(3.5) Ways to ruin Campains

[theoneorange]

What are the most common ways to ruin a campaign? What are ways that campaigns that you were in or ran were ruined?

[Gnome Alone]

Most common way is probably people not showing up and the campaign falling apart not with a bang, but a whimper. Entropy... zam!

There's also the dreaded scenario of one guy making an über-optimized character that then basically solos the campaign. I think this probably happens less frequently than it is made out to, though. Related would be the Mary Sue DMPC, although I gather that that sometimes this leads to online commiseration and general hilarity (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?275152-What-am-I-supposed-to-do) so I don't know if that's necessarily ruined.

Also popular is the old "accidentally solved the main plot right away" thing; I'll bet most of the tales of woe that are posted to this thread will be along these lines.

[Fable Wright]

Optimization ahead of the rest of the party. (Well-played tier 1 characters in a mildly optimized campaign. Use of any Theoretical Optimization build, like the Locate City bomb. Use of Tainted Scholar, Incantatrix, or Beholder Mage. Use of zombie horde/animal companion/summons to do the fighter's job for him, better than he could.)

In other words, when you make the other characters useless, or destroy the setting, you ruin campaigns. That's all there is to it.

[Scarey Nerd]

Dropping the "g" :smalltongue:

The biggest ways I've seen campaigns fall apart were:

The DM not letting players change their mind about what character they wanted to play literally months in advance of the game actually starting, so the players rebelled.

Too many players leading to multiple conversations happening at once and no-one paying attention.

DM getting bored with DMing and desperate to go back to being a player, so they just end the campaign deliberately.

One ridiculously overpowered character in relation to the others and/or what the DM is used to.

The one player the splits the party by being overly sensitive about minor things, often leading to half the party waking up dead and the other half leaving. Works best when one of the now dead players was the only one that had a vested interest in the main plot.

[animewatcha]

Being a monk trying to do everyone else's job?

[Scarey Nerd]

Being a monk trying to do everyone else's job?

What's worse is that they sometimes succeed in low-op games...

[Raezeman]

There are some nice examples in different threats like 'worst things DMs have done to you' and similar like when 1 player starts to effectively work against another player, and the DM taking that first player's side, making it impossible for the second player to keep playing and quit the group.
Or when the DM's primary goal is to kill the players instead of making a good story.

Another way is for players to move away to different places, even countries maybe, making it highly impractical to continue the story.

[Slipperychicken]

A lot of them I've seen go down pretty quickly to TPKs. Especially in the first session. Most GMs I've seen have no way to respond to that and just end the game instead of starting it again with new characters.

PCs murdering each other en masse over really trivial sleights instead of doing the adventure can contribute to campaign failure. A particularly egregious situation traumatized one of my GMs for about a month before he was willing to try again. He was literally sitting there for upwards of five minutes with a thousand-yard stare, then got up and started wandering zombie-like while muttering stuff vaguely related to the game. He's been kind of fine since then, but I still think that experience broke part of him.

[OldTrees1]

It didn't ruin a campaign but it trivialized an adventure.

We were high level Tier 3(or higher) characters and we were trying to break someone out of a high security prison.

I had a fear aura that frightened creatures with 1-6 HD.

For some reason that was enough to trivialize the mission.

[Sir Chuckles]

One campaign I once knew ended with a compounding of elements, from the DM ostracizing all but two players during a fit of rage to giving the Druid a Wisdom score in the thousands.

Most times that campaigns are ruined, it can be placed on the backs of an OOC problem or lack of solution.

[Raezeman]

Most times that campaigns are ruined, it can be placed on the backs of an OOC problem or lack of solution.

Ah yes, now i think of it another real life example:
my brother first DM experience after being player for a while with a group. After not many sessions (possibly only one), 2 of the players got in an argument and didn't want anything to do with each other anymore. Continuing the campaign became impossible until one of them got replaced, but how can you chose which of your 2 friends to kick out when the argument in question has nothing to do with yourself…
So after a long while, my brother started to DM for a different group with probably a lot of stuff from his first campaign recycled. This time, i consist of said group, which is nice for me :p

[Thurbane]

Deck of Many Things (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/artifacts.htm#deckofManyThings), especially at low(ish) levels...

[Arbane]

"I kill the (plot-important NPC)!" is always a favorite.

"You want us to go on a quest to save the world? Nah, I'd rather stay at home and grow turnips."