Worst DM you've had.

[jangartharn1]

Title says it all I know there have been plenty of these but why not have another? Lol I'll start the worst I had was a DM who was a great storyteller but wouldn't let us do anything out of his line for the story if we did we died simple as that a fine example was when I wanted to go get items with the sum of gold I had earned over some sessions but he wanted us to get captured by the enemies of our parties country and I was ambushed by a group of level 15 barbarians and was murdered in one shot his justification "You got mugged it's quite common in this area."

[Red Fel]

Still gonna go with the one who tried to murder me. I think there are a few of us here who've had DMs (or other players) make attempts on our lives. Tends to be a bit of a mood-killer.

Even worse, he ran a seriously overpowered DMPC.

[jangartharn1]

Yea agreed I do dislike when dms have op Npcs to keeps us from doing anything he doesn't like.

[TheIronGolem]

Still gonna go with the one who tried to murder me. I think there are a few of us here who've had DMs (or other players) make attempts on our lives. Tends to be a bit of a mood-killer.

Even worse, he ran a seriously overpowered DMPC.

You surely knew that a demand for the complete story was soon to come. I am here to deliver that demand.

[jangartharn1]

Lol isn't that fun. Another I disliked a bit was one I won't name him but he ran a story were it was us against him and if we didn't fight we died each week was the same I was hopeful it would change it never really did. :(

[BowStreetRunner]

We had a group of players but no one wanted to DM. So it was decided we would take turns DMing a short campaign each. I ran the game first. Everyone seemed to have a great time and they all said they really loved the effort I put into my campaign. But I was mostly looking forward to getting to play so I was relieved when the campaign wrapped up and the next DM was chosen.

Over the course of the first couple of weeks I noticed some of the other players leave the game, but the DM had friends of his that came in to replace them so I wasn't too worried that the game would die. Then the DM pulled me aside after the third game and told me he would rather that I didn't play anymore. He said I made the other players uncomfortable and they had asked him to talk to me. While this seemed like total BS to me, I went ahead and bowed out because I didn't see that raising a stink about it would change anything.

It was a while later that I ran into some of the other players who had left the game and found out he had done the same to them. One by one he took each of them aside and told them the 'group' had asked him to speak to them and no one wanted them in the game anymore. He then replaced them with another friend of his. In the end, only about half of the original players remained and the rest were replaced by his friends.

I was stumped by his behavior until I ran into one of the guys who remained in the game. It turns out the DM wanted to smoke pot during the games and got rid of anyone he wasn't sure about, replacing them with people he knew would be cool with this. Since I was an MP at the time, he was pretty sure that I would object. Thing is, if he wanted to play a game like that, he should have gone off and started his own game instead of shanghaiing ours.

[jangartharn1]

Lol well bow I think you take the honeypot so far.

[Red Fel]

You surely knew that a demand for the complete story was soon to come. I am here to deliver that demand.

It's not like I haven't told it before. This guy ran a DMPC and a railroad, his DMPC was a Wizard who would turn into a Fire Giant in battle, was a member of the Harpers, had slept with one of Mystra's daughters, and...

... oh, you meant the murder attempt. Yeah, he sort of saw me talking to his girlfriend and put me in a chokehold. Not the "noogie time" kind, the "this part of the arm covers the vein, this part covers the artery, the elbow leaves your windpipe open so you can gasp for air as you lose consciousness" kind. And this wasn't me talking to her at a party or something - it was during the game, in which we were both players. What was I going to do, ignore her?

But really, that DMPC was just the worst.

[jangartharn1]

Hmm that guy sounds violent what happened for him to do that?

[Hrugner]

Other than myself when I first started out trying to run a story rather than a game?

I had a DM who invited a friend and myself to join his paladium game. We asked what books he used and he said "oh whatever you have, just let me see the sheets and bring the books" cool, awesome. My buddy and I only had RIFTS books from the paladium universe. For those not aware (which would have included the DM) RIFTS uses the paladium system but gives almost everything megadamage (x100 HP and damage) and invincibility to non-megadamage attacks. So my buddy and I show up to a game ready to eat planets and crap out angles and the DM lets it go and tries to run whatever it was he had planned anyway.

Things did not go well. Every action was the DM looking through our character sheets in astonishment and making sure we weren't cheating. Nobody had fun and the game died immediately after we gave the dying king an elixir of immortality (that enslaved him to my will).

Lesson: look at the character sheet before you say yes and be familiar with the rules.

[MonkeySage]

Day one should have been a big red flag, I'm honestly surprised I hadn't seen it before...

We were pretty much immediately herded onto a self driving carriage with a mansion inside, and at the first available opportunity, we were given faustian contracts to sign...

My character refused at first, as his own freedom was something he valued above literally everything. So the DM goes another route, tricking the character into signing a "permission slip" by using forgery(DC 40).

Every single session after that, I tried to find ways to get out of the contract, and eventually found out that I'd sold my soul to Lolth...

Finally I manage to get out of the one sided deal with her by suing her and winning, with the help of Asmodeus.

This did not last: Immediately after winning, my dude is killed off. Apparently the dm didn't read the rules for Dimension Door, and informed me that I had dem doored into a wagon wheel.

Not my first character to die in this campaign...

My second character is hit with Vengeful Gaze of God.

My third character is eaten by a Lolth touched.

My final character was a half celestial Paladin, who was quickly recruited against his will to join a pirate crew.

[ekarney]

Do I count as eligible?

Out of all the DM's I've gamed with I'm probably the worst.
I'm extremely reaction-based instead of planning, have difficulty making long multi-level spanning quests, and im especially prone to handwaving, "You got a kobold with 30 strength at level 1? good for you". "You guys just figured out how to wipe that entire force of 40 ECL 8 Dekanter goblins at level 5? Well then there's the 20,000xp that's worth have fun at level 8. You can do it in about 3 rounds? Even better!" "You want a battle wagon? Sure, I'd probably wait till you're out of the saves though." "Yeah sure the drow nobles will pay for your explosives they're not gonna care about loaning you 200gp"

Those last three actually happened last session.
Wow, I really am sloppy.

[jangartharn1]

Hmm sounds bad. Another dm I disliked was I'll name him b so b did a campaign based off of minecraft to the letter I don't think a single idea in that campaign was even remotely originally b's idea it was ok but he just did everything you would do in minecraft plus every stinking encounter was creepers and endermen.

[Hrugner]

Do I count as eligible?

Out of all the DM's I've gamed with I'm probably the worst.
I'm extremely reaction-based instead of planning, have difficulty making long multi-level spanning quests, and im especially prone to handwaving, "You got a kobold with 30 strength at level 1? good for you". "You guys just figured out how to wipe that entire force of 40 ECL 8 Dekanter goblins at level 5? Well then there's the 20,000xp that's worth have fun at level 8. You can do it in about 3 rounds? Even better!" "You want a battle wagon? Sure, I'd probably wait till you're out of the saves though." "Yeah sure the drow nobles will pay for your explosives they're not gonna care about loaning you 200gp"

Those last three actually happened last session.
Wow, I really am sloppy.

That sounds like me. Then there's the other side of it "I don't know what you expected, it's a small colony of exiled familiars ruled by a circle of quasits; of course most of the animals in the area are shapeshifted demons and devils." and other things that sound fine in my head.

[ekarney]

That sounds like me. Then there's the other side of it "I don't know what you expected, it's a small colony of exiled familiars ruled by a circle of quasits; of course most of the animals in the area are shapeshifted demons and devils." and other things that sound fine in my head.

Immensely complicated back-plots in which I've forgotten a catalyst to are my thing. Yeah I've got the entire quest detailed as to how the party are going to discover which person in the city is a disguised god.
"So Scott, what are we doing today?"

"Uhhh there might be a cave somewhere?" and then I'll forget that specific item functioning as the catalyst was supposed to be in the caves.

That being said my players are apparently enjoying it and I regularly ask for their feedback, maybe they're just happy with not having a super-railroady DM for once.

[jangartharn1]

Sometimes the best dms are the ones who don't plan ahead and let the pcs decide. :)

[MirddinEmris]

Do I count as eligible?

Out of all the DM's I've gamed with I'm probably the worst.
I'm extremely reaction-based instead of planning, have difficulty making long multi-level spanning quests, and im especially prone to handwaving, "You got a kobold with 30 strength at level 1? good for you". "You guys just figured out how to wipe that entire force of 40 ECL 8 Dekanter goblins at level 5? Well then there's the 20,000xp that's worth have fun at level 8. You can do it in about 3 rounds? Even better!" "You want a battle wagon? Sure, I'd probably wait till you're out of the saves though." "Yeah sure the drow nobles will pay for your explosives they're not gonna care about loaning you 200gp"

Those last three actually happened last session.
Wow, I really am sloppy.

Can i play in your games? Please?

[jangartharn1]

Like I said dms who are willing to change our the best by far. ;)

[Extra Anchovies]

I was pretty bad back in middle school, but middle school doesn't count. That was closer to me and my friends sitting around a table rolling dice and arbitrarily determining how the dice results allowed our characters to kill each other than it was to organized gameplay.

The guy who thought that Sudden Leap (the 1st-level Tiger Claw maneuver) took two swift actions and then a move action has to take the cake. He also didn't let us take a move action instead of a standard action during surprise rounds. Turns out that lacking basic system knowledge is a great way to lose your players.

[jangartharn1]

Agreed sometimes ignorance isn't always the best but you were in middle school so as you said it doesn't count lol.

[Extra Anchovies]

Agreed sometimes ignorance isn't always the best but you were in middle school so as you said it doesn't count lol.

The DM I refer to in the second paragraph wasn't in middle school, sorry for the confusion. Even if we'd had a copy of Tome of Battle back then, we probably would've just deemed it "too confusing" and gone off to play some MtG.

[gadren]

Years ago, when I was fresh out of high school, there was this DM who invited my friend and me to play in his 3.5 Dark Sun game. For some reason, this guy thought he was the coolest **** to happen to anything since that time Robert Drake ate too much Taco Bell.

Our first night coming over, we were just generating characters (we had to roll our ability scores in front of him using his dice, also, 95% of the allowed material was stuff he'd homebrewed himself and printed up at work.) The entire time we were there, he talked about how cool he was. He talked about all the people he knew in Hollywood, and about how people were always asking him to introduce them to celebrities. He talked about the time he lived in Japan, and how about if you're a white guy in Japan you can score all the ***** you want because the women over there love white men and how he couldn't wait until he took his next vacation there. He told us this while his wife and daughter were in the room... after they left he talked about how hot some of the girls at the local highschool were ("the 18 year-old ones only, you understand" he said as he winked). I can't remember all of it, but most of the conversation for the evening was him illustrating what a colossal douche bag he was. After we each rolled up two characters (he warned us to have backup ready in case we died), I drove my friend home.

I'm actually ashamed that for some reason my friend and I decided to return for the actual game, and I have no idea why our judgement was soooo bad. I think were just excited to play some D&D in any form - our old D&D buddies had moved out of state and we had been looking for a new game for a while.

In the two week interval that we waited for the first session, I allowed myself to get really excited about my character - a psychic warrior lion man thing. I wrote up a backstory. The DM called me up to discuss my starting equipment - apparently we started with some magic gear. I asked if I could have some gauntlets of ogre power. He told me no, because there were no ogres in Athas. I said "okay, then can I have some gauntlets of insert strong Athas thing here power?" He told me I was being stupid. Okay.. I took a psicrystal sword. ..I spent probably about 20 hours customizing and painting a miniature, including sculpting a sword to match what my character had. (http://img04.deviantart.net/62a8/i/2008/068/1/9/lion_warrior_by_gadren.jpg) My friend rolled up a thri-kreen ranger.

We show up for the first session. We meet the other players, they seem cool enough to us, aside from how much they enjoyed talking about all the totally hot chicks they were hooking up with all the time. (Spoiler: they were lying.) I talked about the totally hot chicks I was hooking up with all the time, too, (I'm sorry) so I can't judge them too harshly. I show the DM my miniature. He snorts and reveals his cabinet of hundreds of hand-painted miniatures. "Your tax dollars at work!" he says. He then explains how at his government job he basically has nothing to do most of the time, so he uses his work hours to mostly paint miniatures and work on other D&D stuff.

We get to playing. We win the first two encounters easily enough, then have to camp for the night. We pick a fairly clear section of desert where we have a good vantage point of our surroundings. My friend, the thri-kreen, stands watch since he has like +30 spot and doesn't sleep. While the party sleeps, the DM rolls on his (self-made) random encounter table. He rolls up a Fomorian Giant (which was significantly above our CR). He then has the Fomorian Giant make a hide check to hide from the Thrikreen (somehow, in the empty desert with nothing to take cover behind and he's taller than a two-story building), and rolls a nat 20 on the check. According to his house rules, this means the Fomorian's hide cannot be beat by any spot check (other than another natural 20). He casually walks into camp, and coup-de-graces my sleeping character. The remaining characters then wake up because he broke stealth and manage to kill him (luckily, one of the guys crit him, and the DM had a special crit table that he rolled on, so the crit ended up doing quadruple damage but broke the weapon.)

Well, we still had plenty of time left in the night, so I pulled out my backup character - an elemental priest. In his first encounter, I stayed close to my thri-kreen friend to up my survival chances. My friend rolled a nat 1 on his first attack roll, and the DM got out - I **** you not - an 8-page long critical fumble table. After several rolls on the table, it was determined that my friend hit an adjacent ally (guess who), and did x12 damage.

I took 168 damage and died instantly.

When the session was done, the DM told us that some stuff had come up at work, and he'd let us know when the next session was. The next day, the DM called me and told me they were gaming next week, but not to tell my friend. Apparently "they" (I'm guessing just him) thought my friend was "too much of a nerd", and didn't want him back.

I told him I was busy.

[Pex]

DMs who made things personal. Happened twice, both 2E games. As a fellow player in different campaigns, both hated how I played my character. In the first case it was because my cleric would cast spells that were not Cure Light Wounds and occasionally swung his quarterstaff in combat. The player was furious. This was during college, and he literally yelled at me about it in the Student Union. From then on when he would DM my character could never do anything right. Any decision I made was the wrong choice. Any plan I had failed. He stopped being my friend. The second DM we were both playing paladins in a game. His was macho bravado destroy evil. Mine was humble, wholesome, local boy does good. I failed to be a proper paladin in his eyes. When he was DM, once again any decision I made was the wrong choice. Any plan I had failed. He stopped being my friend.

[jangartharn1]

Gadren I must say I'm impressed with you keeping your cool with that stuff and sticking with your friend I wish there were more peeps like you in the world. ;-)

[gadren]

Gadren I must say I'm impressed with you keeping your cool with that stuff and sticking with your friend I wish there were more peeps like you in the world. ;-)

Hah, well I would've stuck with my friend even if the game was really awesome otherwise but let's face it, the guy didn't make the decision very hard for me.

EDIT: Also, I'm pretty sure the reason he thought my friend wasn't cool enough to play D&D with him was that my friend was the only one who was honest while were all saying what lady killers we were. Everyone knows you can't just let some virgin nerd play D&D, it'll bring down the whole game!

[Giggling Ghast]

My oldest brother, who couldn't seem to find the balance between "walk in the park" and "meat grinder."

Game 1: LOL why are a couple of kobolds on a wagon guarding a Ring of Three Wishes

Game 2: WHY THE **** DO THESE GOBLINS HAVE CLASS LEVELS AND VORPAL BLADES

[jangartharn1]

Hmm that's true but still gadren you did the awesome/better thing. ;)

[Drezius]

Here in Brazil we got 8, maybe 10 d&d books in portuguese.
Any GM saying "Only core books".
Cmon bro! 2015 -_-

[jangartharn1]

Lol that's so true.

[MrSinister]

I love these threads but That Lanky Bugger (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?23784-I-think-I-just-dealt-with-the-worst-gaming-session) had his DM pulled from his house in handcuffs by the police, so.....

I have always been the DM in my group, and I am always under prepared and DM on the fly, so I nominate me.

[jangartharn1]

I don't know where I say the post (I'll look for it) but the worst I've even heard of was a guy who went to a dnd convention and they did a campaign there and the DM did the whole things basically on them getting raped by a pack of satyrs and then the DM got beaten up after the convention by some of the guys in that party for wasting there time man was it a weird post I'll try to find it. :)

[jangartharn1]

Hmm I'd still have to say in the end one of the worst I heard of was one I read that's in this very thread its posted by a guy named bow.

[SimonMoon6]

Has anyone ever compiled these threads?

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?57805-Worst-DM-you-ve-ever-had
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?363545-What-was-your-worst-DM-ever-This-thread-is-impervious-roll-to-disbelieve!
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?208061-Worst-DM-Player-you-ever-met
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?329243-What-was-your-worst-DM-ever
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?434043-Worst-DM-you-ve-had

[LoyalPaladin]

It's not like I haven't told it before. This guy ran a DMPC and a railroad, his DMPC was a Wizard who would turn into a Fire Giant in battle, was a member of the Harpers, had slept with one of Mystra's daughters, and...

... oh, you meant the murder attempt. Yeah, he sort of saw me talking to his girlfriend and put me in a chokehold. Not the "noogie time" kind, the "this part of the arm covers the vein, this part covers the artery, the elbow leaves your windpipe open so you can gasp for air as you lose consciousness" kind. And this wasn't me talking to her at a party or something - it was during the game, in which we were both players. What was I going to do, ignore her?

But really, that DMPC was just the worst.
Whoa whoa whoa.

So you were talking to the DM's girlfriend OoC or IC? Then, did he try to murder you OoC or IC? Red, buddy, the big LG is here for you if you need some spare smites.

[Larkas]

Can I nominate myself too? It's been a long time since I last DM'd, maybe some 11 years, back when I was fresh out of highschool. In one of my games, my best friend wanted to roll a loli necromancer. I groaned but agreed to let him play her, as long as she wasn't evil. He agreed, and we started playing. I can't quite remember the specifics (I always used to wing my games on the fly. Ain't I the greatest DM ever? *sigh*), but the party had just arrived at a village to investigate *something*. People gather info from the locals, and the necromancer focused on the barkeep:

LoliNecro: Hello, my good man! I *gives some good reason to find the local graveyard*, and so I ask you: where's your village graveyard?
Me: I'm sorry, but we don't have one!
LoliNecro: :smallconfused: Huh? You don't have one?
Me: No siree!
LoliNecro: What the heck... What do you do with the corpses of your dead, then?
Me: We, uh, bury them in the nearby village!

I could've gone with "We burn them". I could've just let the guy play his goddamn character. But noooo, I had to go and give the lamest excuse ever for a village not to have a graveyard. *facepalm* My friend looked confused as hell and I was "what the heck did I just say?". Hilarity of course ensued, and in the end, we had great fun, but I must say it was in spite of my DMing, not because of it. My players always loved my games, but I guess it it must have been because we were all good friends.

I vowed to myself to only be a DM again when I was able to (a) let my players have their fun and (b) be a good storyteller. As I said, I haven't DM'd since. -__-

[Red Fel]

Whoa whoa whoa.

So you were talking to the DM's girlfriend OoC or IC? Then, did he try to murder you OoC or IC? Red, buddy, the big LG is here for you if you need some spare smites.

OOC and OOC.

What he did to me IC, in a different campaign, was have three orcs break into my PC's room at the inn and rape him. But that's an entirely different unsettling story.

We all ultimately ditched him. Except for his girlfriend (now wife), who was his enabler; she stayed. We tried to reason with him, explain that he had a nasty temper and was a tyrant of a DM, but that he was our friend and we cared and wanted to help and respected the work he put into campaign planning. Then his girlfriend basically undermined what we were trying to do by shouting that he was overly sensitive, that we didn't appreciate him, and that we needed to stop persecuting him.

Yes. Crazy and crazy deserve each other. And we walked, and made our own campaign, with blackjack, and hookers, and...

Thing is, walking was actually great. One laid-back player who had been in crazy-murder DM's campaign was our new DM, and he was about seven kinds of awesome. He was amazingly good at winging it, was permissive of creative ideas but not unreasonably so, and our campaigns exploded with awesome hijinks. For reference, he was the DM of the Dragonlance campaign with the robot, submarine, fetishist black robe Wizard and parabolic laser, the GURPS campaign with the moose-obsessed artist with a paintbrush full of C4, the D&D campaign with the Dr. Reducto-flavored Blue, the Kobold who thought he was a giant, and the Gnome Cleric of a nonexistent deity in which he didn't believe, and the oWoD one-shot with the Nosferatu with the melty face who seduced the terrifyingly obese Nosferatu (female) Prince of the city. His games were glorious and insane, and he remains my inspiration of the ideal DM.

So, good things came of abandoning the guano loco murder-DM.

[LoyalPaladin]

OOC and OOC.
Holy smokes, man.


What he did to me IC, in a different campaign, was have three orcs break into my PC's room at the inn and rape him. But that's an entirely different unsettling story.
This guy sounds like a real peach.


We all ultimately ditched him.
For the better.


Yes. Crazy and crazy deserve each other. And we walked, and made our own campaign, with blackjack, and hookers, and...
Hahaha. Well, usually opposites attract... but it does take a certain crazy to handle true crazy.


Thing is, walking was actually great. One laid-back player who had been in crazy-murder DM's campaign was our new DM, and he was about seven kinds of awesome. He was amazingly good at winging it, was permissive of creative ideas but not unreasonably so, and our campaigns exploded with awesome hijinks. For reference, he was the DM of the Dragonlance campaign with the robot, submarine, fetishist black robe Wizard and parabolic laser, the GURPS campaign with the moose-obsessed artist with a paintbrush full of C4, the D&D campaign with the Dr. Reducto-flavored Blue, the Kobold who thought he was a giant, and the Gnome Cleric of a nonexistent deity in which he didn't believe, and the oWoD one-shot with the Nosferatu with the melty face who seduced the terrifyingly obese Nosferatu (female) Prince of the city. His games were glorious and insane, and he remains my inspiration of the ideal DM.
Oh! That is awesome! So you really did end up benefiting a lot. That DL campaign always sounded like fun. I want to go back to the DL campaign setting someday.


So, good things came of abandoning the guano loco murder-DM.
All is well that ends well!

[Nibbens]

I want to be able to say "I know a guy who..." but I can't. I'm the worst DM I ever knew - and that's that.

A very long time ago, a GF of mine played D&D with my group constantly. The players barely tolerated her, but that's another story. Love is blind, so they say.

Anyway, after the girl and I break up - she dates the entire D&D table. Well, except for one guy who we learned some years later that actually turned out to be her 3rd cousin or something. But I digress.

Me, being the eternal good guy, continue to be her friend in real life and suffer through all the horrible emotions of watching my ex-gf and 1st love run through (can I say "railroad"?) the entire table.

Years later, still friends with the girl (what a long-suffering "friend" I was), I start a new game with new players - away from ex-love, ex-gf, heartbreak city - and we have a good time. And then... it happens. Sure enough, ex-gf meets one of the players of my other group.

Before I know it, she's now playing with the new group and running through all of them too! Well, needless to say, I snapped. People start dying - even multiple times in each session. All the vengeance I could administer which was spawned by the deepest wounds of feeling betrayed by my closest friends was unleashed on my poor unsuspecting players. I killed them with the fury of a sociopath who had lost his mind. I was merciless - and I enjoyed every second of it.

It wasn't until after my 9th PC death in 5 sessions that my players approached me and I had a revelation (or more like had a revelation beaten into my head). Whatever was going on, I had to leave it at the door when I played with them.

I was ashamed. For all I was doing, I couldn't even see what I was doing to my PCs, and my friends. I stepped down as DM and told myself that I wouldn't DM again until I had clear head. This wouldn't happen until the ex-girlfriend moved herself to another state for a few years.

Today, we're still playing, sans ex-gf. I'm happily married and my wife even plays too. Me and my friends have come a long way, and I have to say I'm glad they stuck with me. Some of my best games (and best times) were with them.

Anyway, sorry to sound so sappy - but yeah... I'm the worst DM I ever had.

[Curmudgeon]

This would be a guy who ran an Epic-level convention game, with negligible information provided about the setting. Basically the setup was "Poof! You're transported to a platform floating in the air on another plane, and you can't return. You're immediately blasted at range by flying enemies." I had a Rogue/Shadowdancer character. The enemies all were immune to critical hits, and had DR 20/-. The best I could roll with arrows and no criticals or sneak attack was 21. In the very long (12 hours!) aerial battle I scored 1 total point of damage. I had Hide in Plain Sight and was never targeted, and Evasion adequate to ignore ranged attacks on the platform. As a Dust Para-Genasi (no breathing) I also ignored the inhaled poison. I didn't have any mechanism for combat flight. I did have utility flight magic (potions of Gaseous Form, a scroll of Wind Walk, and the Use Magic Device skill necessary). I also had other travel magic (planar transport, teleportation) which didn't work.

There was nothing but aerial combat. No quests, no puzzles, no traps, no communication of any kind (the DM simply assumed that this group of PCs, all strangers, would immediately ally against his NPC attackers, and the enemies never spoke). The DM encouraged the players to coordinate battle plans; their characters just acted as if they were naturally 100% sympatico. There was no landscape or enemy weapons/gear to grab (they fought only with spells/SLAs and natural attacks). The DM had no capability to alter his scenario to accommodate any characters who weren't flying fighters: me, the PC with Vow of Nonviolence, and the Bard with mad social skills and Polyglot feat (speak all languages) who did little but play his kazoo (!) for supportive music.

If you wanted to reduce a role-playing game like D&D to Whac-A-Mole (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whac-A-Mole), this guy knew just how to go about it.

[LoyalPaladin]

Anyway, sorry to sound so sappy - but yeah... I'm the worst DM I ever had.
*pats Nibbens on the shoulder* It's okay man. *accent becomes more and more Irish* Women 'ave been tha bane 'o men since we were but a wee speck on tha earth's surface.
<Insert "When a man loves a woman">
In reality, I think we just take a -4 to will saves against their enchantment effects.

[Nibbens]

*pats Nibbens on the shoulder* It's okay man. *accent becomes more and more Irish* Women 'ave been tha bane 'o men since we were but a wee speck on tha earth's surface.
<Insert "When a man loves a woman">
In reality, I think we just take a -4 to will saves against their enchantment effects.

Do sad-puppy-dog-eyes count as a bonus to diplomacy or intimidate? Does it stack with the -4 to enchantment effects?

No...I understand now. In PF, nothing stacks. In real life, nothing stacks unless you're a woman. In which case, everything stacks.

[LoyalPaladin]

Do sad-puppy-dog-eyes count as a bonus to diplomacy or intimidate? Does it stack with the -4 to enchantment effects?

No...I understand now. In PF, nothing stacks. In real life, nothing stacks unless you're a woman. In which case, everything stacks.
Bahahaha. Can I sig that?

[Nibbens]

Bahahaha. Can I sig that?

I would be honored! :D

[LoyalPaladin]

I would be honored! :D
Then sig I shall!

[Nibbens]

Then sig I shall!

All, it looks beautiful! My first sig! Yay! lol.

[Giggling Ghast]

AstralFire's story of her horrible Star Wars GM deserves to be reposted here.


- Three minutes in. Haven't met last party member yet. THE IMPERIALS FIND US.
- Weird talking NPC leads us to safety, Imperials proceed to brutally Force Slam him and block everything we do. NPC lives!
- NPC takes us on a crazycabdriver speeder ride across Alderaan, which starts dragging on for about 30 minutes. DM is clearly enthused about this part.
- We finally get to the NPC's boss and the last party member.
- DM asks to 'skip the boring introduction and meeting stuff.'
- When we insist we want to roleplay it out...
- NPC's boss manages to either be immune to, or subtly dodge all of my Persuade, Perception and Mind Trick.
- We go on mission to rescue vehicle from impound. It seems that we can't actually disable the security droid in the impound, just turn them on the sleeping guards. That's fine.
- ...But we begin figuring out alternatives. Send the droid far away, use lightsabers to cut through the door. Set the droid to attack, but have it blare a warning way in advance.
- All of a sudden, the crazy dumb Rodian who talks like Jar Jar is a brilliant slicer who forces the droid to attack. I Mind Trick him with a natural 19 and a +9. He's actually immune to Mind Trick and is suddenly very smart. (Nevermind that I mind tricked him into letting another party member drive with a roll of 4 when we were tired of smashing into fruit stands.)
- The other Jedi in the party goes ahead to save the NPCs. DM actually stops the game and asks "what the hell are you doing?" I DON'T KNOW. SHE'S A JEDI. YOU JUST HAD A WARDROID ATTACK SIX SLEEPING PEOPLE ON THE ALDERAAN POLICE FORCE. What do you THINK she's doing?

He also tried to stuff 12 players into one game.

Oh, and he asked me to play a pregnant character. I thought he was joking, but I did it because I actually came up with some really fun concepts - like she was essentially force dead (sent to AgriCorps) with very little talent until she grew up and got pregnant and the baby's force sensitive... and she draws on the dark side in furious Momma Bear wrath due to hormones. It's a little bit weird, but I'm enjoying it, a lot.

It turns out he asked every single person playing in that group to play a pregnant woman. Even the people planning on men. Turns out he asked the same of his D&D group's women.

The pregnancy bit is what gets me. Keep your creepy fetishes off the gaming table, man.

[TheNivMizzet]

Recent game on Roll20 which I was removed from without warning, as he had told the other players that I was a problem and that he had talked to me when they asked, and then told me that they were meant to have told me when I showed up for that session. Games were a reasonable length but the insane house rules he applied to the game made mundanes even worse and let spellcasters recharge their spell slots every 2 hours for spell levels 1-4. I got behind it and made a wizard, because why wouldn't I in a world with low magic, but insane house rules for the special ones. We were leveling once a session and I thought it was great fun out of game. But in game the world hated us, characters knew what we were planning and who we were without warning. And inconsistencies with rules, such as a time our scout couldn't make a spot check to see the guys standing in a middle of an alley way we were walking down because they had readied actions to shoot us, even if we could have seen them from a couple hundred feet away. Gave us a "Do what these high level characters say or die." ultimatum to keep us from leaving a single city which usually fine, but when they showed up several times to either save us, or when we disobey them and they just let us off seems token and were just invisible walls we couldn't walk around. He had a GMPC which we dragged around because free meatshield, but he always had exactly what was needed, and refused to obey instruction, such as breaking into the house we're getting attack in, despite being told to watch the knocked out guards, and he seemed to be a couple levels ahead of the party. Between him and one of the other party members who seemed to be more involved in the plot, know about different groups in the game and had better equipment than the rest of us, it felt like the GM was playing favorites.
Usually alignment doesn't come up in games. I believe that all alignments can be roleplayed well, and except in a few circumstances such as paladins and blackguards and other niche examples alignment is fine, except when it directly harms or causes harm to other party members through lost gear, HP damage, or throwing them under the bus. The player who knew more about the world was playing a Neutral Evil Rogue, and when we were fighting a gargoyle 3-4 CR above what a group of WBL characters could take, we had about 20 gold between us at this time. I throw an aboleth mucus on the "Gargoyle", and it fails the save. All that needed to happen was the high dex and high AC rogue tank a hit, or stall it for a round in any roguish way he had available, and it was clean sailing. Instead he ran. Left me to soak a gargoyle alone. As a level 3 Wizard, on 8HP. I called him out on this at the time saying "Why didn't you stay and help." He claimed it was in alignment, which I accept but something like that doesn't sit right with me, sacrificing party members to save own skin, outside of an all-evil campaign. The GM later penalized the other wizard for casting grease, hitting two enemy skeletons and the GMPC, saying it was an evil act and that he was a step closer to being evil. That sort of crap makes my head hurt.
When it came to making my backup character he had changed the house rules which was a long forum post, so I asked him where about the changes were and he said he didn't have time to baby sit me. "Okay, I'll just throw my character together, and hope I guess." Read the rules, atleast the race parts, which was what was important. The new rule hadn't been separated from the part saying there had been an update so I missed it. Which I hold my hands up as having been my mistake. (It was that Races which weren't listed, hobgoblins were listed by Fire Hobgoblins didn't count, weren't allowed to take flaws.) When I was ready with a character concept the GM said he wouldnt read it until I had both the sheet and the backstory together. I explained that I didn't want to make a character when he didn't like the concept but he wouldn't hear of it. So I built the character, and the backstory and gave it to him, annotated every non-srd source I used including name and page number, just as he liked it. He said there was a problem, and to try again. I asked what the problem was and he said he wouldn't tell me because I should know. I asked for a general ballpark, he said he didn't have time to tell me the answer. I asked him what he wanted me to do and he said "Stop asking me questions, or I'll kick you from the campaign.".
I asked the group and one of the other guys pointed out the change, and I changed the race/backstory to match the rules. He checked it over and seemed okay I guess? Can't remember what he said about it, but I remember him saying, "I know I'm an *******, deal with it." as an excuse to refuse to answer questions during character building.
I put my hands up that I had been asking alot of questions, mostly about sub-types such as Silverbrow Human and the Fire Hobgoblin, and names of organizations in the world to make my character fit in. But damn it people, GMs who refuse to help a player during character building rubs me up the wrong way. He was even screening my messages when I asked him if he wanted me to quit.

[martixy]

~snip~
Talk about whac-a-mole... I had a game like that.
Played like a third rate, buggy internet flash game designed by a 10-year old.
Jump from encounter to encounter. 0 RP. The DM was running his own little story involving his own DMPC. That character wasn't that bad, but he was so horribly railroady, it was just like a one-man play we were forced to endure.
Then, on top of that, we stomp everything cuz all of us are overpowered to the point of being silly. When the rest of the guys started outright cheating and making ridiculous excuses for it - 2 of them were buddy-buddies, the other guy was an enabler, I decided to handwave a couple extra templates on my character(how do these guys find each other, it's like they have some kind of 6th sense homing ability).

Boy, I weep for the mental state of any person who calls that proper game of D&D.


~snip~
That sounds kinda familiar, what was his name? Unlikely to be the same guy, but it reminded me of another story.

I had this DM with a metric crapton of house rules. BAD ones. He clearly had negative understanding(not little, not zero, negative) on how the game system worked and the rules interacted.
Most amusing thing is - he bragged about being an engineer. I just hope he's not a civil engineer.
He acted nice and all, then he'd switch to this passive-aggressive attitude, he refused to communicate and all the time came up randomly nonsensical rules, just to disallow something he didn't want his players doing.

There was another homebrew-heavy guy I had the misfortune of playing with, but the problem there was more the abusive and immature players and him enabling them.

What else...
I had/have a guy, who is generally a great guy IRL, but he's a complete absolutist. Everything is black and white with him. You can't have any smidgeon of nuance. And he has this style of DMing that... I don't know how to describe, but it just ticks me off. Also, he has a thing out for my character, not a big "thing", but since I snuck it past him, he has not stopped noting that fact.

[ekarney]

Can i play in your games? Please?

Well I mean, I do need some playtesting done soon...

[TheNivMizzet]

That sounds kinda familiar, what was his name? Unlikely to be the same guy, but it reminded me of another story.

I had this DM with a metric crapton of house rules. BAD ones. He clearly had negative understanding(not little, not zero, negative) on how the game system worked and the rules interacted.
Most amusing thing is - he bragged about being an engineer. I just hope he's not a civil engineer.
He acted nice and all, then he'd switch to this passive-aggressive attitude, he refused to communicate and all the time came up randomly nonsensical rules, just to disallow something he didn't want his players doing.

I don't remember his name and I removed him from my skype contact list immediately after calling him out on his bull**** and telling the new guy to run for the hills if he had any sense. I forgot to mention the fight he had with the wizard. Not OOC, but his bard vs the wizard, who had reached level 3 and gotten some nice BFC. The GM asked if he wanted to have 1v1 to prove who was stronger. The bard lasted a round before getting colour sprayed which was our go-to spell between us because it destroyed everything we fought. Round 2 he went for web and filled the bard full of arrows. Game 3 the GM had the two overpowered NPCs show up and DC (Whatever you rolled +2) Hold Person on the Wizard until the Web spell ran out and the Bard could heal. I wish he had fought my backup character, Wizard with VoP. AC 26 at level 3 I think, with 3-4 spells up 24/7 with the recharge rules.

[Zaninel]

About a year ago I had joined a group who for the most part was pretty cool. I'm not going to completely bash the DM because there were several saves that I rolled a Nat 1 on and they hand waved it that I didn't die, just my situation was going to get worse.

Anyways, the biggest problem is that they never would tell her spouse no. They got their hand on a what I could only describe as an epic artifact, would attract artifacts of many kinds, and allow them to get away with rules as written instead of intended, any equipment they wanted they got (Got an epic level item (+12 to Int; they were a wizard) before epic level) and even make up rules of their own. I originally started playing rules lawyer because nobody else was pointing out how they were breaking the rules but after a while I stopped because even though I kept pointing out inconsistencies between what their spouse was doing and what the rules say the DM would hand wave it saying that I must be reading the rules wrong even though I was on the page pointing at the rule in question. So we had a character that was so powerful that by the time my character was level 15 we were fighting epic creatures because they were the only thing that could "challenge" their spouses character and even then the creatures were getting wiped out in five rounds or less. I want to say we even fought Cthulu who because of the rules as written shenanigans that were going on wasn't even a challenge.

After a while our DM got busy so their spouse became the DM and their character mysteriously got too busy to adventure. At that point the campaign evolved into pretty much them trying to kill our entire party off in as many gruesome ways as possible. Our only saving grace in the beginning is that they didn't know what enchantments and gear we had on us at the time (we had told the original DM what buffs we had on us and they hadn't asked until after the first encounter). Of our party of originally 7 people, some who due to their players not being there got hand waved into dying, only 2 survived (one was me) the dungeon they put us through and that was by pure stroke of luck.

Overall I think they were trying to end the story as quickly as possible so they could put on an evil campaign that they were planning. To be honest I stayed because there were a few other players that I enjoyed playing with. Our DM's spouse was all about combat, and being omnipotent, however, I will say they sucked at roleplaying. A majority of the people I played with were alright at roleplaying, however they weren't optimized (which is perfectly fine play what's fun) but for what the campaign transformed into it was almost like carrying dead weight because nobody but their spouse really got a chance to shine.

Sorry if I'm too vague on the details. I fully believe that the DM's spouse lurks on these pages.

[DrMartin]

Other than myself when I first started out trying to run a story rather than a game?



Me too, me too! except that it was not as much a story as a mismatched collection of scenes that i (and only i) thought would be cool, oh so cool. luckily the people i played with were friends and gave me honest feedback, along the lines of "dude, that sucked, we come to play our characters, not to listen to your fanfiction". It got better :D

[Threadnaught]

Do I count as eligible?

Out of all the DM's I've gamed with I'm probably the worst.

Yeah, you're absolutely terrible.

You should DM the Low-Magic game set in Crossroads so I can play the completely unnerfed Warforged Artificer 5-H-4-D-0 again.


I want to do my Stephen Hawking impression again. :smallfrown:

[MesiDoomstalker]

My worst was the DM who laughed at me when I brought a Warforged Wizard to our 4e game. And after finally convincing her, yes, Warforged can do magic, nothing in the books say they can't cause thats stupid, game started. First combat, fighting some big rats in a dark area. Gave me a weird look and asked, verbatim, "What do you do to the darkness?" Uh, nothing? Rats are nibbling my toes, the darkness isn't. She snatched my sheet, looked through it with a scowl. Went on a tirade about how I'm not a wizard cause I don't have Magic Missile, the proceeded to scribble out one of my At-Wills and write in Magic Missile. I was pissed, so I went all out min-maxing Magic Missile. I started matching damage rate with the Striker from just Magic Missile.

Later in the campaign, in what is supposed to be the final boss fight (only level 5, it was supposed to be a short game as she got the real main game together), was some big Giant (I think it was an Ogre, can't remember). I dropped a Daily on it, first round, that proceeded to severely hamper it for the entire fight. You know, what Controllers are meant to do. After we won with little issue, she bitched at me for "not letting her do anything" and forbide me from playing a Controller next campaign. From a previous campaign, I was not allowed to play a Leader because I couldn't out-heal overpowered enemies and we were constantly near death at the end of every fight (because, again, hecka overpowered enemies).

Next game, run a Mul Battlemind. One of the best powers for a Battlemind is available at level 6, its an At-Will that you can use as an interrupt and smack anyone attacking your allies. You can spend Power Points to do this AND keep your actions next round (if you don't spend, you forfeit your Standard next round). So, that's a Defender's job. Incentives attacking him over his allies (in the way of dealing less damage than if they attacked me). After 2 sessions, she told me I'm not allowed to use that power anymore. Why not? I always interrupt her, she can't "target the rest of the party without you butting in." YES! Because that's what he does! He protects his allies, by smacking anyone who threaten's them! When I refused, the second I used it (against a bunch of Kobold Minions), they all moved out of turn and were all able to hit me (despite them all using melee weapons and there was no way all of them could reach me), dropping me from full to dang near dead. I got to sit out that combat.

After that, I continued using the same power with similar results. Which I was fine with, in principal, since it's my goal. What I wasn't ok with was initiative and rule breaking gang ups to knock me out. I also had another power that had a huge AoE that pushed everyone in the area away by my Charisma Mod (which was 5 at this point), so it let me break up enemy groups a lot. After knocking half a dozen kobolds into their own traps, I wasn't allowed to use that power either. By the way, that's half my powers, since Psionic Characters get 4 At-Wills instead of 2 At-Wills and 2 Encounters. The campaign didn't get through the overly trapped kobold den and I was told I was forbidden from playing Defenders too.

For the record, at this point I'm forbidden from literally every class except Strikers. The reason I had played the other 3 class archetypes is because no matter what the classes were chosen, the other PCs were Strikers. Red Wizard of Thay? Fireballs and Magic Missiles everywhere. Fighter? Basic attacks. Not even At-Wills! The only reason they ever used a Mark was me reminding them they got free attacks on those they Marked (because hey more damage!) After the game I was forbidden from playing Defenders, no new game started and the DM eventually moved out of state. I wasn't weeping when she left and the group got some new-old blood from old high school friends.

[Suzuha]

... The DM was running his own little story involving his own DMPC. That character wasn't that bad, but he was so horribly railroady, it was just like a one-man play we were forced to endure.
Then, on top of that, we stomp everything cuz all of us are overpowered to the point of being silly...

Oh man, I had something like that. Years ago, it was a campaign based off of a modified Tri-Stat BESM. This was the first campaign this DM ran, so I was never hard on it- I was just the main DM until I got burnt out and was glad to play a game for once.

It was an AU X-Men (expanding into the rest of Marvel) campaign. His character was strong and silent (like all characters he played), could fly, could manipulate shadows into physical forces to attack enemies, was a sword master (well, with a Nodachi, that is. Nevermind that his character had nothing to do with Japan at all), and he could even use his shadow powers to turn into a shadow dragon.

Did I mention that all the female NPCs thought he was the most attractive Adonis ever? No? Well, the world of that game told us he was exactly that- even going as far as seducing women with calligraphy. Not just specific types that find that art beautiful. Like all of the girls gathered in public for a talent show. He did live calligraphy for a talent show. And won. [My character got second place for playing an acoustic guitar (a skill on his character sheet) and singing "Pretty Woman".]

I'm gonna back up for a moment to say- I know that some parts of that looked startlingly like Chief Circle, but this guy wasn't that bad. He just wanted to have the spotlight and I was willing to let him have it. He got a few spotlight moments in my games, but not as much as others, so I understood why he might want to take center stage. It's not like I didn't have DMPCs in games either (though never to that extent. It wasn't a problem for them to be beaten 1v1 by another person at the table most of the time). And not only that, he let us get away with crazy crap too.

Backing up part 2: Okay, so I mentioned it was a Tri-Stat BESM game that he modified. That modification was his downfall. Normally, Ability Points and Skill Points were separate, but he had pooled them together. So, I took the ability to get more skill points and improve my pool until I hit the level cap for that ability (which improved by 1 per level). So my guy was a step above others (I shared this trick with the others too- and made sure the DM knew about it. He let it slide the first game).

So that was cool. Adding onto that he let me have the power of transmutation with pretty much no restrictions, I was good with how things went. I played a flirty fop of a character (people often looked to him for leadership of our group too- admittedly, I think that was remnants from being the previous, long-running DM) and would often solve problems with the hammer we were given- the DMPC.

Manipulating his DMPC into destroying foes was a pleasure, but it seemed like only a few of us was actually having fun. During a particularly self-serving boss battle (we found out his DMPC was the son of the Shadow King), the youngest of our group blew up and called him out over how we've literally done nothing that session and this is all to feed his ego.

But hold up: other than that blow-up, sounds like everything wasn't that bad, right? Well, yes and no. It was great with what he let us get away with- broke off from the X-Men (being a kind of junior league to them) to form our own group and such. I was also seeing it through the relaxed and rose-colored glasses of being out of the DM seat.

After that explosion from the youngest member, the DM packed up and left. A couple weeks later, he came back with the game revamped. DMPC was gone, but we all had specific powers to roll from on a list (you know, which was okay). I ended up getting Telepathy and while discussing it with the DM found that he was being really restrictive with it, but I could roll with it. Then he really shafted one of my best friends at the table, making his character the buttmonkey. At that point, I was done being an enabler.

I tried to help my friend out during sessions, but eventually that game crumbled too. I would've kept with it if the DM wasn't so unnecessarily dismissive (Often ignoring him when he asked questions) and stonewalled him into uselessness when he was trying to feel out limits of his power. My friend rolled 'adaptability'- which should have been very useful, but the DM was unwilling to give him much wiggle room to take advantage of it. Part of me wishes I introduced that DM to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure so that he can see powers be taken advantage of in unique ways, but this DM was better as a player.

I admittedly don't remember the game that well to remember if the DM was any better in the second game, but I guess it says a lot that I remember having fun with the first game and not the second.

Admittedly, my experience is pretty tame. Outside of that, it's just been a couple of problem players, but that's a completely different story and a completely different group. Beyond that, I've just been part of games that I wish hadn't died.

[RolandDeschain]

I'll join in with some of the others around here and nominate myself, but I won't bore you with a bunch of details. I barely had "system-familiarity" let alone "system-mastery", and I compensated by swinging the biggest, most arbitrary ban-hammer you've ever seen.

I sucked.:smalleek:

I'm better now :smallsmile:

[Threadnaught]

Let's see. There is of course MetaMyconid who foolish enough to allow a fully functional Warforged Artificer into a low-magic game.
Character was one of my favourites, "this character really is a robot and not a sentient being planning to murder all witnesses and delete all information about its existence."

Circa tried really hard to make his game seriously, but Rapey Terry dragged it kicking and screaming into pure ludicrousness. Didn't enjoy the game as much as Myconid's, but it was more well thought out and Rapey Terry was so ridculous, we could barely play due to laughing at the character.

That ******* Druid, who had constant ambushes as every encounter, didn't give me much time to rest and had annoyingly overpowering encounters without realizing why.
He got better, though the challenges kinda became boring.

And me... I only use as many rules as I'm comfortable with, most recently, Encumberance rules. Before the players never had to worry too much about their inventory, as the only characters who risked being overencumbered were the ones who needed everything they carried. Like one of that ******* Druid's Artificers, overencumbered by their armour, weapon, ammo, tools, component pouch and gold.

[Raezeman]

After reading lot's o stuff here, i consider myself rather lucky. Haven't had many DMs yet, so i guess the worst one is the one who only made me think 'oh nice', 'interesting change of events', 'great battle' and stuff in that sense, while the others made me think in the line of 'HOLY CARP THIS IS FREAKING AMAZING', 'FREAKING WHO IS WHAT NOW?', 'FLIPPING GREAT BATTLE THAT FLIPPING WAS' and stuff in that sense.
Though that probably comes from the campaign itself, where only that first DM used a pre-made campaign and the others made the story themselves.

[Sith_Happens]

we probably would've just deemed it "too confusing" and gone off to play some MtG.

I really hope the irony here was intentional.:smalltongue:


I love these threads but That Lanky Bugger (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?23784-I-think-I-just-dealt-with-the-worst-gaming-session) had his DM pulled from his house in handcuffs by the police, so.....

I'm pretty sure Red Fel getting put in a chokehold at least ties that.


[Snip]

Wow. Usually when people out themselves as the worst player/DM they've seen the ensuing story is super tame and mostly just comes off as them being overly critical of themselves. This, on the other hand, is some real, hardcore awful.

You got guts man.:smallamused:


I didn't have any mechanism for combat flight.

Curmudgeon? In an epic game? Without Wings of Flying? How the heck did that happen?:smalltongue:

[Theodred theOld]

Not necessarily a bad dm but extremely bad at choosing level appropriate challenges. In back to back sessions she killed most of a level 8 party. The first was with an extremely optimized pc build (!) and the second was a tayellah. At least I was a warforged for the second one so no con damage.

[atemu1234]

I have a few stories that I'll share once I get access to the desktop site.

[Threadnaught]

I'm pretty sure Red Fel getting put in a chokehold at least ties that.

For the first session. Not the harassment that followed, the impersonator or the stabbing.


Sorry Fel, you've gotta put up with a lot more if you wanna top TLB. Wait, what am I apologising for? That's a good thing.
If anything, you should be thanking those who have listed themselves that you're not in their game. Especially MetaMyconid and his sucky internet. Crossroads is awesome and I wanna play it.

[Rakoa]

For the first session. Not the harassment that followed, the impersonator or the stabbing.


Sorry Fel, you've gotta put up with a lot more if you wanna top TLB. Wait, what am I apologising for? That's a good thing.
If anything, you should be thanking those who have listed themselves that you're not in their game. Especially MetaMyconid and his sucky internet. Crossroads is awesome and I wanna play it.

Can anyone point me to where I can read about Red Fel getting choked out? Not that I WANT to read it, because I love Red Fel. I really do. I just want to read the story.

Red Fel, if you're reading this, will you marry me?

[Seto]

Can anyone point me to where I can read about Red Fel getting choked out?

That's at the beginning of the previous page. Besides, you've said his name three times, so he's probably on his way. :)

[atomicwaffle]

One of my friends, let's call him Kyle...because that's his name. His name is Kyle. Had a campaign I was briefly in. Semi-Serious, I was playing a (PF) Dhampir Gunslinger (insert hellsing reference).

Anyways...this guy, Kyle, is a nice guy. But as a DM, he has a few things I take issue with. First off, his campaign is like 9 PCs, its big. And we're all seasoned except for about 3. Anyways, these people (3 in particular) are flaky and inconsistent about showing up. So, a party of 9 becomes a party of 5 or 6, consistently. BUT...he scales all our encounters for a 9 player party. Since its scaled for 9 PCs but only 6 (including myself) actually show up, EACH AND EVERY MOTHERHUMPING FIGHT FEELS LIKE A CAMPAIGN CLIMAX ENCOUNTER. It also makes me resent the players that DON'T show up (which is awkward because they ARE my friends). This similar issue happened with a campaign where I was a druid.

Secondly. He likes using overpowered DMPCs. Example: When I was a druid, I wild shaped into a mouse to try and follow someone I suspected was tailing us. It was just a goblin. A goblin with 8 levels in slayer. Before the class was released. Party was level four. Yeah. Fair.

Finally. His obsession with cursed items. Every other item was cursed, in both campaigns. I was afraid to pick up anything. In 3 sessions he killed 2 characters with cursed items and nearly killed me. Needless to say I stopped attending sessions.

Kyle, you are a killer DM. I love you as a friend, but please...let up.

I've devoted my DMing to being a dungeonmeister. It's like a dungeon master except 20% cooler.

[Rakoa]

That's at the beginning of the previous page. Besides, you've said his name three times, so he's probably on his way. :)

Oh, I just assumed that is was a legend from sometime in the past. Kinda like That Lanky Bugger. Serves me right for not reading the whole thread.

[atemu1234]

Okay, so my favorite story about a bad DM of mine involves the basis for a few rules of my tables.

1) No knives
and
2) Most definitely no guns.

I think the rest of you can figure this one out on your own, without my help.

[Arbane]

Okay, so my favorite story about a bad DM of mine involves the basis for a few rules of my tables.

1) No knives
and
2) Most definitely no guns.

I think the rest of you can figure this one out on your own, without my help.

Yes, but that doesn't mean we don't WANT to hear it from you!

[Azoth]

Okay, so my favorite story about a bad DM of mine involves the basis for a few rules of my tables.

1) No knives
and
2) Most definitely no guns.

I think the rest of you can figure this one out on your own, without my help.

I couldn't be at your table. My group has a running joke that I can fabricate knives out of thin air. It mainly started when I was absent mindedly rolling one between my knuckles while thinking. Its a habit I have had since I was a teen. Anyway, my roommate snatched it from me claiming I was going to hurt someone...only to see a second knife already rolling between my fingers.I always carry two knives because at work someone is bound to borrow one and then I find myself needing my knife before they return it.

[Roga]

Here's one I've mentioned in threads like this for over half a decade now. I'm not bitter or anything.... :smalltongue:

Now I've heard that it's possible to play a Kender "Right" but I have never ever seen it. Ever experience I've had has been player or DM encouraging the Chaotic Stupid HairPullingOutFrustating little prankster thieves. They always seem to have a ridiculous amount of Deus Ex Machina on their side.
The final time I ever played in a game with one:
Situation: Party has your stereotypical Klepto Kender, which I despise. I'm been in 5 games with them and they've always been the reason the game collapsed. I was determined to Kender-proof my character.

My Solution: I'm playing an Oozemaster, and had commissioned a Special Bag of holding that was a Small Iron flask. The nozzle was 1 inch across so I could squeeze anything I wanted in there from a Canoe to a potion using Malleability. So I was the only person who could get things out of it. I paid for it, and it's cap, to be immune to Acid. And I would swallow it when I didn't need it, and could reach in and pull it out as a full round action. I would sleep myself in a larger Urn (also immune to acid) and coated myself in my Con damaging slime.

GM Response: I wake up in my urn and find that despite my defenses the Kender had unintentionally stolen my flask. To compound the issue, he had put a note in it and threw it in the ocean to see if anyone would ever read his message. I hate kenders, that's the game that made me refuse to ever play in a game with one again.


ME: How exactly did he "accidentally" Open my Urn, reach down my throat without taking at least 1d6 Con, and pull out my flask?
DM: He's a Kender
ME: But explain how, I put a lot of investment into protecting myself. You knew my intentions when I commissioned those items.
DM: I already said, He's a Kender.
ME: *Incomprehensible Rage*

[frogglesmash]

Here's one I've mentioned in threads like this for over half a decade now. I'm not bitter or anything.... :smalltongue:

Now I've heard that it's possible to play a Kender "Right" but I have never ever seen it. Ever experience I've had has been player or DM encouraging the Chaotic Stupid HairPullingOutFrustating little prankster thieves. They always seem to have a ridiculous amount of Deus Ex Machina on their side.
The final time I ever played in a game with one:
Situation: Party has your stereotypical Klepto Kender, which I despise. I'm been in 5 games with them and they've always been the reason the game collapsed. I was determined to Kender-proof my character.

My Solution: I'm playing an Oozemaster, and had commissioned a Special Bag of holding that was a Small Iron flask. The nozzle was 1 inch across so I could squeeze anything I wanted in there from a Canoe to a potion using Malleability. So I was the only person who could get things out of it. I paid for it, and it's cap, to be immune to Acid. And I would swallow it when I didn't need it, and could reach in and pull it out as a full round action. I would sleep myself in a larger Urn (also immune to acid) and coated myself in my Con damaging slime.

GM Response: I wake up in my urn and find that despite my defenses the Kender had unintentionally stolen my flask. To compound the issue, he had put a note in it and threw it in the ocean to see if anyone would ever read his message. I hate kenders, that's the game that made me refuse to ever play in a game with one again.


ME: How exactly did he "accidentally" Open my Urn, reach down my throat without taking at least 1d6 Con, and pull out my flask?
DM: He's a Kender
ME: But explain how, I put a lot of investment into protecting myself. You knew my intentions when I commissioned those items.
DM: I already said, He's a Kender.
ME: *Incomprehensible Rage*

This is one of my all time favourite d&d stories.

[Larkas]

For the first session. Not the harassment that followed, the impersonator or the stabbing.

Eh. Last we heard of him, Lanky was asked to be in a polyamorous relationship with Tammy and Theresa, so it couldn't have been all that bad. Okay, so he declined and went into some deep **** trying to justify this decision to himself, but... Seriously now. I really wish all the best came to pass for that guy. He really deserved it.

[Debatra]

We began a 3.5e game on a ship. A ship we had to chip in to buy with our WBL. I didn't like that, but we went with it. So there are three players in this game, counting me, and our oh-so-wonderful DM told us that we gave up enough gold to buy a Dhow. Okay then, nice. So we start in the middle of the ocean.

Then the guy reveals that the three of us are completely alone on our Dhow, which requires a minimum of five[I] people to sail. No crew, no NPCs, nothing. And this was after the guy heavily implied the ship would be have a full crew, as well as [I]outright stating the boat wouldn't be any more important than we decided to make it. This lead to none of us taking any skills related to sailing. So we ended up stranded, drifting wherever the tides (read: the DM) decide to take us. I spent two hours OOC trying to explain to him why this is a terrible idea before we all just gave up.

---

There's also this little gem I found elsewhere on the internets. To emphasize, this story is told in first-person but is not by me:

Backstory:

A few years ago my LGS started running D&D 4e and had a solid consistent 4 or 5 players. Then it caught on and started getting more and more people. Soon we had about 10 players and 2 DMs. One week, the second DM couldn't make it and so the 1st DM asked a few people if anyone had experience DMing. My friend said he did, which was only partially true. He had DMed 2 or 3 tragically awful sessions among my other circle of friends who hadn't ever played before. The 1st DM, not knowing this, told him he would be DMing the next session if needed and asked him to read up on a bit of the DMG and the come early to read the next part of the module. He does neither of these things.

The Players/Characters:

We had a party of 5.

I played a Wilden Druid with lycnathropy (werebear) and at this point I had been playing for a few months and was familiar with the game.

My gf played some sort of caster and was semi-familiar with the game.

A young kid, about 15 at the time, and notoriously impulsive with a tiny attention span (you know the kind), with some experience, played a rogue.

2 new guys with a lot of D&D experience, but had never been to this LGS played a slayer and a wizard.

The Story

So the session starts with a puzzle. First there is a circular room with an orb on a pedestal and some stone archways along the wall. I grab the orb and one archway opens up what looks like a portal to the woods. I put the orb down and the portal closes. I pick it back up and inspect the portal. The rogue says he attempts to steal the orb from my hand. Rolls thievery against my perception. Obviously, the rogue's thievery is higher than my perception. DM says I don't notice the orb is no longer in my hand.

Wat.

The Rogue then attempts to run through the portal with the orb, and gets shocked by the portal and falls down. I go along with the DM's ruling and tell him that I see the orb now in the Rogue's hand and deduce that it was stolen from me. I demand the orb be returned. The rogue says "No, i'm going to sell it." Being a werebear, I get pissed, transform and attempt to attack the rogue. DM says "No I won't allow PvP."

****ing wat.

Rogue attempts to run through the portal again, gets shocked again. Another party member takes the orb and we continue to the next room.

Now in a room with a bunch of statues holding bowls and a pool of water. There are some obvious religious runes around. The party brainstorms and tries a bunch of things with the orb to solve the puzzle. After about 20 minutes real-time, we get frustrated. DM finally says "roll a religion check." No one rolls higher than a 10. He says "Sorry, can't help ya." 25 more real-time minutes go by (by now the LGS owner is seeing this and getting furious, and the 1st DM's table is waaay past this point.)

The orb was never supposed to come off the pedestal.

One of the new guys starts getting angry and does things like "attempt to smash the statues." DM says it doesn't work. Other new guy says he wants to make another religion check. Dm says "go for it." He rolls a 6. Nothing. He rolls again. 12. Nothing. He keeps rolling religion checks back to back until he gets a high enough roll then the DM explains the religious significance of the statues and we solve the puzzle.

No one is having fun.

Next room, there is a huge pit in the center of a wide hall and some statues at the other side. I attempt to throw the rogue into the pit, and roll a 21 to attack against the rogue's AC of about 15. DM says "You can't do that. What do you guys do?" The rogue says he walks around the pit. I tell him he can't because he's now in a pit. Rogue and DM both ignore me. I tell him again that I threw the rogue into the pit. DM pretends I'm not even there and asks the party again "What do you do?"

I say "I leave the party," I pick up my ****, and I go to burger king. My gf does the same. Players at the other table and the 1st DM give me weird as looks as I walk past.

I cool off at the BK Lounge for about an hour talking about how that was some real life hoe ****, then go back to the LGS.

Turns out the DM TPK'd the rest of the party by barraging them with arrows from the animated statues and not giving them an escape of hiding place. Turns out, there is not supposed to be a way to walk around the pit, and the statues leave after some damage.

DM reportedly stood up when the last player died, raised his hands and said "I win!"

Conclusion:

2 new guys never came back to the LGS.

DM doesn't understand why I was so mad. Doesn't know what he did wrong.

1st DM and LGS owner were livid that they just lost 2 potential customers and players.

LGS owner said my gf and I were credited for the next sessions table fee.

That session and that DM are still a running joke at the LGS.

TL;DR: Stand-in DM lied about DMing before, didn't read DMG or module, pissed off and/or killed entire party.


Well I mean, I do need some playtesting done soon...

...You have my attention. 3.5e?

---

EDIT: And another thing. You know how the Playground likes to joke about DMs smacking people with various books in return for breaking the game? Does anyone remember/have the thread with the story of that actually happening?

[MesiDoomstalker]

EDIT: And another thing. You know how the Playground likes to joke about DMs smacking people with various books in return for breaking the game? Does anyone remember/have the thread with the story of that actually happening?

Not for breaking the game, no. Playing with my best friend, his older brother and his father. The older brother made a snide comment about my Best Friend's girlfriend, who grabbed the nearest source book and gave him a firm smack on the upper arm. No sooner did the sound of hardcover smacking flesh stopped, their dad had slapped both them across the head. It was rather humorous to be honest.

[Aliek]

Since I've DM'd all my campaigns(all 3 of them! None lasted over a couple months tho) I guess I'm the worst DM.

I don't think I'm that bad per se - I'm usually fine with some moderate cheese, got decent/good system mastery, love creating many quirky characters and unfolding a story. But I just can't keep people hooked into it.

Maybe it's a bit of shyness or somesuch, but as much as I try, most of the time we aren't in combat, people are just looking forward to the next combat. Maybe I should look for a DM handbook :smallbiggrin:

[AGCIAS]

Now that I think, I've seen quite a few bad DMs, mostly running games I was interested in joining until I saw the game. An example is the one I sat in on for about five minutes. The conversation between player and DM went like this: "Is my Vorpal battleaxe ready?" "No, it will be five more weeks." The group was third level. Mind, I an not sure I would even allow this at the penultimate levels. Admittedly, I have been spoiled by an exceptional series of incredibly good DMs and players.
But the DM who takes the cut-glass flyswatter for me was one I ran into at college. He had expounded on his views of gaming, but a friend and I decided to give him a try anyway when he was looking for players. He belonged to an un-named major religion which mandated that good always triumph over evil. This lead to our group of five 1st level characters killing a young adult green dragon as a random encounter. Somehow, I think the DM suggested it, someone decided to cut it's stomach open to look for treasure. We found a +1 longsword. Later (don't insult the DM in front of players) I mentioned to my friend that the only way a sword could get in a dragon's stomach is if a fighter PUT it there. Then, in the dungeon, we were fighting a group of orcs. I had a potatomasher -- 4 pints of oil tied around the head of a torch and lit. The DM's response? "Make a dexterity save." NOW I remembered that he had mentioned that he didn't like flaming oil as a weapon. I had suggested several ways to prevent its use, including the only source of oil being something like the oily petrel; leading to parties wandering the dungeon holding dried birds with wicks shoved down their throats as illumination. He chose another ... path. I made three saves and shanked the fourth. The oil exploded over the heads of the party, all in front of me, just as I released it. Oh, ****, I thought, I've killed us all. But the sheet of flaming oil flew over their heads, 25 feet, to do d4 damage to the front rank of orcs. Cudoes to the DM for not flaming us all but I guess that runs with the "good always triumphs" theme. We finished the game, thanked the DM and didn't go back. Later he decided that gaming was too evil and burned all his D&D books. While our group applauded his choice to never again DM, we were all sad that he hadn't offered any of us the chance to buy his books.

[Threadnaught]

Later he decided that gaming was too evil and burned all his D&D books. While our group applauded his choice to never again DM, we were all sad that he hadn't offered any of us the chance to buy his books.

Great cosmic force to which this DM's worship is given, please mildly inconvenience him in anything text based for a single year.

[RingofThorns]

I had a dm that literally tried to turn everything into dnd porn. We had to get info for a quest from this one lady, bard talks to her gets rufied and chained to a bed in her basement getting violated for three days. When we finally find him. she tries to roofie the whole party, my wendigo character (the race from bastards and bloodlines) shrugs it off and kills her. DM goes nuts and demands to know why I did it, I explain that I didnt want to get pulp fictioned and he just gets steamed and throws a fit. Later we are in a jungle like area and a bunch of 'amazon' ambush us using blowguns with knock out darts. The party gets dropped except for me do to a high fortitude save, well they try and seduce me and fail, then try to fight me and fail, so the dm just tells me "you get shot through both hands, fore arms, and shoulders. You cant hold your sword and you cant fight with your arms." When I get annoyed that he just deus ex machinia'ed that he pretty much just insta nukes my character with a fireball from the gods......I was upset....but got even with my next character.

[Sliver]

I was rather new at the time and the DM decided that my character was too boring, so he had it charmed, raped and then brainwashed into being evil, soon separating me from the party and having me animate dead for some big bad. When I was a sorcerer. He just gave me the spells to do whatever was needed, but with no freedom to do anything but cast the spells for the bad, or RP with anything.

His game offered no interaction of NPCs, and almost all encounters were of the "so overpowering that you will be saved by his favorite angelic DMPC" nature, so the only fun we had was interacting with each other, and he took it away from us.

By the time my character was rescued and the DM started describing the super awesome ritual that his NPCs were doing to undo the brainwashing, I was so tired of this that I asked if we can skip it. I haven't stayed for much longer and the game crumbled shortly after that.

[Arbane]

(Bad porn game snipped)
I was upset....but got even with my next character.

O_o

Should I ask, and will it belong in the 'worst players' thread?

[Debatra]

I was upset....but got even with my next character.

Come now; don't even bother to pretend you think you can get away with not continuing the story on this forum. :smallbiggrin:

[ekarney]

Now I know I already nominated myself. But stay with me here, because today I did something horrible.


The events that lead up to today started several months ago when I first started DMing this campaign. I had a player join, for the sake of privacy I'll call him Sprite, who joined my existing players Coke and Sunkist. Coke had been playing a heroic type martial character, Sunkist was an artificer at that point. Sprite joined in as a Water Orc barbarian. Sprite's character was a bit dull and bland but he got things done, he arranged a meeting with the towns local guilds and started some investigation style quests while Coke worked on building relations with some of the guilds and Sunkist just did his thing.

Eventually, Sprite ended up on a quest to stop some sort of messenger of the old gods (Preemptively,everyone was level 1), and to investigate the presence of gods within the town. These quests didn't get too far since Sprite decided he wanted to play a more interesting character and rolled up a Bard, since the party had no face as Sunkist had left at this point. In this, Sprite and Coke started on a politically charged misadventure that ended up with them fighting a proxy war against each other, politically. Sprite ended up winning and had Coke convicted of treason against the regent and he was imprisoned in Suzail's dungeon. Sprite decided to reroll (again) as did Coke.

Coke came back as a Dragonborn Dragon Shaman, Sprite as a Neanderthal Dead Horse (A ranger mixed with binder in terms of play that I home-brewed) in addition, we now have 7up, who's a Kobold Artificer. Quite an interesting mix, and I sent them on a horror based bit, at which point after coming to almost every session for a year straight Coke had to lower his attendance rate because of his job which is fair enough, but it left just Coke and 7up who are both the two most eccentric players I ever had.

I managed to creep the bones out of them with the first session and toned it down a bit on the second, where I had them, now level 5 fighting dekanter goblins with Vril and Drow allies. Where at this point, Sprite asked about some of those unfished quests I'd left with his first character and I told him I can bring those back which was cool cause now I had a storyline. Anyway, they crept over to the Dekanter camp levelled the place with explosives. No drow or vrill help needed. Destroying 160hd of dekanter goblins, warranting them 20,000 exp. Taking them up to level 8. I'd made the mistake of assuming they'd do something conventional like defend the drow camp. However, the Drow offered them a reward in the form of political pull in the town they were travelling to. On their way to the town Sprite and 7up discovered a certain dagger and a certain cloak. What they didn't know is both were artefacts of Lolth. The Dagger can even be used to create a portal to bring Lolth out of the demonweb (This campaign is set during an extended silence of Lolth, caused by different reasons). So they set forth and reach the town, the Drow leader (Head of one the guilds, I mentioned earlier) named Melani, who is a devout follower of Lolth, very promptly request that the cloak be given to her, as it had been in her families possession for quite some time. She said they can hold onto the dagger for now. We also made a joke about Sprite's Bard currently being in possession of lewd paintings of Melani. It was funny and didn't particularly affect the campaign so I said it could be canon if they wanted.

They go off and do various quests or whatever nothing of real importance until they decide to get this dagger checked out, and they asked Melani's second in command about it who was more than willing to oblige since he's really not too fussed about these things. He advised they return the dagger though, since being one of the few good-aligned Drow to ever exist the prospect of summoning Lolth in a relatively innocent town is not one he's too fond of.

But you know what they did? They jokingly said "I roll to cut reality and summon Lolth"

Never before have I wanted to slap a natural 20 so badly. They freaked out a little over it and I said. "Look, you could summon her with this, I advise you to use this metagame knowledge, and since I don't do this often for the love of Pepsi (Not an alias, I just like Pepsi a lot) listen to me. I'll let this summon Lolth if you want, however there's a chance she'll horribly destroy and mutilate you."

Sprite said go for it. 7up, against his better judgement also went along. I again had 2 Incatatrix's pop in (Extremely unorthodox for me by the way, allowing Incantatrix's to pop up like that but I really wanted to give them another chance) they offered an in game option to stop the portal, to which my players again denied.

So, Lolth came in, revealing herself to be Melani, killed the Incantatrix's, took the dagger, and left through her portal.

And that's the story of how I let my players summon Lolth with no negative consequences whatsoever.
Now they're going on an adventure to the Dragon Coast while I figure out what on earth I'm going to do.


tl;dr. I let my level 8 players summon lolth and now they're doing a quest for an English guard captain with a big 'stasche.

[Draco_Lord]

Well I can't say I'm the worst DM, I am have some very bad habits as a DM. So, this is more of a question really. But as a DM, how do you stop yourself from getting upset when your players curb stomp your boss battles?

I just hate it when my bosses feel less imposing because the wizard used a suck or save spell on the first round. 4th round, I can handle. But early on upsets me.

[Nerd-o-rama]

All my bad DMs have been pretty tame. Incessant railroading, incessant railroading with a stark tendency to mumble so I never know which NPC I'm talking to, incessant railroading again...

Actually even though I mention it three times, two of those DMs run exclusively out of pre-written modules so they at least have an excuse. The first long-term face-to-face 3.5 DM I had though was one of those "I'm just gonna guide my players through this novel I'm writing" types. Bonus points for declaring an Evil game and asking for Evil PCs and then not allowing us to do anything evil and forcing us to save the world. It wasn't even like a Suicide Squad situation, we just never had any opportunities, and if we tried to make them, they weren't addressed.


Well I can't say I'm the worst DM, I am have some very bad habits as a DM. So, this is more of a question really. But as a DM, how do you stop yourself from getting upset when your players curb stomp your boss battles?

I just hate it when my bosses feel less imposing because the wizard used a suck or save spell on the first round. 4th round, I can handle. But early on upsets me.

Personally, I just try to get more emotionally invested in the PCs my players make than the NPCs I make. "You roflstomped my boss? Good job, I'm so proud of you!" (having a kid helps me here).

That and I've been fortunate enough not to run a D&D game with a full-classed Wizard.

[warper]

So my group had been having trouble getting our players to DM and continue their campaign for more than 2 sessions and so we decided to do a round robin campaign. The agreement started that it would shift between me and two other guys. (Because we knew the rest were exceptionally bad at dming). Somewhere along the way that was deemed unnecessary and another member starts the session. He is already known among the group for giving practically no freedom in solutions. So the group goes chasing after some guy into his mansion, and into his basement (Dungeon) and it acts as some sort of maze spell (no save). My character is a homebrew treefolk like druid. I wander through the halls checking every door for literally over an hour finding absolutely nothing, empty rooms and empty halls. Not even furniture. Eventually the DM decides the point of our futility has gotten across and scene modes us forward and out of the dungeon. We leave town. There are like 6 level 12's in the party. The DM determines our challenge rating warrants a random encounter from a CR 18 monster that we didn't see until apparently 200ft away and immediately role initiative. Now, I knew this would happen and my character had prepared some pretty douchey spells and won initiative. So I cast some weather like spell (I forget) and ruin the monster on the first turn. He claims it's unfair but I argue that if I don't we are all screwed. He ignores my spell and goes next. Charges, gaze immediately kills one character and damage from charge puts another to like 3 hp. Then he agrees to let me do something to save the party.
Note: I made that character to save the party from those situations and had less "effective" spells prepared for normal encounters.

[Dusk Eclipse]

My worst DM was actually my first DM, and in all honestly it wasn't that he was bad, he was great at weaving stories and improvising on the spot, his mastery of the rules wasn't bad, but he did tend to rule 0 a lot, which on itself wasn't bad per say. The problem wasn't even that he favoured some players (his sons) over the rest of the group. In all honestly I am kinda thankful that he did that, because that is why I got involved with optimizing and how I got my system mastery. Since he favoured his sons in game I had to make stronger characters on my own to keep up.

No the problem was that since the majority of the group lived with him, he tended to go on sidequest and side-games on a dime with them. It wouldn't be a problem if they didn't affect the main game, but they did and once after summer vacations I came with my level 4 rogue to a game, and what do you know since they played a lot during the summer the other characters were already level 7-8ish. Thankfully he let me level up my character to match them, but it was still pretty annoying.

[SimonMoon6]

Maybe not the worst, but here's a new story:

First, the game involves three of my pet peeves: (a) a module, (b) a straightforward dungeon, and (c) lots of undead. Those always strike me as lazy DM choices, but I know that that's par for the course in a lot of games; I'm just used to better. So, that's not automatically a "worst DM" thing, just a "run of the mill, mediocre, ho-hum, bleah" DM.

For me, the part that was bad was that he was barely prepared at all. Like, maybe he had skimmed the module. So, like in a fight, he'd be constantly asking "How does this spell work?" or "How does this ability work?" etc etc. He hadn't looked at the stat blocks and analyzed what the monsters could do in advance; he just tried to wing it. He had no thoughts on strategy or anything like that because he didn't even know what the monsters *could* do, much less what they *should* do.

The final fight was particularly sad/amusing. My character was already dead, but the party had rushed on to the final fight anyway because one of the PCs (whose player was absent) had been heavily buffed. And the DM kept having to ask how all the main boss's abilities worked... and then realized that he had a particularly potent attack that he could use as a swift action every round (and *had* to use a swift action every round or else he'd explode), something that did damage and paralyzing in an area of effect with a Reflex save... and of course, if you fail a save, you're paralyzed and paralyzed people can't make Reflex saves and get re-paralyzed).

And then, at some point, it become apparent that the DM was treading that line of "Oops, this guy's too tough, it's gonna be a TPK" and "I don't want it to be a TPK". So, there were times when coup de graces were not used (especially on that overly buffed PC-with-missing-player who he *really* should have finished off)... until the DM decided he had to house rule that the paralyzing effect couldn't affect someone twice. That still gave him time to kill two PCs (one with CdG that he felt comfortable using now that there was no state of constant paralysis, one with area of effect damage while paralyzed), but the PC-with-missing-player eventually finished him (with help from two other PCs).

[Khedrac]

and of course, if you fail a save, you're paralyzed and paralyzed people can't make Reflex saves and get re-paralyzed
A DM who doesn't know the rules is a pain, but if you were playing 3.5 then the rest of you didn't know the rules either. A paralyzed character has an effective Dex of 0 (for a -5 modifier) but can still make reflex saves (they can even use evasion).

[LoyalPaladin]

Here's one I've mentioned in threads like this for over half a decade now. I'm not bitter or anything.... :smalltongue:

Now I've heard that it's possible to play a Kender "Right" but I have never ever seen it. Ever experience I've had has been player or DM encouraging the Chaotic Stupid HairPullingOutFrustating little prankster thieves. They always seem to have a ridiculous amount of Deus Ex Machina on their side.
The final time I ever played in a game with one:
Situation: Party has your stereotypical Klepto Kender, which I despise. I'm been in 5 games with them and they've always been the reason the game collapsed. I was determined to Kender-proof my character.

My Solution: I'm playing an Oozemaster, and had commissioned a Special Bag of holding that was a Small Iron flask. The nozzle was 1 inch across so I could squeeze anything I wanted in there from a Canoe to a potion using Malleability. So I was the only person who could get things out of it. I paid for it, and it's cap, to be immune to Acid. And I would swallow it when I didn't need it, and could reach in and pull it out as a full round action. I would sleep myself in a larger Urn (also immune to acid) and coated myself in my Con damaging slime.

GM Response: I wake up in my urn and find that despite my defenses the Kender had unintentionally stolen my flask. To compound the issue, he had put a note in it and threw it in the ocean to see if anyone would ever read his message. I hate kenders, that's the game that made me refuse to ever play in a game with one again.


ME: How exactly did he "accidentally" Open my Urn, reach down my throat without taking at least 1d6 Con, and pull out my flask?
DM: He's a Kender
ME: But explain how, I put a lot of investment into protecting myself. You knew my intentions when I commissioned those items.
DM: I already said, He's a Kender.
ME: *Incomprehensible Rage*
I think this qualifies as evil. Trust me, I'm a paladin.

[SimonMoon6]

but if you were playing 3.5 then the rest of you didn't know the rules either. A paralyzed character has an effective Dex of 0 (for a -5 modifier) but can still make reflex saves (they can even use evasion).

It was Pathfinder, which is *just* different enough from 3.x, that I don't question any weird rules that anybody tells me (of *course* you can score critical hits against undead!). I have no system mastery for Pathfinder.

But even so, if someone was gonna fail a Reflex save the first time, then with a -5 (or worse, since they may have had a DEX more than 10), they don't have great chances of making it later... not if they're subjected to a paralyze effect every round with a duration of d10 rounds, If they're paralyzed for five rounds, they have to succeed at 5 Reflex saves in a row... and any failed save has a chance to reset the clock.

And I'm not sure how someone's supposed to dodge an attack if they're paralyzed, so that seems a reasonable house rule (they do have stranger house rules, like getting 2 +1 stat bonuses every 4 levels instead of just one).

[Nibbens]

Wow. Usually when people out themselves as the worst player/DM they've seen the ensuing story is super tame and mostly just comes off as them being overly critical of themselves. This, on the other hand, is some real, hardcore awful.

You got guts man.:smallamused:

LOL. Thanks... I guess. :/

[Strigon]

LOL. Thanks... I guess. :/

Honestly, it doesn't sound like you were that awful.
I mean, don't get me wrong, that was some bad DMing on your part, but:
a) you learned your lesson much faster than others may have,
and
b) it honestly didn't sound half as bad as what others around here have said. Killing lots of players has nothing on the mind-numbing atrocities others seem to have committed.

[AGCIAS]

Well I can't say I'm the worst DM, I am have some very bad habits as a DM. So, this is more of a question really. But as a DM, how do you stop yourself from getting upset when your players curb stomp your boss battles?

I just hate it when my bosses feel less imposing because the wizard used a suck or save spell on the first round. 4th round, I can handle. But early on upsets me.

You just slap on an extra encounter at the end. I recently had the party walk over, around or befriend almost everything in the dungeon. They were supposed to locate the villains' HQ. Instead, they decided to investigate it. I created the HQ on the fly and made an encounter; equal number of fighters of the party's level but lower AC and no magic weapons; that pushed them nearer the edge than they liked then, as that encounter was winding down, ran a group of 10 low level fighters at them, clumped together to make an inviting target for a mage. Everyone they had encountered so far was about 5th, so they freaked until one spell took all but two of the 10. Saved an otherwise questionable (from my viewpoint) dungeon and the players seemed to enjoy.

[AGCIAS]

Not a bad -- actually a good -- DM, but he qualifies for what he did once while we were playing in another game. I got up to go to the restroom and, when I opened the door on my way back, he was standing in the doorway with an antique derringer pointing at my stomach and immediately pulled the trigger. Turns out it wasn't loaded. I wasn't really scared or anything more than mildly irritated (on the order of "M******, you IDIOT!") but I think pointing a real gun at a player, even not in your game, and pulling the trigger qualifies as a BAD DM.

[Debatra]

Well everyone else is calling themselves out, so I may as well mention the time I sent a literal dozen Sea Hags (the ones with the three-day daze) against a party. It was technically a CR-appropriate encounter as the party was tenth-level Gestalt.

Or maybe the time I sent a party of ninth-level characters against a... I forget if he was a twelfth or thirteenth-level Sorcerer. One of the players was a Vampire, and the Sorcerer had an ability that basically functioned as a no-save Suggestion that only works on undead (and has "defeat a former ally or master" specifically listed as a valid command). The fight probably would've sucked if the party ever made it through the front door, and that's not even on me. It was locked. They tried just opening it, then the strongest character made all of one attempt to break it down, rolling a seven. Outside circumstances permanently ended the game shortly thereafter.

In my defense, both parties were warned ahead of time that the encounters wouldn't exactly be fair. Hell, the second was in a game specifically made to see how well they would handle the deck being stacked against them.

[Draconium]

Dang. :smalleek: After reading these stories, I feel really lucky. I've never had any DMs that I would call bad - though a few were inexperienced, but they were trying to make things fun for everyone, so it could have been much worse. Then again, I live in a smaller town that's kind of in the middle of nowhere, so there's not a lot of players around here, and we all know each other (more or less), so that makes things easier about knowing what we enjoy in our games.

[Kesnit]

I have 2 DMs that could count.

1) This happened about 6 years ago, so the details are a little rusty. The original DM had to take a break for RL reasons, and 1 player dropped out. So the other 3 of us decided to run our own short campaigns while we waited for the DM to return. I went first, ran a campaign I'd written before, and turned the DM chair over to Z. Z wanted to run a high-level campaign, so had us create LVL 18 PCs. I admit my first mistake was making a pure Hexblade, who would have been OK, except the other player, J, made a necromancer who had his personal army following him. On the other hand, most of J's army were low-HD zombies, so served more as cannon fodder (something like 4E's "minion") than actual creatures he had to keep track of. Then, since there were only 2 players, Z decided we needed more help and brought in 2 DMPCs* - both of whom were Epic-level. One I remember was a Rogue-ish type; the other I don't remember anything about, other than he was an Epic-level DMPC. Every encounter turned into me and J fighting off small monsters while the DMPCs killed the main monsters. It eventually got to the point where J and I just followed the DMPCs around because neither of us could contribute in any way (or if we did contribute, the DMPCs did it better). I still remember the long combat against an undead with a very big aura of cold that did damage without a huge FORT save every round. I could make the save, but my Hellhound familiar (who took extra damage from cold) could not. The aura of cold was so large that, even taking full move actions, it took 5 rounds to get around it so we could get to an enemy without an aura.

* I have nothing against DMPCs, if they are used in a way that helps the party. In the short campaign I ran, I had a Cleric DMPC named "Healbot" who cast nothing but the Cure line and spells like Bless on the PCs.


2) The other one about a year ago, but his DM-ing style is so weird that it is hard to explain. First, everything in his world is sentient - including all trees and bushes. Most trees are psionic. He has a huge binder of houserules, including his homebrew deities. (Though he will allow canon dieties if none of his fit what you need. He allowed my wife to be a Favored Soul of Illmater when she couldn't find a LG deity that gives unarmed stike as a favored weapon in his collection.) Almost every encounter is a puzzle, but I don't mean "here's three locks, determine which one the key goes in." I mean "a tree is throwing nuts at a cowering gnome. What do you do?" (The tree was too powerful to attack - it had very high AC and did massive damage on a hit. None of my Druid abilities would work on it.) Spells, psionics, and spell-like abilities do not always work the way they are written in the book. (Since he allows any d20 book in his world, another player was playing a Jedi. Said Jedi tried to Force Push an enemy into a wall. The DM said that would work since that would be a different power that the Jedi didn't have.)

[gadren]

Some of these are pretty bad, but... is it just me, or do some of these "worst DM" stories sound more like "mildly odd DM" stories?

[Rakoa]

Some of these are pretty bad, but... is it just me, or do some of these "worst DM" stories sound more like "mildly odd DM" stories?

To be fair, it is worst DM you've had, not worst DM ever. These are the people we call "lucky".

[Socksy]

My DM nerfed my Expert while giving the caster nice things.
It's a 3.X game.
It's his first time running 3.5, though, and I don't think he's going to make a mistake like that again :smalltongue:

[Eno Remnant]

Welp, I may as well join the self-outing. I do all the annoying little generic things (minor railroading, fudging encounters a little because I hate to see them utterly destroyed, etc.), but there's one situation in particular my players will never let me live down.

In the lead-up to a huge, three-way siege on the capital of the kingdom the players are effectively working for, there's a little bit of commotion in the Astral Plane, by a portal leading to the capital. A relatively impressive force of demons and celestials is going at it, and two members of the party are sent to check it out. They quickly decide to back the celestials, and that's where I did something unforgivable.

There were probably forty to fifty creatures in that battle. In its early stages, it took an hour to get through one round. Like the fool I was, it took me a couple of hours to make changes that simplified the battle - changes that had to be advised to me by the players before I did anything.

In this fashion, I stole about four hours from the lives of my players that they'll never get back. I learned my lesson, and the siege itself (which I think took about six sessions, and was mostly the party cleaning up against squads of armoured kobolds, various undead and archons) went much more smoothly.



For the sake of variety, I should make mention of another DM. This thread is, after all, about the worst DM I've had; not my own DMing failures.

This DM is a great guy, he really is, and he knows what he's doing. However, he's had some dodgy campaign concepts like an elf-only campaign (couldn't even swing Ruathar), and a no-magic campaign (which ended up better than expected, but still drew a lot of ire. Especially when he forbade certain maneuvers and class features that were (Ex) because they seemed magical).

While I'm at it, if we count terrifying as "worst", I have a DM who's putting us through our paces in an SCP campaign. I've already lost three characters to it, one twice. I couldn't be having more fun.

[Kira_the_5th]

I think I may have talked about this before, but I don't think I've ever put the full story to paper (figuratively speaking), so I suppose now is as good a time as any.

Back toward the end of my college years, My friend's (now ex) boyfriend invited me, along with my two roommates and my roommate's boyfriend, to a pathfinder game he wanted to run. He presented a few different options of APs he had on hand, (Kingmaker, Carrion Crown, and one other that I don't recall.) Our group choose Kingmaker, as it was the one campaign that stood out as more upbeat than the other two. By the end of character creation, things were looking good. We had a reasonably diverse (if not terribly high-op) group of characters, and the group seemed to meld together well. The following story contains spoilers from most of the Kingmaker AP, so if you're interested in playing it and don't already know the story, be warned.

Our cast:

- A scion of the missing Rogarvia royal family, hidden and trained by the Swordlords to keep the royal line from being completely wiped out, searching for answers as to what happened to her family. Swordlord archetype fighter specializing in high AC, disarming enemies, and a surprisingly large amount of skill points in social skills.
- Another royal scion, his family's least favorite son. He was sent into the Greenbelt as a friendly and socially acceptable way for his parents to say "Go play in traffic" after he nearly killed his older brother. A Crossbowman archetype fighter who was handed a crossbow after failing with every other weapon they tried training him with.
- The crossbowman's bodyguard; a royal guardian none too pleased with her duty to defend a kid who has being sent off on a suicide mission. Vanilla barbarian focusing on dealing as much damage as possible with as little complexity as required.
- A wizard explorer from a vague foreign land who idolized dragons and wanted to study their power. An Evoker wizard who preferred fire and shapechange spells.
- A Varisian wanderer searching for a land for his people. A Nature oracle (who would later respec to a Life oracle, for reasons that will soon become clear.)

The first session:
The first session went well, at least to start. The party drove off the bandits from the trading post, and explored the first few hexes with no real incident. When we returned to the trading post after the first expedition, however, the first red flag started waving. Inside the trading post, we met what would be the first of many, many DMPCs that would the DM had introduced to the campaign to, in his words, "make it his own." The character was a "mysterious" ranger who would show up at the trading post every week or so, and who pinged on the two fighter's Knowledge (Nobility) checks as someone familiar. I don't remember his actual name, so let's just call him "Springer."

Things Get Bad:
While we were reasonably capable during the first session, every session beyond that seemed to push our party further and further down the "incompetent rubes" path. Enemies always seemed to hit, even against the Swordlord's impressive AC, and we need healing constantly. Soon after, the Oracle was able to convince the DM to let him rebuild as a Life Oracle, who began to spray positive energy like a fire hydrant. This kept us alive, for the most part, but not necessarily well. The first module ended with a fight between the party and the Stag Lord, along with his lieutenant Kressel, who had escaped the last time we fought her (Kressel escape count: 1). In addition, the DM started pulling out some questionable tactics, (Surprise! You didn't kill the Stag Lord! That wound in his chest was faked, and he dropped prone to drink a potion! No, you don't get Sense Motive or Perception checks to notice that, it's the heat of battle! Now take sneak attack damage!) Through the convenient intervention of Springer, however, the party is able to win out. Or rather, Springer is able to win out against the Stag Lord, while Kressel escapes after drawing another handaxe after being disarmed by the swordlord, two-handed power attacking with it*, and knocking the swordlord on her rear. (Kressel escape count: 2). Still, the party is now the owners of a new colony! Surely things will improve as the party grows stronger with levels, right? Nope.

It's Bad to be the King:
Soon after, the party worked out their royal positions; the Swordlord became Baroness, the Wizard became Treasurer, the Crossbowman became Councilor (while he and the swordlord worked out the details of their romance, kindled in the raid on the Stag Lord's keep), the Barbarian became Royal Assassin, and the Oracle became Grand Diplomat. The other positions, however, were far more difficult to fill. Helpful NPCs suddenly became less helpful when offered positions of power, leading to the party scraping and panicking for anyone they could get to fill in positions. Out in the field, things were no better. Monsters continued to hit the party with almost every attack, enemies disarmed by the swordlord always seemed to have better weapons in reserve, and opponents would always seem to make their saves against the Wizard's spells, even on a 2. Eventually, the PCs were forced to take on a new DMPC as their kingdom's Spymaster. A woman who just wandered into the castle applied for the position, and, having no one else who could take the job, we had to accept her. Eventually, the townsfolk started turning against the PCs, asking why a group of such complete incompetents were allowed to run the country, when we remained so "unproven." Even after stopping the trolls and defeating the giant owlbear, our party was still seen as incapable of doing anything. Eventually, the DM's antagonistic attitude toward our country got so bad that an angry mob formed outside the palace after the Baroness offhandedly mentioned to the Wizard that she was considering starting a foreign intelligence network to report on news in her home of Brevoy, as well as their neighboring countries. (Seriously, the area around the River Kingdoms is not exactly the most friendly neighborhood.) This wasn't like a day or two later, either. This was "So I'm thinking of expanding our intelligence agency to keep an eye on our neighb- what's that sound?" "The Baroness is arranging a covert spy network to spy on us! Grab your torches and pitchforks!" It all culminated when word from Brevoy came in that we were being replaced.

It Gets Worse:
The entirety of The Varnhold Vanishing involved our party losing complete control of the kingdom to the Crossbowman's older brother, who the DM took every chance to assure us how much everyone loved him and how much better the kingdom was without him. Around this point, the campaign really began to fray. Everyone started coming more for the social aspect than the game itself, and although the party did eventually regain control of their kingdom, the Baroness was killed by a coup-de-grace in order to create an emotional cheap-shot at the Crossbowman's expense. This wasn't during battle, but rather the villain teleporting into the capital, kidnapping her, forcing the party to surrender, and then killing her while she was paralyzed. To add insult to injury, she was then brought back as a vampire. Her player went and made a new character, a Paladin of Shelyn, but the campaign wouldn't last much longer, as this was the thread that began to turn the campaign's fraying into a full unravel.

More DMPCS!
Book 4 went pretty quickly. A lot of Blood For Blood's content is tied up in the siege on Drelev and Armag's Tomb, so the party pushed through it as quickly as possible. The initial battle saw the PCs face Kressel again, who, surprise surprise, escaped unharmed (Kressel escape count: 3). Along the way, however, the Wizard lost everything he owned to a Deck of Many Things disguised as a carnival attraction, the party began becoming beset by clones of Kressel who were permanently shapechanged to be completely indistinguishable from the real thing, the lich Vordekai was still rising in the east, and the party got a new DMPC in the form of a Chaotic Good Drow Ranger. Eventually, the Ranger deals the finishing blow on Armag, once again "proving" to our populace how worthless their rulers are.

The Merciful End:
The campaign ended shortly after War of the River Kings began. No one (other than the DM, of course) was having fun anymore, no one felt any sense of progress or accomplishment, considering that all of our enemies either constantly escaped, were killed by DMPCs who took all the credit, or simply came back to haunt us (the populace was complaining about how we butchered the Stag Lord, and how poor and innocent he was, for example.) After Kressel showed up again, now inexplicably as Queen of Pitax, we collectively packed it in. Shortly thereafter, the DM and his girlfriend actually ended up breaking up (not entirely due to the campaign, but it certainly played a part), and the last we had heard of him, he had started up Carrion Crown with a new group, and was up to his old tricks, trying to break a player who brought in a Summoner specifically designed to counter his cheating. We decided to let that arms race continue elsewhere.

[RingofThorns]

Come now; don't even bother to pretend you think you can get away with not continuing the story on this forum. :smallbiggrin:


This is in 3.5 I made a little lizard folk character that had crazy high hide and move silent. I got even because the dm hated...HATED anyone killing a npc/towns folk, so to get even every time we went to a new town I would break into the local potion shop and apothecary and using my bags of holding I would steal EVERYTHING. then when we left town I poisoned the well and would more or less set up a Saw type trap gauntlet in a couple of houses. Was it a horrible thing to do? yes, did he have it coming? oh yeah. The dm was ticked but knew that if he deused another character or some other cheese to insta kill me we would vote him out as dm. So it was a bitter pill he had to take or leave the group.

[Nexahs]

LOL. Thanks... I guess. :/
The important thing is you learned from the experience. That's all that really matters.

There's some strong evidence that I'm the worst DM I've come across, my first campaign was rife with railroading (but to be fair, no players ever tried going off-rails, so I wasn't exactly holding them hostage). However, special mention has to go to a DM who made us sit through a gladiator-type battle between two NPCs which took nearly a whole session. Other than that though, great guy and a decent DM, too.


While I'm at it, if we count terrifying as "worst", I have a DM who's putting us through our paces in an SCP campaign. I've already lost three characters to it, one twice. I couldn't be having more fun.

I am extremely interested in hearing more about this, but don't want to disrupt the thread - is there, or would you consider making, a campaign journal of some sort?

[Eno Remnant]

I am extremely interested in hearing more about this, but don't want to disrupt the thread - is there, or would you consider making, a campaign journal of some sort?

There isn't one at this point, but I wouldn't be opposed to creating one. My all-time favourite character to roleplay was in that campaign. He was the one who died twice :smalltongue:

[Arbane]

Well everyone else is calling themselves out, so I may as well mention the time I sent a literal dozen Sea Hags (the ones with the three-day daze) against a party. It was technically a CR-appropriate encounter as the party was tenth-level Gestalt.


Sounds like the last session of the superhero game I'm in, where the GM found out that a villain with duplication and a AOE three-round stun that can be used once per round PER DUPLICATE that nobody in the party can successfully resist does NOT make for happy players. We were discussing sniper rifles as a possible countermeasure if that guy ever shows up again. :smallfurious:
Good GM otherwise, though, just new to that particular game.

[AGCIAS]

The important thing is you learned from the experience. That's all that really matters.

There's some strong evidence that I'm the worst DM I've come across, my first campaign was rife with railroading (but to be fair, no players ever tried going off-rails, so I wasn't exactly holding them hostage).

Absolutely. If the people who are calling themselves the worst DMs are, in fact, the worst they have played with, they have been very lucky. I don't think I, or anyone I have played with for any time, qualifies as such. One first-time DM I had literally read from the huge module he was playing at first. But he soon kicked into gear and was running fun, imaginative riffs on the written material. My first campaign was before, I believe, the terms "railroad" and "sandbox". But the first time my players wandered off in a random direction, I realized that my games had to be a web rather than a line. That, and I learned that I can BS on the fly. When I first read the term sandbox, I thought, "How perfect".

Always learn.