At what point does an in-game thing cause you to walk away from the table?

[atemu1234]

Question in the title. When do you, as the player, decide for some reason inside the game to leave the aforementioned game?

[Fallenreality]

In general I'll put up with a lot.

What would make me walk away is having how I play my character forced on me. Such as the DM automatically deciding what I do without consulting me at all. This extends to character deaths. If I die through fault of my own I'm fine. If I die because the DM, or even another player, decides to just kill off a character for fun with no input involved, I would probably greatly rethink being in the group.

Summary:
Removing my input as a player is generally a big warning sign for me.

[Crake]

For me, lack of player agency. If I feel like, despite all my actions and choices, I have little to no impact on the game, then I'm not really interested. The DM may have an amazing story, but if I'm not actually involved, note I mean me, as a player, and my decisions having meaning, regardless of whether my character may or may not be "pivotal" to the story, if everything is on a set path, no, I'm done, I'm out.

That first point typically leads to my second point, which is lack of meaningful roleplay. Having no agency typically means short of me spazzing out and hurling fireballs everywhere, NPCs are going to follow a set dialogue with no meaningful interaction between player and NPC.

[jedipotter]

We were 1st level adventures trapped in a snowbound city. Then young women started getting killed each night. The mayor asks us to look into it.

We waste the next three real hours looking for clues. There are no clues anywhere. Each woman was killed at night, alone, no one anywhere saw or heard anything and there was no physical evidence. With no clues and no leads, out group just decided to ''wander the streets at night'', hopping to find the killer.

And we did....and it turns out it was a Quickling(a halfling like fey with permanent invisibility and haste). Our 1st level characters were less then useless against it. I fondly remember ''throwing snow'' to try and outline it's always invisible form. A couple rounds later all the characters are dead.

I left and did not go back

Though too:

DM was also a husband and dad of a baby and like 30 times had to stop the game to do something for his wife or baby as they both just sat in the next room and had him do things every couple of minutes.

[Renen]

To answer the title question: when the DM of my campaign uses the quote from my sig.

[WeaselGuy]

I walked when it became apparent the DM was favoring her husband, alot. I'll elaborate in a spoiler.


So, it was a party of 4-5 of us, if I recall correctly. I was still new(ish) to 3.5, and definitely hadn't heard of this forum back then (this would've been back in '06 or '07, if I recall). I was playing a Half-Elf Bard who fancied himself a swashbuckler (and by swashbuckler, I mean I PrC'd into Duelist). My buddy was playing a Human Paladin, we had another guy that was a Halfling Rogue, and I think there was a Dwarf Fighter, Dwarven Urgosh type. Then there was the DM's husband. Playing 2 characters at the same time (not like a Dvati, more like "Hey, I'm playing these 2 seperate characters, but they both go on my initiative"). Annoying, but whatever. Their classes though? Homebrewed Alchemist, from Full Metal Alchemist. No restrictions based on class level or knowledge checks or craft skills. Just "Hey, one of these guys is a small human Alchemist, who can emulate any of Ed's abilities, including his full BAB Guisarme attacks. Oh and he has a mechanical arm, with an armblade, and it gives him a bonus to his strength. And his mechanical leg lets him run faster and jump higher. Oh, and his twin brother, Al, he's basically a Warforged from this new setting called Eberron, and he can do the same thing as his Ed."

Consequentially, he stole the show. A lot. Ironically, that's not what made me and my roommate (the paladin) walk from the table. During our 3rd or 4th session, we finally left the town that we started in, after fighting our way out of an arena that I exploited the hell out of; (the DM had given me a Lute that could cast the Sleep spell at will, as long as I hit the right perform check); I used that ability to put "The Big Bad of the Arena" to sleep, then coup-de-graced him. She was peeved. I think that was the only useful thing I did in 4 weeks of playing. No, what drew the line for us is when, as we left the town, my buddy, the paladin, said he was going to summon his charger (we were 6th level I think).
She goes "What kind of animal is your charger?" and my buddy, sarcastically, says,
"A War Elephant.",
and she says,
"Ok, everyone needs to make a reflex save to avoid the summoned elephant showing up and stepping on them."
After riding around on the elephant for an hour, trampling anything that got in our way, and setting up camp for the night, during which the alchemist bros summoned a rock dome around the camp to keep us safe, me and my buddy left.

[Feddlefew]

Someone sexually harassing another player in character and (after the first warning) graphically describing what he wanted to do to them / their character.

(I was the DM / Group Organizer / Host at the time, so I ended the game two hours early and booted him from the group.)

[WeaselGuy]

Someone sexually harassing another player in character and (after the first warning) graphically describing what he wanted to do to them / their character.

(I was the DM / Group Organizer / Host at the time, so I ended the game two hours early and booted him from the group.)

Yeah, the first time I brought my wife to a game with a new group, she was playing her Painted Elf Barbarian/Frenzied Berserker (pretty much straight up the picture from CW). After the party wizard/necromancer started hitting on her and describing unspeakable things, IC, that he wanted his character to do (no really, I will not speak of them), she went full PvP on his d4 hit die and killed him in the surprise round. He was pissed, the rest of his cronies said it wasn't fair and tried to turn on her, I grabbed all my dice off the table (about 75% of the dice that were brought to the game were mine, they didn't think to bring any and I was nice enough to share), collected our character sheets, and took her to dinner for playing a barbarian properly. That was her first game, luckily it didn't completely turn her off of D&D, and now she looks forward to D&D night about as much as I do. She also prefers Pixie Scouts and Pixie Sorcerers, but that's neither here nor there.

[JDL]

Yeah, sexual harassment, overt racism, and general dickery are my walk cues. I honestly don't care about the game itself. If I wanted to "win" D&D I can take a blank character sheet, write 99 in every stat, give myself ten thousand hit points and one million billion dollars gold pieces. Then I write a campaign for myself with a big button that I press that wins the game.

The game of D&D isn't a player versus player or even player versus environment game. It's a social game played around a table with real people. If those people suck, the game sucks. If those people are awesome, the game is awesome. I ain't sticking around if the only reason I'm there is to have someone waste my time getting kicks for their ego. The game group should be about meeting people, making friends and having fun.

[Feddlefew]

I was the DM who ran one shots for newbies in my dorm, so I got some socially maladjusted people, but the sexual harassment incident remains the only time I've actually gotten so furious I couldn't finish the session.

As a player I've never had a game go badly enough to make me leave. I consider myself lucky in that regard.

[Red Fel]

There are a few things I endured in my early gaming career (when I didn't know better) which, if I encountered now, would likely make me leave the table. DMPC who is a high-op Wizard in a party of low-op mostly-newbies, has intimate relations with the daughters of a goddess, has plentiful political power, and resolves every encounter in our favor. Being informed that we are all going on a massive sidequest entirely for the benefit of and dedicated to the PC of the DM's girlfriend (who was a nice enough person, I had no problems with her, but a whole sidequest for one player?) and our PCs had no choice in the matter. Being attacked and choked in real life by the DM. Having a character's room at the inn broken into and being informed that three large orcs violated my PC, no rolls, no saves, just an explanation of what happened, and all because the PC (who was a demon for crying out loud) made a few rude jokes about the innkeeper.Perhaps most tellingly, these all transpired at the hands of the same DM.

Had I known then what I know now, or thought then as I do now, I probably would have left that DM's table. As it was, the players ultimately drifted away from him and formed our own table anyway, which was noticeably less disturbing, except in the ways a table should be.

[WeaselGuy]

Yeah, sexual harassment, overt racism, and general dickery are my walk cues. I honestly don't care about the game itself. If I wanted to "win" D&D I can take a blank character sheet, write 99 in every stat, give myself ten thousand hit points and one million billion dollars gold pieces. Then I write a campaign for myself with a big button that I press that wins the game.

The game of D&D isn't a player versus player or even player versus environment game. It's a social game played around a table with real people. If those people suck, the game sucks. If those people are awesome, the game is awesome. I ain't sticking around if the only reason I'm there is to have someone waste my time getting kicks for their ego. The game group should be about meeting people, making friends and having fun.

Bolded for discussion. That right there? That's what I love. Some of my best friends I have met around the D&D table. I'm in Kuwait right now, and we've set up the computer and webcam so that I can start Skype'ing in every week so we can keep playing. One of our members, he told us we would be playing in a low magic high mortality game when he DMed. I spent 2 weeks making my character and died in the first combat action. It was hilarious, and I didn't even mind, because I was playing with friends.

[Barstro]

Yeah, sexual harassment, overt racism, and general dickery are my walk cues.

I guess it depends on the party and the game. I'm rather ok with overt racism that works for the story. Isn't "humans kill kobolds" the point of lower levels? I do believe in the parity of humans being treated as scum in the elven lands if elves are treated the same in human areas is fine. Player racism against another player is, of course, a reason to walk.

I've been fortunate enough that sexual harassment hasn't been an issue. The one game that did have harassment involved players who were all male and the female PC that was harassed was the only tier-1, so justice was swift. I don't think any at the table would have allowed harassment that offended a player.

If there are in-game reasons to walk, then I would most likely have my character act in kind. Since I'm leaving anyway, I don't mind the character dying for his actions (or the other character dying as an expected result of his/her actions to mine).

One thing that does bother me, but still maybe not enough to walk, is when a DM uses dues ex machina against the PCs. I had one DM where, if there were seven rooms in a building and you checked six before entering, the seventh had eight enemies all higher level than the party. If you did check every room, then the building was empty and there was no fight or loot.:smallfurious:

[Iwasforger03]

As a DM the only time I've ever walked away from a game is when the players had clearly given up on it. They had no iniatitive, they didn't want to follow the story I had planned, but I prefer to run games where you don't HAVE to follow the story... except they also didn't want to come up with anything of their own. They did an arena fight, and that was it, they wouldn't do anything else. They had no interest in the game or any of my efforts regarding it. So, for the first and thus far only time, I turned to the only guy in the party who gave an anything, who was kindly restraining himself from Player Killing the entire party and said "You want to just kill them? Go right ahead." He did. It was funnier than it should have been, and that was that. I still talk to these people, but none of them are in any of my games.

Now, I imagine they might have a different take on that story, but My perspective is that they quit before I did, and I had two other groups I was running, a total of 18 other players to deal with, so if they weren't gonna give a hoot, neither was I.

[Crake]

the PC (who was a demon for crying out loud)

Out of curiosity, what kind of demon were you?

[Red Fel]

Out of curiosity, what kind of demon were you?

Incubus. Not proper as-statted Incubus, just a male version of a Succubus. It was our first Evil campaign, DM was waiving LAs, and I was feeling saucy.

[Feddlefew]

@Red Fel- Did you ever post this story in one of the Bad DM threads?

[Sam K]

Strong DM bias, either towards a specific player or a specific play style/concept; the most common one would be the DMs who follows the "guy at the gym" fallacy(while at the same time allowing magic to run rampant), but I did once deal with a guy who ruled that anything asian-themed was superior and unfailable. Combat went like this: "I try to sunder the enemys katana with..." "You can't! Katanas are much better than any other sword so you can't sunder one with any other weapon! Also the guy is a ninja so he would know ways to stop your sunder even if you could do it!"

I mean, wtf? Ninjas didn't even use katanas! And yeah, this was many years ago when people still thought ninjas were cool.

The big thing that will make me leave a game these days (or more likely, not join one in the first place) is that it's obvious that we don't want the same kind of game. One of the curses of old age is that you realize that:
1. There is more than one way to play make-believe fantasy.
2. Life's too short to argue, I'm not going to make them change their minds, and I'm not willing to sit through a game I don't enjoy.

[Crake]

Incubus. Not proper as-statted Incubus, just a male version of a Succubus. It was our first Evil campaign, DM was waiving LAs, and I was feeling saucy.

So at what point did you turn into a sexy female orc, energy drain them all to death, then turn the town upon the innkeeper, make his spouse your dedicated loveslave (she'd be willing of course) and then offer him to soul trap him to get him away from a miserable existence?

[Red Fel]

@Red Fel- Did you ever post this story in one of the Bad DM threads?

Yup. I've told at least three of those stories, if not all four. They're from different campaigns.


So at what point did you turn into a sexy female orc, energy drain them all to death, then turn the town upon the innkeeper, make his spouse your dedicated loveslave (she'd be willing of course) and then offer him to soul trap him to get him away from a miserable existence?

Never. For one thing, I was too low-level. Basically, I made some snide remarks about the Innkeeper. (I wasn't the sophisticatedly subtle villain you all know me to be, at the time. We all start somewhere.) I figured I was fine, since I was on Thayan payroll, and we were in Thayan territory. Nope. DM informs me that, during the night, the Innkeeper got peeved and hired a trio of orcs (male orcs, for the record) to break into my room and have their brutish way with me. No rolls, no saves. This was a DM who had previously told me that he had gotten turned off of a different game system (Big Eyes, Small Mouths) when his DM for his first game of that did that exact thing to him. So not only was it a disgusting thing and a violation of player agency, it was also a big slap of hypocrisy.

Next day, I tried to torture the Innkeeper for revenge. Emphasis on tried. You see, my "Evil" party stopped me. Even after I explained what the guy did.

Come to think of it, after that, I basically gave up on the campaign. My character gave a great big hug to the first Lammasu we found. Campaign imploded that same session, after the only player who actually roleplayed Evil, as opposed to simply writing it on the sheet, lost his PC. (And by lost, I mean the PC hugged a Lammasu and exploded for his troubles.) So while I didn't exactly walk away from the table, I sort of stopped playing that campaign.

[Crake]

Yup. I've told at least three of those stories, if not all four. They're from different campaigns.



Never. For one thing, I was too low-level. Basically, I made some snide remarks about the Innkeeper. (I wasn't the sophisticatedly subtle villain you all know me to be, at the time. We all start somewhere.) I figured I was fine, since I was on Thayan payroll, and we were in Thayan territory. Nope. DM informs me that, during the night, the Innkeeper got peeved and hired a trio of orcs (male orcs, for the record) to break into my room and have their brutish way with me. No rolls, no saves. This was a DM who had previously told me that he had gotten turned off of a different game system (Big Eyes, Small Mouths) when his DM for his first game of that did that exact thing to him. So not only was it a disgusting thing and a violation of player agency, it was also a big slap of hypocrisy.

Next day, I tried to torture the Innkeeper for revenge. Emphasis on tried. You see, my "Evil" party stopped me. Even after I explained what the guy did.

Come to think of it, after that, I basically gave up on the campaign. My character gave a great big hug to the first Lammasu we found. Campaign imploded that same session, after the only player who actually roleplayed Evil, as opposed to simply writing it on the sheet, lost his PC. (And by lost, I mean the PC hugged a Lammasu and exploded for his troubles.) So while I didn't exactly walk away from the table, I sort of stopped playing that campaign.

Oh wow, that sucks. I suppose I'm too used to being such an evil enabler as a DM. I let people get away with evil things all the time, as long as it's well thought out and they cover their tracks.

[StoneCipher]

I was DM and a PC who was playing a Giant decided to try to hide in someone's house a small peasant shack by LIFTING UP THE THATCHED ROOF AND SQUATTING DOWN INSIDE WHILE THE OWNERS WERE SLEEPING IN THERE.

Then, he was surprised when his hide and move silently utterly failed and the owners woke up.

His response was "What!? I rolled a move silently check! Don't they get a penalty for being asleep?" Yes, silently ripping the roof from a house....

I just had to walk away from that one.

[Honest Tiefling]

Maybe a weird pet peeve, but I hate it when people refuse to have their characters mesh with the party. Entire party agrees on pseudo-Italian lawful-good-ish alignments, but no, we have to have a Native American based chaotic neutral character who is not a part of the mercenary group everyone else is. I admit, I lost it and said I couldn't run the game at that point.

[Feddlefew]

Maybe a weird pet peeve, but I hate it when people refuse to have their characters mesh with the party. Entire party agrees on pseudo-Italian lawful-good-ish alignments, but no, we have to have a Native American based chaotic neutral character who is not a part of the mercenary group everyone else is. I admit, I lost it and said I couldn't run the game at that point.

That could have been made to work. Maybe if the other PCs had kidnapped his character for information or something and hijinks ensued, forcing them to work together or die horribly?

[Honest Tiefling]

If he couldn't agree on other details (and seemed smug about it to boot), I doubt he would have cooperated with any attempts to make it work. I didn't even pick the theme, I asked the players to, so I don't even know why he didn't like it.

[Feddlefew]

Oh, okay. That's not what I thought it was. I've had situations where everyone else had gotten together and worked out interconnected back stories except for one person, so I thought it was something like that.

[jedipotter]

The ''Dave'' game. Dave is infamous for his late night(2am) Taco Bell Alphabet Dungeon games(the dungeon has 26 rooms, one for each letter and a monster of each letter in each room.

So we all made 1st level characters. The whole time the DM keep saying how ''hard'' and ''rough'' he was....so ok. The game starts, and immediately our characters have a hard time doing anything. Like when we climbed a wall with a rope (DC5) we all still ''stumbled and stuff'' and took 1d6 damage. As we could not tell directions, we quickly got ''lost'' in the wilderness. So we wandered around for days as we could not do ''DC 1'' things like ''follow the sun''. The DM got all excited as our food and water ran out, though that was kinda boring to us. We got to the point of making survival rolls to find food and water(DC 10), but although we made them easy, the DM would come down hard and say we only found ''a little water and food, but not really enough''. And when the DM gleefully brought out the ''starvation damage'' rules.....I left.

Dave's plan was to make the game ''so hard'' that all the characters would ''band together like family'', but he did that by sucking the fun out of the game.

[Vhaidara]

When a GM talks out of his ass, is an ass, and shows no desire to learn what he is actually doing.

Haven't actually had to. While I have had a share of incompetent GMs (of the 6 IRL GMs, there was 1 where it wasn't his first campaign)
Uncle: Okay GM, but a Core+1 type, which I can't really stand anymore

Cousin: 2 person group, so we were gestalt. I had no idea what optimization was, so the bad end here was everyone's fault (shadow at level 3)

Friend 1: He is good, probably the best GM I've played under. Realized he was being kind of a **** discussing the campaign he was starting with Friend 2 while I was sitting there, wanting to play (I had GMed for them the previous semester), so he modified his encounters and brought me in. Dealt with my bardly shenanigans too. And when Friends 2 and 3 decided they didn't like me and got me vote kicked from 3 campaigns, he set up a solo so I could continue my bard's tale. Very much an enabler GM

Friend 2: Lots of promise, wish him he best

Friend 3: Eh, I can't stand the guy anymore for personal reasons, but I always had problems. Especially because he refuses to admit ToB is anything more than a crappy book of weeabo fightin' magiks.

Friend 4: ran a 4e campaign, needs to learn how to not accept more players. It was a 5 person group, then 2 people, including me, joined. To be fair, we never had a session with more than 5, but he planned for all 7.

[Feddlefew]

Uh, I've had a TPK from starvation*, and that takes awhile before damage and penalties start stacking. How long were you guys lost in game time?

*I warned them to stock up before tackling the mega dungeon. 9-9

[jedipotter]

Uh, I've had a TPK from starvation*, and that takes awhile before damage and penalties start stacking. How long were you guys lost in game?

We were ''lost'' for close to a week, so are rations were just about out.

Being an elven ranger, ''lost'' in the forest and unable to find food or water was just too much for me.....

[Feddlefew]

We were ''lost'' for close to a week, so are rations were just about out.

Being an elven ranger, ''lost'' in the forest and unable to find food or water was just too much for me.....

That story needs to be told in the purple text of doom.

Edit: It's the text color for stupid evil, as started by the infamous (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?275152-What-am-I-supposed-to-do) saga of (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?282462-The-SUE-Files-Part-II) Marty (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?305986-The-SUE-Files-III-Basically-Exercising-Your-Cheese-Forging-Genes&p=16112819#post16112819).

[jedipotter]

Favoritism.

DM ''K'' had his wife as a player. And every time treasure came around it was like ''Player 1 you find seven copper coins and a broken bottle and Player two you find a lump of coal and a iron cup...oh, and Honey Dear, you find 25 gold coins, a sliver dagger and a ivory unicorn pendent. '' Now sure ''K wife'' did try to put all her treasure in the ''party group loot'', but the DM said ''no! that stuff is just for her''. So it was feet...lets go...

DM ''C'' had cousin ''A'' and ''B''. They had ''just started'' a 1st level game. At about ten minutes in both cousins were doing amazing battle moves and obliterating lots of monsters. While my 1st level character was doing like ''7'' damage and hitting every third time. The DM just said ''oh they picked up some 'cool stuff' in the first game'', but was vague as to what they got. The third fight of ''sitting there doing nothing'' was enough for me to walk.

[ComaVision]

DM ''C'' had cousin ''A'' and ''B''. They had ''just started'' a 1st level game. At about ten minutes in both cousins were doing amazing battle moves and obliterating lots of monsters. While my 1st level character was doing like ''7'' damage and hitting every third time. The DM just said ''oh they picked up some 'cool stuff' in the first game'', but was vague as to what they got. The third fight of ''sitting there doing nothing'' was enough for me to walk.

Jedi, aren't you aware that the DM makes the rules? The players aren't supposed to know everything, even OOC. You shouldn't try to be a powergamer that has to know everything and Co-DM all the time.

[Ssalarn]

Yeah, sexual harassment, overt racism, and general dickery are my walk cues. I honestly don't care about the game itself. If I wanted to "win" D&D I can take a blank character sheet, write 99 in every stat, give myself ten thousand hit points and one million billion dollars gold pieces. Then I write a campaign for myself with a big button that I press that wins the game.

The game of D&D isn't a player versus player or even player versus environment game. It's a social game played around a table with real people. If those people suck, the game sucks. If those people are awesome, the game is awesome. I ain't sticking around if the only reason I'm there is to have someone waste my time getting kicks for their ego. The game group should be about meeting people, making friends and having fun.

Quoted for absolute truth.

[Iwasforger03]

Jedi, aren't you aware that the DM makes the rules? The players aren't supposed to know everything, even OOC. You shouldn't try to be a powergamer that has to know everything and Co-DM all the time.


I'm honestly not sure if that was sarcasm or not...

[jedipotter]

Jedi, aren't you aware that the DM makes the rules? The players aren't supposed to know everything, even OOC. You shouldn't try to be a powergamer that has to know everything and Co-DM all the time.

And this Dm had the rules of ''my cousins characters are awesome''. I never complained or asked to see the rules or a character sheet. I just left.

Though I don't agree with the favoritism or the ''one character is awesome and everyone else is a side kick''. I don't do either in my games.

[137beth]

Condescension from the DM and/or other players
Overt sexism/racism
If I talk to the group about something in the game that is really bothering me and/or why I am not having fun, and they refuse to change it

[jedipotter]

The Non-Serious Game

This is the worst, the DM and the others are just ''playing'' for some vague sense of fun. They only vaguely follow the rules and just sort of free form everything. It's no fun for someone who wants to play the game.

And worse is when they don't play....like when they spend an hour watching You Tube videos.

[Honest Tiefling]

Creeping on other people is a big one. I have a female friend who was turned off of a VtM LARP because many people seem to be trying to engage her bosom, not her.\

I'm also going to put down bad sterotypical gay characters. Some people really should not be playing a gay character of the opposing gender AT ALL.

[Elkad]

Joined a second edition game at a club, playing with about 8 strangers. I was playing a halfling thief (and the only halfling in the party). No magic mart, so what dropped is all the loot we got. Party is mostly good, with a few neutrals.

Looting was a free-for-all, no attempt at distribution was made by anyone, so PCs would stop after every dropped enemy, mid-fight, to grab the good stuff instead of helping their companions. I tried a couple sessions to get some sort of equitable distribution going, and then just gave up and shifted to full thief mode. I'd lift items out of enemy pockets mid-fight and such, trying to hold my own. Started lifting minor items like potions from players.

Fast-forward to 7th level. In a big battle with a horde of thugs I split from the group and headed down a hall, trying to find a second way into the room we were in. Instead of finding my way to flank the bad guys, I stumbled into the BBEG's trophy collection! About the time the fight ends, I stagger into the room dragging a cloak stacked with a bunch of magic armor and weapons. None of the magic items were really useful to me (mostly for Medium creatures), so I kept all the cash I'd hidden and handed out the gear. After the session the DM takes me aside and says "I was sure you were going to keep most of it"

Next session a pair of halfling-only weapons drops (good play reward? I'll never know.), and besides being a good upgrade for me, they are useless to everyone else. BSF (and the player with the worst free-for-all attitude) snags them and sticks them in his pack, and goes back to waving around the new two-handed sword I'd handed to him last session. After the fight I asked him for them. Nope. Offered to buy them for a fair price. Nope. Offered far more than they were worth. Still nope.

Next fight is vs the BBEG. I waited till it was almost over, moved up behind our heavily injured BSF and backstabbed him for a giant pile of non-lethal damage. Picked up my new weapons (and nothing else) off his unconscious form. We finish the fight. I make no effort to get any of the choice gear off the BBEG either. As soon as he's conscious he starts demanding I return them. Tired of his mouth, I do. Pointy end first. This time he's dead. The party looks shocked. I tell the party "I'm tired of his greed and his mouth, but I'll give him one more chance. I'll pay for the rez when we get back to town, but I'm keeping these weapons". It's a week hike back to town, and we know from earlier that the top cleric is only 11th level, so we don't have many days to spare before he's unrezzable.

BSF's player is running his mouth and trying to encourage the other players to kill me. DM tells him that since he's dead, he should go downstairs to the snack machine or something while we fast-forward through the hike, and then he'll be rezzed.
BSF just goes out in the hall and starts complaining loudly enough to hear through the door to someone else about me killing him.
DM asks "anything to do on the way to town?". I hand him a note, he looks at it and says "are you sure?". "yes" "OK".

We get to town after 5 days walk. Head to the temple to buy a rez. A player sticks his head out the door and tells BSF's player to come back in.
I say "Sorry guys, I lost the bag of holding" "What? When? How?"
"The first night, when we were camped by the river. I was down by the river on my turn on watch, set it on a log and it floated away."

Other than the note I passed, absolutely nothing had happened during the trip back, so it was obvious to the players I was lying, even if it wasn't to the PCs.
I ask the DM to reveal the note. It says "First night, on my turn on watch I sneak off, take his body out of the bag, scatter all his gear in the deep water, and dump his naked corpse in the river to float away".
BSF is just about crying, demanding we go back and find it. I remind him that even if we can find his body, by the time we make the trip he'll have been dead for nearly a month, we don't know where to get a Resurrection instead, and we probably can't afford it without selling everything we own.

The DM says "Maybe you should roll up a nicer character next time."

We end the session.

Next week I walk in. The BBEG lair is strangely redrawn on the map board. BSF player isn't in the room, but his same character sheet is sitting there. BSF and the DM walk in together, chatting it up. DM shocks the group by saying "I changed my mind. No killing other players. So you can knock him unconscious and take the swords, but the rest didn't happen. You guys are back at the BBEG lair, the fight is over, and you are all alive and fully healed"

BSF says "I'm going to beat the thief unconscious and take EVERYTHING he has, and I'll do it again for any other character he tries to bring"
DM says "well just don't kill one another".
Roll Initiative.
I win.
I run.
He chases me.
I drink a potion of invisibility and keep running.
He can't find me.
DM asks when I stop.
"I'm invisible and faster than him. Never"
Picked up my stuff and walked out.

Ran into another player a few weeks later.
DM said I fell down some stairs in a hurry, broke my neck, and the BSF found me and took all my stuff, massively increasing his power over the rest of the party. And then disabled non-lethal PvP when they attempted to beat up BSF and share the gear out equally instead. But he still allowed the free-for-all looting, and started letting the BSF stuff entire corpses and treasure chests into his (my) Bag of Holding (still the only one). So nearly all the treasure went to BSF. Party tried to rob BSF while he was sleeping. DM disallowed that too.

Game died within a couple sessions.

It was a fun game until the end. I still don't know what changed the DMs mind, because he was fair to all the players and fine with all the conflict for the first dozen sessions, and had completely flip-flopped to extreme favoritism the next, and it didn't stop after I left.

[Crake]

It was a fun game until the end. I still don't know what changed the DMs mind, because he was fair to all the players and fine with all the conflict for the first dozen sessions, and had completely flip-flopped to extreme favoritism the next, and it didn't stop after I left.

The obvious explanation is that the BSF replaced him with a doppelganger

[Vertharrad]

It was a fun game until the end. I still don't know what changed the DMs mind, because he was fair to all the players and fine with all the conflict for the first dozen sessions, and had completely flip-flopped to extreme favoritism the next, and it didn't stop after I left.

I was thinking bribe or blackmail.

[Susano-wo]

Yeah, good on you for leaving. (and I second the doppelganger possibility--that reversal is so odd)
Well played on gaming within the confines of the ridiculous party behavior/ooc rules, as well. :smallbiggrin:
I've been fortunate to never encounter sexual harassment or blatant favoritism in any of my games. Well, I've seen reverse favoritism a bit (of the knee-jerk reaction type), and I suppose that now I might leave the party over some of it, but not a lot. of course I've typically played with groups of people who were all friends OOC

[Iwasforger03]

He probably figured out how to sweet talk the DM with some crazy idea/bribe into deliberately letting things go the way they did. That would be my guess. I generally assume people who ruin things have at least SOME idea of what they are doing.

[RoboEmperor]

@ Elkad
It is partly your fault. Not saying it is your fault but you did attack first so you're not completely in the clear. It's like, two girls are screaming at each other, but the girl who slaps the others face first is the one who gets blamed for starting the physical violence and as a result, gets expelled, no matter who started the fight.

Having said all that I would've done everything you said including floating his naked corpse down the river. I would've walked too.

As for the DM, he probably got bribed in some way.

[Malistrae]

I have a very high treshold. Racism (specieism?), sexism, dickery are perfectly fine, as long as they are strictly in-character and fit with the alignment/setting/deity/etc. That said, I discourage my players from being too graphic when I am DMing. I prefer not upsetting sensitive people.
Invincible, super-important DMPCs are a huge no-no. I have been forced to use DMPCs in the past (due to the lack of sufficient players), but they were always background helpers and minor characters, not central protagonists with OP abilities.
As a player, there is one thing that I detest more than everything: alignment restrictions. If I have to, I can make ends meet with a neutral PC, but if the DM tries to force me to play some sort of emphatic, emotional, Good character, I quit. However, I can be satisfied by being allowed to play Good characters with skewed perspectives who are on the road of inevitable damnation.