PDA

View Full Version : The Worst Game of DnD I have ever played



starwoof
2011-08-11, 07:02 PM
I've had some bad games, but this one takes the cake and runs away with it laughing.


A few months ago, one of my close personal friends (we'll call him Claudio) tells me that he has been talking to one of our friends from high school that we used to play dnd with. We'll call the high school guy Eddie. Back in high school we would sometimes play with Eddie's dnd group, which had two other guys and sometimes a girl in it. It was pretty fun then.

So a few weeks after that, Claudio asks me if I want to play dnd with Eddie and some other guys. I said yes, because that sounds like a lot of fun. We don't get to play dnd nearly as much as we like, and any chance I can get to shirk of DMing is fine by me. We ask our friend Steve if he wants to play as well, to which he gives us a hearty affirmative. We leave Claudio to set up the details with Eddie, because he's the one who got us back into contact and me and Steve think it would be a little awkward for us to call.

Days pass by. I ask Claudio if we need to bring anything; books, sheets, etc. He says no, just our dice. I asked what level we were but was unable to get an answer. This didn't surprise me. Nobody ever wants to talk about party dynamics and such BEFORE we sit down to play.

Whatever though. We cram ourselves into Claudio's pickup and head off for the college. We arrive slightly late because we had to get some stuff done last second, but were there. We tromped up the stairs to Eddie's place and he lets us in with a slightly awkward hello. Typical stuff for seeing people you've not spoken to in 4 years. We greet his girlfriend and start asking for the important stuff. We also note that there aren't any other players, which we were assured there would be.

Eddie: So you guys brought your books, right?
Us: ...
Me: Claudio said you had books.
Eddie: I don't have my books with me, they're in Seattle...
Claudio: I thought he had books cause he didn't say to bring any...

Well this is distressing. We don't really need books, I guess. We could all just knock out some four minute fighters. But the DM needs books. At this point me and Steve were both starting to get some pings, which we squelched. We just need to stop by my place and grab our books, we tell Eddie, and then we'll be right back. He's gonna go get some food and deal with an errand, and we'll meet back at his dorm in an hour.

In the truck:
Me: I don't know if I have the books.
Steve: What do you mean, 'you don't know'?
Me: I mean they might be at my place, they might be at Rob's place, and they might be at Rick's place. But most likely they are at all of those places.
Steve: Claudio, drive fast.

Well it turned out they were half at my place and half at Rob's, so we manage to get back pretty close to our time limit. Eddie lets us back in and we take seats at the table and start to make characters.

Or we would have, if ten people didn't walk in through the front door. Apparently Eddie's girlfriend was having people over for... something. They were eating stuff and talking loudly for the next few hours, which made concentrating hard. Just remember that for the rest of this story there are ten people yelling in the background. Excellent ambiance... for a sports game. -_-

Eddie: Lets move over to the coffee table...
Us: Sigh.

I am so opposed to coffee tables.

Character creation was shorter than I'm used to but longer than it could have been. I eventually settle on taking a weak concept and making it somewhat effective and is a throw back to one of the characters I played years ago; that of a fighter that dual wields bastard swords with oversized two weapon fighting.

Eddie: You realize that your attack bonus with those weapons is not going to be very good, right?
Me: Yes.
Eddie: Okay. I just want you to know that you'll have trouble hitting monsters.
Me: That's fine.
Eddie: *looks at my sheet* Looks fine. Your feats are okay.

Its really hard to convey here, and my memory is fuzzy at the exact words he used, but he definitely thought I was powergaming, even if his words said otherwise. At the time I didn't think much of it as I am ALWAYS being accused of powergaming. And normally it might be true. Also I was a little pissed about how he kept saying how weak my dude was to everyone. I'm not perfect.

But he did okay my character. So I set off to help Claudio finish faster.

About halfway into character making, Eddie is looking bored. Now a normal DM might be polishing his scenario at this point, looking through books for monsters, or otherwise doing something dungeon mastery. But not Eddie.

Eddie: I'm gonna make a dude to accompany you guys.

Steve and I covertly exchange dark looks. DMPC. Run. But were willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, after all, he used to DM for us in high school and that was pretty fun.

Play starts. We have backstories that we share with the DM and each other. Steve and I have a fairly ornate background story about how I am a disenfranchised son of a noble lord and he's my grudging bodyguard set by my father to keep my out of trouble. We always have backstories, even for a one off like this.

Were now walking alongside the agent of the king or whatever sent to do something somewhere to some guys. The DMPC is talking at us but we mostly ignore him.

An overturned carriage is on the side of the road, so we decide to investigate it. At this point were still having fun; dnd games tend to start slow, especially when the DM and players aren't familiar with each other. My noble son is investigating the wreck when an arrow screeches out of the woods. Initiative! I'm first. Were surrounded by goblins in the trees. One of them is riding a bear. I think I figured it was a black bear at the time, because that would be reasonable and the GM didn't describe it as anything other than 'a bear'.

I pick through some difficult ground to engage this bear, since I am a melee guy and cant reach the goblins in the trees. I reckon our elf can deal with the goblins, which he agrees with since he doesn't want to fight a bear. DMPC holds his action, assuming we can fight them ourselves. We appreciate this on one level because it means the DMPC isn't trying to steal our glory. On the other level, there's a lot of bloody goblins here and we wouldn't mind some help.

The bear's init comes around, and it rolls to hit me. Eddie doesn't have a screen and he didn't bother hiding his roll, but he announces that the four he rolled did in fact hit my AC. And then I died. Because it wasn't a brown bear but in fact a polar bear, which would have been a hard fight for the three of us ALONE, being CR 4 to our three man level 3 party.

Eddie is smiling at this point, with a really smug look on his face. I take care to remain neutral.

Eddie: Well I guess that broken dual wielding build wasn't as good as you thought, huh?
Me: No, I guess it wasn't.
Eddie: Those feats you took from those complete books are so broken. I don't know how you slipped them past me.

Slipped past indeed. He had many opportunities to tell me not to play this character in a way more direct than attempting to convince me it was weak.

Initiative wraps around. Claudio and Steve are both a little peeved I think, but they do their thing. Then DMPC's init comes around. He jumps off his horse, draws a sword, charges the bear and does some kind of combo attack that drops all of it's hp in one strike. Combat ends.

The people behind us are still chatting away loudly.

I'm glaring at my sheet still.

Steve looks uncomfortable.

Claudio at least manages to appear happy and polite.

Eddie is sitting there like a smug... thing I can't say on this board.

Steve and Claudio start to make up some reasons to leave early. Tiredness, gotta get up, stuff like that. I grunt in assent. We leave Eddie's place and start to trek across the campus back to Claudio's truck.

Claudio: Well that was... fun.
Steve: DMPC.
Claudio: What? (he isn't hip to the jive yet)
Steve: I lost interest the moment he started to make his own character.
Me: Yeah.
Steve: The least he could have done was pull that combo crap before you died.
Me: He shouldn't have been there at all.

It turns out that our memories from high school are a little hazy. We thought we enjoyed playing dnd with Eddie, but it turns out we actually just like to play with the other people from his group. There was another guy, his name was... Jack. He had an adversarial friendship with Eddie. He could deflect all the bull that Eddie tried to pull as a DM and as a player, and made him seem like a better person.

Without Jack, that was all turned toward us. We resolved to do two things from now on:
1. Bring our books no matter what.
2. Don't let Claudio plan anything.



And that's the story of the worst session of DnD I have ever played. Cheers.

Acanous
2011-08-11, 07:22 PM
well, that's not too bad. At least you're doing better than That Lanky Bugger.
Whenever I'm feeling like my session's gone to crap, I just think about Lanky and feel better.

Seriously though, I don't know of any combo attack a level one char can do that would drop a polar bear in one shot, barring flaw-feat Spirited Charge, and even then you'd need a mount.

Steward
2011-08-11, 07:41 PM
He must have cheated. I mean, how could your AC be 4?

Honestly, these stories make me think that the only reason some people even bothered to learn how to play D & D was because it was the only way they could get other people to put up with them for more than two minutes. Seriously, who goes to all the trouble of setting up a game like this just to screw with some guy you knew from high school?

holywhippet
2011-08-11, 07:47 PM
He must have cheated. I mean, how could your AC be 4?

Honestly, these stories make me think that the only reason some people even bothered to learn how to play D & D was because it was the only way they could get other people to put up with them for more than two minutes. Seriously, who goes to all the trouble of setting up a game like this just to screw with some guy you knew from high school?

I think he meant that the DM rolled a 4 and it hit his AC. Polar bears have +13 on their melee claw attacks so it could hit AC 17 or less.

One of the other players in my Shadowrun group put it fairly well - a DM can kill you if that want. They make the game world so they can drop an unwinnable fight on you at a whim. On the flipside they could give you fights that you'll never lose short of throwing yourself on your own weapons. It's up to them to balance it out so there is a chance of failure, but not a high probability unless you do something stupid.

I'd personally just walk away from a DM who feels free to throw you into a fight like that.

Tavar
2011-08-11, 08:05 PM
Wow. Real classy there, not actually bringing up a problem. Reeaal Classy.

starwoof
2011-08-11, 08:32 PM
well, that's not too bad. At least you're doing better than That Lanky Bugger.
Whenever I'm feeling like my session's gone to crap, I just think about Lanky and feel better.

Seriously though, I don't know of any combo attack a level one char can do that would drop a polar bear in one shot, barring flaw-feat Spirited Charge, and even then you'd need a mount.

Yeah, I didn't get stabbed at least.


I'd personally just walk away from a DM who feels free to throw you into a fight like that.

We did just that, but we did it in a pseudo-polite way.

Shadowknight12
2011-08-11, 08:35 PM
Yeah, that was all pretty awful. My worst campaign was the time I played with an insanely OCD, elitist, everything-must-be-done-as-I-demand-it DM and his buddies, and the taclord managed to consistently out-damage my striker. Then the taclord (who wasn't one of the DM's friends) talked back to the DM's Mary Sue NPC and got hit with a DM-fiat curse that applied penalties to pretty much every roll. Then it was revealed that the seemingly original plot was actually going to copy a successful fantasy videogame that had come out recently.

It wasn't too distressing, looking back to it. I don't recall getting upset, mostly utterly flabbergasted at how normal and actually appealing everything had been at first glance. It was like biting on a perfectly edible-looking apple and finding it was utterly rotten on the inside. Quite an astonishing sensation.

But yeah, normally that's the reason I don't game that much. It's hard to find good players/DMs.

Traab
2011-08-11, 08:48 PM
You know, I really dont understand the dm mindset sometimes. I see so many stories on these boards where the dm decides he doesnt like the character someone rolled up then proceeds to make sure they die as fast as possible. Is it THAT hard to just say at the start, "Hey, sorry man, but those feats look a bit too optimized/cheesy for my tastes, mind doing them a bit differently?" That way the dm doesnt need to feel obliged to attacked a level 1 fighter with an ancient red dragon just because he doesnt like the ultra optimization the player chose, and time isnt wasted by making them hold up the rest of the party mid adventure while you roll up something that might actually meet his approval.

Shadowknight12
2011-08-11, 08:55 PM
You know, I really dont understand the dm mindset sometimes. I see so many stories on these boards where the dm decides he doesnt like the character someone rolled up then proceeds to make sure they die as fast as possible. Is it THAT hard to just say at the start, "Hey, sorry man, but those feats look a bit too optimized/cheesy for my tastes, mind doing them a bit differently?" That way the dm doesnt need to feel obliged to attacked a level 1 fighter with an ancient red dragon just because he doesnt like the ultra optimization the player chose, and time isnt wasted by making them hold up the rest of the party mid adventure while you roll up something that might actually meet his approval.

A lot of people have an ingrained conditioning to avoid direct conflict at all costs. This can stem from multiple sources, but it all boils down to the same thing: They can't do what you're proposing. It doesn't matter why. It may be a lack of self-confidence, childhood rearing, their idea of impoliteness, fear, etc. Instead, what they do is find "acceptable" (and by this, I mean "unlikely to provoke a confrontation") ways of getting what they want.

Instead of saying "I don't want you to play that," they simply find a "legal" way to kill the character. This doesn't (in theory, of course) provoke a confrontation, because it's been "allowed" by the game. Don't blame the DM, blame the game. Blame the dice. Of course, this is all in their heads. Everyone with the barest minimum of insight realises what's going on. Still, there's no reasoning with these people. Trying to force them into a confrontation will just get them to withdraw even further, making them put on their fake smiles and assure you (lying through their teeth) that yes, of course, everything's fine. And when you look away, they're back to their old antics.

There's no cure for this problem. You just got to learn to spot these sorts of people and anticipate their actions.

Traab
2011-08-11, 09:00 PM
You just got to learn to spot these sorts of people and anticipate their actions.

Or spot them, then avoid them forever afterwards. Ugh.

Shadowknight12
2011-08-11, 09:04 PM
Or spot them, then avoid them forever afterwards. Ugh.

Spotting these sort of people before you find yourself about to play with them requires considerable foreknowledge. Most of the time, you realise what's going to happen after you've already agreed to play.

Quietus
2011-08-11, 09:12 PM
Overall, I think that tendency to avoid conflict is a good thing. It helps us get along as social creatures, otherwise we'd all be fighting with each other over the littlest thing. That's why we have the phrase "Pick your battles".

But I think when it comes to something as foolish as a character you don't like in your game.. it's better to bring it up early. Simply going "Man, I'm not comfortable with dual bastard swords" solves a LOT of problems. Sure, it'll annoy the player for a bit, and it's not a pleasant thing to do - particularly when, holy crap, dual bastard swords overpowered? Really? But there'll be less hurt feelings if you come out and say that then, than if you let someone waste their time building the character, let them think you're okay with it, then go LOLPOLARBEAR on them. Doing that doesn't solve anything. You have my condolences, starwoof.

Kaun
2011-08-11, 09:19 PM
Yeah the worst game i have ever got stuck in was the first time one of my friends ran a game.

I dont still judge him by this game because it was his first time behind the sheild but it went something like this.

The 5 players arrive at DM's house at about 6pm and start generationg characters (it was either 3x or 2ed i cant remember exactly but im leaning more towards 3x.)

This took a couple hours all up including basic back grounds and we were all level 1.

He starts us out on an small island some were, gives a vague discription of our seroundings and then announces that we are being ambushed by half a dozen ogers.

So about 30 mins of combat later we are all dead!

No real chance to run or escape, maybe if 4 of us had sacraficed ourselfs one of us could have survived.

I figured this was a plot move to capture us or ... i dont know something but no it turns out he figured we could beat them.

The funny thing was the whole time through the game he kept anouncing things like "Wow this oger totaly crit again!!!" and "Man i cant belive he killed you in one hit hahah!".

We decided to play cards for the rest of the night.

starwoof
2011-08-11, 09:24 PM
I think I should clarify that the 'combo attack' that the DMPC was pretty clearly pulled out of the DM's back pocket and in no way supported by the rules. I was less ticked about the bear killing me than the DMPC being there and only using his DM magic powers to save everyone after I was dead. That fact more than anything really showed that he was specifically out to kill me.

malleus818
2011-08-11, 11:16 PM
mm.
On a side not, i also hate playing at coffee tables.

Our group is small, 2 of us right now lol, cause we moved to the middle of nowhere. In our case our DM has to have a DMPC, in fact every gamei have played over my 20 some years of roleplaying there have always been DMPC, and i have played in many many groups. I think the main reason was that numbers went up and down so much having a stable character was good.

But it all depends on the DM, i dont like having a PC but i have done it, and in those cases i am more then willing to die to further a plot, actually as a PC i have done as well.

I have had great Dms who have had PCs as well because we use to play a game where we would rotate amongst 5 of us different DMS, it worked brilliant.

THat being said Worst game i ever played.
Local store, owner ran the game. His "business partner" a girl, ahem, always played as well.

It was one of those games would run like this.

We arrive at store, plan to have a month or to long game, first time playing with them, 4 regular players, me and my friend. We arrive at store.

Me:So i guess i will start working on my character?
Owner: Nope here you go, your a thief.
Me: Oh (I like to play a fighter, of any sort, but fine).
Owner: ya i make everyones character, oh and everyone can only be basic races, your a halfling.

Girl: hey i finished my character, (ummm???) i gave myself an extra feat, cause it makes her cool, and shes that devil girl thing, what they called? Teifling! (and yes she spoke like that, and yes thats almost 99% the way the conversation went.

So skipping ahead everything went like,
PC1: I attack with my sword.
DM: Miss.

PC2: i cast magic missle.
DM: a little damage.

GIRL: i attack, while flying and shooting lightning bolts (i exaggerate a little).
DM: you killed it.

Oh and the game would also go.
roleplaying
PC1: 5 mintues
PC2: 5 mintues
Girl: 15 mintues
PC3: 5 mintues
girl: interuppting 5 more mintues.
PC4: 5 mintues
Girl 10 more.

The most frustrating part???? they were not dating, they never would be dating, they did not want to date (and i can 100% assure that.) it was absolutly the most annoying game ever.

and good on you, use those bastard swords!

starwoof
2011-08-11, 11:27 PM
Bastard swords are the manliest weapon in the book. :smallbiggrin:

Without extenuating circumstances I am pretty much opposed to the DM having his own character sheet. It should be a stat block or nothing.

Tvtyrant
2011-08-12, 12:06 AM
Worst one I was ever in had to do with personal issues between the DM and one of the players (girl competition stuff). The DM had a DMPC that was a Ranger/Paladin thing that had +3 weapons at level 4. A lot of them (bow, rapier, shortsword, and lance). The player was playing a Rogue that had a level in Monk so he could flurry ninja stars for SA damage. We entered into combat with some Worgs and the DMPC wades into combat and gets crunched (3 worgs, the rest of us hung back and essentially watched). The Rogue ineffectually flings shuriken from hiding at the Worgs, the Half-Orc barbarian with 3 18s (good roles) proceeds to kill one of the Worgs on a charge, and I (heal bot cleric) sit back and heal the Barbarian. The Barbarian downs the other Worgs over three more rounds, and the DMPC is slowly bleeding out on the ground.

I'm out of slots by this point, so I attempt to make a Heal check on the Rangadin. I fail, and he goes down to -5. The Rogue walks up, coups the DMPC, and loots himself a shiny new shortsword. Me and the barbarian player are trying not to look involved as the DMs face gets blood red and says "roll for initiative." A Troll breaks into the clearing (getting a higher initiative then the Rogue of course) and attacks the Rogue with a claw. The claw doesn't kill him outright, but he goes down (to -9 of course, so the DM can coup him). The Barbarian's player spends close to 5 minutes looking at his sheet trying to decide what to do (he has 18 dex remember) and finally knocks over his cup of coffee by "accident" onto his character sheet. While everyone scrambles around trying not to get coffee on themselves, the Rogue gets a call from the girl and leaves.

nihil8r
2011-08-12, 02:59 AM
rofl@tvtyrant

starwoof, you should have stopped the game from happening as soon as the 10 other people showed up. that should have been your ominous warning that this game should not be. oh well, sorry you had to experience such a terrible game ... if anyone did anything even remotely similar to that to me i would never acknowledge their existence again :smallmad:

malleus818
2011-08-12, 04:05 AM
I dont know if this counts. But i love to roleplay, including some times ineffectual characters, like a two weapon fighter that relies on str and dex, hmm, and my the other two are like me. But we had a third member who power gamed, and owned everybook, AND had a photograhpic memory.

talk about frustrating, could break the game at level 1.
very annoying.
lol the troll one was pretty sad.

not much better then when a character dies, and his TWIN brother appears to avenge him. sigh. why do we get so many tools playing.

Tyndmyr
2011-08-12, 07:09 AM
You know, I really dont understand the dm mindset sometimes. I see so many stories on these boards where the dm decides he doesnt like the character someone rolled up then proceeds to make sure they die as fast as possible. Is it THAT hard to just say at the start, "Hey, sorry man, but those feats look a bit too optimized/cheesy for my tastes, mind doing them a bit differently?" That way the dm doesnt need to feel obliged to attacked a level 1 fighter with an ancient red dragon just because he doesnt like the ultra optimization the player chose, and time isnt wasted by making them hold up the rest of the party mid adventure while you roll up something that might actually meet his approval.

God, yes. Give me solid parameters, and I can have fun building an interesting character within them. Even if those parameters are "core only", they are better than no guidelines. I hate working with a subjective "that's cheesy, but I'm not going to actually tell you what I think, so I'll passive-aggressively screw you randomly".

Yeah, I've had some pretty terrible DMs. My current group has three quite solid ones though...one of which has learned to DM in our group. We've tried to train everyone, but interest and ability vary. Still, having three is a huge blessing. Definitely consider training good players to DM...the world needs more good DMs.

kamikasei
2011-08-12, 07:14 AM
Is it THAT hard to just say at the start, "Hey, sorry man, but those feats look a bit too optimized/cheesy for my tastes, mind doing them a bit differently?"
I don't think it's necessarily a desire to avoid confrontation. The vibe I get in a lot of these situations is that the DM views the player as having tried to get something past them, and that rather than simply saying "no", the player needs to be punished for having asked in the first place.

Tyndmyr
2011-08-12, 07:17 AM
I dont know if this counts. But i love to roleplay, including some times ineffectual characters, like a two weapon fighter that relies on str and dex, hmm, and my the other two are like me. But we had a third member who power gamed, and owned everybook, AND had a photograhpic memory.

talk about frustrating, could break the game at level 1.
very annoying.
lol the troll one was pretty sad.

not much better then when a character dies, and his TWIN brother appears to avenge him. sigh. why do we get so many tools playing.

Er...*looks around guiltily*....was this player named Travis?

Kaervaslol
2011-08-12, 07:24 AM
You should have punched him in his passive agressive face.

This reminds me of a similar experience of mine. I was playing a multiclass rogue/fighter in a 2e game. I had like 100% detect traps, but it seems my skills were worthless because the DM had it against me. I was pissed. Unfortunately for me, the DM at the time was a experience muay thai fighter and I would have gotten my ass kicked.

After the initial rage receded, I confronted him about it. The next session all the traps were easy. I was like :smallconfused:, dude I'm not asking you to make it easy, I'm asking you to make it fair. If I have 100% detect traps, and I rolled a 23 how the f did I not detect a silly mechanical trap? :smallfurious:

Arbane
2011-08-12, 11:49 AM
Eddie: You realize that your attack bonus with those weapons is not going to be very good, right?
Me: Yes.
Eddie: Okay. I just want you to know that you'll have trouble hitting monsters.
Me: That's fine.
Eddie: *looks at my sheet* Looks fine. Your feats are okay.

Its really hard to convey here, and my memory is fuzzy at the exact words he used, but he definitely thought I was powergaming, even if his words said otherwise. At the time I didn't think much of it as I am ALWAYS being accused of powergaming. And normally it might be true. Also I was a little pissed about how he kept saying how weak my dude was to everyone. I'm not perfect.

(SNIP)

Eddie: Well I guess that broken dual wielding build wasn't as good as you thought, huh?
Me: No, I guess it wasn't.
Eddie: Those feats you took from those complete books are so broken. I don't know how you slipped them past me.


I just don't get this part. He thinks it's too strong, so he says it's too weak? Bwah?

Shadowknight12
2011-08-12, 11:52 AM
I just don't get this part. He thinks it's too strong, so he says it's too weak? Bwah?

He's not saying "it's too weak." He's saying "You thought you were better than me, huh?" with an implied "Proved you wrong, eh? Who's the man? I'm the man! My threatened ego can rest easy now that I've squashed your character. Because only I matter."

starwoof
2011-08-12, 12:51 PM
I'm not really sure what his reasoning was. I think he assumed my to-hit rolls would be tanked, but in fact they were pretty decent. He may have been mad that I 'beat him', though that wasn't my intention.

Friv
2011-08-12, 01:24 PM
not much better then when a character dies, and his TWIN brother appears to avenge him. sigh. why do we get so many tools playing.

Oh, revenge characters. A revenge character was part of the worst session of the worst campaign I ever ran.

I ran a game at one point where two of the characters (a Lawful Good elven wizard and a Lawful Evil human fighter) had been bickering over party leadership for a while, culminating in threats, yelling, and the party breaking into two groups (the fighter player and his girlfriend in one, the other three party members in the other). The next session, the girlfriend was unavailable, so it was 1 v 3. Through a convoluted series of events which I may well go into detail on later, he got into a massive fight with a small army of goblins that was about the right level to be a serious but not overwhelming challenge for the entire party.

Part of the reason for this was that when the rest of the party heard the goblins yelling, the wizard was the only one who could understand that the fighter was being attacked, and she said 'to hell with it' and didn't bother translating for the rest of the party.

So the fighter died.

He came back with his next character, a wandering scholar tracing the journeys of his former character. It was pretty brilliant as a hook, so I said yes. This turned out to be a mistake, because it became clear that the player ardently blamed the wizard for "turning the party against him". His cunning plan was to gather evidence to prove that the wizard was responsible for murdering a hero of the realm, and to have her arrested and executed for it. There were only three flaws with his plan:
#1) It's not actually a crime to not go into deadly danger to save someone else, so the wizard was innocent, and thus there was no evidence to gather
#2) Absolutely no one in the world except the wizard knew that she could have gone into danger, so there was no way for the historian to have developed this theory.
#3) The wizard had substantially better Charisma and Diplomacy than the historian.

I pointed out most of these while trying to convince him not to deliberately sink the group, to which the historian's player assured me that he knew what he was doing.

Sadly, the game ended before I could watch him single-handedly destroy it. It was almost train-wreck beautiful, by then.

Tvtyrant
2011-08-12, 01:34 PM
Friv, I believe the historian would have made it a most enjoyable game, and I am truly sorry for your loss. :P

Friv
2011-08-13, 12:23 AM
Friv, I believe the historian would have made it a most enjoyable game, and I am truly sorry for your loss. :P

I'll see about putting together the full campaign log, and then you'll see that it was really a shock that we made it as far as we did. That campaign just lurched from one near-disaster to another until everything finally hit critical mass.

Silus
2011-08-13, 01:45 AM
Worst game that I can remember was a whole two sessions. The first session was GREAT (it's the source of my Goblin Union story). The second session though, not so much. It's not a matter of "OMG that player was terribad", bit rather a DM Improv Fail.

So we're on a goblinoid garrison and I had just finished devolving the place into a riot over worker's rights and such (as a lvl 1 Bard mind you). So general stuff happens and we're more or less forced to be servants to meet the garrison's new Overlord who is coming to inspect the place to see if he wants to take over. So we're expecting...something normal. You know, Advanced Hobgoblin with class levels or something? But no. You know who walks through the door?

This guy:

Ruby Rod and all.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v606/SilusCrow/Asmodeus_-_Eric_Deschamps.jpg


So I can't speak for the other two players, but I just stared at the DM. Seriously? HE is gonna take over a garrison of goblinoids HIMSELF? Some other stuff happened (I think there was another riot or something) and apparently an Allosaurus or something got loose and was attacking the Flesh Golem butler....I dunno, I stopped caring after the "Overlord" walked through the door. Only game where I actually stopped caring during the game. Usually the "stop caring" thing quickly turns into "Let's see if we can't salvage the situation". But no, I actually stopped caring.

TurtleKing
2011-08-13, 01:48 PM
@Silus: You actually cared? I didn't and was just causing mayhem as a small Fire Elemental.:smallbiggrin: Besides I am not sure if that was supposed to happen or not with the Overlord. Though I must say you and another player lets call her L pulled off being married quite well.

Silus
2011-08-13, 02:20 PM
@Silus: You actually cared? I didn't and was just causing mayhem as a small Fire Elemental.:smallbiggrin: Besides I am not sure if that was supposed to happen or not with the Overlord. Though I must say you and another player lets call her L pulled off being married quite well.

"One'a dese days Alice, one'a dese days! Pow! Bam! Zoom! Straight to Ravenloft!"

TurtleKing
2011-08-13, 03:11 PM
Moves hand in front of face.

"Bard".

Silus
2011-08-13, 03:35 PM
Haha :smallbiggrin:

The session was terribad, but a lot of funny things came out of it.

So I suppose I'll move that to the #2 spot and replace it with the Airship Island debacle.

Snails
2011-08-13, 03:38 PM
I don't think it's necessarily a desire to avoid confrontation. The vibe I get in a lot of these situations is that the DM views the player as having tried to get something past them, and that rather than simply saying "no", the player needs to be punished for having asked in the first place.

I think you are in the right ballpark.

Rather than offering something constructive like "I am concerned because hitting not very often but doing so much damage will make the encounters too easy or too challenging, somewhat randomly" or "I think your PC has a glass jaw", the DM here is assuming the worse case scenario and just squishing the PC, as if any useful lesson can be gained from that (other than "avoid playing with me").

DeAnno
2011-08-13, 06:27 PM
To be honest I'm a little confused how the Polar bear killed him in a single blow. It only does 1d8+8 damage, surely a Ranger 3 has more than 16 hp? 4.5x3=13.5, but usually the first HD is maximized which means its 8+9=17, and that's without any con.

starwoof
2011-08-13, 08:43 PM
My memory is hazy but I believe it actually killed me with a full attack. I had pretty terrible rolls for stats (yeah he made us roll), so my con was a lot lower than I would have liked.

Steward
2011-08-13, 08:57 PM
It probably also used a great-axe and could fire off three Maximized Scorching Rays (as a free action, of course), right?

Snails
2011-08-13, 09:26 PM
If you charged forward to hit it, you would have been exposed to a full attack in return. That would be a reasonable enough choice against a black bear, but a terrible one against a polar bear, for a TWF specialist especially, if you had only known what you were up against.

Of course, if you did not do that, he would have charged you, hit, grappled, and then eaten you slowly and excruciatingly, while you comrades were ineffectual until the moment bear actually finished devouring your character. That would be the only way to be certain you learned your lesson, for sure.

Friv
2011-08-14, 09:48 PM
Alright, so here's the beginning of my D&D Disaster Campaign. As I mentioned above, we lurched from disaster to disaster, so this is going to probably take some time.

First, the backstory, and a disclaimer. The disclaimer is that I ran this game about ten years ago, back in high school. This was pretty early in the lifespan of D&D 3.0, which is the game that we played. Some of the things that happened in the campaign were a result of my own relative inexperience running; I'd been at it for a few years, but only with a super-cooperative group, and I didn't know how to handle a lot of problems yet. Also, while some facts have stuck weirdly well in my mind, others have not at all, so there'll be some vagueness.

Backstory And Starting Party:
A friend of mine asked me to run a game for himself and a few of his friends. One of them had never roleplayed before, and another had only played in one or two games which hadn't lasted long, so it was supposed to be a "let's have fun in D&D" style game. I pulled out a world I'd been working on, which was a relatively low-power setting - lots of low-level adventuring class characters, but tapering off rapidly as levels increased, such that people level 9 or higher were literally one in a million, and the highest-level person in all of the human kingdoms was a lone Level 14 wizard. As a result, magic from Levels 1 to 3 was decently common, 4-6 was super-rare, and 7-9 was effectively mythical.

While designing our starting group, I asked people to play generally heroic characters, but the only alignments I banned outright were Neutral Evil and Chaotic Evil - I did say that I'd be looking closely at Lawful Evil and Chaotic Neutral, but if they could work with a heroic party, they could stay. If not, they would have to reroll new characters.

The starting party was made up of four players, as follows:

A) The friend who asked me to run. He was a good guy, but sometimes had trouble realizing when things he was doing would antagonize people. He was playing a Lawful Good elven wizard, and used his starting feat for Skill Focus: Diplomacy +3, which reflected his character being a minor noble from the elven lands, important enough to send to the human kingdoms as a goodwill ambassador, and expendable enough that if she died in the process, the elven kingdoms wouldn't get mad.
B) The guy whose house we were playing at, and the only other guy to have played the game. He made a Lawful Evil fighter, who used sword and shield, and started with Power Attack and Iron Will. He was a cannibal - whenever he killed anything that he considered powerful or skilled, he would eat part of it to gain its power. I warned him that this was a good way to get diseases at low levels, and was treated to a ten-minute explanation of why raw meat doesn't develop bacteria until it's been dead for a while. :smallannoyed: In retrospect, this was a warning sign which I missed.
C) The girlfriend of B. She was the one who'd never roleplayed before, and B wanted to introduce her to the hobby. She was playing a neutral good human cleric (*facepalm*) of the goddess of Hope. Cleric was probably a bad choice for her. She was nice, but was understandably quiet and difficult to pull into the game.
D) A friend of A and B, who'd only played the game a couple of times. A mentioned to me that D had a few social issues, which should have been a huge red flag, but I let it slide because hey, we're all nerds together, right? Anyway, D decided to also play a cleric, this one a Lawful Neutral human.

So our party had lots of buffing and healing, and no skillmonkeys or ranged combat. Well, it could have been worse. At least everyone was on the same side of the lawful/chaotic axis, right? What could go wrong?

Story #1 - "Stirges! Stirges Everywhere!" OR "Storms On The Horizon"

So, the first story was a nice and simple one. Every year, a local mine had problems with clouds of giant mosquito-birds boiling out of the depths and killing local miners. To deal with it, they held a grand festival at the start of each year, offering bounties for teams of adventurers who would race through the mines, culling the stirge population. The players arrived in town alone, too late to form groups with most people, and wound up joining forces to clear the stirges more easily.

This story actually went pretty smoothly. The party worked their way through the mines, fighting stirges, a few giant ants, and another adventuring party that got the bright idea to just murder their fellow hunters and take their stuff. In the mines, the PCs also fought a badly wounded demon, which was crouched over the body of a lone traveller who'd tried to sneak through the lower levels of the mine. On his body, they found a message with the seal of the kingdom of Sashsin, just to the south, which was brightly magical. After a bit of study, they determined that the message would erase itself if opened, and decided that there might be a reward for delivering it to the King of Sashsin. The party also reached Level 2.

The only real problems in this story were little things, but they were enough to worry me. A and B got into a few minor squabbles over party leadership, as both wanted to be the leader and they didn't always agree on what to do. C wasn't really involved, although she went along with whatever the group decided. D refused to use his healing magic on anyone who wouldn't convert to his church and offer a 'donation'; since there was another cleric, he ended up just falling into a buff/debuff role, but it was a worrying trend. Still, the party was still shaking out. Surely things would get better.

Story #2 - "Things Get Worse", OR "The Worst-Laid Plans..."
So, the party was on their way south to Sashsin. To get through safely, they hooked up with a caravan heading in that direction, skirting the edges of the wild lands. There were rumours of the ghost of a slave-girl slain in the mountains haunting the pass, so a pair of priests and a wizard were very welcome to the guards. In total, the caravan had two merchants, four NPC guards, and four PC guards.

Little did the players know, the "ghost" was actually a pair of twin sorcerers, who were leading a small team of bandits. (Level 2 sorcerers, five Level 1 bandit warriors). They would cast an illusion to convince people the ghost was rising, and then drop Sleep spells on them until the caravan passed out. If anyone saw through the trick, they'd kill them and take their things anyway. My cunning plan was that there were several stages were the players could figure this out - investigating the town they were leaving from, passing Spot checks when the "ghost" appeared, overcoming the sleep spells and waking people who didn't. Worst case, there was an elf in the party, who could shake other people awake. Now, I made a mistake on this one. I gave both sorcerers Charisma 16 and the Spell Focus: Enchantment feat, pushing the save DC on Sleep up to 16. The Fighter had a Will save of +3, the clerics had +6 and +7 respectively, so I figured that those odds would be okay.

Whoops.

The players did not investigate, they just shrugged and left, confidant that they could deal with this ghost. They reached that point in the road, the ghost appeared, and while everyone was studying it curiously, the sorcerers dropped two Sleep spells on the first wagon, knocking out a merchant and all four guards. This was not unexpected; the guards only had a one-in-four chance each of passing each save, so passing both seemed unlikely. Everyone rolled for initiative, and both sorcerers beat all four PCs. That wasn't great. The first one rolled for Sleep HD, and managed to get the fighter, a cleric, and the merchant. All three promptly failed their Will saves, and passed out. The other one easily got enough HD to affect the other cleric, who also failed his Will save. In under a round, everyone except A was down.

A then waited for the bandits to arrive, and confronted them. This was somewhat unexpected. She convinced them that she could kill at least one of them before they could bring her down, and that since they only had a couple of minutes to loot and run, she would make a deal - if they only looted the front wagon, and not the rear one, and if they didn't kill anyone, she would swear not to tell anyone about the trick or come after them. The bandits agreed, took the weapons and gold stored in the first wagon, and fled.

When everyone woke up, A claimed that there was a ghost, and she wasn't strong enough to fight it. Since the gold was gone, the caravan master said he'd have to reduce their pay, but they'd still make it across in one piece. At this point, B declared that "If it's real enough to steal my gold, it's real enough to feel my sword!" He convinced C and D to join him in a revenge attack, convinced three of the four NPC guards to join him and gave them some of his many extra weapons, and led a charge into the woods. Bound by her word not to join them, A chose to remain with the caravan. This seemed bad, but they still had a good shot. Three Level 2s and three Level 1s against two Level 2s who'd spent a lot of their spells and five Level 1s was a trickier fight than the one I'd envisioned, but good planning could have carried the day.

Instead, the fighter charged through the treeline, yelling out insults to try and force the 'ghost' to appear. He knew there were humans OOC, and assumed that they'd turn around to fight if he was causing enough ruckus. He was right.

The two sides ran into each other, and initiative was declared at a range of 120 feet. One sorcerer won initiative, then the party, then the rest of the bandits, basically. The sorcerer dropped another sleep spell, which only took out one NPC, and then the entire party charged. Well, almost the entire party. C stayed back to wake up the fallen guard, helping him back to his feet. Then the bandits went. A spell dropped another guard, and arrows stuck in B, the third guard, and D, killing the guard. Finally, another spell dropped against C and the last guard, dropping them both.

At this point, I was pretty sure things were going the party's way. B was close enough to charge the sorcerers, and he had Cleave now. With them dead, the bandits would panic and scatter. This, however, was the point when the party lost their collective minds.

B roared in horror when the guard fell, and spent his action running sideways to reach him - so that he could recover his axe. D realized he was at one-third health, and started retreating, casting a healing spell on himself. The guards were all asleep or dead, as was C.

Another sleep spell dropped on B, which he managed to shrug off again. Arrows then peppered him and D, badly injuring them both. Then B finally charged the archers, failing to realize that since D was fleeing, he was now alone against seven opponents. He reached the first warrior and cut into him, and then got put to sleep. D healed himself again, and fell back another thirty feet. Then he was hit by three arrows and passed out. (Fun fact - the 1d8+2 you get from healing does not match the 1d8+1 you get hit by if there are five people shooting at you, and they've all got even chances of hitting).

Laughing at their incredible fortune, the bandits tied up their new captive, bound the wounds of those who were near dying (losing one guard in the process, but everyone else survived), and set off into the wildlands to sell their new prisoners.

Back at the caravan, A eventually decided that her party wasn't coming, and reluctantly went to look for them. She discovered signs of a battle, and determined that they were likely bound for the city-state just to the southeast. Since it was where the caravan was going, too, she resolved to hope that her party was alive, and to look for them upon her arrival.

After-story summary: By all rights, this should have been a game-ender. One party member had refused to help the others in a fight, another had abandoned his allies without a second thought when things got tough, and the battle was about as disasterous as could be imagined. B pretty much blamed A exclusively for what went wrong, and D blamed B exclusively. C didn't seem to care much one way or the other.


Next time - Things Get Even Worse.

starwoof
2011-08-14, 10:27 PM
I'm really liking reading everyone's disaster stories. :smallbiggrin: I've got another one but I'm debating whether it's story worthy or not... it did end with me getting evicted from my house due partially to pathfinder.

WildPyre
2011-08-14, 11:09 PM
I've got another one but I'm debating whether it's story worthy or not... it did end with me getting evicted from my house due partially to pathfinder.

Okay... I have GOT to hear this one. :smalleek:

masterjoda99
2011-08-15, 11:20 AM
Heh, I love reading these threads. Not only do they illustrate to me examples of truly horrendous gaming, but when certain terrible archetypes of poor DMing rear their heads, it gives me ideas and inspirations for things for me to do when I DM games to parody these archetypes.

Like that time I parodied the "epic spotlight-stealing DMPC" thing. Good old bread wizard...

Shep
2011-08-15, 11:58 AM
To the OP - I think you handled that session really well. You didn't blow up, you didn't storm out, you just gritted your teeth and took your character's death (however unfair and partial the DM might have been) in stride. I struggle with being that detached when I'm a PC (mostly I DM).

dps
2011-08-15, 12:43 PM
I don't think it's necessarily a desire to avoid confrontation. The vibe I get in a lot of these situations is that the DM views the player as having tried to get something past them, and that rather than simply saying "no", the player needs to be punished for having asked in the first place.

Yeah, the vibe I get from a lot of them isn't "I don't like what you've done with your character, because I think it's overpowered and will unbalance the campaign", it's more, "I don't like you much and I'm gonna screw you over".

starwoof
2011-08-15, 05:28 PM
To the OP - I think you handled that session really well. You didn't blow up, you didn't storm out, you just gritted your teeth and took your character's death (however unfair and partial the DM might have been) in stride. I struggle with being that detached when I'm a PC (mostly I DM).

I'm really used to dealing with crap.

Okay. So here's the story of how I got kicked out of my house over pathfinder. I'm a little uncomfortable posting it but I'm doing it anyway.

About 2 years ago I moved out of my mom's house for the first time, and moved in with a guy I knew from warhammer at the game store who had a spare room. We share the same first name, which is how I got my nickname of Red. I didn't have any money, but he said that wasn't a problem as he really just needed help groundskeeping this mansion. So the deal was: I help out, I get to live there rent-free.

It was awesome. Last summer was the best summer of my life. Roommate's brother always came over to play dnd. We got another roommate who was a cool guy who also played dnd. Steve was there so often he basically lived there. We played a lot of dnd... and League of Legends too.

I'm really lazy. I'm really really lazy. I was happy to work whenever my roommate/landlord guy said we should, but he is also pretty lazy and would lose interest, which made me lose interest faster. Then we go play LoL.

Well my roommate was really stressed last summer, partially because of my laziness, but he also had some other issues going on. I wasn't being terribly helpful either. I just want everyone to be clear that this was pretty much my fault, and I take full responsibility for my actions.

One night the five of us are playing Pathfinder. Over the course of the game this guy has been playing a 'Chaotic Neutral' orc barbarian. I am a chaotic good fighter, and the unofficial party leader. I kinda see it as my duty to make sure nobody does anything that will kill the party unless its me, so I've been shooting down the orc's ideas for several sessions now. They were all basically 'murder that guy'. We usually decide what to do by committee, so it's not like we were just doing what I wanted.

We finish a combat against some bandits. I've tackled one of them to the ground with a good grapple roll and now I'm interrogating him. Orc chops off his head. Everyone gets really mad at my roommate guy for ruining the interrogation. I just asked for an attack of opportunity so I could trip him before he kills my prisoner.

Up until this point I didn't really realize that anything was wrong. I thought we were just having fun roleplaying an evil brutish orc and a good nobleman at odds with each other. He was getting really mad. I wanted to keep it in character, but in a rage he kicked everyone out, and kicked me out forever.

Everyone was really mad at him for ruining the game.

Were still friends. I understand why he was mad. I understand why he kicked me out. I don't blame him. He's a really cool guy and we still see each other a lot, he's just a jerk sometimes. Actually besides that part it was a great session.

It just ended with me living with my mom again.

Greenish
2011-08-15, 10:57 PM
^Too bad about losing your own place.


But i love to roleplay, including some times ineffectual characters, like a two weapon fighter that relies on str and dexI don't think making ineffectual characters is roleplaying any more than making effective ones is, and you can definitely make an effective TWFer.


She was playing a neutral good human cleric (*facepalm*) of the goddess of Hope.Why is NG human cleric facepalm worthy? :smallconfused:

BillyBobJoe
2011-08-15, 11:12 PM
Why is NG human cleric facepalm worthy? :smallconfused:

It's facepalm worthy because it was her first time playing, and the cleric is a very difficult first-time character because it's so complicated.

Friv
2011-08-15, 11:55 PM
It's facepalm worthy because it was her first time playing, and the cleric is a very difficult first-time character because it's so complicated.

Bingo.

For first-time players, cleric has two major problems. First, it is really easy to fall into the trap of being the party band-aid, using all of your powers to make other people cooler. Secondly, because your spell lists are huge, you're a prepared caster, and you've got a lot of stuff to keep track of, clerics are one of the most complicated classes. Both of these problems become much worse if the player in question is having trouble connecting to the game in the first place, which is exactly what happened.

Speaking of which, let's have some fun with the next two storylines of the game!

Story #3 - "Of Slaves And Kings", or "Cracks In The Tower"

So. When last we left our heroes, B, C, and D were all being shipped south to be sold into slavery. I worked out a cunning plan wherein all three would be sold to the city arena, to act as either gladiators or enslaved healers for the gladiators. Meanwhile, A was riding down to the same city to look for her party.

However, things went bad pretty quickly, when D refused to admit to being a cleric and claimed that he couldn't fight. He managed to pass his Bluff check, made a jerk of himself, and convinced the arena's buyer that he wouldn't be worth buying. At this point, I took him aside and quietly asked, "Hey, what gives", and he outlined his cunning plan: If the slavers couldn't get a good price for him because he was spoiling all of their sales, they would have to let him go.

I told him that this would not happen. I warned him that the slavers were clearly getting angry, and they were going to knock him out and sell him as a galley slave, and told him point-blank that, with his Wisdom score, he knew this plan would not succeed. He told me that he was pretty sure that I was wrong, and that the slavers would free him any time now.

So he got sold as a galley slave. As an unfortunate coincidence, he was busy for the next two sessions. (I'd half-wondered if he was quietly quitting, but he came back afterwards, so there you go.) So the next storyline just took place without him.

A reached the city, and gave her ambassadorial credentials to the gate guards, Diplomacying them and convincing them to grant her an audience. She discovered her friends in the arena, and made a deal to free them - there was a strange plague affecting the city, and mercenary groups had vanished looking for it. The players were set free, and began investigating; they soon learned that the source of the plague was the local sewers, and delved into said sewers looking for trouble.

And oh boy, did they find it. In addition to an ancient, ruined temple (where B recovered an ancient sword, Seabringer), the players discovered a goblin cleric infecting the city's water supply with dark magic, killed him, and took his stuff. His stuff included a magic ring, which B also claimed. (This is going to be super-important later). Everyone also reached Level 3.

With their problems solved, they accepted a small reward in addition to their freedom, including a few magic items for the other party members, the three heroes bought horses and left town, pushing west into Sashsin.

At which point A suddenly said, "Oh, hey, we forgot about D's character."

At which point the entire party shrugged their shoulders, declared that they'd never really liked him anyway, and continued on their way, leaving D to create a new character for the next session. His cleric remained a galley slave forever. The end.

Story #4 - "Flashpoint", or "Seriously, how did the game not end right here?"
Ok, so. We picked up a new player this session, E. E was a trigger-happy Chaotic Good gnomish sorcerer. He was the brother of a friend of mine, and was a friend of A. I figured he could only help.

While the party was setting up, D pulled up the D&D Character Generator program to put together his next character. Figuring that the party needed a rogue, he decided to create a neutral half-orc rogue character. I suggested that this might not be a great plan, since half-orcs don't make great rogues, but he was committed, so I said sure. He printed up his sheet for me to review, and I noticed the following stats: Strength 18, Dexterity 16, Constitution 15, Intelligence 16, Wisdom 15, Charisma 15.

This seemed rather high. As I was pointedly asking if these had actually been rolled, B took the sheet, looked at it, and pointed out that there was a note on the bottom for how many adjustments had been made: +48 pts. D defended his character on the grounds that the Character Generator hadn't stopped him from adding points, so he'd just kept doing it.

*sigh*

Anyway, once his character was fixed up, the party met up with him as they stopped off in a local town. A dangerous Shadow had been seen in a nearby warehouse, and the locals lacked the magic needed to destroy it, so a bounty was placed on it. The party hired D and E to help them out, promising them an equal share of the reward, and moved in.

At which point D refused to go and scout the area, convinced that the party was trying to kill him. He demanded an extra share of treasure to do his job, so the party said "screw you". He proceeded to follow them through the whole dungeon that followed, refusing to do any of his skills unless they paid extra. :smallmad:

The party ended up attacking the warehouse, and B got strength-drained quite badly, so A took his magic sword to wield as the only other party member able to do so. They found a broken secret door in the warehouse back, and followed it into a horrible set of rooms, each containing a devastating and deadly monster. They gradually butchered their way through this strange area, killing everything except for a baby brass dragon, who the gnome promptly adopted. At the end, they discovered that they'd been killing their way through a nobleman's private zoo; the shadow had been one of his exhibits, which had escaped. The nobleman was arrested for keeping insanely dangerous creatures inside town secretly, the party got a large reward, and everything was okay...

Until the disaster.

A said that, as the party still needed to deliver that sensitive information to Sashsin, they should leave town immediately. B announced that, as party leader, the party was going to stay in town so that he could recover peacefully, rather than having to risk danger on the road before his strength was restored. Everyone else in the party sided with A (even C, which caught me off-guard), so everyone except A rode out of town while B stayed behind.

B then realized that A still had his magic longsword, as well as his share of the loot, as well as his horse.

At this point, B began hatching plans to "get back" at A for "stealing control of the party". D was still refusing to do his work unless mortal danger threatened, and E came within a hair of Magic Missiling the nobleman the instant he was revealed as having done something criminal.

In addition, this was the last session that C played, as she decided that roleplaying wasn't really for her. Given the situation at this point, I did not blame her.

Everything was pretty bad, but I figured I could fix things up, right?

Next Time: I Cannot Fix Things Up.

Elm11
2011-08-16, 02:49 AM
This may be the most tragic, yet hilarious, D&D story i've read in a while. I'm sorry you had to come across all these bad apples at once. That said, it seems as though B and D are the main source of the party's issues, though E is beginning to shape up worryingly.

starwoof
2011-08-16, 05:50 AM
Its a tragic comedy; the Lament of Friv. :smallbiggrin:

Lonely Tylenol
2011-08-16, 08:38 AM
If we're doing stories, perhaps I should share the one of my first real DM experience a short time ago. ;)

Basically, this whole debacle started before the very first Games Day on our island ("Games Day" is a semi-regular public games event a few friends and I have started doing in place of conventions, which we never had)...

The setup:
The two friends who I was working with to organize the event each laid claim to a D&D game (one 3.5, one Pathfinder Hacked), and since we weren't expecting more than a few dozen people throughout the day, I agreed to run the games table, and quietly put the game I was working on for the inaugural Games Day aside. We agreed on this arrangement, and nothing changed until two days before the game, when I found out from the friend who was running the 3.5 game that he decided against it (in testing, the adventure took more than a month and we got nowhere near completing it, so I imagine there was simply too much to cut for a one-off), and was going to be running the games table instead.

Two frantic, sleepless nights later, our very first Games Day begins, and I arrive before most everyone else to set up the tables, chairs and concessions, at around 9 in the morning--without the character sheets. I immediately start frantically scribbling out five level 13 characters for the adventure, mostly from memory and from book diving/web searching on my phone, swearing the whole time (a couple of the gamers helped by making "character sheets" on lined paper--they were actually a huge help for me). That whole process takes me 2-3 hours, and by the time I'm done, everybody else is locked into a game of Munchkin, Robo-Rally or Pathfinder Hacked--and, in the process of waiting for people to free up for a game, I pass out on the floor, tired and grumpy.

A few hours and half of a sharpie mustache later, the first Games Day concludes, and everybody seemed to enjoy the whole thing but me (on account of having to sit out of every game to prepare and then not run my adventure). A few people started to feel really guilty about how things turned out for me, and even though I really want to sleep, they convince me to run the campaign for them, so we get five people together and head back north.

The game itself:
The game began with two of the five people immediately dropping out entirely, leaving two unfilled and unfillable slots. I had designed this adventure for 4-5 players, so this kinda put a damper on everything. I announced that I would be DMPCing the ones the players didn't pick, but that I'd basically be treating them like mules led by a rope--they would basically just be led around in case somebody decided to pick them up or died and needed a replacement, and would only intervene if things genuinely proved to be too difficult.

The group enters the architect's temple, noting the eight closed stone doors and the one open one, and decide to go through the only open door. They manage to kill the iron golem guarded by the anti-magic field, dispersing it, and find that the door he was guarding hides a prismatic wall.

This is where my first red flag appeared. The barbarian, played by none other than my younger brother, decided to "test" the flashy glowing wall--by throwing the halfling ranger into it. He succeeded on the grapple due to his larger STR score and two size categories of difference (the barbarian was goliath), and in he went. The ranger failed every save he made, and so was set on fire, burned with acid, electrocuted (thus killing him), killed (for good measure), and turned to stone, and the party heard his mad, dying cackle as he was turned insane just before being transported to another plane. I explained that his statue of a corpse was in the Elemental Plane of Fire, and his soul was in Mechanus.

The barbarian responded by saying he wanted to test it out with the beguiler/shadowcraft mage next.

I plead with him OOC, explaining that the shadowcraft mage actually has spells which get rid of most of the wall's effects, and with the help of the other party members should be able to get rid of it entirely, and that wanton destruction of the party is just toxic. He relents and settles for his one random PC death.

The party flips the switch behind the prismatic wall and notice loud mechanical noises coming from the temple's walls. They go out into the main hall to find that some of the other doors have opened. After I finish explaining the changed state of the room, the cleric immediately tells me that he wants to cast all his daily buffs persisted, then rest for eight hours. I blink twice, but let him have his "gotcha" moment and rest for eight hours after only one fight. He changes several spells on the list, casts a number of other persisted buffs, then attempts to sleep for eight more hours. I explain that you can only rest to restore spells once in a 24-hour period, so he can't triple up, and as I'm doing so, the mage (the third remaining player) remarks, "I cast Disintegrate on the door."

My jaw drops. I had put Disintegrate on the original list so that the party would have an answer to the Prismatic Wall, but after using it, he decided that he wanted to make that account for all of his sixth-level slots--specifically so that he could obliterate all the doors the moment he realized he was involved in a logic puzzle. I let him pick out which doors he's going to Disintegrate, but I'm visibly upset with the whole affair, because even though I had explicitly stated that there were wards against passage through the doors, I had nothing specifically set up to counter Disintegrate, which I had unfortunately given him. He makes several smug remarks about how he "beat" my adventure that put me in an even messier mood, and the cleric player seems to notice the effect this whole disaster is having on me, and convinces him not to spend all his highest-level spell slots specifically to ruin the centrepiece of my little campaign. At last, satisfied with having bent my unassuming one-off over their knee and spanked it thoroughly, he relents, offering to "humor" me, and says:

"I'll just cast Disintegrate on the big statue in the middle of the room instead."

This turned out to be a big mistake for him, as the statue was the BBEG himself. Since the statue isn't simply nonliving matter, I roll a Fort save, which succeeds. I then roll initiative and encourage the rest of them to do the same. Everyone rolls low, as they killed the party member with the highest initiative modifier, and the Wizard goes first. I ask for the spellbook and the trigger-happy caster decides that the Disintegrate on the statue didn't happen, "but thanks for letting me know to look out for him." Fumes are coming out of both nostrils, and my campaign has been violated from every orifice by this point, but for some reason I trudge on.

The next room involves a network of teleport pads, which instantly devolves into a Scoopy Doo-esque hallway scene, with each party member leaping into a random teleport pad, triggering different encounters, and then hopping into more random teleport pads in the hopes of finding each other (and eventually just getting themselves more lost). The twice-buffed cleric single-handedly ends two groups of monsters and pulls the lever before finding the door closed behind him. He uses a spell he prepared specifically for this purpose to blink back to the center room; I feel cheated again because they seem to be looking for exploits to this whole "warded against unwanted intrusion" clause, but let it go because I'm tired and angry and just want the antagonizing to end. (I also thought the solution--Word of Recall with the statue as an entry point--was innovative.)

The third room they jump into is an elaborate network of spires that seem to be arcing lightning from spire to spire, and they correctly decide to bolt it as fast and far as possible to the door at the other end, which is locked. The gnome beguiler (which I should mention at this time was female as I was playing it) tries to pick the lock, because she has the Open Lock skill, and the cleric player decides that's not manly enough or something, whips out his Large-sized junk (keeping in mind that Righteous Might was one of the buffs, so he was a Large human at this point) and attempts to break the lock with it. 28 on the Strength check successfully breaks the lock, and I roll my eyes and let the crass display happen.

He then begins propositioning the gnome, backing her into a corner and trying to force his Large, er, self on her. The beguiler retaliates by stabbing at his crotch with the rapier, and I successfully avoid having my already shattered game ending with the Lawful Good Cleric of St. Cuthbert violently raping his close friend and adventuring partner in the middle of a magical lightning storm.

The party blows through the next room (which I hadn't completely finished modifying, and instead left as a Zen-like anti-puzzle room) and finds themselves in an empty arena with a tingling sensation down their spines. Though the entire party has good Will saves (the barbarian through Iron Will and a PrC with good Will which required it), the barbarian rolls a natural 1 and his eyes glaze over as he becomes subject to the Dominate Person spell.

The cleric traded out all the spells that could break this enchantment, so he and the barbarian trade blows for a time (the squishy isn't able to land a blow against the barbarian, and so remains mostly irrelevant), until the barbarian changes targets, which allows him a new save. He succeeds, ending the spell's hold on him, and I tell him that the feels normal, save for a huge lump on his head.

He turns to me and says:

"I'm going balls to the wall. Full Power Attack full-round attack."

I'm speechless, as is the cleric player. He rolls his three attacks (two hit) and tallies up the damage, and does nearly enough to kill the cleric outright (knocking him to -7). The caster lands a maximized Orb of Cold against the barbarian, which is enough to kill him outright. The only person who can revive him (the cleric) is now slowly bleeding out with nobody to save him, because they threw the only person who could make the Heal check into a Prismatic Wall, killing him instantly. Miraculously, the cleric stabilizes on his own, then resurrects the barbarian. They decide to end it there for the night; I agree, because between all the stalling, retconning, and interruptions, the game had run us past 1AM by this time.

I did not call them to continue it; instead, I found another party at the second Games Day to play it with, and all of us had significant more fun in doing so (though we didn't get nearly as far, due to half the campaign getting into a long-winded discussion about Doctor Who over cake, which itself isn't a bad thing). I intend to finish the dungeon with them.

The Glyphstone
2011-08-16, 09:42 AM
Story

I give this 0.65 Lankys.

Traab
2011-08-16, 09:58 AM
I just want to make an excuse for mister disintegrate. A lot of times dms seem to really enjoy it when a player comes up with an imaginative way of bypassing traps, encounters, whatever. As an example, you admired what the cleric came up with for escaping from the port pads of doom. It may just be that this is his mindset, he likes to find ways around or through obstacles instead of following the set path. The problem is, he seems to be unaware of the limits on what he should do. Its one thing to find a clever solution to a problem, its something else entirely to basically destroy the entire point of the campaign. It would be like having a player mind control the bbeg on their first meeting, (thats supposed to kick off an entire campaign) and making him kill himself due to some total cheese build. Its just ruining the whole story.

Lonely Tylenol
2011-08-16, 04:43 PM
I give this 0.65 Lankys.

I don't think I want a full Lanky. I may be relatively new to these forums, but even I know he's been stabbed over a game at least once. :smalltongue:


I just want to make an excuse for mister disintegrate. A lot of times dms seem to really enjoy it when a player comes up with an imaginative way of bypassing traps, encounters, whatever. As an example, you admired what the cleric came up with for escaping from the port pads of doom. It may just be that this is his mindset, he likes to find ways around or through obstacles instead of following the set path. The problem is, he seems to be unaware of the limits on what he should do. Its one thing to find a clever solution to a problem, its something else entirely to basically destroy the entire point of the campaign. It would be like having a player mind control the bbeg on their first meeting, (thats supposed to kick off an entire campaign) and making him kill himself due to some total cheese build. Its just ruining the whole story.

If this was the mindset he was taking, I would have enjoyed the process; however, it was obvious from the get-go that Disintegrate was never intended to really be used beyond the Prismatic Wall, and that the walls were intended to have wards designed to prevent their own destruction, just that I had never found one specifically for Disintegrate because... Well... On top of not actually knowing one for Disintegrate, I figured Disintegrate was one-and-done, and the party wouldn't go to sleep after the very first fight to change spells in a one-off module.

I had been playing other games with him for awhile (in fact, I introduced him to D&D myself), so I guess if I had to go back and describe his mindset in more detail when it wasn't 3:30 AM (as it was when I wrote that), it wasn't so much that he found the cheat code I was secretly anticipating that let him beat the game, so much as it was that he found the bug I had absolutely no clue anybody would willingly exploit... That I had screwed the pooch with the whole encounter design (by giving the player a spell that could throw everything completely after making it necessary to have it) and that he had successfully beaten me. To go into more detail about what he said, he actually did use the word "bug" specifically as opposed to "exploit" when describing it to myself, the rest of the party, the players that dropped (who were computer programmers, and had decided to leave to spend the evening on their computers, and from whom the "bug" language probably originated for him). He also used "broke" specifically as opposed to "beat", but that's bad storytelling on my part, and I apologize.

Even then, the doors I could get, but there was no reason to disintegrate the statue. The Cleric (who had a Paladin level or two for encounter balance because @&#% 7th-level spells; at least I got this right with the "no sleeping around" deal) detected no evil on the statue, and the caster detected no magic innate to the statue (just the magic that was flowing throughout literally every square inch of the building). I had described it as a statue erected of himself (which people who make grand temples in their own name are wont to do), and for all intents and purposes, it was a statue. It was an optional fight, even. That act was clear, wanton world destruction, which, he later admitted, was all he was trying to do all along. (As I said--I play with them fairly regularly, or at least did.)

I do enjoy when players use lateral thinking to solve a problem, and to be fair, I did do that with him in one room, in a way; specifically, the "Zen puzzle that wasn't actually a puzzle" room, which was empty except for a puzzle on a table and a door on the other end. While the other members of the party fiddled with the puzzle, thinking it contained the key to the other side (Cleric), or broke the table (Barbarian), he had simply walked around the table and opened the unlocked door on the other side. I don't enjoy when any member of the party (or, in this case, the whole party) spontaneously decide that, since this encounter is not episodic, nothing they do will have consequences in future sessions--and actively go about destroying and raping everything. Unfortunately, this was the mentality they took, which made the whole thing unbearable after not sleeping for two days to write the whole thing up, then not getting to play it at the actual con due to lack of interest, and then having them specifically beg me to set my evening aside to run it for them, when two hours earlier they couldn't be arsed to even sit down with me, and two hours later they would do literally everything in their power do demoralize me and ruin the module. Every single one of them decided that their characters' lives had no meaning before or after this adventure, and that they had no reason to care about them, and so the Lawful Good Cleric of St. Cuthbert (with Paladin levels!) attempted to rape his Beguiler friend, the Barbarian killed two other PCs (his justification--"I'm Chaotic Neutral"--was particularly unsettling, because the character as written was Chaotic Good, and he had never told me of the alignment change to full-blown Chaotic Stupid), and the mage spent the evening Disintegrating everything in somebody else's grand temple because he could.

In retrospect, the casty squishy bugger was probably the least offensive, although his attitude of "I beat you, na na na" throughout the night didn't help.

Greenish
2011-08-16, 04:51 PM
it was obvious from the get-go that Disintegrate was never intended to really be used beyond the Prismatic WallWhat's obvious in your head might not be so for everyone else. If you want to keep the PCs on the trails, don't hand them the lever for the junction. :smalltongue:

randomhero00
2011-08-16, 05:08 PM
he isn't hip to the jive yet

lol this is the best quote !! :D


Anywho, my worst game pales in comparison. But anyway...

It was with a stingy DM and a rules lawyer of a player. (this is a long time ago so I'm not sure I remember the numbers correctly) but a player went all psycho about the number of summons she could command at X level. It was so annoying that it was the last straw for me and I left the group. She ended up wasting something like 30 minutes debating the amount of summons she could Have >< AND it wasnt a tough fight>< sigh

I wanted to slam my head against the table. Because besides her and the DM all of us were un-engaged.

Lonely Tylenol
2011-08-16, 05:27 PM
What's obvious in your head might not be so for everyone else. If you want to keep the PCs on the trails, don't hand them the lever for the junction. :smalltongue:

It was obvious by design of the characters. One-offs are designed with a single sheet of spells prepared, instead of a longer list of spells known, for a reason; because they're meant to be considered a single day's worth of work. I wanted Disintegrate to be a one-use item specifically because random destruction of the world is annoying as sin, which is why it was designed as such. It was the creepy uncle of the spell list, and he knew it.

If I wanted to keep them on the rails, I wouldn't have let them go to sleep after five minutes of adventuring and the first PC death, which in retrospect would have prevented this whole stupid debacle in the first place.

The point is, this wasn't the act of somebody who found the cheat codes to the game; it was the act of somebody who (it was quickly revealed) literally just wanted to obliterate 10-ft. cubes of everything because #&@% being a serious adventurer, in which case why force me to sit around and explore your God complex when there's a computer in the next room with Minecraft on it?

The Glyphstone
2011-08-16, 05:42 PM
I'm kinda confused as to the 'he decided the Disintegrate on the boss didn't happen' bit. Did you actually allow him to 'take it back'? If so,....bad move.

Greenish
2011-08-16, 06:02 PM
It was obvious by design of the characters. One-offs are designed with a single sheet of spells prepared, instead of a longer list of spells known, for a reason; because they're meant to be considered a single day's worth of work.So they were supposed to metagame?

Lonely Tylenol
2011-08-16, 06:15 PM
I'm kinda confused as to the 'he decided the Disintegrate on the boss didn't happen' bit. Did you actually allow him to 'take it back'? If so,....bad move.

I did. I was fried out of my mind due to lack of sleep and I tend to be the type to avoid OOC confrontation, so I let it go. I shouldn't have, and I know this, but I was tired and upset and at that point I just wanted to move on.

It is worth noting that I was also letting him Disintegrate everything else until the cleric talked him out of it, so even though they were actively trying to destroy everything, I was being permissive throughout, so at least I was consistent throughout. The problem is the ret-cons, which I never should have let happen; for that I really have no excuse, except I didn't want this to bleed into an OOC confrontation and turn into a Full Lanky.

Greenish: Frankly, I'm confused. Can you please rephrase that for me?

Traab
2011-08-16, 06:48 PM
I think he meant, how were these characters supposed to know it was meant to be a one day battle and they werent supposed to rest and regain spells?

Lonely Tylenol
2011-08-16, 07:06 PM
Re-posting because forum ate my first try... Sorta.



I think he meant, how were these characters supposed to know it was meant to be a one day battle and they werent supposed to rest and regain spells?

They weren't. The act of resting, in and of itself, was benign, and I have no problem.

But why did they decide to rest for 8 hours after only five minutes inside of the dungeon, when their only spells used were the daily buffs cast and the ones used to dismantle Prismatic Wall, five of which were cast by someone else? That, in and of itself, was shameless metagaming.

starwoof
2011-08-16, 07:09 PM
Well I hope you learned to never GM while tired, anyway. I hate disruptive players like that. I know a guy who is my best friend, but as soon as we sit down at a dnd table he turns into an immature disruptive troll-beast.

Greenish
2011-08-16, 07:17 PM
But why did they decide to rest for 8 hours after only five minutes inside of the dungeon, when their only spells used were the daily buffs cast and the ones used to dismantle Prismatic Wall, five of which were cast by someone else?So that they could ready spells that would actually help them in the dungeon. So that they could have more buffs running (if you have Persist, it makes sense to layer the buffs so as to not lose slots, though the characters should've thought about that before entering).

If your problems are wine bottles, it makes sense to trade your hammer to a corkscrew before starting to dine. If your problems are walls, it makes sense to get some all-purpose siege spells. :smallamused:


[Edit]: I mean, sure, if you say so, then they probably were trying to antagonize you, but those actions made IC sense (unlike that other stuff, huh).

Lonely Tylenol
2011-08-16, 07:46 PM
So that they could ready spells that would actually help them in the dungeon. So that they could have more buffs running (if you have Persist, it makes sense to layer the buffs so as to not lose slots, though the characters should've thought about that before entering).

If your problems are wine bottles, it makes sense to trade your hammer to a corkscrew before starting to dine. If your problems are walls, it makes sense to get some all-purpose siege spells. :smallamused:


[Edit]: I mean, sure, if you say so, then they probably were trying to antagonize you, but those actions made IC sense (unlike that other stuff, huh).

But that's the thing--the characters had all the spells needed to clear the dungeon in style! Among everyone at the table, I had both the most intimate sense of game mastery AND of how the dungeon worked, so the characters were already optimized beyond anything they could have come up with (I should know--I introduced all three of them to 3.5)! I gave them tools we talk about daily, but none of them even knew about (like Shock Trooper and Divine Metamagic). The Cleric's trade-offs only ended up hurting them (the Word of Recall trick was nice, but the spell he traded out for it was Greater Dispel Magic, which they ended up actually needing), and the buffs he ended up casting in the second go were more buffs already on the first list.

But at least he had me acknowledge the changes were made. The other caster only traded all his level 6 spells for Disintegrate, but he did so in secret, and I didn't find out until the actual casting.

None of this addresses the underlying issue of the fact that the IC justification of resting for 8 hours, doing five minutes of adventuring after a 15-minute walk to the dungeon and, say, an hour of breakfast and preparation, using virtually none of his daily resources, saying "well, better pack it in for the night" at 10:30 AM, setting up camp inside the temple (another mistake! I should have killed them all in their sleep ;p ), and then resting for eight hours less than two hours after waking up, is incredibly shaky--and quite difficult to do in any case. I'd like to see anyone spend a full night of restful sleep, do something strenuous for five to twenty minutes, and then successfully sleep for eight hours. Quite the task!

For all that, I still wouldn't say the act of resting five minutes into the dungeon was antagonizing--but it WAS blatant metagaming.

Tavar
2011-08-16, 08:08 PM
Technically, they don't have to sleep. Just rest. Which is entirely possible.

Not necessarily reasonable, of course, but possible.

Greenish
2011-08-16, 08:20 PM
But that's the thing--the characters had all the spells needed to clear the dungeon in style!Maybe they preferred expediency to style. Blasting through all the walls is pretty stylish, though.


he did so in secret, and I didn't find out until the actual casting.Well, that's a bit rude.


For all that, I still wouldn't say the act of resting five minutes into the dungeon was antagonizing--but it WAS blatant metagaming.Not really, given how the world works in D&D.

dps
2011-08-16, 08:43 PM
Bingo.

For first-time players, cleric has two major problems. First, it is really easy to fall into the trap of being the party band-aid, using all of your powers to make other people cooler. Secondly, because your spell lists are huge, you're a prepared caster, and you've got a lot of stuff to keep track of, clerics are one of the most complicated classes. Both of these problems become much worse if the player in question is having trouble connecting to the game in the first place, which is exactly what happened.

Speaking of which, let's have some fun with the next two storylines of the game!

Story #3 - "Of Slaves And Kings", or "Cracks In The Tower"

So. When last we left our heroes, B, C, and D were all being shipped south to be sold into slavery. I worked out a cunning plan wherein all three would be sold to the city arena, to act as either gladiators or enslaved healers for the gladiators. Meanwhile, A was riding down to the same city to look for her party.

However, things went bad pretty quickly, when D refused to admit to being a cleric and claimed that he couldn't fight. He managed to pass his Bluff check, made a jerk of himself, and convinced the arena's buyer that he wouldn't be worth buying. At this point, I took him aside and quietly asked, "Hey, what gives", and he outlined his cunning plan: If the slavers couldn't get a good price for him because he was spoiling all of their sales, they would have to let him go.

I told him that this would not happen. I warned him that the slavers were clearly getting angry, and they were going to knock him out and sell him as a galley slave, and told him point-blank that, with his Wisdom score, he knew this plan would not succeed. He told me that he was pretty sure that I was wrong, and that the slavers would free him any time now.

So he got sold as a galley slave. As an unfortunate coincidence, he was busy for the next two sessions. (I'd half-wondered if he was quietly quitting, but he came back afterwards, so there you go.) So the next storyline just took place without him.

A reached the city, and gave her ambassadorial credentials to the gate guards, Diplomacying them and convincing them to grant her an audience. She discovered her friends in the arena, and made a deal to free them - there was a strange plague affecting the city, and mercenary groups had vanished looking for it. The players were set free, and began investigating; they soon learned that the source of the plague was the local sewers, and delved into said sewers looking for trouble.

And oh boy, did they find it. In addition to an ancient, ruined temple (where B recovered an ancient sword, Seabringer), the players discovered a goblin cleric infecting the city's water supply with dark magic, killed him, and took his stuff. His stuff included a magic ring, which B also claimed. (This is going to be super-important later). Everyone also reached Level 3.

With their problems solved, they accepted a small reward in addition to their freedom, including a few magic items for the other party members, the three heroes bought horses and left town, pushing west into Sashsin.

At which point A suddenly said, "Oh, hey, we forgot about D's character."

At which point the entire party shrugged their shoulders, declared that they'd never really liked him anyway, and continued on their way, leaving D to create a new character for the next session. His cleric remained a galley slave forever. The end.

Story #4 - "Flashpoint", or "Seriously, how did the game not end right here?"
Ok, so. We picked up a new player this session, E. E was a trigger-happy Chaotic Good gnomish sorcerer. He was the brother of a friend of mine, and was a friend of A. I figured he could only help.

While the party was setting up, D pulled up the D&D Character Generator program to put together his next character. Figuring that the party needed a rogue, he decided to create a neutral half-orc rogue character. I suggested that this might not be a great plan, since half-orcs don't make great rogues, but he was committed, so I said sure. He printed up his sheet for me to review, and I noticed the following stats: Strength 18, Dexterity 16, Constitution 15, Intelligence 16, Wisdom 15, Charisma 15.

This seemed rather high. As I was pointedly asking if these had actually been rolled, B took the sheet, looked at it, and pointed out that there was a note on the bottom for how many adjustments had been made: +48 pts. D defended his character on the grounds that the Character Generator hadn't stopped him from adding points, so he'd just kept doing it.

*sigh*

Anyway, once his character was fixed up, the party met up with him as they stopped off in a local town. A dangerous Shadow had been seen in a nearby warehouse, and the locals lacked the magic needed to destroy it, so a bounty was placed on it. The party hired D and E to help them out, promising them an equal share of the reward, and moved in.

At which point D refused to go and scout the area, convinced that the party was trying to kill him. He demanded an extra share of treasure to do his job, so the party said "screw you". He proceeded to follow them through the whole dungeon that followed, refusing to do any of his skills unless they paid extra. :smallmad:

The party ended up attacking the warehouse, and B got strength-drained quite badly, so A took his magic sword to wield as the only other party member able to do so. They found a broken secret door in the warehouse back, and followed it into a horrible set of rooms, each containing a devastating and deadly monster. They gradually butchered their way through this strange area, killing everything except for a baby brass dragon, who the gnome promptly adopted. At the end, they discovered that they'd been killing their way through a nobleman's private zoo; the shadow had been one of his exhibits, which had escaped. The nobleman was arrested for keeping insanely dangerous creatures inside town secretly, the party got a large reward, and everything was okay...

Until the disaster.

A said that, as the party still needed to deliver that sensitive information to Sashsin, they should leave town immediately. B announced that, as party leader, the party was going to stay in town so that he could recover peacefully, rather than having to risk danger on the road before his strength was restored. Everyone else in the party sided with A (even C, which caught me off-guard), so everyone except A rode out of town while B stayed behind.

B then realized that A still had his magic longsword, as well as his share of the loot, as well as his horse.

At this point, B began hatching plans to "get back" at A for "stealing control of the party". D was still refusing to do his work unless mortal danger threatened, and E came within a hair of Magic Missiling the nobleman the instant he was revealed as having done something criminal.

In addition, this was the last session that C played, as she decided that roleplaying wasn't really for her. Given the situation at this point, I did not blame her.

Everything was pretty bad, but I figured I could fix things up, right?

Next Time: I Cannot Fix Things Up.

lol I liked the part where D got sold as a galley slave.

What I don't get is how anyone would think his plan could work.

dps
2011-08-16, 08:45 PM
I'd like to see anyone spend a full night of restful sleep, do something strenuous for five to twenty minutes, and then successfully sleep for eight hours. Quite the task!


I bet I could do it, no problem. Well, if I could ever get a full night of restful sleep.

The Glyphstone
2011-08-16, 08:46 PM
lol I liked the part where D got sold as a galley slave.

What I don't get is how anyone would think his plan could work.

I'm impressed you didn't just have his character killed, if he was that useless.

hangedman1984
2011-08-16, 10:31 PM
What I don't get is how anyone would think his plan could work.

what i liked was him telling the dm how the npc would react. did he not get that the dm was the npc?

Steward
2011-08-16, 11:15 PM
what i liked was him telling the dm how the npc would react. did he not get that the dm was the npc?

I bet he's the kind of person who re-watches the same episode of "Scooby-Doo" twelve times in a row and is still shocked at the ending each and every time. "What are the odds that it would be Mean Mr. MacGregor again? Sure a funny old world, ain't it?"

Traab
2011-08-16, 11:22 PM
what i liked was him telling the dm how the npc would react. did he not get that the dm was the npc?

Seriously, had I been the dm my reaction to that statement would have been something like this.

/eye twitch "Um, you DO realize that i decide how the npcs will react, right? And that I just TOLD YOU what will happen if you insist on keeping up this plan?"

Seriously, in reality, he got lucky, im pretty sure most slavers would have just killed him on the spot so they didnt lose any more money feeding him. "Ok, so your argument is you are worthless? If you insist." /slit

Friv
2011-08-17, 12:27 AM
/eye twitch "Um, you DO realize that i decide how the npcs will react, right? And that I just TOLD YOU what will happen if you insist on keeping up this plan?"

I suspect that he underestimated me. I'm usually a pretty lenient DM, and I had just arranged things so that the party wasn't wiped out by the battle they'd found themselves in. He may have decided that this meant that he could get away with anything - given his general pushing on his next character, I'm pretty sure he was seeing how much he could get away with.

I don't really lose any sleep over the fact that I haven't seen the guy since the campaign ended, that's for sure.


This may be the most tragic, yet hilarious, D&D story i've read in a while. I'm sorry you had to come across all these bad apples at once. That said, it seems as though B and D are the main source of the party's issues, though E is beginning to shape up worryingly.

Honestly, while B and D certainly delivered the lion's share of the problems in that campaign, everyone else contributed our shares. A didn't pick up on the fact that his rivalry with B was moving from the IC arena into an honest-to-goodness grudge, and so just kept needling B and pushing things, C was detached enough that there was nothing holding the group together, E was trigger-happy, and I spent a lot of time behaving as though there weren't any problems in the hopes that they would go away.

DiBastet
2011-08-23, 08:21 PM
I don't want to say that my hemorrhoids are bloodier than yours, OP, but for the worst session you EVER had, that's a very, very brand one. It is bad, makes me feel bad, but I've seen some things that would make us all cry.

Some of pity, some of lol.

Arbane
2011-08-23, 08:50 PM
It is bad, makes me feel bad, but I've seen some things that would make us all cry.


Story time!

starwoof
2011-08-23, 08:58 PM
I don't want to say that my hemorrhoids are bloodier than yours, OP, but for the worst session you EVER had, that's a very, very brand one. It is bad, makes me feel bad, but I've seen some things that would make us all cry.

Some of pity, some of lol.

I think it's time to put your money where your mouth is. :smallbiggrin:

Shadowknight12
2011-08-23, 09:04 PM
I don't want to say that my hemorrhoids are bloodier than yours, OP, but for the worst session you EVER had, that's a very, very brand one. It is bad, makes me feel bad, but I've seen some things that would make us all cry.

Some of pity, some of lol.

In other words, kindly display lactating organs or swiftly vacate the premises.

I'm joking, of course.

DiBastet
2011-08-24, 09:06 PM
[QUOTE=Shadowknight12;11705576]In other words, kindly display lactating organs or swiftly vacate the premises.

Shadowknight12: This is full of awesome and win. You win the thread and a nice phrase for your sig.


So, let us show lactating organs... I won't enter into a lot of detail 'cause of short time avaible right now, but here are four examples I can tell exactly now.

1 - There was this session... One my players was going to DM something. I thought "That will be good..." in the most sarcastic way. He takes me to the house where we'll play, together with his old AD&D group.

You see, this group whose campaign is still running after like, 9 years, and he himself says it went nowhere because hey play like, once every three months.

We "played" six guys in one small room, full of the host's dirty clothing (it could be fun); while his sister and some whore friends spent most of the afternoon listening to some brazilian's whore-music called Funk Carioca; his dog kept barking (did I mention the small dog lived in his room?); the setting was supposed to be ultra power serious and one of the players decided to make a cleric of Teddy, the cute plush bear, including using a blue towel for a cloak; the other would be a stupid half orc monk that spent all the time making small silly jumps, like, ALL HIS TIME, and wanted a bigger kick damage because of that; and one guy, that I will call Generic Steve kept making burping jokes for like, everything.

I used the cell program that makes your cell rings as if someone called you (at the time this app was THE new tech!) after no more than 90 minutes, since I couldn't even stand character creation.


2 - A stupi friend of one stupid players wanted to DM, and I don't know how I got into that.

So everyone had their stupid chars, including a Lizardfolk that was granted a wish, and for his wish he wanted ah...ahm... male mammal reprodutory organ, because he was a reptile, you know... and was forced to marry to the ultra orc dmpc's daughter, "a thing so horrible as to have CHA 1", in the words of the DM.

The room stinked so bad, and I was entranced by the sound of a chirping giant and fat cockroach that just stood there over the guy drawer chirping (keep with me: Giant and fat cockroach that JUST STOOD THERE chirping DURING TWO HOURS AND A HALF), that I don't remember much, 'til the point that the monster of his son was born, some kind of lizard thing with furs, so horrible that the player had to say "oh c'mon dadddy's little...thing :smalleek:" and the lizardfolk was playing with him while the other character, a white weretiger dark samurai was using his chi to regrow the forest of bamboo he cut with a single blow (really); and they were such dumb players... In my games they were even decent players, if dumb, but I just realized that I was keeping them in check; and the realization of that, the furry half-orc-half-lizardfolk and the CREEPTY FAT GIANT CHIRPING COCKROACH that WAS STILL THERE made me completly freak out, throw the dice at the dm and literaly go out yelling "YOU ALL ARE TOO DUMB @#$%@ FOR ME!"


3 - In other, one of my players (I realize some similarities here...) would DM something, and I would play too. In the end we had to take 2 and 1/2 hours of bus just to get to the host's house, then we made character sheets. I remember I would make a fighter, actually a cool concept, a knifer: Someone who used a single dagger to fight, use in grapple, and to confuse enemies, who would see a guy in leather and with a knife and believe he was some kind of rogue (we use class defense bonuses, so I didn't need heavy armor to have very good ac). However I rolled 15, 13, 11, 11, 10, 10, just the absolute bare minimum so you can play, by my rules (4d6 drop lowest; you MUST have at least a total of +3 in modifiers AND at least a 15; AND if you meet the minimum but don't like it you can scrap it and re-roll -you can repeat this process up to three times-). The other rolled very well, but I'm a disaster with dice. But as I created this rule, and we all used it always, I had to play. I was so dumbly useless, but SO useless, that I was the cool nothing. I remember I said "My character will be at the corner while I go to the bathroom" and went to sleep, never to return.


4 - When the same player wanted to DM again, some years later, he was going very well in his adventure, and I was playing well developed gish archivist / master of shrouds was well loved by the party as the buffer / knowledge master / secondary fighter.

We begin with the DM banning an option I was going to take. He knew from level 1 I was going into the divine metamagic persist route (no stacking nightsticks), to persist Lore of the Gods and some party buffs. The build would come to itself when I had the mass lesser vigor, and could (BEHOLD) persist it on like, two party members (I didn't had giant CL), and last session I just leveled to the level I could cast this mass lesser vigor. The DM, who knew all about this, then says something around "no, that's to overpower! I don't mind persist, but free healing, you dm to us, you KNOW it is TOO MUCH! I won't allow this" and I said something on the line of "I spent like 3/4 of my resources on this very specific thing for the last six levels! NOW you're going to tell me you won't allow it?"

But these things happens. Lack of communication!

However, he died in a double fireball blast from the wizard (his build was something that made all his spells Good spells then using a ton of things that gave CL boosts for good spells, and using metamagic reducers (including that from phb2) to make Twin Spell a +1 metamagic only, and then blasting everything away -instead of just using SoD, because blasting isn't so efficient but much more fun-, while trying to, in vain, save our fighter with an Energy Aegis.

Okay, death happens.

The party keeps the session going, and I REALLY speed up a backup concept I had (I keep those ready, and the explanation of pseudo-background already explained to the dm just for these reasons), because the chars were on a dungeon crawl (it was a city-based, social based campaign) and they might need me. So I make this kalashtar psychic warrior and... well.. I wait. I finish in 30 minutes and wait like, three hours and a half until I can play, and while no one in the party ever used charge attacks (and this char was charge-based), the mini-boss we fight is impossible to attack with charges because of like, three or four counter-measures.

Okay, that happens! I would defend myself against charges if I were a monster.

And we keep on, my char being mostly ignored because it was a social campaign and the chars were close to each other and were mourning the death of the priest; until we find the evil wizard / crazy guy leader of the cult. My kalashtar attacks (as he surely would against that kind of manipulator of masses) and everyone gives me cold looks, until I explain "hey, he's NOT the priest!". The wizard throws some smoke that no one can defende against, I jump in the middle and none of my attacks hit.

Okay, wizards are full of counter measures! It happens!!!

He retreats, and while everyone fights the black tentacles I jump after him only to find he's a spell sovereign and was the guy behind the living spell menace, and have to fight him and two living spells.

I got dissolved. It happens. Death happens.

They beat him, and I sped up another backup sheet, of a treasure hunter trophy hunter shifter. We still had two hours, and I did send three backups to my dm after all! I finish the character sheet and after a long long wait I get to make one or two scenes with him, and when the party mostly ignores him, the DM says "Oh Diego, you know, this isn't the kind of character for this campaign. Something more like Cassius (Note: the priest) would be better".

...yeah... it happens.

In the end for next session I made an artificer master of making woundrous items and with LOTS of sneaking abilities, that was supposed to be a member of the inteligence of the nation. The char was funny (not to be confused with fun), made lots of items to the party, and his sneaking around spying was my excuse to leave the table and cook, play videogame, reading hqs because after this session the whole campaign died for me (and I'm the official DM and host of the game).



Well. Lactating organs displayed.

Shadowknight12
2011-08-25, 03:36 PM
Shadowknight12: This is full of awesome and win. You win the thread and a nice phrase for your sig.

My thanks. :smallamused:

Friv
2011-09-05, 02:12 AM
I don't think I can beat DiBastet, but I figure I should go ahead and finish my campaign rundown. So here we go...

Players For These Sessions:
A, The Wizard
B, The Fighter
D, The Rogue
E, The Sorcerer

For purposes of what's up, I will be referring to everyone by their classes from now on, since both of the clerics left.

STORY #5a - "Deals With The Devil", or "Don't Split The Party"


So... when last we left our heroes, they were riding off, leaving the fighter behind. He believed that he could catch up, though. I had a plan. There was an evil forest, with a haunted town. The town was going to go all Groundhog Day, trapping the players and forcing them to unite, and hopefully resolving some of their party issues. Boy, was I naive.

This was where I made my first mistake. The players knew they had valuable intel, but they had no sense of urgency. Hearing rumours of a haunted forest, they decided, "Hell with it, we'll ride around." The fighter, meanwhile, charged straight through on foot chasing them. By this point, everyone had rolled well enough to know that there was trouble in the forest, forcing me to run two sessions - one for the fighter, and one seperately for the rest of the party.

Jerks.

So I split the party, did some quick rewrites to give him a chance, and the fighter entered the haunted forest. He discovered a town that, at dawn, reset back to sunset. The fighter could remember the resets, but no one else could, and they seemed to be tied to the mysterious mansion in the centre of town. The fighter also met a very bored and aggravated vampire who'd been trapped in the town for centuries, who offered to work with him to destroy the mansion's powers and free them both. The fighter agreed.

I then unleashed my big surprise on him. Remember that magic ring he got when he killed a goblin cleric a while back? Well, it was an intelligent relic, essentially similar to the Redcloak if quite a lot less powerful, and dedicated to goblin dominance. It had been quietly preparing to get the fighter near a goblin tribe and then kill him, but its plans were derailed when he got caught in a magical time bubble trapping him forever. So the ring revealed itself to him, offering a truce - it would help him escape, he would return it to the goblins, and they'd call it a deal. The fighter agreed, and the ring told him that it could summon a kyton once a month, and would do so to help them deal with the mansion.

The ring was a lying b*****d, by the way. It could summon a kyton once a week. The fighter did very poorly on his Sense Motive check, and bought the lie. This will come up later.

So they charge through the mansion, and the vampire and the ring take a dislike to each other (the vampire distrusts magic rings, and the ring hates all humans and former humans). The fighter takes advantage of this in the final battle... by allying with the ring to take out the vampire. :smallconfused: He doesn't trust the vampire, see. Can't trust those sneaky undead. But the genocidal ring whose former master you killed? Totally trustworthy.

So, yeah. That was a thing. The town was saved, and the townsfolk were super-impressed by the fighter's ballsy lies about how he singlehandedly saved the day. He then went on his way.

STORY #5b - "Those Darned Aranea"
This is a pretty short one, mostly setting up for the roaring disaster that was Story #6. The players came to a large town on the edge of Sashsin and discovered about fifty adventurers onsite. It seemed that a local village of aranea, magical shapeshifting spider-monsters, was stealing townsfolk for their dark magic, and the kingdom had posted a call for people to kill the lot of them. Since aranea are pretty powerful, the adventurers were forming an army instead of going in group by group. The players got suspicious, and did some investigating - it turned out that the aranea believed that humans were kidnapping them as grotesqueries and for magic harvesting. The real culprits were a large group of goblins hiding out in a ruined castle nearby, who were hoping to push both sides into war to sap Sashsin's supply of trained soldiers. The party won the respect of the aranea for proving this, and resolved to do something about this goblin problem. And with fifty adventurers handy, that should be a snap, right?

STORY #6 - "Tucker's Goblins", or "Everything Is On Fire"
So, the wizard suggested that this was a tricky situation, and the group should probably start organizing some people to investigate this ruined area. The sorcerer counter-suggested that the entire adventuring army should charge the goblin fort at once, and he was way more persuasive. So the group, now Level 5, led a horde of adventurers on a crazed charge while the wizard, and a handful of unpersuaded people, stayed behind to do research.

The team reached the entrance, charged in, and promptly set off a trap that none of the rogues in the lead spotted. This triggered a massive cave-in that killed six adventurers. Fortunately, the wizard had been following at a discreet distance, and helped to dig out the survivors. Only eight adventurers died, but several more were injured and decided to retreat. At the end, there were thirty or thirty-five adventurers left.

At about this point, the fighter arrived. I told him that he heard what was going on, and he decided that it was an excellent chance to slip into the goblin fort and hand the ring over, after which he was going to ally with the goblins to kill the wizard. His plan was to claim that the wizard was solely responsible for the goblin cleric's death, in the belief that once the goblins killed the wizard, he could take back control of the adventuring party. Somehow, he missed the fact that the ring had been there when the cleric died, and mistook my shock and befuddlement for approval. So there was that.

Meanwhile, with the rocks cleared away, the party resumed the assault, somewhat more cautiously. This did not save them when they reached the real entrance to the fort, and triggered several pit traps, after which five goblins appeared and tossed alchemists' fire every which way. Three of the five were killed, and the other two fled. The army gave chase, running straight up a staircase and into two ballistae.

Ballistae do a lot of damage to low-level adventurers. Fortunately, by which I mean deliberately on my part, the PCs were not in the front ranks and avoided being pulped.

So at about this point, the sorcerer and rogue finally agreed that a more cunning plan was in order, now that they were down to ten or so followers. They agreed to divide their forces; the ten adventurers would fake some more charges, not actually advancing, while the higher-level folks snuck in a side entrance and blew apart the goblin formations. This plan was much more solid.

Meanwhile, the fighter reached a different side entrance, as guided by his ring. He realized that he didn't speak goblin, but the ring promised to act as a translator. This seemed perfectly reasonable to the fighter. :smallannoyed: I gave it one last try - as the rest of the party was sneaking by, they heard the fighter calling out in goblin that he had murdered a revered political figure and was here to kill everyone else. And that was where the last problem occurred.

The wizard was the only player who spoke Goblin. When the other two said, "Hey, isn't that Fighter? Should he be yelling in a goblin-strewn cavern? What's he saying?", the wizard said, "Ehn, he's fine. This'll be a good distraction, let's keep going."
:smallfurious:

So the fighter finally realized that the ring was messing with him. In a feat of truly abject stupidity, he swallowed the ring so that the goblins couldn't reach it, and set about trying to outfox them. Since they were firing arrows at him, he climbed up over the cave entrance, and unloaded his truly staggering amounts of alchemist's fire to hold them off. From there, he was going to... I don't know. I don't have a clue what his plan was, since Phase I involved trapping himself on a narrow rock ledge directly over a sea of molten flame that he had created. It didn't really matter, because Phase II of the ring's plan was to summon a kyton.

The fighter's player got pretty mad at me, shouting that the ring could only do that once a month. I pointed out that the ring was a liar, and the fighter had never bothered to have any sort of Identification done on it before he started trusting it, and that I had been rolling Bluff against Sense Motive. It wasn't my fault his Sense Motive was +0. Anyway, the kyton hit him, dealing damage, and he failed to hit it back because he had no sword drawn. So he decided to escape by jumping.

Thirty feet down.

Into the sea of fire that he had just created.

And that was how the fighter died.

The rest of the party cleared out the goblin post in a surprise attack, and then pursued to find the six goblins who had been shooting at the fighter, along with the kyton. They killed both, and discovered that there were no others; they had fled when they realized the adventurers were coming. So twelve level 1 goblins with some traps and alchemist's fire had successfully killed thirty-odd adventurers of levels 1-3. It was a good day to be a goblin, although not to be those twelve in particular. The party took the fighter's stuff, found the ring, and Magic Missiled it to slag. They called it a win.

Story #7 - "No, NOW everything is on fire", or "Fighter Goes Bananas"
Short one. The fighter made his new character - a half-elf monk, a historian who was wandering the path the players had taken up to this point and who had seemingly decided that the fighter was the one truly responsible for all of the great deeds the players had accomplished. His plan was, as mentioned way back when, to put the wizard on trial for causing the fighter's death. He suggested that the cleric character played by his girlfriend would absolutely support this version of events; he'd checked with her, and she was totally on board.

Uh-huh.

But for now, he wanted to gather evidence, so he joined up with the party as they finally reached the royal city of Sashsin. The players delivered their missive to the local guard commander, who read through it - it was information about a terrible goblin threat to the area. In fact, the missive suggested that the goblins were planning an attack against the royal city itself, aided by a wizard from whom they had been purchasing magical goods.

At this point, the city basically exploded.

See, the plot had a twist that I thought was very unique (in my defense, it was Grade 9) - the goblins had developed gunpowder. They were enacting a Gunpowder Plot, filling the basements and towers of various important buildings with gunpowder, and preparing to set them all off with a magical trigger. Since the gunpowder itself wasn't magical, the city's defenses didn't know it was there. The more time that passed before the players arrived, the more time the goblins would have to prepare. When they arrived with the message, it was public enough for the goblins to go ahead and detonate everything.

They had not had time to wire the city guards' barracks, or the houses of several major merchants, but they had had time to cover the royal palace, all three major temples in the city, the Mages' Guild, the city courthouse, and the Adventurer's Guild. All of the buildings exploded, and most of the people in them were killed. The royal line was obliterated, and with no recoverable bodies through the debris, flame, and devastation, reviving them was impossible. The goblins' first strike had been a masterstroke.

After quite a lot of investigation that learned all of the above, the players resolved to track down the wizard who had sold the goblins their triggers, since he was their only lead.

Story #8 - "Death Tower", or "End of the Road"
So a level 5 party reaches a wizard's tower, and yell up at him for a while. None of them can fly, and they decide that having the rogue climb up alone would be rather unsafe, so they decide to go up and chat the old-fashioned way. Sadly, this is a wizard who had made a lot of enemies, so the lower levels of the towers are full of traps and danger. Unbeknownst to the party, but knownst to me, the NPC wizard had a friend, a rogue who helped him sell his goods. The goal was for the final fight to be against a level 6 wizard who wasn't fully prepped and a level 6 rogue who was decently tough. Four on two, I figured one level difference wouldn't be too bad. I misjudged my party.

The players get in a couple of fights, which are super-easy because the sorcerer blows his strongest spell in every round of combat in order to waste the enemy. They don't stop to rest, because they don't want the enemy wizard to escape, so he's out of second-level spells by the time they're halfway up. The wizard is a lot more cautious, using a few spells here and there. What I notice about here, though, is that the party has about one healing potion between them, and no one capable of casting healing spells. Attrition is becoming a serious concern. A minor trap that takes away a couple of hit points is a big deal. This was unanticipated.

And then they reach the fireball. The idea is that it's a double-trap, and a chance for the party to wipe out the rogue and make the end fight easier. There's a giant fireball that springs to life as the players approach. It is actually merely an illusion that cannot hurt anyone, but sets off an alarm one floor up. The enemy rogue sneaks down to see what's going on, hides, and sneak attacks the first person through the fire (assuming they don't spot him) with a sap, knocking them out for later interrogation if he's lucky enough to take out all of their HP (unlikely, I figured, but possible at 3d6+1d3). Then the party gets a chance to wail on him before, realizing how outmatched he is, he flees (or alternately gets killed, depending on how much wailing takes place.) If the party is fast enough to solve the illusion and charges through, they can catch the enemy rogue before he reaches them and make their lives a lot easier.

At least, that was the plan. What actually happens is that the party bickers for ten minutes about how to get through the fire, the wizard figures out it's an illusion, and the rogue argues with her. The monk sides with the rogue because he still hates the wizard, and the sorcerer has no idea. Finally, in a fit of anger, the wizard strides through the fire, yelling that she's perfectly fine.

As it turns out, 3d6+1d3+1 is super-effective against 15 hit points. The wizard drops in one hit.

From the party's point of view, she walks into a fire, lets out a strangled yelp, and stops talking. When they call after her... no response. So they immediately start a long debate about what to do now. Clearly, the fire is dangerous. She's probably already dead. *facepalm*

So the rogue has time to drag her back upstairs for finding out what the hell even is going on.

The monk finally works up the courage to brave the flames, and figures out what's going on. The three remaining party members pursue. At this point, I have a problem - the party is down one member, a second member is almost out of useable spells, and the other two are injured. Their enemies are totally fine, not weakened like I thought they would be. This fight is turning from challenging towards overwhelming. But that's okay. We've got a rogue onhand; let's make it a skill challenge.

The party reaches the enemy wizard's study, and find him ready and waiting for them, with his rogue friend at his side and the wizard PC tied up and unconscious behind him. The enemy wizard says, "Welcome to my tower, I suppose. Would you mind telling me why you're..."

"MAGIC MISSILE" yells the sorcerer.

What.

He's pretty sure, he explains, that he can surprise attack the wizard with a magic missile, and that 2d4+2 damage should take him down. I ask him if he's totally sure about going ahead with this. He says yes. So he magic missiles the enemy wizard.

So the party's rogue promptly attacks the party's sorcerer, hoping to survive the fight. The monk joins in, and the two of them beat their own party member senseless to try and not get into a fight.

They then apologize profusely, explain the situation, and ask what they can do to make up for it. They ultimately agree to trade the sorcerer to the evil wizard and walk away with information leading them to their next target. The sorcerer is killed by the evil wizard as revenge for shooting at him.

And that was the end of the game. The player of the sorcerer took it pretty poorly, and said that he wasn't going to play if the other players were just going to kill him for taking initiative. The players of the wizard and the monk were barely speaking to each other, and we all just basically put down our dice and walked away. We didn't even discuss it, really. I just never called anyone to see when they were next available, and no one ever called me to see what was up with the group.

I'm still friends with the wizard's player, and I've seen the sorcerer's player around from time to time, but I never saw the players of the fighter/monk or the cleric/rogue again.

Elixia
2011-09-05, 04:31 AM
jesus!

and i thought my last session was bad!! thats just ... where are the words?

molten_dragon
2011-09-05, 05:06 AM
The worst game I've played so far was back in college. There were about six of us who played a regular Friday night game with three of us (myself included) who took turns DM'ing.

One week, one of the other guys told us one of his friends was coming and he wanted to DM for us. We were slightly skeptical, but the guy told us his friend was a good DM, so we went with it. At that point in the campaign, our characters were something like 12th or 13th level (I don't remember exactly). I was playing a sorcerer.

When he got there, things went downhill fast. We had ended the last session in some town, and the DM started by having the town guard arrest us for some trumped up charges. When we resisted arrest (being mainly a neutral and chaotic party) they beat us unconscious with ease. I was now fairly worried.

We woke up alone in several underground jail cells. When I immediately began trying to escape, the DM told me that the cells were covered with an anti-magic field and none of my magic would work.

After a day or so, some guards came and told me that I was going to get a chance to fight for my freedom in the gladiatorial arena. I get drug out there, and facing me in the arena are 8 advanced will-o-wisps. I'm fighting them alone. Oddly enough, it seemed like the encounter had been set up specifically to make me fight things I was weak against (and it was). I decided I wasn't playing along any more, and since the DM specifically said I was able to use my magic again, I decided I was just leaving. I told the DM I was teleporting out, and he told me the entire place was surrounded by a dimension lock spell. Okay fine, I'll fly out. He tells me there's a roof. Okay, I'll blow a hole in it. He tells me it's protected by a wall of force. Okay, I'll disintegrate the wall of force then blow a hole in it. He says it's also protected by a prismatic wall. Okay, I get it, this railroad only goes one direction, and there's no stops where I can get off.

I'm very close to the point of taking my stuff and going home, but I don't want to be that guy, so I decide to fight the will-o-wisps. I polymorph into a blue dragon, cast energy resistance (lightning) on myself, and slowly chomp them to bits. At the end, the king was magnanimous and let me go for winning. All-in-all, the combat plus me trying to escape took an hour and a half. And remember, there were five other guys there, all of whom were doing nothing the whole time this was going on.

And that was basically the way the night went. We got called up one at a time to take on one-on-one gladiator fights. Most lasted for at least an hour, and every single one was designed to render our best class features ineffective (I remember the rogue was fighting some sort of undead mind flayer and got his brain sucked out). Four out of the six of us died (besides me, only one other guy made it out alive). The session lasted about seven hours total, and we each got to play a little over an hour of it.

Afterwards, we were sitting around chatting for a bit after the DM left, and we told the guy who brought him never to do so again. He apologized profusely and said he didn't realize his friend was going to do something like that.

As for our characters, we basically just pretended that session had never happened.

Morghen
2011-09-05, 06:46 AM
The worst game I've played so far was back in college.I like your... optimism?

Fatalism?

DiBastet
2011-09-05, 08:14 AM
Wow, your hemorrhoids are not bloodier as mine, but they itch as well.


PS: Ugh. Gross.

Morghen
2011-09-05, 09:20 AM
made me completly freak out, throw the dice at the dm and literaly go out yelling "YOU ALL ARE TOO DUMB @#$%@ FOR ME!"Yes, that definitely was somebody's worst session.

Greenish
2011-09-06, 06:21 PM
I thought "That will be good..." in the most sarcastic way.

…his sister and some whore friends spent most of the afternoon listening to some brazilian's whore-music…

…I used the cell program that makes your cell rings as if someone called you (at the time this app was THE new tech!) after no more than 90 minutes, since I couldn't even stand character creation...


…A stupi friend of one stupid players wanted to DM…

…So everyone had their stupid chars…

…made me completly freak out, throw the dice at the dm and literaly go out yelling "YOU ALL ARE TOO DUMB @#$%@ FOR ME!"…


…But as I created this rule, and we all used it always, I had to play. I was so dumbly useless, but SO useless, that I was the cool nothing. I remember I said "My character will be at the corner while I go to the bathroom" and went to sleep, never to return...While I do not doubt those games weren't great, are you sure there's not something wrong with your attitude? :smalleek:

PairO'Dice Lost
2011-09-06, 08:13 PM
Heh, I love reading these threads. Not only do they illustrate to me examples of truly horrendous gaming, but when certain terrible archetypes of poor DMing rear their heads, it gives me ideas and inspirations for things for me to do when I DM games to parody these archetypes.

Like that time I parodied the "epic spotlight-stealing DMPC" thing. Good old bread wizard...

Details, please?

DiBastet
2011-09-06, 09:07 PM
While I do not doubt those games weren't great, are you sure there's not something wrong with your attitude? :smalleek:

Well, I admit I wasn't in my best at these times, however, one must understand that this is the limit. You know, when you push so far as to see the worst mankind, or in this case, DiBastetkind has to offer...

Greyfeld
2011-09-06, 11:07 PM
So, let us show lactating organs... I won't enter into a lot of detail 'cause of short time avaible right now, but here are four examples I can tell exactly now.

--SNIP--

Sorry, but after wasting several minutes of my life reading your post, I can only conclude that you're the problem in the groups, not the other players.

DiBastet
2011-09-07, 07:54 AM
Sorry, but after wasting several minutes of my life reading your post, I can only conclude that you're the problem in the groups, not the other players.

That's funny. But okay, I'll accept that, because of course that you were outside it and don't know everything. In only one time (the worst, that of the trowing dice around) everyone was "having fun", and even them the other players said "oh, it WAS stupid, but better than standing in front of the pc the whole day".

Greyfeld
2011-09-07, 10:49 AM
{{scrubbed}}

Traab
2011-09-07, 10:54 AM
I just find it hard to sympathize with you due to your rambling about whore friends and whore music. Definitely sounds like an unpleasant place to play a game, I just find it hard to feel bad for you with those kinds of descriptors being used.

Greyfeld
2011-09-07, 11:08 AM
I just find it hard to sympathize with you due to your rambling about whore friends and whore music. Definitely sounds like an unpleasant place to play a game, I just find it hard to feel bad for you with those kinds of descriptors being used.

That's another part of it, but I wanted to tackle something more tangible than the words used to express his opinion, since we're all guilty of being particularly belligerent at one time or another, especially while frustrated or upset.

DogbertLinc
2011-09-07, 12:39 PM
I just find it hard to sympathize with you due to your rambling about whore friends and whore music. Definitely sounds like an unpleasant place to play a game, I just find it hard to feel bad for you with those kinds of descriptors being used.

It's hard to sympathize, because you don't know the kidn of horror ir is on your ears. Try imagining Soulja Boy on a bad day.

Traab
2011-09-07, 12:41 PM
It's hard to sympathize, because you don't know the kidn of horror ir is on your ears. Try imagining Soulja Boy on a bad day.

I have to sit next to my niece while she endlessly loops justin beiber. Music no longer has the capacity to harm me. I have become damage resistant to horrible music. (not to be confused with whore music)

Tyndmyr
2011-09-07, 12:58 PM
But at least he had me acknowledge the changes were made. The other caster only traded all his level 6 spells for Disintegrate, but he did so in secret, and I didn't find out until the actual casting.

I find it's quite common for DMs to not expect or want me to give a list of what I'm preparing. I write it out, but don't bother to read it off unless asked. I assume they know I'll be prepping a new set of spells daily, since it's pretty standard.

I expect the reason they prepared the things they like is simple. They want to control their chars.


For all that, I still wouldn't say the act of resting five minutes into the dungeon was antagonizing--but it WAS blatant metagaming.

Not even a little. Caution in dungeons is reasonable. Resting before alerting all the occupants is also perfectly logical IC. Not metagaming at all.

On the other hand, expecting his character to react to your NPC a specific way because the GM is the one controlling the char...that kind of IS metagaming.

Metagaming isn't just a synonym for "I don't like it".

Sipex
2011-09-07, 02:24 PM
My worst session as a DM wasn't too bad but here it is anyways.

So I played 4th edition (and put your jokes away, that wasn't the problem) with the same group for just over two years. During this time not everyone has been able to make every session (except myself and two players).

This session was special because one of the players, our fighter, was going to miss her first session ever. I couldn't help it, it was either play without her or don't play for a month (and we were already pushing it). It wasn't a story heavy session anyways and we've all missed our share of games.

Well, turns out she wasn't happy about this, she quickly became withdrawn and snippy and her boyfriend (one of the players) has the gall to tell me that she's really unhappy about missing the session and that we should change it.

Really? The others have all missed sessions before and been complete adults about it. She can miss ONE session.

Some context. This comes a couple sessions after a 6 month dry spell caused by not being able to get the entire party together. I stated an ultimatum. Either we stop playing because I don't want to work on a game if we'll never play it anyways or we bite the bullet and go once a month on the most convenient day. This was the most convenient day, out of 6 players and myself she was the only one who couldn't make it so I decided to forge on.

This is all set up for the session.

Game day comes around and we all arrive on time and ready to play. The Rogue (Fighter's BF) takes me aside and lets me know she's really upset and asks I PLEASE PLEASE try not to leave her out of future games. I apologize (Sorry she's upset about this) and explain that everyone agreed to this and we get to gaming.

We have a party of 5 this session, three experienced players who have been around for a while (Rogue, Warlock, Wizard) and two newbies (Psion, Ranger). I decide to start things off by giving the party some simple quest hooks from their guild to get the newbies warmed up and also to get some fighting in (as we spent the entire last session roleplaying for the most part).

Warlock is all gung-ho to quest but Rogue and Wizard are so incredibly frightened by how Fighter might react if she misses anything crucial (the quests weren't crucial, they were things like 'Save my farm from goblins!') that they right out refuse to do quests.

Rogue and Wizard vote we go off and do our own things. I only have Warlock voting against this now and the two newbies are too afraid to vote so my hands are tied.

So Warlock is pissed off while Ranger and Psion sit there twiddling their thumbs because they're new, they don't know how to go off on their own yet. They're barely involved in the story. Wizard says his character heads off to study for his exam (an actual exam I wrote for him) and he pulls out some books to actually study. Warlock, pissed off (more at Rogue than Wizard) heads off with Wizard to study her own in-game backstory stuff in the library with his help and Rogue goes off to do recon leaving me desperately trying to work the newbies in somewhere and leaving the session frustratingly dull.

TLDR: One player misses the game, scares others into inaction, session becomes a slug fest as I struggle to give new, intimidated players something to do.

Greyfeld
2011-09-07, 02:49 PM
My worst session as a DM wasn't too bad but here it is anyways.

So I played 4th edition (and put your jokes away, that wasn't the problem) with the same group for just over two years. During this time not everyone has been able to make every session (except myself and two players).

This session was special because one of the players, our fighter, was going to miss her first session ever. I couldn't help it, it was either play without her or don't play for a month (and we were already pushing it). It wasn't a story heavy session anyways and we've all missed our share of games.

Well, turns out she wasn't happy about this, she quickly became withdrawn and snippy and her boyfriend (one of the players) has the gall to tell me that she's really unhappy about missing the session and that we should change it.

Really? The others have all missed sessions before and been complete adults about it. She can miss ONE session.

Some context. This comes a couple sessions after a 6 month dry spell caused by not being able to get the entire party together. I stated an ultimatum. Either we stop playing because I don't want to work on a game if we'll never play it anyways or we bite the bullet and go once a month on the most convenient day. This was the most convenient day, out of 6 players and myself she was the only one who couldn't make it so I decided to forge on.

This is all set up for the session.

Game day comes around and we all arrive on time and ready to play. The Rogue (Fighter's BF) takes me aside and lets me know she's really upset and asks I PLEASE PLEASE try not to leave her out of future games. I apologize (Sorry she's upset about this) and explain that everyone agreed to this and we get to gaming.

We have a party of 5 this session, three experienced players who have been around for a while (Rogue, Warlock, Wizard) and two newbies (Psion, Ranger). I decide to start things off by giving the party some simple quest hooks from their guild to get the newbies warmed up and also to get some fighting in (as we spent the entire last session roleplaying for the most part).

Warlock is all gung-ho to quest but Rogue and Wizard are so incredibly frightened by how Fighter might react if she misses anything crucial (the quests weren't crucial, they were things like 'Save my farm from goblins!') that they right out refuse to do quests.

Rogue and Wizard vote we go off and do our own things. I only have Warlock voting against this now and the two newbies are too afraid to vote so my hands are tied.

So Warlock is pissed off while Ranger and Psion sit there twiddling their thumbs because they're new, they don't know how to go off on their own yet. They're barely involved in the story. Wizard says his character heads off to study for his exam (an actual exam I wrote for him) and he pulls out some books to actually study. Warlock, pissed off (more at Rogue than Wizard) heads off with Wizard to study her own in-game backstory stuff in the library with his help and Rogue goes off to do recon leaving me desperately trying to work the newbies in somewhere and leaving the session frustratingly dull.

TLDR: One player misses the game, scares others into inaction, session becomes a slug fest as I struggle to give new, intimidated players something to do.

That's one of the big reasons why people hate involving girlfriends/boyfriends in their games. Having that Significant Other there dramatically changes the "group of guys sitting around, shooting the crap" dynamic that makes tabletop gaming so much fun.

While I would be severely pissed at the Wizard as well for that crap he pulled, I also feel sort of sorry for him. I can only imagine the metric ton of whining and bitching he had to put up with afterward, because he couldn't manage to convince you (as the GM) to get the group to revolve around her appearance (or lack thereof).

Course, it's his fault for going out with such an incredibly sociopathic bitch, but that's another topic entirely lol.

Sipex
2011-09-07, 02:51 PM
It was the Rogue who was dating her. The wizard was simply scared of her because she is fairly scary.

Needless to say, we don't play with her anymore.

masterjoda99
2011-09-07, 05:43 PM
Details, please?

It was a game of Burning Wheel, and I had an npc to accompany my two players for that session. He was very much an optimized sorcerer character, high will, high forte, W6 sorcery, the works. Ordinarily this would be a character that was all set up to completely outshine the other two, just like the dreaded spotlight stealing DMPC, except for the small detail where the character only had one single spell: Raise Bread.

theMycon
2011-09-07, 10:38 PM
(keep with me: Giant and fat cockroach that JUST STOOD THERE chirping DURING TWO HOURS AND A HALF),

If it bothered you that much, why didn't you kill it? It's not hard to spray a bug with some soapy water, especially if it's sitting still and chirping.

Trellan
2011-09-07, 10:52 PM
It's hard to sympathize, because you don't know the kidn of horror ir is on your ears. Try imagining Soulja Boy on a bad day.

I don't really like Soulja Boy, but I wouldn't, even on a bad day, describe it as "*incredibly offensive racial slur for black people* music". "Whore" might be less offensive, but it is still definitely insulting, so it's more or less the same thing.

Shadowknight12
2011-09-07, 11:17 PM
I don't really like Soulja Boy, but I wouldn't, even on a bad day, describe it as "*incredibly offensive racial slur for black people* music". "Whore" might be less offensive, but it is still definitely insulting, so it's more or less the same thing.

Not to play Devil's Advocate, but I would just like to point out (if it makes any difference at all) that "whore" isn't that insulting in his country. The cultures are different, and "whore" doesn't carry the emotional impact that carries in the US.

Trellan
2011-09-08, 03:44 AM
Not to play Devil's Advocate, but I would just like to point out (if it makes any difference at all) that "whore" isn't that insulting in his country. The cultures are different, and "whore" doesn't carry the emotional impact that carries in the US.

While that is certainly interesting and something I did not know, it doesn't change the situation much. He's posting on a board predominately used by people from countries that will find it offensive, and we were discussing how it interferes with our ability to sympathize with him. It certainly did for me. Also, you shouldn't start out a post wherein you play devil's advocate by saying you're not playing devil's advocate. :smalltongue:

Steward
2011-09-08, 07:24 AM
Not to play Devil's Advocate, but I would just like to point out (if it makes any difference at all) that "whore" isn't that insulting in his country. The cultures are different, and "whore" doesn't carry the emotional impact that carries in the US.

Not to play Devil's Advocate, but I'm not comfortable with the idea of you being made a Saint of my Church.

DiBastet
2011-09-08, 08:10 AM
People, just to make clear to you, the word whore here carries a very deep meaning. Of course, it's also a lot about the way the female carries herself than it is about her, ahm, "profession". There are the different languages, but I warn you that our equivalent to "whore" is a serious offense that somehow women of the Funk Carioca are proud of being called. Sympathize with me as much as you want, but don't thing it's a "soft" word or that I meant it as soft.

Those who want more information, please refer to the spoiler.

In most circles, being called a whore would be a deep insult, including my circles. However, there is a very very wrong idea around some parts of the country, specially in the Rio de Janeiro about this kind of funk carioca. It boils down to: People know what the music is about, things offensive to the "good manners" and that puts man in a position of badass and women, well, in the position of a piece of thing to be used, the hotter the more used. So, being used by men equals good thing.

This whole idea and musical identity was basically made by men, who dominate this kind of music and culture, so it is fairly easy to understand why men would put them in this position, and the women of this culture, well, they follow it and live it, after all it's the culture all around them.

So, not only people know what our equivalents to "bitch" and "whore" are (in this case an "easy woman", that does anyone without knowing them, that makes what men want, that doesn't carry herself with dignity, has low self-respect, is a plaything for men, dresses like a whore, acts like one, etc etc), but worse, but the men (by the way of the music) openly call the women of their music like that, with the tones of something bad, and every hot or desirable woman of this socitety should be exactly like this. The women, then proudly display these "qualities", while the men use them and the music mock them, and call themselves openly our equivalent to your "whore" (actually there are three slang words to it, but mostly they could be trasnslated as whore, and a little as bitch).

Of course, you can see this on society level, and reflected on personal levels. For two examples, there's the lyrics of a famous song of this funk carioca, that says "I'm a whore, I a'm hot, I'll do only married men. I'm a whore, I am hot, I will @#$% your man", and the famous example of a pair of underage female twins that call themselves "As Cachorras Piriguetes" (you could translate as "whore bitches") and their photos. The photos is something you see everywhere, young women showing themselves on the cam. Its the name they are proud to call themselves that is the point.

So, with that, here on my country people call everything that is made for the females of the funk carioca, be it funk music, culture, even clothing, as our equivalent of "whore (something)". Of course the woman always suffers more in society, but the whole idea that society has about them is basically "it's expected for men to try to use them and treat them as toys, but for them to accept it and be proud is the wrong thing.

This more or less explain for those interested in the meaning.

Now, to the important part.


If it bothered you that much, why didn't you kill it? It's not hard to spray a bug with some soapy water, especially if it's sitting still and chirping.

Oh, I tried. Somehow I believe it was an advanced version with high AC or something. I tried to hit it twice and it escaped. But it just got back and stood there. Also, while the others were also amazed by the bug, the host seemed to not care that much.

Well, he was a very lazy guy, but now I believe he was just jaded for trying so much and not hitting it. It's the only thing of that afternoon that makes us laugh as a group. :smallbiggrin:

Steward
2011-09-08, 11:30 AM
Oh, I tried. Somehow I believe it was an advanced version with high AC or something. I tried to hit it twice and it escaped. But it just got back and stood there. Also, while the others were also amazed by the bug, the host seemed to not care that much.

Are you sure? That bug was probably his DMPC, which is why its reflex saves are so ridiculous. What you should have done was have your Fighter flank it so that you can sneak attack for massive damage.

Tyndmyr
2011-09-08, 11:35 AM
Those who want more information, please refer to the spoiler.

If you ever watched Clerks 2, it sounds suspiciously like "Im taking it back!". In context, it still sounds like it's being used offensively.

The games may have been bad, but referring to people present as whores and throwing dice at people don't really make me feel a lot of sympathy for you.

Shadowknight12
2011-09-08, 01:19 PM
While that is certainly interesting and something I did not know, it doesn't change the situation much. He's posting on a board predominately used by people from countries that will find it offensive, and we were discussing how it interferes with our ability to sympathize with him. It certainly did for me. Also, you shouldn't start out a post wherein you play devil's advocate by saying you're not playing devil's advocate. :smalltongue:

That's quite correct, I was merely trying to give slightly more context to the situation. Apparently I was completely and utterly mistaken. Oh, well. My apologies.


Not to play Devil's Advocate, but I'm not comfortable with the idea of you being made a Saint of my Church.

Whoosh goes the point right over my head. No idea what you're saying here.

dps
2011-09-08, 02:34 PM
If you ever watched Clerks 2, it sounds suspiciously like "Im taking it back!". In context, it still sounds like it's being used offensively.

The games may have been bad, but referring to people present as whores and throwing dice at people don't really make me feel a lot of sympathy for you.

It's not just that; it's the contempt he seems to have for the idea of someone else DMing that he expresses in his story. Going in with that attitude isn't a good way to have a happy gaming experience. Maybe there's more cultural content that I'm being insensitive to, but going into a game session that they guy DMing is the "stupid friend of one of the stupid players" sounds like a bad attitude to me.

Traab
2011-09-08, 04:27 PM
Ok guys, lets move on. Or, as this guy likes to put it, ENOUGH! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd9McnrxVn4#t=2m26s) Helps to have your volume at a decent level. :p

Thorcrest
2011-09-08, 04:49 PM
Well, I thought his games were pretty bad and did not really pay much attention to the "offensive" language... either because I am desensitized or maybe because the language I would use in a similar situation is much worse... for example I once called my DM, who is a very good friend that I now live with a "@#&%%^ faced little &&^$ %$*^@@ )(^%$!!! *%&!" (No, that is not the appropriate numbers of symbols to letters either, so no guess what I said... well you can but you get the idea.) just for throwing three crits in a row against me (dice can enrage me sometimes :smallredface:) anyways... enough about me... let's go over all he said to find the bad stuff:



We "played" six guys in one small room, full of the host's dirty clothing (it could be fun); while his sister and some whore friends spent most of the afternoon listening to some brazilian's whore-music called Funk Carioca; his dog kept barking (did I mention the small dog lived in his room?); Use of the word whore aside, six guys in a small dirty room with a lot of noise is just bad form and does not make for a fun night.


the setting was supposed to be ultra power serious and one of the players decided to make a cleric of Teddy, the cute plush bear, including using a blue towel for a cloak;

This hurts my brain it is so dumb... for a game that is meant to be serious???


the other would be a stupid half orc monk that spent all the time making small silly jumps, like, ALL HIS TIME, and wanted a bigger kick damage because of that;

Not terrible, but really... wanted better damage? Also, he was always jumping... it makes the character silly in any setting ever: Chatting up a girl? not gonna work. Talking to a lord? "Why is he jumping?"


and one guy, that I will call Generic Steve kept making burping jokes for like, everything.

Was he between the ages of 7-14? Otherwise that is very, very stupid!


I used the cell program that makes your cell rings as if someone called you (at the time this app was THE new tech!) after no more than 90 minutes, since I couldn't even stand character creation.

I don't think I could either!


2 - A stupi friend of one stupid players wanted to DM, and I don't know how I got into that.

So everyone had their stupid chars, including a Lizardfolk that was granted a wish, and for his wish he wanted ah...ahm... male mammal reprodutory organ, because he was a reptile, you know... and was forced to marry to the ultra orc dmpc's daughter, "a thing so horrible as to have CHA 1", in the words of the DM.

The occasional crude joke can be very amusing, as can the crude running joke, but making your character THE joke is just bad form and can definitely be a game ruiner if you want a serious game. But the start is a bad mind set. but I might have called them stupid two if this was normal for them.


The room stinked so bad, and I was entranced by the sound of a chirping giant and fat cockroach that just stood there over the guy drawer chirping (keep with me: Giant and fat cockroach that JUST STOOD THERE chirping DURING TWO HOURS AND A HALF),

Ewww, just ewww.



'til the point that the monster of his son was born, some kind of lizard thing with furs, so horrible that the player had to say "oh c'mon dadddy's little...thing :smalleek:" and the lizardfolk was playing with him

Ummm... what? I don't understand? How could anyone allow this? Not game ruining, but it does require some serious brain bleach!


a white weretiger dark samurai was using his chi to regrow the forest of bamboo he cut with a single blow (really)

Was the sword from Final Fantasy? Only they have swords that big! :smalltongue: What level were you guys... I'm sure with enough levels and cheese it could work otherwise, I think the DM is just allowing the players to do whatever they like, which can be bad if this is what they do. Again though, if that is the type of game you like I don't think that would ruin a session, obviously, but if they said it was a serious game... either they lied or have not yet looked up the word serious in the dictionary.



3 - In other, one of my players (I realize some similarities here...) would DM something, and I would play too. In the end we had to take 2 and 1/2 hours of bus just to get to the host's house, then we made character sheets. I remember I would make a fighter, actually a cool concept, a knifer: Someone who used a single dagger to fight, use in grapple, and to confuse enemies, who would see a guy in leather and with a knife and believe he was some kind of rogue (we use class defense bonuses, so I didn't need heavy armor to have very good ac). However I rolled 15, 13, 11, 11, 10, 10, just the absolute bare minimum so you can play, by my rules (4d6 drop lowest; you MUST have at least a total of +3 in modifiers AND at least a 15; AND if you meet the minimum but don't like it you can scrap it and re-roll -you can repeat this process up to three times-). The other rolled very well, but I'm a disaster with dice. But as I created this rule, and we all used it always, I had to play. I was so dumbly useless, but SO useless, that I was the cool nothing. I remember I said "My character will be at the corner while I go to the bathroom" and went to sleep, never to return.

Here the other players don't seem to be the problem, you just didn't have a good character (stat-wise, concept sounds fun), but you could have roleplayed to have fun or just played him to see the limits of your abilities, butyou chose not too, which I don't understand so this one isn't a bad session so much as you not liking the character and leaving, but nobody really seems to have mentionned this yet... just the whore stuff, which again, I don't mind.

I don't have time to go over the last one, but it is just generally a bad luck session with a bit of DM not letting you do what you want all of a sudden... I'll also post my worst session in here later when I have time.

Sith_Happens
2011-09-13, 01:16 AM
Whoosh goes the point right over my head. No idea what you're saying here.

Steward was referencing the origin of the phrase "Devil's Advocate."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_advocate

Friv
2011-09-13, 02:09 AM
That's one of the big reasons why people hate involving girlfriends/boyfriends in their games. Having that Significant Other there dramatically changes the "group of guys sitting around, shooting the crap" dynamic that makes tabletop gaming so much fun.

Man, I am super-lucky. I run games for a married couple, and I've never had these kinds of problems.

Sipex
2011-09-13, 07:50 AM
Yeah, I didn't understand that either, many of the people in my groups are couples so the stereotype responses never reply. Because for every bad instance (read: Above) there are 2 couples who are just fine.

Steward
2011-09-13, 10:23 AM
I think it's only a problem with the gamer drags a non-gaming and uninterested significant other to a game and just expects everything to work out without making an effort. That's a lot different than two people who are dating and who also like or are interested in the game being at the same session.

Nachtritter
2011-09-13, 11:21 AM
Pssssh. I got you all beat, and I will sum it up as best I can in a single sentence;

Cross-dressing 40-year-old furry punk anthro balding wig-wearing player playing a cross-dressing 40-year-old furry punk anthro balding wig-wearing werewolf in a nWOD game who then proceeded to lock himself in the bathroom, (apparently) shoot himself up with something, and went on a rampage around the house before the cops showed up and tasered him.

Advantage: Nachtritter.

Sith_Happens
2011-09-13, 12:34 PM
Pssssh. I got you all beat, and I will sum it up as best I can in a single sentence;

Cross-dressing 40-year-old furry punk anthro balding wig-wearing player playing a cross-dressing 40-year-old furry punk anthro balding wig-wearing werewolf in a nWOD game who then proceeded to lock himself in the bathroom, (apparently) shoot himself up with something, and went on a rampage around the house before the cops showed up and tasered him.

Advantage: Nachtritter.

Did the events following the words "who then" take place in the game or in real life?

Steward
2011-09-13, 12:38 PM
Did you say 'anthro'? Is there a reason why you had to specify that, like most gamers, he is... human?

starwoof
2011-09-13, 12:43 PM
Pssssh. I got you all beat, and I will sum it up as best I can in a single sentence;

Cross-dressing 40-year-old furry punk anthro balding wig-wearing player playing a cross-dressing 40-year-old furry punk anthro balding wig-wearing werewolf in a nWOD game who then proceeded to lock himself in the bathroom, (apparently) shoot himself up with something, and went on a rampage around the house before the cops showed up and tasered him.

Advantage: Nachtritter.

Well, that's me beat.

Gamgee
2011-09-13, 12:51 PM
Just the usual. A control freak DM who had an on the rails campaign. I mean on the ****ing rails. If we didn't follow the prescribed path in the dungeon at level 1 we would be hit by some pretty high level spells and stuff. One guy even went crazy and proceeded to be axe crazy. Another player a thief kept stealing rocks, I suspected they were worthless and he's just pulling one over on me. But it was all in good fun and roleplaying, but oh no the DM couldn't let us have fun as I tried to find out what the thief was hiding. God forbid that.

I think it came to a point where I just got struck by lightening and died. Worse **** I've ever played in. The game didn't last too much longer because of her control freak nature.

Edit
I left after the second game for trying to get into a locked door. I managed to actually break it open with a strength check. But somehow the wizard inside had some trap prepared to auto kill me with a lightening bolt. Up until that point all we faces was goblins and orcs and other low level stuff. There was no indication at any point we were up against anything way over out heads. No plot or anything.

I've had a few others, in the past I caused one once. That sucked bad, learned my lesson though.

JonRG
2011-09-13, 04:42 PM
Did you say 'anthro'? Is there a reason why you had to specify that, like most gamers, he is... human?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=anthro

Though it's kind of redundant next to furry.

bigjeff5
2011-09-13, 08:03 PM
I think it's only a problem with the gamer drags a non-gaming and uninterested significant other to a game and just expects everything to work out without making an effort. That's a lot different than two people who are dating and who also like or are interested in the game being at the same session.

In my experience it happens with either dominating or manipulative personalities. The SO aspect of it actually has the least to do with it, in my opinion.

One of my best friends has a fairly demanding personality. Her boyfriend tends to be pretty passive - not submissive or anything, just laid back, go with the flow kind of guy. They are pretty much a perfect couple, and great fun to be around.

Unless we are gaming of course. She wants her boyfriend to back her up in everything, and when he doesn't want to go along with it (because it's a game, and he wants to role-play his character) she can get nasty - like "guess who isn't getting any tonight" nasty.

Long story short, she isn't inviting to RP sessions any more (and by extension her BF, as they are joined at the hip). We all still hang out, play boardgames and whatnot (where she sometimes does the same thing to her BF >.< but it's not as bad), but no more RP. I can tell she's a little disappointing whenever the RP sessions come up (we have several on-going campaigns) but she has been pretty mature about it.

We've had other SO combos that were bad too - like one guy's super clingy GF who didn't want to spend an evening alone, so he brought her along. He'd try to make her a character and get her to play, but she wasn't into it and would end up sitting bored in the corner all night. Obviously she wasn't having fun, so she eventually convinced the guy to stop going. Lame.

DiBastet
2011-09-13, 08:14 PM
Though it's kind of redundant next to furry.

I can agree with this.

But however, as a DA member, I can attest that in "their" "society", being called anthro is very different from being called furry, even if it's basically furry that likes furry but wants to be called anthro because they are different from those "pervert furry bastards"... Yeah, I don't get it either, just saying what I saw.

Herr Munchkin
2011-09-14, 01:13 AM
Hey,
I have a problem. Here we go...
There are six people in our D&D group:
A: Me. The one with the books. And the one that knows the rules.
B: A friend of mine. Hates D, great friend of C, older brother of E. Slightly crazy, demands total control.
C: A good friend of mine. Friend of B, friend of F. Good player.
D: Old friend of me, B, and C. Likes RPing, not good with rules. At all. Is creative, inattentive.
E: Younger brother of B. Good player, OK with rules. Good RPer.
F: New player. Friend of me and C, knows all others. Decent with rules, good RP.

Problem: B. If B is gone, most problems are solved. However if B goes, so does E.
And, before you ask why B is so bad, I will list the things B has done to "punish" D in he last two sessions:
Did not give D's new character any starting equipment.
Caused lightning to hit D when D was in an underground dungeon.
Blatantly breaks rules to "punish" D, such as causing monsters to ignore the barbarian charging them, and go after D, dealing rabdom damage because D is doing something while waiting for his turn in an encounter, having a double standard of what the session host does: ie. B demands food from D, and lets no-one eat his food, demands pencils from D, claims that D should bring his own pencil, an overall just goes out of his way to hurt D's character.
All npcs hate D. Even those of similar alignment.
Has nearly killed D with "punishment" alone. Three times.
Has, in the past, trapped D in a tree for using a fire ability in a forest.
Has 2 DMPC's that hate D, and are 8 levels above the party.
And me and C are the only ones that know the rules, and I know them best.

So, any help?
The best advice shall get a cookie.

Friv
2011-09-14, 02:15 AM
Honestly, you've only got two choices with a setup like that.

If you're going to confront the situation, you need to sit B down and explain to him that what he's doing is not cool. Is there a specific reason that he doesn't like D, or is it just a personality conflict that he can't get over?

The only other option is to split the group. Sometimes players just don't work well together, due to personality conflicts, differing playstyles, or what have you. It's really better to have no game than one that is actively dysfunctional.

horngeek
2011-09-15, 06:02 AM
Pssssh. I got you all beat, and I will sum it up as best I can in a single sentence;

Cross-dressing 40-year-old furry punk anthro balding wig-wearing player playing a cross-dressing 40-year-old furry punk anthro balding wig-wearing werewolf in a nWOD game who then proceeded to lock himself in the bathroom, (apparently) shoot himself up with something, and went on a rampage around the house before the cops showed up and tasered him.

Advantage: Nachtritter.

But the first time we link to the thread by Lanky, you're beaten too. :smalltongue:

Face it. No one will ever beat being stabbed by their DM, in real life.

DogbertLinc
2011-09-15, 07:42 AM
But the first time we link to the thread by Lanky, you're beaten too. :smalltongue:

Face it. No one will ever beat being stabbed by their DM, in real life.

Not even Lanky. He got crazy-ass DM guy that got taken bt the cops one time. And got stabbed by his girlfriend that was baking a pie or something on another.

Strormer
2011-09-15, 12:44 PM
My first 3.5 game...
I was an L1 Elf Druid. We were in a major city. I told the DM I wanted to find the nearest temple to make my offerings and look for any worthy causes. He said I found one massive church. I went in. It was really dark. Creepy priests walked towards me. I failed a Fort save and blacked out.
When I woke up I was a level 20+ Blackguard dominated by the elder priest of the church of Vecna. Also, the DM's best friend had three artifacts that allowed him to fight like nighcrawler from Xmen and the DM's other buddy's girlfriend was an avatar of a goddess because then she wouldn't have to act on her turn and could continue texting.
I didn't play DND again for three years.
Now I'm a hardcore gamer with great stories to tell.
Lesson: The DM/group makes all the difference in the world.

Randomguy
2011-09-18, 06:43 PM
Hey,
I have a problem. Here we go...
There are six people in our D&D group:
A: Me. The one with the books. And the one that knows the rules.
B: A friend of mine. Hates D, great friend of C, older brother of E. Slightly crazy, demands total control.
C: A good friend of mine. Friend of B, friend of F. Good player.
D: Old friend of me, B, and C. Likes RPing, not good with rules. At all. Is creative, inattentive.
E: Younger brother of B. Good player, OK with rules. Good RPer.
F: New player. Friend of me and C, knows all others. Decent with rules, good RP.

Problem: B. If B is gone, most problems are solved. However if B goes, so does E.
And, before you ask why B is so bad, I will list the things B has done to "punish" D in he last two sessions:
Did not give D's new character any starting equipment.
Caused lightning to hit D when D was in an underground dungeon.
Blatantly breaks rules to "punish" D, such as causing monsters to ignore the barbarian charging them, and go after D, dealing rabdom damage because D is doing something while waiting for his turn in an encounter, having a double standard of what the session host does: ie. B demands food from D, and lets no-one eat his food, demands pencils from D, claims that D should bring his own pencil, an overall just goes out of his way to hurt D's character.
All npcs hate D. Even those of similar alignment.
Has nearly killed D with "punishment" alone. Three times.
Has, in the past, trapped D in a tree for using a fire ability in a forest.
Has 2 DMPC's that hate D, and are 8 levels above the party.
And me and C are the only ones that know the rules, and I know them best.

So, any help?
The best advice shall get a cookie.

The easist solution is to have someone else be the DM. Otherwise you could try and at least get B to keep his conflicts with D out of game. (Or to minimize them in game.)

Steward
2011-09-18, 07:18 PM
Playing with a nutcase is like adventuring with Elan (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0153.html). It can be done, for a while, but it won't be easy and it won't be pretty.

B might be a good friend of yours but he's an awful DM and kind of a bully. If you can't or don't want to stop gaming with him, your best bet is to do what Randomguy suggests and switch DMs. If it helps, say that you're transitioning to a 'random DM' format where you have a different DM every several sessions or something. That way he doesn't realize what you're doing until hopefully he's had time to cool down.

In the meantime, it's kind of up to you to talk to him about the difference between IC and OOC conflicts. I don't understand why two people who hate each other choose to game together, but for some reason that's a common scenario. You can't make B like D but you can get him to stop being such a jerk to a fellow gamer. It might help if you had backup from the rest of the group to help support your argument that their out-of-character feud is ruining the game for everyone else. Ultimately it's up to him to decide whether his hatred of D is more important to him than enjoying the game.

Kaun
2011-09-18, 07:24 PM
With regards to the B and D issue im a big fan of telling B that he is being a jackass and to stop it.

Some times all it takes is a third party pointing out that their being a jerk to pull em into line.

Surrealistik
2011-09-18, 07:29 PM
You know who walks through the door?

This guy:

Ruby Rod and all.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v606/SilusCrow/Asmodeus_-_Eric_Deschamps.jpg


Lol, what the ****.

Silus
2011-09-18, 08:56 PM
Lol, what the ****.

Eeyup.

Same DM was running a game where we were hopping through the timestream. So many possibilities, and we need up in the friggin' 100-Acre Wood with Winnie the Pooh.

And there was the Spelljammer game where the players ended up in Wonderland.

cthulhubear
2011-09-18, 10:57 PM
My first 3.5 game...
I was an L1 Elf Druid. We were in a major city. I told the DM I wanted to find the nearest temple to make my offerings and look for any worthy causes. He said I found one massive church. I went in. It was really dark. Creepy priests walked towards me. I failed a Fort save and blacked out.
When I woke up I was a level 20+ Blackguard dominated by the elder priest of the church of Vecna. Also, the DM's best friend had three artifacts that allowed him to fight like nighcrawler from Xmen and the DM's other buddy's girlfriend was an avatar of a goddess because then she wouldn't have to act on her turn and could continue texting.
I didn't play DND again for three years.
Now I'm a hardcore gamer with great stories to tell.
Lesson: The DM/group makes all the difference in the world.

:smalleek: Errrm.... WTF. This seems so random its unbelievable. You failed a Fort save and suddenly you're a level 20 blackguard, everyone else seems to have reached that level of power, and this all happened in like 5 minutes max.

Andorax
2011-09-21, 03:29 PM
urprisingly, with several decades of gaming under my belt, I have very few bad sessions I can look back on. However, I do recall one of them, which led to the demise of the group (still gamed with some of them after that, others never came back).

Now, just to set some context...the group in question was 10 players + 2 DMs. The campaign had been going on for some time now, with occasional DM swaps to keep things fresh. We were early into a new set of DMs, so controls weren't solidly in place.

Couple of characters die, with their players pissed off at, and blaming, a couple of other players. New characters are introduced with common backstory (and, not atypically, secret "extra backstory" given to the DMs). As is customary, new PCs are accepted at face value and welcomed into the "we're all one happy party" community for continuity sake...otherwise, we burn a whole session arguing over introductions, fair splits of treasure, and the like (remember...12 people).

We make our way into a fairly nasty, trap-laden dungeon. With a lot of time, trouble, and effort we manage to get all the way past the various dangers and down to the badguy (and his horde) at the bottom. Badguy's dead, treasure's ours...all is well, right?

Alas, no. Revenge-minded PCs are the first group to head back through the dungeon to our ship (Spelljammer campaign). Second group consists of one of the PCs "responsible" for getting their last characters killed, and a couple other PCs who had nothing to do with it. Too bad, for the innocent bystanders. A couple of unexpectedly-reset traps and a flurry of arrows later, they're dead. Little do the rest of us know (since we're on a pseudo-break, and are standing around outside the room). Clean up the ambush scene and get ready for...

Third group heads up, with...you guessed it...another of the "responsible" characters and another "innocent bystander". Trick goes off without a hitch a second time.

Last group heads up. Supposedly, there's no reason to blast these guys, but guess what...they set up the ambush a third time, because one of the remaining characters (mine) was known to be extremely loyal to one of the previous two ambush victim targets. So "just in case" I would take counter-revenge, I had to die as well...along with those with me. What a shame.



Sadly, we lost players over the whole issue, and I had to take back over DMing to keep as many in the group as I did. I was enjoying the break, too.

GunbladeKnight
2011-09-22, 12:52 AM
Wow, I've only had one terrible campaign. It was a second group by my current DM to run on another day of the week.

There was:
A: Me playing a female elf rogue who was secretive and misleading (not as much to the party, mind you) Was meant to be an opposite to my all-to-honest paladin in main group.
B: Other guy from main campaign play. Needless to say, he was only really at one session.
C: Guy who had been at one or two sessions of main group. Played a dwarf warrior.
D: Experienced guy who DMed a premade for me once in high school (DM knew him from high school as well). He made a dragonborn dragonwrought kobold who took knowledge checks every 5 minutes "to help the new people", as well as spot checks every time I tried sleight of hand, even if he wasn't paying attention, it wasn't against him, or it was highly unlikely he would see anything (I reached into a log to grab a gem and hide it).
E: D's GF. He built her a charging smite paladin (houserule paladins can be any lawful, and smite works against anything).
F + G: Two guys that were a part of the Paranoia session I ran (along with B and DM). One is a human cleric, other is a human warmage. Both new to D&D.

So D takes command, having +15 knowledges at level 3, a breath weapon every round, and talked to NPCs as if he soloed an adult or older red dragon. Me being a rogue, he immediately distrusts me (I planned to take a gem here, mundane there). He begins to watch everything I do, so I can't really do anything (with his build, I had no chance against him, really. I couldn't even attack him in his sleep since he apparently only needed 2-4 hours so he slept at the same time as me). He starts to get on the nerves of everyone else for being controlling.

Over the course of the game, we find these gems that fuse with people when they touch them (will save), causing them to be possessed and granting them an ability. They decide to destroy these whenever they find them. I snag a couple with a cloth despite the watchful eye, intending to sell them to some fool/the arcana guild. We get sent to an island to find some key. Everything else is going smoothly for now. We meet a guy with the items in his weapons and armor, and with a command he can use them for some nice effects. My character, seeing this, decides that it could be useful if we use these as such while D still considers them too dangerous.

We get to a kobold city, and get sent into a dungeon as a test. The test consists of finding 2 gems within rooms of the 12 elements he has (air, earth, fire, water, lightning, ice, life, death, light, darkness, continuum, spirit). They find a gem I placed in one of my daggers and throw the dagger into a lava pit. I enter the room of darkness and go blind, so I stumble around until I find the room of light. They see a shadow walking around, D attacks and crits to kill it. It turns out to be me, so I give him benefit of the doubt. I sell my soul to an evil god to revive, and I also get the ability to see in any darkness, even magical, and my eyes become dark vortexes.

Turns out, that's not the way to get his trust, which he started to grate on me more as my character started hating him more since he was controlling her and preventing her from doing what she was taught. But she could bide her time. As we pass through a crater (to which B and I know the history), C starts to go crazy. He sees visions, attacking them (which happen to be us). He kills E, the cleric, who sells his soul to the goddess of madness, causing him to have to switch from his god of guidance (which was a lot of fun actually).

We meet another adventuring group on the same mission with a troll. Troll becomes infatuated with me, this is important. I mislead the troll into thinking I'm in love with D, but would be able to love the troll if D were dead. We hear about someone killing people in a desert near us, so we investigate with the other party. We walk into a misty area and meet a monk with special ice powers (which was melting in the heat to cause the mist). We start beating him, causing him to flee as D chases him down to kill him. I say to the troll, so that others can hear, "I hope the kobold isn't dead, someone should go check on him." He immediately rushes off to go attack the weakened D. D somehow convinces the troll not to attack him, and when we meet up with him again, he IMMEDIATELY attacks me, then accuses me of sending the troll after him (to which I'm assuming he metagamed). The rest stay out of it as I roll poorly on my saving throws and die. Well that sucks.

Roll up a new character, orc bard that is a "warchanter". Fun character, which everyone liked. Due to low defense, I get die too quickly. We get to another dungeon and meet with the gem guy again. He says his master liked what she saw of us, and that we could join them... if we betrayed someone. At this point, C immediately turns on F, the warmage, and kills him rather easily after going through the dungeon. D turns around and kills C, C rolls up a new character, a gnome illusionist that pretends to be insane. I roll up a Xeph Psion (though hide it from D so he can't knowledge the heck out of me). He takes offense to that, things start all over again, DM decides to hit the reset button before it just becomes a PvP campaign.

TL;DR: D controls the group and it becomes PvP.

Traab
2011-09-22, 08:33 PM
Wow, I've only had one terrible campaign. It was a second group by my current DM to run on another day of the week.

There was:
A: Me playing a female elf rogue who was secretive and misleading (not as much to the party, mind you) Was meant to be an opposite to my all-to-honest paladin in main group.
B: Other guy from main campaign play. Needless to say, he was only really at one session.
C: Guy who had been at one or two sessions of main group. Played a dwarf warrior.
D: Experienced guy who DMed a premade for me once in high school (DM knew him from high school as well). He made a dragonborn dragonwrought kobold who took knowledge checks every 5 minutes "to help the new people", as well as spot checks every time I tried sleight of hand, even if he wasn't paying attention, it wasn't against him, or it was highly unlikely he would see anything (I reached into a log to grab a gem and hide it).
E: D's GF. He built her a charging smite paladin (houserule paladins can be any lawful, and smite works against anything).
F + G: Two guys that were a part of the Paranoia session I ran (along with B and DM). One is a human cleric, other is a human warmage. Both new to D&D.

So D takes command, having +15 knowledges at level 3, a breath weapon every round, and talked to NPCs as if he soloed an adult or older red dragon. Me being a rogue, he immediately distrusts me (I planned to take a gem here, mundane there). He begins to watch everything I do, so I can't really do anything (with his build, I had no chance against him, really. I couldn't even attack him in his sleep since he apparently only needed 2-4 hours so he slept at the same time as me). He starts to get on the nerves of everyone else for being controlling.

Over the course of the game, we find these gems that fuse with people when they touch them (will save), causing them to be possessed and granting them an ability. They decide to destroy these whenever they find them. I snag a couple with a cloth despite the watchful eye, intending to sell them to some fool/the arcana guild. We get sent to an island to find some key. Everything else is going smoothly for now. We meet a guy with the items in his weapons and armor, and with a command he can use them for some nice effects. My character, seeing this, decides that it could be useful if we use these as such while D still considers them too dangerous.

We get to a kobold city, and get sent into a dungeon as a test. The test consists of finding 2 gems within rooms of the 12 elements he has (air, earth, fire, water, lightning, ice, life, death, light, darkness, continuum, spirit). They find a gem I placed in one of my daggers and throw the dagger into a lava pit. I enter the room of darkness and go blind, so I stumble around until I find the room of light. They see a shadow walking around, D attacks and crits to kill it. It turns out to be me, so I give him benefit of the doubt. I sell my soul to an evil god to revive, and I also get the ability to see in any darkness, even magical, and my eyes become dark vortexes.

Turns out, that's not the way to get his trust, which he started to grate on me more as my character started hating him more since he was controlling her and preventing her from doing what she was taught. But she could bide her time. As we pass through a crater (to which B and I know the history), C starts to go crazy. He sees visions, attacking them (which happen to be us). He kills E, the cleric, who sells his soul to the goddess of madness, causing him to have to switch from his god of guidance (which was a lot of fun actually).

We meet another adventuring group on the same mission with a troll. Troll becomes infatuated with me, this is important. I mislead the troll into thinking I'm in love with D, but would be able to love the troll if D were dead. We hear about someone killing people in a desert near us, so we investigate with the other party. We walk into a misty area and meet a monk with special ice powers (which was melting in the heat to cause the mist). We start beating him, causing him to flee as D chases him down to kill him. I say to the troll, so that others can hear, "I hope the kobold isn't dead, someone should go check on him." He immediately rushes off to go attack the weakened D. D somehow convinces the troll not to attack him, and when we meet up with him again, he IMMEDIATELY attacks me, then accuses me of sending the troll after him (to which I'm assuming he metagamed). The rest stay out of it as I roll poorly on my saving throws and die. Well that sucks.

Roll up a new character, orc bard that is a "warchanter". Fun character, which everyone liked. Due to low defense, I get die too quickly. We get to another dungeon and meet with the gem guy again. He says his master liked what she saw of us, and that we could join them... if we betrayed someone. At this point, C immediately turns on F, the warmage, and kills him rather easily after going through the dungeon. D turns around and kills C, C rolls up a new character, a gnome illusionist that pretends to be insane. I roll up a Xeph Psion (though hide it from D so he can't knowledge the heck out of me). He takes offense to that, things start all over again, DM decides to hit the reset button before it just becomes a PvP campaign.

TL;DR: D controls the group and it becomes PvP.

Dm made the right choice there, at that point im pretty sure if the game continued people would roll a new character just to kill the guy who killed them last who would then reroll, etc etc etc. Or even better, mister lord and master over all he surveys would have just kept auto killing whatever you created because he is so damn certain you are going to try and kill him given the chance.

Medic!
2011-09-23, 07:01 AM
In 10 years I've only had one experience I would truly call awful as a player:

DM tells everyone to roll up good 4th lvl Gestalts.

Party make-up ends up being:
rng/rog
clr of kord/pally of freedom
ftr/pally
clr/dorf
sorc/dragon sham
spell-thief/rng

Since everything else seemed pretty well covered I figured I'd kick around a monk/dru. After spending about a week and a half and a small tribe's allotment of rainforest in paper, I was ready to rock and roll!

Wall of text: We enter the first dungeon, which happens to be in the middle of a lake with a 100-yard "Everything is dead and putrid" zone. (This gets important-ish later)

During our tromp through the magic air bubble under water cave one of our encounters is against an ogre blocking the end of a 10 foot wide hallway ankle deep in water.

My first action when my initiative comes up: Cast one of my precious 2nd lvl spells - Blinding Spittle. I roll my ranged touch with the -4 penalty and hit.

DM asks, "What's the save DC?" I respond, "There isn't one, he's blinded until he washes his eyes out, according to the spell description." At this point I'm thinking either: Say the monster has blind-fight, or make it take, at most, a full round to wash its eyes out. Or...it's a large creature in a 10-foot hallway, hopefully the 50% miss chance applies and someone can not get one-rounded.

No sir, DM says, "I'm not going to allow that. I can't be expected to read through each and every one of your spells before we play. That's rediculous."

I, being a mature and reasonable person (lol) make a snide comment about the DM's character from the last campaign (we rotate DMs) that was casting Dance of Ruin from BoVD (full-round cast time, 1st lvl, 2d20 AE with a reflex for half) as a standard action after making a move action that put him toe-to-toe with two monsters and magically not provoking AoOs.

Shortly there-after we reach the BBEG of the dungeon, who without much ado summons a nasty that both pallies are tied up with. I do my shape-shift thang (phb2 acf style) and sprint for the caster baddie and proceed to dump stunning fist attempts and flank for the rogue and spell-thief.

Suddenly all of us around the caster are rolling multiple saving throws because he just casted Wierd. Rogue bites the dust, Spell-thief is out, I'm almost out of stun attempts, things are looking bleak.

Combat breaks for a moment, where the caster-baddie does the plot-hook thing, saying "I'll give you the item you came for, but you have to go kill my evil necromancer ex-gf back in town first." My character (druid) asks him why everything's dead in a 100-yard radius, he replies, "Because it pleases me." So I open up attacking again, figuring I have some back-up from the two paladins detecting "Major nasty evil."

The DM actually snarls at me and all but shouts, "Power Word Kill! You're dead!" I make another snide comment about saving throws and refuse the blanket true ressurection that this sorceror is offering the dead in the party, roll up a new character with more flexible moral fiber (wru paladins), and we proceed to make deals with every single evil NPC in the game.

tl;dr My 4th lvl druid was power-word-killed for not following the example of two good paladins who made a deal with the 18th lvl evil as **** sorcerer who killed off acres of wildlife/woodland. And blinding an ogre in a narrow hallway for an ambigous duration is too OP unless a saving throw is allowed along with the penalized range touch atk.

Fun side note, when confronted with a "Wall of vampires" our paladins turned tail and ran like girls, despite it being noon game-time and 20 ft from an open doorway to a massive courtyard =(

big teej
2011-09-23, 07:47 AM
In 10 years I've only had one experience I would truly call awful as a player:

DM tells everyone to roll up good 4th lvl Gestalts.

Party make-up ends up being:
rng/rog
clr of kord/pally of freedom
ftr/pally
clr/dorf
sorc/dragon sham
spell-thief/rng

Since everything else seemed pretty well covered I figured I'd kick around a monk/dru. After spending about a week and a half and a small tribe's allotment of rainforest in paper, I was ready to rock and roll!

Wall of text: We enter the first dungeon, which happens to be in the middle of a lake with a 100-yard "Everything is dead and putrid" zone. (This gets important-ish later)

During our tromp through the magic air bubble under water cave one of our encounters is against an ogre blocking the end of a 10 foot wide hallway ankle deep in water.

My first action when my initiative comes up: Cast one of my precious 2nd lvl spells - Blinding Spittle. I roll my ranged touch with the -4 penalty and hit.

DM asks, "What's the save DC?" I respond, "There isn't one, he's blinded until he washes his eyes out, according to the spell description." At this point I'm thinking either: Say the monster has blind-fight, or make it take, at most, a full round to wash its eyes out. Or...it's a large creature in a 10-foot hallway, hopefully the 50% miss chance applies and someone can not get one-rounded.

No sir, DM says, "I'm not going to allow that. I can't be expected to read through each and every one of your spells before we play. That's rediculous."

I, being a mature and reasonable person (lol) make a snide comment about the DM's character from the last campaign (we rotate DMs) that was casting Dance of Ruin from BoVD (full-round cast time, 1st lvl, 2d20 AE with a reflex for half) as a standard action after making a move action that put him toe-to-toe with two monsters and magically not provoking AoOs.

Shortly there-after we reach the BBEG of the dungeon, who without much ado summons a nasty that both pallies are tied up with. I do my shape-shift thang (phb2 acf style) and sprint for the caster baddie and proceed to dump stunning fist attempts and flank for the rogue and spell-thief.

Suddenly all of us around the caster are rolling multiple saving throws because he just casted Wierd. Rogue bites the dust, Spell-thief is out, I'm almost out of stun attempts, things are looking bleak.

Combat breaks for a moment, where the caster-baddie does the plot-hook thing, saying "I'll give you the item you came for, but you have to go kill my evil necromancer ex-gf back in town first." My character (druid) asks him why everything's dead in a 100-yard radius, he replies, "Because it pleases me." So I open up attacking again, figuring I have some back-up from the two paladins detecting "Major nasty evil."

The DM actually snarls at me and all but shouts, "Power Word Kill! You're dead!" I make another snide comment about saving throws and refuse the blanket true ressurection that this sorceror is offering the dead in the party, roll up a new character with more flexible moral fiber (wru paladins), and we proceed to make deals with every single evil NPC in the game.

tl;dr My 4th lvl druid was power-word-killed for not following the example of two good paladins who made a deal with the 18th lvl evil as **** sorcerer who killed off acres of wildlife/woodland. And blinding an ogre in a narrow hallway for an ambigous duration is too OP unless a saving throw is allowed along with the penalized range touch atk.

Fun side note, when confronted with a "Wall of vampires" our paladins turned tail and ran like girls, despite it being noon game-time and 20 ft from an open doorway to a massive courtyard =(

alright... I think you just hit upon one of my greatest pet peeves....

that line about "I can't be expected to read blah blah blah blah"

I personally read EVERY sourcebook I purchase from cover to cover before allowing it into my game. and after reading it cover to cover, I make a little list of things I don't like, divided into "rather not use this, please don't, and can't use this"

ergo, any source I own, I know it, maybe not inside and out, but obviously I didn't catch anything to bad or it'd be on the list of "don't"

so whenever I get a DM who's to much of a lazy ass to go through and say "I'd really rather not" :belkar: :smallfurious:

it's even worse if you're one of those players who has a "standard spell list" meaning that you usually prepare the same list of spells every day. I'd go a step further and make sure I knew those spells as good if not BETTER than you did.

ugh. :smallfurious:

Greenish
2011-09-23, 07:55 AM
clr/dorfIs that cleric//drawf paragon? :smalltongue:

I hope you went "choo choo" during the whole sorcerer event.

Medic!
2011-09-23, 02:39 PM
Yeah lol, he was cleric/dwarf paragon and worshipped his warhammer. He was our designated face-man for uh....dynamic entry without invitation =D

Incidentally, that sorcerer fight WAS the first time I EVER landed a stunning fist on anything that failed the save...until we told the DM exactly what being stunned entailed. He made every save after that, lol. The upside to the story is that after I layed the druid to rest I whipped up my first ever warlock experiment, a hellbred warlock/scout gestalt, and had an absolute blast running across ceilings invisible, spamming shatter, and being just about the only one aside from all the lvl 15+ DMPCs that could reliably hit a baddy.

Also made chasing down the BBEG during his daring gaseous form escape a breeze. Incidentally, this was the 2nd time my character was killed in the first encounter of a campaign after spending a ton of time on it, and replaced by a much quicker-made character. (I'll admit the druid was a little cheesy but I showed restraint in execution. Go go venerable jermlaine monk/druid, we affectionately called him Yoda lol)

Traab
2011-09-23, 03:40 PM
I wonder if the dms who kill your character off for being too good or whatever realize what hell they are unleashing? I mean think about it. The two most common responses to an obvious dm targetted death are, throw together some worthless piece of garbage and be disgruntled the rest of the session due to holding a grudge. Or showing the dm what REAL overpowered characters look like and tearing apart the story until the dm kills that one off too.

Sith_Happens
2011-09-23, 08:04 PM
Incidentally, that sorcerer fight WAS the first time I EVER landed a stunning fist on anything that failed the save...until we told the DM exactly what being stunned entailed. He made every save after that, lol. The upside to the story is that after I layed the druid to rest I whipped up my first ever warlock experiment, a hellbred warlock/scout gestalt, and had an absolute blast running across ceilings invisible, spamming shatter, and being just about the only one aside from all the lvl 15+ DMPCs that could reliably hit a baddy.

That right there is another two fairly infamous problems:
1. The DM fudging the rules/rolls to make sure that the Hopeless Boss Fight (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HopelessBossFight) is, in fact, Hopeless. This is, of course, a specific form railroading, since you were "supposed" to take the job rather than keep fighting him.
2. The dreaded DMPC, which you seem to imply in your last sentence that this campaign had both by the bucketful and all in their worst possible form (i.e.- forcing the players to sit back and watch while they do everything important).