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Vitruviansquid
2014-12-19, 03:38 PM
Through the ages, we've had a couple of threads about the worst GMs you've ever played for or the worst players you've ever GM'ed for, and while it was fun to laugh at others' misfortunes and sneer at their tales of incompetence from on high, I think now it's time to have a thread about our own habits.

What do you do in RPG's that the rest of us can feel schadenfreude about?

As a GM, I love to pull the plotline where the party has a theoretically simple task to do, but are constantly bedeviled by complications caused by unexpectedly unhelpful NPC's or bad luck. I use this plotline so much, my longtime players have started wondering what's going to go wrong every time I give them a relatively simple sounding task.

As a player, I'm totally okay with being railroaded. In fact, I usually prefer campaigns with a pre-determined direction over "sandbox" style campaigns.

And finally, the most scummy thing of all... I've run a campaign for 3 games now on a new system, and I haven't actually read the entire rulebook yet. Players routinely correct me on simple rulings, and we routinely take breaks for minutes at a time to look up the more obscure rules. I procrastinate on all aspects of "GM homework" shamelessly.

ComaVision
2014-12-19, 03:56 PM
I have (to date) always played extremely selfish and evil (or "neutral") characters. I'd like to think I would change my ways with my next character but I'm currently stuck in the DM's chair.

I expect PCs to rise to the challenge in games I DM, which occasionally results in me killing large portions of the group when they're not adequately prepared. We still have fun though so I guess it's not that bad?

braveheart
2014-12-22, 04:39 PM
When I GM I prefer to do a single battle that nearly kills the party over dungeons and skill challenges, and I too put off my GM homework until the last minute far too often.


as a player, every character I have ever played is characteristically a male dwarf, even the female undine Monk turned out to be a greedy male dwarf in disguise

gom jabbarwocky
2014-12-23, 12:05 PM
Forgive me, forum-goers, for I have sinned. I has been 6 years since my last confession.

As a GM, I have railroaded, deliberately turned PCs against each other, split the party, created invincible villains designed only to taunt the players, and destroyed an entire fictional plane of existence just so that the PCs would stop messing it up. I have also engineered insanely complex plots and conspiracies so involved and germane that no player could - or should - possibly care enough to investigate them. I have rage-quit (as a result of players being unable to overcome their most implacable foe - a wire-link fence) and devoted entire sessions to long, boring fight scenes that go nowhere and move the plot forward not a whit. I have actually uttered the excuse, "I didn't make him [an NPC] unhittable - I just made him undamageable!"

As a player, I have been a perpetrator in, and even the engineer of, several counts of wanton player rebellion. I have deliberately created PCs so inept that they were nothing but a burden on the party, I have had characters literally attempt to eat the moon (they failed), and I have obstinately refused to contribute in combats. I have split the party. I have engineered the complete and utter destruction of a year-long campaign through the mere utterance of the phrase, "I let go of the duck."

braveheart
2014-12-23, 12:38 PM
I have engineered the complete and utter destruction of a year-long campaign through the mere utterance of the phrase, "I let go of the duck."

I think that warrants a story be told to explain how that happened

Vitruviansquid
2014-12-23, 12:43 PM
I imagine it went something like this (replace bunny with duck):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDBAiq4RFE

TheCountAlucard
2014-12-23, 04:08 PM
The story for pretty much every game of mine starts with me blatantly ripping something off, then twisting parts, subverting bits, or blending in other elements altogether; the only truly creative part in the process occur once the players start chucking their spanners in the works.

gom jabbarwocky
2014-12-23, 06:14 PM
I think that warrants a story be told to explain how that happened
Okay, but be warned, the tale that follows is long, bizarre, and incredibly stupid.

We were playing regular D&D, ole' three-point-zed. I'm sure they make them greener, but our DM was, shall we say, not terribly experienced. I, for my part, had created a charismatic swash-buckling diplomancer character, having not been informed that this was primarily a dungeon-diving campaign. Not helping things was our rogue, the most unpleasant min-maxer I've ever had the displeasure to play with. The guy was just toxic, making the game unfun for everyone else and having the DM wrapped around his finger tighter than a Chinese finger trap. The plot of the game revolved around a sorcerer who had been possessed by an arch-demon who wanted to destroy the world or something. As a result, the party had to haul butt all over the realm collecting MacGuffins to cast out the demon.

Almost a year into this game, things began to deteriorate rapidly. This was primarily my fault - I was determined to have fun, and had begun doing random crazy stuff just to keep myself entertained and keep the focus off of the invincible, invisible psychopath rogue who was constantly stealing the spotlight, stealing all our best loot, and generally being an unbearable a-hole. By the mid-point of the game, the rogue was running an extortion racket on the rest of the party - this is not a joke, that actually happened. As my PC was basically incompetent, instead of being a threat, he just ended up being and most insufferable bozo of all time - eventually he ended up trying to pass himself off as a wizard by getting a fake beard and stealing a pole with a bird feeder on top as a staff. Everyone else was either bored or as frustrated as I was.

You know how sometimes, when a game goes off the rails, weird things begin happening? Like, you have town guards who are level 20 and barmaids with 100% Dodge? What ended up happening was sort of like that. See, I started hassling one of the generic bartenders at the utterly generic inn that we were staying at. The DM was a good sport, putting up with all my bizarre requests, and eventually all the other players started getting in on it, too. Someone, at one point, asked the bartender for a duck - and he produced a wooden duck. In fact, we got him to produce a lot of ducks of varying sizes, craftsmanship, and colors. Not only that, but we found they had magical properties. If you had at least three of these ducks, they would always form a row. You could pull one away, but as soon as you let go, it would shoot back to being in a row. This discovery was, by far, the most interesting thing that had happened in the entire nearly year-long campaign by this point(and this was a game had even earlier featured the deck of many things). Eventually, we got bored and we took as many ducks as we could carry, because they were fun and weird and had seemingly no useful purpose whatsoever. And yet, I had already begun to hatch a plan...

What was to follow was a part of the game where the BBEG was going to be at this big fancy shindig and the party was supposed to carry out some kind of undercover mission. My character just went to the party dressed as the imbecile wizard, Orephix (pronounced "Or-e-fix"), and hung out with the BBEG, sucking up to him like it was going out of style. The rogue, however, was carrying one of the ducks that he had painted with sovereign glue, while the cleric had the two others of its row in a bag of holding. At the end of the party, the party managed to fail whatever their mission was (I didn't care), and I escorted the BBEG and his lady-friend to their carriage, acting like the most obsequious loser in all the realm. Finally, as he's about to leave, I ask him if he would be so kind as to bless my duck. This didn't make any sense, as, obviously, he was a sorcerer and not a divine caster, so he couldn't bless crap, but I got the GM to say that the BBEG clamps his big dumb hands on our stupid duck, while the invisible rogue was sandwiched between us.

Then the rogue says, "I let go of the duck."

The rogue had been secretly holding the duck the entire time, so, as a result, the duck, with the BBEG still attached to it, zips off into the bag of holding held by our cleric. The cleric then picks up a handy dagger and punctures the bag of holding - which, according to the RAW, means that the contents of a bag of holding, when punctured, end up "lost forever" in the void. Boom - BBEG defeated. Game over.

Needless to say, our DM was not a happy camper. Now, years later, he's gotten over it, and in our gaming group, "I let go of the duck" is still shorthand for when a campaign spirals out of control into destruction.

braveheart
2014-12-23, 06:35 PM
I must say sir you deserve a cookie, for that was pure genius

azoetia
2014-12-23, 07:29 PM
I procrastinate, only doing the necessary DM work at the last minute, and even then under protest. I have a bad tendency to forget about enemy monsters' and NPCs' special abilities and not use them, resorting to just "attack." Not always, but too often nonetheless.

I'm also a bit of a pushover. Since I don't want to be the hated DM people complain about on forums, pretty much all it takes is them rolling their eyes and going, "Oh, so you're going to be that kind of DM now, huh?" for me to abandon what I was going to do. But they're smart enough to know if they did that all the time just to get their way I'd ruin them, so it's not an every-session occurrence. And they can't use that to get me to allow them to do things I wouldn't otherwise permit. I'm pretty easy-going; you have to be attempting something totally ridiculous that no DM would ever allow before I say "no, you can't do that."

My group has never used DM screens, ever. Everything is out in the open: no fudged dice, no hidden documents. I once bought one because it was pretty and had some useful go-to information on it, just to sit beside me as a cheat sheet and otherwise look nice in my collection. My players went "When did you get that DM screen? You're that kind of DM now, aren't you? Jesus. Gonna fudge some rolls, right?" I never brought it to another game.

Sith_Happens
2014-12-23, 07:31 PM
Okay, but be warned, the tale that follows is long, bizarre, and incredibly stupid.

We were playing regular D&D, ole' three-point-zed. I'm sure they make them greener, but our DM was, shall we say, not terribly experienced. I, for my part, had created a charismatic swash-buckling diplomancer character, having not been informed that this was primarily a dungeon-diving campaign. Not helping things was our rogue, the most unpleasant min-maxer I've ever had the displeasure to play with. The guy was just toxic, making the game unfun for everyone else and having the DM wrapped around his finger tighter than a Chinese finger trap. The plot of the game revolved around a sorcerer who had been possessed by an arch-demon who wanted to destroy the world or something. As a result, the party had to haul butt all over the realm collecting MacGuffins to cast out the demon.

Almost a year into this game, things began to deteriorate rapidly. This was primarily my fault - I was determined to have fun, and had begun doing random crazy stuff just to keep myself entertained and keep the focus off of the invincible, invisible psychopath rogue who was constantly stealing the spotlight, stealing all our best loot, and generally being an unbearable a-hole. By the mid-point of the game, the rogue was running an extortion racket on the rest of the party - this is not a joke, that actually happened. As my PC was basically incompetent, instead of being a threat, he just ended up being and most insufferable bozo of all time - eventually he ended up trying to pass himself off as a wizard by getting a fake beard and stealing a pole with a bird feeder on top as a staff. Everyone else was either bored or as frustrated as I was.

You know how sometimes, when a game goes off the rails, weird things begin happening? Like, you have town guards who are level 20 and barmaids with 100% Dodge? What ended up happening was sort of like that. See, I started hassling one of the generic bartenders at the utterly generic inn that we were staying at. The DM was a good sport, putting up with all my bizarre requests, and eventually all the other players started getting in on it, too. Someone, at one point, asked the bartender for a duck - and he produced a wooden duck. In fact, we got him to produce a lot of ducks of varying sizes, craftsmanship, and colors. Not only that, but we found they had magical properties. If you had at least three of these ducks, they would always form a row. You could pull one away, but as soon as you let go, it would shoot back to being in a row. This discovery was, by far, the most interesting thing that had happened in the entire nearly year-long campaign by this point(and this was a game had even earlier featured the deck of many things). Eventually, we got bored and we took as many ducks as we could carry, because they were fun and weird and had seemingly no useful purpose whatsoever. And yet, I had already begun to hatch a plan...

What was to follow was a part of the game where the BBEG was going to be at this big fancy shindig and the party was supposed to carry out some kind of undercover mission. My character just went to the party dressed as the imbecile wizard, Orephix (pronounced "Or-e-fix"), and hung out with the BBEG, sucking up to him like it was going out of style. The rogue, however, was carrying one of the ducks that he had painted with sovereign glue, while the cleric had the two others of its row in a bag of holding. At the end of the party, the party managed to fail whatever their mission was (I didn't care), and I escorted the BBEG and his lady-friend to their carriage, acting like the most obsequious loser in all the realm. Finally, as he's about to leave, I ask him if he would be so kind as to bless my duck. This didn't make any sense, as, obviously, he was a sorcerer and not a divine caster, so he couldn't bless crap, but I got the GM to say that the BBEG clamps his big dumb hands on our stupid duck, while the invisible rogue was sandwiched between us.

Then the rogue says, "I let go of the duck."

The rogue had been secretly holding the duck the entire time, so, as a result, the duck, with the BBEG still attached to it, zips off into the bag of holding held by our cleric. The cleric then picks up a handy dagger and punctures the bag of holding - which, according to the RAW, means that the contents of a bag of holding, when punctured, end up "lost forever" in the void. Boom - BBEG defeated. Game over.

Needless to say, our DM was not a happy camper. Now, years later, he's gotten over it, and in our gaming group, "I let go of the duck" is still shorthand for when a campaign spirals out of control into destruction.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/1d03f638cb43e6d38fdf04210591998b/tumblr_moac0l70Es1soks1io1_400.gif

Susano-wo
2014-12-23, 08:32 PM
wow. that is freakin awesome.
As for a confession of my own, I once put a party member who had risen to a minor civil position in a sack and tried to sell him back to his family for ransom. We had no rules against pvp. but still is generally considered dirty pool. :smallbiggrin:
Oh, I conspired with my gm, in that same campaign, to steal the same characters cloak of invisibility. We made the rolls for it, but still, it was pretty dirty.

Frenth Alunril
2014-12-23, 11:31 PM
In the constant terror that is my game I have committed TPK more than 75% of the time. I have twisted players words against themselves, booted players who are overly foolish/optimistic, held back XP when goals were not achieved, lined up incredible combat, lost my cool when a shopping trip to the city of brass turned into "oh, we didn't want anything anyway." Run good and evil campaigns, and I currently hold the highest PC kill rate of any of the active groups I know of. But my players love me, at least, those I haven't booted.

As a player I must confess that I am horrible playing with people who don't follow rules and are too "creative" in the sense that their idea of creativity is flimsy and whimsical and has no logic even in fantasy. I have rejected systems of play for this very reason, and I believe in playing my character with all of their flaws. I've had an apprentice wizard who was jealous of girls that were more beautiful than her, a swashbuckler that was horrible on stats but lead the party like a dread pirate, a crusader tank that charged in on combat like he was invincible, even played a pacifist cleric who creatively used the spell "weighty chest" to capture and break the hands of 4 attackers who were after my holy symbol. That upset the dm.

I've handed out cursed and intelligent weapons, I've rolled dice just to make the players think I'm looking at stats, I've cheated on HP to make fights more interesting, I've contrived solutions top deal with math savants who blurt out statistics. Most importantly, I let pvp go full blast to the point of players throwing pizza and storm out in rage quit.

ComaVision
2014-12-24, 12:46 AM
*snip*

That sounds like my DM style taken to an extreme. I like.

goto124
2014-12-24, 01:39 AM
a pacifist cleric who creatively used the spell "weighty chest" to capture and break the hands of 4 attackers who were after my holy symbol.

I shall imagine that the 'chest' refers to an woman's hefty bosom.

Frenth Alunril
2014-12-24, 09:37 AM
That sounds like my DM style taken to an extreme. I like.

Thanks! I'll keep it up!


I shall imagine that the 'chest' refers to an woman's hefty bosom.

He he he! Weighty Chest is to be cast upon objects like chests to prevent them from being stolen. The caster may move the object as normal, but anyone else finds the object to weigh 1d4 times their weight. I rolled a 3 while 4 attackers were holding onto it, we all fell to the ground, sure, but what a ride!

Greymane
2014-12-25, 03:39 AM
Forgive me, playground, for I have sinned. It has been so many years since my last confession I cannot recall it.

I do previous character cameos when I DM. More often other people's old characters, but I toss my own in as well. I do it whenever I can find even a half-baked excuse to do it. The last time I did it the other players didn't realize it, fortunately. However, I'm planning one of the boss fights in the future will be against the previous characters the players used in the last campaign.

I have a thing for bad girls. Morally grey to dark, attractive women feature prominently in my games as antagonists and fair-weather friends. I also find excuses to use Succubi and female Erinyes far more than I should.

Only one of my players ever creates a character backstory for me to use. Inevitably, this means the plot starts to sort of revolve around them in some fashion. That, or the side quests become a very bloody version of Days of Our Lives.

As a player, I refuse to play less powerful classes (we primarily play 3.5 D&D). Not because I'm inherently a power gamer (okay, maybe a little), but because the lower tiered the class, the less options it has, and the more boring it is. I also like to have as much control over my fate as possible, and what better way to ensure that than to play a Wizard? This level of power has caused me to butt heads with my DMs in the past.

Jay R
2014-12-26, 10:12 PM
My actual first experience was pretty much just rolling dice to see how it worked.

My second time, which I consider my first real game, I was playing a first level paladin in OD&D with only the first supplement Greyhawk.

The party ranged from 1st to 5th level, was entirely Lawful (which meant Good).

My paladin couldn't afford a sword, and was wielding a mace.

After several encounters, a couple levels down in the dungeon, we were all down to 3 or fewer hit points. (Remember, in this game, 0 hit points is dead.) My paladin had a single hit point left.

The treasure we had just found included a sword, which the paladin asked for. He received the right to pick it up. Unfortunately, it was a high-ego chaotic sword, and the first thing that should happen when my paladin touched it is that he should have received 2d6 points of damage, which would have killed the character. The DM made a few rolls behind the screen, and then wrote and handed me a note.

"This Chaotic sword has changed your alignment. You are now chaotic, and holding a chaotic Flaming Sword."

I thought for a moment, and asked to speak to him privately. When we got into the other room, I told him, "I don't have any questions for you. I just want them to believe you gave me more information than the note had." I told him my plan, we waited a couple more minutes, and then we walked back in.

My (ex-)paladin told the group, "This is a Holy Sword with a quest I have to take on alone. I need you to go back the way you came. It's important that you do as I ask. Go back single file, and no matter what you hear, DON'T LOOK BACK."

Of course the five characters trusted my paladin, and did as he asked. My chaotic ex-paladin came up and stabbed each one in the back. Several times the DM said, "You hear a stab behind you, and a body slumping." "We don't look back." After five times, he told them that they were all dead.

So in my first game of D&D, my paladin murdered an entire lawful party.

Gnome Alone
2014-12-26, 11:06 PM
(hilarious murder story) This is just the best.

Pex
2014-12-26, 11:51 PM
I once ran a 2E D&D game at a convention purposely designed and successfully implemented not to have any combat even though all the pre-made characters had their stats laid out for it. I cringe about it now and thankfully have completely forgotten what the plot was.

In a 3.0 session I ran I once let my personal bias against the rogue class interfere with player agency and refused to let his character get away with breaking and entering a temple of a justice deity. The encounter was not something I planned. The player decided to do it for legitimate in game reasons. I did everything I could to thwart him and finally got him when he failed a saving throw and went to sleep. Of course, he was an elf and supposed to be immune to sleep but in my mind, at the time, I really thought it wasn't a sleep effect. It was a Command spell where in 3.0 you can use any one word order. That one round had the character captured. I've felt guilty the next day and ever since.

As a player I regret nothing.

BWR
2014-12-27, 12:22 AM
I've been a bit whiny as a player.
I have been careless and killed fellow PCs (4 of them in one game)
As a DM I've done a bunch of minor things like made cool annoying encounters or traps that were basically just a '**** you' to the PCs or ruled against something because it wasn't exactly what I had in mind, even if on reflection I should have allowed it.
I'd say my greatest sins have been
- a TPK because they didn't explicitly say they did something very important, when I kind of rushed the players through a situation
- radically changed the sort of game I was running because I thought it sounded fun. The players were not impressed. It was an honest mistake but one I still get grief for years after the fact.
- running a disjointed and bland Mandalorian Wars campaign because I didn't properly plan it, or think about how to get the PCs involved in the big picture rather than just running them from one encounter to another, with almost no continuity of story or purpose.

Kane0
2014-12-27, 04:49 AM
Forgive me playground, for I have sinned.

I have openly encouraged pvp and party conflict
I have been self centered as a player
I have turned down other game for no other reason than they are not D&D
I have fudged
I have utilised homebrew that no other group member had access to
I have metagamed to the extreme
I have used my position as group note-taker to further my own agenda
I have rendered party members obsolete and taken their spotlight
I have outright broken rules over my knee for no good reason
I have stopped running a successful game for no good reason
I have introduced intentionally dofficult characters
I have turned a sandbox game into an evil campaign
I have used loaded dice
I have shown favouritism to group/party members
I have usurped the DM on multiple occasions
I have had my characters act inconsistently for no good reason, or consistently when they shouldnt
I have forced the DM into comjng up with ways to challenge me or my character specifically
I have led my party into nigh-TPKs on multiple occasions
I have derailed sessions off of single meaningless tangents
I have played characters that make group members question my sanity
But worst of all, I think im a pretty good player.

goto124
2014-12-27, 04:58 AM
I have used loaded dice

.......how? Not that it's a good idea...

Knaight
2014-12-27, 05:08 AM
.......how? Not that it's a good idea...

I'm pretty sure the procedure is that you take some loaded dice and roll them.

Silus
2014-12-27, 06:19 AM
I don't have enough experience as a DM to rack up any notable sins, but I've got my fair share of player ones.

1) I fudge the dice. A lot. If I've gotta roll somethings, and I know I have to roll it (not like the DM saying "Okay roll me X skill") I'll sometimes roll it while the DM is occupied with something else (like if something gets his attention during my turn or something). If it's a good roll, I'll keep it, if not I tend to look up when the DM's attention is back on me and go like "Okay so can I roll/Is it my turn?" and essentially take a free reroll. I suppose it's a holdover from my first couple bad DMs.

2) I've stacked a Deck of Many Things. Ended up with ~3 castles and ~21 wishes. Again, was one of those DMs that you'd pull an Old Man Henderson on.

3) I intentionally tempt fate, especially in the current Rolemaster game.
"Okay so I suppose we should check out the creepy castle up ahead?"
"Sure, what's the worst that could happen?"
*Communal groan from the party*

Honestly I think I do it to kinda taunt the DM, as I've hit that moment in gaming where I've just sorta stopped caring about my character. Old school RPGs like Rolemaster, Palladium and Rifts just ain't my bag.

4) I hold grudges in such a way that even a Dwarf would go "Dude, just let it go". I intend to exact my revenge against my current group for the "Magic Sword Incident" that happened ~3-4 games ago (probably sometime in the summer/late spring), and it will be equal parts annoying for the players and hilarious for me.

I would like to stress that as a player, I regret none of this and, if caught doing any of this I'll at least have the decency to admit to it. Except the dice-fudging. That I'll deny up and down until my face is blue.

Marlowe
2014-12-27, 06:59 AM
1, I enjoy making up NPC dialog and have my NPCs talk a blue streak at each other, including lots of cheap shots about each others sex lives!

2, I try to work important exposition into this chatter; but the players tend to miss it because it's buried in amongst aforesaid cheap shots!

3, I insist that every NPC has to have a first and a last name! Some players find this confusing!

Kane0
2014-12-27, 07:46 AM
.......how? Not that it's a good idea...

I have my regular set of dice and my 'srs' set, which were given to me by a ridiculously lucky mate and i'm 99% certain that those dice spent some time in a microwave.

Feddlefew
2014-12-29, 01:51 PM
I could not keep a strait face listening to my DM and a player gushing about how amazing monks are.

Vitruviansquid
2014-12-29, 01:55 PM
1, I enjoy making up NPC dialog and have my NPCs talk a blue streak at each other, including lots of cheap shots about each others sex lives!

2, I try to work important exposition into this chatter; but the players tend to miss it because it's buried in amongst aforesaid cheap shots!

3, I insist that every NPC has to have a first and a last name! Some players find this confusing!

What if the NPC's are from a social stratum in a culture where they don't get last names? =X

gom jabbarwocky
2014-12-29, 02:09 PM
I have my regular set of dice and my 'srs' set, which were given to me by a ridiculously lucky mate and i'm 99% certain that those dice spent some time in a microwave.

Is it possible that microwaving a die will even work?

I'm asking for a friend....

TheCountAlucard
2014-12-29, 02:48 PM
I could not keep a strait face listening to my DM and a player gushing about how amazing monks are.Ugh, tell me about it. :smallsigh:

Hiro Protagonest
2014-12-29, 02:54 PM
I could not keep a strait face listening to my DM and a player gushing about how amazing monks are.

In 3.X that's not really a sin.

If you're talking about Exalted characters using Sidereal Martial Arts, on the other hand... well it could go either way, depends on which SMA they're using.

---

The couple of PbP games I joined, I totally flaked.

Fizban
2014-12-29, 03:05 PM
Last night, in order to save a party member from a charging+pouncing+critting foe bringing death in a single round, I triumphantly questioned the DM as to how that charge happened after I'd staggered (slowed) the same foe on my last action. I immediately realized that he still could have partial charged but declined to mention it. Naturally the character dies in a single round anyway just before the end of the fight, landing at exactly -10 thanks to the 1 point of sonic damage from a crappy Sound Burst trap on the way in.

I may consider investing even more in my defenses.

veti
2014-12-29, 04:22 PM
Way, way back in time, as a callow youth, I was running Call of Cthulhu.

Now, a little later on I became not half bad as a CoC Keeper. Some of my proudest moments of DMing are from that period. But also this memory...

I was running a published scenario. I forget the details, but I'm pretty sure they involved some crazed old wizard in contact with Nyarlathotep. They usually seemed to.

My players, finding themselves pitted against a potentially unlimited number of mooks, not unreasonably decided they wanted to get tooled up. One of them who had some kind of underworld connections, went looking for an arms dealer who'd let them have "the good stuff", not this wimpy rubbish sold in stores. And he rolled a 01.

I let them have mortars, flamethrowers, heavy machine guns, recoilless rifles and basically unlimited amounts of ammo and HE - enough to start a small war. So that's exactly what they did. Most of Massachussetts was reduced to smouldering ruins.

Only much, much later did it occur to me that the arms dealer himself could have been an avatar of Nyarlathotep, since what followed was exactly the kind of chaos he revels in...

Marlowe
2014-12-30, 05:04 AM
What if the NPC's are from a social stratum in a culture where they don't get last names? =X

Is that even a question?

As DM, I presumably have some control over the cultures my NPCs are from; and the nomenclature customs of the same.

The Glyphstone
2014-12-30, 09:05 AM
Whenever I need to come up with a name for a random person on the spot, their first name is always Neil, Nathan, Natalie, etc. Their surname, if they have/need one, always ends up as Charleston, Carrol, Carlyle, etc. One guess as to their middle initial, should it somehow ever come up.

Feddlefew
2014-12-30, 12:37 PM
Okay, time to fess up to some real sins.

-I am a terrible backseat DM. The worst backseat DM. Even after not playing the game for a year and forgetting some rules.

-I am an optimizer at heart and have to make a conscious effort to tone it down.

-I metagame like no tomorrow as a player.

-I am guilty of making special snowflake characters as a player.

-All of my TPKs as a DM have been from me deciding to enforce starvation rules or BAC.

-Once I forgot to bring pizza money.

Sith_Happens
2014-12-30, 05:23 PM
Whenever I need to come up with a name for a random person on the spot, their first name is always Neil, Nathan, Natalie, etc. Their surname, if they have/need one, always ends up as Charleston, Carrol, Carlyle, etc. One guess as to their middle initial, should it somehow ever come up.

Is "Y" a vowel in this case? Because if so I'd like to buy it.

ComaVision
2014-12-30, 05:25 PM
Is "Y" a vowel in this case? Because if so I'd like to buy it.

I'm going to guess it's NPC not NYC lol

Hiro Protagonest
2014-12-30, 06:44 PM
I'm going to guess it's NPC not NYC lol

...

<.<

>.>

I also thought it was NYC.

Andrian
2014-12-30, 08:05 PM
Okay, so here are mine...

-I build my characters crunch first and I love to optimize. I'm not necessarily very good at it, but I love it so much.

-As a GM, I go out of my way to not kill off party members. The exception was in my first adventure as a GM, when there was PvP and one of the characters, who was OP and also evil, got his head smashed in. There was much rejoicing.

-I am a rules lawyer and a backseat GM. And I think all players ought to be, which means I get annoyed when GM's tell me to stop.

-I metagame, but mostly when GMing. I sometimes try so hard to not metagame as a player that it proves to be an annoying hindrance. As a GM, I'm constantly building villains that are designed to exploit the weaknesses of the players.

Marlowe
2014-12-30, 09:09 PM
Whenever I need to come up with a name for a random person on the spot, their first name is always Neil, Nathan, Natalie, etc. Their surname, if they have/need one, always ends up as Charleston, Carrol, Carlyle, etc. One guess as to their middle initial, should it somehow ever come up.
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/252x373q90/673/OmVVXt.jpg

Bloody Peasant!
2014-12-30, 09:57 PM
Oh jeez, I started DMing in my early teens so I've got a ****load of confessions to make.

I've made a dungeon with riddle-doors (using my own riddles) which cast a damaging spell on anyone who guesses wrong.
I've turned my artifically-OP DMPC into the party leader and made him the central focus of a number of quests.
I've railroaded to the point of only allowing the PCs to ask an NPC a given list of questions because those were the only ones I had written responses for. (Yes, just like a video game. I was 14 alrighty?)
I've picked party favorites and fudged rolls to make those PCs do better; I've actively convened to save the lives of PCs I saw as less disposable and have gone out of my way to make things more difficult for those I saw as more disposable, in order to make it clear that the game was meant to be challenging and dangerous.
I've gone through long descriptions of pre-decided battles between NPCs (or between a DMPC and NPC(s)) and have conspired to ensure that the PCs are unable to interfere in those battles, all the while pretending to roll dice to determine the outcome.
I've force-split a party of 1st-level characters and then pitted them against 3rd level NPCs.
I don't see this one as a negative but a lot of people probably will...I've never stepped in to prevent PvP combat whatsoever.
I've turned battles into minigames with weird fiat rules.
I've told the players all sorts of stuff their characters shouldn't actually be able to tell.

I could go on but you get the picture. My DMing track-record is hardly pristine.

The Glyphstone
2014-12-30, 10:07 PM
Actually, I do have one 'serious' confession to make.

Back when I ran a campaign in high school, I decided to create a pretty standard haunted-house adventure. It worked out decently - they smashed all of the completely inanimate statues on reflex, but got freaked out when the food and silverware in the dining room came to life and attacked them instead. The problem came when I got them down to the boss fight with a vampire.

Firstly, I decided to draw a five-pointed star on the battle map in the vampire's demon-summoning room. Unfortunately, I accidentally drew a six-pointed star instead.

Secondly, my attempt to give the boss a thick Lugosi accent instead apparently became a heavy lisp instead.

This is now referred to as 'The Gay Jewish Vampire Incident', and is why I flatly refuse to do accents or voices of any kind for NPCs or PCs I play/portray.

Solaris
2014-12-30, 10:18 PM
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/252x373q90/673/OmVVXt.jpg

Your posts make me lament this forum's lack of a like or upvote function, Marlowe.

Honest Tiefling
2014-12-30, 10:20 PM
I make too many sympathetic villains. People seeking vengeance regardless of the cost, priests and nobles abusing their position, people stuck in the political schemes of others, people driven to banditry to support their loved ones, people committing murder to protect those they love, etc.

In my defense, I still let and encourage player characters to run them through if they feel it is justified.

Bloody Peasant!
2014-12-30, 10:30 PM
I make too many sympathetic villains. People seeking vengeance regardless of the cost, priests and nobles abusing their position, people stuck in the political schemes of others, people driven to banditry to support their loved ones, people committing murder to protect those they love, etc.

In my defense, I still let and encourage player characters to run them through if they feel it is justified.

How is a priest or noble abusing their position a sympathetic character? Realistic, sure, but I don't see where sympathy would come in.

Honest Tiefling
2014-12-30, 10:33 PM
Er. That'll teach me not to re-read my posts. I meant more characters that do mostly good in their position, but still abuse it behind the scenes. Like a noble that might be otherwise goodly and kind, but decided to annihilate the family of their most hated enemy in any way possible.

Marlowe
2014-12-30, 10:42 PM
Er. That'll teach me not to re-read my posts. I meant more characters that do mostly good in their position, but still abuse it behind the scenes. Like a noble that might be otherwise goodly and kind, but decided to annihilate the family of their most hated enemy in any way possible.

Again. How is this remotely sympathetic?:smalleek:

veti
2014-12-30, 10:42 PM
This is now referred to as 'The Gay Jewish Vampire Incident', and is why I flatly refuse to do accents or voices of any kind for NPCs or PCs I play/portray.

I love that idea so much, I'm going to stealborrow it. A GJV will make a perfect minor character for the players to fixate on, while forgetting their actual mission...

Honest Tiefling
2014-12-30, 10:46 PM
Because that person could very well defy social norms or expectations to do well by the people, such as a good king who instead of continuing with serfdom or slavery, abolishes the practice. Or perhaps one that prevents forced marriages, or allows people of different social or races to intermarry. Perhaps they stop a terrible and bloody war, which has not only taken countless lives, but was started to invade a former ally.

When I say sympathetic, I don't mean a character that is justified, but that some aspect of them can be sympathized with. Sure, they're still a horrible person that probably needs a sword to the heart, but the desire to end slavery can be sympathized with.

Vitruviansquid
2014-12-30, 10:48 PM
Er. That'll teach me not to re-read my posts. I meant more characters that do mostly good in their position, but still abuse it behind the scenes. Like a noble that might be otherwise goodly and kind, but decided to annihilate the family of their most hated enemy in any way possible.

I can dig it.

If you can't handle the feud, get out of the fiefdom.

Marlowe
2014-12-30, 10:56 PM
That's exactly the problem. Because if people see it coming, they WILL get out, and they'll try to arrange to come back with an army or via a squad of hired assassins.

If people don't see it coming, they'll get wiped out. Fine. And then all those that can put two and two together will arrange to see this happen to you in turn, before themselves and their own nearest and dearest wind up on your hit-list.

Honest Tiefling
2014-12-30, 11:03 PM
Not saying every villain is a mastermind who can pull it off, either. After all, the PCs have to enter the picture somehow, so maybe after the massacre of an entire family they're willing to pull off a hit on the villian. And then learn that they're killing the guy who freed the serfs a while ago, which meant that he freed their own families, for the sake of the guy who adamantly defended it.

I actually hate trying to play masterminds, I find idiots who somehow have lots of power or mindless enemies like zombies a lot easier sometimes.

Marlowe
2014-12-30, 11:17 PM
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/252x373q90/909/x5UOA2.jpg

Sith_Happens
2014-12-31, 01:18 AM
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/252x373q90/909/x5UOA2.jpg

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ GIVE TEMPLATE. Lower case text for the filter.

Marlowe
2014-12-31, 01:27 AM
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/431x385q90/537/80e2Dc.jpg

Sith_Happens
2014-12-31, 02:00 AM
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/431x385q90/537/80e2Dc.jpg



https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/252x373q90/909/x5UOA2.jpg

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ GIVE TEMPLATE.
This space intentionally left blank.

Marlowe
2014-12-31, 02:22 AM
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/400x592q90/913/24JtUx.jpg

Arbane
2014-12-31, 06:10 AM
Is there a macro-making program for that, or just Photoshop and a lot of spare time?

Feddlefew
2014-12-31, 06:31 AM
Is there a macro-making program for that, or just Photoshop and a lot of spare time a minute in MS paint?

Fixed it for you.

Marlowe
2014-12-31, 06:51 AM
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/900x506q90/661/w66sQ2.jpg
EDIT: Thanks Feddlefew. That was getting embarrassing.

goto124
2014-12-31, 07:21 AM
........ninja'd.

Feddlefew
2014-12-31, 07:56 AM
I can smell the line tool.

Back to confessions:

-As a DM and a player I have excused myself and walked out into the hallway so I could laugh manically for a bit.

Solaris
2014-12-31, 08:03 AM
That's exactly the problem. Because if people see it coming, they WILL get out, and they'll try to arrange to come back with an army or via a squad of hired assassins.

If people don't see it coming, they'll get wiped out. Fine. And then all those that can put two and two together will arrange to see this happen to you in turn, before themselves and their own nearest and dearest wind up on your hit-list.

"Adventurers". It's spelled "adventurers".

Marlowe
2014-12-31, 08:29 AM
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/643x643q90/661/MRehGq.jpg

ComaVision
2014-12-31, 11:51 AM
[IMG]BBEG and TPK[IMG]

I seriously want to try this and see if I can get away with it now.


I don't see this one as a negative but a lot of people probably will...I've never stepped in to prevent PvP combat whatsoever.


I'm a step worse than that. I try to instigate party conflict (via moral choices or NPC favouritism or whatever).

Honest Tiefling
2014-12-31, 12:18 PM
I'm a step worse than that. I try to instigate party conflict (via moral choices or NPC favouritism or whatever).

Then I am a very bad person as well. (Admittedly, I try to not to the point of PvP...)

Silus
2014-12-31, 04:34 PM
So one that came to mind recently as I began planning for an upcoming campaign:

I routinely disregard the requirements for templates when creating creatures. Notable example, Ghost Lich Sorcerers.

SpamandEggs
2014-12-31, 09:28 PM
I backseat dm pretty shamelessly unless the dm can prove they know the rules better than me, based on my perception of the dm as the "alpha" of the group. Trying to be better about it.

JetThomasBoat
2015-01-01, 09:14 PM
-I got super mad one time in a campaign because we had this group of rivals and they were really trying to get the Maguffin from us and the DM kept not letting us get to anything resembling a city so I could feel clever by paying someone to make a fake to let them "steal" from us. Felt super bad about it later. It was a wonderful campaign.

-I metagame sometimes with monster stuff. Comes from having way too many DMs that would make me roll quite high on a knowledge religion check so my Lvl. 1 cleric could remember that skeletons are resistant to sharp things. Recently, in a new game, Lvl. 5 I got a modified 20 on bardic knowledge check and remembered that trolls had regeneration bypassed by fire, but not by acid. This may have been me being butt hurt because I bought a corrosive longsword and literally named it "Trolleater" on my character sheet.

What do you guys think? Would the acid working to keep trolls dead thing be fairly common knowledge?

-I've played a lot of Fighter/Barbarian characters because I felt lazy when creating characters. And I dip into barbarian just for fast movement like all the time on non-casters. To my credit, while never having much backstory, these characters are almost always the ones I have funny things happen to. Also, most of the time, none of the DMs give any setting information beforehand.

-I never really keep track of ammo. I should get this one for free, though since I'm also the only person in the party that thinks to keep a ranged weapon around.

-I take SOOOOO long to decide on my character. Make them pretty fast, though.

-I make special snowflake characters sometimes. When I was younger, this was mostly because this or that video game had a cool guy in it or I thought it would be funny. Later on, it was some combo I thought would be powerful (and was, for our low OP games).

-I made drow characters cause I was super into Drizzt back then. Really only like four, though. And even that much of a noob, I still didn't dual weild cause I thought it was weak mechanically.

As for DMing:

-Just kind of bad at it. Like can't multitask or improvise well at all. Though I've run games maybe...seven times in ten years? All short little one shots, too.

-I make DMPCs almost always. Never at all OP or anything, in fact probably under powered, but they're often more fleshed out than anything in the games.

-I am too easy on the players. Fudging rolls to save them and basically giving them billboards to point them the right direction cause they can't get my poorly thought out trail of bread crumbs (that I thought was clever at the time).

Arbane
2015-01-02, 05:44 AM
What do you guys think? Would the acid working to keep trolls dead thing be fairly common knowledge?

Makes sense to me - it's the sort of thing the first (permanent) Trollslayers would have bragged about to all and sundry. It's like 'knowing' that you kill a zombie by destroying the head. Iit's the sort of news that gets around pretty quick.

Andrian
2015-01-02, 09:26 AM
-I metagame sometimes with monster stuff. Comes from having way too many DMs that would make me roll quite high on a knowledge religion check so my Lvl. 1 cleric could remember that skeletons are resistant to sharp things. Recently, in a new game, Lvl. 5 I got a modified 20 on bardic knowledge check and remembered that trolls had regeneration bypassed by fire, but not by acid. This may have been me being butt hurt because I bought a corrosive longsword and literally named it "Trolleater" on my character sheet.

What do you guys think? Would the acid working to keep trolls dead thing be fairly common knowledge?

I'm not sure, but it seems like any decent GM who was made aware of the name of your weapon would give you a circumstance bonus to remember that fact.

GloatingSwine
2015-01-02, 09:46 AM
-
-I metagame sometimes with monster stuff. Comes from having way too many DMs that would make me roll quite high on a knowledge religion check so my Lvl. 1 cleric could remember that skeletons are resistant to sharp things. Recently, in a new game, Lvl. 5 I got a modified 20 on bardic knowledge check and remembered that trolls had regeneration bypassed by fire, but not by acid. This may have been me being butt hurt because I bought a corrosive longsword and literally named it "Trolleater" on my character sheet.

What do you guys think? Would the acid working to keep trolls dead thing be fairly common knowledge?


I think it would depend on how common trolls were.

If trolls were an even somewhat regular hazard in a particular area, the things which kill them would be reasonably well known.

If trolls were rare and very unlikely to be encountered, knowing how to kill them would be similarly rare (especially the acid thing, because people are more likely to have ready access to fire to deal with the thing which keeps getting back up, so "fire kills a troll" would be more common knowledge than that acid does)

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-02, 01:05 PM
-I metagame sometimes with monster stuff. Comes from having way too many DMs that would make me roll quite high on a knowledge religion check so my Lvl. 1 cleric could remember that skeletons are resistant to sharp things. Recently, in a new game, Lvl. 5 I got a modified 20 on bardic knowledge check and remembered that trolls had regeneration bypassed by fire, but not by acid. This may have been me being butt hurt because I bought a corrosive longsword and literally named it "Trolleater" on my character sheet.

What do you guys think? Would the acid working to keep trolls dead thing be fairly common knowledge?

It really depends. Without a great deal of literacy (even with), many people probably hear stories of trollslayers, but some might be so inaccurate that people might think trolls are purple, four feet tall and shoot lightning. Depends on how close the trolls are, how common, and how many people pretend to be monster slayers. Also, it depends on how much of a jerk monster slayers are willing to be and either embellish their stories or make up ones so random people can't take their jobs.

However, I do think a DM should step in BEFORE the character does something like that (I assume the sword was bought for said trolls). If I had missed it as a DM, I would have probably retconned it to be a fiery sword instead due to a retroactive check.

Jay R
2015-01-02, 04:13 PM
Think about the people in the part of the world the characters have spent time in. Are they more likely to have spoken seriously to somebody who has actually slain trolls, or to have heard the boasting and lying of somebody who's never even seen a troll?

PCs have probably heard at least eleven of the three ways to kill a particular moster.

DarkestKnight
2015-01-02, 04:57 PM
Forgive me Giant, he who lives in the playground, for I too have sinned.

Offense 1:I was once accessory to murder. Our scorpion clan swordsage (my brother) assassinated the party's catgirl multi-limbed anthropomorphic tiger that ate paladins (my then girlfriend) in the middle of the night with a sword I, the artificer, made just for this purpose.

Offense 1B: When did this all happen? On her birthday.

Offense 2: I laughed.

Faily
2015-01-02, 07:11 PM
I have committed some sins of my own too.

#1: I often play Elves. Like... very often. To the point where other players or GMs get confused when I am not playing an Elf.

#2: I backseat GM. If things deviate from RAW or established fluff, I'm often the first to speak up and then get the correct ruling from a book or pdf. I have also spent time googling Sage Advice, Erratas or FAQs just to prove that I'm right.

#3: My male characters tend to be gay or bi... and more often than not are hedonists or lechers. There have been exceptions, but those times I've had to keep myself on the "narrow path", so to speak.

#4: And despite my own poor representation of the male gender in my characters, I get very often annoyed when the men in my play-group play female characters due to the characters then sleeping with every male NPC we come across. Double standard, I know. Not gonna deny it, and it's probably my biggest sin.

Addendum: #5: Too often do I choose to play Cleric in 3.5. >_>

JetThomasBoat
2015-01-03, 10:57 AM
Taking all of your answers into consideration, well...

I'm playing a bard from a barbarian tribe in the frozen north of the campaign, so....maybe on that? I feel like it's likely that my tribe may have encountered trolls? But being barbarians, they probably didn't have a lot of acid around?

I bought the sword at character creation because my character is supposed to be somewhat sneaky, so I didn't want fire or lightning just writhing around my sword and I thought naming it Trolleater would be like...a barbarian kind of thing to do. I figured it was a family heirloom or something.

The area we were in, where we really wouldn't have had much time to gather much info, is a very Forgotten Realms-esque version of the Underdark. We actually started the game as slaves to a mindflayer who was using us in an arena to try and win something back from a competitor or something.

BWR
2015-01-03, 03:20 PM
the men in my play-group play female characters due to the characters then sleeping with every male NPC we come across

In all fairness she is exaggerating quite a bit here. One guy we play with has a tendency to play women in D&Dish games (incl. Star Wars) and during some 11 years only one of his characters has done this. The other has played with us for a bit less and only one of his characters has done this over the past 3 years. There's also the question of whether you count '5% of male NPCs tops, probably quite a bit less" as 'every male NPC we come across'.
I will agree some of the characters are a bit flirty, but they are generally more ****-teasers than ****-pleasers.

Sith_Happens
2015-01-04, 12:38 AM
In my first D&D 3.5 campaign I did that thing where you only correct the DM on rules when it would help you. He used fumble rules though so I consider my selective corrections to have merely been leveling the playing field.:smalltongue:

Brumagris
2015-01-04, 04:52 AM
Once several years ago, playing in a Dragonlance campaign, my character, human warrior, got involved in a gladiatorial match against my colleague´s character, a minotaur warrior. For those unfamiliar with Dragonlance, minotaurs are a civilized society in which the concept of honor is a core and based on face to face combats to discuss all matters, including rulership over their empire.

My colleague was so excited about an "honorable face to face, roll initiative to see who slashes first" fight in which we will cross weapons (and he would undoutbfully smash me given his powerful build), that, with the agreement of the DM, I decided to devise a slightly out of the box strategy.

Entering the arena (a 1,5 meter wide bridge over a wheel of liquid silver, as far as I remember), I decided for a red cloak and some pepper bags as weapons, and a shiny outfit (very much torero style) instead of armor.
The fight went pretty straightforward, I did shake the red cloak in a bullfighting fashion, to which my colleague reacted blindlessly charging. I threw the pepper bag into his eyes, stricking true, thus leaving the opponent both furious and blind, and I threw him into the silver pit.

As much as I sent to hell the honorable fight and my colleague became really upset, I can never regret the strategy and the fun we had with it.

Mono Vertigo
2015-01-04, 06:37 AM
As I frequently find myself GMing, I constantly face 2 problems.
The first is that I overplan things, because I really like writing and expanding on fluff. Half the stuff I write down never gets used or mentioned at all (and that's an optimistic estimation). That's both because of the nature of RPGs and players creating their own path, and because of the nature of PbP, where campaigns rarely reach an end.
The second is that I'm actually kind of crap with the mechanical side of things and very regularly gets corrected by my players, or worse, try to correct someone, before finding out I was wrong all along. :smalleek:
Of course, since I very rarely see GMs for the games I want to play, I'm stuck having to study the rules regularly, even those I though I already memorized correctly, instead of having the leeway that players usually get. Oh well.


One more:
I'm addicted to plot twists such as "your enemy isn't really your enemy at all", "your ally isn't really your ally at all" and "your goals might sound noble but they will ruin everything if you don't stop pursuing them". I make sad faces when a player tells me "I'd really like it if [background point] didn't turn out to be wrong or fabricated", because invariably, it's stuff I wanted to subvert, and it takes extra effort for me to remember that and leave it alone for the rest of the game.
That I regularly GM NWoD and Magical Burst games only encourages me. Plus, I've never had that happen to my character before, even though I'd have fun playing out the reaction to the twist.

Freelance GM
2015-01-04, 11:27 AM
I cannot truly atone for my sins, for though I admit to them, I have no remorse.

As a DM, I have procrastinated prepwork.
I have recycled characters and plotlines from older campaigns.
I have gotten mad when my players escaped the Railroad.
I gave my players access to explosives. Twice. (And then became guilty of the previous sin.)
I have fudged the dice in my player's favor, but only because killing them would disrupt the plot.
I have fudged the dice in my favor, because a player was annoying me.
I deliberately manipulate players into making poor decisions. (Like when I convinced the fighter to go off alone... In Castle Ravenloft.)
I have committed Deus ex Machina.
I have used Random Encounters as a form of punishment.
I don't give out enough loot or Magic Items.

As a Player, I have min-maxed.
I have metagamed.
I have used the Monsters-as-PC rules for optimization.
I am a Human supremacist. (Suck it, Elves!)
I have asked to use a Homebrewed class.
I have initiated PvP, and convinced other players to initiate PvP.
I have exploited a DM's unfamiliarity with the rules for my own benefit.
I have corrected the DM on rules mistakes.
My actions have been straight-up "Nope'd" by a DM, because they would have instantly solved the campaign.
I have incited a "Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies" ending.
I have used my RL diplomancy skills to role-play negotiations my character can't possibly pass if I had to actually roll anything.
I have triggered traps, random encounters, and other very bad things, because I was bored.
I have contemplated going down the Well.
I have stolen the spotlight.

It's kind of funny that I have more sins as a player, since the ratio of campaigns I've played in vs campaigns I DM is like, 1 to 4.

ComaVision
2015-01-05, 03:15 PM
In my first D&D 3.5 campaign I did that thing where you only correct the DM on rules when it would help you.

I've done this but not for my benefit. A friend of mine was playing a Soulknife (3.5 D&D) and I just couldn't bring myself to point out when he triggered an AoO the DM didn't notice, or overcalculated his attack bonus.

gom jabbarwocky
2015-01-05, 03:55 PM
I don't give out enough loot or Magic Items.

Pshaw. That is no sin. Kids these days grew up spoiled on vydja games, where you get a gold coin for knocking over a giant turtle! In my day, killing a turtle got you maybe a copper piece, tops! And we liked it that way!

My players are lucky if they make it level 8 with a wig of +2 Charisma and a mastercraft blunderbuss that still explodes if you roll a natural 1. 'cause when I play D&D, I play to win.

JetThomasBoat
2015-01-05, 05:50 PM
Oh, that's another one for me. My GM is new to the Pathfinder system and often doesn't notice things like his brother, who plays a wizard, not noticing the damage caps on his spells or whenever anyone other than me provokes AoOs (I never provoke them because I specifically try not to).

I tell myself it's okay because of how often we almost die or take way too long to get things done because the GM doesn't explain things to us well or even correctly sometimes.

TheCountAlucard
2015-01-05, 10:04 PM
I have recycled characters and plotlines from older campaigns.Guilty!


I gave my players access to explosives. Twice.Sounds like a matter for the police. :smallamused:


I don't give out enough loot or Magic Items.Wait, that's a thing you can do? :smallconfused:

Over about two months of game time, various players in my seafaring game have gotten:

A magic bag of papaya seeds which grow in a single day when planted.
Two silver sabers from a demon prince.
The talking cat familiar of a cursed sorcerer.
A jacket made of behemoth leather reinforced with metal plates forged from the screaming souls of imprisoned ghosts.
A blood-drinking sword made of the same metal as the jacket.
A puppy from the kennels of the sun-god.
An armored troop carrier ship with a pair of ballistas on it.
A treasure map.
A club made from wood and magical sun-gold, made by the thunderbirds.
A glass jar filled with honey.
A curse from the shark goddess, causing the PC to be mobbed by sharks at every opportunity (hey, they can't all be good :smallamused:).

Arbane
2015-01-05, 11:04 PM
Over about two months of game time, various players in my seafaring game have gotten:

A magic bag of papaya seeds which grow in a single day when planted.
Two silver sabers from a demon prince.
The talking cat familiar of a cursed sorcerer.
A jacket made of behemoth leather reinforced with metal plates forged from the screaming souls of imprisoned ghosts.
A blood-drinking sword made of the same metal as the jacket.
A puppy from the kennels of the sun-god.
(SNIP)

...And that's about where I figured "He's running Exalted." Its not like Exalted characters need a lot of magic items.

Dewani90
2015-01-05, 11:49 PM
I have a horrible habit of murdering the bards of the party, and nope, playing a paladin hasn't stopped me from doing so yet (bless alignment rules, can play a lawful evil pally), in my defense, most people i know who play bards, use them as only background music cd-players... they never help the party except when the song has any effect...

i am also guilty of playing some custom races that aren't even in the manual or the monster-pedia... they are just like regular races, just crazy looking (and i can still mix with the rest of the party just fine, being a special snowflake elven maiden who is beautiful as the sun and can sheet rainbows is just not my style, being a female oni(instead of orc) who could break your bones and use them as toothpicks is)

GreenZ
2015-01-06, 12:58 AM
Forgive me, for my players are toys and my characters are useless.

I will secretly fudge die rolls or stats to fit the moment, both for players and against them. If a 'strong' monster would die too easily they might have a few more hit points; if a player rolls well, the action might work even if the numbers are a bit off.

I will often give the illusion of numerous options but boil the possibilities to a few possible choices. All plot roads will lead to A, B, or C eventually.

I sometimes sacrifice gameplay and plot flow to create scenarios that I am interested in GMing.

I dislike combat as a 'go-to' solution for problems and have had a Pathfinder scenario go through the first 4 games with only a single combat encounter.

I enjoy watching the party have moral or theological conflicts between party members, sometimes full scenarios are dedicated to making the party decide on an action of morally questionable problems.

Sometimes there is no correct answer.

I do not trust most players with playing Evil characters in a party.


If there is a 'tinker', 'crafter', 'creation wizard', or character type with similar abilities: I will desire to play it before anything else.

I favor interesting mechanics and flavor over effective or cohesive ones. I would rather play a silly and useless character over a boring and useful one.

To that note, I will create a high OP character in a low OP party just because it does silly things.

And to this extent, I enjoy playing 'support' characters over any type of leading role and have had a Cleric banned in a low OP game for 'making the party Barbarian broken'.

I enjoy playing non-combat characters, whether technically or completely pacifistic. Even when they provide little benefit to the party.

I sometimes enjoy acting morally questionable in character in order to cause natural conflict in the party, both in and out of character.

Marlowe
2015-01-06, 03:07 AM
I have a horrible habit of murdering the bards of the party, and nope, playing a paladin hasn't stopped me from doing so yet (bless alignment rules, can play a lawful evil pally), in my defense, most people i know who play bards, use them as only background music cd-players... they never help the party except when the song has any effect...

i am also guilty of playing some custom races that aren't even in the manual or the monster-pedia... they are just like regular races, just crazy looking (and i can still mix with the rest of the party just fine, being a special snowflake elven maiden who is beautiful as the sun and can sheet rainbows is just not my style, being a female oni(instead of orc) who could break your bones and use them as toothpicks is)


http://i217.photobucket.com/albums/cc29/Blackfire_of_Tamaran/dewampireavatar_zps0bcf071f.png<---YOU.
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/331x373q90/912/9QDoBr.jpg
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/497x373q90/673/ySaZlA.png

SMWallace
2015-01-06, 04:11 AM
I must confess... As a player, I really enjoy being the odd one out in the party, purely because I enjoy roleplaying all the difficulties out, often in an intentionally annoying way. Campaign of mostly Evil and Neutral-on-the-way-to-Evil characters? I'll take a Paladin, thanks. Group of LG wizards and clerics on a mission to channel their magic to help people and purify the dark forces of the world? I hear my calling as a Hexblade/Occult Slayer.

I think the worst thing is that I never play characters for the lulz. I always build characters seriously and make them internally consistent and as interesting and complex as I can, and according to my friends they'd all be really awesome and fun in games where they're less out of place, but I always pick the most frustrating situations for them.

banthesun
2015-01-06, 10:05 AM
My actual first experience was pretty much just rolling dice to see how it worked.

My second time, which I consider my first real game, I was playing a first level paladin in OD&D with only the first supplement Greyhawk.

The party ranged from 1st to 5th level, was entirely Lawful (which meant Good).

My paladin couldn't afford a sword, and was wielding a mace.

After several encounters, a couple levels down in the dungeon, we were all down to 3 or fewer hit points. (Remember, in this game, 0 hit points is dead.) My paladin had a single hit point left.

The treasure we had just found included a sword, which the paladin asked for. He received the right to pick it up. Unfortunately, it was a high-ego chaotic sword, and the first thing that should happen when my paladin touched it is that he should have received 2d6 points of damage, which would have killed the character. The DM made a few rolls behind the screen, and then wrote and handed me a note.

"This Chaotic sword has changed your alignment. You are now chaotic, and holding a chaotic Flaming Sword."

I thought for a moment, and asked to speak to him privately. When we got into the other room, I told him, "I don't have any questions for you. I just want them to believe you gave me more information than the note had." I told him my plan, we waited a couple more minutes, and then we walked back in.

My (ex-)paladin told the group, "This is a Holy Sword with a quest I have to take on alone. I need you to go back the way you came. It's important that you do as I ask. Go back single file, and no matter what you hear, DON'T LOOK BACK."

Of course the five characters trusted my paladin, and did as he asked. My chaotic ex-paladin came up and stabbed each one in the back. Several times the DM said, "You hear a stab behind you, and a body slumping." "We don't look back." After five times, he told them that they were all dead.

So in my first game of D&D, my paladin murdered an entire lawful party.


I intend to exact my revenge against my current group for the "Magic Sword Incident"

You don't happen to know each other, do you? :smallbiggrin:

Spojaz
2015-01-06, 02:19 PM
As a DM,
I have lazily made bosses that don't have a hit point total until I decided it was time to end the battle.
I have also written out shamefully little, sometimes running multi-session campaigns with only a few names in my notebook.
I have railroaded and abused DMPC's.

As a player,

I have fudged my dice. When I have a good idea but the dice say I just randomly fail, I can't stand it.
I have built characters around a misinterpretation of the rules, and then made them keep working like that after I found out the truth, without telling the DM.
Also, I have use nonlethal damage on Bozaks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dragonlance_creatures#Draconians) in a dragonlance campaign, so that we could suffocate them while they were helpless as a time delayed explosive. (I still fell bad that I had this idea)
I have abused magic every chance I get, from polymorphing my Psion into a tent in order to fly, to putting enemies temporarily turned into frogs into unbreakable jars. (They turned out like those joke cans full of snakes, but with blood)

Darth Tom
2015-01-06, 05:44 PM
My first time RP'ing, I refused all hints and attempts by the group at making my medic actually useful: in my defence, all I knew was that "this isn't like those Munchkin PC games" so I was determined to prove that I had listened by using ingenuity to evade any and all combat.

My second time, a friend who started about the same time as me wanted to DM, but hadn't really got the point: the entire game was us helping his character (not an NPC, the DM's stated PC) which was some sort of modified wizard with 5 levels on everyone else) go through a railroad plot (complete with every other road attempted leading to where he wanted us, and making it very clear that it was railroading). I was playing a dwarf barbarian with 18/00 strength (AD&D) and 3 intelligence and wisdom (he had an axe in his head, was my excuse). I had fun playing a brain-damaged dwarf barbarian for a few sessions, being rewarded with increasingly improbably equipment (Chekov's +5 greataxe for instance...) for being the only player not arguing with the DM. After a couple of weeks I was taking watch one night while the other characters slept, I wandered over to another PC's stuff and asked if the characters were all asleep. The DM said yes, clearly hoping I was about to steal from the other player. I asked to check carefully if every other character was asleep. The DM said yes. ALL other characters? Yes. "Ok... I hit the wizard with my +5 greataxe". Funnily enough, he wasn't interested in keeping the game going after that.

Years later as a GM, I used increasingly deviant homebrewed forms of the Fallout pen and paper rules in order to simulate whatever game world my players wanted. Some of them were very deviant indeed.

Metahuman1
2015-01-06, 08:26 PM
2) I've stacked a Deck of Many Things. Ended up with ~3 castles and ~21 wishes. Again, was one of those DMs that you'd pull an Old Man Henderson on.


I have to know, how the hell do you stack a Deck of Many Things with out setting it off?

Arbane
2015-01-07, 01:01 AM
I have to know, how the hell do you stack a Deck of Many Things with out setting it off?

They probably mean they stacked the real deck of cards the players were drawing from to figure out what cards the PCs drew. Much less risky.

(Protip for shameless munchkins who aren't good at card tricks: The Deck of Many Things does not say anywhere in its description that you can't use Augury to find out if drawing a card will be beneficial or not.)

goto124
2015-01-07, 01:15 AM
My first time RP'ing, I refused all hints and attempts by the group at making my medic actually useful: in my defence, all I knew was that "this isn't like those Munchkin PC games" so I was determined to prove that I had listened by using ingenuity to evade any and all combat.

My second time, a friend who started about the same time as me wanted to DM, but hadn't really got the point: the entire game was us helping his character (not an NPC, the DM's stated PC) which was some sort of modified wizard with 5 levels on everyone else) go through a railroad plot (complete with every other road attempted leading to where he wanted us, and making it very clear that it was railroading). I was playing a dwarf barbarian with 18/00 strength (AD&D) and 3 intelligence and wisdom (he had an axe in his head, was my excuse). I had fun playing a brain-damaged dwarf barbarian for a few sessions, being rewarded with increasingly improbably equipment (Chekov's +5 greataxe for instance...) for being the only player not arguing with the DM. After a couple of weeks I was taking watch one night while the other characters slept, I wandered over to another PC's stuff and asked if the characters were all asleep. The DM said yes, clearly hoping I was about to steal from the other player. I asked to check carefully if every other character was asleep. The DM said yes. ALL other characters? Yes. "Ok... I hit the wizard with my +5 greataxe". Funnily enough, he wasn't interested in keeping the game going after that.

Years later as a GM, I used increasingly deviant homebrewed forms of the Fallout pen and paper rules in order to simulate whatever game world my players wanted. Some of them were very deviant indeed.

I shall imagine that your barbarian used his head as a sheath for his pretty goodaxe greataxe

gom jabbarwocky
2015-01-07, 02:34 AM
I have to know, how the hell do you stack a Deck of Many Things with out setting it off?

If you get a wish card right off the bat, use it to divide the deck in two - one deck with all the good cards, one with the bad cards.

Yes, I was in a game where one of the PCs got their hands on a DoMT and did this. No, it was way worse than you'd think.

Man, this thread is really dredging up a lot of gaming memories I had hoped I had forgotten.

Arbane
2015-01-07, 04:34 AM
If you get a wish card right off the bat, use it to divide the deck in two - one deck with all the good cards, one with the bad cards.

Yes, I was in a game where one of the PCs got their hands on a DoMT and did this. No, it was way worse than you'd think.


Oh, that was clever.

In the words of the Penny Arcade guys, "That thing eats campaigns."

BWR
2015-01-07, 05:10 AM
Oh, that was clever.

In the words of the Penny Arcade guys, "That thing eats campaigns."

I will never understand the hate people around here have for the DoMT. As DMs and a players my gangs think it's tons of fun.

Jay R
2015-01-07, 11:31 AM
You don't happen to know each other, do you? :smallbiggrin:

Giggle. I doubt it. Mine happened in 1975.


If you get a wish card right off the bat, use it to divide the deck in two - one deck with all the good cards, one with the bad cards.

Yes, I was in a game where one of the PCs got their hands on a DoMT and did this. No, it was way worse than you'd think.

If I were the DM, that would work for one draw. A deck reshuffles after each draw.


Man, this thread is really dredging up a lot of gaming memories I had hoped I had forgotten.

Yup. I had a Deck once, and used a Helm of X-Ray Vision to see the first and last card in the deck. If either of those was safe, I drew it. If not (once), I had to draw randomly, but two bad cards were not available.

[If I had been the DM, the character would just see the whirring of the cards self-shuffling faster than he could follow.]

Lord Torath
2015-01-08, 10:33 AM
I have to know, how the hell do you stack a Deck of Many Things with out setting it off?Play a (2E) Wild Mage. You have a 50% chance of getting the card you want on each draw (or controlling a Wand of Wonder). That means there's only a 1-in-4 chance of getting a bad card. If you try for the "get-out-of-jail free" card with each draw, you can use it to nullify any bad draws you get later.

Edit: Don't really do this unless you want to really antagonize your DM.

cougon
2015-01-09, 05:58 PM
-As a DM and a player I have excused myself and walked out into the hallway so I could laugh manically for a bit.

Why in the world would you want to leave the presence of the rest of the players to laugh maniacally as the DM? I love the expressions on their faces when I do this.

Silus
2015-01-10, 12:47 PM
I have to know, how the hell do you stack a Deck of Many Things with out setting it off?

Pretty much taking advantage of the DM's distraction to slip a beneficial card to the top of the deck while shuffling.

Vitruviansquid
2015-01-11, 06:59 AM
Yesterday, I killed a player, forcing him to re-roll... and then almost killed his new character in the same session.

TheCountAlucard
2015-01-11, 08:37 AM
Yesterday, I killed a player, forcing him to re-roll... and then almost killed his new character in the same session.I can at least say with confidence that I've never killed any of my players, and only two of their characters (more if you count clones in Paranoia, in which case my GM screen is propped up on a mound of corpses).

Pex
2015-01-11, 02:59 PM
They probably mean they stacked the real deck of cards the players were drawing from to figure out what cards the PCs drew. Much less risky.

(Protip for shameless munchkins who aren't good at card tricks: The Deck of Many Things does not say anywhere in its description that you can't use Augury to find out if drawing a card will be beneficial or not.)

In a 2E game A Deck of Many Things showed up, and my cleric had cast Divination before deciding to draw for guidance. The DM responded by removing some of the bad cards. The DM was normally a player and just DMed that one session with our same characters, so with that I had confidence the DM just wanted to throw in a bit of fun not ruin characters. I drew two cards, gaining 10,000 XP enough to gain a level and the loyal fighter. The fighter was nice, but I really enjoyed gaining the level. My character was starting to get up in levels. He was my first to reach the teens, and I was thrilled that I finally got to enjoy high level play and as a spellcaster cast the higher level spells only NPCs ever did.

LokiRagnarok
2015-01-11, 08:09 PM
Player confession: when OOC my genresavvyness is tingling and I don't like where the story is going, I play it out as a hyperparanoid character - even if there was previously no indication my character is like that.

goto124
2015-01-11, 08:50 PM
Player confession: when OOC my genresavvyness is tingling and I don't like where the story is going, I play it out as a hyperparanoid character - even if there was previously no indication my character is like that.

On a related note, I'm not a fan of the term 'metagaming'. Especially since I used to be in a game that feels TOO much like reality.

I can find it fun to play a character who doesn't know something I do. But there's a limit, and if I can't metagame to some extent I find that immersion is broken, wierdly enough.

ewoods
2015-01-12, 11:18 AM
As a DM, I play favorites. The players I like the most get the really good magic items and some slack when attempting to do things they shouldn't be able to do and I've even been known to create entire plot-lines around their characters. Meanwhile, I basically ignore the players I don't like or am overly hard on their characters. In my current campaign, there's a guy who I really don't like. I've killed his character three times in the year we've been playing. He still shows up every week and now he always has two or three back-up characters with him, just in case.

As a player, I intentionally create sub-optimal characters. Rogues with 6's and 8's for dex, fighters that don't wear any armor, strange race/class combinations like kobold paladins. My last character was a gnoll fighter, which doesn't sound so bad except I played him like a dog, including a compulsion to retrieve anything that anybody within 30 feet of me threw (Will save, DC 18, to avoiding chasing after it). My DM gave me a free feat in exchange, but I would have done it even without the feat.

Solaris
2015-01-12, 11:52 AM
I once sent my brother's AD&D 2nd-level monk, whom he loved for both high rolls and well-developed backstory, through a teleportation circle in a dungeon, transporting him into a room with a group of zombies. A minute later, his tattered corpse reappeared in the room with the rest of the party. I don't know why none of the other characters went to help him, but I still feel bad about it ten years later.


Player confession: when OOC my genresavvyness is tingling and I don't like where the story is going, I play it out as a hyperparanoid character - even if there was previously no indication my character is like that.

I don't like the idea that characters who grew up in a world defined by a genre aren't savvy to the conventions of that genre.
It'd be like saying real-world humans wouldn't be able to tell that walking down a dark alley in the bad part of town is probably a bad idea.

ewoods
2015-01-12, 12:11 PM
I don't like the idea that characters who grew up in a world defined by a genre aren't savvy to the conventions of that genre.
It'd be like saying real-world humans wouldn't be able to tell that walking down a dark alley in the bad part of town is probably a bad idea.

There's a balance to be struck here. The paladin in the group I DM for starts detecting evil on everyone around him if something even slightly suspicious happens, even if it's just something as simple as the dwarf bartender giving them a dirty look when they walk into the tavern because he doesn't like elves and there are two of them in the party.

Solaris
2015-01-12, 12:15 PM
There's a balance to be struck here. The paladin in the group I DM for starts detecting evil on everyone around him if something even slightly suspicious happens, even if it's just something as simple as the dwarf bartender giving them a dirty look when they walk into the tavern because he doesn't like elves and there are two of them in the party.

Just to tweak him, make about one-third of the humans (adjust as appropriate for other races) evil. After all, they tend towards an even spread of alignments.

ComaVision
2015-01-12, 12:25 PM
Forgive me Playground, I have sinned this recent Thursday. As DM and without mercy, I killed a player's new character in its first session. I killed his last player the session before. He literally spent more time making the character than playing it.

CarpeGuitarrem
2015-01-12, 12:40 PM
I have a bad habit of not making time to prep for my game sessions. I still pull something out of them and generally leave players entertained, which does not help my bad habit at all.

Honest Tiefling
2015-01-12, 12:51 PM
I forget to make something for the session. So I pull something out of my rear end. Players enjoy it more then usual. Then I get very sad.