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Righteous Doggy
2012-04-26, 08:01 PM
So, today my dm misheard me and thought I asked for the whole group to be teleported to the evil capitol of the world. We transitioned fast and I had no idea. In the middle of the massive fight with 100+ total stranger evil guys, someone said something that made me realize my error. Since half our day was over, we couldn't just turn around so I accepted my error and went on.

So, I thought I'd ask for other experiences and advice on this. Good or bad, its still a neat story.

GunMage
2012-04-26, 08:44 PM
I was playing in a shadowrun game recently that suffered from a variation of this problem. Our gm constantly would take things we said, and extrapolate some random sequence of events from them. For instance, we were on the run from some people on our way to Vegas, and he took that as we were going to drive straight on to the strip. Obviously, we were kind of confused when dozens of mercenaries showed up to waste us, since we all were intending to go somewhere not the most obvious and out in the open place in the city.

Hardly the biggest problem that game had, but still irritating.

Talakeal
2012-04-26, 09:18 PM
So, today my dm misheard me and thought I asked for the whole group to be teleported to the evil capitol of the world.

What did you mean to say?

Righteous Doggy
2012-04-26, 09:27 PM
What did you mean to say?

I was scrying through various places to teleport to becuase we wanted to go to a big ol' library to pick up some good books for our casters/skillmonkeys and enchant our fighters weapons by a professional magical blacksmith rather than the drunken town blacksmith we happened to be with. He thought that I had decided to go straight to the place I couldn't scry, and was where the adventure hooks were pointing to as "Big scary citadel filled with traps". So... i guess we're murdering the whole townships worth of people... also our meat shields were gone for the day. I wanted it to be a day off from combat and some good roleplaying.

@Gunmage Well obviously the first and most intuitive place you go when your on the run is to the middle of a highly populated area louded with security. I've had DMs like that. I just had to learn to be specific and carry 8 backup plans on me at anytime. also, a spare rope for when the first one is at the bottom of a well.

Marlowe
2012-04-26, 10:02 PM
Back in AD&D days I once (well, TWICE) had a DM who's entire adventure plan consisted of:

1, PCs and merchant they escort come to capital city of Human kingdom neighbouring their own (this done in narration in the first two minutes).
2, PCs discover city and kingdom are suddenly under Gnollish military occupation.
3, PCs abandon merchant, and flee back home to alert their own kingdom, having a minor encounter on the way to feel important.

That was it. That was the entire plan. Oh, and apparently the entire world consisted of nothing but these two human kingdoms plus a "wildland" area where the gnolls come from.

Anyway, he did this twice. First time, well. It was lame, but not horrible.

SECOND time we decided to actually stay in the city to organize a resistance. We're heroes aren't we? In spite of discussing this in front of his face and coming to a quick and unanimous decision, he proceeded to spend the next hour throwing us ways to escape the city.

Everywhere we walked we found an unguarded postern gate leading out. Or a half-crumbled bit of wall. That was it. The entire city consisted of nothing but ways out.

At one point, a random Elven street-gang (In spite of this not being a setting with Elves) approached us unheralded and got us to come with them. Wink. Wink. They promptly lead us through an underground passage which came out outside the city. Thus resulting in us having to sneak back IN.

After this, we called him on what he thought he was doing. He looked at us blankly and said; "You want to escape the city. I'm trying to show you how". As if the whole last two hours of character interplay in front of him hadn't happened. When we told him point-blank that that WASN'T what we wanted to do, he got surly and moaned "I swear, you lot are the most UNPATRIOTIC bunch of PCs I've ever met."

Eventually we realized there was no doing anything but what he wanted, and went along with it. The campaign didn't make a second session.

So yeah, more "inept railroading" and "blatant ignoring what people are telling you" than "mishearing", but it sort of counts.

kieza
2012-04-27, 02:47 AM
I've had it go the other way around several times in one campaign. That group had one player in it whose brain ran perpendicular to mine and everyone else's. Among his many nonsensical plans:

-The party has just broken into a gang hideout, freed a hostage, and tossed him down to this PC. A gang member looks out a window. The hostage is already around a corner. The PC specifically asks if there's anywhere he can hide, and is explicitly told that he's standing in shadows deep enough to hide in. He then uses a minor enchantment on his implement to make the loudest noise he can.
-In the middle of a fight in a building which is collapsing from all of the structural collateral damage that's been caused, one of the other PCs is knocked out, and there's a big monster standing right next to him. The crazy PC knocks down the only load-bearing wall supporting the roof over the downed PC, causing the roof to fall in on the downed PC...and only him (and yes, he knew where it would fall). Why? He figured that the monster couldn't perform a coup de grace through a foot of rubble.
-Confronting a powerful demon, he spent most of the fight throwing glass orbs containing hellfire at it, apparently under the impression that demons would be resistant to radiant damage (one of his specialties) since it was the main weapon of their "natural predators," angels. And since demons are resistant to holy light, they must be weak to their own hellfire, right?
-When a supposedly demon-possessed priest drank holy water to prove he was free of influence, he responded by hitting the priest in the face with a battleaxe, since "only a demon would drink holy water."
-He once tried to use the glass from one crushed potion vial to hamper the progress of an entire army of orcs...who, earlier in the day, he had tracked by following their bootprints.

The only approximation of his thought process that we could ever come up with was that, instead of looking for the most appropriate course of action, he simply latched onto the first idea he came up with, assumed it was a good one, and followed it to its illogical conclusion. We once saw him playing Mass Effect, and he died six times in a row performing the exact same course of actions each time.

"Insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results."

Analytica
2012-04-27, 07:20 AM
I've had it go the other way around several times in one campaign. That group had one player in it whose brain ran perpendicular to mine and everyone else's. Among his many nonsensical plans:

-The party has just broken into a gang hideout, freed a hostage, and tossed him down to this PC. A gang member looks out a window. The hostage is already around a corner. The PC specifically asks if there's anywhere he can hide, and is explicitly told that he's standing in shadows deep enough to hide in. He then uses a minor enchantment on his implement to make the loudest noise he can.
-In the middle of a fight in a building which is collapsing from all of the structural collateral damage that's been caused, one of the other PCs is knocked out, and there's a big monster standing right next to him. The crazy PC knocks down the only load-bearing wall supporting the roof over the downed PC, causing the roof to fall in on the downed PC...and only him (and yes, he knew where it would fall). Why? He figured that the monster couldn't perform a coup de grace through a foot of rubble.
-Confronting a powerful demon, he spent most of the fight throwing glass orbs containing hellfire at it, apparently under the impression that demons would be resistant to radiant damage (one of his specialties) since it was the main weapon of their "natural predators," angels. And since demons are resistant to holy light, they must be weak to their own hellfire, right?
-When a supposedly demon-possessed priest drank holy water to prove he was free of influence, he responded by hitting the priest in the face with a battleaxe, since "only a demon would drink holy water."
-He once tried to use the glass from one crushed potion vial to hamper the progress of an entire army of orcs...who, earlier in the day, he had tracked by following their bootprints.

The only approximation of his thought process that we could ever come up with was that, instead of looking for the most appropriate course of action, he simply latched onto the first idea he came up with, assumed it was a good one, and followed it to its illogical conclusion. We once saw him playing Mass Effect, and he died six times in a row performing the exact same course of actions each time.

"Insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results."

When someone next asks how to play a character with high intelligence and abysmal wisdom, this is what I should point them to. :smallbiggrin:

The Dark Fiddler
2012-04-27, 07:35 AM
I'm still not entirely sure what happened, so I'll keep this short and simple.

We were playing a DBZ game (not a system I'd recommend, in hindsight), and fighting for a Dragonball that was being used to power some base or something. I tried to maneuver so I wouldn't hit it with my energy blast, but I guess there was some poor communication/understanding in how exactly the place was laid out, and I ended up both destroying the Dragonball and ending the campaign. Oops.

Marlowe
2012-04-27, 07:39 AM
I'm still not entirely sure what happened, so I'll keep this short and simple.

We were playing a DBZ game (not a system I'd recommend, in hindsight), and fighting for a Dragonball that was being used to power some base or something. I tried to maneuver so I wouldn't hit it with my energy blast, but I guess there was some poor communication/understanding in how exactly the place was laid out, and I ended up both destroying the Dragonball and ending the campaign. Oops.

There, now what's why you need to spend 4-5 episodes aiming very precisely.

One Tin Soldier
2012-04-27, 09:27 AM
Well I've never accidentally derailed a campaign due to poor communication, but while I was playing Geist: the Sin-Eaters the GM misunderstood one of my powers and thought that my octogenarian had just rocketed off into the sky.

Slipperychicken
2012-04-27, 10:49 AM
Three easy words will prevent many of these problems. Are you sure?


Battlemaps are extremely useful to make sure you aren't eating an AoO for standing next to a monster while Glitterdusting half your team.

I consider it a cheap trick to have a PC follow a suicidal or out-of-character action when the player misspeaks. If you do that, the PCs might as well get filthy rich every time the GM says "ten thousand each" rather than "ten thousand total", or brutally murdered when he says fifty instead of fifteen enemies.

AshesOfOld
2012-04-27, 12:42 PM
There, now what's why you need to spend 4-5 episodes aiming very precisely.

This forum could easily come with a like button, for comments just like that. God I loved DBZ.

For my story,
I ran into this guy all the time, who was supposedly a big man at the conventions we both used to hang out at.
I had applied to a few of his games and ended up at two of them, so I was very excited. It did not pan out as I had hoped.
I should say that he was pretty good at describing scenery and characters but he was just so arrogant!
Anyway, we dive into this detective plot and after a few good hours of investigation, we find a clue that a woman about to be brutally murdered, is held hostage at the docks across town.
So I tell him we'll drive there as fast as we can.
He asks us: "Do you run any red lights?"
And my friend answers "yes". And I can see he's about to add something, when the DM cuts in and says: "You crash into another car and all die."
This was after five hours of play, just before the big showdown. Needless to say, he wasn't the most popular DM at that particular con, and I ended up swapping my second game for a hilarious Munchkins tournament :smallbiggrin:

Togath
2012-04-27, 01:46 PM
I've had it go the other way around several times in one campaign. That group had one player in it whose brain ran perpendicular to mine and everyone else's. Among his many nonsensical plans:

-In the middle of a fight in a building which is collapsing from all of the structural collateral damage that's been caused, one of the other PCs is knocked out, and there's a big monster standing right next to him. The crazy PC knocks down the only load-bearing wall supporting the roof over the downed PC, causing the roof to fall in on the downed PC...and only him (and yes, he knew where it would fall). Why? He figured that the monster couldn't perform a coup de grace through a foot of rubble.
-Confronting a powerful demon, he spent most of the fight throwing glass orbs containing hellfire at it, apparently under the impression that demons would be resistant to radiant damage (one of his specialties) since it was the main weapon of their "natural predators," angels. And since demons are resistant to holy light, they must be weak to their own hellfire, right?


These two don't seem so bad, the first is meta gaming however, but the second still makes sense from an rp perspective(and is something I've often wondered about, about dnd, as it does make sense for something to be stronger vs. it's natural enemy)
I do agree that the others are a bit out there though

The Glyphstone
2012-04-27, 01:49 PM
These two don't seem so bad, the first is meta gaming however, but the second still makes sense from an rp perspective(and is something I've often wondered about, about dnd, as it does make sense for something to be stronger vs. it's natural enemy)
I do agree that the others are a bit out there though

I wouldn't even call the first one metagaming, unless he used the word 'coup-de-grace' in-character. It's a perfectly valid assumption, if a risky and somewhat callous one, to judge that your fallen friend will be hurt less by a big heap of rubble burying him than by a monster chewing on his jugular vein with impunity - the monster will need to spent time digging out the target, or else go after someone more accessible.

AshesOfOld
2012-04-27, 02:32 PM
I wouldn't even call the first one metagaming, unless he used the word 'coup-de-grace' in-character. It's a perfectly valid assumption, if a risky and somewhat callous one, to judge that your fallen friend will be hurt less by a big heap of rubble burying him than by a monster chewing on his jugular vein with impunity - the monster will need to spent time digging out the target, or else go after someone more accessible.

Problem is, that if he's down, he's got less than 10 hp. Which makes the calculated action of burying him under a building less callous and more plain stupid.

The Glyphstone
2012-04-27, 03:17 PM
Problem is, that if he's down, he's got less than 10 hp. Which makes the calculated action of burying him under a building less callous and more plain stupid.

he mentioned radiant damage, which makes me think 4E - an environment where it takes significantly more relative damage to bring someone from 'unconscious' to 'dead', which would be reflected by IC knowledge even if it wasn't expressed in numbers.

Totally Guy
2012-04-28, 04:38 AM
One time I was GMing and the party had gone into a big ol' battle and now that the war was underway they wanted to sneak out and do something else.

The players wanted to leave the battle and that was pretty much how they said it. They wanted to sneak into the enemies castle but I thought they were going back to their encampment.

I described them meeting the NPC that was with their troops and aside from a "why are you here?" "it's my duty to the horde" neither of us recognised that we were thinking of entirely different places.

We got to the end of the scene and the players said they wanted to go into the tower now. I asked how they would get through the battle and past the enemies moat. They thought they'd just done all that.

I was really worried that I'd made a campaign ending mistake.

But we rewound back to the misunderstanding because it wouldn't have been fair to do otherwise. And it was all fine after all.

Rorrik
2012-04-28, 03:55 PM
Not so much misunderstanding, but growing up my brothers and I played with my Dad as DM. He was a "no takebacksies" kinda guy and if one of my younger (7 and 5) brothers said something foolish, it happened.

On one occasion we had prepared a huge ambush complete with a young gold dragon on our side to slay an ancient red dragon that plagued the area. While I was shouting taunts to bring the dragon out, my brothers shouted as well, revealing the better part of the ambush before I could stop them. We almost lost the dragon.

In another session, one of my friends was joining us. We were preparing to leave our personal island fortress when he remembered to go get something. This led to us leaving the row boat unattended, so it drifted away. My, very vocal, friend then said that the entire party jumped into the canoe, sinking it and nearly drowning the two plate laden fighters. It was quite the chore cleaning up his messes.

denthor
2012-04-28, 04:06 PM
in a a game I ran a ranger that was a 1/2 orc. We suspected that we were being followed so I said my ranger turns around walks backward for three rounds.

Me: What do I see at 100 feet.

DM: nothing

round 2

Me: I take a second round of spot checking do I see anything between me and the last town?

DM: nothing

Round 3

DM: You get attacked by a thief from off the road take damage.

Me: what

DM: came from off the road sneak attack damage

Round 4

Fight

Round 5

will save

Round 6

under charm person tell me everything you know about your party members.

Rounds 7-15 I blab

out of character

Where were the people that charmed me

Less than 50 feet away but you wanted to know about 100 feet away so you did not see them.

Righteous Doggy
2012-04-28, 04:10 PM
Less than 50 feet away but you wanted to know about 100 feet away so you did not see them.

He heard you fine. He was was just mean:smallyuk:!

Traab
2012-04-28, 06:02 PM
These two don't seem so bad, the first is meta gaming however, but the second still makes sense from an rp perspective(and is something I've often wondered about, about dnd, as it does make sense for something to be stronger vs. it's natural enemy)
I do agree that the others are a bit out there though

It makes no sense to have something that cant hurt you much as your natural enemy. If that angel is doing crap damage against me, I consider it my natural comedy relief, not enemy. A wolf is a deers natural enemy. That doesnt mean that deer get tooth proof armored fur to resist taking damage from it. And that wolf shouldnt have to learn how to gore a deer with antlers somehow in order to kill it. I follow the pokemon doctrine. A water types natural enemy is electric types. That means electric attacks hurt more. Hence, a demons natural enemy is an angel because holy attacks hurt more.

Daremonai
2012-04-29, 03:48 AM
While I understand the basic reasoning, it makes just as much sense for a predator's attacks to be more effective against its natural prey's defences as for defences to be strong against attacks....

Slipperychicken
2012-04-30, 11:38 AM
He heard you fine. He was was just mean:smallyuk:!

Again, this is what I meant by cheap tricks. Next time the GM misspeaks in your favor, call him on it.

Serpentine
2012-04-30, 06:57 PM
My very first DM ever was... Well, not very good. But she was our very first, so we didn't know any better.
At one point, though, we were wandering through the forest and I came across this "huge grey creature". I remember she specifically described it as "towering over the treetops". At which point, all we newbies were all

http://stigmalitia.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/SimbaScared.jpg

Much confusion and "omg I run away!" later, it was established that the DM meant "it seems like it's towering over the treetops". It was actually a grey render, which I think are Large sized (Huge at the biggest, iirc).

kieza
2012-05-01, 01:59 AM
These two don't seem so bad, the first is meta gaming however, but the second still makes sense from an rp perspective(and is something I've often wondered about, about dnd, as it does make sense for something to be stronger vs. it's natural enemy)
I do agree that the others are a bit out there though

On the first one, the player had 4 HP when he was hit by a critical from the monster, putting him low enough that the entire party was on the edge of their seats. It was sheer luck that I rolled low for the damage when he got buried.

On the second, it wasn't so much the fact that he made that logical leap, it was the fact that he kept doing it for an entire fight after being told repeatedly "the hellfire doesn't seem very effective" rather than making a Religion check or testing a new strategy. Apparently, he thought "not very effective" meant "it has a lot of hit points," not "it's mostly immune to that damage type." (Of course, he was the only one getting that feedback, so this pretty much reinforces my belief that his mental processes are irreconciliably different from the rest of the world's).

On another note, I now remember an entirely different player who, having used a "5 minutes or until the end of the encounter" self-buff, decided to run ahead of the party and tackle the next encounter before it wore off. He proceeded to run across a 200-ft parade ground, enter a barracks by the simple expedient of running through the closed door, and get completely pwned by the trio of gishes and caster inside--without the buff ever coming into play. To this day, we're not sure what he thought when the entire party told him "uh, we're not following you just yet, that's probably a bad idea." (He also had the bad habit of running through a half-dozen AoOs to get to a squishy wizard, landing a hit, and falling unconscious before his next turn.)

Sith_Happens
2012-05-01, 02:32 AM
Apparently, he thought "not very effective" meant "it has a lot of hit points," not "it's mostly immune to that damage type."

He obviously needs to play Pokemon more.:smallwink:

missmvicious
2012-05-01, 07:07 AM
So first of all people mishear me all the time. I have a weird accent and I can be a little awkward in social situations so I mutter or something. I imagine the only way to fix it is to always like enunciate and what not so thats how you go about fixing it.

Anyways one of my horror stories.
In my first campaign ever my female gnome bard was knocked out in a fight and I said that I really could "only lay there and wait for the dwarves to save me". Every guy at the table thought I said "only lay there and wait for the dwarves to rape me". That was a miserable moment for me because they then proceeded to make loads of jokes about it. I wanted to crawl under the table and die.

Marlowe
2012-05-01, 07:16 AM
So first of all people mishear me all the time. I have a weird accent and I can be a little awkward in social situations so I mutter or something. I imagine the only way to fix it is to always like enunciate and what not so thats how you go about fixing it.

Anyways one of my horror stories.
In my first campaign ever my female gnome bard was knocked out in a fight and I said that I really could "only lay there and wait for the dwarves to save me". Every guy at the table thought I said "only lay there and wait for the dwarves to rape me". That was a miserable moment for me because they then proceeded to make loads of jokes about it. I wanted to crawl under the table and die.


Impossible by RAW. Unconscious always counts as Willing.

missmvicious
2012-05-01, 08:54 AM
Impossible by RAW. Unconscious always counts as Willing.

Impossible by RAW yes, but with one's hubby at the table still a very bad idea.

Krazzman
2012-05-01, 09:37 AM
My first DnD Campaign, playing an elven rogue (6th level). Together with a Human Fighter and a Dwarven Druid (female). We slept in the trees because of skeleton patrols. I wanted to climb down the tree we slept in and the dm asked how I wanted to do that. I said "I climb down or do you think I would jump". Seemed like I have muttered the first part and jumped directly on the dwarf that tried to ground me for jumping on her...

Serpentine
2012-05-01, 07:06 PM
Impossible by RAW. Unconscious always counts as Willing.Wow. That's... a really disturbing implication :smalleek: