung a net trap. Rolled ones when charged by a ghast. he ended up lying down in a shallow grave power vometing for an intire fight. Held him. Levetated him. Ripped apart by dogs. Ok that was not me it was the barbarian player when he GMed for a night. Beat up by wooden dalls.

The cleric wanted his armor enchanted. He let the shifty guys in hoods with raspy voices and red eyes enchant his armor for 500 gold. After a month of wearing armor of healing, vampieric healing, it came allive and tride to eat him in his sleep.

The thief baught gloves of dexterity +4 for 10,000 gold. They where cursed.

I almost had a full TPK invalving a small shack, two shamblings mounds, and a cursed ever smoking jacket. The wizard loved that jacket. Got it from the same guys who soled the gloves.

Half red dragon troll. Need I say more?

Half red dragon barbarian minataur, in a narrow tunnel.

Swamp + lizardfold shammans + entangle.
Oh and giant crockadiles and pythons.