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Kaveman26
2013-02-06, 10:55 AM
The Campaigns that Went Wrong:

So…I have written something along the lines of 500 pages worth of campaign logs and recaps. Most have been rather well received. I thought it was time to add a list of the campaigns where stuff went horribly wrong as well. Before our more creative workarounds and general ability to roleplay we cut our teeth on the nightmarish thickheaded crap that most people did. These are not the tales of epic glory and fantastic character development. This is the other stuff…

I would cheerfully invite others to share the adventures that died in their infancy or came to sudden and screeching halts.

Dark Sun 2nd Edition:

Character details for this campaign are more vague. It was run ages ago and I was nowhere near as obsessive with notes and record keeping. The group was eccentric even by Dark Sun standards. We had…

A Mul gladiator that specialized in tortoise blades and acrobatics. He was basically wolverine…but if wolverine was a half dwarf mutant ninja with turtle shells hooked to short swords hooked to his forearms.

A Half giant Gladiator with obscene Strength and Con and not much else. A true one trick pony. Smash…still moving? Smash again.

A human defiler that thought he was best suited for front line combat.

A thrikeen ranger that was bit obsessed with using all four arms to wield longswords and hand crossbows.

An Elf bard that specialized in poisons and blowguns.

Almost from the get go this group was doomed. We began play as slaves in a caravan heading for a major city. In transit the Bard manages to slip his bonds and free the rest of us. We are absolutely equipment less and resort to using our loincloths (our only starting equipment) as makeshift slings and garrotes. My naked half giant manages to strangle a guard and we get access to a single set of clothes and a spear.

As we are slipping free from our wagon raiders attack the caravan and we sneak into the desert to hide and await the raids completion. Come dawn we are searching for water (a constant activity in Dark Sun) and we realize that we have no way of storing the water…so we do the only thing we can. We use the half Giants loincloth as a make shift waterskin…and quench our parched lips with crotch flavored brackish cactus water.

Such dire measures are short lived as we scavenge the sacked caravan and scrounge some basic clothes and a few clay jars that double as water barrels. Some broken chains and wagon wood become improvised clubs and chain whips and off we go.

Our first encounter is against a nest of ankhegs and we smash them with broken chunks of wood and a single obsidian spear. We take as solid beating in the process and bemoan our complete lack of healing. Inside the ankheg nest we locate globs of honey that function as cure light wound potions. We tear apart the carapaces from the giants insects and use the half giant loin cloth for a rucksack to carry our honey.

We wander the desert for days no knowing what direction to head in…half us nearly die of thirst as we fail checks to find water. Salvation comes in the form of a burial cairn that bears weapons and scraps of armor. We fend off a host of skeletons and emerge from the tomb almost respectable for 1st level characters (we started at level 3 though so we are still raggedy for our level).

By the end of our first session we stumble upon a camp of humanoids (I don’t recall what they are named) that gain attack bonuses as more of them attack you. We get our asses kicked but manage to break them and run them off. In their camp is a solid metal chest that we are super eager to break into. Our DM warns us off it and we ignore his hints to leave it be. The Bard tries to pick the lock with a scrap of metal from a chain and he rolls a natural 20. Our cheers are short lived as a fire elemental rises from the chest and attacks us. I am sketchy on the actual rules but as I recall the fire elemental in 2nd edition had immunity to anything less than a +3 weapon. The chest was a McGuffin we were supposed to hold onto for some time before opening. It killed all five of us without breaking a sweat.

Well What we Were Supposed to Load the Fountain With:

A 2nd edition campaign with a very small player base. In traditional cliché style we were investigating a newly discovered temple in a dense forest outside a wilderness town. We had three characters…a NE druid that was obsessed with baboons and would only use a greatclub for a weapon. A N Fighter Mage that dual wielded longswords and a Wizard that specialized in flint lock pistols and fire spells.

Some unusual behavior in the townspeople (amnesia and unexplained wounds) led us to believe they were involved with the temple and must be part of their cult. We found the temple and dispatched some cultists we found on the grounds. The temple was non descript and only had three rooms. In the center room was a fountain. The fountain was empty. We searched the three rooms for DAYS. We could hear noises under the floor but could not find a way to get under there. More cultists showed up and we killed them too. Finally the fighter mage decided to try and fill the fountain. He found some bloodstains on the fountain floor and deduced that it must be filled with blood to trigger the secret door to the lower levels. So we slashed the throats of the dead guards and tried to drain them into the fountain. Only problem…blood doesn’t really flow from a dead body. Our solution? Find live bodies!

Our increasingly psychotic group tracked the forest for cultist to take alive and we would drag them screaming and begging for mercy back to the fountain where we drained their blood inside. Still no door or entrance made itself available. At this point our DM was practically hitting us over the head with

DM: THE BLOOD HAS NO EFFECT ON THE FOUNTAIN. CLEARLY THE FOUNTAIN IS NOT PART OF GETTING TO THE OTHER PART OF THE TEMPLE.

We went back into town and the druid who was getting hungry decided to eat the first thing he could catch and kill…which happened to be a townsperson domestic goat. He walked to their little garden and clubbed the leashed goat to death and then proceeded to gut it in their back yard and eat it raw. The city guard came and pressed him for an explanation…he offered them some of the goat and looked confused.

The townsfolk had us hanged after killing three of the town guard.

As we swung from the gallows the DM almost in tears yells out
DM: The entrance WAS BEHIND THE TEMPLE IN THE CELLAR. WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU NOT LOOK AROUND THE OUTSIDE! Ahhhh!!!!!!

Death Was a Pale Horse:

I genuinely think this campaign was the closest our DM came to having a nervous breakdown. In the infancy of 3rd edition we put together a squad of characters and began play working with a horse merchant. We were all level 1 and had fairly cool characters for level 1. What they were was not important…what happened is.

The horse merchant was well known and established for some of the finest mounts for a hundred miles. We all went through some checks to find mounts best suited in temperament and personality for our characters. A ton of thought was put into this and I think it was meant to make us care about our horses instead of using them as cover.

In an isolated corral was a princely horse…a fine stallion of remarkable speed and strength. A truly bad ass horse. We all made rolls to try and see if the horse would take us as riders. All of us failed. We pressed anyway. Our fighter tried to break the stallions will and got thrown from the mount in response. Our wizard tried to daze it with color spray before mounting it…the horse kicked him in the head and rolled maximum damage…killing him outright. Outraged the fighter charged and tried to avenge the wizard…the horse hit him with two hooves and a bite attack the next round and knocked him out. Our ranger tried putting an arrow into the horse and he actually managed to connect…the merchant took offense and lit into the ranger. The campaign ended before it began with the horse killing four of us and the merchant killing the ranger.

FreakyCheeseMan
2013-02-06, 07:51 PM
So, I've been the part of one (And only one Deadlands) campaign.

Our party was fairly typical of the game, so, in other words, completely bat**** insane:


Myself, a calm-spoken Sheriff who'd maxed out the Deadlands-equivalent of "Intimidate" and had a perk that could best be summarized as "Crazy Eyes".
An Austrian mad scientist with his own wagon and suit of power armor, determined to put a gattling gun on every surface that could concievably hold one.
A naive kid looking for the mythical city of "Pendejo." He picked the name because he thought it sounded Spanish.
A swindling saloon-girl/bounty hunter with an obsessed stalker.
A wounded ex-Confederate Sergeant.


Despite our complete inexperience with the setting, our party actually got off to a good start, investigating a series of Ghost-related murders along this one trail. However, we fairly quickly got sidetracked into hunting not the Ghosts, but rather a series of random local bandits. The game lasted for about four sessions, and we never made any progress along the intended plot.

In combat, our party was beyond effective. The few enemies that didn't cower or wet themselves at the sight of my Sheriff's murder eyes (I routinely rolled Intimidate-equivalent checks in the upper 40s) fell instantly before a wave of small-arms fire; no fight lasted long enough for the Mad Scientist to get to fire a single one of his Gatling guns. Until the end, by far our biggest challenge was crossing a river, where a combination of bad luck, heavy gear and abysmal "Ride" skills almost drowned half the party (Halfway across the river, my character named his horse "Bad horse."

Finally, time came for us to make camp, and set up guard. Needless to say, the Mad Scientist refused to participate, a fact to which the Confederate took exception. So, when what should have been the Mad Scientist's watch came around, the Sergeant snuck into his tent and did a Rebel Yell right into his ear; in a fit of perhaps excessive zeal, the guy playing said Confederate actually made the ear, into the guy playing the scientist's ear.

So, naturally, the Scientist's first action was to start shooting with the gun he kept under his pillow. By pure luck, his first bullet struck the Confederate, who nonetheless managed to wrestle the gun from the Scientit's hand. The Mad Scientist then grabbed a bowie knife in one hand and a pack of dynamite in the other, and insisted he would blow up the wagon if everyone didn't go away and let him sleep.

By this point, my character had woken up and gotten to the back of the wagon, and leveled a gun at the Scientist's head, demanding he put down the Dynamite and step outside to discuss matters like a rational adult.

"No!"
Bang!
Ka-Boom!

nedz
2013-02-06, 10:38 PM
The first time I played G1

G1 — The Steading of the Hill Giant King had just been published and one of my friends had bought it. He was very eager to run it and so I agreed to play it one-on-one. I generated a suitable party and stocked up with the usual equipment.
The DM reads out the flavour box, which leads to the following.
"The Steading is made of wood ?"
DM: "Yes"
"We double back a bit until we find some local villagers and check that this is the home of the Hill Giants ?"
DM: "Oh yes"
"And we check that they are evil ?"
DM: "Yep"
"Then we return to the Steading. The Wizard, Paladin and Cleric stay out front, 30' from the door, whilst the Thief sneaks around and pours oil on to the wooden building."
DM: "OK"
"The Thief can make several trips — we have a lot of oil."
DM: "OK"
"The Thief lights the oil and retreats to the rest of the party. We wait for the Giants to emerge."
DM: :smallannoyed:

evildmguy
2013-02-07, 09:33 AM
Kaveman26: Love all your write ups! Thanks!

I usually DM but one time in college, I met a bunch of guys who knew other guys that were running a game. They knew I wanted to play, so managed to get the three of us invited to the game. The DM had started G1-3 and had run one or two sessions with the other players previously.

The three of us decided to go as characters that knew each other. I'm fuzzy on the details. I was playing a druid and given that I had Creeping Doom, I must have been single classed. That meant that one of them was a ranger and the other was a ranger/druid. I think we had a human, elf and half elf and made the half-elf sibling to the human and elf, so we were all related.

As they had already started, the DM took us aside and gave us the background. We were part of a patrol that had been captured by the giants after an ambush. (There was a bit of grumbling of the three of us being ambushed in the wilderness but mostly let it go.) We were told that other patrol members were our good friends from the same village or area. And then we were told that we had had to watch over the course of weeks as they were all cooked and eaten by the giants and it was just the three of us left. Okay. We were fine with this.

So, we start the game tied up in a room when the rest of the group shows up and finds us. They untie us and give us our equipment that either they found or was in the room. At this point, I'm impressed with the DM because we had a good role playing base and he got the new guys into the action as fast as he could.

The other group had apparently either charmed or convinced a giantess to lead them to us. Once we were free, the three of us looked at each, looked at the board with the minis, and then said we were killing the giantess, "whom we had recognized as one of the ones that had cooked and eaten our friends." I was expecting the other players to speak up in the giantess' defense and have an uneasy alliance but some good role playing and us having to accept this "ally."

Before the other players could say anything or we could explain what had happened to us, the DM said, "No, I won't allow that." What? You just gave us the background and identified this as someone who killed our good friends! It devolved into meta gaming between the players and DM, with the three of us bringing up the background. But the DM was adamant and wouldn't let us even talk it out. The giantess was under DM protection.

So, we keep going into the steading and the players, and their characters, are not happy. The other players didn't tell us anything about what they were planning. So, when a giant appeared in the hallway, the three of us, acting as scouts, attacked, hoping to take it down quickly and maybe quietly.

The DM again stopped us because that wasn't the plan. What? And why aren't the players telling us this? We got no information from either side and are reacting to what we see!

This happened a couple more times and the three of us are just pissed now. The other players aren't saying anything and the DM seems to be running the adventure from both sides. I'm not sure why he has players at this point. He is describing the action, sometimes of both player characters and monsters, and leading us into the steading! WTF?

Finally, we get into a fight and everyone is involved. My siblings are behind me dealing with a giant or two and all of the other party and attacking giants are in front. I tell the DM that I'm casting Creeping Doom starting in front of me and that I can control it to only attack the giants.

"I don't think you can control it that way."

"Well, I'm still casting it."

(For those that don't know, Creeping Doom did 500-1000 hit points of damage total before dying out. Think of the videos of the ant swarms that chew wide swaths of a jungle down to the ground. That's what I put into the hallway.)

I don't remember if he saved the other PCs and just had it attack the giants or not but I didn't care and knew I wasn't going to be back.

Looking back, I realize I didn't handle it well. But it really irked me when the DM was stopping our actions or not allowing things that he didn't agree with.

edg

geeky_monkey
2013-02-07, 10:43 AM
Maybe I'm confused but web a thread has the word "recap" in it that usually means the OP want to recap HIS stories and not have evertyone else post theirs >_>.

Like I said, maybe I'm wrong though.

He specifically asks other people to post in the 1st post:

"I would cheerfully invite others to share the adventures that died in their infancy or came to sudden and screeching halts. ".

Anyway, my story:

I was DMing for a group of reasonably newish players. They'd been tasked with sneaking into the house of a minor merchant who the quest giver thought might be connected with a cult trying to take over the city.

They managed to get into his room without too much trouble (although they nearly died to a couple of guard dogs due to some frankly appalling rolling - I've never seen so many natural 1), and all they had to do was get into a locked drawer to find a ledger which proved his connection.

Unfortunately they spend so long looking for a non-existent key (it was on a chain round the neck of the merchant!) that he came home, caught them, and his bodyguards caused a TPK when they stood and fought rather than fleeing.

I'd given them dozens of warnings at this point he was getting home soon (they knew his schedule), and that they'd searched the room really thoroughly and there was nowhere a key could be concealed.

At no point did the rogue try to pick the lock or any of them try smashing it. It wasn't even like they wanted to leave no trace - they'd torn up half the floorboards at this point and were about to start on the walls!

Afterwards the players realised how stupid they’d been and we all laughed about it, but I spent most of the session stopping myself from screaming at them to just hit the desk with their weapons not the floor!

Edit: first time posting on here - if anyone tells me how to multi quote/spoiler box I'll tidy this post up.

Dr Bwaa
2013-02-07, 11:10 AM
At work so I can't give a big summary of all the campaigns that fall into this category, but I can give one. We had a high-powered 3.5 campaign around level 11 for a while that was really just a romp. We hit different dimensions (came to the real world and fought one of the PC's grandmothers incarnated as a colossal fire elemental; made our way through the Durance of Hate to fight Mephisto, etc) and eventually one day we came upon a deck of cards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deck_of_many_things). Everyone in the party drew six times (not to be outdone by each other). Needless to say, the campaign ended (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/6/28/). It is now known only as "the Deck of Many Things campaign".

Kaveman26
2013-02-07, 11:21 AM
Wear Protection:

Here is one of the more infamous TPK's that was strictly our fault. Our group had been working together and had advanced into the level 7 range from 1st. We had a good mix of stealth and blasting and were enjoying the encounters. Our DM was somewhat stingy with loot and we grew anxious.

We began trying to supplement our income by disemboweling and gutting anything we killed. Our thought process was that if we killed a dire bear...it might have eaten someone with gear. Or if we took out a band of orcs, one of the orc lackeys might have swallowed some gems to avoid sharing. Bottom line we searched the exterior and interior of corpses.

Not wanting to discourage creative thinking, but also wanting to stem a constant tide of "well I'll double check the lower intestine" he began forcing us to make Fort Saves against diseases. Our group contracted a nasty con affecting disease and we ended up losing two players in the wilderness. In trying to carry around the dead bodies the remaining party members contracted the plague and also succumbed.

We got the picture...from there out we wore gloves while gutting our kills.



Maybe I'm confused but web a thread has the word "recap" in it that usually means the OP want to recap HIS stories and not have evertyone else post theirs >_>.

yeah I meant it as a starter for posting some of the dumbest things my friends and I have ever done, but I like to hear the other stuff people manage to steer themselves into as well.

Grim Portent
2013-02-07, 12:50 PM
'Not wanting to discourage creative thinking, but also wanting to stem a constant tide of "well I'll double check the lower intestine"'


You guys needed discouraged from sticking your hands into a creatures lower intestine? And you weren't even washing your hands or wearing gloves?

Kaveman26
2013-02-07, 01:07 PM
You guys needed discouraged from sticking your hands into a creatures lower intestine? And you weren't even washing your hands or wearing gloves?

Not until our whole group died, after that hygeine was more involved with our role playing experience.

ArcturusV
2013-02-07, 02:46 PM
Well, my last 3.5 one, running a Vashar Ninja probably counts as a pretty bad campaign.

Starts off with me basically being told I'm in my hometown, and wander around and do what I'd normal do. So I spend about 5 minutes wandering around until I find the plot. Some NPC vendor tells me that the captain of the guard got murdered in a way that no one can figure out. Sounds obvious to me. And as a Ninja a method for killing people that no one can figure out and thus can't defend against sounds valuable. So I bite on the hook. Try to go down to the bad section of town, round up some contacts from the underworld, ask if there's some new heavy hitter in town, etc.

Find out when I get there, that the place is cordoned off. Guard tells me that no one is allowed in as they search. Any attempt to bypass them, even one where I was moving along rooftops, out of sight of the guard on the street, got spotted and Noped, with the guard who apparently had some short range teleport at will power as he'd suddenly be right in my way. So frustrated, I bluff the guard into telling me where his boss is for "Recompense" for them basically shutting down her legitimate business by not letting her get into her working area there.

So I'm finally pointed towards the barracks and the newly promoted Captain of the Guard. I go there. There's a drunk guard. He tries to attack me and says he's going to rape my character... because we're in a Vashar city and my DM is playing up the Evil in that way. Under attack, I bluff the guy to get an attack in where I can sudden strike with my dagger, dropping the guard. I decide to run away from the rape gang hideout/scene of the crime. Out of nowhere I get KOed. No chance to avoid it or anything. Just "You see a mailed fist come out and deck you, you're knocked out."

Ended up in someone's personal dungeon, with one leg chained to a couch. All my gear missing. Being a player who wants to do stuff rather than just wait... I notice in his description of my circumstances he says "The cuff around your leg is attached to a chain, the chain is wrapped around one of the couch's legs".

So I go "Ah ha! Easy escape!" and tell him I'm trying to tilt the couch up so I can slip the chain off the leg. I am retroactively told that the chain actually is inserted into the couch's leg, not wrapped around it, and that wouldn't work.

So eh. I give up. My jailer comes in. Offers me some drugs, water, and soup. Also gives "Hurr hurr, I did stuff to you while you were unconscious" overtones because, again, Vashar and that's how my DM presumed they were, serial rapists who would do it at the drop of a hat. Which no one really appreciates being basically told your character was violated with nothing you could have done about it.... -_-

Eventually the jailer gives me time to stew. I go "Hmm... soup. Means I have a spoon to eat the soup. I know..." and said I'd try to break the handle off the soup spoon, and use he broken handle as an improvised lockpick to free myself from the shackle. I get told there is no spoon, no one eats soup with a spoon.

So... stuck. I sleep. Get woken up by my patron Archdevil who apparently decided to pop in and give me a visit (... waking me up by molesting me... sensing a pattern?). Told met he murder thing was important and I had to follow through on it. As I was going to anyway. Disappears. Leaves me still chained up despite asking if an all powerful Archdevil might actually help her disciple accomplish the goal by getting her out of this temporary setback.

Next morning I find out that the jailer is the captain of the guard. Is going to press me into helping investigate the murder, and that I'm on temporary probation. Oh, and the guard I killed with my Sudden Strike wasn't actually dead just for a kick in the teeth.

So we're investigating. Seems like obvious Vampire killing (And I pass my check to figure out Vampires exist and such) since people are being killed by two small puncture wounds on the neck, no blood sprays, etc. There's one witness, I get to question her. She's obviously lying and being evasive... so my Vashar, being Lawful Evil, decides to torture some truth out. In the end she resists but is screaming bloody murder. Three guards rush in. No questions asked, doesn't give me a chance to talk, won't reply to me. Just comes in and attacks me, getting a Surprise Round on me to surround my 1st level character and prevent my escape. They stab me into negatives before I can act.

I wake up in jail. Find out that my character got raped... again... they broke my dominant arm. Being given another "Do what we say, or else" ultimatum...

This process repeats, I get out. I do something that gets me out of line even a little, I get thrown in prison, all my stuff taken away, etc... usually with the obligatory "someone did something to you while you were out" bit. It wasn't a fun campaign. I liked the character idea at first. But I probably wouldn't want to play her again if I had to keep all that storyline baggage and campaign history.

Not sure if it was the DM was just very linear and hated going off plot. Or if it was something where he just wanted to punish me for having an Evil Character. Which might be the thing. Though my "evil" wasn't generally plot derailing so much as just another means to the end of the story.

None that none of this prison stint stuff really mattered to the other players. They were hemming and hawing a lot about what they wanted to play, taking their sweet time, some people not showing up. So I was basically running one on one and getting backstory fodder until everyone else finished their character.

Never got to that point. I think everyone saw what happened to my character and decided they didn't want to have that guy as a DM.

Arbane
2013-02-07, 08:23 PM
(Rapefest Railroad Snipped)

O_o

...Why did you stick around more than one session? :smalleek:

ArcturusV
2013-02-07, 09:06 PM
Because A) I never get to actually be a PC, I"m always DMing. B) Kept getting promised it would "Get better" once everyone else jumped in. At the very least someone would be watching my back for the sucker punches and mass rushes.

And well... you know how hope goes? I was getting to be a PLAYER... for the first time in about... 6 years? And I wasn't being asked to play a Healbot Cleric or else everyone will whine at me. I was psyched up, really eager.

Then stuff happened. And excuses about how it'd get better, and he's just setting things up so it's rough, and getting the rust off his own DMing, etc, etc, etc.

And the excuses just kept continuing.

Three sessions in, everyone other than the DM was just "Yeah.... no." Even me at that point. Which irks me. I really was excited to be a player again. I really was excited to be asked/allowed to do something other than sit in the back and Cure ____ Wounds after a fight was over.

Then it all went horribly wrong.

Averis Vol
2013-02-08, 01:05 AM
Heh, about two months ago a friend of mine started up a game, and I was getting to play, a wonderful stint from my every week DM'ing for the last eight months or so, so we roll up characters and the party is thus:

Draconic Human binder 5/Knight of the seal 2
Draconic Human warblade 7
Hellbred cleric 7
Chaos Gnome Sorcerer 7 (me)
Sir Walter the liberator: my dire weasel mount

Game starts with us, recent war heroes, being honored next to the king of the land himself, along with our captain Vance. So after a little RPing and chatting amongst ourselves we turn and see that there's a sixth person sitting in the back of the room; we didn't get a name, just that he was "The Wizard" and he was just here to see the ceremony. So, being the only one in game and out with the slightest hint of charisma I smile and offer him a drink before we're called to accept our medals.

The DM sets the tone with a glorious monologue of our victories as we walk out, and we quickly notice that we are not walking as fast as we were sure we were. Eventually time stops completely and theres sort of a parlor trick flash of red powder, and standing before the king is a man maybe twenty years of age wearing blood red fullplate with the symbol of Hextor on his shoulder and bearing a longsword that glowed with a malicious purple hue.

We force will saves like crazy to break free of the spell, but to no avail as the man walks over and says in an echoing tone, "For my father!" before bringing his blade up and removing the kings head. There's some malicious evil overlord laughing going on and the man raises the head up and shouts, "forces to be I command you, make me king of this land!"

Now, we can all still hear and think, just not move, but after a moment the world begins to move again and we all stumble as we were not expecting it, as it also seemed the man in fullplate wasn't either as he was set to looking about for the source that interrupted his spell. So, now that others can act, alarms are raised and the man takes one last look and recognizes us, though we can't quite place who he is (Damn low rolls sometimes!) and he gives the most bloodcurdlingly creepy sneer as he points at us and disappears in the same puff of dust that he came in.

So back to being able to move we rush to the king and drag his body into the palace and set him down, where we again realize that the man we forgot last time is still in the room. He doesn't seem surprised that the king was dead and we stand defensively over our liege and threaten the man (Stupidly as you will find out; See: Castle Archmage) if he doesn't tell us what he knows. He chuckles and breathes heavily on us, which due to failed fort saves, sends us flying across the room. we stand up and prepare for a fight as he tells us that we need to leave town, it is not wholly what it was when we first entered, and to smash open the wall down the hall to find a secret entrance into the market district. We try to get more info but he merely shoo's us and says, "You will only escape through the hole in the town square, so go and find the heir."

Not wanting to get breathed on again we say our apologies and smash open the kings wall and find a small three foot diameter door that opens up into a giant steel slide that my character is all too eager to dive into, followed directly by sir Walter mind you, and after about thirty seconds we're shot out into a.....well a bowl of feather beds and bounce around harmlessly for a second. After a while I fire an arrow up the shaft (As per our signal if I was still alive on the other side) and my teammates also come sliding down, looking a little worse for the wear then I was (small size is awesome sometimes and they didnt get out of the way of each other. They were also all wearing fullplate sooooooo....DM was lenient on them taking the fall damage for each person to hit them.) and we all go poking out the brush cover to see ourselves in the aforementioned market district.

So we all move around town like people brought from the twelfth century into modern day tokyo, as we notice that the town is structurally the same but take on a more.......Stalin-ish design; there are symbols of hextor on every building and statues of the king (The whelp who took off the real kings head) line every open walkway; the only thing not done up completely is a well at the edge of town. Now, though I was a sorcerer my int score was still very high due to lucky rolls, so I put up my hand and say" I know what you're thinking, but don'---" by the time I can finish the sentence, my group are practically fighting to see who gets to be first down the well, and after some deliberation they grab me and jump in; expecting to find a way out the other side.

........

we Re rolled for the rest of the session.

To put it into game terms, I didn't want to go, so the warblade grappled me and dove in. none of them had ranks in swim and they all had heavy armor which means they sank like bricks and ultimately took me down with them. The entire rebuilding process was marked by the nearly un ending laughter of our DM, actually, I'm pretty sure he passed out once and woke up just to keep laughing. Minus play by post that was the last time I got to be a PC.

I don't truly know what happened to my Dire Weasel now that I bring this up, hmm....

ArcturusV
2013-02-08, 01:25 AM
Oh man... seen so many PCs die by forgetting Heavy Armor + Water = Death. :smallbiggrin:

Averis Vol
2013-02-08, 01:40 AM
Yea, it was really sad, though, the DM expected only the group newbie to do it, not the majority of the vets. :smallannoyed:

ArcturusV
2013-02-08, 02:39 AM
Ooo, but it's something that happens to EVERY DnD player once. I mean most DMs don't throw water hazards at you all that often. But the first time they do? Someone/people are going to die, horribly.

And then, from that point on, even the DM promises you'll be in the middle of a desert campaign where there isn't more than a thimble full of water in any one place... you still take the Swimming Skill.

geeky_monkey
2013-02-08, 05:52 AM
Another game that died in its infancy:

Our DM decided to try something a bit different – a heavy roleplay game set in a royal court that may have been taken over by a powerful cabal. It was supposed to be low on combat (before we started the DM told us there’d probably be none, a formal duel at most and they’d be rare), heavy on the intrigue, mystery and political manipulation and all about bluffing, diplomacy, and playing people against each other.

We were court officials working for a minor lord, one not important enough to have been approached by the cabal but who was aware that something was going on. He’d tasked us to investigate and find out who was in it and what its ultimate goal was. He warned us to be discrete as if the cabal discovered we were investigating it he couldn’t protect us.

In the first session we heard a vague rumour that one of the nobles might be a vampire in the service of a powerful lich. No evidence to back it up, and the source wasn’t very reliable at all (a drunk servant!).

The very next session one of our party decided to act upon this by attacking him in an open session at the court, in front of the king. Turns out he wasn’t a vampire.

Unfortunately he was still a Baron who’d been attacked by the servants of a rival lord. We were arrested, tortured, ‘encouraged’ to turn on our master who, thanks to the manipulation of the real BBEG (whoever that was), was executed for plotting against the king and the DM abandoned the campaign as he couldn’t work out how to salvage it and went back to a game where a player being a mindless murder-hobo was more manageable.

Kesnit
2013-02-08, 07:43 AM
This was in a Mage: the Awakening game.

Normally, my now-wife (she was my fiancee at the time of this event) runs WoD, but one of our players wanted to try running a game, and wanted to play Mage. Neither my wife nor I are overly familiar with Mage, but we knew the system.

The story behind the game was standard, but fine - group trying to take over the city and we have to stop them. Our first plot hook ended up taking us into the Spirit Realm, which was the first sign something is wrong. Only my fiancee's PC had any Spirit Arcana, or even knowledge of the spirits. But we managed to muddle through and beat the first boss. Mission 1 down.

Since the first mission was Spirit-based, I assumed the ST would set up each mission to focus on one of the Arcana that the party had. (I was Forces-focused. Another guy focused on Death. The other woman in the campaign was Fate. There was one other guy, but I can't remember what he was.) I realized I was wrong when the second mission also dealt with spirits. So much so that other than my fiancee, none of us could do anything. (It involved negotiating with spirits and werewolves. My fiancee's character came from a werewolf family.)

About this same time, I realized that I was not being paranoid; the ST really was hitting on my fiancee. When she completely ignored him, he started hitting on the other woman in the game. (She at least was single, and did go out with him once or twice.)

By this time, I was pretty peeved with the ST. His game focused only on one character, and he was being a jerk. (Word edited for polite company.) My fiancee was peeved because this was one of her few chances to play (rather than run), the game was awful, and the ST was being a jerk. We quit showing up. Without us, his game fell apart very soon after.

Kaveman26
2013-02-20, 10:19 AM
A Charmed End:

So...this one time we decided to try and synergize a broken group of characters. We built two half-ogre fighters with spiked chains and combat reflexes that would go the way of spring attack. Think about the very early OOTS strip where Roy fights the half ogre. Exactly like that. Except...we made two of them. We then made two evil cleric who would raise dead and summon creatures to choke a battlefield. Our fifth character was a halfling rogue that was meant to stalk the twirling circles of chainy death.

Our very first encounter was against a force on the other side of a ravine. As the first opposing arrow fell against us...the question was raised.

"Did anyone pack a missile weapon?"

A few turns of arrows and a pair of failed will saves against Charm Person later, our ogre death machines had fulfilled their purpose against our clerics and dismantled our rogue into small squishy bits.

DM: So...you ready to roll up a new party?

TuggyNE
2013-02-20, 08:08 PM
Our very first encounter was against a force on the other side of a ravine. As the first opposing arrow fell against us...the question was raised.

"Did anyone pack a missile weapon?"

A few turns of arrows and a pair of failed will saves against Charm Person later, our ogre death machines had fulfilled their purpose against our clerics and dismantled our rogue into small squishy bits.

Well, other than the fact that charm person Does Not Work That Way, I'd say you kinda got what was coming to you. Always plan for versatility! :smalltongue:

DigoDragon
2013-02-21, 09:05 AM
One of the shortest-lived campaigns was a Super Hero plot using the GURPS system.
The initial hook was promising-- The United Nations creates an international Super Hero force to fight several recent organizations that have cropped up with supernatural and highly advanced abilities/gear/etc. The base was set upon a mobile aircraft carrier.

The problem... the GM went on an all-night bender watching Hellsing the night before. So the campaign quickly devolved from us trying to locate a doomsday cult to us watching some strange looking priests fight paper demons and scream quotes from Boondock Saints.
The zombie Joker subplot made no sense either.

We all gave up after we reached Monte Carlo to stop a bomb plot from succeeding. The reason we quit was that found out the rulers of the area were all better super heroes than we were. The king's daughter was a Class A D&D wizard. Using D&D rules.

Did I mention we were using the GURPS system? >_>