Most horrifying things that the DMs have done to you.

[atemu1234]

Okay. I've heard horror stories, but now I want to hear yours. What's the worst thing (and I mean horrifying) your DMs have pitted you against or made happen to you?

[Kazudo]

Well, mindflayers at level 5. The worst thing was that we survived. None of our loved ones did, though, and we only got out three years later.

[Oliver Veyrac]

Fight Urlgasta -> get swallowed by urlgasta -> cut way out of urlgasta -> get outside -> get swallowed again -> cut way out of urlgasta -> get swallowed again -> Party fighter gets swallowed -> cut way out of urlgasta -> rogue kills urlgasta outside -> I die from energy drain as it was still digesting me even though it was dead.

[Lightlawbliss]

Party of all T1s: fighting a cheater of mystra in an unhallowed area with an anti-magic field tied to it. Oh yes, and the only place safe from the 20 disintegrate traps around the room was inside the field... and then the DM had the gull to make the room fall apart when the cheater of mystra died. (atleast he gave enough time for those of us near the door to escape by running)

[Tarlek Flamehai]

Girdle of Feminity/Masulinity on a ship of lonely pirates.

[OverdrivePrime]

Girdle of Feminity/Masulinity on a ship of lonely pirates. :smalleek: We may have a winner!
No good can come of lonely pirates.


Most of my most excruciating game experiences have been at the hands of various World of Darkness or Immortal: The Invisible War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal:_The_Invisible_War) GMs, but I've had a couple doozies in D&D.

In my first (and only) time playing a character shorter than 5'-5", I rolled up a 3' tall halfling rogue for a one-shot run by my longtime DM for me and two of the women I used to game with where we were all supposed to play against type. The ladies played a half-giant cleric of love and a human barbarian lass.

About ten minutes into the game, my rogue botched a disable device check and got hit with a permanent reduce person. Suddenly I was 3 apples tall! With a squeal of delight, the half-giantess picks me up and crams me into her titanic cleavage, then tightens the laces of her battle-corset. I hadn't thought to put points in Escape Artist (because seriously, I had never used that skill before) and the DM ruled I auto-failed my grapple check to get out of the... [ahem] confining conditions due to the size difference.

So, I spend the rest of the game getting carried around like a cell phone, only to be retrieved when they needed a trap disarmed. The DM, encouraged by the ladies' delight, did nothing in the world to help me. It was pretty much the most emasculating game experience of my life.

At least it made a pretty funny drawing when the game was over. :smallsigh:

[hemming]

Yeah...one of my DMs castrated one of my characters

I was sleeping in the nude, no time to change, enemy makes a called shot on the penis and my character was a eunuch

[SimonMoon6]

I was playing in a 3.0 game and the DM... decided to run a game where we had substantially less than the recommended WBL.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

[Zalphon]

The DM made us fight a monster that could only act when we blinked. If we took our eyes off it, it could waylay us. We couldn't even look at our dice.

I took the fall and they rolled while keeping their eyes on the DM's. I told them what they rolled. That was scary. Like TPK scary. It one-shot my Druid.

[Shining Wrath]

It depends on what you mean by "horror".

If you mean "Lovecraftian eldritch creepiness", mind flayers.

If you mean "We're doomed with a super-sized side of doomed fries", Lady Vol backed up by Vampire Clerics. I actually grappled Vol and tossed her off the side of the flying ship, but obviously that was only a temporary inconvenience.

If you mean "This is utterly unfair", pursuing gestalt sorcerer / rogues via carriage as they pour magic missiles into the only person in the party capable of a handle animal check and keeping our carriage moving.

[fuzzybits]

I don't really have anything that's been done to me yet. But the most horrifying thing I've done to a party was running the 3.5 updated version of White Plume Mountain with a level 6 party.

Namely the end, where they triggered the Symbol of Insanity trap, since the code word no longer works. Only the Bard managed the will save, everyone else had permanent confusion. And then they had to fight an Efreeti. Needless to say TPK, which I worked into a "they got captured" instead. I felt terrible afterwards.

[Calimehter]

Worst I had was 2e when I had a character with a ring of regen, and we had a TPK in a room vs. a pack of gargoyles. Unfortunately, there was an asterisk on the TPK, because every few rounds or so thanks to the ring I kept coming back at 1 HP . . . in the middle of a roomful of sadistic gargoyles, who would promptly shred me . . . where I would lie in a bloody heap, only to come back at 1 HP a few rounds later, when the would shred me . . . and so on and on and on. I was basically "alive" until the gargoyles got tired of their chew toy and let him die. We never really sat down to figure it out, but it could have been years. We didn't really have anyone in town who was going to come looking for us anytime soon.

Once we realized what was going to happen to my character, we all basically got real quiet at the table for a few minutes and said "daaaamnnnn . . . "

[Segev]

Also not anything horrible done to me, but in a game I ran, I gave the party three wishes that had to be made on the spot with an efreeti who just wanted to grant them and go home.

[Tarlek Flamehai]

:smalleek:

At least it made a pretty funny drawing when the game was over. :smallsigh:

Post, now, or else!

[OverdrivePrime]

Post, now, or else!

Else! The Half-giant got to take it home. :smallsigh: It was just not my day. The DM for that game is an awesome artist.

[Rijan_Sai]

About ten minutes into the game, my rogue botched a disable device check and got hit with a permanent reduce person. Suddenly I was 3 apples tall!
Please tell me that, somehow, someway, for the sake of completeness, you were able to get hold of a Rod of Wonders that you activated repeatedly untill your skin turned permanently blue?:smallbiggrin:

[WeaselGuy]

My DM got sick of my monk utilizing his adamantite fist feat to find hidden doors and traps (picture the tiefling crawling around 5ft at a time, punching the floor to see what would happen, with our barbarian standing behind me to soak whatever traps would trigger). He solved the problem with a retracting floor triggered by a pressure plate, that opened up over a pit of lava. I actually critted the reflex save and managed to somersault over the barbarian and land on a safe spot. The barbarian became extra crispy. Our druid did him a favor though and reincarnated him as a bugbear, so we called it a win.

[Keneth]

I literally have no horror stories and I've been roleplaying for a long time.

I also usually don't describe to my players what happens to them if they get wiped. I think it's best that way, for the sake of their sanity.

[Rubik]

The DM sprang an ambush of level 7-10 ogres against our level 5 party. The party was knocked unconscious through nonlethal damage, and the ogres grabbed my (pre-adolescent) character and ran when reinforcements arrived, returned to their cave, and gang-raped him. Repeatedly. In unfortunately graphic detail.

I left the group after that.

[12owlbears]

The worst thing a DM has ever sent against us were 5 multi-headed winged phrenic dire lions.

[Shining Wrath]

The DM sprang an ambush of level 7-10 ogres against our level 5 party. The party was knocked unconscious through nonlethal damage, and the ogres grabbed my (pre-adolescent) character and ran when reinforcements arrived, returned to their cave, and gang-raped him. Repeatedly. In unfortunately graphic detail.

I left the group after that.

That DM has some serious problems. Teen-aged boy?

[dascarletm]

The DM sprang an ambush of level 7-10 ogres against our level 5 party. The party was knocked unconscious through nonlethal damage, and the ogres grabbed my (pre-adolescent) character and ran when reinforcements arrived, returned to their cave, and gang-raped him. Repeatedly. In unfortunately graphic detail.

I left the group after that.

Just another day in the life of Patrick Bateman

[Rubik]

That DM has some serious problems. Teen-aged boy?Fully-fledged adult.

For a given definition of "adult," anyway.

[VoxRationis]

In Forgotten Realms:
Wandering through the woods, mid-level characters, sleeping in Leomund's secure shelter, when our DM says:

"You see Shar outside the window."

After nearly wetting ourselves and driving ourselves nearly into a panic trying to figure out how we could possibly even survive this one, the DM starts wondering why we're so concerned. After replying that we didn't feel confident that our eight or ninth-level party could take on the greater goddess of darkness, he goes:

"I thought Shar was a race."

So no harm done, but it really freaked us out for a bit.

[NoACWarrior]

In a long standing campaign which we had good fun, good laughs, and good debates in there were a few screwed up things which happened:

One of my first few characters was a female hexblade elf, all the guys were making fun of the fact I rolled a female, and an elf (at the time elves were totally last year). This escalated to the point where my 8 strength character wound up accidentally insulting the half-orc barbarian. We took the fight outside and he won the grapple. So what did the half-orc barbarian do? Anything a PC controleld male half-orc barbarian would do when he grapples a low strength woman. At least I was spared the details, but my character kinda had a bun in the oven from that... too bad she was eaten by a plant monster about 2 hours later.

Skip forward to a few sessions after that. I thought it would be cool to be a half-dragon (not a good idea but hey I was a lot more impractical then), so I pleaded my friend DM to let me play one. He put a heavy restriction on it, and tied the PC to the "royal" family to prohibit bad things from happening. It was a wise decision at the time, but would prove fatal later. It turns out my half-dragon samurai (yes I know, impractical) was the illegitimate son of the prince's aunt (she was raped by a dragon) and was trying to get the prince's respect. Somehow I managed a good diplomacy, and the price and I decided to switch swords. I now have the 2nd strongest sword in the game, and the prince has the 3rd or 4th (I have no idea why I did that, reconfirming blood lines whatever), this will become important later. We come to a close on the first half of the campaign where we are supposed to assault the tower, with the price taking on BBEG at the top of the tower by himself (we are the distraction). The DM sends us against a Cryo Hydra at our Lvl 9-10 party (I have 6-7 levels due to LA) and I proceed to stupidly complete defend, I take all the breath weapons to the face and die. The party carries on, taking the sword with them. Meanwhile the prince is within inches of killing the BBEG but fails by around 10 damage total (his original sword would have killed BBEG). Party unknowningly continues up the tower, facing deadly traps all the while and eventually gets smashed by the BBEG when we run out of juice. TPK, could have been avoided if I didn't play a Half-Dragon.

Skip forward to the next 3/4. I was playing a warforged charger, most of the party did DoT and attrition style combat, our DM liked that style, but sometimes when facing against BBEGs we wouldn't have the juice to keep up (so I rolled a charger). We finally catch up to the BBEG (the same one at the first half) and he is ready for us with all his created / summoned undead. I roll first initiative and do my thing, destroying all of the BBEG's undead in the first round, with them doing either Cha damage or drain to me. Second round, I charge at BBEG, drop him to 1/4 HP and end my turn, taking more Cha damage / drain. At that point I'm the closest to BBEG, he proceeds to port out (without a defensive check) and I take my AoO, but wait, I have 0 Cha left, so I crumple in a stupor. BBEG gets away and I'm crying (he was my creator) asking why he turned evil. We later found out that either I was immune to said Cha damage / drain from the living contruct traits or from a spell. We chalked it up to creator issues and called it a night.

TL;DR: Got assaulted and impregnated by another PC half-orc barbarian, Half-dragon Samurai are terrible and cause TPK and kill main NPCs, Not reading your type's traits or spell immunities is a bad thing.

[ZX6Rob]

The DM sprang an ambush of level 7-10 ogres against our level 5 party. The party was knocked unconscious through nonlethal damage, and the ogres grabbed my (pre-adolescent) character and ran when reinforcements arrived, returned to their cave, and gang-raped him. Repeatedly. In unfortunately graphic detail.

I left the group after that.

...Yikes. That's, ah...

You know, I hear the occasional horror story about DMs like this, who -- usually in immaturity -- believe that the only way to make a campaign more... I don't know, "mature", in the same sense that the ESRB uses the term, is to fill their game with more unnecessary violence and sex than your average HBO prime-time show. I guess I count myself lucky that I've never had to deal with the kind of game-master who, upon stumbling across a copy of the F.A.T.A.L. RPG, thinks to themselves, "Yes, this will do nicely! This is exactly what I was looking for!"

I've never had a character castrated, I've never had a character get groped by a rogue with a particularly high sleight-of-hand skill, and I've most certainly never had a character get brutally and repeatedly sexually assaulted by monsters. Honestly, the worst thing that comes to mind is a very by-the-book DM I had a few years ago who MDK'ed a party of three with a wisdom-draining, incorporeal monster (I want to say it was an allip) at 3rd level, when, of course, none of the party had acquired magic weapons yet. This same DM took, I felt, somewhat unnecessary delight in also killing a swashbuckler I rolled up with an animated rug and some in-hindsight questionable save DCs.

That last one was my fault for playing a 3.5 swashbuckler, though.

Still, I've been very lucky so far, if some of the tales in this thread are to be believed. I've had way, WAY more bad experiences behind the screen than in front of it. This is a slight tangent, but...

I was DM'ing for a new group of five players, all of whom seemed very excited to play the game for the first time. I'd come up with a new adventure, helped all five roll up their first characters -- every one of them wanted to be some variation of Good, so I thought I was in the clear here -- and established the standard "small town besieged by orcs" plot hook to get things moving. I mentioned that they'd want to acquire horses to visit their first destination, and then disaster struck.

Upon meeting the stable-owner, the group immediately reverted to a pack of full-on psychopaths. In the space of thirty seconds, they described, in great detail, how they murdered the man, slowly, of course, set fire to the stables with the horses still in them, shot the running stable-boy in the back, and then -- of course, of COURSE they did this -- urinated all over the remains.

I just kind of blinked and said, "All right, well... I guess the town guard shows up, they're more than a match for the five of you, you all go to jail, are summarily convicted, and the game's over. I don't want to do this any more."

I told a friend of mine about this incident later, a friend who, as it happens, is one of the best DMs that I've ever had. Or, rather, I started to tell him. "You'll never guess what my players tried to do. First game ever, and they just--" I started. "They burned something down and pissed all over it, didn't they?" he said flatly. "What-- yes! Yes, that's exactly what they did!" And then he said something that I've never forgotten.

"I'll never understand why so many people, when given the infinite power and free reign that an open-ended game like D&D presents them, will immediately choose to pee all over everything in creation."

So, long story short, I now have an extremely embarrassing "no pee" clause whenever I DM a new group for the first time.

[Shining Wrath]

Fully-fledged adult.

For a given definition of "adult," anyway.

If ever a small child goes missing in his neighborhood, drop a dime. Those sorts of fantasies don't come easily.

[pwykersotz]

Most horrifying as in scariest? The DM let me be a STP Erudite that learned ALL the spells and now I have infinite PP and ML. As an Evil character. Currently he's building a Psionic Death Star out of his Psicrystal for the fun of it.

Things the DM has actually done? We accidentally turned on an ancient artifact and it drained magic from the multiverse. Even the gods were brought low. We were level 1. It was terrifying.

[Arbane]

"I'll never understand why so many people, when given the infinite power and free reign that an open-ended game like D&D presents them, will immediately choose to pee all over everything in creation."


I'd sig this, but the mods might disapprove. :smallbiggrin:

Anyway, my own story: GM tells us to make up level 0 commoners with aspirations to reach a PC class, gives us some details about our hometown... then has it attacked by drow who kill a lot of people and drag the PCs down into the underworld for a year of torture before we get an escape attempt due to a drow (male) who's fallen in love with her husband's character who also had a split personality as a result of all the abuse (also male - she mentioned she'd been wanting to using this plot with a female character, but thankfully the only one was a miraculously non-annoying kender). :smalleek:

I will say, the escape was one of the most harrowing adventures I've ever been in, but the fact we only got away due to Yet Another NPC kind of spoiled the triumph, and the next few sessions of working our way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty kind of soured me on the game in general.

In retrospect, I should've roleplayed my character with the severe PTSD they obviously had, but I didn't think of it at the time.

[sambouchah]

A DM had us traveling with the ultimate campaign boss(unknowingly), who killed all living matter within 80ft. My Druid noticed all the plants and animals dying and got very upset, I shaped into a Desmodu Bat and flew above him pelting him with grenades. He jumped and split me in two with a single strike. I asked to see the guy's stats(I was dead, so I wasn't going to try again) and he was actually a deity. There's been much worse, but that one is my most hated memory.

Another bad one was my animal companion getting sexually assaulted by a Mindflayer of Thoon(one of the big ones). I pointed out that Flayers don't have genitalia and the DM said he cast Alter Self to give himself something. Poor puppy:smalleek:

[Brookshw]

The DM sprang an ambush of level 7-10 ogres against our level 5 party. The party was knocked unconscious through nonlethal damage, and the ogres grabbed my (pre-adolescent) character and ran when reinforcements arrived, returned to their cave, and gang-raped him. Repeatedly. In unfortunately graphic detail.

I left the group after that.

You've told this story before but it continues to sicken me. A more sure sign of a disturbed mind than excessive exclamation points.

[Ionbound]

Worst thing a GM has ever done to me was, hands-down, the Daemonhost incident, and, to be fair, it was more the dice's fault. Basically, our unadvanced DH Character, a Psyker and an IH Sororitas, were put on a train full of untrained Psykers on their way to be sanctioned. Eventually, a warp disturbance happens, and the GM rolls for psychic phenomenon. For the most part, generally harmless...But there was one, who rolled for Perils of the Warp. And then rolled the Instantaneous Possession result. So, two, unadvanced characters are suddenly facing a Daemonhost. At this point, things turn around. The GM had given us a 5-grenade suicide belt, which I had taken, and so my character death-hugged the bloody thing, and burnt a fate point to survive. And it still didn't die! Luckily, however, it got stunlocked by critical wounds and the Sororitas, and after several rounds, we finally ended the damned thing.

[delenn]

If ever a small child goes missing in his neighborhood, drop a dime. Those sorts of fantasies don't come easily.

Yeah, I'm kind of disturbed by how many people here have DM's that just throw in sexual assault and rape. I don't mind games that deal with disturbing adult content, but it's something you should certainly know you're getting into before signing up to play. If a DM sprang that on me out of nowhere, I'd leave the table.

I knew it was coming because we discussed it before hand, but I had an ear and a hand cut off as punishment for murder, and the other PCs didn't see it coming - the OOC looks on their faces were priceless. One went off to the bar, pretending she didn't know me (thanks, friend! :P), and the other was still pissed at me because he knew one of the victims. We're all LE, so I considered asking that he be the one to do the chopping (justice!), but I didn't get the chance.

[Rubik]

the Daemonhost incidentLike, Matt Daemon?

[Yogibear41]

Was playing a dragon who could alter shape almost at will and was basically a book wyrm wizard(so puny), had been living as a human in a city for over 50 years, currently disguised as a 60-70ish looking old man(use to say im gandalf without the pointy hat) anyway got fed a potion while knocked out from damage, failed my Will save, had to find and bed the first reasonable thing I found attractive(some spell from book of erotic fantasy). Stumbled across a bard girl in the middle of town performing, with a bit of roleplaying and my +0 diplomacy check modifier a few more will saves, managed to make it to an inn before I couldn't hold out anymore and started tearing her clothes off in the middle of the tavern, she ran away, and I ended up having to be relieved by a middle aged tavern woman, who then developed a strong liking for me because of my prowess which also got a boost from the spell/potion that first put me into the situation. Luckily I had changed my appearance from the old man to a young attractive gentleman, so she didn't know who I was, well sort of. Also I had been robbed before being fed the potion so I had to convince the tavern keeper that I was really the old guy who came in for drinks all the time and I would pay him back later. Think I was level 1, might have been level 2. Wasn't really horrifying as much as it was funny and awkward lol.

It was funny because this character wasn't really the type to go looking for action all the time, but I have other characters who are basically the exact opposite. Had another character almost die, and get his ear cut-off all because he was trying to get a piece of tail.

[NoACWarrior]

It was funny because this character wasn't really the type to go looking for action all the time, but I have other characters who are basically the exact opposite. Had another character almost die, and get his ear cut-off all because he was trying to get a piece of tail.

And people say Love potions can't hurt...

[hemming]

I knew it was coming because we discussed it before hand, but I had an ear and a hand cut off .

no pun intended? Looks like you really overplayed your....position

[ZX6Rob]

Yeah, I'm kind of disturbed by how many people here have DM's that just throw in sexual assault and rape. I don't mind games that deal with disturbing adult content, but it's something you should certainly know you're getting into before signing up to play. If a DM sprang that on me out of nowhere, I'd leave the table.

Yeah, I have to say, this thread really caught me off-guard, too. I mean, I've had players in my groups that have wanted to play Lothario before; lots of guys want to be suave and smooth with the ladies (or dudes; I don't judge), but I usually handle that kind of thing very lightly. A little note about a comely lass at the bar as they prepare to retire for the evening is usually enough for the player to feel like they're hitting that particular note of their concept, without the need for either of us to go into further, inevitably awkward detail.

The number of people who are telling these stories of weird sexual assault in a D&D game is... higher than I would have guessed. I mean, we're reading these stories in kind of a vacuum; I have no idea how anyone else's group normally operates, so maybe for some folks, sitting down and talking about ogre rape is, like, a Tuesday night thing?

I'm with you in that I don't really mind a bit of adult content, but I'd rather it not be gratuitous, and I'd want to know what I'm in for so I can opt out rather than be grossed out. Being caught by surprise isn't much fun. Then again, even when you kind of know what's coming, actually playing things out may be worse than you expected.

I can recall another time, actually, that our regular group wanted to play an all-Evil campaign. I was a player this time around, and one of my failings is that, when I'm a PC, I have a very difficult time accurately role-playing capital-E-Evil, so I went for Neutral Stupid instead, figuring I'd just be the brawn. One of our other players, though -- who, when he committed to a character concept, REALLY committed to it -- created an absolute psychopath, a brutal, remorseless killer, and to date, is the only person I've ever seen role-play Chaotic Evil in what I believe to be an accurate way.

His character was a serial murderer who had an obsession with kytons, the chain-devils. He had a prestige class that gave him mastery over chains, he had mutilated his body and wrapped himself in bloody chains, and he had a secret murder-hole lair. He would lure people back to his dank little cave, which was strung with chains hanging from all over the ceiling. From there, he would use his special abilities to cause fear by rattling his chains and swooping around on the ceiling, and finally, when they were too terrified to defend themselves, he would leap down, incapacitate them, and skin them alive. Very gruesome stuff.

It was his character and his character alone that actually got the rest of the group to stop the second or third session in its tracks. We all told the DM that we were sorry, but this game was making us all extremely uncomfortable, and we all wanted to play something else. To be fair to my friend, he really just played his character as-written, and had no idea we were all as uncomfortable as we were until we spoke up.

Nowadays, I guess I just kind of prefer to keep my campaigns a little lighter. I'm not too crazy about dark-and-brutal, really. It's easy to make your BBEG an absolute monster of a person, an irredeemable bastard who tortures children and rapes prisoners and just does all kinds of horrible things, and that kind of a villain may even be effective. After all, the players, if they have even a shred of decency, are going to feel motivated to stop the machinations of The Dark Lord Kittenstomper O'Bloodrapist -- or at least understand why the people at large would like them to -- but it results in a boring, one-dimensional villain. It's what Terry Goodkind's writing very quickly devolved to; all of his bad guys were just absolute evil with zero motivation beyond "boy, it sure feels good to be a reprehensible person, I think I'll keep doing this!"* It's much more difficult, I think, to try to make a villain that is, if not sympathetic, then at least understandable, but that's ultimately a more rewarding encounter. It's why everyone cared about Darth Vader as a character and wanted to know more about him, but the Emperor was basically a plot device in a ratty bathrobe.

Anyway, I'm getting way off-topic again. Sorry, sorry, continue on with the stories!

*I know, Goodkind is a) not a very good writer, and b) trying to make some ham-fisted point about Objectivism or the power of the self or some such nonsense, but I've been sitting on this criticism for years, so I'm using it.

[Shining Wrath]

Yeah, I have to say, this thread really caught me off-guard, too. I mean, I've had players in my groups that have wanted to play Lothario before; lots of guys want to be suave and smooth with the ladies (or dudes; I don't judge), but I usually handle that kind of thing very lightly. A little note about a comely lass at the bar as they prepare to retire for the evening is usually enough for the player to feel like they're hitting that particular note of their concept, without the need for either of us to go into further, inevitably awkward detail.

The number of people who are telling these stories of weird sexual assault in a D&D game is... higher than I would have guessed. I mean, we're reading these stories in kind of a vacuum; I have no idea how anyone else's group normally operates, so maybe for some folks, sitting down and talking about ogre rape is, like, a Tuesday night thing?

I'm with you in that I don't really mind a bit of adult content, but I'd rather it not be gratuitous, and I'd want to know what I'm in for so I can opt out rather than be grossed out. Being caught by surprise isn't much fun. Then again, even when you kind of know what's coming, actually playing things out may be worse than you expected.

I can recall another time, actually, that our regular group wanted to play an all-Evil campaign. I was a player this time around, and one of my failings is that, when I'm a PC, I have a very difficult time accurately role-playing capital-E-Evil, so I went for Neutral Stupid instead, figuring I'd just be the brawn. One of our other players, though -- who, when he committed to a character concept, REALLY committed to it -- created an absolute psychopath, a brutal, remorseless killer, and to date, is the only person I've ever seen role-play Chaotic Evil in what I believe to be an accurate way.

His character was a serial murderer who had an obsession with kytons, the chain-devils. He had a prestige class that gave him mastery over chains, he had mutilated his body and wrapped himself in bloody chains, and he had a secret murder-hole lair. He would lure people back to his dank little cave, which was strung with chains hanging from all over the ceiling. From there, he would use his special abilities to cause fear by rattling his chains and swooping around on the ceiling, and finally, when they were too terrified to defend themselves, he would leap down, incapacitate them, and skin them alive. Very gruesome stuff.

It was his character and his character alone that actually got the rest of the group to stop the second or third session in its tracks. We all told the DM that we were sorry, but this game was making us all extremely uncomfortable, and we all wanted to play something else. To be fair to my friend, he really just played his character as-written, and had no idea we were all as uncomfortable as we were until we spoke up.

Nowadays, I guess I just kind of prefer to keep my campaigns a little lighter. I'm not too crazy about dark-and-brutal, really. It's easy to make your BBEG an absolute monster of a person, an irredeemable bastard who tortures children and rapes prisoners and just does all kinds of horrible things, and that kind of a villain may even be effective. After all, the players, if they have even a shred of decency, are going to feel motivated to stop the machinations of The Dark Lord Kittenstomper O'Bloodrapist -- or at least understand why the people at large would like them to -- but it results in a boring, one-dimensional villain. It's what Terry Goodkind's writing very quickly devolved to; all of his bad guys were just absolute evil with zero motivation beyond "boy, it sure feels good to be a reprehensible person, I think I'll keep doing this!"* It's much more difficult, I think, to try to make a villain that is, if not sympathetic, then at least understandable, but that's ultimately a more rewarding encounter. It's why everyone cared about Darth Vader as a character and wanted to know more about him, but the Emperor was basically a plot device in a ratty bathrobe.

Anyway, I'm getting way off-topic again. Sorry, sorry, continue on with the stories!

*I know, Goodkind is a) not a very good writer, and b) trying to make some ham-fisted point about Objectivism or the power of the self or some such nonsense, but I've been sitting on this criticism for years, so I'm using it.

It's just me, but I have more fun with a good character. As for Goodkind, I read "Wizard's First Rule", said "Why did I stick with this to the end?", and never read another.

[Rubik]

Yeah, I have to say, this thread really caught me off-guard, too. I mean, I've had players in my groups that have wanted to play Lothario before; lots of guys want to be suave and smooth with the ladies (or dudes; I don't judge), but I usually handle that kind of thing very lightly. A little note about a comely lass at the bar as they prepare to retire for the evening is usually enough for the player to feel like they're hitting that particular note of their concept, without the need for either of us to go into further, inevitably awkward detail.

The number of people who are telling these stories of weird sexual assault in a D&D game is... higher than I would have guessed. I mean, we're reading these stories in kind of a vacuum; I have no idea how anyone else's group normally operates, so maybe for some folks, sitting down and talking about ogre rape is, like, a Tuesday night thing?He told me he did it because he didn't like the fact that I was playing my baby gold dragon as CG. I'd written CG on my character sheet because I'd read in an issue of Dragon that young dragons tend to be much more impulsive.

I guess he just really, really didn't like what he saw as "breaking stereotype." The gods only know what would've happened if I'd played a dwarven wizard or something.

[Tanuki Tales]

This didn't happen to me, but it happened to the Paladin played by this freshman in high school who had just joined our DnD club:

We were in a sapient dungeon that really hated the party, which I had created because our usual DM wasn't there that week. We had much fun, much laughs, much Squidward moments for the party Doppleganger as his Mindspy abilities kept pinging off what was probably going to happen just as the rest of the party blundered into it.

The DM decided to go with this when he came back and had the Paladin get separated from us and then encounter a door, which contained the following and disappeared as soon as it shut behind him:

A Japanese Love Hotel
A Succubus
A tentacle monster
A donkey

[Felvion]

Two incidents one as a player and one as a DM.
As a player, it was in my very first long run campaign. Age of 17 in real life and level 3 in the game. We are in a cage-elevator descending deeper and deeper in a dungeon. Out of the sudden a manticore appears. We roll initiative and first goes the cleric, then my rogue, third the beast and last one the wizard. The cleric takes cover behind his tower shield. I'm kinda stunned from fear when the dm describes the tail baring some longsword-spikes. I make sure i take some cover behind the cleric and throw a tanglefoot bag. Natural 1. Next round the wizard takes all the longsword-spikes on him. He asks "why all on me?" The dm proudly loughing says something like "because you had the less cover". He dies and next round i hit nat 20 with next tanglefoot bag and the manticore unable to fly dies. The dead wizard, name him Jim in real life, looks really bad. Much worse than someone that had lost a character. The dm finally spared him his life admitting it was unfair to target all the attacks on him. The whole session had a crappy feeling cause Jim looked so devastated.
The bad thing is that after few days we were told that Jim's father had died the night before we played and he just came without telling us to help him forget the tragic real-life event. Still friends with Jim, after all these years he remembers that session and finds the incident kinda funny.

As a dm, it was Jim again, wizard again. The party is in the forest and has run up to 1-2 random rangers that gave them zero helpful information making them lose precious time. After this they randomly fall upon the avatar of Nerull himself disguised. He starts talking and Jim goes mad cause he thinks it's another waste of time. He says "i charge towards him and kick him two-footed on the back in order to throw him down the mountain slope". I'm stunned. I pause so that i can think what my reaction should be. After few seconds, the party stops laughing and Jim and he says "ok, i don't really do that but i need to play a barbarian soon. Let's listen carefully to another random hooded man in the forest." After a while their faces looked really funny when they found out that was a god. I imagine my face was much funnier when i saw them laugh the first place....

[hymer]

2nd edition. DM fiated that an NPC wizard approached our camp, taking us by surprise, no rolls or questions of lookouts or how we arranged our camp. Then he fiated that we got no save against the fireball the NPC cast on us. Then fiated that our clothes and hair caught fire, and we had to spend three rounds putting the fire out, whether we wanted to or not. Then fiated that it didn't matter that we jumped into the creek, it still took three rounds to put the fire out. Oh, in 2nd edition, a round is a minute.
I endured one more session. After that session I talked to him, and asked him if he would be willing to make any changes to his DMing. He responded that anyone not satisfied could just stay away. So I handed him my sheet and did.

[Shining Wrath]

2nd edition. DM fiated that an NPC wizard approached our camp, taking us by surprise, no rolls or questions of lookouts or how we arranged our camp. Then he fiated that we got no save against the fireball the NPC cast on us. Then fiated that our clothes and hair caught fire, and we had to spend three rounds putting the fire out, whether we wanted to or not. Then fiated that it didn't matter that we jumped into the creek, it still took three rounds to put the fire out. Oh, in 2nd edition, a round is a minute.
I endured one more session. After that session I talked to him, and asked him if he would be willing to make any changes to his DMing. He responded that anyone not satisfied could just stay away. So I handed him my sheet and did.

Some people should not be DM's. It goes to their head.

[delenn]

no pun intended? Looks like you really overplayed your....position

Oh hush, you. You're the one with the ear for puns. Especially now that you've got mine.

ZX6Rob - not quoting because I agree with pretty much everything you said. Just wanted to add that though I am in an evil party right now, we're definitely campy evil not 'um, should I be reporting you guys to the police?' evil. It was an experiment at first, really, and we knew there was potential for all of us to turn into sociopathic characters, but none of us actually wanted that, and now we're a solid group that can work well with each other and allies, including good characters. That doesn't make our characters good, but I like to think we're the kind of nuanced evil characters that would garner understanding, if not sympathy, from outsiders. There's a lot of good RP potential in evil characters, as long as you know the difference between running an evil PC and being a creepy player. Sounds like the latter was going on there, and I definitely don't blame you and the group for calling a time out on that ish.

[PraxisVetli]

Two.
One, it was a Duskblade, a Necromancer, and Ninja/shaper (Comp. Adv.). Versus: four Gauths and a Beholder, which after (BARY) surviving, we turned the corner to find three Gelatinous Cubes and Darkness Given Hunger.
We were lvl 8.


second, it was a Druid, Sorcerer(evoc), Ranger/fighter (bow), cleric (healbot), bard/auspician, and a conglomerate sorc/fighter/psion(Twf).
We were mainly core, terribly unoptimized, and roughly lvl 20 with maybe50k worth of gear between all of us.
VERSUS
Bane, Lloth, and Besheba.
And they knew we were coming. Admittetly, they were straight out of the books, but still.
It was a bad day.

[Augmental]

One of my first few characters was a female hexblade elf, all the guys were making fun of the fact I rolled a female, and an elf (at the time elves were totally last year). This escalated to the point where my 8 strength character wound up accidentally insulting the half-orc barbarian. We took the fight outside and he won the grapple. So what did the half-orc barbarian do? Anything a PC controleld male half-orc barbarian would do when he grapples a low strength woman. At least I was spared the details, but my character kinda had a bun in the oven from that... too bad she was eaten by a plant monster about 2 hours later.

Please tell me that barbarian PC died in a gruesome manner later on. That's just sick. :smallfurious:

[Droningbass]

Once upon a time, in a campaign not all that long ago, several hero-hopefuls were running for their lives from some big old beasties that wanted to fangoriously devour the poor little Level 2 PCs. Our adventurers in question were: a (far-too-powerful, but snooty and difficult to deal with) Half-Drow Fighter-type, a (constantly roll-failing, but absolutely hilarious) Human Rogue, a (bubbly, bright, but not combat oriented) Half-Elf Bard, and a (hated-by-every-single-NPC-we'd-ever-encountered-for-no-reason) Gray Elf Wizard.

To make a long story short, these intrepid adventurers were in a village that was cursed in a way that made all of the townsfolk turn into hideous beasts by night (from the Jerimond's Orb Module). The party had done its best to figure out anything about what was going on, but it was news to us that literally *every single villager* would turn into a face-ripping, blood-thirsty monster every time the sun set. So, one thing led to another, and before they knew it the whole part was sprinting away from the village in hopes of hiding in a barn outside of town. That was a no go, and they could hear the hairy beasts not 2 rounds away from them.

Their last option was to climb up the nearest tree and hope that the transformed villagers didn't have a Climb speed. My character (the Gray Elf Wizard) was the first to reach the tree, but had a notable Strength penalty. Spell-slinger McGee got lucky, and rolled high enough to scamper up the tree like a squirrel running from the neighborhood cat. The rest of the party was up the tree within 2 rounds, with the hairy beast-villagers snapping at their heels. The Rogue and Wizard were the only two who were able to make it up without taking some damage from the clawing/biting villager-monsters.

I forget how many we were running from at this point, but it was probably only 2-3. The party was making attacks of opportunity as the beasties tried to climb the tree, but before they knew it the Half-Drow Fighter-type and Bard were unconscious and bleeding out. Mostly by luck, the Wizard and Rogue were able to drop the last two creatures in a round. Now they had to deal with their companions who were bleeding out...

They were able to stabilize the Bard with little difficulty (after rummaging through her knapsack to "borrow" her Healer's Kit), but the Half-Drow was another story. He was down to -9 HP, and they had almost completely given up hope, until luck finally came back to our (usually incredibly unlucky) Rogue! With the Fighter-type's wounds stabilized, the Rogue and the Wizard exchanged high-fives and even high-fived the now stable, but still unconscious, members of the party. After some (absolutely quiet and paranoid) revelry, the Wizard and Rogue settled in for an uncomfortable and pensive night in the cold tree.

[delenn]

Please tell me that barbarian PC died in a gruesome manner later on. That's just sick. :smallfurious:

At least he was spared the details. :smallfurious:

Seriously, crap like this is one of the major reasons I refuse to play with people, especially men, that I don't already know.

[Rubik]

At least he was spared the details. :smallfurious:

Seriously, crap like this is one of the major reasons I refuse to play with people, especially men, that I don't already know.Some of us men find it just as disgusting as you do, Delenn.

[delenn]

I know that, which is why I clearly stated that I try to get to know a group before I play with them.

eta: (ok, maybe no so clearly, but it was implied. But just from this thread, this kind of creepy *^!$! is a trend, and a problematic one).

[Tanuki Tales]

Some of us men find it just as disgusting as you do, Delenn.

And of course, it's completely unheard of for girl gamers to ever do anything unsightly.

[Rubik]

I know that, which is why I clearly stated that I try to get to know a group before I play with them.

eta: (ok, maybe no so clearly, but it was implied. But just from this thread, this kind of creepy *^!$! is a trend, and a problematic one).It's a thread about the "most horrifying things that DMs have done" to us, so of course terrible stories will be showcased here.


And of course, it's completely unheard of for girl gamers to ever do anything unsightly.Not going to argue with the intent behind that comment, though it should probably be in blue.

[OverdrivePrime]

Most of us. If anyone pulled that sort of garbage at my table, they'd be lucky to be only thrown out of the house and permabanned. If that's what someone includes in their fantasy life, I don't want them in my real life.

[CIDE]

My DM introduced my character to the rest of the party. Not so bad, right? Well, it was a 2e game where I was playing a Thri Kreen (giant bug race). through dm fiat shenanigans with an odd magical semi-sapient dungeon my character having been lost to the dimensions ended up being "rebirthed" in front of the party from the remains of slain enemies. Which just happened to be bug enemies. Needless to say before my character could so much as say "hello! My name is--" he had a few additional holes that weren't supposed to be there.

[delenn]

And of course, it's completely unheard of for girl gamers to ever do anything unsightly.

I'm really not looking for a fight. But it's also not completely unheard of for 'girl gamer' to be used as a pejorative (and NoACWarrior posted about being picked on for rolling 'a female'. Where's a Ferengi gif when you need it?).


It's a thread about the "most horrifying things that DMs have done" to us, so of course terrible stories will be showcased here.

That's fair, but like I said, I have no problem with disturbing adult-centered storylines being included, as long as the players know that's what they signed up for. It's when you throw it in out of nowhere that I have a problem.

eta: gah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to double post. I'd merge them if I knew how.

[(Un)Inspired]

Uhhhhhh. My spirits are so low right now.

I try to hold my emotions at arms length and experience them like reading a good book as opposed to letting them infect me directly but I have to admit this thread has gotten to me.

I like having a good laugh at people's in-game misfortune but I wasn't expecting anything like this thread...

The table some of you have had to put up with... I'm so sorry. I'm a DM myself and rarely get a chance to be a player. Because of which I often take some pretty Pro DM stances but some of the things these people have done to you...

I don't even know what to type to express how I feel. Whether you think acts like rape should be discussed in a game or not; surely we can all agree that only a monster would wield it like a bloody cudgel to punish players for making characters that rubbed them the wrong way.

I can't believe I even had to just type that sentence.

The story about Jim the wizard dying right after his father died in really life... I... Clearly that wasn't the DM doing something malicious but my god what a horrible follow up to one of life's worst tragedies.

[Rubik]

eta: gah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to double post. I'd merge them if I knew how.Click the edit button on both posts, copy and paste from one into the other, then delete the one. Voila.


Uhhhhhh. My spirits are so low right now.

I try to hold my emotions at arms length and experience them like reading a good book as opposed to letting them infect me directly but I have to admit this thread has gotten to me.

I like having a good laugh at people's in-game misfortune but I wasn't expecting anything like this thread...

The table some of you have had to put up with... I'm so sorry. I'm a DM myself and rarely get a chance to be a player. Because of which I often take some pretty Pro DM stances but some of the things these people have done to you...

I don't even know what to type to express how I feel. Whether you think acts like rape should be discussed in a game or not; surely we can all agree that only a monster would wield it like a bloody cudgel to punish players for making characters that rubbed them the wrong way.

I can't believe I even had to just type that sentence.

The story about Jim the wizard dying right after his father died in really life... I... Clearly that wasn't the DM doing something malicious but my god what a horrible follow up to one of life's worst tragedies.Well, I was upset at the time, but then I used the story to tell to people in the area who I learned wanted to game with the guy (including all the store owners who sponsor D&D games and meet-up boards). I'm pretty sure he hasn't been able to play for a few years because of it, as a DM OR as a player.

Nobody deserves to be saddled with someone like that in their games.

[Captnq]

That damn crab.

[cakellene]

Good thing I was never in a group that felt in-game rape of characters was something to do. I would probably have a criminal record if I ever was in one of those groups.

[Tohsaka Rin]

For several years running, I had the same (bad, BAD) DM.

If he got into the mood that he wanted to run a game, no matter who's turn it happened to be, he'd insist on running a game. Or he'd just A) Go home, or B) Sulk the entire night, complain, and not participate.

As my group was small (usually only 2 players and the DM, 3 players if we were lucky enough to get a sibling to join in. All of us had a younger brother each.) it was either put up with his attitude, or not game at all.

Twice with him running the game, did I try playing a female character.

The first time, I was sexually assaulted by a female elf in a public bathhouse (hur hur, girl on girl is hot), and basically ruined my night.

8 or so years later, I tried again. THIS story will be a little more verbose, and possibly all the sadder for it.

My friend was playing a charger (I can't remember his class off the top of my head) and I was playing a Psion with a whip (I was going for Pyrokineticist) and we were probably 4th or 5th level.

For some (unexplained, or just badly explained, I can't recall exactly) reason, we were teleported to Valhalla. Into the middle of a lodge full of Einherjar, who were in the middle of reveling. And they asked us to join them.

Cool.

After a few minutes of drinking, and partying, they decided that it would be fun to (now, I'm going to clean this up a bit) sexually assault/gangrape (ugh) my character.

Both my friend and I decided to leave. FAST. (He was just as stone-faced as I was when he'd heard it.) So, we get up, and run for it.

Having a higher speed than mine, he managed to out-pace me. I told him to keep going, since we both knew how this was going to end anyway. And if he did get lucky and escape, he could track me down to rescue me later.

Somehow, the Einherjar managed to suddenly double their speed and surround me. I had a whip, so, it went about as well as you'd expect. I was knocked out, and the action shifted to my friend.

Whom ran into the Einherjar champion, that the DM had previously spent several minutes talking up. Sadly, he obviously thought being level (I think) 18 was going to stop a crit from a charger from killing him. It didn't.

However, the DM saying 'he has infinite HP' was a different matter altogether.

...

To make a long story short (too late), we spent several minutes pointing out various ways, by the book, that his 'champion' could win the fight without much trouble, that weren't blatant cheating.

The DM didn't care. 'He has infinite HP because I say so'.

So, my friend spent the next dozen combat rounds seeing just how high he could rack up the damage total before he finally lost to blatant cheating. We lost count around the 800 mark. And were NOT happy.

When, before he could launch into more annoying story, we told him the sexual assault was NOT COOL, he just stared blankly at us. 'I didn't say that'. It still doesn't surprise me that his mouth works independently of his brain.

To top everything off, we woke up, locked up in a room with a barred door. Nothing we tried worked, 'because'. And 'wait for the story'. After just deciding to sleep, no matter what was going on outside (because when we did try, at first, to interact with it as best we could, it was just listen checks that we couldn't fail, to hear more unrelated-to-our-characters plot. And even when we DID fail BADLY, we still both heard the same thing) the doors suddenly open, and a shadow on the ground intends to lead us somewhere.

...Which was just into the forest outside, to meet someone. Someone, I might add, whom we could've met by simply succeeding to outrun the Einherjar in the first place, with no interruption to the plot AT ALL.

When we finally had enough, he threw a fit about how he'd had to change the plot to give into my wild demands. A fit, preceded mind you, by us talking calmly, quietly, and simply asking him plainly why he had avoided taking the simpler route to many a point of frustration for his players.

...This is not, by a wide margin, the worst thing the DM has done to me. Not at all. On the other hand, it does fit in with the theme of this thread. I have many a terrible tale, but I think for now, I've talked on long enough.

[Sir Chuckles]

Uhm...as the one with jolly good times inscribed into his name, I'll do two things: First, give my bad story, then give my good story, which involves doing something mean to the player sexually that ended up well received and mildly hilarious.

First:
Gave the Druid in the party 2508 Wisdom.
The campaign just went downhill from there. Don't even have to say why.

Second:
The party just came out of a dungeon, an we decided to take a soda-run, bio, etc-break. Now I have a Constitution through the roof, and I was hosting, so I had some spare time. My campaign fully written, I decided to add some life to my setting. I had given every NPC a portrait and two-sentence introduction, previously, and, as such, one character had expressed interest in one NPC. I decided to rack open the BoEF So when they all got back, I broke the after-dungeon tension with a "She makes a Charisma check, and she has an Appearance score of 16", right at the drug dealer Ninja. Nat 20. Now, I had early explained Nat 20 skill checks aren't auto-success, but he rolled with it in the spirit of a high check. Then... "Make a Constitution check." "...Nat 1." "...Seriously? Roll the d%." "...Nat 100."
"The Ninja has twins."

"3 minutes after being pulled into the bank, you see -the Ninja- walking out of the bank, a stupid, stupid grin on his face."

Do note that said Ninja is a female player.

[Rubik]

For several years running, I had the same (bad, BAD) DM.

If he got into the mood that he wanted to run a game, no matter who's turn it happened to be, he'd insist on running a game. Or he'd just A) Go home, or B) Sulk the entire night, complain, and not participate.

As my group was small (usually only 2 players and the DM, 3 players if we were lucky enough to get a sibling to join in. All of us had a younger brother each.) it was either put up with his attitude, or not game at all.

Twice with him running the game, did I try playing a female character.

The first time, I was sexually assaulted by a female elf in a public bathhouse (hur hur, girl on girl is hot), and basically ruined my night.

8 or so years later, I tried again. THIS story will be a little more verbose, and possibly all the sadder for it.

My friend was playing a charger (I can't remember his class off the top of my head) and I was playing a Psion with a whip (I was going for Pyrokineticist) and we were probably 4th or 5th level.

For some (unexplained, or just badly explained, I can't recall exactly) reason, we were teleported to Valhalla. Into the middle of a lodge full of Einherjar, who were in the middle of reveling. And they asked us to join them.

Cool.

After a few minutes of drinking, and partying, they decided that it would be fun to (now, I'm going to clean this up a bit) sexually assault/gangrape (ugh) my character.

Both my friend and I decided to leave. FAST. (He was just as stone-faced as I was when he'd heard it.) So, we get up, and run for it.

Having a higher speed than mine, he managed to out-pace me. I told him to keep going, since we both knew how this was going to end anyway. And if he did get lucky and escape, he could track me down to rescue me later.

Somehow, the Einherjar managed to suddenly double their speed and surround me. I had a whip, so, it went about as well as you'd expect. I was knocked out, and the action shifted to my friend.

Whom ran into the Einherjar champion, that the DM had previously spent several minutes talking up. Sadly, he obviously thought being level (I think) 18 was going to stop a crit from a charger from killing him. It didn't.

However, the DM saying 'he has infinite HP' was a different matter altogether.

...

To make a long story short (too late), we spent several minutes pointing out various ways, by the book, that his 'champion' could win the fight without much trouble, that weren't blatant cheating.

The DM didn't care. 'He has infinite HP because I say so'.

So, my friend spent the next dozen combat rounds seeing just how high he could rack up the damage total before he finally lost to blatant cheating. We lost count around the 800 mark. And were NOT happy.

When, before he could launch into more annoying story, we told him the sexual assault was NOT COOL, he just stared blankly at us. 'I didn't say that'. It still doesn't surprise me that his mouth works independently of his brain.

To top everything off, we woke up, locked up in a room with a barred door. Nothing we tried worked, 'because'. And 'wait for the story'. After just deciding to sleep, no matter what was going on outside (because when we did try, at first, to interact with it as best we could, it was just listen checks that we couldn't fail, to hear more unrelated-to-our-characters plot. And even when we DID fail BADLY, we still both heard the same thing) the doors suddenly open, and a shadow on the ground intends to lead us somewhere.

...Which was just into the forest outside, to meet someone. Someone, I might add, whom we could've met by simply succeeding to outrun the Einherjar in the first place, with no interruption to the plot AT ALL.

When we finally had enough, he threw a fit about how he'd had to change the plot to give into my wild demands. A fit, preceded mind you, by us talking calmly, quietly, and simply asking him plainly why he had avoided taking the simpler route to many a point of frustration for his players.

...This is not, by a wide margin, the worst thing the DM has done to me. Not at all. On the other hand, it does fit in with the theme of this thread. I have many a terrible tale, but I think for now, I've talked on long enough.My response to this?

"Get out. Now. And you're never welcome in my home again. You'd better take everything you own, because I'm having you arrested if I ever see your face here again."

[Tohsaka Rin]

(What Rin should have said)

Yeah, well, I've known the guy since kindergarden.

And I DID say this wasn't the worst thing he's done, by far. Trust me, I have worse. I'm just waiting for more people to come along, so I can top them, without feeling like I'm doing it just for the attention.

Don't get me wrong, the attention is nice.

Um, on topic? Getting dropped into a layer of hell, for no explained reason. I lead my friend out, mainly through guile and stealth. Once we got out, we decided to take what loot we'd gained from the things we had killed, and went shopping.

One item purchased each, and then portals opened under each of us, and we were dropped into hell again.

...This time, we killed everything in our paths, purely out of spite. There hadn't been any plot to speak of, though the DM kept insisting he 'had something planned'.

That session, and the campaign (of which this was the first, and only session) ended when I decided that rather than trying to escape again, we should just go about sterilizing the entire plane. There's threatening to do the impossible, and then there's having people believing you could pull it off.

I tended to land somewhere north of 'mostly impossible'.

[Silus]

Well, not really "horror" but more "oh God why", a new DM I'm gonna be playing with has okayed my playing, I kid you not, a Bandersnatch Barbarian (Pathfinder) for the lvl 20+ game he's building.

Should give you some ideas on what the monsters will be like.

[BoutsofInsanity]

Insert Paladin falling story here.

[StreamOfTheSky]

One DM was the most hands-off DM I've ever seen and was fine just watching things descend to chaos or having us putz around for hours trying to find something in the game world to do. To make a long story short, one day a player decided to kill my PC in his sleep so she could qualify for the Assassin prestige class (we were an evil party, btw, though up till then not the back-stabbing variety). She then taunted me about it and how when the party (who also had no clue it was her, or at least had no evidence) got me raised, I'd have to RP not knowing it was her and not seeking revenge. I left the game. DM talks to me the next day, says the game's gotten out of hand...going to end it by siccing a level 20 party of good guys disguised as a fair challenge on them and even bringing in other players to play them, offers me a chance to get payback. I join w/ a cleric, told by the DM that the rest of the party is good like me. Then they all turn on me and kill my (new) character all of a sudden. Yeah, turns out they were also evil and the DM lied to me and they had formed a secret alliance with the player I hated. They then went after my recently raised former character, with the playing taunting me the entire time like I was her mortal enemy even though until the previous week we had no issues with each other. I stormed out of the room and quit D&D entirely for a year or so.
DM's boyfriend followed me out of the room and said if it was him, he would've thrown his drink at the player or something, her behavior was so hostile. The DM wasn't the main culprit in this story, but was one hell of an enabler.

Then in another game, I had an extremely hands-on DM, who insisted we make mid-level characters to fit specific roles he had drawn up for a game where we'd all start as prisoners w/ nothing (good sign!) and presumably get magic items later on (hint: we never did). Mine was accused of witchcraft and was supposed to be kind-hearted, so I made a CG fey bloodline Warlock who abhorred killing and always tried to solve things through diplomacy, Charm invocation, etc... We weren't told what the other people's characters would be. Surprise! Turns out all the others were assigned to make evil PCs! Double surprise! Turns out the DM's vision of the campaign was a grimdark crapsack dystopian hellhole where nearly everyone is a horrible, evil monster and any attempt to do the right thing was promptly punished by the DM or made to be pointless.
Like the time we encountered mech suits attacking us with paralyzed CHILDREN inside of them, providing power by their life force. After (miraculously) managing to convince my bloodthirsty comrades to aim to smash/disable the machines themselves rather than take the quick victory by "shooting into the cockpit," the DM gleefully explained that the kids' life forces were tied to the machines and so by destroying the machines, we killed them anyway. :smalleek:
I quit after about half a dozen sessions. The Marquis de Sade's Justine (also known as The Misfortunes of Virtue) is a great read, but I didn't feel like roleplaying the character. :smallmad:

[Tohsaka Rin]

An 'Oh God, why?' story.

Second level party.

Adult green dragon.

Out in the middle of lightly wooded area.

TPK.

Why?

Because the DM randomly rolled it on the encounter table.

Of course, I was grappled while the rest of the party got picked off, one by one, to stop me from doing anything to save them. This marked the turn for me, as after this fiasco, I was fed-up, and stopped pulling my punches when the DM decided to pull this sort of crap.

This story was pre-Rin goes to hell, if that helps the context of both.

[squiggit]

Nothing as horrifying as some of the stuff in this thread and honestly not even a good story:

Our party makes it to a village and we're more or less just left to our own devices. We go to the magic mart then go goof off at a tavern and the session ends.

Next session we're supposed to meet with the village elder later that day. Rather than fast-forward to the meeting, we're told to do what we want and sort of putz around with nothing to do for a good hour. Our paladin at some point wanders off and the rest of us do too in an attempt to find any sort of plot hook.

An hour into the session we finally get to go to the meeting. Nothing happens. Just generic lines about heroes. We don't even get a quest or quest reward of any sort. The paladin isn't at the meeting.

Two hours into the session we decide to leave. The DM tells us we can't, and makes up a plot reason (our boat was being repaired). We go out into the woods around the town to look for something to do. Turns out the area around this village is utterly and completely peaceful. The paladin isn't there.

Three hours into the session we go back to the tavern and try to find someone to talk to. We talk to everyone in town looking for a plot hook. The DM keeps telling us to be patient and the paladin is still MIA. We try to look for him but keep getting waved off as not having a clue where he went.

Four hours into the session (by now I've gotten my laptop to wander around this forum) the paladin returns to the group with a +1 Holy Flaming greatsword (we're level 1) and we're told the boat's been repaired and we can leave now. Turns out for the entire session the DM and the Paladin have been text messaging their own private side-quest.

And that basically set the tone for the rest of the campaign. Which only lasted three or four sessions before it broke down. No idea why it lasted past the first hour of the second session though.

[Hyena]

The DM decided to go with this when he came back and had the Paladin get separated from us and then encounter a door, which contained the following and disappeared as soon as it shut behind him:
A Japanese Love Hotel
A Succubus
A tentacle monster
A donkey

Alright, I'm already regretting asking the question, but which one did he choose?

[rmnimoc]

Most horrifying thing a DM has ever done to me....

Compared to everyone else on this thread I've gotten off rather light.

There was a campaign that was myself and a few newer players. We'd messed up a few plot things on account of the new players being a bit overzealous. After a few killed NPCs that the DM was going to use for his plot, he got a bit upset and decided to TPK us to end the campaign. I kept foiling that, and he wasn't too happy about the fact I continued to save the other players. So he decided that was OOC for my character, and turned him into an NPC.
Kind of annoying but whatever, I made a new character with the alignment he said I was acting as. No big deal. Until the same things happens again, except this time my character was mindraped into NPC-dom.
Whatever, Take 3. I came up with a new character. The DM's new idea? Throw my old characters at the party. We win, and he decides to try to seduce me with a succubus. After that failed, he just threw a lady of pain-esque (not actually stated out, just insta-win) NPC at us, then used a new homebrew variant of Charm Person to make me kill the party. Then he ruled that my character there was now immortal and forever stuck as a slave to that NPC.


The annoying part is he never mentioned why he was doing that until after it was over, and had he just explained himself I'd have just let him win.

[Arbane]

I know that, which is why I clearly stated that I try to get to know a group before I play with them.

eta: (ok, maybe no so clearly, but it was implied. But just from this thread, this kind of creepy *^!$! is a trend, and a problematic one).

It's definitely not just this thread. I've heard a LOT of stories like that, mostly from female players. And I have a suspicion that for every story we hear that ends with "...and I can't believe I ever played a RPG again after that" or "...and I didn't play again for ten years", there's another twenty that ended with "and I never played a RPG again". :smallfurious:

[MightyPirate]

I don't know that this qualifies but I wanted to share it regardless.

This was actually my first time playing in a D&D session. I was playing a straight premade fighter who just so happened to be the muscle for the party rogue. She was you basic con-artist, very good at fast talking but also way too curious for her own good. We also had a sorcerer in the party who was a self proclaimed 'glorious bastard'. This probably should have set off bells right off the bat but I'd played some World of Darkness before so twisted teammates weren't really anything new.

We had to sneak into some sort of local monastery to find the entrance to an ancient ruin. We knew there were wishes to be had and a dragon to be slain so we struggled our way through a basic puzzle in the courtyard. We solved it, opening a portal to a tower standing ominously in the middle of a blizzard. It had a pretty cool Narnia vibe so I was enjoying myself pretty well at this point.

As we were battling our way through the storm toward our destination we were assaulted by a giant. I don't actually remember how we defeated him but I do know this is were I learned the function of attacks of opportunity. That function is for the fighter to get creamed into the snow repeatedly and then clobbered again as he stands back up. Really all I understood about that combat.

Once inside the tower we set to work exploring the spiral stairway within. The Sorcerer found a wand on the top floor and proceeded to play with it until he blew off the top 20 feet of the tower.

The rogue in the meantime had me keeping watch over a locked doorway about midway up the tower whilst she tinkered with a trap at the bottom of the stairs. She managed to activate the trap, revealing a small opening on the other side of a pit trap that had opened simultaneously in the floor.

It was at about this time that the doorway I was watching over opened itself and started spewing boulders at my unaware teammates. This is how I found out that my shield (in addition to not helping much against giants) could not stop boulders, nor the giant gears of the trap within the doorway, and it didn't even make a very good improvised sled.

We somehow survived this craziness even though the DM insisted that the way the rogue spread the party before triggering the trap increased it's challenge rating by no less than 3 levels. We found ourselves on the other side of the pit, which turned out to be a chute that dropped into a large gilded cage.

The sorcerer cast invisibility on himself to go sneaking around once we opened our prison and the rogue quickly set to work stuffing her pockets with as many riches as she could find in the adjacent rooms. After we split up my poor fighter managed to find the dragon at just about the same time that the sorcerer found the magic lamp we were seeking.

I had pretty well accepted my position as monster chew toy by now so I set after the dragon on my own. The sorcerer used one of his wishes to turn the dragon to stone, with me trapped under its massive talon. They never did even look for me, content with saving the day and acquiring their riches.

Ultimately I accomplished nothing helpful the entire session and ended up with the decidedly short end of the stick. I still remember this fondly as one of my favorite sessions. Sorry if this rubs against the theme of the thread but really it was just a horrid chain of failure that ended up being immensely enjoyable.

[atomicwaffle]

Our current party (campaign's almost over, and i stopped caring 2 months ago) have a reference we call, 'Happy Birthday'

So, our dm does this thing where you automatically level up on your character's birthday. Cool, i guess.

Anyways, i'm playing a Mystic Theurge and we are at sea. We run across a ship that's been floating for a while. Being a cleric, i go to investigate. In the lower section of the ship, i find the crew and passengers bound and gagged across the area. I step down to try an save them, and boom, PROXIMITY explosive runes everywhere. I make my reflex save and am only reduced to 15 hp. I also get to watch as the helpless people are SHREDDED and BURNED ALIVE by the explosions, and i run to avoid the burning ship. It sinks, and the blood and fire summon an undead Kraken we have to fight. It kills about half of the crew of the ship we're on. This all happened on my character's birthday.

[banjo1985]

Some of these stories are properly horrifying, I never considered my gaming group to be a collection of well rounded and sane individuals until today.

Worst thing a DM has ever done to me is have one of my clones teleport in right over the bottomless pit my last clone just fell into. That was Paranoia, so that sort of shenanigans is to be expected.

Worst thing I've done as a GM is to throw the reverse gravity chess room at my players with no explanation. A room made of 8x8 two metre squares, where most of them are enchanted with reverse gravity. A character makes a wrong move, they fall onto the ceiling, and drop back down when they hit a normal gravity square. They were very low level, and not used to trap rooms, but they still got the hang of testing every square quite quickly before venturing onto it.

[Socksy]

-stuff-

I almost snorted aloe vera juice out my nose at the illithid zombie thing in your sig.


-more stuff-

Yours too. I'm just going to have to learn to not drink while reading signatures.

[Tanuki Tales]

Not going to argue with the intent behind that comment, though it should probably be in blue.

People are getting sick of the blue text, so I felt like dispensing with it. And it's a valid point to make. I've heard plenty of stories of female gamers being the source of horror in horror stories of this kind. Just because there's a larger distribution of males in this hobby doesn't mean that one should necessarily be on their guard against just the men; they should be wary of everyone until proven decent otherwise.

[Shining Wrath]

At least he was spared the details. :smallfurious:

Seriously, crap like this is one of the major reasons I refuse to play with people, especially men, that I don't already know.

As a male person, if someone suggested their PC was going to rape my female PC (I'm playing one now), some real-life combat might ensue. Not part of the game, guys. Not funny, not cool, not something to joke about.

[DSmaster21]

3 Lv. 3s vs a Lich comes to mind.

"But easy traps should be about DC 30 or it is too easy."

This dm happens to be a good friend of mine who refuses to use the resources I give him to help him. The only thing that I could not give him is the experience from the different games I was involved in. All my books, everything. This is why the rest of my friends had a discussion and decided that burnout or no I am dming again.

I freakin' hate dming because I like to play so I typically have a DMPC and if he is ever remotely competent then I am "godmodding"..

[morkendi]

Ruled that all undead are immune to my shadowcraft mage illusion based stuff because he said they are not affected by mind influencing stuff. Then sent us to ravenloft where a good chunk of my spells did nothing now.

[Qwertystop]

Who was it that got stabbed IRL again? I know that story's been floating around for a while.

[manyslayer]

Thank goodness any of my stories are rather tame by comparison. I think there was some female PCs assaulted stuff in my jr. high school group but not since then (unless someone had it was part of character background for reasons of revenge or PTSD like behaviors).


Probably the worst in recent memory was from a DM that is usually pretty cool. We were defending a frontier village against goblins and other raiders from the wilderness. On one of our treks, a bunch of nimblewrights killed and replaced many of the townsfolk. Then we interacted with them for weeks and never got a Sense Motive or anything to see if we noticed anything. Now, my character would be clueless (-1 to Sense Motive) but two other characters were really good at it. So we only find out when they attack us and the rest of the villagers.

[Tanuki Tales]

Who was it that got stabbed IRL again? I know that story's been floating around for a while.

That'd be Lanky, but I don't believe any of his woes were ever at the hands of his DMs, were they?

[Xintas]

I'm going to play the devil's advocate here, provided a few givens.

First, this does not apply to any of the stories listed previously. Those are reprehensible and not in keeping with the expectations of the players nor the tone of the campaign.

Second, any material of a graphic or explicit nature, even if the situation comes up, is not necessary to graphically depict (excepting a horror scenario or something where psychological damage is supposed to occur).

Given those things, I can understand where that type of material may have it's place in a game. I was DM'ing a long campaign once and I prefaced the entire campaign by saying that it was going to be heavily focused on the plot and realistic interaction between characters. This would not always be pretty or palatable as all people are not. The players agreed and we moved on.

In the interim, many "encounters" took place at the behest of the characters, but they are an "adventurer's good" type of party, so nothing was too bad. That being said, one of the female PC's decided to go down to a dock by herself at night to look for information. She found some dock workers who I described as "unkempt, uncouth, and obviously menacing". She decided to try to win them over by seducing them. Then rolled a 2 on her diplomacy. I let her reroll it as bluff. A 3. I informed her very blatantly that she had failed, it was obvious, and that the workers were advancing. She decided that, rather than taking the hint, she would continue to go for broke.

"Are you sure?" "Yes." "Are you really sure?" "Yes."

5 rounds of this ensue with the workers advancing each round, only a 5 ft step because I was praying she would get the point.

She didn't.

I eventually felt bad enough that I shanghai'd a later plot hook by having one of the NPCs show up and save her before anything untoward happened (but after they had grappled her). Do I think this was wrong? No, I let the character play her role and follow the plot, gave plenty of warnings, and made it clear before both the session and the encounter that it was possible.

TL;DR Context and group awareness/agreement trump hard rules.

[Zirconia]

Due to a "plane shift" mishap, my AD&D cleric ended up in the modern world, with no contact to his deity. He ended up mopping floors at the YMCA to make a living and street preaching in hopes of getting some converts to his deity so he could reestablish contact/recreate his deity, it wasn't completely clear what was needed. Rather ignominious, I abandoned the character.

Same DM, different character, the whole group through another returning from plane shift mishap ended up in the "land of assassins", a group that was uber powerful and was used to enforce social order, such as making sure that as a PC you couldn't sell spell services. They caught us, of course, and would only release us on condition that we agreed to wear collars that would blow our heads off if we told anyone about them in any way. My then girlfriend refused, as she felt her character would not be willing to knuckle under to them. They executed her, and I spent the rest of the campaign working towards the sole goal of finding a way to reveal the assassins. It ended before I got high enough level to do it (needed access to antimagic, etc.), but I was always curious about how the DM would have dealt with it. I never told him my plan, as he might have found some way to thwart it.

Different DM, also AD&D, felt that the rewards in the system were too generous so cut all loot in half. And we had to pay for leveling, which is in the books but I'd never seen anyone else use. Between that and the death rate, we spent the entire campaign in debt until finally around 7th-8th level we got a castle built which broke even on expenses (which he said was a first in any game he had run) and about 20,000 GP in savings. He then time shifted us all to 200 years in the future, castle and money gone, magic users/clerics hunted and with a chance per round of spell failure and with nobody who could train them to higher levels. I think his remaining original players gave up on the campaign at that point, he found new people and kept it going.

Even before that it was pretty brutal, we all had multiple characters since we needed at least a dozen PCs to survive. We actually spotted a random encounter of several Fire Giants once before they spotted us, which was very rare, and since we couldn't take them we followed them around and made the DM roll random encounters for them. They hit a pack of ghouls that took almost all of them out, and we were able to beat the remainder. Yes, his world was so dangerous even his random encounters couldn't survive random encounters for a full day in the wilderness. :)

[Qwertystop]

That'd be Lanky, but I don't believe any of his woes were ever at the hands of his DMs, were they?

The stabbing wasn't, but I think the other two were...

[killem2]

I don't know how horrifying it was, but I was the DM and sent a lowly shadow at a party of fresh and new 4 level 1 players. lol

[Shining Wrath]

I'm going to play the devil's advocate here, provided a few givens.

First, this does not apply to any of the stories listed previously. Those are reprehensible and not in keeping with the expectations of the players nor the tone of the campaign.

Second, any material of a graphic or explicit nature, even if the situation comes up, is not necessary to graphically depict (excepting a horror scenario or something where psychological damage is supposed to occur).

Given those things, I can understand where that type of material may have it's place in a game. I was DM'ing a long campaign once and I prefaced the entire campaign by saying that it was going to be heavily focused on the plot and realistic interaction between characters. This would not always be pretty or palatable as all people are not. The players agreed and we moved on.

In the interim, many "encounters" took place at the behest of the characters, but they are an "adventurer's good" type of party, so nothing was too bad. That being said, one of the female PC's decided to go down to a dock by herself at night to look for information. She found some dock workers who I described as "unkempt, uncouth, and obviously menacing". She decided to try to win them over by seducing them. Then rolled a 2 on her diplomacy. I let her reroll it as bluff. A 3. I informed her very blatantly that she had failed, it was obvious, and that the workers were advancing. She decided that, rather than taking the hint, she would continue to go for broke.

"Are you sure?" "Yes." "Are you really sure?" "Yes."

5 rounds of this ensue with the workers advancing each round, only a 5 ft step because I was praying she would get the point.

She didn't.

I eventually felt bad enough that I shanghai'd a later plot hook by having one of the NPCs show up and save her before anything untoward happened (but after they had grappled her). Do I think this was wrong? No, I let the character play her role and follow the plot, gave plenty of warnings, and made it clear before both the session and the encounter that it was possible.

TL;DR Context and group awareness/agreement trump hard rules.

Female PC 'comes on to' unsavory characters as part of Gather Information? I'd say you handled that pretty well. Sometimes the City Guard just happens by, and that's a Good Thing.

[HaikenEdge]

DM pitted the first level party I was in against Epic NPCs. There was no way we were getting out of that one.

[Dimers]

I played in a game of Deadlands. Telling NPCs the stories of your victories over the forces of evil is important in that game, and my fellow PCs had the other roles handled, so I made a character focused on telling the story. No combat or stealth skills to speak of, not much besides a face. I poured all my resources into making a popular tavern/hotel/etc. as home base for my character and the team, a place where I could tell my stories to rally the world against the Darkness. Hours of idea-time went into the details.

DM burned down the place by fiat in the first game session. Automatically caught fire from one attack, and nothing that three PCs and a host of NPCs could do would keep the fire from spreading until it destroyed the whole place.

[Tohsaka Rin]

2 Major reasons why I stopped playing a rogue were due to inherent flaws in the class, that, at the time, couldn't be easily bypassed.

The first was that, before the books came out, allowing things to sneak attack undead and constructs, the ability was all but useless against them. And my DM would almost without fail pit us against those things if I played a rogue.

The second... Was that I almost without fail put 18 in Int, when I was playing a Rogue. ;.; So many skill points. Worse, if we started a game above 4th level. Always took me an hour to make my character alone, AND I was constantly being asked by other players to help make their characters, too.

A story about Gods. (One of many)

Starting a campaign (I should really preface every story with 'I use this term loosely') at 2nd level, party of two. What little background info we're given is that the world has basically burned due to war. All that's left are a few thousand people, total.

And the Gods.

All the Gods. Who, somehow, still have all their power, despite having virtually zero worshipers. And have nothing better to do, than to pester the characters into doing quests for them. Personally.

I am NOT using hyperbole here. Wee Jas dropped a 2-mile wide firewall across the path we were talking. Before she revealed herself, I knew I didn't like where that was going, and told my companion that we were just going to walk around the damn thing.

Didn't help.

Wee Jas arrived, personally. Not an avatar, not a projection via magic. No, Wee Jas herself. And demanded we follow her to her home (which wound up being a cave), and perform quests for her.

We TRIED outrunning her, but were flanked from behind by Hercules, and another 2-mile wall of fire at the front. They proceeded to march us back to the cave, where the rest of all the Gods were, waiting. Apparently, to nag us into doing quests, and teleport us back any time we tried to leave without agreeing to do so.

Magic didn't work, which was terrible for my friend, as he'd rolled up a Cleric/Wizard. Despite the Gods being right there. Couldn't be bothered to do anything to help the guy, in spite of demanding we do stuff for them.

So, we both took VoP. It was understandable, really, as it was a zero-loot game. We were NOT informed of the magic issue before hand, we were NOT informed of the loot issue before hand. We were NOT informed of the Gods thing before hand.

Needless to say, this 'campaign' was 3 hours long. Mainly because my friend kept complaining the entire time. And the DM wouldn't/couldn't give him any answers.

Mainly, I suspect, because like usual, he hadn't put any actual thought into the game. This really underlined just about every game he ran.

And the God thing came up a few more times. But I'll save those for another post.

...I DID amuse myself during it, by picturing Hercules as Kevin Sorbo. Was good for a chuckle or two at the table that day.

[hemming]

A story about Gods. (One of many)
.

I'm all for the intervention of petty gods into human affairs (much like in Hercules with Kevin Sorbo) - but no, not like this!

[dascarletm]

I think many of these things can be avoided by DMs and players learning how to "read the room."

I played a game with my nephews once (they were hitting puberty at the time). Interesting game, I had to veto a lot of their stuff because... yeah, crossing into the weird uncle line now.

I've had "mature" stuff in games before, and it has been fine. Though I know which groups are okay with what content, and that is really what matters.

disclaimer: I've never condoned games with stuff in some of the previous posts.... That reminds me, I had a friend who was actually mentally disturbed, and wanted to do some of the stuff mentioned above, and worse. I eventually stopped playing with him after he put out cigarettes in my carpet intentionally. Wish I had done so earlier.

[Captnq]

I never get to play. I only torture players.

However, I have learned never to have an NPC step in to save the day. Better to murder them horribly then have someone else steal the credit.

[pwykersotz]

I never get to play. I only torture players.

However, I have learned never to have an NPC step in to save the day. Better to murder them horribly then have someone else steal the credit.

Quoted for truth.

[Meth In a Mine]

We were level nine, and there were five of us. We walk into this dungeon, progress with reasonable difficulty, until we come into a room with wooden walls. Seeing as wooden walls were most certainly NOT the norm in any dungeon we had heard of, we got suspicious. The rogue went in alone with a fly spell cast by the wizard to look for traps. After taking 20, she found none. Relieved we stepped inside. All of a sudden, the whole room lurches like a ski lift that jammed. We get about 2 seconds to be puzzled before the whole thing drops down a deep shaft into a large pool of water (so we're trapped in a room full of water and needing to hold our breath at this point). Then spikes protrude from the floor and start to close in. The Barbarian and I (the Fighter) begin trying to smash open the wooden ceiling, but after two rounds, FIVE Dire Ghost Sharks appear. We all died in that mother of all traps, except the wizard, who teleported out, like the jerk he was.

[winter92]

He set the astral plane on fire. All of it, with lots of fire. My first level conjurer's benign transpositions suddenly weren't so good, and had I taken abrupt jaunt like I initially intended I'd have been killed on encounter one, round one.

[NoACWarrior]

Ah repressed memories - Another DM I played with was a great guy but at times was horribly hands off. Due to that my caster almost died several times to a sadistic other PC (who is my best friend). So I was playing a Neutral Stupid Shujenja (yeah I know) but he really had only a 3 INT so I role-played him that way. His "friend" and childhood influence was the wizard, who took care of my character like a dog at times. It wasn't too bad, I had fun playing seriously clueless. Within the first session the wizard beat my Shujenja nearly to death with a sap filled with oranges so that the guards didn't think he was being abused. Apparently the town guards knew my Shujenja had mental deficiencies and took it under their duties to keep me safe in the down. In the first dungeon we went into - a mega dungeon with unlockable rooms - we ran into an ooze, and the wizard told me to cast flame blade and run into the room claiming it had ice-cream. I had no idea what ice-cream was and the wizard did opposed bluff to convince me it was ambrosia worth dying for. I ran into the room headlong straight into the ooze - at least taking out 1/4 of ooze's HP before getting engulfed. The DM didn't want me to die, so he had my flame blade kill the ooze, and I was stabilized at -9hp. Needless to say the DM gave me 3 more INT points and told me to never roleplay stupid again, and the slogan for the campaign became, "for the ice-cream" whenever we ran into dangerous situations again.

[Tanuki Tales]

Alright, I'm already regretting asking the question, but which one did he choose?

Sorry, just got to this post catching up with the thread. He didn't choose one, they were all in the same room.

[Stella]

Yeah, I'm kind of disturbed by how many people here have DM's that just throw in sexual assault and rape.I am, too. I'm happily able to report that I've never witnessed anything like that. Probably the most 'adult' a game I've been in situation came when I was the DM and one of the players, a charismatic rogue with the party in a small town inn, chatted up one of the waitresses for information and then said he'd like to seduce her. I said "Well, it's a fantasy game. Do you want something to happen?" He said he did, and I said fine, it does. That's it, no more detail than that. Then for the next days activity I had her be all clingy and desirous of a long term commitment and he pretty much had to sneak out of town to get away from her and rejoin the rest of the group.

I'm also not much for bad experiences overall. Here's my worst:

I started playing D&D when I was in high school and there was a local gaming club which met in a community center. The club had high attendance for each meeting and one DM in particular was very popular. There were usually 10-12 people wanting to play in his game each session, and he would only turn people away after all the available seating was filled. But then he'd basically cull the ranks, assisted by his group of close friends. They were all in the 5-9 level range and all the new players were 1sr level. I recall figuring out the SOP when there was a night encounter, low level players were being killed off left and right, and on the 8th level Paladin's turn, who was one of the DMs friends, the Paladin says "I start walking towards the fight", which gave the DM about 3 more rounds of mayhem before the Paladin arrived to put down the monsters who were basically just a pile of evil humanoids of ~3HD.

Fast forward several years: I'm in my 30s and meet some 25-30 year old gamers at a game shop. I'm invited to play with them. We're a group of 4-5 characters of mid-level playing 3.0 In some downtime during the third session we're just chatting and in a conversation I say "Hastur the unspeakable", in context for the discussion. The DM has been working on his notes which is why we had the downtime. He looks up, cackles gleefully and, tittering to himself like he was 13 he rolls some dice and declares that Hastur appears and attacks my character, an 8th level Cleric. I point out that this was a completely OOC conversation, but it doesn't matter to him. I die in one round, of course, and Hastur ports away. The party is about to get me raised, but I announce that my good aligned Cleric has died fighting an evil god and is happy with his rewards in the afterlife, and that was my last time playing with that group. The group itself was fine, it was only the DM who was immature for his age. But the DM is the person who can more easily wreck the atmosphere of the game than any single annoying player might. I found out from one of the group that the character had been raised and was being run as a second character by one of the group, because they needed the heals.

[Yukitsu]

He let me rule the thing I conquered.

At the time, none of us knew the monster that he had unleashed, and once Pandora's box was opened, it could not be closed.


Yeah, I'm kind of disturbed by how many people here have DM's that just throw in sexual assault and rape.

Only happens to my male characters instigated by high charisma female characters. I've never been sure how I'm supposed to react to that.

[Vrock_Summoner]

Probably the most vile and depraved act any DM has inflicted upon me was requiring the group to use the Spell Points: Vitalizing variant from Unearthed Arcana. It really is that bad.

[Bobbyjackcorn]

I don't have anything beyond sheer dickishness that I have personally experienced, but I was the DM in a campaign that had our groups "Best Grimdark" award:

The party was travelling through a land called the graylands, a thickly forested area where the dead naturally rise and a good majority of what isn't aberrant is corrupted via the BoVD template.
Well, they were ushering a group of refugees from a destroyed village across the graylands when they get attacked by four corrupted Dryads. They proceed to lay havoc on the group. It wasn't too bad in the beginning when the nomad psion in the group was using his teleportational abilities to pluck the dryads out of the trees and drop them numerous feet, but eventually he as a player started metagaming when he realized they were dryads. "Dryads are good by nature." he told the party. "As a good character, I will kill any of you that kill these." Well, long story short, two were already dead by then, but they managed to knock unconscious the other two and tie them up in the woods. All the while I had been HEAVILY implying that these Dryads were irrevocably evil, and corrupt beyond measure.
That night, after the group had travelled farther into the woods, they heard a scream come from where they had travelled through. All the heroes awoke of course, but for some reason only two of them actually decided to investigate, and they were the only neutral characters. The good characters felt they couldn't even be bothered to figure out what it was.
So, one character makes his way down the trails, and the other moves silently behind him, hidden from his sight so as to be able to make a quick escape. When they arrive at the clearing where they tied up the Dryads prior, they see the two, now free from their bonds, viscerally violating a villager who seems to have wandered, curious, back to where they were tied up. The villager is dead, roots coming out all orifices. The Dryads are cackling madly. The one who is not hidden decides this is utterly vile, and something must be done. He sneaks up to them while they are unaware. The hidden one just watches him. The sneaking one, a rogue by trade, sneak attacks on the Dryad, dealing a very little amount of damage to it. This encounter is meant for at least two people of his level. The dryads turn their wretched barkskin faces to him. They smile.
As he begins to run, they both cast sleep on him. He fails his save. Meanwhile, his compatriot has to leave the table and go home. He explicitly tells us "None of you have my permission to use my character. No matter what happens, he just goes back to his tent and goes to sleep." Nobody liked him much.
The last thing that I explain to the now doomed character is that the last impressions of life he has are roots shattering his signiture sunglasses that he has had since day one, as they burst out from his eye sockets.

It was the most poetic, most legitimate, most sad player death we have ever had. No one resurrected him. Lord knows, they could have found someone to do it, but you just don't bring a man back who's gone through that hell.

[dreadwind80]

For me the entire campaign the DM ran was full of horror and wonder. It was 3.5 with house rules in a spelljammer setting. We started on a ‘normal’ pirate ship, were captured by Neogi, had our hearts removed and bottled as a means of control, after some extended body horror and experiments. They modified our ship to be a clumsy spelljammer powered by a life-force draining (con damage) chair. Spikes shoved through arms no less.

Suffice to say, it went downhill from there, we pillaged and raided at their behest as slaves, taking prisoners to power the ship. We eventually recovered our hearts and fled the solar system, that’s when the rest of horror of the spelljammer universe kicked in.

Months travelling the vastness between spheres and inside, with limited resources, with no access to conjuration magic, so no healing or food easily. Solar systems with black holes, fleets of undead, elves, orcs, fascist insane humans, thoon mind flayers. A favourite was the system which was sentient & hated life itself actively draining the will to live. We had to hallow the ship just to prevent us from making will saves vs suicide, after a period of suicide watch in groups so at least one crew member passed. Or the flesh eating telepathic siren trees on the one planet.

The house rules included downtime actions that took a month – including item creation. We were stranded on a rock for several months just to research and build the magic items we needed to replace our hearts. We had to make custom spells such as transmute wood to food, to avoid starvation eventually building a recycling system that used EVERYTHING, leading to it being best not to question what you were eating…or whom.

There may have been some monstrous inbreeding between a crew member and a shadowy spider creature (a valued NPC) resulting in a brood of shadow babies that prowled the ship and liked to live in your shadow. A trickster cleric actively corrupting people including children we picked up, he later married the shadow creatures. The shadow war between this cleric and the engineer who hated each other on alignment principles, threatened to tear the ship in half. Only made worse when due to being trapped on a sinking rock outcrop in lava, he fell through a portal. He came back working for mechanus as a spy, with minions, for the eventual planar invasion in a few thousand years.

The ship got infected with psychic mind flayer disease at one point and slowly converted into mind flayer biomass which we had to burn out. One of the engineers homunculus when he was unconscious liked to try and assassinate people, due to a malign influence. We had to send two years building a new ship that was actually decently capable, due to the house rules. All the monsters fought intelligently.

Epic, but a thing to survive mostly.

[Segev]

Only happens to my male characters instigated by high charisma female characters. I've never been sure how I'm supposed to react to that.

How would you react if it were a female character you were playing, and instigated by a high charisma male character?

[Theafroscotsman]

I'm all for bashing on terrible DMing and rape-in-game enthusiasts, but are we forgetting that some of the best stories have this gruesome act thickening story lines? Game of thrones? Spiderman? True it is a horrendous act, pretty much the epitome of cruelty to any being, but isn't that the very reason that DM's and story writers have their evil characters do them?

Again, totally against rape in real life, and I totally despise it.

[pwykersotz]

For me the entire campaign the DM ran was full of horror and wonder. It was 3.5 with house rules in a spelljammer setting. We started on a ‘normal’ pirate ship, were captured by Neogi, had our hearts removed and bottled as a means of control, after some extended body horror and experiments. They modified our ship to be a clumsy spelljammer powered by a life-force draining (con damage) chair. Spikes shoved through arms no less.

Suffice to say, it went downhill from there, we pillaged and raided at their behest as slaves, taking prisoners to power the ship. We eventually recovered our hearts and fled the solar system, that’s when the rest of horror of the spelljammer universe kicked in.

Months travelling the vastness between spheres and inside, with limited resources, with no access to conjuration magic, so no healing or food easily. Solar systems with black holes, fleets of undead, elves, orcs, fascist insane humans, thoon mind flayers. A favourite was the system which was sentient & hated life itself actively draining the will to live. We had to hallow the ship just to prevent us from making will saves vs suicide, after a period of suicide watch in groups so at least one crew member passed. Or the flesh eating telepathic siren trees on the one planet.

The house rules included downtime actions that took a month – including item creation. We were stranded on a rock for several months just to research and build the magic items we needed to replace our hearts. We had to make custom spells such as transmute wood to food, to avoid starvation eventually building a recycling system that used EVERYTHING, leading to it being best not to question what you were eating…or whom.

There may have been some monstrous inbreeding between a crew member and a shadowy spider creature (a valued NPC) resulting in a brood of shadow babies that prowled the ship and liked to live in your shadow. A trickster cleric actively corrupting people including children we picked up, he later married the shadow creatures. The shadow war between this cleric and the engineer who hated each other on alignment principles, threatened to tear the ship in half. Only made worse when due to being trapped on a sinking rock outcrop in lava, he fell through a portal. He came back working for mechanus as a spy, with minions, for the eventual planar invasion in a few thousand years.

The ship got infected with psychic mind flayer disease at one point and slowly converted into mind flayer biomass which we had to burn out. One of the engineers homunculus when he was unconscious liked to try and assassinate people, due to a malign influence. We had to send two years building a new ship that was actually decently capable, due to the house rules. All the monsters fought intelligently.

Epic, but a thing to survive mostly.

That game sounds truly amazing. *Scribbles down ideas for a new campaign*

[XmonkTad]

As sort of a one-shot thing a friend ran The Tomb of Horrors (3.5 update mod). Worse, we had to play it core only. We all died a lot.

Big Spoilers Below:

We had made it to the final room and idiotically awakened the skull-golem-boss thing. It started sucking out our souls and so the monk and I ran to the anti magic field room to avoid getting killed.

Because this is the 3.5 module, the AMF effects the soul drain ability of the boss (which is SU). The notes on the field include a specific exception for the abilities of the Effrit that lives in the room, but no exception for the boss. One of Gygax's original rulings (involving killing the boss with the crown) seems to suggest that using earlier traps to beat the boss is intended. However, our DM ruled that the boss's abilities still worked in the AMF. I lost my soul, and the monk committed sepuku by kicking the Effrit jar over and making it mad.

It was a long hard road ending in an unsatisfying defeat.

[Shining Wrath]

I'm all for bashing on terrible DMing and rape-in-game enthusiasts, but are we forgetting that some of the best stories have this gruesome act thickening story lines? Game of thrones? Spiderman? True it is a horrendous act, pretty much the epitome of cruelty to any being, but isn't that the very reason that DM's and story writers have their evil characters do them?

Again, totally against rape in real life, and I totally despise it.

Rape as something that happens off-screen as part of the plot - one thing.
Rape lovingly described by the DM - much worse.
Rape of one PC by another PC - extremely likely to lead to fist fights, rage-quits, and other forms of a ruined gaming table.

[ZX6Rob]

I'm all for bashing on terrible DMing and rape-in-game enthusiasts, but are we forgetting that some of the best stories have this gruesome act thickening story lines? Game of thrones? Spiderman? True it is a horrendous act, pretty much the epitome of cruelty to any being, but isn't that the very reason that DM's and story writers have their evil characters do them?

Again, totally against rape in real life, and I totally despise it.

Yeah, but there's a difference between something like a book or a television show, which is passive entertainment, and something like an RPG, which is a more active form. Characters in Game of Thrones, for example, can be sympathetic, but there's an important degree of separation between actor and viewer. When you play a character in an RPG, that character is an avatar for you in the world and you are personally invested in that persona. It's the difference between someone graphically describing an event to you that happened to another, third party, and someone describing in detail something horrible that's supposed to be happening to you. I think it's difficult to have the same degree of separation sometimes, especially if this is a "third-act turn" and you've had lots of time already playing as and learning your character.

Now, I don't want to be accused of promoting "badwrongfun", so by all means, if you and your group are comfortable with darker, more adult themes like that at your table, ain't no thang to me. I will say, though, that I would find it really, really uncomfortable to be on either the player's or the DM's side of the screen for that kind of stuff, especially the sorts of things that have come up already in this thread.

Sometimes, trying so hard to makes a villain irredeemably evil backfires, too. I remember that there was an example character in... what was it... the Book of Vile Darkness maybe? Anyway, his deal was, he was an anti-paladin or blackguard or something, a pale, evil guy in horned, black plate mail. His gimmick was he had this belt with a bunch of collars chained to it, and each collar was locked around an innocent little orphan child. I think it was meant to show the kind of depravity that a truly Evil character could reach, as well as presenting a moral challenge to the players -- it would be difficult to employ certain spells or tactics without injuring or killing the starving children lashed to him -- but I think I laughed out loud when I saw him. I mean, it's terrible, but it's also just so ridiculous. It's such a blatant attempt to create a black-hearted servant of evil that it rolls around into the kind of ridiculous territory occupied by movies like Machete. Creating a truly terrifying villain is like walking a knife-edge, because if you don't go far enough, he won't seem like a threat, and if you go too far, it'll just be creepy or worse, ridiculous.

As a slight tangent, I think it was Yahtzee Crowshaw, the video game critic, who, in a review of the Mass Effect series, mentioned how the series' overarching villains -- murderous sentient starships that wanted to exterminate all life in the galaxy -- were boring, uninteresting antagonists because there's not a person alive who would oppose stopping a force that wants to destroy not just the world, but an entire galaxy. It's why the "save the world" plot is so over-used, because pretty much everyone is going to automatically be on-board with it. By the same token, I think creating a villain that rapes and pillages his way across the land is sort of the same thing. Everyone's going to want to curb stomp the guy in black metal plate with the spiked codpiece who violently deflowers the half-elf scout when the group is preoccupied elsewhere, but that seems like a cheap and exploitative ploy to justify the group's inevitably killing him. A deed like sexual assault or some other twisted, dark event meant to give character to your BBEG should be handled with the utmost care, and I think most D&D games just don't have the kind of narrative control that really makes that possible. Your mileage may vary -- I openly admit that I think Game of Thrones is dumb and over-the-top, so it's really not my cup of tea -- but I just don't like that kind of turn in my games.

[hemming]

Rape as something that happens off-screen as part of the plot - one thing.
Rape lovingly described by the DM - much worse.
Rape of one PC by another PC - extremely likely to lead to fist fights, rage-quits, and other forms of a ruined gaming table.

Yeah - rape as part of a character backstory or event the characters find out about - ok I guess

I don't think you should ever rape somebodies character as a DM - its gratuitous.

If their choices lead them to get hurt for some reason (IC choices can occasionally lead to pain without railroading): why not just have them beaten up, mugged or, at the worst, have someone cut off their nose or scar them permanently.

If they lose in combat, just kill them. If you want to keep them alive, have them tortured and mistreated - no reason to go the route of rape.

Its not fun for anyone and not necessary to tell a good story- and D&D at its best is about fun and collective storytelling.

One of the two female players in my game right now has a character that sleeps with anything that moves - its fun, hilarious and totally in-line with her character (who is a shameless hedonist). But I find it weird/not fun to RP past light, initial flirting - so after a good enough diplomacy check I usually say something like "you go off and whatever you want to happen with this guy, happens." I can't even imagine wanting to RP a rape scene

Edit: Delenn, who has been posting in this thread, is the other female player in my game right now - but her character is generally somber and all business

[Shining Wrath]

Yeah - rape as part of a character backstory or event the characters find out about - ok I guess

I don't think you should ever rape somebodies character as a DM - its gratuitous.

If their choices lead them to get hurt for some reason (IC choices can occasionally lead to pain without railroading): why not just have them beaten up, mugged or, at the worst, have someone cut off their nose or scar them permanently.

If they lose in combat, just kill them. If you want to keep them alive, have them tortured and mistreated - no reason to go the route of rape.

Its not fun for anyone and not necessary to tell a good story- and D&D at its best is about fun and collective storytelling.

One of the two female players in my game right now has a character that sleeps with anything that moves - its fun, hilarious and totally in-line with her character (who is a shameless hedonist). But I find it weird/not fun to RP past light, initial flirting - so after a good enough diplomacy check I usually say something like "you go off and whatever you want to happen with this guy, happens." I can't even imagine wanting to RP a rape scene

Edit: Delenn, who has been posting in this thread, is the other female player in my game right now - but her character is generally somber and all business

Sex is not creepy. Rape is creepy. Hitting on people in bars can be hilarious, especially when they turn out to be polymorphed or disguised. That's not a woman, it's a polymorphed sentient psionic sandwich!

ZX6Rob, ever read Fred Saberhagen's Beserker stuff? Sapient robots killing their way across the galaxy, intent on destroying all life. Speculated to be the result of a race that was losing a inter-species war and resorted to desperate measures.

Saberhagen didn't use them for *big* stories, where planets sent massive fleets into battle. That every sentient species in the galaxy opposed them was taken as a given. No, he used them for small stories, where a handful of people would have to make a decision about what to do.

For example, fleet captain arrives at an inhabited planet ahead of a known Beserker fleet. Planet is expecting some critical hardware to enable it to complete a defensive shield. And the ship that was supposed to be carrying the hardware is in orbit around the star, a wreck. The critical hardware is missing and the ship's log indicates an attack by a small Beserker vessel.

Two smaller ships are headed toward the planet. Both claim to be carrying the critical hardware. Both claim the other is a Beserker, possibly with some sort of bomb aboard.

Captain can't catch them - but his weapons can. He can shoot one down, but which one? Which series of text messages comes from a human, and which from a machine?

[hemming]

Sex is not creepy. Rape is creepy. Hitting on people in bars can be hilarious, especially when they turn out to be polymorphed or disguised. That's not a woman, it's a polymorphed sentient psionic sandwich!

She is my best friends girlfriend!

Edit: Yeah - flirting ok to RP. But, as a DM, I really don't want to RP sex with my players regardless

[Theafroscotsman]

Well, lets talk about 2 things that are relatively popular, and show relative degrees of the act, evidence or aftermath. This possibly may get deleted for derailing, but meh. If you've read or watched the berserk Manga/anime or played dragon age origins (dark spawn) You'll know what I mean.

[RavynsLand]

Pitted our woefully unprepared three-character, sixth-level party against an ice devil.

We tried to run away but there was no salvation, for he could teleport without error at will.

[hemming]

Was playing a game about ten years ago - core only, no-op. We had an old-school DM at that time.

The dungeon splits and I go one way with another player while the rest of the group goes the other. We are about fifth level

The tunnel is very dark and we come to the edge of a deep dark pit - but my torch light reflects off something in the pit (the glint of gold?).

I throw the torch into the pit - there is indeed a layer of gold at the bottom but it is teeming with a huge swarm of rats. My torch catches the rats on fire - now a burning rat swarm. The foul, acrid smoke fills the tunnel and the rats are going crazy

We both decide to climb along the edge of the pit and leave the gold. My buddy makes it safely to the other side. Halfway across, I fail.

But its okay, because I have a rope around my waist tied to my friend. Nope - 50 ft rope, 30 ft deep pit.

I survive the fall but take serious damage - so my friend can pull me up right? Nope - rope catches on fire and has 2 hit points.

I am devoured by burning rats before I can escape.

[Arbane]

Even before that it was pretty brutal, we all had multiple characters since we needed at least a dozen PCs to survive. We actually spotted a random encounter of several Fire Giants once before they spotted us, which was very rare, and since we couldn't take them we followed them around and made the DM roll random encounters for them. They hit a pack of ghouls that took almost all of them out, and we were able to beat the remainder. Yes, his world was so dangerous even his random encounters couldn't survive random encounters for a full day in the wilderness. :)

That's brilliant. :smallbiggrin:


I don't know how horrifying it was, but I was the DM and sent a lowly shadow at a party of fresh and new 4 level 1 players. lol


DM pitted the first level party I was in against Epic NPCs. There was no way we were getting out of that one.

...DM just wanted the game OVER, huh?


For me the entire campaign the DM ran was full of horror and wonder. It was 3.5 with house rules in a spelljammer setting.

(SNIP)

Epic, but a thing to survive mostly.

:smalleek:

...I don't think that was Spelljammer. That sounds like the GM dumped you in Warhammer 40K's Warp.

[ZX6Rob]

ZX6Rob, ever read Fred Saberhagen's Beserker stuff? Sapient robots killing their way across the galaxy, intent on destroying all life. Speculated to be the result of a race that was losing a inter-species war and resorted to desperate measures.

Saberhagen didn't use them for *big* stories, where planets sent massive fleets into battle. That every sentient species in the galaxy opposed them was taken as a given. No, he used them for small stories, where a handful of people would have to make a decision about what to do.

For example, fleet captain arrives at an inhabited planet ahead of a known Beserker fleet. Planet is expecting some critical hardware to enable it to complete a defensive shield. And the ship that was supposed to be carrying the hardware is in orbit around the star, a wreck. The critical hardware is missing and the ship's log indicates an attack by a small Beserker vessel.

Two smaller ships are headed toward the planet. Both claim to be carrying the critical hardware. Both claim the other is a Beserker, possibly with some sort of bomb aboard.

Captain can't catch them - but his weapons can. He can shoot one down, but which one? Which series of text messages comes from a human, and which from a machine?

I can't say that I've read it, but it sounds really interesting, and it seems like a great example of subverting the trope that I'm sort of talking about above. Like you said, he doesn't use them for the big stories, because I think he realizes that another steely-eyed general sacrificing nearly everything to eventually destroy a single-minded, nigh-infinite, completely unsympathetic force is just spectacle. Sound and fury, signifying nothing; we wait for Michael Bay to adapt it and move on.

The Berserkers sound like they're more of a setting detail -- and, indeed, that's exactly . They're akin to a natural disaster; simply a fact of living in the universe the author is detailing. But like you said, the interesting stories come out when real, relatable, fleshed-out characters have to exist and survive in a world where something like that exists. In the example you posted, I'd argue that the robots aren't really even the "villain", or at least, no more so than an encroaching tidal wave would be. The real adversary of the story is doubt, and the characters' having to overcome their inability to act and decide their fate -- and the fate of those on the world below -- is the arc that we're interested in seeing.

That, in particular, is a fun thing to do in D&D - put the players in an ambiguous moral situation and force them to make some hard choices. Like some of the more "mature" themes mentioned already, it's probably for the best if the group knows what kind of campaign they're getting into, and there's a lot of bad DMs that use that kind of thing as a petty excuse to make poor players of paladins fall from grace, but handled well, it can make for a very memorable situation.

Anyway, I fear we're getting back off track here, so I'll contribute another story that I must've blocked out.

During a brief time in my life that I would very much like to forget, I lived in a small town in North Dakota. Our regular group decided to change things up a bit, and one of our players started DM'ing a game that lasted four or five sessions. He told us proudly that he had a campaign setting that he'd been working on for several years, and would love a chance to take us through it. The issue here wasn't that he was just a terrible DM, and he didn't really do anything horrific; this was just a comedy of ineptitude, and clearly, this guy'd bitten off more than he can chew. We were given little to no direction, few NPCs to interact with, and a huge island to explore that nonetheless seemed to have very little on it to actually do. I don't really recall all of the details, but some of the more memorable incidents from one particularly disastrous session include:


A caravan was discovered in ruins, with a single, locked chest surviving the apparent carnage. Lacking a rogue or anyone else with skill at opening locks, our barbarian/cleric announced his intention to open the chest by force. He rolled an exceptional check and the key item required to continue the story from that point was destroyed as he did so. I believe we pretty much just ended up dropping that thread, as we were told there was "no way" to recover the MacGuffin.
Attempting to return to the only town we'd encountered so far, the party of three third-level characters were beset by a random encounter in the woods... consisting of three babau demons, each a CR 6 encounter on its own. Our weapons were consumed by their toxic flesh, and we were somehow (I think, due to DM sympathy) allowed to run away, sans any swords or axes.
Shortly thereafter, having dragged ourselves back to town, one of the players got into a bit of an argument with the apparent leader of the settlement. The group was escorted by armed guards to the outskirts of town, where the humble mayor enacted a "magical barrier" of some sort that forcibly thrust us outside the border, no save given, and completely and totally prevented entry to the entire hamlet for all three of us. When pressed for information regarding this unusually powerful effect, the DM admitted that it was completely custom, not based on an existing spell or ability, and all but told us that literally nothing we did was going to get past it. Which is fine, I suppose, plot armor and all that, but it seemed like a cheap, quick-and-dirty fix to me, and the player of the barbarian/cleric had some fairly heated words with our now-flustered DM.
After realizing that our attempt to regain entry to the town was destined to be in vain, we decided to explore the area. The DM noted the existence of a towering keep high on a hill not far from where we were, and put some amount of effort into describing it. Since we had no other landmarks to go off of, we decided to head there. After surviving a few more random encounters (at this point, my druid was essentially hitting things with sticks he picked up from the side of the road), we arrived at the base of the tower... at which point the DM states that he has nothing planned for the tower and that we are done for the night.

[Captnq]

As a rule I avoid the rape-card.

Yes, it can be "backstory" but normally it backfires or comes off as trite. You see, I run a semi-tippyverse Forgotten Realms. There are "smart" villans and "dumb" villians. The smart ones make sure not to push things too far. They have long term goals and understand somethings are pointless. If you rape and murder someone's family, the PCs will bring them back from the dead, gather up an army of adventures who don't want their family raped and murdered, and scry and die your ass.

Dumb villians try that crap and usually find other villians avoid them. Why? Because you don't want the reputation of being someone who hangs out with them. Slavers rarely "damage" the "merch". They have no problem selling to perverts, but usually keep the perverts names and addresses, just incase a group of heroes show up to stomp them.

"Yes, I'm a slaver, but honest to zone of truth, I never touch them. If you work with me, I'll let you know who the REAL perverts are." That's what its about, protecting your ass. Idiot villians attract too much attention and WHUMP. So while you might have some 8th level pervs running around, anyone who is successful understands the "rules".

I view it sort of like a cold war between good and evil. Nobody wants to drop the nukes, so they stick to "limited exchanges". BBEG stick to being evil rulers and tyrants, and Good guys don't systematically blow up mountains to collapse them on top of you.

[Yukitsu]

How would you react if it were a female character you were playing, and instigated by a high charisma male character?

There's actually pretty biological differences in how men and women react when solicited by sex. It's one of those scenarios where it'd be really odd if they did react identically. For example, tazing a guy in that situation would be fine, but I'm not sure how many guys would taze a pretty girl that's trying to sleep with him.

[cakellene]

There's actually pretty biological differences in how men and women react when solicited by sex. It's one of those scenarios where it'd be really odd if they did react identically. For example, tazing a guy in that situation would be fine, but I'm not sure how many guys would taze a pretty girl that's trying to sleep with him.

IMO, it comes down to if they are willing partners and not which sex is being the initiator.

[Yukitsu]

IMO, it comes down to if they are willing partners and not which sex is being the initiator.

That's definitely the reality of the morality divorced of character, but actually playing out what someone would actually do it is going to be different I suspect.

[delenn]

Only happens to my male characters instigated by high charisma female characters. I've never been sure how I'm supposed to react to that.

Did your character consent, or did you have a DM who thinks 'high charisma' means 'can rape whoever you want as long as you roll high enough'? Because that's not what CHA is. Raping someone is not 'trying to sleep with them.' It's rape. If the latter, I'd say you've got a crappy, or at least (if I'm being charitable), an incredibly immature DM, and you've got every right to tell them to knock it off.

To get back on track (because I'm pretty sure the OP didn't intend this to be a thread where people defend DM rape fantasies) - I had a DM that lopped off a character's arm (a giant minotaur fell on it - we couldn't save it), and had a demon tempt all of the PCs with character-driven offers that all but one of us refused.

[Yukitsu]

Did your character consent, or did you have a DM who thinks 'high charisma' means 'can rape whoever you want as long as you roll high enough'? Because that's not what CHA is. Raping someone is not 'trying to sleep with them.' It's rape. If the latter, I'd say you've got a crappy, or at least (if I'm being charitable), an incredibly immature DM, and you've got every right to tell them to knock it off.


Opposite, DM that thinks 40 some charisma knight in shining armour that saves ye olde damsel in distress means the womens just throw themselves at you. I don't really care to tell the DM to knock it off because I'll be honest, I don't really care, I just don't know how to RP it.

Edit: According to my non-D&D playing macho man buddy, after trying to parse out the individual parts of my sentence, good RP would just be saying "hells yes." That makes life simpler.

[hemming]

Hmmm.....a game where lots of people want to sleep with you and a game where everybody wants to rape you are different - you have to choose to fill your world with and have your PCs encounter lots of rapists

If you are going for a gritty, dark, hyper-realistic feel that includes rape in your game and your players are on board with that, then play it

Bur charisma = obligatory game rape isn't necessary to include in a high fantasy game and a lot of players don't expect it or like it

[Sir Chuckles]

It boils down to a matter of consent. Not in character consent, but what limits are being set OOC. Half my players wouldn't know what to do if a woman literally threw themselves on them nude, so I keep such instances to a minimum.

You always have to lay down the ground rules, for everything.

[cakellene]

Opposite, DM that thinks 40 some charisma knight in shining armour that saves ye olde damsel in distress means the womens just throw themselves at you. I don't really care to tell the DM to knock it off because I'll be honest, I don't really care, I just don't know how to RP it.

Edit: According to my non-D&D playing macho man buddy, after trying to parse out the individual parts of my sentence, good RP would just be saying "hells yes." That makes life simpler.

If I was in that position, my response would be to tell them to cut the crap. If they refused, I would no longer associate with that group and would inform cops of an individual with rape fantasies they might wanna watch out for.

[Yukitsu]

If I was in that position, my response would be to tell them to cut the crap. If they refused, I would no longer associate with that group and would inform cops of an individual with rape fantasies they might wanna watch out for.

I read rather too many novels that have some elements of that to even consider that people add it to anything because it's their fantasy (though if they as a guy fantasize getting attacked by an attractive woman, I'm honestly not going to consider that a thing to go to the cops over). I rather suspect that a lot of people just add it to whatever it is because it's easy writing rather than anything else, and honestly many DMs are often the epitome of lazy writing. That's probably why the page one quote was questioning why it was coming up in so many stories, and also the answer to that question.

[hemming]

Charisma is tricky, as the DM sets the DCs - so it is all fluff,

Are there DCs too high for your 40 charisma character to overcome his attempt to sleep with others?

DC for religious devotion or vows?

A cultural taboo or tradition?

Perhaps a personal conviction or loyalty?

What is your DC to beat love?

[Yukitsu]

We don't get too many examples for skill DCs - but if leaping across a 30 foot chasm is a DC 30 and your ability score modifier is at +15, then it may not be so easy as you think to auto-sleep with anyone you please in the game

Oh it's not auto. We like to roll a sort of first impression diplomacy check, and when we're all there and rolling to see how much some princess or queen or something like that likes each of us, I'm 7 for 7 rolling 20. And then politics happen, by which I mean non-consensual marriages. My friends are of the view that I have some kind of crazy anime curse.

[hemming]

A forced marriage doesn't make someone want to have consensual sex with you

Edit: In the interest of off the rails - I'm done

[Benthesquid]

The most horrifying thing I've done to my players (I GM more than I play), was actually more or less by accident.

The party, at that point, for various RL reasons, consisting of two players, stopped off at an inn for the night, where the innkeeper kindly served them some rabbit stew before sending them up to bed. Right off the bat there were indications that everything was not as it seemed. The innkeeper was a decrepit old man, who proudly pointed to an ancient, cracked and weathered painting of his children, who he remarked were sick in bed. There was also something moving under the floorboards, and a suspicious rug just the right size for a trapdoor in one of the rooms.

The more savvy character (both players picked up that something wrong was going on, but one of them was RPing a character who had recently left the monastery where he was raised for the first time), pretty quickly pegged that something was up, and utilized magic to stay up and keep watch, but as a True Neutral character loyal to his companions but uninterested in much besides increasing his arcane knowledge, decided he wanted no part of whatever was up, and declined to investigate further.

Cue the innkeeper sneaking into their room with a giant club. A battle ensued, resulting in the innkeeper being tied up. He claimed that he had heard a thief sneaking into their room, but they were having none of that, and he wound up muttering something about his children being hungry.

They decided that untying him was bad idea, but that they had better see what was up with the children before they decided how to deal with their father.

In the children's bedroom, they found a pair of goblins, dressed in the children's clothes, snacking on... something. Another fight later, the goblins were also tied up, and the party decided to lock everyone in the larder (because it was the room they found that locked from the outside), and report all this horror to the nearest civil authority.

Upon opening the larder, they found meat. A lot of meat. Some of it awfully suspicious looking. The goblins were perfectly content to be locked up there, and made it pretty clear that these were the previous guests. A peek under the trapdoor, and a brief fight with the rat swarm feasting on the non-larder remains later confirmed it.

Rather unsettled, the two set out for the nearest village. All in all, it had been a fair successful session. A creepy, tragic tale of loss, horror, anthropophagy, and madness, all intentional.

And then, as they walk away from the inn, and resolve to camp in the woods the next time the other option is a creepy inn in the middle of nowhere, up comes the question I hadn't considered, the cherry on the horror sundae.

One of them remarks, "Wait a second- what about that 'rabbit' stew he served us?"

[Yukitsu]

A forced marriage doesn't make someone want to have consensual sex with you

Edit: In the interest of off the rails - I'm done

Nonono, my male character who made the roll got politicked by various people into it. It was still very much non-consensual, but to be fair I guess people of that age didn't think of it as such.

[cakellene]

Nonono, my male character who made the roll got politicked by various people into it. It was still very much non-consensual, but to be fair I guess people of that age didn't think of it as such.

Marry the queen or die kinda thing?

[Vrock_Summoner]

Marry the queen or die kinda thing?

... I'm pretty sure he wasn't talking about the marriage part. He had something else to do or die.

[hemming]

Another fire story incidentally - same DM as before, but mostly a series of bad decisions on my part

We're exploring a forest and once again the party is split, my rogue/wizard tiefling is with a dwarven fighter with a winged cape.

We stumble across a shrine in the forest with several bejeweled objects on an altar. Being irreverent, unwise and greedy, I grab the jewels off the altar without a second thought.

A hoard of undead of all types begin clawing through the dirt around us and rising to the surface. We begin to battle but are clearly outmatched and the numbers are growing - I use two fireballs in a round in as wide a spread as possible to try and thin out the low CR mooks.

The other 3 PCs have heard the battle at this point, and are running to investigate. But they run into a rapidly advancing forest fire first

The dwarf sprouts wings and airlifts me out - the wizard casts fly and floats above the trees - leaving the cleric and the barbarian stuck fleeing the forest fire on foot as undead begin appearing out of nowhere in every direction

Needless to say, they were not very happy with me

Edit: I guess a horrifying thing I accidentally did to some other players

[atemu1234]

As the OP, can we move the topic away from rape? I'm looking for horror stories, not a discussion on in-game morality. But, at any rate, I have a story from an old friend he asked me to post.

He was in a party consisting of tenth level characters. He was a human ranger, there was an elf wizard, a gnome bard, and a human rogue. They came up against a lich, and they were going to try and kill it and destroy its phylactery.

So they go into the dungeon, kill the lich, nothing much special. But then they go into the dungeon beneath the castle were the lich lived, in an attempt to find the phylactery. They find a huge stash of treasure- which was guarded by a half-dragon tarrasque. This tarrasque was a CR 22 encounter, and they were tenth level characters. They only escaped a TPK because it was sleeping. They left the room, and collapsed the dungeon on top of the tarrasque. The DM apparently did this just to prevent the lich from dying (maybe making it powerful enough to avoid death would have helped?) and it was an all-around humiliating event. The tarrasque wound up flying away, and they fled.

[Sith_Happens]

I've gotten off easy so far, worst thing in any of my groups was a DM who thought that deliberately killing off a PC (via fiat, of course) "for drama" was an okay thing to do. And of course my Wizard whose spellbook I'd just finished filling with all manner of new goodies was the chosen victim.:smallsigh:

I had him stay after the game (I was hosting) and talked it over with him and it didn't take long before he agreed that that was a bad move, but at the same time he refused to take it back. Halfway through building my replacement character I realized that the campaign had pretty much been killed for me, so I dismissed myself from the group in the most polite way I could manage.

The weirdest part was he was a pretty good DM besides that one incident.

[atomicwaffle]

homebrew enemies always piss me off.

[Threadnaught]

I've given one of my players (that ******* Druid) the chance to play in my homebrew group using the Sniper (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2759.0) for his Class. While selecting his equipment he said he wanted to spend 2gp on a Dagger, I decide to offer him a Magic Dagger for the same price. A +1 Returning Dagger in fact.

He's suspicious of my generosity and we debate about the possible benefits of Mundane Dagger vs Magical Dagger, after being pressed to choose between them for two minutes, he goes for the Magic Dagger... Oh boy, I've really painted myself into a corner on this one. He has a +1 Returning Dagger that always returns to it's wielder until handed over to a new wielder, who must accept it willingly. Having the Dagger in his possession causes 1d4 Dexterity Damage per day each time he fails a Fortitude Save.


In addition to that Dagger, I intend to send my players' characters to deal with a load of Undead. I will give them for free a +1 Disrupting, Divine Wrath Sacred Sap, so far so good, just a Lethal Joke Weapon (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LethalJokeItem) right? Well, no. It only looks like it, it's cursed. It's powers only work if a living creature is killed, then it remains active for 24 hours.
My players aren't all that interested in being Evil, the closest they seem to get is playing Neutral Characters, so throwing them into a zombie apocalypse, charging them with saving the survivors and making the most powerful weapon against Undead rely on them slowly murdering a survivor each day, is pretty nasty. I don't think they're going to trust any Magic Items I hand out once they see those in action. :smallamused:


And since one of the players is playing as a Drow Warrior Poet named Vehk (http://uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Vivec_(god)), I'll be remodelling some of the plot from that game in a way to accommodate his concept. Maybe if I make the Nerevarine into a series of Inevitables. :smallamused:

[kkplx]

Well, most horrifying thing done to me (and my fellow players) was a DM that had no concept of mechanics at all, that homebrewed (aka made up) every encounter, adhering to neither WBL, DCs, Size, Reach, etc rules. The game felt like a complete and unpredictable minefield (since it randomly spiked in difficulty) for the 4 sessions i played in, and the DM himself asolutely refused any kind of hints that he might be doing something wrong here (and by something i mean literally every single aspect of the rules.)


As a DM, I'm currently running my first campaign (that I record, ergo i can link to it) and had 2 oh **** moments, both kinda unintentional.

Had 2 tiny vipers hidden in a tree that would drop on the first guy walking under it - it hit our 3rd level soulblade, with both of the snakes hitting him and rolling a maximum 6 con damage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYBd5cf3fLM&list=PLMEjT1rVV_GMqoJITbs5dHv6b5tUkQ-xB#t=3100), leaving the poor guy at 2 con and with 2 secondary rolls still pending, as well as possible further attacks. He very barely survived, which made the encounter as a whole very memorable and cool, but when it happened I was scared for my player. But seriously...DC10 fort save :(.

The other incident happened just last wednesday, I set the (ECL 3.6 and well optimized) party against a total of 4 separate ankhegs, with the last one improved to huge size to act as a "queen". I made possible places where they hide super obvious with sand piles on the way - regardless of them having a good hour to figure out the creature's behavior and clues, the Catfolk bard decided to stumble head first into the opening where the queen was hiding. He got hit by her charge and put to -8hp right away - next session they'll try to resolve that combat.

[Arbane]

He's suspicious of my generosity
(SNIP)
Having the Dagger in his possession causes 1d4 Dexterity Damage per day each time he fails a Fortitude Save.


Gee, I can't imagine WHY.

[Bonzai]

First off, I want to say that I have a great group. We have one player who DM's sometimes. He always takes printed MODs and tweaks them. This can lead to problems, and I am not sure how much of this is him, and how much was the mods fault. All of this was during the same campaign.

3 lvl 3 characters encounter a Wraith. My True Namer being the group caster. I ended up having to pretty much solo it.

5 lvl 4 characters vs a Yochol. My True Namer still being the primary caster, I also ended up doing the bulk of the damage.

The same party encounters a priestess of Shar performing a ritual. The entire room is blanketed in an anti-weave magic zone that lets her cast with impunity. We clear the fodder and try to disrupt the ritual, but no dice in restoring the magic. The priestess casts an unknown spell, and is surrounded by a shadowy orb. The spike chain fighter attempts to get her, but his weapon is disintegrated as it passes through the orb. He pulls out his bow, and the same thing happens to the arrows. The only thing that works is my true namer using UMD on a looted shadow magic wand of scorching ray. 5 rounds latter I kill her, but two characters are dead, a third is in negatives, and the healer is shut down for several rounds before the weave returned.

Some time latter, the party had shifted toward being caster based. We encounter several phaerim that had a custom version of the spell immunity spell. One that allowed them to benefit from their buffs. By a weird quirk of my class I was able to heighten my dispel enough to bypass it and strip them down enough to get rid of it.

Moral of the story? Things are bad when a party has to rely on a true namer to bail them out.


As for the worst I've done? Keeping with the rape theme...

We had a player roll up a Cleric of Sharess, who role play wise was a total hedonist. The problem was that the player was constantly missing games without any notice. So much so that I finally parked his character in an inn, role playing that he now had enough coin to ensure that he would neither be sober or single for some time. Eventually the player showed back up expecting to play. Last session, the party had spotted an Ettin in a field, and we stopped it there for the night. So we began the session with " When last we met, the party had spotted an Ettin, a female one, crouched over something in the grass". The party approaches and the Ettin turns and shouts "Go away! He mine". Combat ensues, and upon closer inspection the Ettin had been crouching over the missing character who was passed out drunk, naked, with his clothes strewn about. I inform the player that the last thing he remembers is riding out of town, roaring drunk, where he encountered the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

To his credit, the player didn't miss a beat. Upon being revived by the party, his first words were "Oh. Hey guys! Where have you been? I met this wonderful girl....Twins actually"!

[tyriuth]

The worst thing that has ever happened to my characters while playing D&D was when I played a 3rd level changeling beguiler. At that level I wasn't really expecting to go up against any invisible enemies; let alone one cleric of the death domain with a potion of greater invisibility. With nothing that we could use to find the cleric, we had to wait for the spell to wear off.

He ended up reanimating some of the corpses that remained of the previous encounter (Which had left me at 12 hp). Thinking "I can't be bothered with this" I cast a silent image to create a wall of stone dividing the zombies from us and then I get death touched in the back with a no save and die from the death domain's granted power...

I really liked that character...:smallfrown:

[Umbranar]

Although this may not be the horror your looking for, it was pretty bumming for me.

We were playing the shackled city and were in a weird underground complex.
I was playing a Whisper Gnome Rogue and found a hidden door in the floor.
I opened it and took a look with my Darkvision (only one in the group with darkvision).
A choker surprised me and instantly succeeded in grappling me.
Then it acted before me on the initiative count and it got a crit off on me. I was only level 2.

Another fight that was terrible was at the end when we were fighting Adimarcus. Im not exactly sure what he was but he was powerful as hell and had two forms, one angelic and one demonic, with each form having its own HP pool, DR, Fast healing etc.
Our barbarian died in round 1, our druid was next then our warmage. I was left with our support cleric and I was playing a buffing/BFC wizard/Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil. Needless to say, we ran out and plane shifted.

[Anachronity]

I may have caused one of these. I like horror-themed campaigns a lot, but sometimes I think I go to far. While I don't do horrible things to the PCs (not in the sense of being graphic, anyways), I generally consider NPCs to be fair game. I don't find many things too scary, but sometimes that stops me from realizing sometimes how horrifying I've made an encounter without really thinking about it.

In one campaign there was an evil enchanter who had magically distributed his consciousness into a swarm of rabbits as a form of immortality, with the swarm eventually growing in number until it had supplanted the entirety of the area's rabbit population. The catch was that to maintain his state he had to sacrifice human children. He was intended to be a sort of "bogey man" for the children of the area. Unfortunately the PCs didn't realize what was going on and they left the town for a few days looking for someone. They later returned and figured it out, and found the bad guy's evil warren filled with the remains of the children. I had intended to describe the villain's lair that way regardless, but I think they assumed that they were to blame for it.

The campaign ended shortly after that, although I may have been reading too much into it and the players were just busy from that point onward (it was in college, so that's not so unlikely). Regardless, it taught me a thing or two about letting players know beforehand if a particular campaign is going to have a horror theme.

[delenn]

Oooh, thought of another one, though I was the DM:

Two of my players couldn't make it, so I had their PCs, along with most of the rest of the small village they were in, fall into a magical sleep while the other two PCs had to solve the murders of several villagers whose corpses were missing body parts. BBEG was trying to reconstruct and re-animate a body that looked like his dead daughter by harvesting 'matching' body parts from the town. One of the sleeping PCs woke up to find her face covered in dash marks to indicate where a surgeon should cut. In the end, because she wasn't there to play, I didn't cut her nose off (it wasn't quite right, BBEG decided), and her character hilariously ran with it - first being shocked and creeped out that someone tried to cut her face, and then offended that her nose was rejected.

[Captnq]

Once I did have a player with a Nightmare Flaw.

So I ran an entire adventure that was "fake". Halfway through, when the one player went out, I told the rest of them it was fake and proceeded to "kill" them all in an horrifying fashion. When it finally came his turn, I suddenly said, "And as your brain starts to pull itself free from your body to run off on your spine like a slithering horror, you wake up screaming. Turns out it was all a nightmare."

Then I picked up the adventure next week "exactly" the same start as his nightmare.

[3drinks]

I came in here to talk about bad form I as a DM have used - key NPCs to save the day, "Scripted" important fights. Then I read the stuff on the first couple pages. My. God. That is heinous. And anyone with those kinds of fantasies is not right in the head - and they should seek professional help. Those types are very much sexual deviants. *shudders*

As a player, I guess the "worst" thing I experienced, was my first time ever playing the game. I was thirteen and had made a Dwarven Fighter. At the beginning of the encounter, we cleared some Goblins from the front of the Cavern. Cool. I walk in, and there's a Skeleton lying on the floor with a sword stuck in it. I take it and ask the DM what it was. He replied "Oh, it's a Broadsword +2." That's awesome, my first night playing and I have a magical weapon. (Yeah you're probably seeing where this is going now). Next encounter, I make the first swing with the Blade...come to find out it's a Backstabber +2. Yeah, I died. Got a chance to revive if I performed a task for a Deity...who's name was Lolth. She said "Find me the jewel-encrusted cup and you can have your life back".

...It wasn't the Cup you're thinking of. No, instead it was the Codpiece from a suit of Full Plate Mail.

I didn't really understand it much back then, but I look back on it now and laugh at the whole situation. My gullibleness at picking up the Sword (never pick up a Sword that's still sticking in someone's back).

[WarKitty]

Deck of Many Things.

Cursed.

With a lure that made any character that touched it want to keep drawing cards.

[Sir Chuckles]

Deck of Many Things.

Cursed.

With a lure that made any character that touched it want to keep drawing cards.

In my group, the words "Deck of" has a greater effect than Dominate Person cast by an epic level specialist Wizard.

Recently, one character died due to the Deck. So they decided that the best course of action to bring him back was to keep drawing. I genuinely did not want them to do that, but knew they wouldn't back off from it. I did a terrible, terrible, bad bad DM move that I feel guilty for (but not enough to tell my players and rescind the action) and slipped the card out of the deck when they weren't looking. It's not the first time I've Sleight of Hand'd the Deck, but it's the first time I've done it 100% against their favor.

They ended up drawing every other card at least once, except two. Note that this is the Pathfinder Harrow version, which uses the full deck plus Jokers.