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super dark33
2011-07-19, 04:43 PM
Title says it all.

My worst DM made a campeign, which revolved 5 players to do stuff a gnome archmage tells you to do. first we were forced to fight a war aginst some orcs, then we were forced again to fight a psionic danger, which was finaly killed when a new player came and magic missle'd its back.
THEN we were forced to unite with five 'chosen ones of light bla bla' (from a book of pseudo-dnd game), who had to beat their counterparts who were so super powerfull that us the players didnt even manage to hit them. then we had to find the 'mask of winter' AKA a demigod that almost killed us all, the almost is because that we were forced to put all our money in a pool so a super pet will come out, and we didnt manage to fight anything because it killed anything.

Tl;dr: he forced us to his plot so he can see it as a movie in his imagination.

he used too many railroaders to get us to his plot, that i dont remember doing anything by my charecter. he was so obbsesed with his NPC's, that when we tried to rob a merchant, he used the lame old 'the halfling merchant is actually a powerfull wizard'.
anouter railroader was a huge goblin army that was supposed to scare us to the mountain with the bad guys. we fought it, and we couldve won, unless he us forced not to (''they are all level 10+ and have super magical gear'').
anouter example is when i full attacked his DMNPC gnome archmage, he didnt die because he was his char when he played anouter DMs campeign.

Tl;dr: he didnt give us free will, and used too many times over powerfull NPC to dominate us. ANd was fond of his NPCs too much.

you have some? show us so DMs/players can learn from outers mistakes.

Xtomjames
2011-07-19, 05:04 PM
The worst DM/Player I know is one in the same. I won't give names, but let's just say that I've never met someone so incompetent before.

I'll call him B: I first met B playing my first game of Rifts back in my hometown's game shop F.O.Y. or ~Fountain of Youth. I joined and played a version of the Doctor (Doctor Who) just for S***s and Giggles. B played a Dogboy. Now apparently he'd been playing (according to him) Rifts for a few months, but in game and out of character he failed to grasp basic concepts of game play. He didn't plan his character's actions out and often bungled up everything.

Later he asked several people to join a game he decided to run and I ended up playing a pretty basic character, the Leyline Walker. Now I'll give him kudos for planning this time, but he didn't think certain things through and my character and the party ended up not only stealing the entire Transport that we were supposed to be guarding and it's contents, but we were able to sell it for 40 million credits. We went from 3rd level Rift's characters with minimal money to super rich buggers in one session.

In the few D&D games he and I played in together he often played characters that were meant to be smart but failed miserably because of poor character construction or him just not being a good player at all. Or he played characters not capable of much. I wish I could give more detailed accounts but I haven't played with him in years and don't plan to in the future.

Stix
2011-07-19, 07:15 PM
I don't know how to spoiler so you'll have to bare with the block'o'text

In keeping with precedent we shall name him R.

R was playing a half-dragon cleric of Loki. r was not only the guy who intimidated the rest of the party into doing things he wanted whenever possible he made it his mission to "erect a temple to loki" in every town he found. his version of "erecting a temple" was either burning or blowing up a tavern or temple of another god. by level 7 the party was not welcome in ANY town they had ever been in. except one, which he was nice enough not to blow anything up in because it was a quest hub.

comicshorse
2011-07-19, 07:40 PM
The worst DM/Player I know is one in the same. I won't give names, but let's just say that I've never met someone so incompetent before.

I'll call him B: I first met B playing my first game of Rifts back in my hometown's game shop F.O.Y. or ~Fountain of Youth. I joined and played a version of the Doctor (Doctor Who) just for S***s and Giggles. B played a Dogboy. Now apparently he'd been playing (according to him) Rifts for a few months, but in game and out of character he failed to grasp basic concepts of game play. He didn't plan his character's actions out and often bungled up everything.

Later he asked several people to join a game he decided to run and I ended up playing a pretty basic character, the Leyline Walker. Now I'll give him kudos for planning this time, but he didn't think certain things through and my character and the party ended up not only stealing the entire Transport that we were supposed to be guarding and it's contents, but we were able to sell it for 40 million credits. We went from 3rd level Rift's characters with minimal money to super rich buggers in one session.

In the few D&D games he and I played in together he often played characters that were meant to be smart but failed miserably because of poor character construction or him just not being a good player at all. Or he played characters not capable of much. I wish I could give more detailed accounts but I haven't played with him in years and don't plan to in the future.

If that's the worst you ever meet you should consider yourself lucky

Engine
2011-07-19, 07:51 PM
Let's call him WPIEM (Worst Player I Ever Met).

- He played a Sorceress, half naked all the time just because she had Cold Resistance.
- First session, he didn't prepare his spell list, so he picked up spells on the fly: of course they were the most useful spells for every encounter.
- Every hour or so we had to to go in another room because he needed to talk with the DM about things our characters didn't know, to do something alone and so on.
- The DM openly said that the campaign was more about survival than defeating enemy, and violence wasn't always the best solution. The group was nearly TPK'ed two times, both times because his character had to attack something or someone that represented no immediate threat for the group.
- His character resorted to violence even when the party face was trying to persuade NPCs.
- He always tried to do scout duty (it was a low level game) just because his character had Invisibility, of course we had to wait for his character to return. Most of the times his character attacked something.
- He always tried to leave the party Rogue behind because she was badly wounded thanks to the needless fightings.
- When he couldn't be the absolute protagonist of the current scene he just isolated himself with Facebook.
- He kept for himself all the cool stuff he found unless it was useless for his character.
- He flirted with the girlfriend of another player. In front of him.

WolfieDM
2011-07-19, 08:48 PM
The Worst Player I've ever met has to be "J".

I was running a little mini-campaign and everyone starting at level 8. So J decided to be the bard.
He put the 18 he rolled into his Charisma and took 3 levels of the Human Paragon from Unearthed Arcana to get the +2 Ability boost since he didn't actually have to suffer through them and chose +1 to Charisma at levels 4 and 8.
He gave himself an Ioun Stone and Cloak of Charisma giving him a +4 to Charisma each totaling him up to 30 Charisma.
He took Skill Focus Diplomacy and Negotiator as two of his feats and put max ranks into Diplomacy.
He now had a 11 Ranks, +10 Ability Modifier, and +5 Misc Modifier in Diplomacy. He only needed a 9 to turn an Ancient Black Dragon Friendly.
I said I'd just bump up the DC to which he proceeded to cry. I am physically appauled by grown boys crying and let him have his way.
He rarely failed rolled less than a 10 on his Diplomacy Check and there was little combat.

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-19, 09:06 PM
Not the worst, but...


*Someone who let OoC pet peeves dictate what they do, and lashed out at PCs for their players not being descriptive enough when they weren't paying attention. Not cool.
*They then slipped an aphrodisiac to an unknowing character who they had molested before. They then tried to forcibly kiss said PC. And then black mail their boyfriend when they came back and were sorta pissed about the whole thing. And then got pissy IC and OoC when they were called a molester, saying it was just a joke.
*Tried cracking jokes when an important, and respected NPC died. And then whined about getting thrown out of places for their disrespect of the dead.
*Killed a half-orc child because that was the law of the land. Despite following a god who had orcblood paladins and was too fond of children to ever harm one.
*Was annoyed when other people ignored their plans, no matter how awful they were, or if they invovled things the paladin did not know anything about.
*Was annoyed when their PC, who was quite rude, was not well liked by other PCs, saying that constantly harassing people and making wildly inappropriate comments was just a joke
*WORST PALADIN EVAR. I know paladins get a lot of flak, but please try to avoid killing children and molesting people.

Everest
2011-07-19, 09:14 PM
I think I'm especially sorry for Engine and Honest Tiefling. I haven't had any players quite that bad, but there was "T".

DISCLAIMER: He was only there for the first few levels of the first campaign I ran, and it was very non-serious at that point. But that mostly applies to the tone of the campaign, and his overall conduct, IC and OOC, was deplorable. He kinda hated the game, but he should have said so sooner and saved himself (and the rest of us) some grief. And the only reasons we even put up with him in the group for so long were because I was green and averse to removing players, and because it was a very tight-knit group of friends, so it might have messed up our friendship. And it's a friendship largely based on giving each other crap.

*Didn't make his own characters and left that to me. Even when we were running two characters at a time.
*Erased the lines I drew on the whiteboard I was using before I got my handy-dandy vinyl play mat. He also drew whatever struck his fancy on the parts I didn't happen to be using.
*Outright killed one of his fellows. He was playing a wizard (4e) and spammed Scorching Burst, deliberately placing the area of the spell on an unconscious ally even when he could have attacked solely enemies.
*Made fun of the other players' character names. Every time those names were mentioned.
*Didn't bother looking up what his powers could do, and held up the game every time it came to look up a power that might be more helpful than Scorching Burst.
*Made a PC based off the girl he has a creepy crush on and proceeded to get butthurt whenever she happened to become the target of enemy attacks.
*Attacked random civilians at times when it did not benefit us to do so.
*The straw that broke the camel's back: threatened to rape the character I was running as a joke in response to . . . something or other.

But I have yet to play under a really lousy DM.

kardar233
2011-07-19, 09:33 PM
I know a couple of local players; let's call them V and J.

My pet peeves of theirs:
They always fight each other. Even when their characters have no reason to do so, they constantly attack each other for no reason. When, as captain of the ship we were on, I warned that I would personally kill anyone who started infighting, and I killed both of them (I was an optimized Warblade, they were unoptimized Druid and Ranger), they whined about it.
That brings me to my next one: Not taking responsibility for their actions. When they did something incredibly stupid, like directly disobeying my character or running into whole groups of enemies, they'd whine and moan at the GM.
They didn't understand the basic rules of the game, and didn't even try to do so. One time, V's character died for whatever stupid thing he did, we lent him the GM's copy of the PHB so that he could make a new character, and maybe learn game rules other than "I attack" for once. Did he? Nope, he waited until our next session and then bugged me and the GM for help making their character.
Furthermore, because they spent no time working on their characters, they always made terrible optimization decisions and then whined when they were useless against the 6th-level Warriors we were fighting.
Randomly attacking things was also a major thing of theirs. J randomly attacked a powerful lich while we were 5th-level while I was negotiating with it, and got Finger of Death'd. And then whined. We had to physically restrain V's character to stop him from attacking Jarlaxle at level 6. (Granted, I ended up killing Jarlaxle with a Truly Immovable Rod in the same encounter, but at least I had a plan.)
And what was almost worst: They had no initiative other than "I attack it" or "I threaten it with my sword". You get to something that isn't solved by immediate violence and they'd either try and solve it with violence anyway, or just sit there until one of the other players came up with a plan. Then whined when said plan involved some damage to them, even though they had agreed to it.
Worst of all: In their favourite pastime, violence, they didn't even bother to make an effort at it. They didn't bother reading the PHB sections on actions and combat, or special combat maneuvers. They didn't even bother totaling up their attack bonus! They did it on the spot, every time, with us having to remind them what factors affected it, and easily adding minutes to even simple combat encounters.

Unfortunately, two-person groups aren't great fun. Better than having those two clowns around.

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-19, 09:44 PM
Everest, he made his after after what? I think I'm sorry for you. And women in general for putting up with that. I hope he didn't inflict himself on any other woman nor have her run into battle half naked.

As for DM...

I was a DnD noob, and decided that my PC would be an impulsive, hot headed fire sorcerer, who had hopes of discovering brass dragon heritage. I, by the way, was not high level. 6 at the most, I think. The first enemy we encountered? A mature red dragon. I felt real useful. Even my maxed out bluff wasn't terribly handy. I can't remember precisely, but I think some NPCs, including a DMPC dragon, took out the dragon after I tried to bluff and pretend to kill someone for the dragon. Needless to say, it wasn't terribly successful.

I was, however, given an elemental for a familiar for free. At first, I was excited! I could continue my elemental theme and not light the familiar on fire. Turns out, however, that with this DM that fire elementals immediately ignite their surroundings on fire. The DM neglected to mention this, so my PC encountered a lot of high level elves who were a bit pissed that their forest was now on fire. My DM then offered to let me retcon my choice of elemental into an earth one. I wasn't wild about the choice as my theme wasn't intact, but my other choice was to die as a pincushion.

The little earth elemental proceeded to whine that my sorcerer had initially wanted another elemental as a familiar, despite that event never occurring. I threatened to b****slap it to shut it the **** up, forgetting my alignment in frustration.

I moved away for college, but heard from my friend that the DM later made his DMPC a demigod of jokes and pies.

Everest
2011-07-19, 09:53 PM
Well, luckily she wasn't in the group or anything. She's quite separate from my group of friends, actually, and I hope to God she never finds out about that. But he didn't have her running around half-naked, I'll put that in his favor.

Otacon17
2011-07-19, 10:06 PM
I didn't actually have to play with this DM, (let's call him M) but a lot of my friends did. I met him a couple of times and I watched one of his sessions once, though:

M had made the worst kind of DMPC. Every horrible DMPC stereotype you can think of was rolled into this one character. He was a Thri-Kreen Monk who was blatantly the main character. Everything the players did was to aid this Thri-Kreen in some way. Not just the major quests, either. Everything. He even made them dig graves for some friends of his who had died. Heck, he probably would've made them go pick up his dry-cleaning and groceries if they'd kept playing long enough. Oh, and when the players tried to refuse digging the aforementioned graves (because they were mostly neutral and had never met the people they were digging them for)? M said, "No, you dig the graves, because <DMPC's name> told you to," and moved on. They tried to kill the DMPC multiple times, but he would always 'miraculously survive.' It was eventually revealed that the reason he could live through so many beatings was because he was immortal, due to literally being best friends with a god. Needless to say, my friends now hate DMPCs. And Thri-Kreen. And Monks.

Maphreal
2011-07-19, 10:11 PM
I mostly DM with a competent group, so I don't have any horror stories really. I do have some pet peeves though:


- The friend-of-a-friend who shows up unexpectantly with a chaotic evil dragonborn mineral warrior half-ogre lycanthrope who got "lucky" on stat rolls, and expects no problem fitting into a party of good aligned, 28 pt buy low-op characters.

- The player who never rolls below a natural 15 on any roll, regardless of what the die actually says.

- The player who thinks that because they were clever enough to pump Diplomacy with synergies, they should be able to practically mind rape any NPC.

- Rap music.

Big Fau
2011-07-19, 10:39 PM
I mostly DM with a competent group, so I don't have any horror stories really. I do have some pet peeves though:


- The friend-of-a-friend who shows up unexpectantly with a chaotic evil dragonborn mineral warrior half-ogre lycanthrope who got "lucky" on stat rolls, and expects no problem fitting into a party of good aligned, 28 pt buy low-op characters.


That isn't possible. He'd have lost the Dragonborn benefits (and likely died from the damage it would have done). And why did he roll stats when you guys were using PB?


As for me, the worst player I have ever had was actually my DM. I had been asked to run a campaign (by the other players at the table, not him), and all he did was acted as Chaotic Stupid as humanly possible. He did this specifically to end the campaign as fast as possible so he could resume DMing, as he had thought up a "clever storyline" while writing his character.

From what I remember (this was 6 years ago), he:

Refused to make skill checks on the assumption that he could RP his way out of a Balance check caused by a Grease spell.

Stole from a Wizard 7 levels above him (this was an NPC in a pre-made module).

Made his character 9th level instead of 5th (he actually just grabbed one of his NPC's statsheets from a previous campaign and passed it off without letting me review his character sheet).

Used a weighted d20 (there's a hole drilled into one side, which isn't easy to spot without actually holding the die). He apparently uses that same die for his DMing.

Attacked other PCs for incredibly minor offenses (he nearly 1-shotted the party's Warlock for a pirate-related pun, since his character was a Swashbuckler).

Used his WBL on a Necklace of Fireballs and threw them with reckless abandon (two PCs were forced to reroll after the first session).

nazgulnine
2011-07-19, 10:45 PM
I think I've got one that qualifies. Not to complain or anything, but I felt this guy was pretty bad to his players.

DM decided to run a high-end campaign revolved around bandits and gods. Our party consisted of 4 4th-level PCs. This guy was really into his NPCs and blatantly told our group IC that we were dispensable. Mind you, we were playing a game with resources heavily limited to our characters. The DM threatened to kick one of the players out after missing a session, despite knowing the player had previous engagements. At the climax of the campaign, one of the party characters died (much to that player's, and the rest of the party's, chagrin) and when our party made the decision to stall on fighting a god (these were level 4 characters), the DM told us the campaign was over and that the world was destroyed.

kharmakazy
2011-07-19, 10:47 PM
Had a DM throw all the characters onto an island populated mainly by collosal sized animals at level 1.

He told me my character's god Io (who was a substantial part of my backstory) in fact did not exist in his campaign world. After the game started.

Told us that casting summon X spells had a % chance of summoning huge hostile agels and/or demons. After the game started.

Told us that undead summoned or created will cease to exist randomly. After the game started.

Unbeknownst to us, the first time one of the characters uses the word "ash" a malevolent being he created that kills gods will attempt to take control of our character permanently.

Build a boat and leave the island? Nope. Infinitely large kraken surrounds the entire island.

He told us we wouldn't need a healer. Why? Turns out there is a giant tree on the island that will heal you if you eat it's fruiting bodies. Great? Nope. The tree then unfailingly dominates you into attempting to eat fruit bigger than your body, which will most likely kill you.

Middle of the island is filled with an army of hundreds.

Try to hide out? Nope. Ridiculously overpowered troll spider abomination apparently summons it's own cave at our location, kills two of the players, and is only felled by his DM PC.

I was eaten by a colossal bear. Fortunately at the time I was hiding in a mithral box that I spent all my starting wealth on. The DM had the bear punch it's own chest until the box exploded, killing the bear. That's right. The bear knew it had eaten a box, and decided to attack me by attacking it's own torso. I survived.

This DM gave us all a bucketload of his homebrewed races and classes to choose from. Half of them were completely unplayable, the other half were gods at level 1. He demanded over and over that the players immediately delete the files as they were his personal copyright and we would somehow make it difficult for him to "publish" them.

When we came up with ways to overcome his ridiculous obstacles... he just got angrier and angrier.

Also, dragonfire adepts are way overpowered and need to be nerf'd.
Naked unarmed DFAs who only own mithral boxes

navar100
2011-07-19, 11:01 PM
Worst DM: When he had a crush on a girl, teaching her to play D&D, she could Do No Wrong. All her plans worked. Every NPC liked and helped her. He would constanstly praise her how well she did. Meanwhile, in another campaign where's he's a player, he was upset I had my cleric cast spells that were not Cure Light Wounds. He yelled at me in public the next day. From then on whenever he was the DM my character could Do No Right. All my plans failed. NPCs hated me. He even admitted one time purposely having something happen that would get me upset.

Worst Player: We were both playing paladins. Mine was wholesome sweet. His was righteous warrior. He hated how I played my character. He transfered that hatred into hating me personally. He would bicker with me. When he finally grabbed hold of the DM reins, that was the end of my participation with the group, losing friends forever.

Starwulf
2011-07-19, 11:31 PM
The Worst Player I've ever met has to be "J".

I was running a little mini-campaign and everyone starting at level 8. So J decided to be the bard.
He put the 18 he rolled into his Charisma and took 3 levels of the Human Paragon from Unearthed Arcana to get the +2 Ability boost since he didn't actually have to suffer through them and chose +1 to Charisma at levels 4 and 8.
He gave himself an Ioun Stone and Cloak of Charisma giving him a +4 to Charisma each totaling him up to 30 Charisma.
He took Skill Focus Diplomacy and Negotiator as two of his feats and put max ranks into Diplomacy.
He now had a 11 Ranks, +10 Ability Modifier, and +5 Misc Modifier in Diplomacy. He only needed a 9 to turn an Ancient Black Dragon Friendly.
I said I'd just bump up the DC to which he proceeded to cry. I am physically appauled by grown boys crying and let him have his way.
He rarely failed rolled less than a 10 on his Diplomacy Check and there was little combat.

Ya know, I'd say that makes you the "Bad" DM in this case. Think about it: he went through and made a character exactly how he wanted to: A diplomancer, with a super high CHR stat. He devoted all of his wealth towards it, centered his entire build around it, and what do you do? Tell the poor guy "Yeah, well, because you're so OVER effective, I'm just going to bump the DCs up to match your enhanced ability" Instead, if you didn't like it, just tell him to lower his stats a bit, put them somewhere else, or if you really didn't want a Diplomancer, tell him so, and quite frankly, you should have done so at the beginning, plotting out an entire character around an entire build, at level 8 can take an hour or more(the more includes decent fluff), which is a huge waste of time. I mean, I wouldn't cry about it if it happened to me, but I'd damn well be angry at you for not stating your likes and dislikes at the start of the campaign and then trying to railroad me into ineffectiveness afterwards!

kharmakazy
2011-07-19, 11:37 PM
grown boys crying

I agree with the above poster.

Maphreal
2011-07-19, 11:53 PM
That isn't possible. He'd have lost the Dragonborn benefits (and likely died from the damage it would have done). And why did he roll stats when you guys were using PB?

That was an exaggeration about the God-awful abomination of a character that is often created with heavy min-maxing. These guys (more than one around here) find out that their friend is playing in a campaign, and just create a character on their own without asking the DM or even finding out creation rules. They then proceed to pop in with said friend, and expect to jump in the game without me so much as glancing at their character sheet.

I've since made it a rule that no one brings friends in to play without first checking with me and getting the character approved beforehand.

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-19, 11:58 PM
I mean, I wouldn't cry about it if it happened to me, but I'd damn well be angry at you for not stating your likes and dislikes at the start of the campaign and then trying to railroad me into ineffectiveness afterwards!

I have never met a DM that didn't expect players to not make characters that defy common sense and destroy all verisimilitude in the game. I think expecting to get away with a diplomancer build is a bit much, especially if it was a roleplaying heavy game.

Herabec
2011-07-20, 12:00 AM
Worst DM I've ever played with... Let's call him C.

First off, he had a penchant for trying to rape our characters.

Had a tendency to try and *vividly* describe the sodomy of a party member, before I told the DM to take a Shut the Hell Up Pill and get on with the game.

Threw a Balor at us at level 1 because he was bored with his own game.

Launched an army of Vampire Spawn at the party. At level 3.

Would get pissy any time the party thwarted an NPC.

Used his DMPC (which was a level 4 Assassin. At level 4.) to outshine everyone.

Consistently metagamed to ensure any plan we ever devised would fail one hundred percent of the time, regardless of how well planned or how high our rolls were.

Really, the only reason I never left was that he was the only DM available in my area for the two months I played.

NikitaDarkstar
2011-07-20, 12:13 AM
In the Diplomancer case, that honestly sounds like a lack of communication. The player should have checked if he could play something like that beforehand, and the DM should have said no, or "yes, but...".

As for myself, I've only really had one bad DM experience, and that was a DM who was running an good/evil campaign. One team would be good guys, the other evil (it was PbP so it was possible to do it like this) and told us it was a survival game. All fine and good. He also told us he wanted some background story and such and we proceeded to put quite a bit of effort into it, who doesn't want an RP heavy survival game?

When the game actually starts he decided to completely ignore everyones background story tossing my group into a situation that simply wasn't one 3 out of 4 characters would ever get into. (He assumed an elf druid that dislikes civilization, a rogue with a record thick enough to clobber someone to death with and a young dread necro that literary don't understand the concept of "moral" would be fine with working for the dwarven guard captain of the city... No.) That got me extremely on edge, but I decided to roll with it, railroading to get the campaign going is sometimes necessary.

A little while later he out of the blue asks if people want to run the campaign as a gestalt campaign, most people like that idea and rewrite their sheets. Just to have to change them several times because "they did it wrong." (Gestalt rules are somewhat vague and he didn't specify his take on them...)
Once everyone is finally done he hits us with an. "Oh by the way you need to take three phobias from Heroes of Horror. One has to be severe and tie into your backstory, you can BS the other two. Oh and the Severe one can't be obscure." A severe phobia from the book of vile deeds is a DC 15+CR of encounter Will save against becoming panicked, that's worse than a dragons fearful presence. We were level 1 characters.
I asked him if that was to compensate for the gestalts, the answer was "No, I just read about them and thought they sounded cool." I twitched pretty badly and dropped the game right then and there. Forcing us to change stuff like that after the game started and redo character concepts just because he thought it sounded cool? Yhea, sorry I'm not that desperate to play.

Starwulf
2011-07-20, 12:32 AM
I have never met a DM that didn't expect players to not make characters that defy common sense and destroy all verisimilitude in the game. I think expecting to get away with a diplomancer build is a bit much, especially if it was a roleplaying heavy game.

A diplomancer can only get away with so much, especially when played as a Bard. There are so many more ways to break a game with characters MUCH more over-powered then a Diplomancer Bard. I'll admit, I don't have any experience in RL games, but at least here on the forums, every single solitary thread I've looked at on the Recruitment forum, the DM always lists his "do's and do-not's", either right away, or as people start to join the thread and ask questions. If the DM in this thread couldn't be bothered to A: State his "Can do, can't do's" at the start, B: Ask the character to tone it down, and instead immediately railroads the poor guy by saying "Yep, I'm upping the DC's for EVERYTHING involving your particular skill-checks", that's the sign of a piss-poor DM in my book.

I mean, hell, what's he going to do with a Wizard who is focused solely on blasting? "Sorry, but every creature is immune to lightning, fire, cold, acid, electricity, so you're SOL"? Because that is exactly what he did to his player with the Diplomancer Bard. I"m not saying the guy isn't at fault for completely over-doing it, but the DM has his share of Blame, and imho, it's at least 10-15% bigger share then the player. A player can ONLY work with what he's told. Sure common sense is important, but again, a Diplomancer Bard isn't THAT over-powered.

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-20, 12:42 AM
It would not be the power I object to, but how little sense it makes. If the player showed up with a half gold dragon, half celestial, half golem half vampire character, I'd still not expect it to see play even if it was specialized in baking bread. Given the situation, it seemed like the guy was using diplomacy in areas that really didn't make much sense and trying to avoid all encounters that way. I really doubt it made much sense from a plot perspective.

And I have never seen play by post games where one of the rules was that the character must obey common sense. I still assume it is an unspoken rule.

Starwulf
2011-07-20, 12:52 AM
It would not be the power I object to, but how little sense it makes. If the player showed up with a half gold dragon, half celestial, half golem half vampire character, I'd still not expect it to see play even if it was specialized in baking bread. Given the situation, it seemed like the guy was using diplomacy in areas that really didn't make much sense and trying to avoid all encounters that way. I really doubt it made much sense from a plot perspective.

And I have never seen play by post games where one of the rules was that the character must obey common sense. I still assume it is an unspoken rule.

I must admit I don't really see the issue with avoiding combat. I love to play Video Games where stealth or diplomacy is always an option on the board, albeit very hard at times. There is, as the old saying goes "more then one way to skin a cat". Just because the DM wanted there to be lots of combat in his campaign, doesn't give him the right to railroad his players into it. The DM DM's for the players, the players don't play for the DM, at least, that's how I've always viewed it. I mean, I've read hundreds and hundreds of threads on this very board about how terrible a thing it is to railroad your PCs into following your specific plot, the very specific way that YOU want it to be done, and quite frankly, that is exactly what it sounds like WolfieDM was doing: Railroading, plain and simple. I mean, if he actually walked around with an Ancient Black Dragon as a pet...well, I can see that being an issue, but if he was just circumventing combat by talking the hostile creatures down, well, that's basically what a negotiator does every-day in RL, in business(arbitration), in police work(Hostage negotiator), in economics(haggling with a store-owner). Dozens more examples, but I imagine you get the point.

I'm just not sure why you're defending an obvious Railroader, when on any other thread in this particular forum, Railroaders get chewed the hell out.

Edit: also, to your last bit: The problem with that, is different people have different views on what common sense entails, and what it does not. I've seen tons of threads where even a tiny bit of optimization is frowned upon, other threads where middling optimization is encouraged, and other threads where total, obliterating optimization is not only encouraged, but expected. Hence why every thread I've ever read immediately evolves into a "Can we do such and such? What about this? How do you feel about this?" and from the DM "This, this, and this is not allowed, but feel free to use anything else" or "All published material is fine, Homebrew needs to be run by me first, but I'm likely NOT/AM(depending) going to allow it"

Hiro Protagonest
2011-07-20, 12:56 AM
Starwulf, if you were the DM, would you be fine with a character having a god's attitude towards him being helpful? Kinda defeats the purpose of the game if he casts a sending for the god and the god says "yeah, that's not too hard" and proceeds to turn the party into great wyrm gold dragons while they're facing the BBEG?

Okay, that might've been an exaggeration, but he could easily get lots and lots of super powerful allies like giants and dragons and titans.

Starwulf
2011-07-20, 01:03 AM
Starwulf, if you were the DM, would you be fine with a character having a god's attitude towards him being helpful? Kinda defeats the purpose of the game if he casts a sending for the god and the god says "yeah, that's not too hard" and proceeds to turn the party into great wyrm gold dragons while they're facing the BBEG?

Okay, that might've been an exaggeration, but he could easily get lots and lots of super powerful allies like giants and dragons and titans.

I wouldn't be fine with it at all, but that is NOT my beef here. See, if I was WolfieDM, I'd have said, from the start "No this this and this, don't optimize your characters to much, but make them moderately efficient at whatever task you plan for them to do" No, my issue is in how the DM handled the situation, by telling him "yep, you're to powerful in that particular area, I'm raising the DC of every single encounter like that", when instead he should have said "Your character is a bit to over-powered for this campaign, why don't you lose those 3 Paragon levels, and one of your +4 CHR items", or "Yeah, I don't want that type of character in my game, it's much to optimized, roll up a different character, or remove a serious amount of power from this one(which, goes back to my first point, that the DM should have said "This is the level of Optimization I want and expect, do NOT cross that line, or I'll not allow you to play in this game"

TL;DR: If you're going to railroad, do it at the VERY beginning, before anyone wastes an hour or more of time coming up with a character concept and building said character. Don't get all pissy when you don't lay down the rules clearly at the start and then someone comes with a concept you don't personally like, say "To bad so sad this is over-powered for my adventure." and then come complain on a forum about how "This person is the WORST player ever", because his player wasn't completely at fault.

rayne_dragon
2011-07-20, 01:06 AM
Worst DM: He did some other things, including railroading and poor handling of a romance with one of his players, but the worst (in my opinion) was that he was running an epic-level game and inflicted something like 14 levels of permanent level drain on the characters that couldn't be cured by any normal means in a 3rd edition game.

kharmakazy
2011-07-20, 01:13 AM
Diplomacy usually take 1 minute or more... if you can get titans to listen to you for a minute without them crushing you, you have accomplished something right there.

The diplomacy table doesn't make a lot of sense though. Should take the power of the creature into account somehow, not the same flat DC for commoners as dragons.

As a DM I would apply circumstance penalties for attempting to parley with things that could easily hit you hard enough to erase your family tree.

nihil8r
2011-07-20, 02:11 AM
i love this thread. i have at least a dozen horrible stories but i'll focus on one recent one. it's a little bit similar to kharmakazy's in that everything we did was automatically going to fail because magic!!!. i also have another story about the always-changing-the-gameworld dm that maybe i'll tell later :smallcool:

so i met a few new local gamers through meetup. the one guy invites me to his game. the world is a cyberpunk fantasy world besieged by demons. sounds fun, right? plus this guy and the group's other dm have their "own" game system which is largely taken from the heroes system. sounds fun, right?

so i make a female dark elf rogue/wizard/assassin who specializes in handguns. my backstory was that i used to be a fashion model but discovered crime after blackmailing and murdering some creepy guy who wouldn't take no for an answer. sounds fun, right? my core spells were improved invisibility, haste and heroism and i dual-wielded pistols. with my self-buffs i could make called headshots very easily. the other players were a lascivious, flaming homosexual elf wizard (played by the group's other dm), a sword-using elf duelist (played by the gm's live-in girlfriend), and an orc demon-hunter (played by some guy who would fall asleep at the table).

for our first job we were teleported to some ruined area the demons controlled in search of some powerful magical orb, and we were allowed to keep all spoils (except this particular orb). sounds fun, right? well, the first demon we kill is inexplicably carrying a bag of holding with about 15 magic items in it. eventually we find the house hiding the magic orb, kill the golem guards, and loot the treasure then teleport back to town.

now, tons of magic items for no reason might not be that big of a deal. after all, maybe the gm has big things planned and wants us to have money. and the 3 other players take advantage of this cash influx by taking their weapons to the magic store to be upgraded. i, however, because a) i have the paranoid flaw and b) am not retarded, do not leave my weapons at the magic store to be upgraded. (i think i left my armor or something inconsequential).

so of course we are ambushed at the nightclub we go to afterwards. apparently some big celebrity singer (i chose the name celine dion for the gm because i love terrance & phillip) is at the club in the vip suite and assassins are trying to kill her! oh noes! so despite the duelist not having her swords and the orc not being there (i think the player was absent) we faceroll the baddies. hurray . . .?

no. not hurray. because now the magic cyber police arrive. they somehow cast a mass hold person on the ENTIRE nightclub and teleport in. the gay wizard tries to escape the hold person. he rolls two consecutive twenties (for an end result of like 60 something) and manages to break the hold. yay!

so the two archmages are easily convinced that we are the good guys or whatever. that's fine. and despite charisma being my dump stat (hey, i was a model, not an actor) i manage to befriend celine dion. yay! but here is where the problems begin.

someone, you see, has been sending celine dion death threats. more specifically, someone has been sending celine dion (who is an elf) elven fingers in the mail. also, we somehow discover that celine dion used to be a drug smuggler before she became a big pop star. and, somehow, she lost 10 billion dollars [sic] worth of drugs to the police years ago. hmm.

what do we learn from our thorough investigation of the death threats? nothing. seeing as i can now blackmail celine dion with the fact that i know her secret identity as a 10 billion-dollar-losing drug smuggler, i try to get our protection rates significantly increased. the npcs are very resistant. okay, fine. so what can we learn by simply guarding celine dion at her next concert? well, we can learn that we are powerless to stop a teleporting, magic-detection impervious assassin with an invisible dagger from waltzing right up to celine dion and slashing his throat all over her.

what? i come up with the idea that the assassin (who apparently was the one sending his own fingers to celine) may have used some sort of blood magic soul-splice to put himself into celine? of course the gm immediately agreed that this sort of thing was certainly possible. in other words, he had no idea what he was doing (besides railroading the snot out of us) until i came up with that idea.

fine. before this railroad attack the gay elf wizard had complained out loud that we didn't know what to do and weren't being given enough information. it wasn't a nasty complaint at all, it was positive feedback. and the gm became angry and hostile about it. sounds fun, right?

so. celine dion now wants us to go with her to some secret hiding location where she can hide for a while. oh, before that happened another uber dmnpc showed up to harass the gay wizard and see through my invisibility. anyway, we get in some airship cruiseliner for a week. never leave it. then a smaller ship comes and picks us up and takes us to some remote estate in the wilderness. finally, some action might happen!

this estate, it would seem, is designed for super rich people to go to and be safe while doing things in safety and privacy. it's completely cut off from the rest of the world, surrounded by a huge wall and has guys with machine guns and whatnot. you can't call to or from here. i don't think teleport worked. iirc my invisibility won't work. which i guess makes sense if this is supposed to be an assassin-proof locale . . . but it's not assassin proof because eventually someone throws a grenade into our room. no one is seriously hurt but there isn't anyone in the hallway who could have thrown it. it isn't that we failed our spots or something, this is a secured building and ONLY someone on the inside could have attacked us. how they got away is of course a mystery (cough cough railroad).

so we (mainly me i think) confront the guy in charge, who isn't really the guy in charge but whatever. he absolutely refuses to cooperate with us at all. he's rude and belligerent and unarmed and unarmored. so when he turns to leave us i announce a backstab.

the live-in girlfriend immediately wails "no dont!" :smallannoyed: i realized that she knew him well enough to know that he would just kill my character. so now myself very angry i recanted. and now we're stuck here in this estate where our magic and technology doesn't work, and we are under attack by magical railroad assassins, and we can't leave by flight because the ship that brought us here left long ago. sounds fun, right?

so the demon hunter orc and i decide to check out the surrounding forest. guess what, it's full of demons! we faceroll the first ones we find, but many more are coming. thus we must go back to the estate. thus we are trapped in a place where our class abilities inexplicably don't work, npcs are antagonistic and most likely invincible, and escape is impossible. sounds fun, right?

at this point we wisely switched to a new game that would be run by the guy who played the gay wizard. he gave us a presentation on the game world, it would be a ravenloft-inspired setting and we would be adventurers working for the local leadership as problem-solvers. sounds fun, right? i for some reason made a female barbarian/bard/alchemist who had to drink a beer in order to cast a spell. the old gm's live-in girlfriend made a male gnome thief. and ... the old gm didn't want to make his own character so he just told the new gm to make him a druid.

first game session starts out fine, there are two new players as well. a paladin whose player is unable to roleplay at all (which is fine, some people are new) and some psionic blaster guy. we meet the baron or king or whoever, get sent on our mission, and fight some orcs on the river along the way. fine. but then ... combat is over, and the old gm throws a TANTRUM and RANT about how druids are HORRIBLE and all his spells are BAD and why would a DRUID care about this setting (the forest is infested by undead and this guy claims a druid wouldn't ... :smallfurious:) and the new gm didn't do a good job of whatever. i was furious. i immediately wanted to switch my character to a druid (my original concept was kind of dumb) just to show him up. but instead ... i just stopped gaming with that group. i went to denny's afterwards with the new gm and the psionic blaster guy and so the parting with them was amicable but ...

this old gm is the same guy who, upon playing settlers of catan for the first time, threw a tantrum and stormed out of the room. i took over his hand and won the game. sure, the other players were also playing for the first time but ... let's review. an adult in his late 30's who throws tantrums over games and his game is a boring, pointless railroad to failville? sounds fun, right?

Kojiro
2011-07-20, 02:34 AM
<stuff>

Phobias? In the Book of Vile... I assume you meant Darkness, because the only one with "Deeds" in the title is the Book of Exalted Deeds. Anyway, where are these? I tried looking, and I can't find them, in either of the above books; Unearthed Arcana has something along those lines in the (in)sanity section, though. Is that what you're referring to?

Also, on-topic... Hm. Wow. None of my worsts compare all that much to examples here; while I've RP'd with some unskilled and/or unpleasant people, they generally either weren't this bad, or the badness wasn't (directly) from on related to the game/RP.

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-20, 02:37 AM
I would suggest posting them anyway. Might provide an interesting read, even if they are not the worst. Especially if they are humorous.

veven
2011-07-20, 02:49 AM
Honestly I've been pretty blessed. I've very few complaints about anyone who's ever DM'd for me and only had a couple problem players but they only played for two sessions.

The Players:In my first time as DM two guys, best friends in real life and really good friends of mine wanted to play a halfling and gnome in some sort of weird sexual relationship (weird in that they spent lots of IC time talking about it). Player B had insisted on playing a Gnome despite me telling him that Gnomes didn't actually exist in the world (due to main quest related events). Our group is not too serious but these guys could not take anything seriously for more than a minute. A knowledge nature check let them know that the nearby owlbear dwelling might have some eggs which were pretty valuable on the local black market. The party ventured to the caves to find some eggs. They found em and camped out for the night, during which each problem player tried to steal the eggs from the other party members and then from each other. The more experienced player in the party ended up crushing all the eggs.

The DM: Despite his relatively low level of system master this guy is actually a very creative DM and usually runs very fun games but he has the habit of smoking a LOT of marijuana before sessions which slows him down quite a bit. One time he even fell asleep while the group was discussing their plans.

One minor complaint I have with my current DM is that he doesn't really know how to build a challenging encounter without simply inflating the CR to a huge number (which usually means high damage full attacks). E6 game, party of 4, level 6+2 feats. Encounter; 1 Kython Slaughterking, 1 slaymaster, 3 impailers, 5 adults. It was obviously a "you gotta run" encounter but he set it up so we were pretty much trapped and we ended up loosing the cleric and two of our closest NPC allies.

Serpentine
2011-07-20, 02:51 AM
Only really had one bad player.

We'll name him George. George decided to play a Wizard, elf. He gave him 18 Strength. We were musing about what that would look like, an elf with 18 Strength. We were thinking Bruce Lee. He went with Arnold Schwartzenegger.
We were helping him complete his test for the Adventuring Academy. He made a Knowledge check to find out what we were fighting and how to beat it. He refused to tell anyone.
Wanted to look inconspicuous, so purchased a film noir-style hat and coat. In medieval fantasy.
Came across a pub called The Eye of Gruumsh populated by orcs and half-orcs. Decided to sneak in. Without any ranks in Disguise, wanted to disguise himself as an orc. DM told him there's no way he could pull it off, could maybe manage human. Disguise consisted of jamming his hat over his head to hide his ears. Nearly got murderised.
Went wandering around the adventuring academy looking for some sort of "ultimate power" thing. Walked into the dean's office and declared "I find a filing cabinet!" In medieval fantasy. Later got mixed up in the Fighter's lessons cuz he looked so beefy. Wore an illfitting chain shirt, hit the teacher with the sword. Ran through the school, straight into the women's baths. Was dumbstruck by a red-headed beauty (DM rolled 3d6s for Charisma for her, got 3 6s. She later came back as a dragonslayer PC) and fell madly in love. Walked into a class room where another character was giving a lecture (he got a better Knowledge check than the lecturer and took over...). "Snuck" in with his jangling chain shirt. Was confronted by the other character, and blatantly lied. "Snuck" out again... through the window.
Every time he had any information whatsoever that would be useful, point-blank refused to reveal it to anyone else.

Fun stories, yes... but got these by going off apart from the rest of the group, so we sat there watching his shenanigans for hours on end. We talked to him about it, but he was unapologetic - something about them being entertaining. One of the last straws was when he started getting racist (ironic, considering the things he was saying and his Mediterranian heritage), and I suggested that his playstyle didn't really fit.

Lord.Sorasen
2011-07-20, 03:57 AM
Only really had one bad player.

We'll name him George. George decided to play a Wizard, elf. He gave him 18 Strength. We were musing about what that would look like, an elf with 18 Strength. We were thinking Bruce Lee. He went with Arnold Schwartzenegger.
We were helping him complete his test for the Adventuring Academy. He made a Knowledge check to find out what we were fighting and how to beat it. He refused to tell anyone.
Wanted to look inconspicuous, so purchased a film noir-style hat and coat. In medieval fantasy.
Came across a pub called The Eye of Gruumsh populated by orcs and half-orcs. Decided to sneak in. Without any ranks in Disguise, wanted to disguise himself as an orc. DM told him there's no way he could pull it off, could maybe manage human. Disguise consisted of jamming his hat over his head to hide his ears. Nearly got murderised.
Went wandering around the adventuring academy looking for some sort of "ultimate power" thing. Walked into the dean's office and declared "I find a filing cabinet!" In medieval fantasy. Later got mixed up in the Fighter's lessons cuz he looked so beefy. Wore an illfitting chain shirt, hit the teacher with the sword. Ran through the school, straight into the women's baths. Was dumbstruck by a red-headed beauty (DM rolled 3d6s for Charisma for her, got 3 6s. She later came back as a dragonslayer PC) and fell madly in love. Walked into a class room where another character was giving a lecture (he got a better Knowledge check than the lecturer and took over...). "Snuck" in with his jangling chain shirt. Was confronted by the other character, and blatantly lied. "Snuck" out again... through the window.
Every time he had any information whatsoever that would be useful, point-blank refused to reveal it to anyone else.

Fun stories, yes... but got these by going off apart from the rest of the group, so we sat there watching his shenanigans for hours on end. We talked to him about it, but he was unapologetic - something about them being entertaining. One of the last straws was when he started getting racist (ironic, considering the things he was saying and his Mediterranian heritage), and I suggested that his playstyle didn't really fit.

The worst part about this story is, right up until the racism bit, this guy sounds like he had the potential to be an awesome player. I mean, these are fun stories. An 18 strength elf wizard? Attempting to fool orcs by wearing a bigger hat? "Sneaks" with armor (as a wizard)? But he had that flaw of wanting to be the sole star of the show at all times, and as such you guys missed what could possibly have been a fun character to play with.

I have been blessed, myself. I had two questionable players who came once as a guest to a single session. Everyone I ever intended to play with for an extended period of time has been wonderful.

Serpentine
2011-07-20, 04:31 AM
Imagine the stories we could've had if he'd deigned to allow other characters to join in...
That character's demise was pretty dramatic, actually. Came up against a mindflayer. It honed in on him because of his high Intelligence and messed up the rest of us, then grabbed him and planeshifted. On the other plane, it started boring into the character's skull. He (Rule 0) had his magic staff in hand (Staff of Power?), and managed to snap out of the spell he was under before he fell unconcious so he broke the staff over his knee. The blast destroyed the mindflayer, and he went *pop!* and found himself on Mechanus. Right in front of a bunch of saboteur demons. With just a few hitpoints left.
And that's where he left the game, as far as the rest of the party knows well and truly deaded and nommed by a mindflayer. Thinking of introducing him again at some point, or maybe an allusion or somesuch...
'course, then the DM introduced another character for him to play - a super goodie-two-shoes Favoured Soul or Dragon Disciple (I forget) - and he started playing him exactly the same :smallsigh:

Yora
2011-07-20, 05:10 AM
I've seen some really terrible players back when playing NWN online, but I don't really want to think back on that.

I don't know if I would really call him a bad DM, but our last one seemed to enjoy nothing more than to annoy everyone else. Occasionally someone else ran the game and he played his smug elven wizard who did nothing but annoy everyone else. And that's his description of his own character.
The campaign ended when the DM decided to run us through the Tomb of Horror. apparently for no other reason than enjoying watching us fail.

Eldan
2011-07-20, 05:10 AM
I don't think I've ever had any really bad players, but I had a bad DM once.

You see, our local game shop-owner (they mostly sell Warhammer miniatures) decided to let people use the shop's back room (it had a table and half a dozen comfy chairs, as well as being his general store room for miniatures he'd painted, scenery, old posters and so on) for roleplaying games. I hadn't played any RPGs for six years, so I posted general interest. After a while, it looked like a group was coming together for a system I didn't know yet, but studied the books for.

So, I showed up on that evening. Other than me, one player and the DM showed up (three other players said they'd come, but didn't. Good start). We made characters, went over the rules, all looked fine so far. Then, however, came the game.

We were supposed to find some missing people. I suggested to go to the place where the last person had vanished.

DM: It's a house in the poor section of town. It's empty.
Me: We look around the house for tracks, or broken windows.
DM: Okay.
[Two minutes of silence]
Me: Do we find anything? Should we roll some kind of check?
DM: You don't find anything.
Me: Hmm. In that case, we try to get into the house.
DM: You do that.
[Minute of Silence]
Me: So... what is inside?
DM: Oh, nothing. The house is empty.
Me: Then we try [other thing].
DM: Sure.
[Minute of silence]

There followed a few more tries fro me trying to do anything in this place. I should also mention that our quest-giver, the local authorities, had not given us any clues beyond "people went missing". Not even a list of names or locations. Apparently, "that was not available".

Finally:
DM: You hear something from the dark alley behind the building.
Me: I go to investigate, gun drawn.
DM: A man is running away from you.

Thanks to my speed, I manage to catch up and throw the guy against a wall, immobilizing him.

Me: What does he look like?
DM: It's a man in a coat.

I proceeded to ask him who he was. The answer was "I'm just someone walking through!"
Asking why the guy ran away from the police looking at a crime scene didn't reveal any results. Neither did some light torture (punching, intimidating). He simply didn't talk.

At that point, the session was over. This had actually taken over two hours.

Tengu_temp
2011-07-20, 05:46 AM
The title of worst DM I've seen belongs to one of those two people:
This guy was a pretty cool player, so when he offered me and my brothers to join a game, we accepted. I decided to just watch the session, my brothers made a human noble and a dwarf engineer (it was a WFRP game). The DM wanted players just to provide the character concept and then filled the character sheets for them, with stats that were often impossible by the rules - weird but not too bad, so everyone went with it. The session, on the other hand...
It started at an open slave market, in a city where by canon slavery is illegal. Most of the session consisted of the DM's previous player, who was playing a priest, negotiating for the release of one of the slaves who was an important figure, while everyone else sat there and twiddled their thumbs. After 2 or 3 hours, when it became apparent that the negotiations won't go anywhere, the group decided to capture the slavers in an ambush and rescue the slaves. They found a good spot on the slavers' caravan route and set up several traps crafted by the engineer.
The traps failed by dm fiat, then a big group of human slavers led by a gigantic half-ogre jumped out of the nearby bushes and surrounded the party. Seeing that all is lost, the noble started to flee on his horse, heading for the place with the least enemies and intending to jump over them - but the DM either interpreted that as "right next to the ogre" or decided that it moves at the speed of light, because the ogre grabbed the horse and broke its neck without any rolls. Then everyone was captured, once again completely via DM fiat, even though most of the PCs wanted to fight at this point.
The session ended here. Nobody returned for the next one.
A DM on a forum I played offered to show some people how to play PbP games - it was the first such game for many of them, me included. The informations we received at the start were almost nonexistant: barely a word about the setting other than it was fantasy, and rules on character creation in his homebrew system, but nothing beyond that - no rules on how anything works, so everyone shot in the dark, and no skill list in a skill-based game! Many PCs came up with bizarre concepts (mutant chaos squirrel, anyone?) or incompatible ones, and the DM was fine with all of this. What he wasn't fine with, however, was people coming up with characters that were too mundane or too strong - he was a huge believer in special snowflake syndrome, and considered arbitrary character weaknesses to be the same as good roleplaying.
The game started with most of the party in a tavern, where they spend a lot of time doing nothing while waiting for something to happen and/or bickering with each other (remember the incompatible characters part?), while the DM's girlfriend, playing a special snowflake bard with weird and overpowered abilities, was in a completely different place, interacting with some people in some guy's mansion and completely god-modding her way through everything. The DM insisted that we post in predefined order all the time, and constantly berated us for playing unimaginativly and missing the point of PbP - because we were just posting our actions and conversations instead of god-modding the whole environnment like his girlfiend.
Predictably, the game didn't last long, and barely any plot started (and went nowhere) while it was alive. It put me off PbP games for years.

As for worst player, it's a hard choice - since I spent years playing NWN persistent worlds, I encountered a lot of drama queens, disruptive behaviour, people acting like jerks "because I'm roleplaying my character this way", general idiocy and terrible roleplaying, uncomfortable ideas and other horrible stuff, and it's hard to pick the one that was the worst. I'll go with the worst player I can remember and describe in an amusing way.
It was an Exalted Solar game. He created an apparently purposely underpowered Zenith who barely had any Zenith abilities and instead focused on sorcery. He was barely active and roleplayed his character in a very bland way, but whined that he doesn't have any opportunities to shine and play his character - and when the ST gave him opportunities, he ignored them most of the time. When people disagreed with him, he whined even harder. When we fought an equally numbered group of Terrestials, he complained that we have no chance because a full circle of Solars will always lose against 5 Dragonblooded with good teamwork (any more experienced Exalted player will tell you how ridiculous this claim is), and when we beat them without too much difficulty, he whined that the ST went easy on us.
The player left the group soon afterwards. His character became an NPC, and everyone agreed that the ST roleplayed it in a much more interesting way.

Yora
2011-07-20, 06:24 AM
As for worst player, it's a hard choice - since I spent years playing NWN persistent worlds, I encountered a lot of drama queens, disruptive behaviour, people acting like jerks "because I'm roleplaying my character this way", general idiocy and terrible roleplaying, uncomfortable ideas and other horrible stuff, and it's hard to pick the one that was the worst. I'll go with the worst player I can remember and describe in an amusing way.


Oh yes. The drama queens loved NWN. :smallbiggrin:
But usually you could identify the groups of elf sorcerers and paladins at their picknicks very quickly and just pass by without talking to them. And in big evets they usually stood at the side whispering among themselves while watching the rest with disapproving looks.

Tengu_temp
2011-07-20, 06:33 AM
Ignoring them is more difficult when you're a DM, though. Especially a DM whose side job includes making sure the playerbase behaves.

Morghen
2011-07-20, 08:07 AM
I guess I've been lucky. The worst GM I've been around wasn't a jerk at all, just woefully underprepared:

He showed up for the first session without really knowing the rules of the system. (He'd played tons of a previous edition, but none of this edition.)

Real dialogue from the session:
Player: "I guess I'll run back to the bar. How long will it take me to get there?"
GM: "Um... Hang on." [Goes to look up rules on running.]

The same sort of thing happened during combat. "Hang on. Lemme look that up."



The worst part? It was me.

Engine
2011-07-20, 08:25 AM
I think I'm especially sorry for Engine and Honest Tiefling. I haven't had any players quite that bad, but there was "T".

Well, thanks. Anyway, it's nice to see I'm not alone.


I guess I've been lucky. The worst GM I've been around wasn't a jerk at all, just woefully underprepared:

He showed up for the first session without really knowing the rules of the system. (He'd played tons of a previous edition, but none of this edition.)

Real dialogue from the session:
Player: "I guess I'll run back to the bar. How long will it take me to get there?"
GM: "Um... Hang on." [Goes to look up rules on running.]

The same sort of thing happened during combat. "Hang on. Lemme look that up."

The worst part? It was me.

Having this sense of humour and self-criticism it's the mark of a good DM, pal.:smallwink:

Choco
2011-07-20, 10:13 AM
Worst player that I remember, hmmm... Let's call him S, and as for what he did:


-All of his characters had the exact same personality, the Insufferable Douche.
-He expected all the rest of us, and the NPC's as well, to accept him being an insufferable douche and think nothing of it, yet when anyone was even half as wretched towards him as he is towards them, then them's obviously fightin' words.
-He started PvP at the slightest provocation in what was supposed to be a non-PvP game, and instantly complained to the DM when someone else tried to attack him (justifiably, due to constant provocation), reminding everyone that this is a non-PvP game.
-All of his characters were loners who had no reason to be with the party, and in fact hated everyone in the party.
-His characters never got along with the rest of the party, despite the fact that the DM requested everyone have some positive connection.
-All of his characters had the typical dark past tragic backstories of emo-ness, and he used that as an excuse for acting like he does.
-Constantly used the "that's what my character would do" excuse when anyone complained about his character.
-Constantly tried to replicate the effects of feats/skills/spells by "roleplaying" and then getting mad when told the game didn't work that way (example: tried to get a whirlwind attack by describing how he spins his sword around).


I remember once just to make a jab at him I made a character who also had a dark and tragic backstory, who had lost everything and then some, and yet was still able to be sociable, happy, and look at the bright side.

Sipex
2011-07-20, 12:24 PM
I have one specific player, some people may have seen me speak of her before as this was rather (past 6 months) recent.

Problem Player (In a numbered list because I like lists)
1) While everyone playing was new to the system (4e) she never actually learned how to play in the 2+ years we played.

2) Her character builds were inconsistant. She'd optimise for dual-wielding longswords and use a greatspear...then she'd get upset because she wasn't as effective as the other party members.

3) She didn't seem to understand the concept of playing a fighter (despite choosing it after being told how it works). She kept trying to be a striker but would get upset when the rogue out damaged her and she'd whine or snap at me if she took too much damage (particularily after marking a large number of targets).

4) She'd make constant threats to myself or volunteer DMs (when a player DMs their own dungeon for a day) based on if her character was killed. Not death threats (they were rather unspecific threats) but threats nonetheless.

5) She'd get upset if the group didn't go 100% with her plans. Compromise? Not likely. This would result in arguements and the whole debacle ending with "Fine, I'm outnumbered anyways" then sulking for an hour while we played.

6) She would get snappy and mean if the other players got too rambunctious or talkative. We didn't run a tight group, it was very free-flow and not all too serious, OOC talk encouraged. She picked up a ruler for a couple sessions before we told her off because she was using it to whack the table (big snapping sound) and another player.

7) Playing 4e, each character has an assortment of powers which tell you what you can do. To make things easy we each paid the $10-$20 for nicely printed out cards for ourselves. Nevertheless, her turns always played out as such:
Me: It's your turn.
Her: Oh! Ohohoh. Um...
Me: What are you going to do?
Her: I hit this monster.
Me: With what?
Her: OH! Um...my spear.
Me: I mean, what power?
Her: Ohohoh!
*Goes through her closed folder of power cards instead of how the other players have theirs out in front of them then CLOSES the folder again and puts it away*
...
What does this power do?
Me: What does the card say?
Her: Uhmmmm...
*reads it*
Okay, I'm ready.
*She rolls a D20 by itself instead of also rolling the damage, you know, even though we've been through this before and asked her about it*
Eleven! (the dice reads 11). Did I hit?
Me: What's your total?
Her: OH!
*Opens her closed folder again with her character sheet*
+9.
Me: Okay, so 20. That hits, what's the damage?
Her: Oh!
*cue folder again*
...
Which one is a D8? (Despite our constant attempts to have her simply have her dice ready)
Me: This one, roll.
Her: *Rolls dice*
Eight! (The dice reads 8)
Me: What's your total?
...etc...etc...etc

8) She refused and got downright angry if we suggested any help. See, she had some trouble learning the game (as seen above) and retaining that knowledge BUT she would not admit to this fact. Meaning any help beyond directly requested help meant we thought she was stupid.

9) Threw a hissy fit if she missed a session. I'm talking about pre-planned, legitimately missed sessions where EVERY OTHER PLAYER has missed at least one session without causing trouble. Nope, she scared my group into in-action and caused a month-long debacle simply because we wouldn't cancel a game if SHE couldn't show up.

10) Constantly created characters and tried to play them. We started out with this being okay. This is my fault, I was new and didn't realise what monster I had unleashed upon the campaign. I only allowed people to play two characters at once though. We saw how much trouble this initiated and as I got more adept at DMing I realised we didn't really need this in place. We came to a decision that the characters currently around could stay but couldn't be actively played. They could be switched in at logical times (While visitng HQ) but no new characters.
Needless to say she still tried to make new characters and she still tried to play more than 1 character at a time.
You know that whole speil I had about her taking a turn? Try that twice a round.

11) Constantly insulted the party wizard (personally, not the character but the player). I mean, we all did to an extent, that was sort of his bit, he insulted himself. It's normally a fun thing. But she would take it too far and get nasty and spiteful.

12) Any problems caused by the above points were brought back on her fiance who played our Rogue. He'd get the silent treatment and get guilt tripped after the session.

13) When the going got tough she...gave up. I'm not talking about 'frustratingly tough' I'm talking about 'minor trouble' tough. She'd get flustered and say "I give up, I'm too stupid/it's too hard/etc." and sulk.

14) She'd constantly steal the limelight from other players. This was done by trying to push her character into every situation possible instead of letting the limelight get passed around and making a skill check whenever ANYONE else made it. Locked door? She's there trying to out pick the rogue. Arcana? Trying to out think the wizard. I mean, seriously, let those who have specialties try first. She'd gloat if she got the higher roll too.

Name_Here
2011-07-20, 12:34 PM
I wouldn't be fine with it at all, but that is NOT my beef here. See, if I was WolfieDM, I'd have said, from the start "No this this and this, don't optimize your characters to much, but make them moderately efficient at whatever task you plan for them to do" No, my issue is in how the DM handled the situation, by telling him "yep, you're to powerful in that particular area, I'm raising the DC of every single encounter like that", when instead he should have said "Your character is a bit to over-powered for this campaign, why don't you lose those 3 Paragon levels, and one of your +4 CHR items", or "Yeah, I don't want that type of character in my game, it's much to optimized, roll up a different character, or remove a serious amount of power from this one(which, goes back to my first point, that the DM should have said "This is the level of Optimization I want and expect, do NOT cross that line, or I'll not allow you to play in this game"

TL;DR: If you're going to railroad, do it at the VERY beginning, before anyone wastes an hour or more of time coming up with a character concept and building said character. Don't get all pissy when you don't lay down the rules clearly at the start and then someone comes with a concept you don't personally like, say "To bad so sad this is over-powered for my adventure." and then come complain on a forum about how "This person is the WORST player ever", because his player wasn't completely at fault.

Rule zero. The GM has a right and the responsibility to step in whenever the game becomes broken. If the character was tossing out epic level spells at level 5 I don't care how legit his build it the GM has to step in and remove that ability no matter how essential it is for the "character concept". If the player has a problem with the GM removing broken mechanics then he has no place at the gaming table and should be told to beat sand.

I've had some terrible GMs but they were mostly at cons and were trying something new which just turned out poorly so I don't really talk too badly about them but my worst player was something special.

We played Dark Heresy he was a psyker. He routinuely tossed out 14+ force bolts, surprisingly never rolling an 8. I found out later that he was adding his psyker tests wrong so he was tossing nearly double the dice he should have. Also one time when they captured a female cultist and were preparing to torture the information out of her I can't really say what exactly he thought I would let him do but I shut him down and ended the scene immediately after I heard his plan.

NikitaDarkstar
2011-07-20, 01:18 PM
Phobias? In the Book of Vile... I assume you meant Darkness, because the only one with "Deeds" in the title is the Book of Exalted Deeds. Anyway, where are these? I tried looking, and I can't find them, in either of the above books; Unearthed Arcana has something along those lines in the (in)sanity section, though. Is that what you're referring to?

Also, on-topic... Hm. Wow. None of my worsts compare all that much to examples here; while I've RP'd with some unskilled and/or unpleasant people, they generally either weren't this bad, or the badness wasn't (directly) from on related to the game/RP.

*facepalm* This is why I shouldn't post to late in the evening, I got BoVD mixed up with Heroes of Horror, phobias are on page 61-62 in that one. *goes back to edit that mistake out of existance*

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-20, 01:45 PM
*facepalm* This is why I shouldn't post to late in the evening, I got BoVD mixed up with Heroes of Horror, phobias are on page 61-62 in that one. *goes back to edit that mistake out of existance*

Don't feel bad, I always get Book of Exalted DEEDS mixed up with Book of Vile DARKENESS. And then get Complete Arcane and Complete Mage mixed up to boot.

NikitaDarkstar
2011-07-20, 02:42 PM
Don't feel bad, I always get Book of Exalted DEEDS mixed up with Book of Vile DARKENESS. And then get Complete Arcane and Complete Mage mixed up to boot.

OH no, I've given up on not calling the BoVD Deeds on the end... seriously. I'm annoyed cause I mixed it up with Heroes of Horror. XD

And I for the longest time thought the Complete Arcane and Complete Mage were the same thing until my DM sent me both books and I just went "Oh umm.. well..." Granted.. I never used either much, played a straight up wizard/archmage and used the spell compendium, libris mortis and sandstorm more than anything. (Sandstorm is great for all your fiery needs... combine with libris mortis and we now have a very destructive blaster. XD)

Flame of Anor
2011-07-20, 02:46 PM
The worst part about this story is, right up until the racism bit, this guy sounds like he had the potential to be an awesome player.

Yes, quite. It reminds me of that Barbarian Wizard thread.


The worst part? It was me.

Is it bad that I'm instantly reminded of the end of THE DAY OF ALL THE BLOOD? :smallbiggrin:


She'd get flustered and say "I give up, I'm too stupid"

After that story, I feel like agreeing with her.

Sipex
2011-07-20, 02:48 PM
You're not the only one, trust me.

Saying that would've just made it worse though.

GeekGirl
2011-07-20, 03:00 PM
This back a few years ago while i was in college. My worst DM, wasn't a bad DM... He knew the rules he needed to, good at in-prov when it was needed, his stories were intriguing, and i can't remember him ever railroading a story. I think I was the first girl he DM'ed for, almost ever group of enemies we fought tried to subdue me (without killing) and take as a hostage/prisoner. Almost on a weekly basis I found myself my character tied/bound/strapped to something with little to no way out on my own. Honestly it was just kinda creepy.

Silus
2011-07-20, 03:02 PM
Let's see if I can blaze through this quickly. And hopefully this does not devolve into a full blown argument (the person in question frequents this site).

Let's call this guy....Pooka (after what he played in an oWoD game). I'm thinking that most of this stuff isn't what is typically considered as "bad gamer material", but it ground the other player's gears something fierce.


1. Guy has no idea how to make a balanced character. From my experience playing with him, he either makes them stupidly weak (Played a Dread Necromancer with like 3 HP and could only be healed by Negative Energy at level 3) or full on munchkin (Owlbear Rogue with Hide in Plain Sight and magic items from the Magic Item Compendium).

2. Throws fits when things go south. Example: Pirate game, we just knocked over our first ship, but in doing so, we beat it up pretty badly. Guy threw a fit because we busted the ship up and wanted to make a name for himself right then (when we had like 0 reputation).

3. Never takes the time to get the right info. Same game as above. We capture an Assassin (Death Attack and all) at the end of the previously mentioned fight. He wanted to keep him hostage and sell him back to his employers. Our rogue wasn't having that, so she killed the assassin. He threw a fit (again) despite our saying that it would be dangerous to keep him hostage all that way and that nobody would buy back an assassin they hired. Ended up having to all but yell at him to see reason.

4. Very "no-out-of-character-knowledge" heavy. Not normally a problem, but when everyone else if handing out info to the others and he's the only one keeping his HP under wraps, it gets down right tiring.

5. Tries to pull things over on the DM. Happened when I DMed a game. Guy tried to cast a spell on another player, and the targeted player asked if it was an attack spell. Cue yelling match as he refused to give up the name of the spell (It was Phantasmal Killer).

6. Not a team player. Actively back stabs other players (as above), steals loot, loots in the middle of combat (gold and stuff, not magic items that could even the odds) and is pretty much just fail at team mechanics.

7. As a DM, can't improvise worth a darn. Goblinoid garrison (underground), and he throws in an Allosaurus and Asmodeus (himself). After he showed up, the players kinda just stopped caring.

8. Fail at balanced combat. 5 lvl 6 characters (With only an Adept for a caster, no magic items and a small army of ogres) vs a lvl 20 Psion/Rogue? Yeah....

9. Champaign inappropriate characters. oWoD game. The plot was a murder mystery in the Umbra (at a school). So we have a pair of Werewolves, a pair of Mages, a Vampire merc (my character, OK'ed with the ST's blessing and urging) and a Pooka (Changing). Everyone else was into the whole feel of the thing--gristly murders, powers and abilities being stolen, all that jazz. We know it's serious stuff, so we made appropriate characters. He, on the other hand, made the equivalent of Snarf to the Thundercats. A male Pooka (with, as far as I'm aware, little to no combat abilities or sleuthing abilities) wearing pink and wielding a pink Beretta with Hello Kitty on it (Guy has an unsettling...thing for Hello Kitty).

Also, there's some non-gamer things, but that's not what this thread if for, so I'll just skip'em.

Only reason we didn't ditch'em I think was because we couldn't afford to lose a player (pickings at the time were a bit slim).

Sipex
2011-07-20, 03:04 PM
This back a few years ago while i was in college. My worst DM, wasn't a bad DM... He knew the rules he needed to, good at in-prov when it was needed, his stories were intriguing, and i can't remember him ever railroading a story. I think I was the first girl he DM'ed for, almost ever group of enemies we fought tried to subdue me (without killing) and take as a hostage/prisoner. Almost on a weekly basis I found myself my character tied/bound/strapped to something with little to no way out on my own. Honestly it was just kinda creepy.

D&D seems to provoke the creep out of some nerds. No wonder people seem to think that of us...

That said, your DM may have just watched one too many Scooby Doo episodes.

super dark33
2011-07-20, 03:32 PM
The first post shows my worst DM, this one shows the worst player.
they were on the same campeign. ill call the player A and the DM O.

A wanted to make a 'short alien boxer' build. so he made his race, class and prestiege class. it was so overpowerd, that his damage output was 400 on every hit. (he made abillitys that would quadrafie his damage, stacks with the triple hit on every BAB attack he has, and his massive STR. and somhow everytime he did this attack he rolled 19 or 20. somehow)
he always tried to take the str boosting magic items. his reason? ''i need it more then your lizardfolk ranger needs it''. though the group didnt kill many monsters, because the 'chosen light warriors bla bla' would kill them most, and the Elderitch puppy would kill all the high CR monsters we were fighting, he still killed the tougher monsters we were fighting, but still claiming that the rest of the group chars, a lizardfolk ranger (me) , a lizardfolk cleric (my brother), a guy who used an archer build, then switched to a paladin riding build, both not optimized, My friend wo made a wild elf barbarien with an ubar axe that would smash enemies if he could attack them, and the wild elf's brother, who swithced chars every second session.
O didnt mind about A makeing his too powerfull char, and we didnt realy mind it either, it was powerfull, but i held the highest kill-count of 8 monsters.

he always tried to get to the limelight, trying to talk to the NPC's,thinking he was a better talker then my brother, who doesnt roll for diplomacy in the game, her rolls it IRL on the dm,which made A frustrated about being 'non-competent', thogh he was killing every enemy with one blow.
he used to argue about his special abillitys with the O.

It wasnt a fun campeign, the only fun parts were the the group was killing stuff, and my brothers always right decisions, which were alwayis railroaded by O.

They both got better next campeign though.

TopherKersting
2011-07-20, 03:36 PM
Having this sense of humour and self-criticism it's the mark of a good DM, pal.:smallwink:

That's exactly what we keep telling him when we try to encourage him to step behind the shield. The worst DMs I've ever had are the ones who think they're good, because too often they stop working at it. I arguably have more HackMaster GM street cred than anyone, and I can rattle off a dozen areas where I really need to improve my game.

Worst player I've had: The in-uniform cop who was shoplifting from the game store where I ran my game. :smallfurious: (He was an awful player as well, but the OOC actions sum him up nicely.)

Worst DM I've had: I've been pretty fortunate to have had mostly good DMs. I have had three different DMs take my clever play as a personal affront and grudge monster my PC to death, so even that doesn't bother me much anymore.

Topher

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-20, 03:51 PM
D&D seems to provoke the creep out of some nerds. No wonder people seem to think that of us...

That said, your DM may have just watched one too many Scooby Doo episodes.

To be fair to us dudes, it's not just males who do this sort of thing. Ever seen females make creepy characters? I admit that a lot of these examples are from NWN, but well. Women can be just as crazy, if not crazier at times.


The females who does not take no for an answer and will aggressively hit on NPCs until both the NPC and the DM are afraid and want to run away.

Females who complain that males make too many female characters, so there are no male characters to flirt with.

Female characters who are supposedly good, but then backstab or sabotage other good characters for being female, in character or not. Or sleep with male evil characters and see nothing wrong with being their ally.

Or female characters, which are sometimes even played by women, who forget that in order to continue being good aligned you do have to get out of bed occasionally and help others.

And then female characters who send unsolicited pictures of themselves, especially when doing it for in game freebies. Um...No thanks?

Brauron
2011-07-20, 04:07 PM
Let me tell you about G.

As a player:


Went through more characters in my Call of Cthulhu campaign then the rest of the party combined, each one carrying more and bigger guns.
Developed a temporary insanity in CofC, and I asked, "Would you like me to assign, or would you like to roll randomly on the chart?" He chose the chart, asserting, "I'm the master of my own destiny." Chart comes up suicidal mania. His version of suicidal mania was "OK, I'm going to charge the baddies with my elephant gun and take as many of them out as I can before they shoot me to death."
Strong-armed his way into a friend's D&D game as "payment" for driving this friend to the pharmacy to pick up his insulin.
Built a Scout, armed with a longspear, with no ranks in Hide, Move Silently, Survival, Climb, Listen or Spot. At the best of times, he was a pale imitation of the party's Ranger. The rest of the time, he was useless.
Couldn't roleplay his way out of a paper bag. As the DM put it, "I look around the table and I can picture you guys as your characters -- Bill, I can see your Fighter, Dan, I can see your Ranger -- but then I get to G and I just see G sitting there in a Cheeto-stained hoodie."


As a DM (D&D 3.5)

Declared the campaign to be "No Magic" and then proceeded to throw Ethereal monsters at us
Didn't bother to read any of the rules. An actual question he asked me, "A CR 15 monster is an appropriate challenge for 3 level 5 characters, right?"
Asked the rest of the table (most of us had DMing experience) for advice and then ignored us.
Planned out each session in five minutes prior to us sitting down to play.
Declared that us killing the head of the merchant's guild caused a complete collapse of the entire world's economy in a matter of hours.
Gave a PC a magic, returning short-spear...that had a demon bound in it that made critical hits do massive amounts of damage, but also forcibly infected the PC with a slow corruption into a demon. And there was no way to get rid of the spear.
Declared from the start that the campaign was going to end with him throwing a flock of dragons at us and seeing how many of them we could kill before we all died.
Upon looking at the statblocks for dragons, decided that he'd use Great Wyrm Gold Dragons, since they had the highest CR. Changed his mind and used Wyverns, modified to have a breath weapon, when we told him in no uncertain terms that we'd make him eat his dice.
Declared that the group of five Purple Worms (never mind that the statblock says Always Solitary) chased down our party who were mounted on horses (which are much faster than purple worms)
Decided that 11 Hieracosphinxes were an appropriate challenge for a group of level twelve adventurers with no magic except a cursed demon spear, didn't read the description where it said they're hawk-headed and described them to us as Gynosphinxes, and then proceeded to have one ask us a riddle that took him three minutes to recite, was inappropriate for the setting, and had the sphinxes attack us en masse when we failed to guess the answer -- which was, as I recall, "a train." Did I mention that this sphinx encounter took place in their eyrie, atop an Everest sized mountain that was sitting in the middle of a vast, otherwise featureless plain?

Flame of Anor
2011-07-20, 04:47 PM
Let me tell you about G.

Strong-armed his way into a friend's D&D game as "payment" for driving this friend to the pharmacy to pick up his insulin.

http://sazbean.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/facepalm1.jpg


An actual question he asked me, "A CR 15 monster is an appropriate challenge for 3 level 5 characters, right?"

http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/files/2010/02/double-facepalm.jpg


the answer -- which was, as I recall, "a train."

http://images.sodahead.com/polls/001829213/50976231_181148_triple_facepalm_super_xlarge.jpeg

Hiro Protagonest
2011-07-20, 04:53 PM
http://sazbean.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/facepalm1.jpg



http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/files/2010/02/double-facepalm.jpg



http://images.sodahead.com/polls/001829213/50976231_181148_triple_facepalm_super_xlarge.jpeg

You forgot something.

http://www.demotivationalposters.org/image/demotivational-poster/0909/epic-facepalm-when-you-just-know-you-messed-up-demotivational-poster-1253705267.jpg

Mazeburn
2011-07-20, 05:02 PM
This thread is awesome. x)

Okay... My one's pretty creepy. This guy was my first DM, and thinking back on it, it's a wonder I wasn't driven away from RPGs altogether.


At uni, I joined an RPG club, having never played before. The guy who ran it clearly had a crush on me right from the start, since he kept trying to subtly ask me to the movies. But okay, I told him I wasn't interested and things went on okay. He was generally annoying and obnoxious, and his campaigns were pretty bad and full of DMPCs, but whatever, I was new to it all.

A couple of weeks later I started dating someone who we both knew. That week, we played a one-shot where we had to play ourselves. We were transported to the post-apocalyptic future where we'd apparently been gone for ages. We explored a bit, and eventually ran into some older versions of RL friends, as NPCs. ...Then we ran into my RL boyfriend, as an NPC.

The DM then attempted to roleplay my boyfriend kissing and cuddling me.

Yeeeeeeeeah. ;-; That wasn't happening. I pretty much walked straight out.

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-20, 05:11 PM
Mazeburn, I am sorry that happened to you. That is why some gamers should have to take ranks in social skills.

Edit: And in some cases, lots of ranks. Oh god, lots of ranks.

Notreallyhere77
2011-07-20, 05:25 PM
As a DM (D&D 3.5)
Gave a PC a magic, returning short-spear...that had a demon bound in it that made critical hits do massive amounts of damage, but also forcibly infected the PC with a slow corruption into a demon. And there was no way to get rid of the spear.


That, by itself, wouldn't be so bad, but the rest makes it so.

For me, I've already complained about the guy I think is the worst in my group(because he's an insufferable troll who delights in breaking the game and lying about his optimization level, but I still feel I owe him for giving me rides home for a few weeks, so I haven't had the balls to tell him off yet), so I'll tell you about the second-worst. We'll call him "M."
He only lasted a couple months with us, but they weren't pleasant. First of all, he was loud. Like, making the neighbors complain about us loud. So loud that someone adjacent to me couldn't hear me talk because M, on the other side of the table, was talking (as I recall, he was regaling his take on a rule he didn't read; more on that later). When my friend finally got his attention and said "Hey, I can't hear [me] over you, and we're over here." His response? "TALK LOUDER!" Yeah.
He always needed us to remind him that dice rolls have modifiers.
He played a 16-year old druid girl who apparently was willing to sleep with anyone for even the smallest benefit. He is, and was, over 20. Little creepy.
He didn't read the rulebook enough to have a good grasp on his class abilities. This is bad for any class, but for the druid it's inexcusable.
He sulked when his characters died, even though we told him that our DM's games had high PC turnover (40% of his gameworlds' interactive populations are epic level and pick fights with low-level travellers).
When we found a way to bring him back, he metagamed out of it. No, really. He drew from the Cookie Jar of Many Things until he got the Void cookie. The DM was willing to let wish bring him back, but he looked up the Deck in the book and said it wouldn't work. The DM said, after M had left the room to sulk, "I was gonna let it work, but he had to metagame, so now it won't."
M didn't come back after that session. None of us miss him. The two friends who joined the group (and learned the rules at the same time he did, but faster), are still with us today and enjoying the heck out of the game. Yeah, it was bad, but at least it's over.
Worst DM was me once. It was my second game, and this time I'd actually read the rules and made a homebrew world and taken it all quite seriously. But two things happened.
One, my players decided to play opposing alignments. I didn't know how to deal with evil, stab-happy PCs.
Two, I lost my temper when they killed the campaigns main (and, at the time, only) source of plot hooks (it was their employer, the captain of the boat they agreed to serve on), and I got up, walked across the room and slammed my fist down on some furniture. I have since learned to control my frustration and not be such a control freak (it's bad for DMing), but I was limited to player-only status for over a year until I begged them to let me try again. The next game was a 2nd-9th level world-travelling semi-political rescue-the-kidnapped boy prince story. They loved it, and I didn't get angry at anything. A true success.

Acanous
2011-07-20, 06:12 PM
Hmm... on the Male/Female Player creep, I have a couple of examples...
I'm uncreative and sick, so I'll go with "J" and "K". Completely unrelated to the poster JaronK, who is cool :p
Ok, so let's start with the male player, J.
1: He has two personality archetypes which he always plays, and will swap between at random: Jack Sparrow, and an elizebethan cathouse madam.
This can be extremely disconcerting.

2: All of his PCs are female, all of his PCs are lesbian, and they will try to make it with every female NPC in line of sight, regardless of availability, orientation, or relation.

3: He declares a "Nat 20" on any roll lower than 10. When called on his blatant cheatery, he fights back by rolling his D20 over and over again until he actually gets a 20, then saying that roll was his roll. At one point, a fellow playgrounder bought him a specialty D20 that lights up and plays music if it actually rolls a 20. He has yet to bring it to session.

4: He is very, very bad at optimization. But tries to play like his character is super-powerful. 3 and 4 actually cancel eachother out to some extent; his builds are subpar, but he fakes his rolls, which brings him to medium effectiveness. The other players have pretty much agreed on this point.

5: Guy can roleplay pretty well, but has little atatchment to his characters. When other party members try to tie-in their backgrounds, or make good reasons why they're close to his character, he'll go off and die then refuse to be rezzed because he got bored of the class and wants to try something new.

then there's K
K is an older player, from back when we played RIFTS and Vampire in the late '90s through early '00s. Where J's flaws make him a subpar Player, K's flaws...well...
1: She hogged the spotlight. All the time. If you wanted to do something, she had to have either already done it, or go with you and you were helping her do it. If there were two objectives that needed to be completed simultaniously, or seperately enough that she couldn't go do both, hers was the more important one.

2: All her characters were dark and trajic. Decent precident in Vampire, I know, but we're talking WH40K levels of GRIMDARK here. The things she'd RP I don't think I can say on this forum without risking a banning offense. I once played a foetal gangrel who disguised itself as a teddybear and hung out with a child malkavian, the two of them preying on children and creating the myth of the boogyman throughout history- pretty dang dark and boundry-pushing for me- and she responded by playing something so bad it made me feel ill. I should have known better than to create a character she'd see as a challenge to her spotlight, but I was new.

3: Drama queen. Most of her characters were at least two of the following: Blind, Deaf, Mute, physically handicapped. She'd spend half the session bemoaning how awful it is to be physically handicapped and how terrible her endless torment of unlife was, and be completely useless in any social encounter. Don't get me started on combat. Whenever the DM would have us in a situation she'd have trouble with (Like, I dunno, stairs. In Medieval england. Where there arent' handicapped ramps) she'd snap at him, guilt trip us all into helping her into the scene(Instead of just sending one person in to go do objective X while the rest do objective Y) and generally cause a ruckus if we weren't all close at hand whenever she needed one of us.
(In D&D, this might even be acceptable, with the don't split the party mentality- but in Vampire, hanging out as a group all the time when you're trying to be discreet, and loden down with a very recogniseable blind, crippled lady makes you an easy target.)

4: Her character had to be the epicenter of sensuality. She'd actually take powers for this, so it's lower on the list, but she'd basically make us spend willpower if we didn't want our characters sleeping with her. All of our characters. Sometimes simultaniously. She got graphically descriptive.
This extended to forcing players to fight over her. (We didn't want to, but it's hard to resist a 5 dot dominate)

5: She'd hit on players and the DM to get her way. She'd try to sleep with the DM for leverage. She'd try to sleep with players for leverage if the player got an important part in the story.

Notreallyhere77
2011-07-20, 07:10 PM
3: He declares a "Nat 20" on any roll lower than 10. When called on his blatant cheatery, he fights back by rolling his D20 over and over again until he actually gets a 20, then saying that roll was his roll. At one point, a fellow playgrounder bought him a specialty D20 that lights up and plays music if it actually rolls a 20. He has yet to bring it to session.
Yeah, "M" did that, too. He... wait.


At one point, a fellow playgrounder bought him a specialty D20 that lights up and plays music if it actually rolls a 20.
What? :smallconfused: One more time...


a specialty D20 that lights up and plays music if it actually rolls a 20.

Must... have. Where can I purchase such a fine artifact?

Flame of Anor
2011-07-20, 07:10 PM
Hmm... on the Male/Female Player creep, I have a couple of examples...
I'm uncreative and sick, so I'll go with "J" and "K". Completely unrelated to the poster JaronK, who is cool :p
Ok, so let's start with the male player, J.
1: He has two personality archetypes which he always plays, and will swap between at random: Jack Sparrow, and an elizebethan cathouse madam.
This can be extremely disconcerting.

2: All of his PCs are female, all of his PCs are lesbian, and they will try to make it with every female NPC in line of sight, regardless of availability, orientation, or relation.

3: He declares a "Nat 20" on any roll lower than 10. When called on his blatant cheatery, he fights back by rolling his D20 over and over again until he actually gets a 20, then saying that roll was his roll. At one point, a fellow playgrounder bought him a specialty D20 that lights up and plays music if it actually rolls a 20. He has yet to bring it to session.

4: He is very, very bad at optimization. But tries to play like his character is super-powerful. 3 and 4 actually cancel eachother out to some extent; his builds are subpar, but he fakes his rolls, which brings him to medium effectiveness. The other players have pretty much agreed on this point.

5: Guy can roleplay pretty well, but has little atatchment to his characters. When other party members try to tie-in their backgrounds, or make good reasons why they're close to his character, he'll go off and die then refuse to be rezzed because he got bored of the class and wants to try something new.

Okay, pretty bad...


then there's K
K is an older player, from back when we played RIFTS and Vampire in the late '90s through early '00s. Where J's flaws make him a subpar Player, K's flaws...well...
1: She hogged the spotlight. All the time. If you wanted to do something, she had to have either already done it, or go with you and you were helping her do it. If there were two objectives that needed to be completed simultaniously, or seperately enough that she couldn't go do both, hers was the more important one.

2: All her characters were dark and trajic. Decent precident in Vampire, I know, but we're talking WH40K levels of GRIMDARK here. The things she'd RP I don't think I can say on this forum without risking a banning offense. I once played a foetal gangrel who disguised itself as a teddybear and hung out with a child malkavian, the two of them preying on children and creating the myth of the boogyman throughout history- pretty dang dark and boundry-pushing for me- and she responded by playing something so bad it made me feel ill. I should have known better than to create a character she'd see as a challenge to her spotlight, but I was new.

3: Drama queen. Most of her characters were at least two of the following: Blind, Deaf, Mute, physically handicapped. She'd spend half the session bemoaning how awful it is to be physically handicapped and how terrible her endless torment of unlife was, and be completely useless in any social encounter. Don't get me started on combat. Whenever the DM would have us in a situation she'd have trouble with (Like, I dunno, stairs. In Medieval england. Where there arent' handicapped ramps) she'd snap at him, guilt trip us all into helping her into the scene(Instead of just sending one person in to go do objective X while the rest do objective Y) and generally cause a ruckus if we weren't all close at hand whenever she needed one of us.
(In D&D, this might even be acceptable, with the don't split the party mentality- but in Vampire, hanging out as a group all the time when you're trying to be discreet, and loden down with a very recogniseable blind, crippled lady makes you an easy target.)

4: Her character had to be the epicenter of sensuality. She'd actually take powers for this, so it's lower on the list, but she'd basically make us spend willpower if we didn't want our characters sleeping with her. All of our characters. Sometimes simultaniously. She got graphically descriptive.
This extended to forcing players to fight over her. (We didn't want to, but it's hard to resist a 5 dot dominate)

5: She'd hit on players and the DM to get her way. She'd try to sleep with the DM for leverage. She'd try to sleep with players for leverage if the player got an important part in the story.


:smalleek:

:eek:

That's seeeeeriously messed-up.




Must... have. Where can I purchase such a fine artifact?

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/games/deaa/

Grendus
2011-07-20, 07:12 PM
Mazeburn, I am sorry that happened to you. That is why some gamers should have to take ranks in social skills.

Edit: And in some cases, lots of ranks. Oh god, lots of ranks.

Methinks in her case, he needed Skill Focus. And the Negotiator feat. That's... kinda wrong.

Choco
2011-07-20, 07:15 PM
Did I mention that this sphinx encounter took place in their eyrie, atop an Everest sized mountain that was sitting in the middle of a vast, otherwise featureless plain?

While I agree with most of the rest of your list, this specific small part actually sounds interesting. I for one am always big on there being some type of fantastic terrain, and even though you were playing "no magic", it clearly existed in some form (demon spear, various magical beasts, etc.) and could have at one time created this.

On the other hand, I can't talk much, cause one night I had the players competing in a footrace on a bunch of house-size tree stumps that were floating 1 mile in the air and connected by rope bridges. Yes, both alcohol and lack of sleep were involved.

randomhero00
2011-07-20, 07:50 PM
Ummm.. lets see... I guess the worst was the rules lawyer. I mean every single time. It was so infuriating because it slowed down all combats to twice as long as theyd normally be. semi ironic thing is that it was a woman.

edit! not that all women are like that, just that most are usually laid back and cool.

peacenlove
2011-07-20, 08:14 PM
Worst gamer ever: A girl, lets call her X. Was kicked after 3 sessions.
She played an unoptimized fighter (seriously skills were perform(Dance) and feat choices were skill focus (perform (Dance)) disregarding any advice we gave her, ignoring the team's experience of my campaign style, namely hard, rewarding battles.)
Said character was willingly and constantly separated from the team to fight monsters, dying effortesly from CR = her level - 5 encounters, forcing the table to watch her die miserably. In a game where, even if the players tried their best, there always was 1 death per session.
She hit on other players both in and (luckily rarely) out of game to the point of frustration, and when one of the players had (in game) sexual intercourse with her, she spent over half an hour telling us the details.
Paired with another bad player (especially hateful since he blatanly misinformed us about the rules, and insisted that he is always right), they stole the spotlight, not even I (the DM) could talk anymore. Not to mention chaotic neutral = mercilesly abusing handicapped people to the point of disgust.
Lastly when she (finally) left, she blatantly stated that she came into the table only to hit on me and that I was so cruel to ignore her. Along with other not so pleasant information. :smallannoyed:

Since I primarily DM, I can assume that I am the worst (and best) DM I have ever seen. :smalltongue:
But on a more serious tone, the worst DM I had encountered was in an exalted game, where he wrote the backstory for us and we were supposed to assasinate our team mates in a barren wasteland.

Golden-Esque
2011-07-20, 08:33 PM
Diplomacy usually take 1 minute or more... if you can get titans to listen to you for a minute without them crushing you, you have accomplished something right there.

The diplomacy table doesn't make a lot of sense though. Should take the power of the creature into account somehow, not the same flat DC for commoners as dragons.

As a DM I would apply circumstance penalties for attempting to parley with things that could easily hit you hard enough to erase your family tree.

As a whole, the Diplomacy skill is very much left up to the GM, which can be a problem if you have a bad one.

For example, my players had just freed a group of NPCs from a Mirror of Life Trapping. As per the mirror's rules, their equipment was lying around in other places, but the party couldn't get to it without destroying the mirror.

Immediately after the NPCs were freed, one player noticed a member of a cult they had been fighting against among them (distinguishable by the tattoo on his back) and proceeded to beat the crap out of him.

The party's face attempted a Diplomacy check to get the people "moving along," and even rolled a natural 20 on it. But he still failed. Why? As per the rules, the NPCs should have all been eating out of his hands. Well, I put several factors on the table after the party started complaining that they had failed.

#1 - These are completely naked people; the Mirror of Life Trapping specifically stats that all nonliving material is not pulled inside of it. Yeah, it had been a LONG time inside the mirror for some of them, but the last thing these people remembered was their stuff (temporal stasis and all that jazz), so it's a group of unclothed people who can recognize their clothing and armor not 10 feet away from them. Regardless of Diplomacy, do you think ANYONE is going to leave to follow a stranger while unclothed, with their possessions nearby?

#2 - Another unclothed person was getting his butt handed to him in a fight within visible perception. Based on the fact the man getting beaten isn't wearing anything either, it's pretty easy to guess that he was also in the mirror, and while they may not understand that he is in an evil cult, they do understand that they could be nexted, and move for their stuff anyway.

What I'm trying to say is that any character playing a Diplomacy-heavy character needs to be aware that it is a skill that really cannot be fully dictated by the rules. You can be good at it, but you also need to keep in mind what people will think based on appearances, as appearances are a huge part of real-world diplomacy as well. A character that expects to always get their way with that skill is going to sorely disappointed.

Choco
2011-07-20, 09:03 PM
What I'm trying to say is that any character playing a Diplomacy-heavy character needs to be aware that it is a skill that really cannot be fully dictated by the rules. You can be good at it, but you also need to keep in mind what people will think based on appearances, as appearances are a huge part of real-world diplomacy as well. A character that expects to always get their way with that skill is going to sorely disappointed.

Not only that, but in your specific example it would not have worked anyway, cause none of those naked people would stay and listen long enough to even be affected by a diplomacy check.

kharmakazy
2011-07-20, 09:06 PM
Things

That's basically what I said but elaborated more. Circumstance penalties. You still can't make a convincing argument as a standard action. There is the rushed diplomacy check as a full round action with a penalty... combined with circumstance penalties...

As a DM I give bonuses based on how convincing the players argument is, and penalties depending on circumstances.

You are naked. Penalty. You are trying to convince them that the demon with the flaming sword is more important than their things? Bonus!

Jay R
2011-07-20, 09:11 PM
Y'know, I had a couple of people I was going to write up.

But now that I've read the entire thead, I don't have any experience that belongs with these. By comparison, I have lived a charmed life. I've had annoying players or slow DMs, but nothing to compare with what I've read here.

Thank you for reminding me what excellent people I've played with.

Starwulf
2011-07-20, 09:28 PM
And then female characters who send unsolicited pictures of themselves, especially when doing it for in game freebies. Um...No thanks?

That is...just, wow man, that's kinda sad! Must be the same type of chick who, when a cop pulls them over, deliberately pulls their shirt down a good bit and loosens their bra so the cop can get a good look in order to get out of a ticket >< Hate that type of woman.

Thyrian
2011-07-20, 09:58 PM
For the damn diplomacy thing Rich Burlew has a nice take on it in one of his locked threads, quite specifically because of how easy it is to become good at it incredibly fast.

Worst Player:
My friend when he played dnd in high school and only played because his best friend did. He didn't understand the rules, his roleplaying was lacking because the character he'd designed was simply a guy enshrouded in large black cloak with a bat on his shoulder. Overall these aspects are not too bad, a good group is quite happy to help teach the rules as long as that learning is retained! The worst part was his mood, it was just a constantly bringing the atmosphere down. He tried for 4 sessions and gave up.

5 years later he gave it another go of his own initiative. Now he can see the world instead of just his friends rolling dice and doing arithmetic and he's a joy to DM for.

kharmakazy
2011-07-20, 10:00 PM
the solution is to then post those pictures online. Perhaps someplace... anonymous.

sparkyinbozo
2011-07-20, 10:11 PM
Okay, here is mine:

I was playing with a new group recommended by a friend because I had just relocated. There was one player who routinely made extremely racist comments during the game and was obviously cheating (i.e., doing 36 Flame Strike damage at level 6 with no save). He was also pretty awkward socially, but, hey, it's a nerd thing.

So next session, the kills off his character, creates a new one, and has it interacting with mine in awkwardly friendly ways. Long story short, this guy was in the closet and had a crush on me, which I learn after the DM gives him my phone number and I get some interesting messages. So as a player, bad...as a person, creepy.

Acanous
2011-07-20, 10:24 PM
the solution is to then post those pictures online. Perhaps someplace... anonymous.
...Indeed

http://thedemotivators.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/anonymous.jpg

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-20, 10:27 PM
the solution is to then post those pictures online. Perhaps someplace... anonymous.

The woman in question had enough sense not to send them to me (What would I do with them? Draw moustaches on them?) and those who did get the pictures quickly deleted and exorcised their computers.

Vladislav
2011-07-20, 11:31 PM
Ya know, I'd say that makes you the "Bad" DM in this case. Think about it: he went through and made a character exactly how he wanted to: A diplomancer, with a super high CHR stat. He devoted all of his wealth towards it, centered his entire build around it, and what do you do? Tell the poor guy "Yeah, well, because you're so OVER effective, I'm just going to bump the DCs up to match your enhanced ability" Instead, if you didn't like it, just tell him to lower his stats a bit, put them somewhere else, or if you really didn't want a Diplomancer, tell him so, and quite frankly, you should have done so at the beginning, plotting out an entire character around an entire build, at level 8 can take an hour or more(the more includes decent fluff), which is a huge waste of time. I mean, I wouldn't cry about it if it happened to me, but I'd damn well be angry at you for not stating your likes and dislikes at the start of the campaign and then trying to railroad me into ineffectiveness afterwards!I completely agree, this is more of a case of Bad DM than Bad Player.

Not to mention that the player in question wasn't as horrible of a Diplomancer as he could have been.
- He could have taken a single level of Warlock for +6 Diplomacy
- He could have taken a single level of Marshal for double Charisma bonus.
- He could have been a half-Elf with that Bard racial sub-level from RoD that drives DMs crazy.
etc.

This was in fact a very mild Diplomancer build. The really abusive builds can auto-make a DC 25 check with the -10 penalty for accelerated diplomacy.

Laura Eternata
2011-07-21, 12:10 AM
I've apparently been MUCH luckier than most of you (you all have my sympathies, especially Flame of Anor.) Still, I've got a couple of minor horor stories to share.

Worst DM:
I had just started a new group after my old one basically fell apart (no story there, we just sort of drifted apart) and, after an introductory campaign DMed by yours truly, one of my friends, U, decided that he wanted to try his hand at it.I was initially reluctant -- I had planned on DMing a few more to give them a good better idea of how everything worked -- but he was insistent, and I eventually gave in.

First session went fairly well, though it started off relatively poorly. I was in the bathroom when he started, so I arrived halfway through the partiy's conversation with a character who was apparently my father. That was annoying, but then we had to take a five minute break for me to explain to him what a duskblade is. I had told him that I was going to play one the week prior, so he'd had ample time to look it up. That's more of a personal pet peeve of mine, though, and not a real issue.

The problem started a bit later. We were attacked in the middle of the night by Not-Nazgul, who we tried to fight off... only to find that they were level 10 blackguards (commence the PrC prerequisites explanation.) Again, annoying laziness, but nothing major. The next session, however, was when things got ridiculous. The dungeon, which supposedly housed a reagent my father needed for a spell, had three encounters for our third level party of a duskblade, a rogue, and a favored soul: 2 medium skeletons, 1 medium skeleton, and 1 ancient red dragon. The skeletons died pretty much instantly (I found out later that U was too lazy to actually make opposed checks to combat my trip attempts and just decided whether or not I succeeded based on what I rolled, so I managed to trip every singe one, every single time.) Then came the dragon.

After failing a move silently check, he promptly said "It kills you." Commence the challenge rating explanation. After convincing him to retcon that out of existence, he got pissed and decided that we had "ruined his game," and instead of trying to get us back on track, he basically had us wander around aimlessly for several hours until he decided that another country (that we had never heard about) invaded while we were gone. Had he finally come up with a coherent story-line, we all through?

Good god, no. After having us escape, he never mentioned the army again. End session 2.

Th third (and last) session was less abysmal, but it did serve as the most anticlimactic ending of all time. We fled into a nearby forest and found an old man who handed us the reagent we'd been hunting for instantly. We returned to my father only to find that he had used the whole adventure as an excuse to get rid of me so he could run off with his new girlfriend.

As for the worst player, I have to admit that it has to be me. It was my first character, and I decided to play a neutral evil tiefling rogue who killed every NPC who annoyed her. That game only lasted abut 20 minutes before I'd ruined the plot beyond repair. My next character was a paladin who tried to make it up to the DM by doing everything he wanted.

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-21, 12:18 AM
As for the worst player, I have to admit that it has to be me. It was my first character, and I decided to play a neutral evil tiefling rogue who killed every NPC who annoyed her. That game only lasted abut 20 minutes before I'd ruined the plot beyond repair. My next character was a paladin who tried to make it up to the DM by doing everything he wanted.

Well, if she was trying to kill a few NPCs and not all of them, that's actually a lot better then many starting roleplayers.

Arutema
2011-07-21, 01:17 AM
Playing Pathfinder Society, I've met a lot of players, many good, some bad, but C was definitely the worst.

C played a heavily optimized barbarian, not that bad.

C was optimized for intimidate, and tended to use it in place of other social skills, the party bard with max ranks in diplomacy and bluff did not approve.

Now comes the bad part, C blatantly cheated the Pathfinder Society rules on replaying a scenario for credit (you can't).

Finally, the clincher, C spoiled the plot of a scenario to the players. So much for a cunningly-set ambush. At this point, I almost asked C to leave the table.

For better or worse, I left town for a new job after that incident, and will no longer have to tolerate C's antics.

Serpentine
2011-07-21, 01:48 AM
...
Fun stories, yes... but got these by going off apart from the rest of the group, so we sat there watching his shenanigans for hours on end. We talked to him about it, but he was unapologetic - something about them being entertaining. One of the last straws was when he started getting racist (ironic, considering the things he was saying and his Mediterranian heritage), and I suggested that his playstyle didn't really fit.I remembered the other thing about this guy! Basically, when he wasn't galavanting about on his own or taking his turn in combat, he payed absolutely no attention whatsoever. If the spotlight wasn't directly on him, he just didn't care. This lead to a lot of "Blah blah blah blah blah. George, what does your character do?" "What? What's happening?" "*recap of the last 20 minutes of game*" "Okay, I guess I'll do this." "Alright, you do that. Now blah blah blah blah blah. George. George? George, what does your character do now?" "What's happening?" ":smallfurious:"

I haven't really had any player or DM creepiness. The closest was my first DM - who was also probably my worst, what with the bad type of DMPC and sad undercomprehension of the rules and stuff like that. She was very fond of her innuendo and sexual attraction rolls and stuff, but that was just the sort of person she was - a lover of innuendo and awkward flirting. One character got knocked up, I think.

Oh yeah, one of the players from that game was pretty awful... As a person, he constantly talked way too loud, and was aggressively paranoid about other people's opinions of him - protip: constantly assuming everyone hates you will tend to be a self-fullfilling prophesy.
In-game, he was awful and dividing in-character and out-of-character knowledge. At one point, his Sorcerer got completely smashed off his face (drunk-wise) and then did some really badass stuff (involving setting himself on fire and hugging enemies and stuff). The next day, there were a few rolls and he couldn't remember anything that happened. The rest of the characters didn't know he couldn't remember anything, and they were all there so there wasn't much need to talk about it*. The player in question chucked a hissy fit because no one would tell his character what he did the day before. Then there was that gem:
Massive red dragon: "IGNORANCE IS NO EXCUSE."
Sorcerer: "Well I don't know about that, but..."
Rogue: *sap to the head* "Ignore him, he is a fool!"
Leading into the self-fulfilling prophesy bit, the Sorcerer guy insisted that the Rogue player hated him because of stuff like that. The latter pointed out that if he was roleplaying properly, with no pulling punches, he probably would've slit the Sorcerer's throat as an offering to the dragon to ensure the survival of the rest of the party. But he didn't, cuz he didn't wanna cause friction with the player. I think he might've thought my half-elf character hated humans because he was playing one, too...


*in retrospect, we could have roleplayed a "how cool was it when you did that thing!", but we weren't very good at the game at that point.

Esprit15
2011-07-21, 01:54 AM
I'm sure this thread skews the results, but are the creepy sex-heavy stories in D&D really that common, or do they almost exclusively make up bad stories?

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-21, 01:56 AM
I would say that is more of a result of gathering people from the ages of 15-75 together. I might be jaded against these stories as I used to play WoW and NWN. Those who have played know what I mean.

Flame of Anor
2011-07-21, 02:20 AM
I've apparently been MUCH luckier than most of you (you all have my sympathies, especially Flame of Anor.)

:confused:

Well, I'm touched by your concern, but I haven't actually posted any stories in this thread...

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-21, 02:32 AM
Then post something, so she can be some sort of forum prophet.

As for another story, well, never let it be said that players of Vampire are never violent hobos. I've seen a PC walk up to someone and kill them in front of a crowd of witnesses when they were too weak to fend off that many humans. And each time the player did an action, the DM asked several times if they were sure. Most people usually try to go into a house and kill people, not do it in the streets.

Engine
2011-07-21, 03:46 AM
I would say that is more of a result of gathering people from the ages of 15-75 together. I might be jaded against these stories as I used to play WoW and NWN. Those who have played know what I mean.

Thou shalt not remind me of those days!:smallannoyed:

TriForce
2011-07-21, 08:16 AM
worst DM: since a lot of letters are already taken, lets call him Z

Z starts by telling us that he wanted to make a "urban" campaign, much more roleplay and politics, and less actual combat. Now, im not that good at politics, but im willing to give it a go, who knows, its different, so it might be fun.

my character however, would reflect that im not that good in diplomacy. im playing a ranger, with a heavy emphasis on the sneaky parts, in order to scout and spy a lot, the other characters were a bit weird, (female bard dual wielding whips anyone?) but still they could do all the talking statwise.

my ranger is hired to join a certain faction, in order to spy on them and if possible, assasinate the one who is the head of that particular branch.

everything goes allright, the DM is prepared, the players get along and im given the chance to do my thing.

that was the first session, and it all went downhill from there. i our party, there was not much emphasis on combat related skills, however, for some reason, the only encounters we got (and were unavoidable or our mission objectives) were AT LEAST 3 ECL above us if not more. the way the DM played this was by making the party almost dead, and then holding back so we could kill the encounter. this happened repeatedly. i told him this wasnt a lot of fun. we would never stand a fair chance and the only way we would win was becouse Z would let us win. this went on for several sessions, with me and others complaining about it.

all the while, i was preparing a setup for the guy i was supposed to assasinate when possible (wich by now, became a bit of a DMPC). since the rest of the party didnt know about my intentions i had to do it alone, and the guy was a vampire, so i was sure t was a bit out of my league. instead i lured him in a "trap" by giving him a magic item we discovered that bolsters undead, setting it up so it looked like he stole it, and spreading misinformation about his intentions with it, ruining his reputation both in his own faction and outside of it, and possibly making him hunted by authorities forever. (all the while doing my best to make it seem like someone else did it)

not only didnt that work very well ( Z's responce was "that wont damage his reputation as wel as you want it to") but it didnt even slow him down or anything. to top it all off, due to a random effect by a magic item simlar to a deck of many things, i got suddenly teleported to the DMPC´s prison, with him appearantly knowing it was me who did all that stuff, AND all the other PC´s not knowing about it.

i had no chance to fight my way out, (all my gear was gone too) so i tried talking. i managed to give a reasonable explaination for why im innocent, but appearantly, Z's DMPC wasnt going to let a simple thing like roleplay mess up his plans, so he used his gaze on me (works like dominate person) and asks me again.
since dominate person controls the body of a person, but not the mind, i manage to convince the dm that im still capable of lieing, wich i do.
at this point Z spends about 15-20 mins searching the PHB and other sourcebooks looking for a spell that would force me to tell the truth. he comes up with a combination of dominate person and zone of truth, and then orders me to say i didnt betray him, wich i comply to.

Now, zone of truth shows when someone tells a deliberate lie, since im forced to say that particular line, its not deliberatly lieing, it doesnt work.
Z gets frustrated and drops the dominate effect on me, at wich point i hold a speach to the DMPC fulled with "technical truths" (since im still under the zone of truth effect) seriously, tarquin would be proud.

after that, the DMPC kills me. just like that.
appearantly, the only way i could end that scene was either by dieing, or confessing and hoping he wouldnt turn me in a vampire spawn or something ( something my char considered unlikely)

there are many many more things that went wrong, but that particular instance pissed me off.

TL;DR: putting my char in a unescapable deathtrap, and putting lots of challange rating impossible encounters on us in a supposidly roleplaying campaign

Frozen_Feet
2011-07-21, 08:37 AM
Worst DM I know: me. :smallbiggrin:

Okay, maybe not quite. When I was ten years old and starting with the hobby, my friend's little brother might have been worse. But so much time has passed that I can't really remember. Other GMs I've played with have felt generally pretty skilled.

This is not to say I'm an awful GM - I have pretty wide experience on the field and my players like me well. I can be pretty merciless in mocking them and their characters when they do something stupid, though. :smalltongue:

Worst player: Hmmm. To be frank, lot of my players are pretty horrible and get dragged down in long-winded OOC arguments. This may have something to do with them being brothers. :smallcool:

Vknight
2011-07-21, 08:46 AM
Rants & Stories of VKnight (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=206075)
Story Number 1.
And the newest storied being added later today are also examples. Of horrible DM's and PC's

Choco
2011-07-21, 08:59 AM
That was annoying, but then we had to take a five minute break for me to explain to him what a duskblade is. I had told him that I was going to play one the week prior, so he'd had ample time to look it up....(commence the PrC prerequisites explanation.) Again, annoying laziness, but nothing major....The dungeon, which supposedly housed a reagent my father needed for a spell, had three encounters for our third level party of a duskblade, a rogue, and a favored soul: 2 medium skeletons, 1 medium skeleton, and 1 ancient red dragon.

It annoys me to no end when PLAYERS refuse to learn at least enough rules to run their characters, and I am shivering trying to imagine what would happen if one of them took up DM'ing.... A lot of people don't seem to understand that while you in fact don't need to know all rules under the sun, if you want to DM you need to at least know the rules for what you are throwing against the party...

Of course that reminds me of another entry into the "worst player" category. Let's call this guy J, AKA the Senior Newbie:

J has been playing D&D 3.5 with us for the past 5 years, and he still has absolutely no understanding of the rules or even his own character (cause rogues apparently must have all sorts of complicated rules and options that make Wizards look simple). Even though we have been playing regularly those 5 years, he still has to look up his BAB, how many SA dice he has, and his weapon's damage with EVERY ATTACK. He also never has a clue what to do come levelup and/or shopping trip, and brings 1-2 entire sessions to a halt so the DM can get him straightened out.

Whenever any of us point out that he should know how to play his character, he snaps "I have a life outside of D&D you know, unlike SOME people!" The thing is though, he is single and was unemployed 4 of those 5 years and spent all his time surfing the web. And on top of that, he has no learning disabilities so he has no excuse for not picking up ANY sort of knowledge during the 5 flippin' years he has been playing with us.

For reference we have a guy who is married, works 1 full time and 1 part time job, AND has an infant son. He played a wizard and was able to learn enough about the game to DM his own campaign in less then a year. Also, we have had new players come into the group and it only took them about 2 sessions to have more knowledge than he does.

We have not ditched him because he is a good friend and in general is not disruptive to the game, so the rest of us decided to keep track of all his bonuses and the like for him and that made things easier.

I swear, I don't care what the haters say 4e was a GODSEND for us, entirely cause of this one player. We got him to just play a striker and focus on high damage, and printed him some power cards using the character builder, with all the nice attack bonus and damage printed in 1 line at the top. Even he has not found a way to mess that up yet, but why do I feel like I have just jinxed myself? :smalleek:

TriForce
2011-07-21, 11:17 AM
I swear, I don't care what the haters say 4e was a GODSEND for us, entirely cause of this one player. We got him to just play a striker and focus on high damage, and printed him some power cards using the character builder, with all the nice attack bonus and damage printed in 1 line at the top. Even he has not found a way to mess that up yet, but why do I feel like I have just jinxed myself? :smalleek:

tbh, being happy with 4th edition becouse its so simple even the dumbest/most unmotivater player can handle it, isnt exactly a GOOD point :P regardless if you like 4th or not, that never should be a positive thing :P

Flame of Anor
2011-07-21, 11:30 AM
I have pretty wide experience on the field and my players like me well. I can be pretty merciless in mocking them and their characters when they do something stupid, though. :smalltongue:

No, no, that's good DM. This is the thread for bad DMs. :smallwink:


tbh, being happy with 4th edition becouse its so simple even the dumbest/most unmotivater player can handle it, isnt exactly a GOOD point :P regardless if you like 4th or not, that never should be a positive thing :P

Yeah, that was a pretty trenchant, if unintentional, description of the problem with 4e.

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-21, 11:35 AM
I've been in the position that Choco has been in before. Being happy with 4th for being simple is probably a lot better then smacking players upside the head repeatedly. It is not a perfect solution by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a lot easier.

Laura Eternata
2011-07-21, 11:49 AM
:confused:

Well, I'm touched by your concern, but I haven't actually posted any stories in this thread...

Sorry, I meant Acanous (whom you had quoted.) I was practically asleep, cut me some slack. :smallwink:

Justicar
2011-07-21, 12:28 PM
Hmm... While some of fellow gamers might think of some worse players, there is one that I've personally experienced that I can write about.

This took place last year when I was deployed to Afghanistan. Not wanting to give up on my gaming fix, I packed up some models, a grid map and some erasable markers and began looking for some players. Unfortunately, all of the ones I found were were night-shifters.

Now, to put it into perspective, in the desert, we work 12 hour shifts (eight-to-eight) for six days a week. To be fair to the players, I ran the game Saturday nights, so that I pretty much had all of Sunday to recover. I would spend an hour or two a night during the week planning, mapping and creating. I made certain to plan things out a couple weeks in advance because the party were sometimes random and I needed the buffer to correct the campaign in response. On the day of game, I would be coming off of a 12-hour work day, take a short 1-2 hour nap, wake to set up the maps and models so that we could start by midnight, take a short 30 minute nap at 4am when they went to 'lunch' and we'd finish around 8 am. And THEN I had to create an incharacter journal log of the campaign for a couple of the players whose deployments had ended but still wanted to know what was happening. To say the least, by the end I was pretty dead.

The campaign I'd come up with was fairly simple. You're the last fort on the frontier for a kingdom and were stuck in the middle of the lizarkfolk-infested jungle. Suddenly, the lizardfolk are becoming mysteriously aggressive and an unknown 'Prophet' was going around the lizardfolk tribes preaching to them. Basically, a setting that would allow new characters and players as people deployed in and out of the base.

It wasn't that bad in the beginning. I had a trio of really fun players (with a companion character to fill out the fourth slot). A bit silly, but fun (one was playing a Rogue vigilante named Ratman). However, they were a bit combat-focused.

Then, one of the players left and another stepped in. He was a veteran 3.X player and had never touched 4e before. He claimed he was into "real RP" opposed to combat although he never showed it much when given the opportunity. I warned him that I'd already planned the campaign out a couple weeks in advance and they were a bit combat-oriented because the previous player liked them. However, I would start phasing RP more into the campaign and by the time I finished those encounters, the game should be to the level he talked about.

Up until this point, myself and my players were all having fun and it would have ended with some pleasant memories for all us. Unfortunately, we learned that 3.X was a HUGE complainer. He was constantly griping about things and attempting to do things that weren't written about or feasible in 4e. If I pointed this out, he would spout about the superiority of 3e. We kept him around because playing with just two players (even with two companions) didn't seem feasible to us.

Then came the Reflex Incident. They were on a mountain pass when they were ambushed. A couple of them were large and throw boulders at them (basically hill giants with the serial numbers sanded off and a race-lift to lizardfolk. One of their attacks was Hurl Boulder, which targeted the player's Reflex defense. He brought the game to a grinding halt as he tried to argue that he should be able to make a Dodge roll and how unreasonable it was that 4e didn't allow that.

The next day, after getting some sleep. I sent an email to the party apologizing the previous game. I reiterated that I'm operating those games with only an hour or two sleep, so my mind might not be firing all of its synapses. So while I appreciate inovation and creative-thinking, if I can't think of how to adapt the rules right away, I was going to default back to the RAW. Also, if a player had ANY proble with the game, to approach after the session was over instead of stopping the action for everyone else. Then we could go over the rules together and come to an understanding. As I explained again what the defenses meant was your Reflex save WAS your character attempting to dodge out of the way, just like Fortitude was how resist you were to poison, disease and jarring attacks and Will protected your mind against things like psionics and fear.

I also gathered them together quickly to ask them about areas they'd like to see changed. The biggest were that they wanted combat to go faster and that they didn't like static defenses. I explained that dynamic defenses (roll a d20 and add your defense modifier) would slow down the game even more, but as a compromise, I gave everyone a free enounter utility power make a dynamic defense roll as a reaction to be targeted by an attack.

For my old players, who mostly told me that they didn't even know there WAS a problem before the new player started complaining, this was enough. But the new player didn't think this was enough. He felt like he was the player advocate for players that didn't have any problems. He started 'forgetting' about games, which slowed the campaign down even more. He tried to talk the other players into joining him in a 3e campaign, which never materialized.

In response to his delays, I had to start paring away at the campaign. "Well, I guess I don't have time for them to meet the Prophet, but they can at least stop the lizardfolk warlord." "Hmm... now they can't get to the warlord in time. There's still time to break the siege though, right?" In the end, he dropped out and we tried to find some other players to round out the campaign, but were unsuccessful. There was no conclusion to campaign and, what started as a fun and pleasant way to blow off some steam ended in frustration.

Long story short. While running a 4e campaign during a deployment, a new player and hardcore 3e fan derailed a formerly fun campaign and ruined everyone's enjoyment of the game.

Shep
2011-07-21, 01:02 PM
Worst player I ever met is me. I've mostly DM'd over the last 25 years, and I've discovered that I'm a terrible player (possibly as a result of mostly being a DM). I like being in control of external events (other than die rolls, RAW/RAI, and player decisions). I've had some players tell me I'm the best DM they've ever had, but though no one's called me out as a player (I play with all friends) I'm pretty sure I'm a pain in the behind as a player. The others are pretty subtle (one of the other players wore a "who died and made you DM? shirt last session) and in general very cool, and I try not to argue with the current DM, but at times I find myself complaining.

For example, as a second level party he threw 6 ghouls and a wight up against us... at night. I play a cavalier and don't sleep in my armor, so I was paralyzed before I could even wake up. We lived only because a) the party summoner distracted several of the ghouls with beetles here and there and b) the ghouls seemed to suddenly forget their attacks paralyzed us after two of the party went down. At one point I asked the DM, "If this was your plan, wouldn't it have been less effort to just inform us we wake up dead?"

This is high hypocrisy on my end, since I've certainly underestimated encounters I've designed before, and I've also fudged die rolls when I discovered I made things too intense for the party to survive. I realize this now, but at the time I was mad because my character was going to die before he even had a chance to make a single decision or take a single swing. Is the DM within his rights to throw an encounter at us more than APL + 6? Of course. The others just take things in stride and don't complain, but at times I fail to keep my mouth shut (like when he told us we were in a storm, the winds picked up to 100mph, and then he wondered why we weren't trying to get out said storm when my str 18 cavalier has a 50% chance every round of being blown to kingdom come.)

Other incidence? I argued with him over his interpretation of Shatter when he said it destroyed our Alchemist's vials (the spell states it doesn't work on attended objects.) I'm not used to accepting other DM's rules. Hopefully I'll get better at it, cuz I actually think I like playing more than DMing for the most part.

obliged_salmon
2011-07-21, 01:15 PM
Worst player:
Was running a 4e game for a bunch of folks. I felt bad for the guy, but he just wasn't all there, mentally. Couldn't make his own character or do the math, always had to be reminded what he was rolling and adding to the rolls, etc. Kinda smelly. Eventually we stopped playing at the FLGS and never invited him to switch locales.

Worst DM:
Me, probably. Had a rocky start. Running a Serenity game that's been pretty fantastic recently, but started with me doing the bads, including DMPCs, railroading, PC's getting captured and rescued all the time.

Before that, even, I ran a two session 3.5 game where I plotted out a martial prowess tournament, including who would win it for each battle. An NPC won the final match. Then when the extra-planar beings attacked the town, I couldn't bring my CR 6 shadowcat to actually harm any named NPCs, let alone the players, all level 2. Bad DM. I'm better now, though.

Sipex
2011-07-21, 03:43 PM
Long story short. While running a 4e campaign during a deployment, a new player and hardcore 3e fan derailed a formerly fun campaign and ruined everyone's enjoyment of the game.

Moral of this story is edition wars kill (games). So don't do it!

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-21, 03:53 PM
-snip-

Long story short. While running a 4e campaign during a deployment, a new player and hardcore 3e fan derailed a formerly fun campaign and ruined everyone's enjoyment of the game.

Did he call it a dodge roll? I could understand if you are not up on terminology from an edition that you don't play, but if he called it a dodge roll I'm going to have to head desk. I also thought the hill giant throwing rocks was an attack so reflex wouldn't even matter in 3rd edition.

peacenlove
2011-07-21, 05:06 PM
-snip-

I feel your pain man :smallfrown: I am the same control freak as a player thats why I avoid it altogether.

Acanous
2011-07-21, 05:24 PM
If he thought the "Hurl Boulder" ambush counted as a trap, maybe...

byaku rai
2011-07-23, 07:27 AM
*Bump* because schadenfreude. :smallbiggrin:

After reading these accounts, I feel extremely lucky never to have experienced anything of this level.

Worst Player: Let's call him H.
He played with us once. Well, he might have played with the full group more than that, but he played with me in the group once. He was a sorcerer, and our DM at the time (who has grown into a very good DM) was overpowered by his OOC charisma, combined with a bullheaded approach to the rules.
Long story short, he took "+2 caster level" in something to mean that in whatever category that was, he had gained two levels... Complete with new spell levels. At something like level 4, he summoned a hellhound. He then Enlarged it, and rode it, using some mounted combat feats he shouldn't have had, and along with his hawk companion managed to trash everything. In one round. I was the party fighter at the time, so all I could really do was mop up whatever creatures managed to survive his round, or hope against the odds for a higher initiative roll. This was impossible, because I swear he never rolled lower than a 10.
We quite handily smashed our way through the dungeon, with our druid and cleric lagging a bit behind, and of course he was the star of the show. It was my very first time playing DnD (3.5 if anyone cares), and I was mildly lost the whole time until I hit upon Rule 1: Roll a d20 for everything. We all felt left out, and later, when the DM wasn't being OOC diplomancered (I swear H has an IRL charisma of 20 and max ranks in diplomacy), he discovered the quite a few rules that H had "misinterpreted". He didn't play with us again.

Worst DM has to go to me, for the Out-of-Game reason of I am absolutely horrible when it comes to getting everyone together for a session. In-game, I think I do alright (my players have said they're having fun, mostly because I am very, very good at improv), but I always make the plans to meet at the last minute, and I don't think there has been a single time when all of my players were there at once. :smallfrown:

CakeTown
2011-07-23, 11:03 AM
Worst DM:
Me. I've only played under 2 DMs, one ran a decent one-shot at a convention, and the other one ran a year and a half long campaign that was simply epic.

But me on the other hand... I've tried DMing 3 games. The first was keep on the Shadowfell. It lasted 1 session. I had 2 players(plus a DMPC(didn't do much except help in battle)), and I messed a lot of things up. First, I forgot that the encounters were meant for 5 characters, so I almost killed a player in the first fight. Second, I was also guilty of being creepy at one point. One of the players decided to sneak into the lord's manor, and kept asking what every room looked like. I'm not the greatest at improvisation, so when he asked what the paintings on the walls were of, I told him they were all of orc women in revealing outfits. My other player found this creepy though, so I retconned it.

My second game took place an hour or so after the first game(one of my players had to go, and another had shown up). Unable to do anything original, I quickly came up with an outline for a one-shot that was exactly like the convention game I played in. However, I didn't do the best job. I didn't really remember how many enemies the other DM made us face, so I prettymuch just threw whatever at the players. It was an undead campaign, and the BBEG was this dwarf who was trying to become a lich. I quickly made him in the Monster Builder, but I made some vital mistakes. The main mistake was that I never gave him a melee attack, so he could never do opportunity attacks. His only attack was to dominate a player, which didn't do too much. I also was a bit of a bad DM when they managed to subdue the BBEG. I was a little annoyed that he had been so easy, so I made him keep trying to fool the players and get away with his plan. But in the end, it didn't work, and the players got their happy ending.

My third, and probably the worst, was supposed to be a 1 shot version of the 4e Tomb of Horrors adventure. I was getting them to do the 3rd tomb, with the arch puzzle from the second tomb. I had 4 players, and made a really unlikeable DMPC, who was a bit of a Mary Sue, in contrast with my previous DMPC. I had 5 or so encounters planned, and I wanted to make combat run faster, so I doubled attack damage, and halved health. This resulted in 1 player nearly getting 1 shotted on the first turn. I'm terrible at encounter design apparently. In the tomb itself, I wanted to mess with my players, so I kept suggesting that the players try each arch(which made various bad stuff happen to them). By the time they finally made it through the real entrance, most of them were naked, one had died of old age, 2 more were genderflipped, and all my players were annoyed at me. 2 of them decided they were bored of the game, and quit right there, and the other 2 decided to quit before they got to my next encounter. It was really a terrible game, and it stopped me from wanting to DM for a while. Even now, I've never been able to come up with a decent campaign idea.

Worst Player
I don't think there have been too many absolutely bad players in the games I've played in. I think we all started off as bad players, but I'd chalk that up to inexperience. The worst would probably be a girl in the 1 and a half year campaign I played in. She always forgot about her best powers, and she'd always forget what to roll. She started off playing a cleric, and she NEVER used powers that would be useful. She had one power that made the next attack on a monster an automatic crit, but she never used it. She had another power that let a dying player automatically stabilize when they failed a death saving throw, but she also never used it, not even when it meant the difference between a certain character living or dying. Later in the campaign, she switched to a paladin. Her biggest mistake was wearing cloth armor until just before the final fight with the BBEG. Luckily the DM noticed, or she would have probably died.

Another bad player in that campaign roleplayed a complete jerk. He threatened most of the characters, and even attacked me once. He also tried to gain double EXP for several things. For example, we needed to deal with a village of gnolls attacking travellers. He had the brilliant idea to negotiate with them, and as he had a very high diplomacy, he was successful. The gnolls were convinced to go elsewhere, so they'd stop attacking travellers. The DM gave us the EXP that the entire encounter would be worth if we had killed everyone. After we left the village, this player told us that we were going to go back and kill all the gnolls. We protested that this didn't make sense, but then he revealed that he told the gnolls to go to a small, unprotected farming village(he was the only one that knew that the village was there). Seeing as we were all reasonably good, we were forced to go back and kill the gnolls so they didn't hurt anyone else. And behold, we got experience for killing the gnolls too, so we managed to get double EXP for the encounter. He tried to pull something like this later, but the DM told him no way.

They aren't bad people though, and I have to say that they're a lot better than some of the players I've read about in this thread.

Nero24200
2011-07-23, 12:44 PM
While far from the worst it's the first example I thought of off the top of my head.

I remember once playing with a player who hated anything that wasn't Lord of the Rings. If the party included something like a warforged or shifter he got annoyed. Anime especially was something that ticked him off. Whenever something unusual came up he would always say "I'm here to play D'n'D not Naruto". This was pretty annoying, what was worse is that it was anything not in Lord of the Rings.

I recall once we were on a quest once to find a strange sword and were in a rush as one of our enemies was looking as well and taking a small army with him. by luck we managed to find it before them but due to some recent encounters and not-so-great decisions on our part the army was almost on top of us as we found it. Suddenly the NPC tells our teammate (the player as noted above) to "swing the sword". He does - the swing sends out a shockwave that just misses the army (due to a bad roll) but instead cuts off the top of the nearest mountain.

The player instantly drops the sword and refuses to play since it's "too anime". He said he wanted a western fantasy and that we were too stupid to know what a "real fantasy game is like" (yeah, unusual choice of words). Some of you may recognise some traits about the sword - it was actually based on a mythical Irish sword called Caledbolg which did the exact same thing (well not exact, it was three mountains in the myth if I recall correctly). In other words the player complained about "anime" being in his "western" game because of a sword from Irish mythology.

Yeah we stopped playing with him after that.

Bovine Colonel
2011-07-23, 08:01 PM
snip

Did you try explaining...things to him?

nyarlathotep
2011-07-23, 10:21 PM
snip

Wow just wow.

Then again I have used "Norse Mythology did it" as a defense when my sorcerer's response to any threat was "I polymorph and seduce it" regardless of gender, species, or appearance.

Flame of Anor
2011-07-23, 10:31 PM
Then again I have used "Norse Mythology did it" as a defense when my sorcerer's response to any threat was "I polymorph and seduce it" regardless of gender, species, or appearance.

Greek mythology, too.

Knaight
2011-07-23, 11:01 PM
The player instantly drops the sword and refuses to play since it's "too anime". He said he wanted a western fantasy and that we were too stupid to know what a "real fantasy game is like" (yeah, unusual choice of words). Some of you may recognise some traits about the sword - it was actually based on a mythical Irish sword called Caledbolg which did the exact same thing (well not exact, it was three mountains in the myth if I recall correctly). In other words the player complained about "anime" being in his "western" game because of a sword from Irish mythology.

I hate it when self proclaimed purists don't know their source material, and whine loudly when they think its been violated. The worst I've seen was someone whining about how Arthurian myth was ruined by "Political Correctness" as soon as a character that wasn't from England was introduced. Said character was a certain Palomides. Who was in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, published in the 1400's. Later, there was whining about the existence of Agravaine, Gareth, Lamorak, and a reference to two brothers who killed each other (Balan and Balin, with both characters and events also in Morte), with the last of these being "some cheap soap opera plot".

nyarlathotep
2011-07-23, 11:30 PM
I hate it when self proclaimed purists don't know their source material, and whine loudly when they think its been violated. The worst I've seen was someone whining about how Arthurian myth was ruined by "Political Correctness" as soon as a character that wasn't from England was introduced. Said character was a certain Palomides. Who was in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, published in the 1400's. Later, there was whining about the existence of Agravaine, Gareth, Lamorak, and a reference to two brothers who killed each other (Balan and Balin, with both characters and events also in Morte), with the last of these being "some cheap soap opera plot".

Leaving aside Palomides did he have an issue with the French Lancelot, or the fact that Gawain and his brothers were Scottish.


Greek mythology, too.

As far as I know Zeus never turned into a woman.

Knaight
2011-07-24, 12:19 AM
Leaving aside Palomides did he have an issue with the French Lancelot, or the fact that Gawain and his brothers were Scottish.

He wasn't aware that Gawain had brothers, and thought that someone had just made them up on the spot. How he missed Agravaine and Gareth I don't know, but he did, and obviously making up "new characters" ruins the myths.

Immonen
2011-07-24, 02:19 AM
As far as I know Zeus never turned into a woman.

He was referring to the bestiality aspect of it. Zeus turns into animals of all sorts (including a duck, at some point) to rape women. Loki turned into not just a woman, but also a horse when he seduced Sleipnir.

tl;dr- European mythology, in general, has a lot of shapeshifting gods having sex with lots of things.

nyarlathotep
2011-07-24, 02:53 AM
He was referring to the bestiality aspect of it. Zeus turns into animals of all sorts (including a duck, at some point) to rape women. Loki turned into not just a woman, but also a horse when he seduced Sleipnir.

tl;dr- European mythology, in general, has a lot of shapeshifting gods having sex with lots of things.

Yeah I was just arguing over semantics for the sake of being silly.

Speaking of semantics I hope Loki never seduced Sleipnir cause he was Loki's child. The horse you're thinking of is probably Svaðilfari. :smallwink:

Immonen
2011-07-24, 04:18 AM
Speaking of semantics I hope Loki never seduced Sleipnir cause he was Loki's child. The horse you're thinking of is probably Svaðilfari. :smallwink:

>_<
yeah, my bad. late nights do strange things to my brain.

Traab
2011-07-24, 08:51 AM
Yeah I was just arguing over semantics for the sake of being silly.

Speaking of semantics I hope Loki never seduced Sleipnir cause he was Loki's child. The horse you're thinking of is probably Svaðilfari. :smallwink:

Bah, whats one more perversion to add to the pile?

some guy
2011-07-24, 09:37 AM
tl;dr- European mythology, in general, has a lot of shapeshifting gods having sex with lots of things.

I'm sure it's human mythology in general has lot of shapeshifting characters have sex with shapeshifted things. Mind you, my main source of all things mythological is this blog (http://bettermyths.blogspot.com/), which is also very hilarious.

On tracks:
I never really met horrible players/dms. My worst DM used natural 1's as autofail on everthing and may have been a fudger*. He gave me the feeling he wouldn't let my pc die, in response I became a pretty petty player by making my character too daring** in combat.
He wasn't a bad DM, those things just rubbed me the wrong way.

I didn't encounter bad players, just players with bad tendecies such as coming late, cancelling an hour before, not cancelling and just not showing up. Which all irritate me, but nothing compared to some of the stories in this thread.

*Not meaning I think fudging is wrong***, it's more that I don't like fudging.
**Fighting 9ish zombies, drunk and alone. As a rogue. I might have been an extra bad player in that campaign because of spotlight hogging. My excuse was that it moved the plot forward.
***I would say that there's no wrong way to play rpg's, but this thread proves otherwise.

Chernobyl
2011-07-24, 10:43 AM
I've got a great DM, with terrible homebrew tables. We're forever running into these really formidable wandering monsters, who have really paltry treasure.

For example, last night our party (everyone 3rd level) ran into a random encounter of rock trolls (CR 6 :smallannoyed:). They almost killed us; we barely escaped with our lives.

But while they were chasing after us, our ever-resourceful half-orc doubled-back to their camp and looted their stuff. So our DM checked her random treasure tables and informed us that the trolls had nothing more than a non-magical steel shield (:smallmad:).

WalterBlack
2011-07-24, 03:01 PM
Sounds to me like most of the people complaining either take D&D too seriously, or are in fact obliviously describing themselves as being the problem element in their group. Others are simply nitpicking. Allowing the rare exception of genuine mental illness, most groups should be able to amicably resolve their issues.

However...

Some people are simply outrageously detached from reality, and are simply unfit to interact socially in any capacity. One such player, let's call him XB34Z² (because his strangeness simply isn't represented well by a single letter, and XB34Z² sounds like a reasonable approximation of the designation he is known by on his home planet) I have experience with. XB34Z² is his character. His emotions are interwoven with those of his character, to the point of near-violent outbursts whenever events unfold which might be unfavorable to his character. He is so deeply immersed in his character (even though his contributions to the advancement of the storyline are limited) that one fears for his physical well-being if the link would ever be severed.

If XB34Z²'s character's ability scores were people, they would all be legally drinking, while his hit points look like the kind of number sequence a mathematician would cower from. He is brought to the brink of tears by a series of poor rolls, and will throw tantrums at the slightest hint of an unfavorable rule interpretation. He is an unrelenting menace of social maladjustment and obliviousness. He is the kind of player that will berate another for not playing their own character according to his interpretation.

Worst of all? Since most of the outbursts weren't directed at me, but the DM, I didn't really mind that much. It was thoroughly entertaining.

Zerter
2011-07-24, 03:02 PM
Before posting about my own worst DM/Player experiences, I'd like to reply to #92 as I am the Z mentioned.


worst DM: since a lot of letters are already taken, lets call him Z

Z starts by telling us that he wanted to make a "urban" campaign, much more roleplay and politics, and less actual combat. Now, im not that good at politics, but im willing to give it a go, who knows, its different, so it might be fun.

...

after that, the DMPC kills me. just like that.
appearantly, the only way i could end that scene was either by dieing, or confessing and hoping he wouldnt turn me in a vampire spawn or something ( something my char considered unlikely)

T's critique is very valid, I did have a tendency early on to put up strong encounters for the PCs only to scale them down during combat. I learned from this (this was my second time DMing) and stopped doing it after a number of sessions (I put more effort into preparing them), but it (and other events) had set a negative tone with T and another specific player (lets call him Thormin Hardrock). I don't really get why he refers to ECL however as we were playing an extremely high powered campaign and the CR as stated in the books did not accurately represent what would be a challenge for the party.

As far as the incident with the vampire goes the critique is valid to a point (I did make mistakes, but not to the extent I think it should have been taken so hard). I had constantly rewarded T throughout the campaign for undertaking various side-quests many of which were related to him harming the vampire in some way. The way he tried to hurt the vampire by spreading misinformation was not that effective in my eyes however, this was a city that allowed entire districts filled with devils, undeads and other extremely evil (and powerful) beings to exist (as long as they abided by certain groundrules) and spreading the word some vampire was out for world domination just was not that impressive as it would have been in a standard world. Related to this, it was relative easy to track who had spread the information (the people T had used to do this were basically a gang of thugs whereas it was established early on the vampire was part of a influental faction within the city) and I ruled the vampire had found out (obviously looking for the person that was behind putting out these rumors about him) about T spreading the information and that he would be looking for payback.

This was all to be worked out later (the vampire did get in some trouble because of the information spread and it would impact the campaign). However, at some point I thought the campaign had lost some of it's mojo and decided to shake up things and introduce a powered down deck of many things at the end of a session so we could deal with ramifications in the next one (I had let them know this might be happening the week before so they could think about what choices to make). Unfortunately for T, he drew some ****ty cards including one that made him a enemy and one that trapped him somewhere. I was under pressure at this point to retcon the entire situation ("Who introduces a deck of many things!"), but I decided against it as it was not fair towards the player that had more luck and because I believe that D&D is only fun if it has real risks and real rewards. So I fastforwarded what might have happened anyway a bit and informed T the deck had trapped him in the headquarters of the vampire.

In the vampire's lair he tries to roleplay his way out of his current situation and avoids telling any technical lies, the vampire has a host of ways to detect lies at his disposal but no ways to force the truth (except one that kills the player), the main problem however is that the story the player is telling is simply not believable, it is obvious he is trying to avoid telling any technical lies). Eventually the vampire turns T into a vampire himself - because a vampire serves the vampire that creates him absolutely this will give the vampire the information he desires.

The party sat out to free T from the vampire and succeeded in doing so the same session, but T was so down from the entire experience he no longer desired to continue with the character. It also created a negative tone between T, Thormin Hardrock and another player as that player informed the Undeads that they had liberated T and this was taken rather personally.

I realise, most certainly in retrospect, that putting a character in a situation where there is only one way to survive (telling the truth in this case, I'd like to point out at this point that the vampire had always been reasonable and giving as regards to the party) is not a good idea. I made plenty as DM, but I do very activally try to learn from them and did so during this campaign.

Eventually a very negative atmosphere was set in this party for various other reasons, but also those related to my DMing and I took my responsiblity and offered to step down even though there were no outright pressure to do so. The negative atmosphere remained however and eventually blew the party up, causing T and Thormin Hardrock to leave as the rest went on to play weekly, which we still do with a much more positive atmosphere and me DMing a lot better at the moment (thanks in regards to lessons taken from my stint as T's DM). But more about that when I tell you about the worst D&D player in the world.

Hiro Protagonest
2011-07-24, 03:09 PM
The way he tried to hurt the vampire by spreading misinformation was not that effective in my eyes however, this was a city that allowed entire districts filled with devils, undeads and other extremely evil (and powerful) beings to exist (as long as they abided by certain groundrules) and spreading the word some vampire was out for world domination just was not that impressive as it would have been in a standard world.

Did he know that? Because if it's that common, he should know that.

navar100
2011-07-24, 03:12 PM
Sounds to me like most of the people complaining either take D&D too seriously, or are in fact obliviously describing themselves as being the problem element in their group. Others are simply nitpicking. Allowing the rare exception of genuine mental illness, most groups should be able to amicably resolve their issues.


Reminds me of my second worst DM - Dismissed my claims of why I wasn't haven't fun in his game as whining. When he deliberately did not have my character start with the rest of the party for a new campaign, engaged in a combat that took a real hour with me just sitting there, then was about to start another combat and my character was still not introduced, it was time to leave, so I did. Then he blamed me for ruining his plans of some grand introduction, so he decided to kick me out of the group I had already quit.

Zerter
2011-07-24, 03:17 PM
Did he know that? Because if it's that common, he should know that.

He did know that. A week before we began the first session I had already established the city we played in was populated by various extremely evil and powerful factions, who could be assumed to gladly take over the city if given a chance. This included for example a red dragon of deity like power named Crovax (think Tiamat) that ruled various districts within the city with a iron fist and was populated by devils, (I had established it as the go-to-place to make devil's bargains). The party itself was evil and did some horrific stuff, none of which lead to the authorities coming after them (though some people wronged personally did seek revenge).

The entire city (every campaign we have played since, just not by me, has taken place in it) consists off 10.000 districts ruled by various factions that are kept in check by certain ground rules: you're allowed to do pretty much what you want in a district you control and have seperate laws etc. but you're not allowed to turn the neighbours into undead for example (which is something the vampire did and got him trouble, not the having a major evil artifact part and seeking world domination). Also there is a common LG organisation to fight major outside and inside threats (revolutions, wars) and keep everyone in check. It is based on the way the USA works with various states that have their own laws, but there also being a federal government that takes care of a number of specific tasks.

flumphy
2011-07-24, 03:35 PM
Reminds me of my second worst DM - Dismissed my claims of why I wasn't haven't fun in his game as whining. When he deliberately did not have my character start with the rest of the party for a new campaign, engaged in a combat that took a real hour with me just sitting there, then was about to start another combat and my character was still not introduced, it was time to leave, so I did. Then he blamed me for ruining his plans of some grand introduction, so he decided to kick me out of the group I had already quit.

If I have an awesome place to introduce a character halfway through a session (or they play something weird for the setting and my planned starting point just doesn't make sense for them), I might opt to have them sit out that long. Of course, I always ask the player's permission first, giving them the option to show up late or just start with the rest of the group anyway. Most of the times this has happened people just opted to sit out.

Honest Tiefling
2011-07-24, 03:42 PM
@navar100: I understand this situation. I've seen PCs embark on the quest before my PC had a chance to even see them!

I think the DM should have discussed it with you. And he should count himself lucky that you didn't just wander off in the meantime.

Blazen
2011-07-24, 04:02 PM
He would have had you sit out of 2 combats? How much you wanna bet you wouldn't have gotten catch up XP either.

comicshorse
2011-07-24, 06:30 PM
***I would say that there's no wrong way to play rpg's, but this thread proves otherwise.

Do what thou wilt provided thou amuse everybody

Kesnit
2011-07-24, 09:56 PM
A few of mine. (Not all are D&D)

D&D 3.5 - We will call him Z
Crappy role-player, and thinks he is a powergamer. He was playing a VoP Monk. However, since we were low-level (no higher than 5) and our only Tier 1 or 2 character was a Blaster Wizard, he did OK. Then the DM had to take a break for RL reasons, so the rest of us decided to run short campaigns to fill in.
Z wanted to run a high level campaign, starting at LVL 18. I honestly don't like pure casters, so made a Hexblade. The other player made a True Necro. Z helped him make a high HD undead with several stacked templates to serve as the TN's main companion. So far, so good. Then we met the 2 DMPC's. One of whom was an Epic Rogue/Assassin; I can't remember what the other one was, but it was higher level than the PCs, and I am not 100% sure it was a legal build.
My strongest memory of that campaign was when we were dropped in a combat with lots of undead with some template that gave them an aura of cold that automatically did damage. (I had taken Improved Familiar and had a hellhound, which, of course, takes extra damage from cold.) Plus, there was the major undead that had some huge aura of fear with a DC so high I could only beat it on a 18 or higher - which I would have to roll every round.
The TN could send his "army" in (since they were immune to the fear aura), but most all died to the automatic cold damage. However, his "army" was mostly lower level undead, so could not hit the main enemy on less than a 19.
After that, every encounter turned into "the PCs stand back and pick off the easy stuff while the DMPC's do everything."

Not long after, one of the players decided to run a Vampire: the Requiem game. Z made a character heavily statted for combat with the personality of an amoeba. And we discovered Z has no ability to RP whatsoever. In a game where combat happened maybe every 4-5 sessions. He spent months just sitting at the table, doing nothing. Even after he was given the opportunity to change his character to become more valuable, he sat at the table and did nothing.

nWoD - We'll call him R
Changling the Lost. R had a pretty good character concept - minor league baseball player who became a knight in a True Fae's chess set. However, his character was obsessed with killing his Fetch and getting his life back. In all honestly, had he asked, the rest of the party would have helped him. But he didn't ask. In fact, he kept his actions hidden from the rest of the group. This meant that the ST had to spend a large portion of her time dealing with his actions alone, rather than running the story for the rest of us. She tried talking to him and encouraging him to work with the group, but he refused, insisting this is what his character would do.

Mage the Awakening. R was the ST of this game, and he had a good story idea. The PCs all live in a certain city (made up by the ST), and there were a lot of hooks. Our first mission involved a trip to the spirit realm and was a lot of fun. The Spirit Mage got a lot of time, but that's OK. We all thought there would be a mission that focused on our skills. The problem began when we took as our second mission one he was not planning on us taking until much later, so he had to make it up on the fly. And this one also involved dealing with spirits and going into the spirit realm. By this point, it was very clear he was flirting with the two female players, one of whom was the Spirit Mage. Who also happened to be my fiancee. She and I were so irritated that we stopped going - her before me.

nWoD - We'll call him J
First session, less than 30 minutes after the game started. J was known for being a loudmouth, though I had never played with him before. J's PC was running his mouth and being confrontational.
I was playing a PC with very high social skills and powers that cause people to like you. In- and out-of-character, I was getting annoyed with J, so dropped one of the powers on him. When it succeeded, I said "your character now likes mine." As in, "your character is no longer antagonistic and likes being around mine."
J throws down his character sheet and stands up, screaming "I won't play a gay character." Then he stalked out of the room.
The game ended at that moment.

Mutant Sheep
2011-07-25, 12:35 AM
nWoD - We'll call him J
First session, less than 30 minutes after the game started. J was known for being a loudmouth, though I had never played with him before. J's PC was running his mouth and being confrontational.
I was playing a PC with very high social skills and powers that cause people to like you. In- and out-of-character, I was getting annoyed with J, so dropped one of the powers on him. When it succeeded, I said "your character now likes mine." As in, "your character is no longer antagonistic and likes being around mine."
J throws down his character sheet and stands up, screaming "I won't play a gay character." Then he stalked out of the room.
The game ended at that moment.

He was playing a character? Seems like he was just being mad. Also, why did the game end, seems like it just improved.:smalltongue: Also also, he was terrible at bending rules, he could have gone all "brotistic" on you and exaggerate everything.

Kesnit
2011-07-25, 07:25 AM
He was playing a character? Seems like he was just being mad.

He was playing a character (of a sort) until he got angry that I used a power on him. Perhaps he was a little OOC angry before that because my fiancee had, IC, questioned his "uber power." (The game was VtR. He was playing a Gangrel who fought with a sword. He was going on about how that build is so powerful. My fiancee, also playing Gangrel, asked how his sword was more powerful than her claws.)


Also, why did the game end, seems like it just improved.:smalltongue:

The ST and other players were too stunned.


Also also, he was terrible at bending rules, he could have gone all "brotistic" on you and exaggerate everything.

:smalltongue: He could have, and I would have laughed (in a good way) at his RP. But he just didn't seem to understand - even after we tried to explain it - that the power didn't make his character love mine.

hangedman1984
2011-07-25, 12:19 PM
A few of mine. (Not all are D&D)
nWoD - We'll call him J
First session, less than 30 minutes after the game started. J was known for being a loudmouth, though I had never played with him before. J's PC was running his mouth and being confrontational.
I was playing a PC with very high social skills and powers that cause people to like you. In- and out-of-character, I was getting annoyed with J, so dropped one of the powers on him. When it succeeded, I said "your character now likes mine." As in, "your character is no longer antagonistic and likes being around mine."
J throws down his character sheet and stands up, screaming "I won't play a gay character." Then he stalked out of the room.
The game ended at that moment.

sounds like someone is extremely insecure about their sexual identity

Justicar
2011-07-25, 04:15 PM
Did he call it a dodge roll? I could understand if you are not up on terminology from an edition that you don't play, but if he called it a dodge roll I'm going to have to head desk. I also thought the hill giant throwing rocks was an attack so reflex wouldn't even matter in 3rd edition.

He actually said he wanted to "roll to dodge." That's what confused me too. I used to DM 3e ('01-04) and 'rolling to dodge' wasn't possible. Dodge was a feat that gave a small bonus to AC, improved evasion allied protection from area attacks and Reflex were saves against effects from an attack, which may have been what he was talking about, but it wasn't what he said. None of those were applicable in this situation though.

I was too sleep-deprived to effectively explain the situation to him and he only came to 1 or 2 more sessions. However, it was too late by then and the campaign fell apart as we looked for a replacement.

Ceridan
2011-08-01, 05:13 PM
The worst DM I know. Lets call him K.

A couple of things to know about K before I get into my example. K can weave together great stories, but he has an utter lack of rules knowledge and is incapable of doing any prep work prior to a game. This could normally be overlooked but read on to see why it is a problem. It's made worse by the fact that K always wanted to DM the games despite his lack of knowledge of game mechanics.

We were playing a modified game of DH. We were playing a marine unit, with some acolyte back up, based on a space hulk that was trying to close the Eye of Terror from with-in. Cool concept. Well a group of deamons had boarded the ship and we had to hold a section of corridor as the engineers tried to cut through to another section. So lesser daemons flood the corridor and the marines manage to hold them off, but the a Lord of Change, the master of sorcery, pops in and we know fear. Or we would have if K had read the rules for the greater deamon and psychic powers. It should have been blasting us with spells and magic, instead it was using it's staff as a bat...

K has read a lot of the novels and knows the fluff of 40k universe. He had no excuse for using the BBEG in the way he was. The lesser deamons were contained, and this should have been a truly epic battle, but no. It should have rendered unconscious half the party and the rest should have been on the ropes, but no. No one was down, and only a few of us were hurt.

The towering deamon was playing whack a mole with the marines, and getting spanked for it. What really killed the game was when an acolyte, a scum turned pilot, landed a lucky Righteous Fury shot with his bolt pistol that killed the beast. K went ballistic. No flavor text for the shot or the monster's death, instead he yelled at the player for his dice roll and the session came to a complete stop.

I mean, even if he didn't know the Psychic rules, and he didn't, he could have faked it. Flavor text and dice rolls for damage would have worked. "The creature levels it's staff and a jet of multi-colored fire engulfs the corridor. Roll to dodge monkey boys." How difficult is that?

Traab
2011-08-02, 10:13 AM
Hmm, sounds like he is really good at creating the story, why not try to convince him to keep it that way? Basically, he sets up the back story, writes up a general list of encounters and plot relevant information, then hands it off to the dm who knows the rules and can make the encounters work the way they are supposed to. Dont try to trick him or anything like that, just sit him down and say, "Look K, you setup amazing campaigns, great stories, awesome backdrops and do great plot hooks. Your weakness is that you dont know the rules and stats as well as a dm needs to in order to make the actual gameplay work. Why not work with (insert guy with rules knowledge here) and write up all this great stuff so he can fill in the stats and skills needed to make the whole thing complete?" It could make for some great collaboration work between them. He makes up the story, his partner does the technical stuff, and then see which one does a better job of running the game as the dm once that stuff has been covered.

Choco
2011-08-02, 12:26 PM
I've got a great DM, with terrible homebrew tables. We're forever running into these really formidable wandering monsters, who have really paltry treasure.

For example, last night our party (everyone 3rd level) ran into a random encounter of rock trolls (CR 6 :smallannoyed:). They almost killed us; we barely escaped with our lives.

But while they were chasing after us, our ever-resourceful half-orc doubled-back to their camp and looted their stuff. So our DM checked her random treasure tables and informed us that the trolls had nothing more than a non-magical steel shield (:smallmad:).

I actually do that a lot myself. Now before you start hoisting me up the flagpole, hear me out:

I really don't follow the treasure recommendations in the books, and in fact a lot of non-humanoid monsters have no treasure at all. I try my best to only give treasure to things that would actually have treasure. The PC's sometimes go damn near an entire level before finding any treasure in the common sense (usable items, magic anything, etc.) other than the occasional coinage. If they want to get resourceful and harvest the corpses of the exotic creatures they are slaughtering, they of course get the money from that.

On the other hand, I do stick within a few % of the WBL recommendations, and in fact often find myself going Monty Haul. I of course do this by giving the PC's HUGE payouts when they finally get one. A dragon's hoard means nothing if it has just as little in it as the 2 troll camps you raided before. However, if the PC's have been barely scraping by with hardly any treasure for a whole level, and they fight the dragon boss at the end, they then get over a level's worth of treasure in 1 go. Same thing if they accomplish a major quest objective: They know (or hope :smallamused:) that a huge payout from the king is waiting for them.

In general there is very little "random" treasure in my games. The vast majority of the treasure the PC's get is the stuff that they specifically sought out, purchased, was promised to them, etc.

Grendus
2011-08-02, 12:49 PM
In all fairness, though, Rock Trolls should have at least had something. They're monstrous humanoids, and bandits to boot, they should have at least had a cache of "shinies" they took off their last victims.

Trinoya
2011-08-02, 03:40 PM
Worst DM/GM/ST I ever had? That'd be an x-girlfriend... she basically handed me the game on a silver platter and nerfed all the other players... the game died really quickly there after, with me apologizing to all three of the other players profusely. In spit of my attempts to work with their characters she basically was, as one put it, '**** blocking the entire process.' She even had one character basically get sent off into magical illusion land to never be heard from again...

That's pretty much when it was clear she wasn't going to let anyone else advance except me... and the decision was made to quit.


Worst player... Generally speaking all my players are good, high quality folks, even if a trap or a puzzle can ruin their day... I've found the most dangerous thing I can do to them all is throw a door at them... (a simple door.. Just a door. Not a fancy door.. just a stone door...)

As such, even my 'worst' player is, in my opinion, a cut above the rest. He may not be the most socially graceful, and he may not even be all that competent in a lot of situations since he has a hard time picking up on the subtleties of it, but I still consider him good since once in a while he could be brilliant.

That said, he had a character that lived for approximately 3 seconds before it died, and a large swath of dead characters in his wake... a very large swath.

2nd place would be former girlfriend again (and it's a close second) since when her character was retired because she was leaving the game she basically summoned the BBEG to kill the party off.

Alaris
2011-08-02, 04:37 PM
Ah... the worst DM I've ever played under... I played under for roughly 1 hour. No... really. I'm not joking.

This guy is not a social guy. In any sense of the word. All of the NPCs in our party (4-5 of them, to our like... 4-PC party?) were essentially DMPCs. The mages all had reserve feats, and the Warforged was practically his baby.

They defeated the encounters for us... and we were supposed to be the heroes. We didn't need to do anything, honestly. Thankfully, I had an excuse to leave about an hour in, and took it, quickly escaping. I got the full details from the other players later, and we decided to drop that game quickly.

Ironically, that DM is the same Player who I would consider my "worst player." He has some major problems, but he is tolerable, and has not done anything that would have me kicking him out of the game. He needs to work on his social skills, in my opinion, but he's far from a terrible player.

Hopefully he can improve, with the more he plays, and interacts with people. I can only hope.

Hiro Protagonest
2011-08-02, 04:51 PM
2nd place would be former girlfriend again (and it's a close second) since when her character was retired because she was leaving the game she basically summoned the BBEG to kill the party off.

So, since she wasn't able to play in the campaign anymore, she wouldn't let anyone else?

Trinoya
2011-08-02, 05:34 PM
So, since she wasn't able to play in the campaign anymore, she wouldn't let anyone else?

I don't really know what was going through her head at the time, nor have I had any inclination to find out what it was. Maybe she felt jaded and was concerned I would just kill her character off anyway (a baseless assumption, I don't just kill off PCs since that requires effort and work on my end)... or maybe she thought the parties 'infiltrate the castle' plan didn't give her a big enough role and she was just spiteful. Not sure... sad thing was the parties over the top insane plan had actually been working up to that point.


Funny story though, the event is so ill remembered at my table that to this day all my players believe her character will be the final big bad evil boss monster of the story.

some guy
2011-08-02, 06:13 PM
Worst player... Generally speaking all my players are good, high quality folks, even if a trap or a puzzle can ruin their day... I've found the most dangerous thing I can do to them all is throw a door at them... (a simple door.. Just a door. Not a fancy door.. just a stone door...)


How does that even work? There must be a story behind that?

Trinoya
2011-08-02, 06:52 PM
Doors are the arch enemies of my players. I've had doors stop more players in their tracks than any monster, trap, or puzzle I have ever written.

The specific door in question THIS particular time was a large stone door in which on the opposing side where shades of various power levels. The door was locked, and too heavy to move for the weaker characters, with the fighter types out of commission they rapidly ran out of options. One of the players managed to get to the other side of the door, and was subsequently assaulted in total complete darkness by shades.

The other players ultimately destroyed the entire building to rescue him because that was the most efficient way to do it.

The stone door survived.



But I have lots of door stories... they actually blew up a door due to massive pressure and force, nearly killing two PCs on the opposing side of the door, who managed to get the words, "Oh shi-" out before they were promptly 'pwn'd.'


The truth is, the final boss of my world will not be the player character they all think it is... it's gonna be a door. ^_^

The Glyphstone
2011-08-02, 10:22 PM
Just an ordinary, unlocked, untrapped, nonmagical door leading into a blank wall?

Serpentine
2011-08-03, 12:31 AM
One of the characters in my game stole a door...

WarKitty
2011-08-03, 12:57 AM
I had one with "Favored enemy: door"

Fera Tian
2011-08-03, 02:24 AM
DMing.
Attacked other PCs for incredibly minor offenses (he nearly 1-shotted the party's Warlock for a pirate-related pun, since his character was a Swashbuckler).


What's a major offense then? I find pirate puns very offensive and see his actions as justifiable.

Extra_Crispy
2011-08-03, 08:30 AM
Worst player I have ever met was a long time ago a friend started a White Wolf compaign. He allowed just about everything and because of my real world name and the fact I like werewolfs I played a werewolf but not a combat one. I played a glasswalker computer geek, but took some advantages that made me ok in combat. This other guy, we will call him J (for jerk) played a gun using fairy. So throughout the whole game he is calling me a dog, and making very rude comments because OOC he hates werewolfs. I am mostly putting up with it because I am new to the game and I really wanted to play, also he had dozens of guns and hundreds of silver bullets for each of them, in character there was not much I could do. Anyway at one point we are fighting a creature that can manipulate matter, I see it and charge since I am the hand to hand combatant and before I get there it turns the floor into silver. I stop cold and decide to reload the guns for the Fairy. The creature turns one of the shotguns into cold steel, if you dont know it is like silver is to werewolfs but for fairies. So the fairy drops the shotgun and grabs another gun and keeps shooting. I tell the gm I am picking up the now worthless shotgun and holding on to it. J then complains for 30 min about how I should not have such a powerful weapon against him that it is unfair and I should not be allowed to keep the cold steel weapon. About to lose it I told him that I will give up the shotgun the instant he gives up the thousands of silver bullets he has, he continues to complain but less vocally and just amps up the insults to my character about him being a "dog" Later I tell the GM that I take a hammer to the shotgun and fashion into a very crude club. Finally J layed the last straw, after hours of insults, not all of them in character, he said something that just really pissed me off, and he said it in character so in character I calmly tell the GM that I grab the cold steel shotgun and hit him with it. I did not know that cold steel was that dangerous to fairies, (my character had no occult skill so could not know either) thought I would just give him a bit of damage and that was it, get him to shut up. And I forgot I was in crinos form, the strongest form you can get. So after rolling dice to see if I hit and then damage I did something like 10 aggravated damage, unsoakable, little fairy go boom. J then proceded to scream and yell about me killing his character for hours, and how the GM should not have let me keep the shotgun, how it was completely unfair, completely stopping the game for that session. Then J stormed out of the game room.

The only good thing about the whole situation was the GM thanked me afterward for getting rid of J. He disliked him also but did not want to be a complete jerk and ban the guy from playing because he was a friend of a friend.

Swordguy
2011-08-03, 09:03 AM
Worst player (tie):

#1) Deliberately invoked Theoretical Optimization-heavy PCs (played to their maximum level of power) in a 7-player group that was VERY happy with blaster wizards and sword&board fighters, and refused to stop as long as the game involved ANYTHING from TV Tropes. Favorite Quote: "If you were a truly 'good' GM, you could run a game without using anything at all from the site!"

#2) Brother/Sister team. Self-described "optimizers" who agreed to keep it relatively low-key during character creation. Played a wizard and bard who did, in fact, keep it relatively low-key during character creation and up through about level 3. Then they started up with the TO and powergaming. Started the Tippyverse in-game, started diplomancy cheese to force clerics to summon Solars under their control...the whole 9 yards. Oh, and started up an incestuous IG relationship (a la the Lannisters) that was described - in detail - to the whole table when it came up. When interrupted, they used diplomancy/magic on the party to MAKE them sit still and listen to their little fapfic.

comicshorse
2011-08-03, 09:36 AM
One of the characters in my game stole a door...

Biggest mistake our G.M. ever made :
" Why was that Beholder just hanging around in the room. Why hadn't he left ?"
" Er...the door was immune to his powers, he couldn't get out "
" Hold it ! The door is immune to everything a Beholder can do. We're having that !"

Best Tower Shield

Worst GM. One guy I know had a bad habit of inflicting male-on-male rape on the P.C.s. It is something he seems to have dropped lately though.
He also played the kind of DMPC that gives them a bad name in a Vampire game and pretty much tried to have my P.C. killed in the same game.

Volthawk
2011-08-03, 09:39 AM
#1) Deliberately invoked Theoretical Optimization-heavy PCs (played to their maximum level of power) in a 7-player group that was VERY happy with blaster wizards and sword&board fighters, and refused to stop as long as the game involved ANYTHING from TV Tropes. Favorite Quote: "If you were a truly 'good' GM, you could run a game without using anything at all from the site!"

This comes to mind when I read that. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheTropelessTale)

The Random NPC
2011-08-03, 10:28 AM
Six pages and no one mentions That (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23784) Lanky (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93633) Bugger (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=95189)?

Dragor
2011-08-03, 10:57 AM
The worst player I've ever played with was a guy I dislike quite a bit but we needed him to make a three-man group. Let's call him A.

It was our DM's first time at a proper game, and she wasn't solid on all the 4th edition rules, but it was cool, as one of the players acted as a rules lawyer in her stead. It was all going along fairly well. My character was an outcast Dwarf, exiled from her ultra-conservative clan for displaying psionic ability (not encountered by the clan before her, to her knowledge). There's a lot more depth to her backstory, but that was essentially it. Kind-hearted but sometimes brash and quick to anger, she acted as the de-facto leader of the group.

A's character, who's concept I quite liked, was a half-elf Bard who was the product of human and elven collaboration at colonising in the area. This was a nice parallel with the other member, a Warlock who'd been the slave of elves and had been brutally treated.

We came to an elven camp (of the woodsy elf variety) with two mute brainwashed female cult members, who my character had emancipated from their incredibly creepy and evil master by curbstomping. The elves considered the two girls, who were totally harmless and being rehabiliated by our sympathetic warlock, as abominations who needed to be killed. The bard agreed, for reasons unknown. After some thought, I was against euthanising them as I didn't think it agreed with my characters motives.

He proceeded to call my character stupid, and said that I personally 'did not grasp the philosophy' (OOC) and apologised to the Elven leader about 'my stupid friend'. It wasn't in a funny belittling way; it was simply rude. I wasn't very happy about this, but I didn't let it boil over. Let me make it clear that it's not the idea of disagreeing with me that I disliked, but making me feel stupid and making my character idea seem stupid. There were simply better ways of going about disliking my characters feelings on the matter than personal attacks and belittling.
Add to that the fact he makes stupid noises (like, deep, guttural groaning noises which sound absolutely vile), tries to steal the spotlight in every situation, and seems to think that if he phrases everything incredibly archaically it makes him sound more intelligent, he was a quite unbearable player.

(He also proceeded to tag along with me and the DM to a personal gathering that he wasn't invited to, due to it being old friends he barely knew, and proceeded to try and force me to get drunk and called me 'kid' and 'boy', still arguing that I knew no philosophy despite the fact I've studied it at university, unlike him. Oh, and I'm 19, and he's also 19. Does not qualify him to treat me like an infant. :smallannoyed:)

I guess that's out-of-game and doesn't count, however.

Sorry for the rant. I really don't like this guy- can you tell? :smallwink:

Trinoya
2011-08-03, 11:32 AM
Just an ordinary, unlocked, untrapped, nonmagical door leading into a blank wall?

Well... leading to a small room... but yes... just a door.

My players have grown to fear the simple things... the really simple things.

Analytica
2011-08-03, 11:32 AM
Finally J layed the last straw, after hours of insults, not all of them in character, he said something that just really pissed me off, and he said it in character so in character I calmly tell the GM that I grab the cold steel shotgun and hit him with it. I did not know that cold steel was that dangerous to fairies, (my character had no occult skill so could not know either) thought I would just give him a bit of damage and that was it, get him to shut up. And I forgot I was in crinos form, the strongest form you can get. So after rolling dice to see if I hit and then damage I did something like 10 aggravated damage, unsoakable, little fairy go boom.

Werewolves have an actual mechanic for going into berserk rages. Everyone who knows anything about them IC should know this. This is really the only thing that could or should have happened, in my opinion, that fae really committed suicide... :smallbiggrin:

Analytica
2011-08-03, 11:37 AM
#2) Brother/Sister team. Self-described "optimizers" who agreed to keep it relatively low-key during character creation. Played a wizard and bard who did, in fact, keep it relatively low-key during character creation and up through about level 3. Then they started up with the TO and powergaming. Started the Tippyverse in-game, started diplomancy cheese to force clerics to summon Solars under their control...the whole 9 yards. Oh, and started up an incestuous IG relationship (a la the Lannisters) that was described - in detail - to the whole table when it came up. When interrupted, they used diplomancy/magic on the party to MAKE them sit still and listen to their little fapfic.

Except for the part about exposing the rest of the players to too much material that those other players do not care for, I kind of want to play this... :smallredface:

Serpentine
2011-08-03, 11:41 AM
Not with your own sibling, I hope :smalleek:

Dragor
2011-08-03, 12:07 PM
#2) Brother/Sister team. Self-described "optimizers" who agreed to keep it relatively low-key during character creation. Played a wizard and bard who did, in fact, keep it relatively low-key during character creation and up through about level 3. Then they started up with the TO and powergaming. Started the Tippyverse in-game, started diplomancy cheese to force clerics to summon Solars under their control...the whole 9 yards. Oh, and started up an incestuous IG relationship (a la the Lannisters) that was described - in detail - to the whole table when it came up. When interrupted, they used diplomancy/magic on the party to MAKE them sit still and listen to their little fapfic.

If I could actually access YouTube now, you can totally bet I'd be linking Patrick from SpongeBob going "AHHH! HORRIBLE!"

Incest, explored properly, can be interesting. That, however, is just... gah. Where do you even start? :smallconfused:

--EDIT--

Just realised that if I'd put an ellipsis after 'can be', that sentence would've been a whole lot different... oh dear.

The Glyphstone
2011-08-03, 12:33 PM
If I could actually access YouTube now, you can totally bet I'd be linking Patrick from SpongeBob going "AHHH! HORRIBLE!"

Incest, explored properly, can be interesting. That, however, is just... gah. Where do you even start? :smallconfused:

--EDIT--

Just realised that if I'd put an ellipsis after 'can be', that sentence would've been a whole lot different... oh dear.
That sentence could be a lot different no matter where you put the ellipsis.:smallbiggrin:

"Incest, explored...properly, can be interesting."
"Incest, explore properly, can be...interesting."

Karoht
2011-08-03, 01:08 PM
Hmm... on the Male/Female Player creep, I have a couple of examples...
I'm uncreative and sick, so I'll go with "J" and "K". Completely unrelated to the poster JaronK, who is cool :p
Ok, so let's start with the male player, J.
1: He has two personality archetypes which he always plays, and will swap between at random: Jack Sparrow, and an elizebethan cathouse madam.
This can be extremely disconcerting.

2: All of his PCs are female, all of his PCs are lesbian, and they will try to make it with every female NPC in line of sight, regardless of availability, orientation, or relation.

3: He declares a "Nat 20" on any roll lower than 10. When called on his blatant cheatery, he fights back by rolling his D20 over and over again until he actually gets a 20, then saying that roll was his roll. At one point, a fellow playgrounder bought him a specialty D20 that lights up and plays music if it actually rolls a 20. He has yet to bring it to session.

4: He is very, very bad at optimization. But tries to play like his character is super-powerful. 3 and 4 actually cancel eachother out to some extent; his builds are subpar, but he fakes his rolls, which brings him to medium effectiveness. The other players have pretty much agreed on this point.

5: Guy can roleplay pretty well, but has little atatchment to his characters. When other party members try to tie-in their backgrounds, or make good reasons why they're close to his character, he'll go off and die then refuse to be rezzed because he got bored of the class and wants to try something new.I just want to point out that I play with this person as well, and Acanous from time to time.
J really does cheat. Heavily. But the funny thing is, even if we just said to the guy 'every hit lands and confirms a critical, just stop rolling' he would likely still be the least effective party member at the table, the majority of the time. He has got better (both being effective and not cheating) over the last 6 months or so, there is some hope.

Surprisingly though, he is a much better DM. And I have no idea why that is. He roleplays better when he is DM'ing, he rolls on the table and doesn't fudge, and he's not trying to be the center of attention. Again, there is some hope.

Analytica
2011-08-03, 02:15 PM
Not with your own sibling, I hope :smalleek:

No. I prefer to keep my pretend incest pretend only. Eh. Did I just write that? :smalleek:

Sipex
2011-08-03, 02:39 PM
Don't worry, we don't judge. Some days you pretend to be siblings, other days you're Samuel L. Jackson and she's Oprah, we understand.

Steward
2011-08-03, 02:39 PM
I think a lot of these problems could be solved with just a little bit of willpower. Like the sibling incest people -- is there any reason why the players --- not the characters, who I understand were ensorcelled or coerced, but the players -- couldn't have stood up and said, "Hey, can you guys knock that off?" (politely but firmly, of course!) It's weird how often so many of us (I include myself in this) put up with this obnoxious garbage for so long. I get if it's a close friend of yours or something, but if it's just some guy that no one else in the group likes, why let him ruin the game every week?

Maybe I shouldn't complain though; these stories are definitely fascinating.


Werewolves have an actual mechanic for going into berserk rages. Everyone who knows anything about them IC should know this. This is really the only thing that could or should have happened, in my opinion, that fae really committed suicide...

Oh, yeah, totally. It's like he walked into a biker bar and found the biggest, toughest tattooed stereotype in there and took a dump into the guy's lap. There's no realistic way that he was going to walk out of that situation alive and Extra_Crispy definitely handled it the right way even if he didn't know about the cold iron weakness. Sometimes you have to beat some sense into people and if you have to beat it into them so hard that you give them a fractured skull and subdural hematomas then that's what you gotta do. :smallwink:

Mutant Sheep
2011-08-03, 04:18 PM
Don't worry, we don't judge. Some days you pretend to be siblings, other days you're Samuel L. Jackson and she's Oprah, we understand.

Bu..buh..buhhh... SNAKES ON PLANE! THINK SNAKES ON PLANE! THINK SNAKEY THOUGHTS! Phew, now I'm thinking of Indiana Jones AUGH CYRSTAL SKULL AUGH!

Dragor
2011-08-03, 04:52 PM
That sentence could be a lot different no matter where you put the ellipsis.:smallbiggrin:

"Incest, explored...properly, can be interesting."
"Incest, explore properly, can be...interesting."

OH GOD. Thanks Glyph, now my skin is squirming... plus, I'm starting to realise that you can stick an ellipsis in nearly every sentence and make it creep-worthy.

To stay OT, another player I've played with who was nowhere near as bad as A (see my above post), but has his moments of utter stupidity. Basically: he wanted to play a vampire. In a desert setting, after I'd told him that was the setting. :smallconfused:

Kaun
2011-08-03, 05:28 PM
To stay OT, another player I've played with who was nowhere near as bad as A (see my above post), but has his moments of utter stupidity. Basically: he wanted to play a vampire. In a desert setting, after I'd told him that was the setting. :smallconfused:

I seem to remember a vampire adaption based around dwelling in the desert were rather then feeding on blood it sucked the water from its victem.

It might have been a 2e Ravenloft thing i think.

Arbane
2011-08-03, 05:46 PM
To stay OT, another player I've played with who was nowhere near as bad as A (see my above post), but has his moments of utter stupidity. Basically: he wanted to play a vampire. In a desert setting, after I'd told him that was the setting. :smallconfused:

That's not _quite_ as dumb as it sounds at first - NOBODY wants to go out in the desert at mid-day, and the sun sets eventually. And sand's probably easier to bury yourself in than dirt...

Rixx
2011-08-03, 06:49 PM
Bu..buh..buhhh... SNAKES ON PLANE! THINK SNAKES ON PLANE! THINK SNAKEY THOUGHTS!

I don't think that can get much more Freudian!

The Glyphstone
2011-08-03, 07:46 PM
OH GOD. Thanks Glyph, now my skin is squirming... plus, I'm starting to realise that you can stick an ellipsis in nearly every sentence and make it creep-worthy.

To stay OT, another player I've played with who was nowhere near as bad as A (see my above post), but has his moments of utter stupidity. Basically: he wanted to play a vampire. In a desert setting, after I'd told him that was the setting. :smallconfused:

True; any sentence can have elipsises added to make it more...creepy.:smallamused:


Back OT: Most DMs I've had were mediocre at worst/best. One was inordinately fond of level 1 mooks, throwing waves of dozens of them rather than scale enemies to our level (from 1 to 6+). Another was an intinerant railroader who turned the module we were playing into "The Amazing Adventures of DMPC Self-Insert and friends".

The only real 'horror story' I have is from a very short-lived PbP game. Short-lived as in, the DM's first post unilaterally TPKed the party, because he had changed his mind about running it.

Traab
2011-08-03, 08:07 PM
True; any sentence can have elipsises added to make it more...creepy.:smallamused:


Back OT: Most DMs I've had were mediocre at worst/best. One was inordinately fond of level 1 mooks, throwing waves of dozens of them rather than scale enemies to our level (from 1 to 6+). Another was an intinerant railroader who turned the module we were playing into "The Amazing Adventures of DMPC Self-Insert and friends".

The only real 'horror story' I have is from a very short-lived PbP game. Short-lived as in, the DM's first post unilaterally TPKed the party, because he had changed his mind about running it.


Heh, did the words, "rocks fall" appear in that first post anywhere?

The Glyphstone
2011-08-03, 08:08 PM
Sadly, no. It was demons or something, I don't really remember.

Mutant Sheep
2011-08-03, 08:10 PM
Sadly, no. It was demons or something, I don't really remember.

Demons fall? Don't you mean paladins? :smalltongue:

Bu..buh..buhhh... SNAKES ON PLANE! THINK SNAKES ON PLANE! THINK SNAKEY THOUGHTS! Phew, now I'm thinking of Indiana Jones AUGH CYRSTAL SKULL AUGH!

I don't think that can get much more Freudian!

Bu...buh...but the joke was the white text.:smalleek:...:smalltongue: Also, I learned you can boldface colored text today! (And quote-ina-quote) Call now and get a free smiley!
:smalltongue: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpJGZ9RHAvU)

Kaun
2011-08-03, 08:20 PM
The only real 'horror story' I have is from a very short-lived PbP game. Short-lived as in, the DM's first post unilaterally TPKed the party, because he had changed his mind about running it.

Hahah, thats one way to do it i guess.

Lacks subtly but sends a definate message.

HunterOfJello
2011-08-03, 10:43 PM
I haven't played a game with any players who I would qualify as terrible, but I have played with a player who I'll now classify as strange. I also was in one game with a terrible DM, but I don't think I'll not talk about that guy since he comes onto these boards.

The player that I classify as strange is odd because he disappeared from the lives of everyone involved with our group's sessions and has cut off contact with all of us. He still posts information on Facebook, so we know that he's not actually missing, he just cut everyone off. It also gets stranger from my point of view because while different members of the group had a number of minor (and generally normal game-related) disagreements with him, there was no noticeable disagreement in the 2-3 sessions prior to his disappearance. It's also worth noting that he seemed really into the d&d games while also being an avid fan of MtG, Munchkin, and Heroscape. When he stopped contacting everyone he left all the MtG cards he owned, his Munchkin game, his d&d books, his d&d minis, and his Heroscape minis.

I have no idea why the guy left, why he left all his ****, or why he stopped talking to everyone. I just hope he wasn't replaced by an incompetent doppleganger. It would have been cool to play d&d with a competent doppleganger.

Kaun
2011-08-03, 11:22 PM
Sounds like he found a women.

Claudius Maximus
2011-08-04, 01:20 AM
Which is clearly mutually exclusive with hobby gaming.

Kaun
2011-08-04, 01:28 AM
Hahah, people tend to forget about the rest of the world when it happens some times.

Rimeheart
2011-08-04, 02:58 AM
Worst DM: She essentially gave us alot of room to optimize... trouble is almost every one at the table was new to 3.5. There were two of us who were fairly familiar. What would happen is we would start out in one dungeon and then some how either on purpose or by accident get ourself ported to another dungeon completely seperated from the other as near as we could tell. We just kept dungeon hopping with no discernable reason to me any more.

The last session ended with us finding some unreadable runes on the walls. Despite all our knowledge checks etc. it was unreadable... Which is great... because I guess it was not part of the story then? :smallconfused:

Serpentine
2011-08-04, 05:18 AM
I have a bad feeling I might be heading towards a "worst player/s" story... I'll soon be playing in a one-off Evil drow campaign. One of the girls (incidentally the girlfriend of the friend I'm having major issues with right now) tends to get really sullen and sulky any time anything doesn't go her way, and one of the guys... I can't remember, it's been a while since I played with him, but he's pretty... just generally really annoying. Guess we'll see...

One of my friends and occasional DMs wasn't especially bad, but... He had this whole court scene set up, and started reading out what was going to happen with it. Part-way through, I think he realised that he was basically just reading us a story we weren't really gonna be actively involved in (yes, a problem, but I like the guy, and it was pretty entertaining), and he sorta... had a bit of a breakdown. He got up and left the room, had a cry, and the game was over.
:/

Traab
2011-08-04, 09:46 AM
Sounds like he found a women.

If I may quote Questionable Content. He decided he didnt want to die a smelly virgin. :smalltongue:

Hiro Protagonest
2011-08-04, 11:28 AM
Which is clearly mutually exclusive with hobby gaming.

And contacting your friends.

Karoht
2011-08-04, 11:46 AM
I'm fine when people just have different interests and go do other things.

But for goodness sake, is it so hard to tell people rather than having us all find out by your complete lack of contact?
We live in a world of text message breakups and even a text to say "sorry chums, I won't be able to make session anymore" is to much effort? Serious?

Arbane
2011-08-04, 12:30 PM
When he stopped contacting everyone he left all the MtG cards he owned, his Munchkin game, his d&d books, his d&d minis, and his Heroscape minis.

I have no idea why the guy left, why he left all his ****, or why he stopped talking to everyone.

Maybe he joined one of those nut sects that thinks fantasy games are real Satan-worship?

Crusader808
2011-08-04, 04:32 PM
Wow. I've got nothing on you guys.

The worst I've dealt with is 1 CPM, the occasional dice cheat, and the person who only could create disruptive characters (and who mercifully no longer plays in my group.

Big Fau
2011-08-04, 09:27 PM
Is it safe to put Byron Hall under the "Worst DMs" category?

Blazen
2011-08-04, 09:44 PM
Maybe... Is it known if he ever actually ran his own game.

Crusader808
2011-08-04, 09:55 PM
I'm pretty sure that you can include anyone who wants to run or play TGTMNBN in the worst player and DM category.

Arbane
2011-08-04, 09:58 PM
Is it safe to put Byron Hall under the "Worst DMs" category?

He found PLAYERS, presumably. They'd belong here, too, if anyone had ever met them.

Jagu
2011-08-04, 10:13 PM
First post :smallbiggrin:

Worst DM. Unfortunately my first. I didn't play again for over a decade.
First time playing for me. I was in high school, I had a few friends over to play after school.
Cast: A (DM, male. Has a crush on B.) B (Female, is dating C.) C (Male.)

Essentially, A makes unreasonably good things happen for B, and unreasonably bad things happen for C. We had been playing for maybe an hour and were already grumpy about the obviously biased treatment of the characters while we were working our way through a cave system. C asks if he can use his staff to light the way, A says sure. C (definitely OOCly) jokes about his character holding up his staff and declaring "I am the god of the glowing staff!" A insists this was IC, and promptly has a huge flock of baddies that overheard him swarm in from the next room. It was looking unlikely our group would have survived, but at that point the game devolved into arguing, and all the players were just too irritated to continue. That was the first and last time we played. I wish I remembered more details, but again...it was over a decade ago. :smalltongue:

Big Fau
2011-08-04, 10:17 PM
Saying he playtested it alone is giving him credit, so I'm thinking "No". Although I've heard legends (from TvTropes) that there are... things... that play it.

Burnheart
2011-08-05, 04:51 AM
Umm can someone tell me who is Byron Hall and what is TGTMNBN?

Volthawk
2011-08-05, 05:06 AM
Umm can someone tell me who is Byron Hall and what is TGTMNBN?

TGTMNBN is The Game That Must Not Be Named. FATAL

Byron Hall is the creator of that game.

Immonen
2011-08-05, 06:54 AM
TGTMNBN is The Game That Must Not Be Named.

Byron Hall is the creator of that game.

Well, we have one way to settle this. Is any soul on this thread brave enough to gaze upon that dread tome and find the playtester credits? If they are present, then Byron Hall officially wins the thread.

flumphy
2011-08-05, 07:22 AM
Well, we have one way to settle this. Is any soul on this thread brave enough to gaze upon that dread tome and find the playtester credits? If they are present, then Byron Hall officially wins the thread.

Against my better judgement, I checked. Unless the credits are buried in some bizarre place in the heart of the text (no, even my accursed eyes dare not venture into the dark void between the introduction and the indexes at the back!) there are none, just a blurb on Hall himself and a bibliography. (Apparently, he actually researched some of the, um, stats...)His website claims that the game was being playtested, so it's possible that those vile souls actually exist but were mercifully uncredited.

The Glyphstone
2011-08-05, 07:35 AM
Creator: Byron Hall

Playtesters:
Byron Hall
B. Hall
"BH" Hall

Immonen
2011-08-05, 07:51 AM
Well, having never DM'ed TGWMNBN, Byron is regrettably disqualified.

Serpentine
2011-08-05, 07:54 AM
Wouldn't put it past him to play with himself...

Crusader808
2011-08-05, 08:38 AM
He certainly wins "worst game designer". I have a low enough opinion of humanity to allow me to believe that beings exist that play and enjoy this awful thing. I find it funny that they weren't willing to admit it in print.

Darthteej
2011-08-05, 10:37 AM
He certainly wins "worst game designer". I have a low enough opinion of humanity to allow me to believe that beings exist that play and enjoy this awful thing. I find it funny that they weren't willing to admit it in print.

I...believe I read a very short account of a man who DM'd a single session of TGTMNBN, but I don't remember exactly where it was(prob. 4chan). The players, to their credit, played in the intended spirit of the game.

Crusader808
2011-08-05, 11:10 AM
The players, to their credit, played in the intended spirit of the game.

<shudder> Curse you for mentioning this, now I'm going to have to find this. Sartin and MacLennan's review was bad, this sounds worse.

Any loss of sanity I experience is on your shoulders.

Darthteej
2011-08-05, 11:56 AM
<shudder> Curse you for mentioning this, now I'm going to have to find this. Sartin and MacLennan's review was bad, this sounds worse.

Any loss of sanity I experience is on your shoulders.

It's an unbelivably short post, though, just 3 or 4 sentences. Might have been here.

Chess435
2011-08-05, 12:05 PM
It's an unbelivably short post, though, just 3 or 4 sentences. Might have been here.

Wherre is this game you're all referring too? It sounds horrible. I like it.

Douglas
2011-08-05, 12:15 PM
Bah, you're all like those cowardly idiots in Harry Potter who won't say Voldemort. The game's name is FATAL (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Worst_RPGs_ever#F.A.T.A.L.).

Crusader808
2011-08-05, 12:28 PM
TGTMNBN is a hold out from the days when the FATALities would show up and troll threads about the game. I believe RaHoWa had a similar effect and weirdly so did RIFTS.

I figure it's a public service to keep people from finding the horrible thing.

I apologize for my part in the threadjacking :smallsmile:

Gnaeus
2011-08-05, 01:11 PM
What is RaHoWa?

And if fans of Fatal trolled threads, doesn't that imply that they actually played it? Or did they troll it because they hated it?

The Glyphstone
2011-08-05, 01:24 PM
What is RaHoWa?

And if fans of Fatal trolled threads, doesn't that imply that they actually played it? Or did they troll it because they hated it?

Racial Holy War. Basically, Skinhead: The RPG.

Crusader808
2011-08-05, 01:38 PM
Last thing I'll say before letting this go back to it's original purpose.

The FATALites, many of who were probably sock puppet accounts of Hall himself, would post "FATAL IZ BEST GAM EVUR!" and the like. So it was pro-FATAL stuff.

Knaight
2011-08-05, 01:56 PM
Racial Holy War. Basically, Skinhead: The RPG.

Nah. Racial Holy War is more like Real Life: The RPG written by Skinhead Racist, featuring the view of Real Life as seen by Skinhead Racist.

Ravens_cry
2011-08-05, 02:14 PM
Wouldn't put it past him to play with himself...
I bet he plays with himself all the time.

Big Fau
2011-08-05, 03:49 PM
And the TvTropes version. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=7ixhxjqoe9swz1xv4bxgw5h0&page=1)

The Glyphstone
2011-08-05, 04:05 PM
I bet he plays with himself all the time.

http://www.instantrimshot.com

Burnheart
2011-08-05, 05:30 PM
I'll put my self forward as the worst DM i've ever met.. since today was my first attempt and i have never met any other DM's, IRL anyway :smallbiggrin:

ZealPaladin
2011-08-05, 07:04 PM
Alright so, I did not memorize what letters were taken so far, but let's just refer to this annoying PC as T and one of my DMs as D. Unfortunately, I've had to deal with T as a player in the campaign that D was DMing for. Fun.

As for T:

I've dealt with T in two campaigns - one that D was DMing in, and one that I DMed myself.
T was playing a completely unoptimized Druid (I've seen this before on the thread, so whoever dealt with this, you have my sympathies). We were using standard 3.5, and I was playing a Human Paladin, along with two friends who were playing an Orc Barbarian and a Human Rogue (they were ok as players, and we got along well). We were level 4 at the time of this incident.

Anyway, T insisted on being fully combat-oriented. I wasn't totally opposed to the idea (i.e., Druids have Wild Shape, somewhat better HD than the more fragile spellcasters, and buffs that could help in combat), but the problem was that T barely used his druid abilities, and he emphasized two-weapon fighting. He NEVER used Wild Shape, and when I later suggested it to him, he said "Druids can do that?!" And, we often needed healing, but T always loaded his spells per day with often useless, non-combat spells (Tree Shape, Transmute Rock to Mud, Stone Shape, Water breathing, etc...). In other words, he could rarely heal us, and his best damage spell was Flaming Sphere. Anyway, while D was dragging us along a linear plot, we were being chased through a forest by about 5-7 enemy soldiers. There were only 3 of us at the time (we didn't have the orc barbarian yet) so we were formulating a plan. T goes ahead and casts Tree Shape to hide himself in the woods, abandoning us. It went like this.

T: I cast Tree Shape.
D: Ok, what kind of tree do you want to turn into?
T: I want to match these oak trees...
Me: Wait, how does this help us?!
T: It doesn't.

In other words, me and my party's rogue had to take out the soldiers on our own. Thank goodness for flanking, sneak attack, and Lay on Hands. When T appeared to "save" us, he barely did any damage with his dual-wielding.

Apart from that, I DMed another campaign where the PCs were fighting a tyrannical, oppressive empire that was attempting to overrun an elven-human alliance that was outside of empire control (not very original, but it was fun). Anyway, T decides to play a True Neutral Reaper (I believe that he was a Bard who prestiged into the homebrew class that he found online). I allowed the class, as I didn't seem OP. What I didn't realize was that his character would be very, very annoying. In short:
- He rarely used his spells or class abilities, so he was atrocious at combat.
- He claimed to only venture with the party so he could "collect their dead souls." So he refused to heal anyone, and he would never cooperate with the PCs.
- He tended to get in long, drawn out conversations with NPCs about nothing, thus boring the other players. When he would talk with the PCs, they would get into arguments.
- He got into fights with powerful Dwarven Clerics trying to help the party. Additionally, he angered a council of Satyrs that the PCs were trying to get help from by attempting to dominate their head wizard. His attempts resulted in his imprisonment.
- I had a long talk with him about his character, and he decided to leave the campaign entirely. The rest of my party breathed a heavy sigh of relief as, in our next session, we decided how to kill of T's character.

As for D (not as long):

D has a very good knowledge of the rules. Unfortunately, having a rules lawyer for a DM can be very annoying, especially when they constantly rule against the party. In short, these were D's problems:
- D railroaded us in a linear story where we had to escort an elven priestess somewhere. Where exactly, and why? We didn't know. The priestess was a DMPC (or a plot device) who was simply meant to fill the healing gap created by T. She had something against this tyrant who had a castle that could only be reached by traversing a random desert and going through a gate to a demi-plane. Yeah.
- Little plot development. We only knew the names of 2-3 areas that we had visited, and they were starting towns that we never visited again. There was no map, and we never knew where we were. Apart from the DMPC, there was rarely any good NPC interaction. We even just had to assume that the BBEG was evil, with no development.
- If we did not have knowledge (as per the skill) in an area, our characters knew absolutely nothing about the topic. As in, if we did not have knowledge (local), we knew nothing about any town we stepped into (excuse for little development). If we did not have history, we knew nothing about the world. Therefore, no world background, no reasoning as to why the BBEG was, in fact, the BBEG.
- "You can't do X because the enemies have already taken Y precautions and are ready to counter X strategy, as rule Z allows." This thread is loaded with these, I'll spare you guys.

TL DR: T was an unoptimized character in D's campaign who thought a Druid was just a Fighter with utility spells. He also played a character who used TN as an excuse to refuse to aid the party, or have anything to do with the story. D was a DM who couldn't develop the plot and abused combat rules.

Analytica
2011-08-05, 08:05 PM
Well, having never DM'ed TGWMNBN, Byron is regrettably disqualified.

The thing is, I remember reading a blog post by some gamer girl years before I heard of FATAL. I've been trying to find it again but failed. She and her friend played a game with some guy DM:ing a game he was writing, consisting of a huge binder of material. This included rolling for unspeakable limb lengths and orifice circumferences, just like in That Game, though they took this in stride initially. Then there was some meaningless gameplay with a very powerful DMPC, and they did not return for the next game. The DM/homebrew game designer was described as socially inept, creepy and strange in his manners. The game was then just being developed by him, and not named, but it all does point towards being an early playtest of FATAL. As I said, I haven't been able to find the website again, so I can neither prove this to you nor verify it myself, but...

vanyell
2011-08-05, 08:37 PM
The worst DM I've ever had was a relatively new one, who came up with what seemed like a decent plot hook, but how things changed.

before starting the game, he came in, and the players all pulled out pre-prepared character sheets, as requested, then the DM asked me how easy it would be to convert our characters from 3rd to 4th edition. We had never played 4th as a group before this, and at least 2 of our players had never played 4th before.

the quest itself was not very memorable, except for the fact that every encounter was an ambush against us, and the only treasure was a bunch of keys. After all was said and done, we got no rewards whatsoever. Immediately after this, he turned to me and said, "I'm done. Vanyell, you're DMing now".

I had no prep time, and the "plot hook" he left us with at the end of the adventure was an impossible one to fill (for a bunch of level 1 characters, our next "target" was something known only as the "lich king") so I was forced to come up with a fresh premise on 30 seconds of prep time, in a system I am not familiar with.

worst part is they liked my DMing enough that they want to turn it into a repeating thing.

ZealPaladin
2011-08-06, 12:21 AM
After all was said and done, we got no rewards whatsoever. Immediately after this, he turned to me and said, "I'm done. Vanyell, you're DMing now".

Talk about training those vital DM improvisation skills :eek:
I'm typically horrible on the fly as a DM.


worst part is they liked my DMing enough that they want to turn it into a repeating thing.

So did you ever run more sessions of this?

Chess435
2011-08-06, 01:11 AM
:eek:

Simply reading the review of FATAL was enough to put a sizable ding in my SAN.....

Please excuse me while I go shopping for some brain bleach. :smallfrown:

Serpentine
2011-08-06, 04:01 AM
http://www.instantrimshot.comBut but but he was just continuing on from my joke :smallfrown:

Kesnit
2011-08-06, 06:04 AM
As for T:

(snip) We were level 4 at the time of this incident.

Anyway, T insisted on being fully combat-oriented. I wasn't totally opposed to the idea (i.e., Druids have Wild Shape, somewhat better HD than the more fragile spellcasters, and buffs that could help in combat), but the problem was that T barely used his druid abilities, and he emphasized two-weapon fighting. He NEVER used Wild Shape, and when I later suggested it to him, he said "Druids can do that?!"

Although the rest of what he did was jerkish, in this case, he is correct. At LVL 4, Druids cannot Wild Shape. That power comes at LVL 5.

Akisa
2011-08-07, 05:22 AM
Although the rest of what he did was jerkish, in this case, he is correct. At LVL 4, Druids cannot Wild Shape. That power comes at LVL 5.

In pathfinder you can wildshape at lvl 4

Drachasor
2011-08-07, 09:11 AM
I...believe I read a very short account of a man who DM'd a single session of TGTMNBN, but I don't remember exactly where it was(prob. 4chan). The players, to their credit, played in the intended spirit of the game.

That is, in fact, not to their credit.

WolfieDM
2011-08-07, 10:51 AM
Can someone make a version II of this thread because it's boring scrolling through the off-topic conversation to find the funny stories.

Serpentine
2011-08-07, 10:56 AM
Can someone make a version II of this thread because it's boring scrolling through the off-topic conversation to find the funny stories.Might wanna review the forum rules, particularly the section on duplicate threads.

Sorcerer Blob
2011-08-07, 11:11 AM
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=382&d=1214037416

This was an awesome thread before... ya know... 2 pages ago when it became all about F.A.T.A.L. (as informative as that was...)

Blazen
2011-08-07, 12:52 PM
I'll contribute one for worst player. Let's call him M

M was a munchkin through and through. I had joined a DH group, and this was my first time playing DH. I made an assassin, which is apparently the same class that M had made. He decided that as a result he would try to show me up every chance he got. I had made my character melee focused, while his was a sniper. Despite this he managed to always be better at whatever he did. He had the best starting stats of anyone in the party (since we have to roll each stat, he somehow rolled really well for all of them).
Now, when I say he would try to show me up, I mean that I would charge an enemy, and he would decide to go charge one as well, and then gloat about how he charged better.
To make matters worse, since the game was at a FLGS he decided to play in a D&D 3.5 game that was going on. At the same time. He would leave the group for hours on end to play in the other game (though admittedly we didn't mind this much).
He played a wizard in the other game, and apparently he managed to piss the other group off quite a bit. He ended up doing something that summoned a demon who tried to kill him. The other players didn't help him, and justified it by saying their characters didn't want to fight a clearly more powerful demon. His character died. He got pissed and stormed out of the store, never to be seen again.

Drachasor
2011-08-07, 01:01 PM
The most unpleasant player I've ever dealt with doesn't rank that high with what other people have. Every time we went into a town, his female character would prostitute herself, kill the mark after sleeping with them, and then rob them. We all had to sit through the whole process.

He was a fine guy outside of that, from what I recall though.

Ravens_cry
2011-08-07, 01:04 PM
But but but he was just continuing on from my joke :smallfrown:

Yes, yes I was. But, you have to admit, the setup was perfect for it.

Niek
2011-08-08, 02:49 AM
Worst player I've gamed with is a friend whom I will refer to as "C".
The game was a one-shot FATE game, set in a robot-apocalypse version of the university most of the players went to. Our characters are freshmen who missed the evacuation. I decide to make mine a history major with a tendency towards white-knighting. Other players F and J make an amateur stage magician and a Pokemon-loving robotics major, respectively. C makes a military buff. There were 2 other players, but one left early and I dont remember what the other's character was. Now, the GM tells us each to take a piece of signature gear for our characters. I take a replica broadsword, F takes a fancy cape, and J takes a small robotic pokemon. C takes a backpack full of high explosives. This should have been the first sign that things were not going to end well.
After taking some time to RP being holed up in the dorms, the GM says we see a huge robot is heading straight for our building, so naturally we get the hell out of their. The robot is moving fairly slowly though, so we figure we have time to go into the nearby grocery store to stock up on supplies. When we get there we find it controlled by a gang led by a very large, imposing man who offers to let us in, but only if we provide him a "playmate" for as long as we are there. C readily agrees and offers him J's character, the sole female member of the party. Of course, my character would have none of that, and says as much, placing himself between J and the gang leader. This leads to C complaining at length OOC about me opposing his actions.
The rest of the party agree with me, but the situation intensifies and J panics and throws her robot at the gang leader's face, where it latches on, but doesn't actually do much damage. I try to prevent the situation from blowing up by trying to help remove it, but C takes this as his opportunity to throw a grenade at the gang leader, removing any possibility of a peaceful resolution to the situation.
The rest of the party is understandably freaked out by this, and react as one would expect to their friend suddenly blowing off a good chunk of a man's torso. C, however, ignores our pleas for him to stop and begins throwing grenades all over the store at the other (unarmed, and equally as shocked as the party) gang members, who begin to run for the exits. Both F and myself attempt to get him to calm down and stop destroying everything, but this only causes him to declare us to be "traitors" and begin attacking us as well. The three of us end up spending every FATE Point we have fighting each other, ending with my character sacrificing himself to strike C's pack, hoping to destroy his explosives but accidentally setting the whole thing off, which brings the roof of the store down C, F, and myself. The remaining 2 party members and a couple of NPCs we had saved manage to escape, but the game is beyond salvage. C continues to blame F and me, saying that it wouldnt have happened if I hadn't "white-knighted" him, despite that being very clearly spelled out as my character's most important personality trait.

TL;DR, player thinks "grenade-happy psychopath" is a reasonable personality type and is incapable of separating IC and OOC grudges. The same player also has a tendency to give up very easily upon falling slightly behind in board games, and either quits on the spot or spends the rest of the game sabotaging other players rather than trying to pull back into the lead himself.

As a DM, it is a combination of the same C and another friend, R.
C is running a D&D3.5 one-shot of his own design, having never played the game before (and if fact, having only first read the PHB a couple weeks before). Admittedly, this isnt his fault, since creating the adventure was an assigned project for a class. What is his fault is that, despite everyone else in our circle of friends advising him otherwise, he insisted on giving the end-boss entirely arbitrary stats (double max HP for his class and level, homebrew abilities out of nowhere with little thought for balance). We do eventually manage to talk him into lowering the power of most of the special abilities, but it remains troublesome. The fact that he spoiled who the end boss would be in pregame discussions was also a bit of an issue, but not that big of a deal.
When it comes time to run the actual game, R volunteers to be a "PC-NPC" helper, which C accepts since he needs help running the game. The players first encounter a demon and a celestial dueling in the middle of the road, both very obviously far beyond our own level 2 selves in power. The celestial comes up victorious and then both vanish without interacting with the party, so we all just continue on to our destination, an old crypt supposedly full of loot (unorginal, but functional).
We fight a couple of ghouls, then find several magic items that they were guarding. This is where R's influence begins to cause trouble. Apparently, he had suggested that one of the items, a magic longsword, be intelligent and evil. R attempts to force J's LG Monk to use it, with the clear implication that this sword will be a corrupting influence. J refuses, and after a while the point is dropped, with the sword simply floating after us of its own accord.
Our next encounter is an old woman who gives us a Deck of Many Things. At level 2. Unfortunately, someone in the party (I think it was F) decides to draw from it, getting the Skull (among other things). After player protests that a Dread Wraith is unreasonable for a 2nd level party, C and R agree to downgrade it to an Owlbear skeleton. Unfortunately, this still proves to be too difficult, and because of characters trying to help we end up with three of them on our hands.
Here is where we learn that the magic sword can apparently cast a Firestorm spell at will. The owlbears are vanquished, but there are still some rather pressing issues resulting from the Deck, including an Imprisonment. Luckily player B (the GM from the above FATE game) draws from the deck herself, and gets the Moon card. She wishes away the various ill effects caused by the Deck, and the party continues on.
After a few hours of mostly uneventful gaming, we come to the final dungeon. Once inside, nearly all of the obstacles are solved by the players reminding the sword that its Spell-Like Abilities make the problem trivial, and I (the other players having long-since gone to sleep for the night, along with C, leaving R in charge) end up fighting the necromancer alone, with the sword standing by the sidelines. I manage to put up a fight, mainly due to use of a tanglefoot bag and the necromancer being unsupported, but still can't manage to defeat it. The sword then finishes him off by using some magic book we had gained that none of the party could read, and inexplicably reveals itself to be the demon we saw at the beginning. End session, with much confusion as to what the game had actually been about.
TL;DR, incoherent plot, godmode DMPC, Deck of Many Things, BBEG with arbitrary stats and method of defeat, hijackery from the supposed assistant DM.

Vknight
2011-08-08, 03:34 AM
I nominate myself as worst Player/Dm on the fact I am either immune to F.A.T.A.L, have lost all my sanity/am truly a deep one, or gained some ability to not take san loss.

But in a serious manner.

J. My players knew practically nothing of what J did. He kept in hidden under secret notes to the GM etc. This is a nasty dark horrible little person You have been warned.

He was in are group were I Dm. This was in the beginning when we first got the group together, we play 4e cause most were new players. That was 3years ago. J was with us for less then 1.
So we begin J does not listen to any suggestions for making his character from everyone, ok that's fine.
Except your Warlock should not have 14Con & Cha.
Second you should remember to curse things.
3rd the party had no control with 7players.
4th he came late and had to be a dwarf & striker.
5th he was going into melee with his axe & hammer.
6th he complained whenever he got hit (low hp go figure)
7th the party already had 3strikers, 2leaders, 1defender.
8th he decided to actually accept the invite at the last moment.
9th he wanted to be a prince like a elf player I also had
10th Died from a spike pit trap on a crit because he had to chase down a single fleeing goblin.
11th It ran around a very obvious tarp.
12th He actually had high enough perception to notice it but kept going
13th Had the nerve to blame me for his failure
14th When the Dwarfs brother a Dwarven Sorcerer 14Cha, 16str showed up to replace his brother he followed the same pattern and died on the same pit trap.
15th Not joking same pit trap they had been going into the goblin den to save the brother.
16th Brought a dwarf that was there cousin who was somehow nobility
17th The king is human in a grassy flat kingdom
18th Those Dwarves were somehow related to him
19th Dwarves in that home-brew setting fell into one of several groups
20th Dwarves don't like that king for trying to not exterminate the last remnants of the elves and Eladrin
21st That would mean other Dwarves would hate his characters and have no respect for them
22nd Insisted they should respect him as a prince (this was the wizard who was the cousin)
23rd Insulted and attacked a nobleman and was sent to jail, attacked the jailors because it was 'unjust'
24th The nobleman's crime? Speaking well of elves
25th The same elves his 'cousin' the king is protecting.
26th Called out a recurring villain
27th Fell into a pit trap and died like his cousins.
28th Repeating actions above whenever they applied
29th Replaced by twin brother. Wizard of the same level with a Imp familiar and looked like a beautiful women. Multiclassed into rogue
30th Killed a ballistic operator and shot at a caravan to prove his loyalty to some Orcs
31st Orcs that had been warring with his tribe for years
32nd He specifically targeted the wagon with alchemical supplies so they could not be accessed by the caravan in the ambush
33rd Caused a rockslide to protect the Orcs and killed a elven noblewoman
along with her guard
34th Tortured and did horrible things to any elven races they fought
35th Would within a town club a woman tie her up and proceed to make her the new town bicycle for 2sp per ride.
36th Would sometimes have his own fun then gut the women
37th Mad the serial killer Smiling Jack that did horrible things to people
38th Got it blamed on the 'Gore Wizard'
39th Said was going to make Imp full-fledged succubus for his personal needs
40th Challenged an Archmage to a showboating contest.
41st Made an illusion of him ******* the Archmage
42nd The Archmage burned it turning the illusion it fireworks and a truly marvelous spectacle
43rd Complained that was not fair and violated the rule of the duel
44th Challenged a ship captain for his ship in a no magic duel
45th Used some magic to buff himself and still lost and complained the captain cheated
46th Attacked the captain and was promptly thrown overboard
47th Tried to burn down the captains ship
48th Tried to find the captains home-port to meet the mans wife and 2daughters. For his bicycle
49th Added a silver stud to his leather armor after every time Smiling Jack.
50th People finally track them down and take the Gore Wizard in for execution
51st Helped make this trial more like the Spanish Inquisition.
52nd Skinned part of the wizard to help make sure he told the truth
53rd Wizard was proven innocent but had 3diseases and only had 12Con
54th Decided he needed to expand his horizons with animals
55th Proceed to get a group of 4wild dogs and release them on one of his newest bicycles.
56th He repeated that a few more times
57th Tried to add the female party members to his silver stud collection, or to his bicycles whichever ever way leaves you less scarred.
58th Tried to taint a Pegasus into a flying Nightmare
59th The BBEG actually wanted him as his right hand
60th Those women he did not gut were given to Dwarven or Orc contacts for a massive underground slavery ring.
61st He proceed to bring in more new meat over the course of 3months then they had got in the last year
62nd The Gore Wizard without skin on his left arm used magic to get a metal skin the Dwarfs player planned to remove it to remind him who is truly in charge
63rd The Gnoll Barbarian was disgusted by his callous behavior to humanoids. The Gnoll was a serial killer+ barbarian+ ninja+ mythos horror
64th When afraid other party members might find out prepared to have them join the slave ring
65th Kidnapped a high priestess of the elven church. Made her a bicycle after she became a silver stud, those dogs were used on her after she had been sprayed so they would do the proper activity. to finish into the Slave Ring were he could get to her at any time and have fun
66th Told the slavers of all attempts to get the priestess back so they could be prepared
67th Did I forget the cannibalism?
68th Every one that got gutted before that had a piece taken with his jaws
69th Hit on the girls at the table
70th Made suggestive remarks even though two of them were dating
71st Tried harder when the third girl started dating a guy that is apart of are group
72nd He had that look which you can't place but he had something bad planned. (He really did have something bad planned and was suspended for a week)
73rd He planned to try it with each of the other girls
74th Did not bath
75th Called anyone a racist who disagreed with him because he's black so you must be trying to put the black man down
76th Is the classic bad black stereotype, the voice how he acted, the watermelon every day and the fried chicken at least once a week
77th No stereotype jokes even by the other black members of are group or they were racist
78th Could not get anything done even with help, including needing help to explain the listed array's
79th Would listen to bad rap during battles
80th tried to guilt trip other into helping him
81st Tried to make everyone in the group believe I'm a racist thus unfit to Gm. At the time we had 3black members including him (The other guys left having moved away)
82nd Attacked others personally character and would question them if there acts were truly moral.
83rd Had a suicide plan that would deal 7d6+7 of fire, cold, acid, and thunder if he died in the 25ft area. Not that bad but considering he could widen it to 50ft out and that 7d6+7 was for each individual damage type.
84th Secretly installed blastpatchs on the others backpacks or other carrying equipment.
85th Planned to force them to become slaves or die after introducing them to his club
86th He kept getting away with it with good role-playing and great rolls etc.
87th Ate Dragonborn baby with garnish from Tiefling.
88th Tried to attack the king and fell to his death from the castle walls
89th Claimed I was a racist because he had lost the most characters and left.
90th Tried to come back because he had to show the racist the error of his ways.
91st Almost got are club disbanded from the school once he couldn't get back in.
92nd Played his dwarf around the others like a shining beacon of righteousness. Well doing some of the terrible things in-front of them

So by the end the party planned to kill him. Luckily the campaign came to an end on the session he died. The king safe the elves at peace and slave ring 'diminished in power' (In truth stronger because of one dwarf) and Dark Orc War-Chief and his Evil God slain. All at the end of heroic tier. The Dwarves willing to not kill elves on sight (Except for an elite band trained by 1Dwarf) and finally the party could find this 'Smiling Jack' ironic no?

Knaight
2011-08-08, 04:22 AM
How was this guy not kicked out of the group fairly early on?

Analytica
2011-08-08, 09:18 AM
I nominate myself as worst Player/Dm on the fact I am either immune to F.A.T.A.L, have lost all my sanity/am truly a deep one, or gained some ability to not take san loss.

I thought you were exaggerating, then I read...



Please do not use bicycle as euphemism for someone being held captive and raped.

... this. OK. :smalleek:

Earthwalker
2011-08-08, 11:34 AM
But but but he was just continuing on from my joke :smallfrown:

I liked the joke the first time it was said, so Serpentine, have a cookie.

And to add to the thread worst GM for me was a friend called for now J

J would railroad most plots, if he didn't think of it then you couldn't use it kind. He also was very keen on capturing people to let little session play out where he forces characters to choose each others fates. "Tell me what I want to know or your friend Player A dies" kind of deals.

My favourite (not sure thats the best term) session was in shadowrun. We were hired to obtain blood from a group of people, clearly so our Mr J could do some nasty ritual magic on our targets.

The poeple seemed to be a collection of no boodies, no matter what our leg work rolls were we found nothing. So we get the blood and my Ork (the leader of the group) kept it safe in storage till we could hand it over.
Of course at this stage we were ambushed and captured.(like I said he liked this)

Then came the interogation. Turns out all the people we took blood from were linked to the Yakuza (which we couldn't find out till now) The interogation starts with the shooting of our team face. Left to bleed to death, if we told them where the blood was we would go free and the face would get medical attention.

(to make this story shorter I refused but offered to tell them if they let everyone but me go free, and counter argued and negotiated the best I could. All this time our two street sams kept quiet.)

The went on for a couple of hours game time, till finally with a gun to my head I was told to give up the blood or die. I refused and was killed.

The interogators turn to the two street sams and ask them where the blood is, they both say "Only the ork knew". With this information they two street sams were let go as they didn't know where the blood was and me and the face were roll up new characters.

In the debreif after the game I asked the GM what I should have done to live, he lists off what he thought we would do. Bargain or compromis or try to blufff. I said I did all them to be told "Yeah but your an ork so thry wouldn't listen to you".

I stop playing with J after this.

Serpentine
2011-08-08, 11:59 AM
*noms bakedgood* :B

That is... not a good GM o.O I know I tend to get railroady, but that's just cuz I'm bad at organisation and improvisation. I'm trying to improve, and I try to remind my players: "if you decide to do something I haven't taken into account, that's my problem, not yours. Although we may need a 10 minute break for me to think of something."

Quietus
2011-08-08, 12:21 PM
*noms bakedgood* :B

That is... not a good GM o.O I know I tend to get railroady, but that's just cuz I'm bad at organisation and improvisation. I'm trying to improve, and I try to remind my players: "if you decide to do something I haven't taken into account, that's my problem, not yours. Although we may need a 10 minute break for me to think of something."

I would agree. Hell, I love when players give me a "Wait, what?" moment - it helps keep the game fun for me. And I like to think players enjoy causing those moments, too.

Vknight
2011-08-08, 01:52 PM
How was this guy not kicked out of the group fairly early on?

Again I had only played 3.X 5years before that(8Years Ago total). So my only experience with D&D was that. So 3years ago when that campaign started I was willing to have a large group and was also new to DMing. Since I one was just starting to DM, having only ever played before that.

I made some mistakes but also knew what to do.
The thing is the Dwarf had a simple routine that worked in a block schedule so it could change when needed. The Guards had nothing just bodies or missing persons. Things did not add up the crimes were brutal but also had some magic. He used alchemical items on the bodies very often.
So it pointed to wizards etc. There was a nickname for the parties other wizard(his original character a Orc Ranger died 2sessions in) 'The Gore Wizard' because he always got a crit or did just enough damage to finish a target and since all his spells were blasts bursts etc the end result was not pleasant. Which lead to the suspicion that it was the wizard even by other party members. The Gnoll Barbarian was a suspect until to prove his innocence he stayed in a jail cell for a week. 2Smiling Jack murders later.
I could not tell everyone in the group about the nasty in character things because most were new to D&D and would use meta knowledge along with didn't want out of character conflict or the younger people being put off D&D or other role-playing games because of one players antics.
Finally the out of character anger and stuff started half way through the year and was nothing big enough for me or anyone to take notice. 3/4 through the year it got bad and I had a reason to get rid of him. Gave him one last chance because we had 2sessions left and... he failed we no longer play with him.

So I blame myself for some of the bad stuff that happened but I used only what was available to the guards and other investigators. I didn't have curfews and what not until Smiling Jack became truly prominent then the dwarf changed his schedule.
The Player I think was the worst and would love FATAL. Probably part of the reason to my immunity having to deal with him.
I did inform my players of what J did when I banned him. J then went from being kind of nasty to well J does not talk to people anymore because of his behavior

So yeah that's why he was not immediately thrown out he only gradually went into doing all that evil. He also covered his tracks and made it seem as those there misfortunes were caused by the Slavers with no connection to him. After all he helped destroy that Slaver Pit in 'Hyougken' (Something like that) so how could he be a Slaver?

Vknight
2011-08-08, 02:00 PM
I thought you were exaggerating, then I read...
... this. OK. :smalleek:

(Sorry Double Post)
Yeah that's what he called it, *Sigh* Photographic Memory so I still remember that and I will remember it whenever I think of bicycles. Excuse me I need to go lie down recounting this makes me sick... I wish J had never tried to be part of are group.

Analytica
2011-08-08, 02:51 PM
(Sorry Double Post)
Yeah that's what he called it, *Sigh* Photographic Memory so I still remember that and I will remember it whenever I think of bicycles. Excuse me I need to go lie down recounting this makes me sick... I wish J had never tried to be part of are group.

There, there. *pats*

I am really quite impressed at your information management skills though, in that you actually manage to make a campaign with intensive intra-party conspiracies work without the players noticing everything that happens. With players that have compatible visions, this could make for some fairly epic campaigns. :smallbiggrin:

Thelion
2011-08-09, 10:07 AM
Not the worst player ever (I'll call him David, since that was his name :smallbiggrin:), but definitely one of the worst roleplayers I've ever DM'ed:

David was a friend of mine back in 2004, and he told me he really wanted to know what D&D was like, so I prepared a soloadventure for him. He loved Dragonlance and Sturm was his favorite character, so he really wanted to play a Paladin. I wrote a simple quest, where he was asked to bring back a kidnapped bride, while the husband-to-be would help him with his bow.

However, pretty soon it turned out that he had a lot of trouble playing Lawful Good. Usually I cut my players some slack with the whole 'lawful' bit, but I was really surprised that he did not understand why knocking out a female bandit, stripping her of her clothes, gagging and tying her up and fondling her afterwards was considered evil. I rewinded that bit and agreed that he could tie her up and try to get some information out of her, but anything else would make him lose his powers.

In the end they found the bride, but the groom was so beaten up that he was near death. The paladin refused to lay on hands and didn't bother to guide them back to their village.

Karoht
2011-08-09, 10:36 AM
Not the worst player ever (I'll call him David, since that was his name :smallbiggrin:), but definitely one of the worst roleplayers I've ever DM'ed:

David was a friend of mine back in 2004, and he told me he really wanted to know what D&D was like, so I prepared a soloadventure for him. He loved Dragonlance and Sturm was his favorite character, so he really wanted to play a Paladin.~snip~
So wait, he had a character he really connected with as a template, but still had really no idea how to play a Paladin, or what sort of behavior was acceptable or unacceptable?

I'm not asking this to berate you (and this will probably come off as patronizing, apologies in advance) or anything but did you ever say to him "Would Sturm be down with what you are doing right now?" Did he have any kind of response?

That, and having never read Dragonlance, is Sturm secretly a jerk or something?

Sorry, I'm just really flabbergasted.



Related Anecdote:
I participate in a medieval reinactment group. We do observe the martial arts of the period as much as is reasonably and safely possible. And we have a very good track record for a group that swings real swords at one another.
I'm always amazed how people who portray Knights on stage/in the arena can be such *****. Off-stage is one thing. But on stage? Where is the honor? Where is the comradery?
I call that bad roleplaying, with the added negative that it is usually in front of a crowd of people.

I just don't understand how people can empathize with a character template (IE-Paladin, Knight, etc) but then demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of that template. Such as the afformentioned person playing a Paladin.

Sorry if that comes across as a bit of a rant.

Greenish
2011-08-09, 10:47 AM
Well, knights were people too, so I have no doubt that many knights were probably huge jerks.

Thelion
2011-08-09, 10:51 AM
So wait, he had a character he really connected with as a template, but still had really no idea how to play a Paladin, or what sort of behavior was acceptable or unacceptable?

I'm not asking this to berate you (and this will probably come off as patronizing, apologies in advance) or anything but did you ever say to him "Would Sturm be down with what you are doing right now?" Did he have any kind of response?

That, and having never read Dragonlance, is Sturm secretly a jerk or something?

Sorry, I'm just really flabbergasted.



Related Anecdote:
I participate in a medieval reinactment group. We do observe the martial arts of the period as much as is reasonably and safely possible. And we have a very good track record for a group that swings real swords at one another.
I'm always amazed how people who portray Knights on stage/in the arena can be such *****. Off-stage is one thing. But on stage? Where is the honor? Where is the comradery?
I call that bad roleplaying, with the added negative that it is usually in front of a crowd of people.

I just don't understand how people can empathize with a character template (IE-Paladin, Knight, etc) but then demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of that template. Such as the afformentioned person playing a Paladin.

Sorry if that comes across as a bit of a rant.

No, Sturm is not a jerk after all, he's one of the best examples of how LG should be played. Too bad this guy had no clue indeed how to behave or even act like his favorite character, I guess he's of an entirely different alignment in real life.

Karoht
2011-08-09, 10:52 AM
Well, knights were people too, so I have no doubt that many knights were probably huge jerks.And historically speaking, you would be correct.
However, when you are playing a historical character such as Sir William Marshall, a guy who was renowned for his honorable approach to some very unhonorable situations, you can't go out on stage and be a jerk.
Seriously, wiki the guy.
And while that isn't happening with the person who plays Sir William Marshall, it is happening with other people portraying people of a similar pedigree.

Either way, I see it as bad roleplaying personally, in that they are not playing their role as it is known.



No, Sturm is not a jerk after all, he's one of the best examples of how LG should be played. Too bad this guy had no clue indeed how to behave or even act like his favorite character, I guess he's of an entirely different alignment in real life.Wow. Shame that.

The Glyphstone
2011-08-09, 10:53 AM
Yeah...if someone's playing a Knight and is a total jerkface to anyone who's not richer than him or capable of beating him up, he's very much in-character. "Honor and Comradery' come from the romanticized legends of knights.

EDIT: If they're imitating specific individuals, that's a different story. That's just laziness.

Karoht
2011-08-09, 10:55 AM
Yeah...if someone's playing a Knight and is a total jerkface to anyone who's not richer than him or capable of beating him up, he's very much in-character. "Honor and Comradery' come from the romanticized legends of knights.

EDIT: If they're imitating specific individuals, that's a different story. That's just laziness.
Exactly. It would be like someone portraying Robin Hood, but robbing everyone, not just the rich.
Whereas if they were playing any old bandit, they would indeed rob everyone, especially the poor.

Traab
2011-08-09, 11:00 AM
And historically speaking, you would be correct.
However, when you are playing a historical character such as Sir William Marshall, a guy who was renowned for his honorable approach to some very unhonorable situations, you can't go out on stage and be a jerk.
Seriously, wiki the guy.
And while that isn't happening with the person who plays Sir William Marshall, it is happening with other people portraying people of a similar pedigree.

Either way, I see it as bad roleplaying personally, in that they are not playing their role as it is known.

The worst part is the situations highlighted in his post. The other guy might be forgiven for slipping and choosing a less LG choice on how to get past a problem, if the LG choice would make things really difficult, but stripping a captured bandit down then sexually assaulting her? (I think thats the legal term for groping someone who doesnt want you to) Refusing to heal the groom at the end of the main mission, and refusing to escort them safely home?

I mean the first is just stupidly out of character for a paladin and is just the random action of a guy id keep my eyes on irl, but the second isnt just a violation of his characters expected choices, it was silly, as escorting the duo home would be an obvious plot hook for further adventure. Did the player basically decide he was done with the game at that point? Or bored with the story for some reason? I mean, he seems to be missing the point. In an rpg style game, the story doesnt end because you rescued the princess, (or whatever) the story goes on afterward and a new adventure comes up.

Mixt
2011-08-09, 11:00 AM
Worst DM has to be the guy who kept making his BBEG's ludicrously overpowered.

He even named one of them "The Evil Lord Homo Sapien Sapiens"

WHAT KIND OF NAME FOR A BBEG IS THAT ANYWAY!?

Bad with names, this DM is.


The Evil Lord Homo Sapien Sapiens: In the name of human progress i shall obliberate all you hold dear!!!

And

The Evil Lord Homo Sapien Sapiens: HUMANITY RULES SUPREME! I SHALL SMITE YOU IN THE NAME OF MANKIND!

Karoht
2011-08-09, 11:04 AM
Worst DM has to be the guy who kept making his BBEG's ludicrously overpowered.

He even named one of them "The evil lord Homo Sapien Sapiens"

WHAT KIND OF NAME FOR A BBEG IS THAT ANYWAY!?

Bad with names, this DM is.


The evil lord Homo Sapien Sapiens: In the name of human progress i shall obliberate all you hold dear!!!

Ouch. Yeah, that is probably the worst bad guy name I have ever heard. Right up there with Dormamu from the Doctor Strange comics.

Mixt
2011-08-09, 11:13 AM
Yeah, you should have seen how he acted.

Burn down that forest, rape that elf, wage war on those dwarves for no reason and take their stuff, drive countless races into extinction, take drugs, dump radioactive waste into the ocean, kill anyone who does not share his religion, initiate witch hunts against spellcasters, and so on.
He was also a pedophile.

Classic huh?

The Evil Lord Homo Sapien Sapiens was a monster in every way.
And he kept ranting about the obvious superiority of the human race and how he was the pinnacle of humanity blahblahblah :smallyuk: