How did I roll a "1" when choosing this group?!?

[PokéTriforce]

Ever have a DM kill a PC just because that player never lost a character before? Ever have a player kill another player just because that other player leveled up before the first player? Ever have a player kill their PC just because that character was having a bad day?

This thread isn't just about killings. DMs vs. players. Players vs. players. It's only natural that some games might have tension. This thread is about those times that you wonder why you chose to hang out with these people in the first place.


The DM told (not asked) his roommate to be his co-DM. That roommate doesn't even know how to make a character of his own. After the first session (which I wasn't a part of), the roommate was told that the NPC the DM created for him wasn't a PC...therefore, couldn't be played like the others. All the roommate wanted was to play in the game. He never asked to be co-DM in the first place.

Anyway, after the second session (which I also missed -- due to a busy schedule), the DM wanted me to talk to his roommate. I told him that the roommate should become a player instead. I said I'd help the roommate create a character for his game.

DM: So, you're telling me to drop [the roommate] from my game, right?
Me: That is not what I said. I said that he just shou--
DM: But, if he can't play the game, then you want me to tell him he's no longer in my game.
Me: Would you just shut up long enough for me to tell you what I'm sayi--
DM: But, you'll still be showing up, right?
Me: Not if you keep acting like this. Just let me help [the roommate] create a new character for your game.
GM: I'll have you know that many people want to play in my game. I was holding the spot for you. If you're not going to play, then I can tell one of the many others -- who want to play -- that they can.
Me: Whatever. Just let me talk to [the roommate] and help him create a character for your game. It's on September 16th, right?
DM: Alright. It's at noon.
Me: We'll see if I'm there or not.

The next phone call I receive is from the roommate.

Roommate: What did you say?!
Me: ???
Roommate: [the DM] said that you told him I don't know how to play and that I can't create my own character. He told me that you suggested he ban me from his game.
Me: I said nothing of the sort. All I said to him was--
Roommate: He told me that you weren't going to play in his game because of me.
Me: I didn't say that. I was trying to tell you what I told him
Roommate: I'm listening.
Me: I told him that you just wanted to play in his game...that you weren't asking to be a co-DM. I mentioned how you have difficult--
Roommate: He says that he won't allow me in his game and that you said you weren't going to be in it. He's blaming me for EVERYTHING!

After the roommate calmed down, I was able to explain what had occurred...and that the DM was just being a bully (frustrated that every girl -- which he immediately he hits on -- rejects him). The roommate (who was already in a campaign that I'm running) will use the character (that I created for the other DM's game) in a campaign that he's working on.

Not only did I seem to have told the DM to kick his roommate out his campaign; I seem to have left it before I even started it.

[Eldonauran]

Honestly? I would distance myself from these people immediately. Someone who can not listen and allows their emotions to dictate their actions to that point is someone that I do not consider emotionally or mentally stable enough to be around.

They might be great people and this could be a very rare occurrence. I don't know. I just know they can be someone else's problem.

[PunBlake]

That situation sounds terrible. I'd rather tell silly stories than ones with that much IRL tension. So...

I had a fellow player kill himself.

In one campaign, at lowish level, we encountered a recurring (between planes and campaigns) shopkeeper who is (unknown to current characters) a son of Garl Glittergold. He lets this particular DM sell custom joke items (sometimes useful items as well).

Our warforged rogue wanted a "dangerous" short sword, so he was given a short sword of wounding to "test out." With no idea what it does, he tests it by stabbing himself in the leg. He bleeds out before my character, the party healer, can reach him from across town. He could have asked the shopkeep for a healing potion, but gave up instead to avoid the potential side effects from a joke cure or repair potion.

[Calthropstu]

So yeah, my swanmay 2e psionicist is made unconcious. One of the pcs decides to rape her.
The gm rolls for pregnancy. I am pregnant. I use a haste spell to age myself to have the baby faster.
I have spellfire like abilities. Gm rules I gain thousands of spellfire points instantly. I explode and die doing thousands of damage to the surrounding area.

Yeah. It ultimately ends with the gm tackling me because I refused to give him my character sheet as I left.

So I ate it. I have not seen this level of dickery since.

[ComaVision]

It sounds like there is a whole lot of "artistic license" involved in the story in OP.


Our warforged rogue ... bleeds out

Huh?

[Elricaltovilla]

So yeah, my swanmay 2e psionicist is made unconcious. One of the pcs decides to rape her.


It never should have gotten past this point. I would have picked up my stuff and gone home as soon as the GM allowed that to occur at his table.

[Buufreak]

Huh?

I too was curious how that worked, but in a world with a dmpc that spews out divinely powered asinine items, I wasn't willing to completely rule it out as possible.

[PunBlake]

Huh?
I wasn't DMing. The DM ruled he was bleeding oil. (Warforged have a lot of immunities, but they aren't immune to critical hits or, by extension, bleeding.) The player decided he wanted a new character and let himself die, in true munchkin fashion.

[Erit]

So yeah, my swanmay 2e psionicist is made unconcious. One of the pcs decides to rape her.
The gm rolls for pregnancy. I am pregnant. I use a haste spell to age myself to have the baby faster.
I have spellfire like abilities. Gm rules I gain thousands of spellfire points instantly. I explode and die doing thousands of damage to the surrounding area.

Yeah.

... I'm sorry, what?


It never should have gotten past this point. I would have picked up my stuff and gone home as soon as the GM allowed that to occur at his table.

You're a gentler soul than I. That night would have ended in defenestrations and fire if I'd been there.

[Particle_Man]

You mean characters killing characters, right? Not players killing players? :eek:

[Doctor Awkward]

According to the 4e Eberron Player's Guide, "Warforged bodies have an internal network of tubes filled with a bloodlike fluid that nourishes and lubricates their systems."

This is probably what leaks out in the event of bleed effects that result in Con loss and HP damage. If this was copied from a 3.5 source, then it wasn't the Campaign Setting, Races of Eberron, or the Player's Guide to Eberron.

[Calthropstu]

... I'm sorry, what?


Yup.

It was bad. Not the worst story I've seen, but the worst I personally experienced.

[BRKNdevil]

Yeah... the worst i have ever had is a group where one just kept getting sick drunk or beat the enemies to death with a dead foe/civilian. Oh, and one person who never gave me back my DS charger since he came to a session with his practically dead.
I feel like with the Rape Case that the people are pretty terrible you'd just be able to tell right off the bat though

[Calthropstu]

Yeah... the worst i have ever had is a group where one just kept getting sick drunk or beat the enemies to death with a dead foe/civilian. Oh, and one person who never gave me back my DS charger since he came to a session with his practically dead.
I feel like with the Rape Case that the people are pretty terrible you'd just be able to tell right off the bat though

I was 19, the youngest was 14 and I was homeless and the gm was letting me crash on his couch from time to time. Starving lets you put up with a lot. I let one of the group put superglue in my (long) hair for $20.

[PunBlake]

According to the 4e Eberron Player's Guide, "Warforged bodies have an internal network of tubes filled with a bloodlike fluid that nourishes and lubricates their systems."

This is probably what leaks out in the event of bleed effects that result in Con loss and HP damage. If this was copied from a 3.5 source, then it wasn't the Campaign Setting, Races of Eberron, or the Player's Guide to Eberron.
We ruled this at table, without doing any research AFAIK, as we were playing 3.5 and that particular DM does almost everything off the cuff.

In a different campaign, he gave us (via the same DMNPC) a Deck of Many Things... at level 3. One person gained 10 levels and a castle, and another (me) pulled Death on the first draw. That campaign ended immediately.

[Calthropstu]

We ruled this at table, without doing any research AFAIK, as we were playing 3.5 and that particular DM does almost everything off the cuff.

In a different campaign, he gave us (via the same DMNPC) a Deck of Many Things... at level 3. One person gained 10 levels and a castle, and another (me) pulled Death on the first draw. That campaign ended immediately.

They really should rename that the deck of campagn end. The deck of many things has completely screwed over campaigns more times than I'd like to admit.

[Erit]

They really should rename that the deck of campagn end. The deck of many things has completely screwed over campaigns more times than I'd like to admit.

It's the Deck of Many Epilogues.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

In a different campaign, he gave us (via the same DMNPC) a Deck of Many Things... at level 3. One person gained 10 levels and a castle, and another (me) pulled Death on the first draw. That campaign ended immediately.

Been there. Achieved my character's life goal. Retired.

Same group had so decrepit it's a meme necromancer get turned into a child and pushed toward a romance with an eery child goddess/choosen one.

[Albions_Angel]

While at uni, and a member of the uni game soc, and a long standing 3.5e group there, I decided I would try out 5th as my house mate was planning on running a game. I was a little concerned as it was his first time dming and he had only been in one other game, but who knows. The setting sounded cool.

So I make a character. A druid. nice and simple. Meanwhile he is telling me about his other game and alarm bells are ringing. The low level party encountered a wyvern. While it was distracted, one of them snuck up behind it and applied shocking grasp to.. its innards. The DM found this hilarious and this killed the wyvern, no damage roll. To make matters worse, they then looted its hoard and got an epic level sword, kept it, and then killed all the gods... at level 3. Not my sort of playing, but what set alarm bells ringing was "it was so funny, so my game will have more of that!" I politely pulled out.

A few weeks go by, and I am hearing stories of the players, what they will be playing, and they all went for rule of cool. Still not my game, but nothing wrong. It is a pretty dysfunctional party though...

Well, it gets down to the wire and my housemate comes and sees me and begs me to play. He wants a lot of combat, and the party isnt built for that. They dont have a high HP heavy hitter. He is worried they will all die at level 1. Oh, and rule of cool is gone. He read a book and wars are far more interesting. Well, that IS more my kind of game, so I dust off the druid. Im about to stat out some wildshapes, planning for moon circle, when he says "Oh, you wont be able to wildshape right off the bat". Well, no, I have to wait until level 2. "No, I mean at all. You need to see every animal to wildshape into it." No, it says I cant wildshape into animals I havnt seen, but its expected I will have seen the common ones. Plus I can find animals with a cantrip. "Oh that doesnt work." Why? "I dont want you being a bear" Oh, ok. What large carnivores are available on your continent. "Oh, loads." Cool, Ill be one of those. "You cant find any" ...

Ok, scratch the druid. He wants a tank, look what just got released on the 5e UA. The first 5 levels of the Mystic class. And one of the archetypes, the Immortal, is nigh unkillable and has an auto hit attack. He likes this, so I go as that.

And then it all goes wrong. I hold up in combat, but everyone else falls over constantly. He doesnt pull his punches. And he is rule of cooling his own stuff again. Well we get to level 3 and then then players start "fighting back". Within 2 sessions, one blows up half a town, with the DMs help, only to have the DM go "You shouldnt be able to do that" but not reversing it. So now we have the law on our trail and my LG character is thinking "What is going on". I try and turn myself in, only to have the DM tell me I cant. So I try and capture the player, only to have the DM send my character on a pilgrimage. Suddenly I am half a continent away, in the middle of a session, and the party dies to 5 goblins. Then an argument breaks out. So my character comes back and saves everyone, and I havnt spoken for 30 minutes now. So I am back, and I try to arrest the player again and once again I am on the other side of the continent.

It dawns on me that the DM didnt want me to play. He wanted me to build a medium op character he could use as a tool. I go make myself a drink. Then some food. I come back to the table an hour later and they are killing the king. Somehow my character is back and wielding the sword. I pack up my dice. I collect my stuff and go back to my room. I take my plate back to the kitchen 2 hours later. They are still there. They dont seem to have noticed I have left.

I kid you not, next session, I dont even turn up. Half way through, i get a text. "Hey, what would your character do in this situation?" Probably pray. "Oh, ok. Thats not very fun so hes gunna stab the shopkeeper. Thanks!"

I dont miss that guy.

[PokéTriforce]

I started this thread mentioning (among other things) PCs killing themselves. I won't talk about the player who kills his PCs -- just because he wants to play a different one -- in this post. I'm going to tell you about the player whose PC committed seppuku over making bad choices.

It started with him naming his character Sea Man. He wanted his character to be a sailor. He didn't know the reference it had. The rest of us tried to keep our composer when talking about Sea Man. I was DM. The campaign started at a fishing village; so his character would have been fine.

Anyway, his next mistake was when I talked about a blind man making sushi. It started out as a joke...but not really. I wanted to see how many players were willing to try the blowfish. For those that don't know, an improper cut of blowfish can be poisonous to humans. I had the players who tried it make a percentage roll, followed by a fort. save. Sea Man ended up getting sick and puking.

Mind you, I wasn't picking on the player nor his PC. He just happened to have made the choices that he did. When another player said that Sea Man was going to be known as the party's [whatever the person whose job is to walk through traps and eat/drink questionable stuff] -- that player thought he was being funny. I told him it was just a case of poor judgement, for those that tried the blowfish.

It was too late. The damage had already been done. The player said, "That's it. Nobody likes this character; so he commits seppuku and kills himself. Then, another character with the same stuff and everything and the same rolls comes in. He's not the same as my other character because I said so. He looks and has everything the same, except his name isn't Sea Man anymore." He then erased the name on his character sheet. "His name will now be..." [I don't remember what he called his character at that point] "...and is different because this is a different character. None of that stuff happened to him. He never ate the sushi."

At that point, I told everyone we were going to have an hour break and re-start the entire campaign. I told everyone that the haven't met -- nor have they had the sushi. I said that they are now to undo anything that happened to their characters since the start of this game.

An hour later, they (including the player who got upset) were ready to begin again. Everyone repeated what they did...including those that tried the blowfish. This time, the one player refused. The rest of that session, the player hardly did anything. At the end of the session, the others asked me to talk to the one player. I did.

He said that everyone was picking on him. I assured him that they were not. He asked me if he can have another character that has nothing to do with any of this. I told him he could...as long as his new character made sense for this campaign. I told him I'd need to take his current PC and NPC it (to give that character a reason for leaving the party). The player took his character and said he wasn't going to play anymore.

He showed up for the next session and said that he didn't have his character sheet. I let the rest of the group decide if he should be able to create a new character or try to play as the sailor that he was in the previous session. When they started mentioning what they remembered about his sailor, he pulled out that character sheet and ripped it up.

We played without him for some time. He came back with a new character. We finished that session with his new character. We abandoned that game and started a new campaign, the following session. This time, it ran smoother. Even the player was fine with how things were.

There are only 2 other "failed events" with that player; but, I'll save those for another time.

[Yogibear41]

I once played in a game where I was a 1st level goblin barbarian using one of the goblin variants that has +2 con so I had a 20 con at level 1, I took the bear totem variant for free toughness and took roll with it 3 times for dr 6/- at level 1. The DM had mounted dwarf trackers track me across country at night, following blood that he spilled from light crossbows by rolling 7 and 8 on his 1d8 every round. We were on roll 20 and he never used the in game diceroller he used his own and just told us what he rolled, while we had to use the in game dice.......

Also in the same game, while another player was attempting to rob a store in a small village, the DM told us there was a guard posted on every corner in the village. Later on in the same game, while hiding from a sniper position in which I wanted to shoot guards from hiding to cause random chaos, my character had to wait hours to see a single guard........

[SangoProduction]

About the seppuku player: Yeah. I can see that, as someone who once had low self-worth, and played in a toxic group because they were the only group to play with (before the days of the internet).
Not saying your group is toxic, but those with such low self worth is unlikely to take well to being the butt of a joke, especially a series of them in succession. Did he overreact? Certainly. But it at least follows a logic.

(Hmm. This topic does remind me of a couple political groups who are anti-joke. Might be related. But I don't think you can discuss politics here.)

[Climowitz]

I once dmed two different parties but on the same world, both were made of 5 people. I stated that they wouldn't pick a Class, they would choose a race and a name, and play a level 0 in a "harmless" city where their decisions would give them their class, and the rest was for them to keep choosing.
First party went smooth, a character got drunk and fought everybody on the bar, so a person trained him in the art of Drunken Fighting, another found a Demolition suit and bought it, so he became a Demolisher, another one got to study with a genius inventor about physics and mathematics and stuff, so he became a Calculator, another one found a potion and asked it's owner what i was, so he became his apprentice and ended up as an alchemist, and the fifth who was aiming to play a Gunner and name his character for it, a name like Harry Caliber, ended up killing the necromancer living in the cementery and absorbing his powers, becoming a necromancer himself. But that was nothing.
The other party had a smooth start also, except for this player. On this "Harmless" city he managed to kill three level 0 characters, before getting the fourth with a class, and what he did was find a potion, laying on a fountain, and drank it, becoming a Mutant. Everybody remembers the one who killed his character 3 times in one session on a city without dangers.

[Buufreak]

Well, since everyone else is sharing, I suppose I can do more than just comment...

So, my first ever 3.5 game was interesting. Not exactly in the good way, though. A friend had invited me, and he had a work buddy that I had known for a bit, and he seemed like a decent guy. Which, to his credit, he was. He wasn't exactly the best DM though. Had alot of "wonder around until you stumble onto something relevant" syndrome. Also had a DMPC that was about 5 levels higher than the party who would deus ex any situation that lasted longer than 2 rounds of combat.

Then we had the other two guys in the group. They, like the DM, seemed decent enough. However, they had previously been dating one another, and the aftershocks of breaking up was still very prevalent, and carried over into the game. What's worse, they both seemed charged enough to be, what I would refer to as, aggressively seeking new companionship. They didn't care that I was married. They didn't care that the word "no" had been used already. It was uncomfortable. I bowed out after a handful of games.

[Darth Ultron]

I see this all the time with players:

The classic is simply running into battle. They see a foe, and run towards it. Often the PCs don't live past the first foe.

Many spellcasters, or other soft characters that run into melee.

A classic in my games is I will describe something like ''an altar made of pure obsidian rock and covered with slowly flowing blood, with a human skull with two diamonds in it's eye sockets on top. Around the altar are the chard skeletal remains of several people." Then a player will say "I go pick up that skull!".

[Bphill561]

It happens. I played in a group that had a party of mixed evil and neutral PC’s. Even after we came up with a plan, the party would do stupid things and block the arcane caster from casting the planned area effect spell. The DM harassed the player constantly saying he was evil he should cast it anyway and damage the party, which the player never did for self-preservation. Finally, in one encounter he rolled higher initiative, and cast a wall of fire very strategically on the far side of a large room in front of a doorway to stop it from filling up with endless enemies. One of the other PC’s ran into the wall of fire for no particular reason near the end of the fight. After the player left, the DM continued the session solely for his PC to backstab the arcane caster. He gave himself plenty of xp for the “kill”, because the caster was clearly a threat to the party for casting wall of fire.

The player made a new character the following week … and the DM encouraged another player to kill him off almost immediately. After that, two of the players asked me to run a game which I was hesitant to do (although leaving was a must). Before I answered they called the DM and told them we were all out. I subsequently got a call from the DM that they were going to throw all my books I left at their house out in the rain if I did not immediately come pick them up. When I got the books, I also got berated by the guys mom whom he lived with. He was 35 and I was 17. All in all, it was good times.

[cartejos]

The first group I was in had an odd gimmick for the campaign.

The player characters were sucked through a portal at a convention of some sort, from earth, into Faerun.
One of the players died in the first battle and took over a previous NPC that was "almost" willing to come with us when we first asked them.

We fought a lich followed by a hydra at a low level, we killed the lich but only barely and the dm wanted more of us to die because they wanted the campaign to be a "real challenge."

So they threw a hydra into the mix after giving us a few minutes to recoup from the lich.

My character readied an action to cast a spell at it, but only if it took hostile action.
Turn order was Me -> Hydra -> Rest of the party. I had won initiative a lot due to a good dex and improved initiative (probably my favorite basic feat btw, didn't seem great when I first started, but then using it is just blissful)

The DM told us that the hydra was just walking around, not aggro-ing at us or anything, just walking around 60 feet away.

Because it wasn't being hostile I didn't use my readied action. This caused the rest of the group to actually shout at me. I asked the DM if the Hydra was being hostile and they said no. When the dm said that, the player who already died that campaign fled from the fight, saying they were going back to town. When it came back to my turn, I also started heading back to town. The moment none of us had any readied actions against the hydra the DM decided it wanted to fight. So it did. It killed three of our four, and there wasn't enough loot from the combined Hydra and Lich fight to even bring a single one of us back to life. The only survivor was the player who fled in the first round, who happened to get the last hit (somehow) after the hydra dropped the third of us.

Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies isn't very fun. Maybe there is a time for it, but that likely isn't anytime before level 5.

As a result of this I was kicked out of the group for "starting too many problems."

[zlefin]

I see this all the time with players:

The classic is simply running into battle. They see a foe, and run towards it. Often the PCs don't live past the first foe.

Many spellcasters, or other soft characters that run into melee.

A classic in my games is I will describe something like ''an altar made of pure obsidian rock and covered with slowly flowing blood, with a human skull with two diamonds in it's eye sockets on top. Around the altar are the chard skeletal remains of several people." Then a player will say "I go pick up that skull!".

hehe, reminds me of the anime Rune Soldier Louie

Louie, who's a wizard, charges into the fight and ends up breaking his wand by using it to bash the monsters instead of casting spells. This ofc requires a bunch of work to get a replacement wand.
Ofc unlike ultron's examples, Louie is in quite good shape and handles the melee jsut fine; though breaking the wand means he can't do magic properly until he gets the new one.

[Florian]

So, joined a group that was advertised as "political game in a Full Metal Alchemy-inspired world".

Session Zero started with us creating a bunch of alchemy students in some kind of faux nazi kingdom using the SaWo rules, which are known for a lot of things, but handling social stuff, it ain´t.

So, we start at exploring the university, getting to know the teachers and fellow students, try to sniff out what campus politics are like and, well, basically start looking for either hooks, leads or concrete quests to engage with. So, basically, we try to grasp at any straws to get the thing going, n´kay?

Next 4 sessions, we try to do anything that's not up on a tree at the count of 3 and the gm is looking more desperate, angry and agitated at times. It started around the end of session two, when he had some kind of hissy fit that he should kill our characters for something something and that we do everything wrong.... Around the middle of session 3, he starts going into a rage that we made all the wrong friends and made every friendly an enemy, blah blah blubb and at the end of the forth session, we collectively quit, because we were running stupid standard "quests" and not having found anything "political" in this campaign, while that maniac was going on about the twelve factions we've already supposedly met and how deep and interconnected everything was.....

[Calthropstu]

hehe, reminds me of the anime Rune Soldier Louie

Louie, who's a wizard, charges into the fight and ends up breaking his wand by using it to bash the monsters instead of casting spells. This ofc requires a bunch of work to get a replacement wand.
Ofc unlike ultron's examples, Louie is in quite good shape and handles the melee jsut fine; though breaking the wand means he can't do magic properly until he gets the new one.


Thank you. I was looking for an anime to watch this week

[DarkEternal]

I have a few of those, though usually in the formo f DM's. A pathfinder game, the group was supposed to rally a kingdom to get it's defenses up against the incoming drow force. The problem was, the king was not having any of that since he was old and decrepit and useless. So they went for the next best thing, the tomboyish princess who was off to the east near one of the forts. So, the group made it's way there.

Group makeup – some overpowered abomination of Pathfinder occultist (basically binder) with Path of war stuff that made him do 100+ guaranteed damage every round with little failure chance played by a guy who just likes breaking stuff in games without going the obvious full caster routes, another guy who played a PoW Stalker and just teleported all over the place and was sorto f benign, despite being impossible to spot in stealth due to his incredible stealth skill, a psion played by a git who was just toxic to the rest of the group by doing stupid stuff like „Oh, a thief tried to mug me in the street i a town known to have thieves? Well, might as well fireball him to death alongside ten other civilians that were around and then be amazed how the town's authorities do not look kindly to that kind of behaviour“, a Warder half giant who was the only sane member of the group.

So, basically, got their way over to the fort. In the travels there, psion made life a living hellby looking after his own arse all the time, and/or teleporting away in the middle of the fight saying he was useless against incorporeal stuff so why would he risk getting hurt (they got attacked by some spectres while travelling through the bog marshlands) which pissed off half the party. Anyway, got there, small fort on a strategic location. They didn really do well diplomatically, but well enough that the leader of the fort, a warlord class general came out to talk with them. He offered them a place to stay if they wanted to, but couldn't help them with finding the princess because he had too few men to spare plus, they were still strangers, golden tongued or not.

So, of course, said psion stepped in. He played an archetype…forgot the name, the one that pretty much dominated everything. So, that was his natural course of actions. Let's go and dominate the warlord so he has to do whatever the party wants. In broad daylight, in front of the entire population of the keep, or at least a few dozen soldiers that were there overlooking this exchange. The warlord saved after the attempt, many face palms were had by the party and of course, combat began. Warder dropped to his knees asking to parley, stalker pissed off with a dimension jump, and of course, the psion teleported away in the first round of combat, leaving said warder there who surrendered and the abomination binder guy whose ego was too strong to surrender, but he didn't really fight at his best, either so they dropped him but didn't kill him. They took the two prisoner, who both had decent diplomacy rolls and managed to secure some kind of a „it was all a big misunderstanding“ at the expense of their gear and that they report said psion at first possibiliy.

Almost came to physical blows out of character too because the party was fed up with psion guy doing this sorto f stuff. So, the end result? Psion guy went in a blaze of glory suicide attack on the fort, by basically running at it and teleporting before he was pelted by like a hundred arrows, killed and burned.

He made a new character, a bard which was not much ebtter. But the only saving grace was? Well, we have a home rule that if the party loots a dead party member to increase their own wealth, the new character from that said party member begins play with the basest of resources and equipment, no magic gear. Sooo, he was a level 7 bard in a dingy leather armor with a blunderbuss and his musical instrument. And that was it. Small victories and all that.

[Calthropstu]

I have a few of those, though usually in the formo f DM's. A pathfinder game, the group was supposed to rally a kingdom to get it's defenses up against the incoming drow force. The problem was, the king was not having any of that since he was old and decrepit and useless. So they went for the next best thing, the tomboyish princess who was off to the east near one of the forts. So, the group made it's way there.

Group makeup – some overpowered abomination of Pathfinder occultist (basically binder) with Path of war stuff that made him do 100+ guaranteed damage every round with little failure chance played by a guy who just likes breaking stuff in games without going the obvious full caster routes, another guy who played a PoW Stalker and just teleported all over the place and was sorto f benign, despite being impossible to spot in stealth due to his incredible stealth skill, a psion played by a git who was just toxic to the rest of the group by doing stupid stuff like „Oh, a thief tried to mug me in the street i a town known to have thieves? Well, might as well fireball him to death alongside ten other civilians that were around and then be amazed how the town's authorities do not look kindly to that kind of behaviour“, a Warder half giant who was the only sane member of the group.

So, basically, got their way over to the fort. In the travels there, psion made life a living hellby looking after his own arse all the time, and/or teleporting away in the middle of the fight saying he was useless against incorporeal stuff so why would he risk getting hurt (they got attacked by some spectres while travelling through the bog marshlands) which pissed off half the party. Anyway, got there, small fort on a strategic location. They didn really do well diplomatically, but well enough that the leader of the fort, a warlord class general came out to talk with them. He offered them a place to stay if they wanted to, but couldn't help them with finding the princess because he had too few men to spare plus, they were still strangers, golden tongued or not.

So, of course, said psion stepped in. He played an archetype…forgot the name, the one that pretty much dominated everything. So, that was his natural course of actions. Let's go and dominate the warlord so he has to do whatever the party wants. In broad daylight, in front of the entire population of the keep, or at least a few dozen soldiers that were there overlooking this exchange. The warlord saved after the attempt, many face palms were had by the party and of course, combat began. Warder dropped to his knees asking to parley, stalker pissed off with a dimension jump, and of course, the psion teleported away in the first round of combat, leaving said warder there who surrendered and the abomination binder guy whose ego was too strong to surrender, but he didn't really fight at his best, either so they dropped him but didn't kill him. They took the two prisoner, who both had decent diplomacy rolls and managed to secure some kind of a „it was all a big misunderstanding“ at the expense of their gear and that they report said psion at first possibiliy.

Almost came to physical blows out of character too because the party was fed up with psion guy doing this sorto f stuff. So, the end result? Psion guy went in a blaze of glory suicide attack on the fort, by basically running at it and teleporting before he was pelted by like a hundred arrows, killed and burned.

He made a new character, a bard which was not much ebtter. But the only saving grace was? Well, we have a home rule that if the party loots a dead party member to increase their own wealth, the new character from that said party member begins play with the basest of resources and equipment, no magic gear. Sooo, he was a level 7 bard in a dingy leather armor with a blunderbuss and his musical instrument. And that was it. Small victories and all that.

Small victories indeed. Coming to blows over a game is stupid. Fun little fact: there's an average of 4 Monopoly related deaths each year.

[umbergod]

Small victories indeed. Coming to blows over a game is stupid. Fun little fact: there's an average of 4 Monopoly related deaths each year.

Yeesh. Ive gotten annoyed with how a game is going, sometimes to the point of ragequitting, but to come to physical violence over a game? Wtf is wrong with humanity?

[Calthropstu]

Yeesh. Ive gotten annoyed with how a game is going, sometimes to the point of ragequitting, but to come to physical violence over a game? Wtf is wrong with humanity?

Yeah. At least I've never heard of anyone getting shot (https://www.yahoo.com/news/mass-shooting-reported-jacksonville-183605118.html) over a ttrpg.

But seriously, people are messed up.

[umbergod]

Yeah. At least I've never heard of anyone getting shot (https://www.yahoo.com/news/mass-shooting-reported-jacksonville-183605118.html) over a ttrpg.

But seriously, people are messed up.

Yeah i saw that too :( if youve got that much anger and that little self restraint then you shouldnt play multiplayer games

[Caedes]

So yeah, my swanmay 2e psionicist is made unconcious. One of the pcs decides to rape her.
The gm rolls for pregnancy. I am pregnant. I use a haste spell to age myself to have the baby faster.
I have spellfire like abilities. Gm rules I gain thousands of spellfire points instantly. I explode and die doing thousands of damage to the surrounding area.

Yeah. It ultimately ends with the gm tackling me because I refused to give him my character sheet as I left.

So I ate it. I have not seen this level of dickery since.

What the actual over... So much wrong in that. So much wrong...

[Kyrell1978]

I played with an individual who was so terrified of dying or putting the character in danger that they never wanted to leave to go do anything without 100 percent confirmation that there would be no danger. We spent more time in libraries than dungeons and the main goal of every campaign became to play shopkeeper simulator to earn money rather than actually adventure.

[Buufreak]

I played with an individual who was so terrified of dying or putting the character in danger that they never wanted to leave to go do anything without 100 percent confirmation that there would be no danger. We spent more time in libraries than dungeons and the main goal of every campaign became to play shopkeeper simulator to earn money rather than actually adventure.

To be fair, I'm currently living out my life long dream of playing an NPC in FF14 by power leveling every crafting/gathering class all on the same character and setting up shop on the market boards. Money be good.

[Kyrell1978]

To be fair, I'm currently living out my life long dream of playing an NPC in FF14 by power leveling every crafting/gathering class all on the same character and setting up shop on the market boards. Money be good.

But, do you do that on every playthrough? Always.....even when switching games.......

[Calthropstu]

I played with an individual who was so terrified of dying or putting the character in danger that they never wanted to leave to go do anything without 100 percent confirmation that there would be no danger. We spent more time in libraries than dungeons and the main goal of every campaign became to play shopkeeper simulator to earn money rather than actually adventure.

See, the proper response was, "Ok, while your character plays shopkeeper we adventure." Once he had been left out for a few hours he'd either join the adventure or leave the group.

[Kyrell1978]

See, the proper response was, "Ok, while your character plays shopkeeper we adventure." Once he had been left out for a few hours he'd either join the adventure or leave the group.
Tried it but it was compounded by the fact that shopkeeper was also the dm's significant other and was shown considerable favoritism. I tried but eventually had to leave the group.

[Buufreak]

But, do you do that on every playthrough? Always.....even when switching games.......

I mean, its an MMO, not really much to playing through again... But I get your point.

[Calthropstu]

Tried it but it was compounded by the fact that shopkeeper was also the dm's significant other and was shown considerable favoritism. I tried but eventually had to leave the group.

Ouch. Yeah, no getting around that.

[Kyrell1978]

To make things even worse (same group) every single death attack was leveled at my teenage son. No exaggeration, no hyperbole, every time any creature used a death attack it was against the youngest most inexperienced player at the table (it killed him twice). That doesn't even begin to describe how dysfunctional the two main culprits (dm and shopkeeper) were, bringing their real life relationship problems into the game literally every week. Like "Okay, I guess were all sitting here watching you all fight for an hour before game starts. Fantastic."

[Buufreak]

You have my deepest sympathies. No person should be subjected to that crap.

[Kyrell1978]

You have my deepest sympathies. No person should be subjected to that crap.

It's cool. I blew up the group and have the decent half still coming over to play. After a few decades I'm honestly surprised there's not more horror stories. :smallwink:

[Hurnn]

I played in a game that was going to be Ravenloft, and we were starting at level 5 4d6 keep 3.

I built a buff-bot healer cleric, with fairly average stats 12,10,14,12,16,14. I spent about 1/2 my wealth by level on a MW heavy x-bow, a sliver morning star, +1 half plate and a prayer bead. The other half went into 2 trained riding dogs, 2 mules a wagon, 3 animal handler hirelings, and 4 lvl 2 warriors with a lvl 3 fighter as their leader, all of whom I outfitted, and paid for a month.

My girlfriend wanted a cool bounty hunter/assassin build, so I helped her. It was a fighter 2 ranger 2 rogue 1 that was going to switch into assassin at 6. I figured out a 5 or 6 feat chain that at 30' range she would do 1d8+10(13 if they were flat footed).Then she proceeded to roll insane on the dice, it was like 14,20,16,14,16,20.

After the first session they guy playing a druid that was planing on taking draconic wildshape accused me of power gaming because I had a bunch of hirelings, and she was doing too much damage. He basically killed the game after 1 session because the dm didn't want to deal with conflict.

This was also the game the forever sold me on point buy, because my girlfriends character had a combined 90 stat points for a character that could basically run on a pair of 16's our poor monk rolled 6 points under average. Unfortunately it was not even in a "cool I got 2 18's and 4 8's" way it was something like a 14, 2 12's, a 10 and an 8, and he was was just useless.

[Climowitz]

I played in a game that was going to be Ravenloft, and we were starting at level 5 4d6 keep 3.

I built a buff-bot healer cleric, with fairly average stats 12,10,14,12,16,14. I spent about 1/2 my wealth by level on a MW heavy x-bow, a sliver morning star, +1 half plate and a prayer bead. The other half went into 2 trained riding dogs, 2 mules a wagon, 3 animal handler hirelings, and 4 lvl 2 warriors with a lvl 3 fighter as their leader, all of whom I outfitted, and paid for a month.

My girlfriend wanted a cool bounty hunter/assassin build, so I helped her. It was a fighter 2 ranger 2 rogue 1 that was going to switch into assassin at 6. I figured out a 5 or 6 feat chain that at 30' range she would do 1d8+10(13 if they were flat footed).Then she proceeded to roll insane on the dice, it was like 14,20,16,14,16,20.

After the first session they guy playing a druid that was planing on taking draconic wildshape accused me of power gaming because I had a bunch of hirelings, and she was doing too much damage. He basically killed the game after 1 session because the dm didn't want to deal with conflict.

This was also the game the forever sold me on point buy, because my girlfriends character had a combined 90 stat points for a character that could basically run on a pair of 16's our poor monk rolled 6 points under average. Unfortunately it was not even in a "cool I got 2 18's and 4 8's" way it was something like a 14, 2 12's, a 10 and an 8, and he was was just useless.

That's why i make a roll as a DM and give the dice results to the players to put them together the way they want. So that everybody has the same combined stats, and may have a big stat if they want.

[Mystral]

"The aristocrats".

[Calthropstu]

That's why i make a roll as a DM and give the dice results to the players to put them together the way they want. So that everybody has the same combined stats, and may have a big stat if they want.

Roll 6 sets. Arrange them side by side.

Players may pick any set going vertical, horizontal or diagonal (16 sets total)
Each set may only be used once. Die rolls determine pick order.

That's how I do it.

[Kyrell1978]

Roll 6 sets. Arrange them side by side.

Players may pick any set going vertical, horizontal or diagonal (16 sets total)
Each set may only be used once. Die rolls determine pick order.

That's how I do it.

That's pretty cool. All my players and I like playing at a pretty powerful level so I just give them 90 points and say "enjoy, put them wherever you want."

[ATHATH]

Yeah. At least I've never heard of anyone getting shot (https://www.yahoo.com/news/mass-shooting-reported-jacksonville-183605118.html) over a ttrpg.

But seriously, people are messed up.
There was a guy who got stabbed, though, and another guy who got threatened by a DM with a gun (IIRC). Both of the stories were posted on this forum, IIRC, so maybe they'll get reposted or linked to here.

[Kyrell1978]

There was a guy who got stabbed, though, and another guy who got threatened by a DM with a gun (IIRC). Both of the stories were posted on this forum, IIRC, so maybe they'll get reposted or linked to here.
**** like this is why the 80s sucked for table top gamers.

[Eldest]

Lanky had (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?23784-I-think-I-just-dealt-with-the-worst-gaming-session) a rough time of it (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?93633-In-which-the-worst-session-comes-back-to-haunt-me-Sort-of) with games. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?95189-New-Worst-Session-How-Lanky-got-hisself-stabbed!)

To be clear, because it's hard to tell: that's three links.

My personal horror story was just one childish person who I was playing a mixed WoD game with. We were playing the two mages in the group, and I was mentoring him IC. It turned romantic IC, where my mage was a member of the enemy faction to his (for anybody that knows NWoD mage, she was a Seer, his character was a Free Councilor), and it was meant to be dramatic and tension-ridden.

Now, I compulsively put "IC" there, because the lump that was playing the other character basically tried to turn this into something out of character, knowing I had a girlfriend, and went into unwanted graphic details on exactly how the characters were having sex.

I put my foot down, of course, and he stopped doing it after a serious discussion with him, me, and the GM, but I will not play with that guy again and I'm quite cautious about unknown players and relationships IC now.

[farothel]

So yeah, my swanmay 2e psionicist is made unconcious. One of the pcs decides to rape her.
The gm rolls for pregnancy. I am pregnant. I use a haste spell to age myself to have the baby faster.
I have spellfire like abilities. Gm rules I gain thousands of spellfire points instantly. I explode and die doing thousands of damage to the surrounding area.

Yeah. It ultimately ends with the gm tackling me because I refused to give him my character sheet as I left.

So I ate it. I have not seen this level of dickery since.

I must say that this wouldn't have worked with me either, as player or as GM.

In our regular group we would never do such a thing. Some in-party friction is often present (and often quite a lot of fun to do), but I've never seen it go further than that. I've played in games were more mature stuff like this has come up (we were all 30+ years old, so mature topic can) but you never, ever do stuff like that to another character without the player knowing and agreeing. I've once written a story on sexual abuse in a PBeM game, but there is was me writing for my own character, with GM approval (and content warning on top of the post), as some sort of twisted character development.

I think when I see all this that I'm quite lucky with my regular roleplay group. We never had any of these stories. The worst we had was one player leaving because he argued that other players were hugging the spotlight too much, as they were much more quick witted and better at impromptu replies. He wasn't wrong in that, but we had talked about it before and the GM tried to give him more time to come with replies, more time to answer and a bit more plot to shine and he also spent a lot of time on his smartphone ignoring the extra plot. And that parting was on friendly terms and we still see each other from time to time to play boardgames.

[Calthropstu]

I must say that this wouldn't have worked with me either, as player or as GM.

In our regular group we would never do such a thing. Some in-party friction is often present (and often quite a lot of fun to do), but I've never seen it go further than that. I've played in games were more mature stuff like this has come up (we were all 30+ years old, so mature topic can) but you never, ever do stuff like that to another character without the player knowing and agreeing. I've once written a story on sexual abuse in a PBeM game, but there is was me writing for my own character, with GM approval (and content warning on top of the post), as some sort of twisted character development.

I think when I see all this that I'm quite lucky with my regular roleplay group. We never had any of these stories. The worst we had was one player leaving because he argued that other players were hugging the spotlight too much, as they were much more quick witted and better at impromptu replies. He wasn't wrong in that, but we had talked about it before and the GM tried to give him more time to come with replies, more time to answer and a bit more plot to shine and he also spent a lot of time on his smartphone ignoring the extra plot. And that parting was on friendly terms and we still see each other from time to time to play boardgames.

Yeah, the group was a bunch of absolute jerks. But it was not the worst campaign I've ever been in. The group itself was toxic, but the game was fun in spite of it and I have to say I enjoyed it.

In direct contrast, the worst campaign I was in had great players but the gm was horribly inept.

[Manyasone]

Roll 6 sets. Arrange them side by side.

Players may pick any set going vertical, horizontal or diagonal (16 sets total)
Each set may only be used once. Die rolls determine pick order.

That's how I do it.

I must be daft, when I arrange them in a six by six grid, I only get 14 choices.
How?

EDIT: yeah, really daft...it's my dice roll method. We use the 5d4 method. I made a 6d4 grid...idjit...still, it brings the choices down to 12. What dice roll method you use, Cal?

[Calthropstu]

I must be daft, when I arrange them in a six by six grid, I only get 14 choices.
How?

EDIT: yeah, really daft...it's my dice roll method. We use the 5d4 method. I made a 6d4 grid...idjit...still, it brings the choices down to 12. What dice roll method you use, Cal?

You have 6 up and down
6 left and right.
2 diagonal from corner to corner.
I miscounted it's 14, not 16.

4d6 drop lowrst reroll 1's.

[PokéTriforce]

A classic in my games is I will describe something like ''an altar made of pure obsidian rock and covered with slowly flowing blood, with a human skull with two diamonds in it's eye sockets on top. Around the altar are the chard skeletal remains of several people." Then a player will say "I go pick up that skull!".

I take my waterskin and fill it with the flowing blood (for later use). I'll use my dagger to pry the gems from the skull. Can I loot the chard remains while I'm at it?

[PokéTriforce]

I played with an individual who was so terrified of dying or putting the character in danger that they never wanted to leave to go do anything without 100 percent confirmation that there would be no danger. We spent more time in libraries than dungeons and the main goal of every campaign became to play shopkeeper simulator to earn money rather than actually adventure.

In a group that I was in, the DM killed me right away (to establish his DM dominance to the group). My character was going to be switched out, anyway (since my character wouldn't have fit with where the DM was taking the game -- after the previous DM turned over his game in order to become a player...and not deal with another player who kept causing problems for him -- as a DM).

My new character was a cleric/anti-cleric (modded to be balanced -- with the DM's approval). Worshiper of Taia, he went through some changes that caused him to have only HALF his spells & abilities (with only the other half available when he was the other). Actually, he was a cleric by day and an anti-cleric by night. I designed a Jekyll & Hyde character. Neither had memories of when they were the other.

Anyway, we got to a town. The DM's friend wanted to slowly take over this town. The DM was allowing it. The next thing I knew, we had gone 3 or 4 sessions without even continuing the adventure. It was all about helping the DM's friend's PC take over the town (and becoming henchmen). I talked with some of the other players. One of them said he didn't want to risk leaving town -- based on the dangers out thee and the next town being too far away.

I worked with the DM and created an elven princess who, when there was danger, would disguise herself as a warrior and fight. I was going for Zelda as Sheik (for the warrior). She had a carriage (to eliminate the problem players had with distance). After the 5th or 6th session without them leaving (because they were being paid well, as henchmen), the DM & I had the princess leave with another party (to stop the army of evil from taking over the lands).

We had had enough. I came up with another PC to mess with the DM's friend (once again, having the DM's permission). Minion was a half-Bugbear/half-Orc Blackguard. The INT & WIS were his "dump stats". His only function was to work for the DM's friend's PC...and be such a nuisance (bumbling & botching things up) that the DM's friend's PC would lose most of the town's servitude.

Wouldn't you know it? The DM's friend was no longer able to make it to sessions (starting the session after Minion joined the party). With that, the DM's friend's PC was caught by the authorities (along with Minion). Both were taken to a ship that set sail for an exile continent. The princess made her way back to town -- announcing that the group she was with were all killed. We got the game back on track.

A couple more sessions went. Then, the DM got a new job -- and couldn't continue the campaign, anymore.

[PokéTriforce]

Tried it but it was compounded by the fact that shopkeeper was also the dm's significant other and was shown considerable favoritism. I tried but eventually had to leave the group.

I KNOW that guy! His live-in girlfriend & her cousin got to have all the luck in his campaign -- while the rest of us barely scraped by. If you check out my Character Identities -- (Stories from the PCs themselves) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?560202-Character-Identities-(Stories-from-the-PCs-themselves)) thread, you'll learn more about him.

[MesiDoomstalker]

I had a group once that, over the course of 4 games, got me banned from playing 3 of the 4 class archetypes in 4e. For those uninitiated, 4e categorized all the classes into one of four categories; Striker, Defender, Controller and Leader. Striker was DPR, Defender was MMO Tanks (basically), Controller did battlefield control, and Leader's did healing/buffing. Now, I say I was banned but that implies there was something wrong with how I played. That is not the case.

The first game I played a Cleric, because we needed a healer. To make a long story short, I was banned because I couldn't heal enough to actually function as a healer. The problem being; that's actually really hard to actually do. 4e is very well regimented so that as long as you have a Leader, you should be able to go through encounters with minimal damage at the end. Just how the game math works. Assuming the DM did things right and didn't fudge numbers and throw out wildly unbalanced encounters. Or played dumb wolves as the utmost strategist who recognize a spellcaster and dog-pile the Wizard. Or have a Great Wyrm Black Dragon kidnap the level 4 Cleric from the more appropriate Very Young (I assume) Black Dragon boss fight. It was my fault that I was hundreds of feet in the air in the claws of a massively out-of-our-depth dragon and thus unable to affect the battle in any way. But yes, banned from healing because I couldn't outheal DM's baloney.

The second game, I play a Warforged Wizard. Lots of teasing for playing a 'stupid combination' which isn't abated by pointing out one of the signature heroes for Eberron is Warforged Wizard. More teasing for forgoing Magic Missile. And Fireball. For note; Wizards in 4e are Controllers. They have damage options but they are bad compared to Strikers and their Battlefield Control options are soooo much better. After I respecced to abuse Magic Missile, I'm banned from using Magic Missile (no I can't respecc, I'm just a filthy power gamer for wanting to remove a spell I'm not allowed to cast anymore). So back to Wizards actual job, denial. Big boss fight, drop a Daily whose effect is basically, deal damage every round and knock them back. Since the effect lasts for the encounter, and the boss is an Ogre with no range, we just sat on the opposite side of the effect and let the Ogre run into it, take damage get knocked back and then use its Standard to move forward again. And then I hit it with a weaker ability that pushed it back again. Rinse and Repeat till it died and we took little damage. Banned from playing Controllers for doing what is described on the tin. "I'm not having fun when you make my encounters easy." Ya well I don't have fun when I can't do my job either.

Third game, I'm batting 0 for 2 for not getting banned from a whole category of classes. I pick Battlemind this time, a Defender. Most Defenders are reactive tanks; they punish enemies who don't target them. Battlemind's main one is basically a charge attack triggered whenever someone attacks an ally (only once per round). That ability was banned the first time it was used. "A Dwarf shouldn't be moving outside his turn! That's kobolds!" Progressively more bans and 'fixes' to other base mechanics of the Defender archetype.

There was a fourth game but I was so beyond done by then I didn't even care. I rolled a paladin, since the DM was a player this time and she could eat something I'm sure is censored she wasn't in control anymore. That game didn't last very long and the troublesome members of that group dispersed and left those who weren't toxic waste. Thank gods.

To recap; I was banned from Healing because I can't outheal a DM who didn't know what she was doing. I was banned from Controllers for Controlling. And I was banned from Defenders for Defending.

[Kyrell1978]

I had a group once that, over the course of 4 games, got me banned from playing 3 of the 4 class archetypes in 4e. For those uninitiated, 4e categorized all the classes into one of four categories; Striker, Defender, Controller and Leader. Striker was DPR, Defender was MMO Tanks (basically), Controller did battlefield control, and Leader's did healing/buffing. Now, I say I was banned but that implies there was something wrong with how I played. That is not the case.

The first game I played a Cleric, because we needed a healer. To make a long story short, I was banned because I couldn't heal enough to actually function as a healer. The problem being; that's actually really hard to actually do. 4e is very well regimented so that as long as you have a Leader, you should be able to go through encounters with minimal damage at the end. Just how the game math works. Assuming the DM did things right and didn't fudge numbers and throw out wildly unbalanced encounters. Or played dumb wolves as the utmost strategist who recognize a spellcaster and dog-pile the Wizard. Or have a Great Wyrm Black Dragon kidnap the level 4 Cleric from the more appropriate Very Young (I assume) Black Dragon boss fight. It was my fault that I was hundreds of feet in the air in the claws of a massively out-of-our-depth dragon and thus unable to affect the battle in any way. But yes, banned from healing because I couldn't outheal DM's baloney.

The second game, I play a Warforged Wizard. Lots of teasing for playing a 'stupid combination' which isn't abated by pointing out one of the signature heroes for Eberron is Warforged Wizard. More teasing for forgoing Magic Missile. And Fireball. For note; Wizards in 4e are Controllers. They have damage options but they are bad compared to Strikers and their Battlefield Control options are soooo much better. After I respecced to abuse Magic Missile, I'm banned from using Magic Missile (no I can't respecc, I'm just a filthy power gamer for wanting to remove a spell I'm not allowed to cast anymore). So back to Wizards actual job, denial. Big boss fight, drop a Daily whose effect is basically, deal damage every round and knock them back. Since the effect lasts for the encounter, and the boss is an Ogre with no range, we just sat on the opposite side of the effect and let the Ogre run into it, take damage get knocked back and then use its Standard to move forward again. And then I hit it with a weaker ability that pushed it back again. Rinse and Repeat till it died and we took little damage. Banned from playing Controllers for doing what is described on the tin. "I'm not having fun when you make my encounters easy." Ya well I don't have fun when I can't do my job either.

Third game, I'm batting 0 for 2 for not getting banned from a whole category of classes. I pick Battlemind this time, a Defender. Most Defenders are reactive tanks; they punish enemies who don't target them. Battlemind's main one is basically a charge attack triggered whenever someone attacks an ally (only once per round). That ability was banned the first time it was used. "A Dwarf shouldn't be moving outside his turn! That's kobolds!" Progressively more bans and 'fixes' to other base mechanics of the Defender archetype.

There was a fourth game but I was so beyond done by then I didn't even care. I rolled a paladin, since the DM was a player this time and she could eat something I'm sure is censored she wasn't in control anymore. That game didn't last very long and the troublesome members of that group dispersed and left those who weren't toxic waste. Thank gods.

To recap; I was banned from Healing because I can't outheal a DM who didn't know what she was doing. I was banned from Controllers for Controlling. And I was banned from Defenders for Defending.

Wow. That sucks. I hope everything worked out for you eventually.

[Calthropstu]

I had a group once that, over the course of 4 games, got me banned from playing 3 of the 4 class archetypes in 4e. For those uninitiated, 4e categorized all the classes into one of four categories; Striker, Defender, Controller and Leader. Striker was DPR, Defender was MMO Tanks (basically), Controller did battlefield control, and Leader's did healing/buffing. Now, I say I was banned but that implies there was something wrong with how I played. That is not the case.

The first game I played a Cleric, because we needed a healer. To make a long story short, I was banned because I couldn't heal enough to actually function as a healer. The problem being; that's actually really hard to actually do. 4e is very well regimented so that as long as you have a Leader, you should be able to go through encounters with minimal damage at the end. Just how the game math works. Assuming the DM did things right and didn't fudge numbers and throw out wildly unbalanced encounters. Or played dumb wolves as the utmost strategist who recognize a spellcaster and dog-pile the Wizard. Or have a Great Wyrm Black Dragon kidnap the level 4 Cleric from the more appropriate Very Young (I assume) Black Dragon boss fight. It was my fault that I was hundreds of feet in the air in the claws of a massively out-of-our-depth dragon and thus unable to affect the battle in any way. But yes, banned from healing because I couldn't outheal DM's baloney.

The second game, I play a Warforged Wizard. Lots of teasing for playing a 'stupid combination' which isn't abated by pointing out one of the signature heroes for Eberron is Warforged Wizard. More teasing for forgoing Magic Missile. And Fireball. For note; Wizards in 4e are Controllers. They have damage options but they are bad compared to Strikers and their Battlefield Control options are soooo much better. After I respecced to abuse Magic Missile, I'm banned from using Magic Missile (no I can't respecc, I'm just a filthy power gamer for wanting to remove a spell I'm not allowed to cast anymore). So back to Wizards actual job, denial. Big boss fight, drop a Daily whose effect is basically, deal damage every round and knock them back. Since the effect lasts for the encounter, and the boss is an Ogre with no range, we just sat on the opposite side of the effect and let the Ogre run into it, take damage get knocked back and then use its Standard to move forward again. And then I hit it with a weaker ability that pushed it back again. Rinse and Repeat till it died and we took little damage. Banned from playing Controllers for doing what is described on the tin. "I'm not having fun when you make my encounters easy." Ya well I don't have fun when I can't do my job either.

Third game, I'm batting 0 for 2 for not getting banned from a whole category of classes. I pick Battlemind this time, a Defender. Most Defenders are reactive tanks; they punish enemies who don't target them. Battlemind's main one is basically a charge attack triggered whenever someone attacks an ally (only once per round). That ability was banned the first time it was used. "A Dwarf shouldn't be moving outside his turn! That's kobolds!" Progressively more bans and 'fixes' to other base mechanics of the Defender archetype.

There was a fourth game but I was so beyond done by then I didn't even care. I rolled a paladin, since the DM was a player this time and she could eat something I'm sure is censored she wasn't in control anymore. That game didn't last very long and the troublesome members of that group dispersed and left those who weren't toxic waste. Thank gods.

To recap; I was banned from Healing because I can't outheal a DM who didn't know what she was doing. I was banned from Controllers for Controlling. And I was banned from Defenders for Defending.

I tried 4e and it was so horrible I couldn't get past 4 sessions. The mechanics were crap, combats were crap, and doing anything outside of combat was completely unsupported by rules.

And I refuse to even try any future d&d editions.

That said, ban ME from playing something? I ban you from dming for me. I'd have been gone after the first.

[Kyrell1978]

I tried 4e and it was so horrible I couldn't get past 4 sessions. The mechanics were crap, combats were crap, and doing anything outside of combat was completely unsupported by rules.

And I refuse to even try any future d&d editions.

That said, ban ME from playing something? I ban you from dming for me. I'd have been gone after the first.
I tried 4e a couple of different times. It felt too much like a video game to me. All the per blank powers seemed like cool down timers, but hey I know some people had fun with it. I''ll stick with pathfinder and older.

[Melcar]

Ever have a DM kill a PC just because that player never lost a character before? Ever have a player kill another player just because that other player leveled up before the first player? Ever have a player kill their PC just because that character was having a bad day?

This thread isn't just about killings. DMs vs. players. Players vs. players. It's only natural that some games might have tension. This thread is about those times that you wonder why you chose to hang out with these people in the first place.

This... just do this! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2-MCPa_3rU)

[Kyrell1978]

This... just do this! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2-MCPa_3rU)

Throw rocks at them? :smallwink:

[PokéTriforce]

I, too, had tried 4th (DEMO games), a couple of different times. I just couldn't get into it. I even attempted 5th (DEMO game). That didn't work for me, either. I have one friend who actually didn't mind the demo he played for 5th. He just wants someone else to pay for his books, if he was going to play that. Since the other 4 of us (in the D&D group I run) prefer 3.5, we won't be obtaining any books from 5th. Therefore, he will have to join a different group, if he wants to play 5th.

After all, there's nothing wrong with playing in multiple campaigns.

[Bohandas]

Switch from Dungeons And Dragons to Paranoia XP

[MesiDoomstalker]

Wow. That sucks. I hope everything worked out for you eventually. It did, in the end. Like I said, the problem people went away briefly and we (those who remained who are incidnetally the long term friends who got me into the hobby in the first place and are great) didn't mention we started a new game without them. Or the next game. Or the next. And so forth.


I tried 4e and it was so horrible I couldn't get past 4 sessions. The mechanics were crap, combats were crap, and doing anything outside of combat was completely unsupported by rules.

And I refuse to even try any future d&d editions.

That said, ban ME from playing something? I ban you from dming for me. I'd have been gone after the first.

I hadn't quite yet learned the idiom "No gaming is better than bad gaming." I was contemplated quitting the game but since I hosted, that meant canceling the game since no one else could host and younger me was too squeamish of pissing people off to do that. Now, in the rare instance someone does something not kosher at game night, they aren't coming back. But that hasn't' had to happen yet (and the issue people have been made clear they are no longer welcome).


I tried 4e a couple of different times. It felt too much like a video game to me. All the per blank powers seemed like cool down timers, but hey I know some people had fun with it. I''ll stick with pathfinder and older.

When I actually got to play I enjoyed it alot. I see where some people won't like it. I'd play it with gamists players who want to crunch numbers and run a WoW Raid without a computer. File off the D&D label and label it properly, and it's perfectly good game at what it's supposed to be.

[Kyrell1978]

It did, in the end. Like I said, the problem people went away briefly and we (those who remained who are incidnetally the long term friends who got me into the hobby in the first place and are great) didn't mention we started a new game without them. Or the next game. Or the next. And so forth.



I hadn't quite yet learned the idiom "No gaming is better than bad gaming." I was contemplated quitting the game but since I hosted, that meant canceling the game since no one else could host and younger me was too squeamish of pissing people off to do that. Now, in the rare instance someone does something not kosher at game night, they aren't coming back. But that hasn't' had to happen yet (and the issue people have been made clear they are no longer welcome).



When I actually got to play I enjoyed it alot. I see where some people won't like it. I'd play it with gamists players who want to crunch numbers and run a WoW Raid without a computer. File off the D&D label and label it properly, and it's perfectly good game at what it's supposed to be.

Glad to hear everything worked out. I've certainly "failed" to mention some new games to people before as well.

[PokéTriforce]

There are only 2 other "failed events" with that player; but, I'll save those for another time.

The player that created Sea Man in one of my campaigns was in other campaigns I ran. He always wants people to think he's a good guy; so he does stuff he thinks will make him look good.

One time, when the party reached a town, I had a beggar approach them. When said player gave a gold piece, I told him 2 others showed up...also begging for change. He said he tosses 2 silver pieces at them, each. I told him five more showed up. He tossed 5 copper pieces at each of them. I told him even more beggars were surrounding him. He said his PC runs away.

Of course, that's when the problem might have been with the DM (which was me). And this leads me to another DM who kept adding more trouble into the mix. I don't remember if I mentioned this or not: I was in a campaign that senselessly killed someone's PC -- just because she never lost a PC in anyone's campaign before.

There was a door to the basement. One of the PCs decided to try to bash open the door. He failed. The "soon to be dead" PC simply followed the lead of the previous PC. She, too, failed. I said that I check the door handle. The door was unlocked. I opened the door. Arrows/bolts came flying through. I succeeded on my Reflex roll. She (and the other who tried to break-down the door) failed theirs. The DM said the last one was too far & concealed to be hit. We were facing 8 [I don't remember what race]. We all fled. They fired on us again. For whatever reason, the DM said the rolls targeted the specific PC. She died. We took a break.

During the break, I asked him why there were 8 of them...especially since we were Level 4 and they were CR 6. He said there wasn't. I questioned him on that. He said there were originally only 2 of them, which we could have handled. He said that after the first "door bashing" attempt, he doubled them, to teach us a lesson. I replied to him, "I'm assuming that if _I_ had attempted to bash the door, there would have been 16? And the last person would have made it 32 of them...in a 6x4 grid room?!?"

His reply was that he wouldn't have made it higher than 12 of them firing at us (and the other 12 in that room would be melee fighters). Since only one of the players was not in the room at the time, we informed him (as we packed-up our stuff). We all left his game.

[Bohandas]

There was a guy who got stabbed, though, and another guy who got threatened by a DM with a gun (IIRC). Both of the stories were posted on this forum, IIRC, so maybe they'll get reposted or linked to here.


**** like this is why the 80s sucked for table top gamers.

It's not like that doesn;t happen with other kinds of games. Especially games of chance.

[Calthropstu]

It's not like that doesn;t happen with other kinds of games. Especially games of chance.

There are 4 deaths on average each year related to Monopoly.

[PokéTriforce]

Small victories indeed. Coming to blows over a game is stupid. Fun little fact: there's an average of 4 Monopoly related deaths each year.

There are 4 deaths on average each year related to Monopoly.

:eek: Remind me not to play Monopoly with you. :tongue:

[Kyrell1978]

So yeah, my swanmay 2e psionicist is made unconcious. One of the pcs decides to rape her.

I know some people wouldn't like me "taking away player agency," but I'd have stopped this right here. If your "agency" includes this then you don't need to play at my table.

[PokéTriforce]

OK. I'm a hypocrite. In the thread " Character Identities (Stories Form the PCs, Themselves) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?560202-Character-Identities-(Stories-from-the-PCs-themselves)) ", I mentioned how I won't be a part of his game.

Well...as it turns out, the roommate is back in the DM's game -- as a player, this time (new character). Somehow, I'm expected to be there, as well. At least my character gets to be played. I have a feeling this will be my ONLY time playing in the DM's campaign. I'll explain why the DM needs to stay away from D&D (as both a DM AND a player), some other time.

[Calthropstu]

:eek: Remind me not to play Monopoly with you. :tongue:

You'll be fine so long as I get to play the car. And get to be the bank. And DON'T YOU DARE TAKE THAT PROPERTY, IT'S MINE. YOU ******* GIMME THAT PROPERTY. *Pulls knife*

[NerdHut]

My worst experiences thus far have been pretty mild (on my end). Oversized groups; power gamers who were fun to have around, but difficult to play with; and life drama causing games to dissolve (like one player cheating on another with a third).

The worst actual games I've been in were at the same time. As a group of four people we had two games going each week (Saturdays for one and Sundays for the other, I believe), so we were going back and forth between two campaigns each with three PCs.

The problem wasn't even drama or being bad people. It was dramatically different playstyles. One campaign had a little bit of RPing, and lots of powerful homebrewing that made the mechanics nearly impossible to track (And I'm the kind of person who makes spreadsheets for fun), and when we had battles, they tended to last a session and a half (or about 6-7 hours all total). The other was 98% combat. I couldn't deal with it, and the other player who didn't DM was in the same boat. So we just left the games.

Luckily, we're all still friends, and one of those DMs even played in my most recent game when we agreed he could power game a little as long as the basis of his build was a little weak to start off. He's starting another game very soon, and at the moment it looks like he's pulled back on the over-the-top stuff, so I've agreed to play again.

TL;DR: I haven't rolled a natural 1 when choosing a group, but I've rolled low a couple times.

[DeadMech]

I'd say my picks for choosing groups averaged more around 3-4 than rolling a 1. No one get's stabbed, or molested, or assaulted, and at the end of the day no one hates one another. Just really disappointing and a waste of everybody's time.

DM 1: I'm super excited about this final fantasy rebuild of 3.5 I made. There are spots open, first come first serve.
Me: I like final fantasy and DnD, sure.
DM 2: I'm here too. We're running multiple games. I helped make the overhaul and we really want to test it out.
DM 1: Here's the half a book of custom classes and setting lore we made for the game. These are the other players of the team you're joining. A white mage and a black mage and summoner.
Other party members: Hello.
Me: Looks like the party needs some meat. Usually I don't go for melee classes but this knight class fills just what we need and it's got a bunch of neat features that I've never seen before.
DM 1: Oh yeah we borrowed some stuff from tome of battle to make the martial's a bit more rounded out.
Me: Neat. Never read it. Anyway here's my sheet.
DM 1: Great. let's get started.

Proceed to play a pretty fun game for a week by play by post. Dispatched off to a fortress a weeks journey away to gather scouting information on the orcs that took it so that a battle plan to take it back can be formed by the army.

Me: Alright team. We reached the fortress. Let's lie low and see what we can learn before we report back.
Team: yeah!
Dm 1:(disappears off the face of the planet)
Dm 2:My buddy's got busy with stuff. Anyway. I'm taking over the campaign til he gets back. Sometime this week I'll post the continuation after I finish up some stuff for my party. (proceeds to fall off the face of the planet as well)
Us: Well then...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DM: I'm super excited about this diablo themed campaign. There are spots open.
Me: I like diablo and DnD.
Dm: Great. Here's the custom angel race you'll be playing. It's basically a full progression 1-20 class that you will be playing gestalted with a regular class. Your group will be a bunch of angels who choose to be exiled from the high heavens like Tyrael in order to save humanity from the forces of hell.
Me: Neat. This angel class is super OP. Full BAB, great saves, Full divine caster like a cleric but has limited spells known and charisma casting like a sorcerer, free ability score increases, charisma bonuses added to a bunch of stuff like saves and AC like a nymph or something, not terrible skills per level, really big skill list, free weapon proficiency.
DM: Oh yeah. But you'll be facing literally hordes of enemies and the demons running hell are all massively powerful. You'll need it. Here's a 40-something point buy. Go nuts.
other player: Dibs on paladin. Big ole muscle head with a giant sword and full of vengeance and smite.
Another guy: Dual kukri weilding rogue!
Someone else: Something with a bow.
Me: Neat. Well Sorcerer obliviously synergizes with the angel and we don't have any arcanists or knowledge skills so I'll go knowledgmancer. (Proceed to spend an all nighter researching angel and diablo lore for character background and characterization)

Game starts. We start in the high heavens making our last goodbyes before we depart coming crashing down outside a town under siege by undead. Never heard of that happening before.. anyway we mob up some zombies and I start checking the wounded humans, applying cure mino rwounds to stabilize whomever is still still alive.

Dm: (disappears off the face of the planet)

That's only 2 examples but pretty much sums up my experience with the hobby in general.

[Masterabomb]

It never should have gotten past this point. I would have picked up my stuff and gone home as soon as the GM allowed that to occur at his table.

I completely agree. As a dm, a pc raping another will have you banned from my game. I barely even allow them to fight each other. Only if it seems plausible from a player standpoint, if its caused by ooc conflict i stop it. But i have seen things get over played at many tables. You have to set your own boundaries.

[PokéTriforce]

I completely agree. As a dm, a pc raping another will have you banned from my game. I barely even allow them to fight each other. Only if it seems plausible from a player standpoint, if its caused by ooc conflict i stop it. But i have seen things get over played at many tables. You have to set your own boundaries.

It's even worse when the NPC does it. In a game I was in, the DM wanted to teach the players (not the PCs; but the players) a lesson. One of the players drew her PC as sexy with skimpy clothing (animé style). She was playing an elven cross-class rogue & ranger. Her DEX was high...but her STR wasn't. Because she missed the previous campaign, the DM said that her PC was still in the previous town. So far so good. She headed to where the rest of us were. When she reached where we were, she went to the tavern (rather than try to find us). That's when the DM decided an NPC took her to the back alley and...

He lost half his players, because of that. His excuse was that she shouldn't have been so scantly dressed and wandering into a bar without knowing what would happen to her.

[Buufreak]

His excuse was that she shouldn't have been so scantly dressed and wandering into a bar without knowing what would happen to her.

Macho slut-shaming mentality™, now in tabletop form.

[Elricaltovilla]

It's even worse when the NPC does it. In a game I was in, the DM wanted to teach the players (not the PCs; but the players) a lesson. One of the players drew her PC as sexy with skimpy clothing (animé style). She was playing an elven cross-class rogue & ranger. Her DEX was high...but her STR wasn't. Because she missed the previous campaign, the DM said that her PC was still in the previous town. So far so good. She headed to where the rest of us were. When she reached where we were, she went to the tavern (rather than try to find us). That's when the DM decided an NPC took her to the back alley and...

He lost half his players, because of that. His excuse was that she shouldn't have been so scantly dressed and wandering into a bar without knowing what would happen to her.

My question is, how did this result in only losing half the players?

I am starting to realize I may have been spoiled in the quality of person I've been able to Roleplay with. The worst that's ever happened to me was that we didn't play game that night, despite everyone being there and it being my specific birthday request. Overall, I'd say I've been very lucky.

[Arbane]

He lost half his players, because of that. His excuse was that she shouldn't have been so scantly dressed and wandering into a bar without knowing what would happen to her.

I'm very disappointed in the other half of his players.

[Calthropstu]

Macho slut-shaming mentality™, now in tabletop form.

I feel someone needs to point out that this is actually a thing. Dressing like a slut garners a certain kind of attention, much of it negative or unwanted. If a friend of mine were to try going out alone dressed in extremely provacative clothing I'd probably say something along the lines of "looking to get laid tonight?"

If it were my daughter when she reaches that age, I would flat out forbid it. Because this actually happens. And it's not rare. So the gm in this case, while a bit heavy handed, is not completely undefendable... Unless it was "and you are grabbed from behind, dragged off and..." With no chance for a respinse. That's just bull****.

[Doctor Awkward]

I feel someone needs to point out that this is actually a thing. Dressing like a slut garners a certain kind of attention, much of it negative or unwanted.
No.
No it is not "a thing".

Rapists don't choose their victims based on their clothing. They choose victims whom they believe they can physically overpower.

[Bohandas]

There are 4 deaths on average each year related to Monopoly.

I was thinking more along the lines of people saying that poker and blackjack and billiards and stuff like that are wicked or whatever

EDIT:
"Trouble with a capital "T" That rhymes with "P" And that stands for Pool"

[martixy]

So there are tons of immature people everywhere. What else is new? Can we now get off the rape train? For the sake of the thread and the sanity of anyone who reads it.

My nat1 on groups was when I stumbled into a powergamey group where no one actually knew how to optimize properly, so everyone just ended up cheating. This was compounded by the inexperienced DM who couldn't tell them apart. Players kept trying to one-up each other, to the point where one of them switched 3 characters in 3 sessions, the last one having leadership and his previous character as a cohort. The whole campaign trudged on for a several sessions, until we ran across the BBEG and his henchmen, in what was supposed to be a non-combat, let-me-monologue event, where the DM signaled "curbstomper here, do not engage". Flew right over most of the party's heads. We began combat. The baddies were dropping some crazy numbers. And so one of the players decided to drop some crazy **** of his own, randomly announcing something that had 2000 DC and a similarly absurd damage value. And the DM just said... okay. Cue endgame cutscene, etc.

I'd love to say he had the self-awareness to just accept defeat and move on, but he probably didn't. I moved on after that.


My next anecdote is not much of a story, as it ended quickly - on the internet, stumbled onto a group where the DM was some immature kid that showed clear favouritism to his friends. Stayed for one session, didn't come back for the next.

[Calthropstu]

No.
No it is not "a thing".

Rapists don't choose their victims based on their clothing. They choose victims whom they believe they can physically overpower.

It's not just rape. There's numerous guys walking up to you to flirt (some of which are too dense or too inebriated or too cocky to take a hint). There's people looking at you with disdain and jealousy, there's exaggerated treatment (a waiter might bend over backwards to get you a free meal while an older waitress might spit in your food.)

A guy pissed off enough at being rejected might attack as well. All I am saying is that a woman alone dressed in provacative clothing garners attention. A lot of it. And mch of it is not good.

Seen it happen on the bus several times, and more than nce a guy had to be ejected from the bus.

[PokéTriforce]

The half of players thing: There were 7 of us. 4 of us left. One of the other three thought the DM made a good call (he, unfortunately, hits on any female, when he can). Another was the DM's friend...and would find the good in anything the DM did. The last one just didn't care. After the session following, the DM decided to let us know that he won't do anything like that again. That's when I heard from the 3 that remained (in 2 sessions after the incident).

Moving on, I'm about to play in a campaign (today) -- just to test out my Eidolon character. The DM asked me to show up and give his game an honest try. This, of course, was AFTER he kept having problems with my character.

His problems went as follows:

Problem #1) "He's a ghost?! You can't do that! If you play a ghost, then I'd have to open the Ghostwalk world. Do you realize how many victims the murderer had caused?!? There would be too many ghosts roaming around in my world!"

Problem #2) When I told him that I could be one of those victims, his reply was, "Then you'd know who killed you! You do realize that you shouldn't be using player knowledge. You can't power-game in my campaign. I won't let ANYONE power-game in my campaign."

Aside from the fact that he allowed his girlfriend (now ex) and her cousin do whatever they wanted in his game -- while the rest of us were made to barely scrape by... Anyway, I assured him that the ghosts would only be those who refused to "move on". I, also, told him that I may not have SEEN my killer. Having gone through the trauma of being killed, my character could have "amnesia" of that incident. He accepted that.

Problem #3) Mind you, I was still creating my PC when the DM called and said, "You're power-gaming, again. I just saw what you said about what incorporeal means." He thought it meant I was translucent & could become invisible. "This means that everyone else can't touch you and that you can hit them. That's being O.P.ed."

I explained that I had to roll the same 50% as everyone else (DMG p. 295). "But you can change forms at will. That means you can become corporeal when you attack and go back to incorporeal when you don't want to be hit." Ghostwalk states that those feats take ONE ROUND to activate. Therefore, I can't just turn it on & off in an instant. It took me a while to explain that to him. I, also, had to explain that he wasn't going to wear armor -- due to the fact that turning incorporeal would drop the armor on the ground. Reverting back to corporeal would mean he has to don on his armor...IN THE MIDDLE OF BATTLE! Besides, this character is NOT A FIGHTER! His "living" class is Commoner. He was designed to be a SUPPORTIVE character.

When I asked the restrictions of creating my character (before I even thought to play an Eidolon), he told me nothing from Faerun or Eberron. He was willing to allow Oriental Adventures (because I tent to create characters from Rokugan). Since we were starting at Level 7, I spent the gold based on level 7 (19,000 gp). When I was to help my friend, I was told -- by the DM -- that he only gets 1,400.

Problem #4...sort of) When I asked why he never told me that BEFORE I spent my gold, his reply was, "I didn't think you were that far in your character design." I told him that he NEVER said that we get less than what the book says we get. After a while, I was allowed to keep what I had purchased. This doesn't seem fair to me (fairness for the others, that is).

Problem #5) Once again, incorporeal beings walking through walls. The DM said that I was giving my character the advantage by bypassing the dangers and damaging the bad guys before the party gets there. He told me that I was going to hog all those points to myself. Once again, I had to remind him that I DO NOT PLAY WITH PLAYER KNOWLEDGE! How would I know that there were bad guys behind the wall? How would I know to avoid traps?

Problem #6) "But you can see invisibility. You know...when you turn incorporeal. You'd be able to see things like that."

He has no clue as to what he's talking about. My character CAN'T see invisibility. At this point, I told him that he can either learn how to read (and read Ghostwalk) or just find out how I play my character when I get there. I said, "Otherwise, I may not join your campaign, at all."

Well, wish me luck!
[This was posted 1 hr. 15 min. before the game starts]

[Doctor Awkward]

It's not just rape. There's numerous guys walking up to you to flirt (some of which are too dense or too inebriated or too cocky to take a hint). There's people looking at you with disdain and jealousy, there's exaggerated treatment (a waiter might bend over backwards to get you a free meal while an older waitress might spit in your food.)

A guy pissed off enough at being rejected might attack as well. All I am saying is that a woman alone dressed in provacative clothing garners attention. A lot of it. And mch of it is not good.

Seen it happen on the bus several times, and more than nce a guy had to be ejected from the bus.

Those people who are too dense, cocky, and/or inebriated to take a hint are *******s. So is the guy who gets pissed off at being rejected. What you say, and what you mean, and what you think is not who you are. What you do is who you are.

People don't choose their outfits because of how they think it will make total strangers they encounter in public feel. They choose them because of how it will make themselves feel. Clothing serves two purposes: protecting your modesty, and expressing yourself. A woman in a slinky dress is exactly the same thing as a man in a sleeveless muscle shirt, or a woman in a three-piece suit, or a man in a corset and a fluffy pink wig.

How other people react to seeing this clothing is entirely on them. No one, at any point, is ever responsible for another person's behavior. If a guy gets angry because he hit on a girl and got rejected, then he is an *******, regardless of whether she was wearing a two-piece bikini or a burqa.

It's still true even in the rare cases of a person dressing provocatively for the sole purpose of garnering special treatment, like your hypothetical server who somehow gets them free meals. She didn't make them do anything. Even if she explicitly said out loud to their face that she was dressing that way for exactly that reason, their response to that is entirely on them. She didn't "seduce them" into getting something. She made a deliberate attempt to manipulate them, and they allowed it to happen.

[Boggartbae]

All I am saying is that a woman alone dressed in provacative clothing garners attention. A lot of it. And mch of it is not good.

Women get bad attention where ever they go in spite of what they're wearing, not because of it.

Also, a man using an RPG to try to teach a woman about the dangers of being a woman in the real world is incredibly conceited and indefensible. Gaming with your friends should be safe and fun. If the DM is such a misogynist that he needs to punish a woman for drawing her character skimpy, then that is 100% on him.

[Arbane]

To those making the 'realism' argument: Do you also have mobs try to lynch drow, tieflings or half-orcs? Why or why not?

[Calthropstu]

Those people who are too dense, cocky, and/or inebriated to take a hint are *******s. So is the guy who gets pissed off at being rejected. What you say, and what you mean, and what you think is not who you are. What you do is who you are.

People don't choose their outfits because of how they think it will make total strangers they encounter in public feel. They choose them because of how it will make themselves feel. Clothing serves two purposes: protecting your modesty, and expressing yourself. A woman in a slinky dress is exactly the same thing as a man in a sleeveless muscle shirt, or a woman in a three-piece suit, or a man in a corset and a fluffy pink wig.

How other people react to seeing this clothing is entirely on them. No one, at any point, is ever responsible for another person's behavior. If a guy gets angry because he hit on a girl and got rejected, then he is an *******, regardless of whether she was wearing a two-piece bikini or a burqa.

It's still true even in the rare cases of a person dressing provocatively for the sole purpose of garnering special treatment, like your hypothetical server who somehow gets them free meals. She didn't make them do anything. Even if she explicitly said out loud to their face that she was dressing that way for exactly that reason, their response to that is entirely on them. She didn't "seduce them" into getting something. She made a deliberate attempt to manipulate them, and they allowed it to happen.
Yes, I agree. People not taking the hint et al are, indeed, *******s. SURPRISE, the world is full of *******s.

As for not getting different treatment, I call bs. I have noted a distinct difference in how I am treated when I wear t-shirts vs suits.
And I have watched how people act around women wearing tight or revealing clothing. One guy was literally jerking off in his pocket on a bus to a teenager wearing a miniskirt.
So it happens. Not taking notice of this is unwise and unhealthy.

To those making the 'realism' argument: Do you also have mobs try to lynch drow, tieflings or half-orcs? Why or why not?

Yes, and I warn my players beforehand. People are prejudiced against those races for good reason.

[PokéTriforce]

Well, wish me luck!
[This was posted 1 hr. 15 min. before the game starts]

I had actually posted it 1 hr. 20 min. before the game was supposed to start. When I got there, I found out that the DM told us the game started at noon because he KNEW that everyone would be up to an hour late. Why did I show up at 11:55am, then?! 1pm comes around...still no game. The DM's excuse was, "I don't want to start the game unless I'm told that I can NPC the player who's running a little late."

Just after 1:20pm, we FINALLY begin the game. One of the players said he had to leave around 6pm. The DM said that he can't guarantee it, because "that would be less than six hours of play."

Throughout the game, they kept talking about strippers & body paint (and other non-game stuff). Besides myself, 2 females and 2 males showed up because we thought there would be a D&D game. Actually, I think there was another female who was there to play D&D, too.

One of the males who was there to play D&D was the DM's roommate. The DM kept belittling the roommate. Here are some examples...

Roommate: It's past 1pm. You said you changed it to 1.
DM: I said for people to show up between noon and 1pm.
Roommate: You said for everyone to be here bu noon.
DM: No. I said by 1pm. I told everyone to be here by 1pm...not noon.
Me: Actually, you told me that the game started at noon. That's why I arrived so early.
DM: Well, that's because people tend to be late...up to an hour late. That's why I said to be here by noon. That we we can start the game at 1.
Roommate: But, it's AFTER 1, already!
DM: I can't be unfair to anyone. That's not the paladin way. I'm trying to find out if the last player wants me to NPC her character until she arrives or not.

[By the way, the DM is delusional. He actually BELIEVES that he's the embodiment of a paladin from 3rd edition -- even though he only plays as if the paladin was 2nd edition]

Female Player: Well, can't we just start anyway?
DM: I just told you. I'm waiting for...hold on...that's a text from her. She says it's fine. We can begin now.

Another example...

[After 6 or 7 minutes of 2 players talking (in character)]

Roommate: When will the others get their turn?
DM: Talking is a free action. The haven't actually taken their turn, yet.
Roommate: Talking for that long of a time IS their action. Otherwise...
DM (interrupting roommate): I will not have "rules lawyering" in my game.

[The roommate got up and left]

Female player: Did I do something wrong?
Me: Not really. You just continued after the timer ran out.
DM: Talking is a free action! There is no timer for talking! Are you saying you want me to implement something that's not actually in the RULES?!
Me: So, talking for over...
DM (interrupting me): You do realize that YOU would have to play with those rules, as well. Do you really think you can handle doing that? Let's put it to a vote.
DM: Remember, everyone. Talking is supposed to be a free action. If you choose this, we would have to start a timer when anyone talks. Can you live with that?

[Everyone voted for it. No hesitation -- except by the DM]

The final example was at 6:17pm (when the player -- who had to leave -- packed his stuff and was about to head through the door). We found a place to wrap-up this session and the DM was awarding XP. He gave many of the players 1,500 xp.

DM (to me): Since you weren't really playing, in this session...you were just trying to be funny, right? You weren't actually playing for xp, were you? Because of that, I award you 100 xp.

DM (to roommate): And you don't get anything for not doing anything. I can't award xp if you didn't actually contribute to the game.

[Just to let you know, the roommate explored the building with the rest of the party. He cast read magic on a room full of runes. He conversed with (and found out about) one of the villains. He informed the party leader of what he found out about said villain. He cast halt on a possessed party member. And he shackled said party member.]

DM (after the 2 males, 2 females, and I mentioned everything the roommate did): But he didn't DO anything! He didn't even TELL anyone about his conversation.
Other female player: He DID tell me! He mentioned what she had said.
DM (to roommate): Can you mention anything that Mrs. Gould said?

[After the roommate said "close enough" to what Mrs. Gould said to him, the DM awarded him 1,000 xp]

I can tell you -- for a FACT -- that the 5 of us who showed up for D&D WON'T be there...for October, anyway.

[King of Nowhere]

It's even worse when the NPC does it. In a game I was in, the DM wanted to teach the players (not the PCs; but the players) a lesson. One of the players drew her PC as sexy with skimpy clothing (animé style). She was playing an elven cross-class rogue & ranger. Her DEX was high...but her STR wasn't. Because she missed the previous campaign, the DM said that her PC was still in the previous town. So far so good. She headed to where the rest of us were. When she reached where we were, she went to the tavern (rather than try to find us). That's when the DM decided an NPC took her to the back alley and...

He lost half his players, because of that. His excuse was that she shouldn't have been so scantly dressed and wandering into a bar without knowing what would happen to her.

On the other hand, an attempted rape could have been a perfectly good random encounter. Did the player get to roll dice for it? was it a reasonable fight? I'd certainly see nothing wrong with a gang of would-be rapist out after a party member serving as a low level encounter.
Of course, it's bad if it happens by DM fiat - which is what it seems happened from what is told here, but I won't pass judgment without hearing the story from the other side.
Frankly, I've always been puzzled as to how society makes such a special case of rape while a lot of other violence is accepted in the media. npcs try to kill the party all the time. killing is a heinous crime, but nobody recoils with horror when it is done in fiction. Yet having npcs try to kill the party (or enemies in a movie) is fine, but having them try to rape a party member is not. I can't see any logical reason for it.

As for slut-shaming, one must not confuse caution with victim blaming. It's like, if I walk in the slums wearing a golden rolex wristwatch, I am doing something dangerous. No, there is nothing wrong with wearing expensive wristwatches, and I do not deserve to get robbed. The people robbing me are not justified in robbing me because I was flaunting my expensive watch.
Still, flaunting an expensive watch in a clearly dangerous area is a stupid thing to do, because it draws the attention of bad people. unfortunately there are bad people in the world, and so sometimes one has to exercice caution even when he's doing nothing wrong.
Incidentally, this is only a minor part of the issue, because most of the times the victim knew her rapist. So the advice should not be "dress more", but "hang up with better people".

Which brings us back to roleplaying. Because, really, "hang up with better people" is a maxim that applies to pretty much everything in life. And I would suggest it most strongly at poketriforce, who keeps posting horror stories here. I don't know those people or your life or anything but what you're writing, but it seems you really should set up to gaming with better people. Those who leave your old group disgusted by how it's handled are a good place to start looking.

[Arbane]

(I hope someone who posts on Something Awful is reading this, as there's some primo grognards.txt material here.)



Frankly, I've always been puzzled as to how society makes such a special case of rape while a lot of other violence is accepted in the media. npcs try to kill the party all the time. killing is a heinous crime, but nobody recoils with horror when it is done in fiction. Yet having npcs try to kill the party (or enemies in a movie) is fine, but having them try to rape a party member is not. I can't see any logical reason for it.

/looks at profile in sidebar
"Gender
Male"

I think I found your problem.

Protip: It is statistically unlikely that anyone playing at your table has been killed and has psychological trauma as a result of it. The same is NOT necessarily true for sexual assault.

[Buufreak]

kersnippity

So, I feel like this goes without saying, but the Good Ser Douchington has earned such a name. At this point I feel like the only appropriate question was that if you knew he was going to be this bad why did you go in the first place?

[JyP]

So, I feel like this goes without saying, but the Good Ser Douchington has earned such a name. At this point I feel like the only appropriate question was that if you knew he was going to be this bad why did you go in the first place?
it's not everyday you can encounter a 3rd edition paladin IRL :smallcool:

:smallbiggrin:

[dude123nice]

Ever have a DM kill a PC just because that player never lost a character before? Ever have a player kill another player just because that other player leveled up before the first player? Ever have a player kill their PC just because that character was having a bad day?

This thread isn't just about killings. DMs vs. players. Players vs. players. It's only natural that some games might have tension. This thread is about those times that you wonder why you chose to hang out with these people in the first place.

I would just drop my friendship, and any contact, with these people. They both have issues. REAL serious issues. Get away from them while you still can.

[Arbane]

On the other hand, an attempted rape could have been a perfectly good random encounter.

I have heard enough horror stories of women being chased out of RPGs by rapenards that I no longer have any tolerance for that kind of jackassery, 'realism' arguments be damned.

[Krazzman]

I have heard enough horror stories of women being chased out of RPGs by rapenards that I no longer have any tolerance for that kind of jackassery, 'realism' arguments be damned.

You heard the horror stories of those failed attempts. I can assure you in a mature group the threat as a random encounter can work. Also it's not only women that can be sexually assaulted (just adding).

I think for our groups it's just that we roll if we play each week and fail most weeks... We started Strange Aeons in january 2017 and are still in book 1... still level 2 though.

Before that? I had a shadowrun game disintigrate because one player was stealing from the GM... like cups and ****. And another group disintigrated because of their first child... despite being annoyed with their other groups handling of their children.

[Calthropstu]

I have heard enough horror stories of women being chased out of RPGs by rapenards that I no longer have any tolerance for that kind of jackassery, 'realism' arguments be damned.

See, this I can understand. There will always be idiots who take realism to the extreme. If you explain that to a player or gm, and they refuse to honor that request then it can fully be considered jackassery

[Buufreak]

My hard rule of thumb comes from a dm point of view: be up front and clear about things. Explain and discuss with the players what can and can not be acceptable at the table. Take input, and don't just vomit overbearing information onto them.

It usually solves a lot of these types of subject matter issues.

[mehs]

So my nat 1 is a long one if I remember right. It was a small group (3 including gm) and we were all more or less new to the game. I was familiar with the rules since I had read the rulebooks as reading material for two years by this point (we were like 14) but I had not been able to play in any actual campaigns other than this one previously so I didn't know some stuff about how the game is actually done other than the rules. So initially me and other player each had 2 characters and the gm had a character as the party leader. Gm let me be mythic and gestalt treating (mythic tiers as half levels) in exchange for a half xp penalty (did not know that mythic tiers are only supposed to be every other level, the book just said they were roughly half a level). Party makeup was other player cleric and fighter, me cleric/wizard (necromancer with undead (gm approved)) rogue/trickster, gmpc sorcerer. Setting was modern day earth (NYC) but with a masquerade and such and there were several other planes (non magical humans were the only ones on the other side of the masquerade) for the different races. We were a mercenary group and initially it was pretty railroady, other than a few suggestions about what we would hunt the party leader (gmpc) made most of the decisions but we were all new to it so it was okay INITIALLY. Periodically some cultists would attack us. They each had amulets with 1/day enervation and we were level 2-5 (but it was 2 vs 5 and they were low level). After a point (like 3 attacks) gmpc decided to visit parents in elven plane for a week or so to see if they would stop attacking us. That was when I found out that gmpc's father was head councilman of elven place and his grandmother was a great wyrm red dragon (as a side note, the other player was a price of orc nation mafia and bodyguard. My guys were two foster brothers...). So after that week we came back and there were cultists in out office in the empire state building. We killed them and then their freaking god (Apophis) tp'ed in and summoned 2 young black dragons... ... ... At this point my rogue decided that simply enduring cultist attacks wouldn't end it any time soon (we didn't even know why they were attacking us) so he went and decided to jump out of the building (feather fall) and track down their base and kill them. The fight with black dragons ended the round I mentioned that dragon zombies would be fun to play with. Apparently the gm just realized I would have dragon corpses if the fight went through so that is when magic fbi swat burst in.

So my rogue had found their base pretty early and this is where the nat 1 started happening. The Gm would only let me storm their base if I made character sheets for the enemy npc’s. The GM didn’t want to do it himself. I made the 40+ character sheets and the rogue stormed the based. The enemy boss wizard within the first few rounds of combat burnt his own base to the ground with an elder fire elemental and multiple walls of fire. The rogue then got put on a bus without my say having any weight in it (he was “on the run from the fbi cause apparently the fbi wont do anything about cultist attacks but sure as **** will do stuff about retaliation against cultist attacks.”). I then experienced the first of many nerfs to come in the form of gestalt and mythic being banned. Gmpc then decided to go to elven plan and do stuff there until everything cooled down (again). Gmpc decided to hunt a dragon so it took 2 levels and over a month of in game time just to get to the dragon’s mountain. On the way I got 2 more nerfs (feats got banned and I was forced to reset my wealth. Gm decided I had been given too much money and I had crafted too much so I had to reset my money to starting 7th level wealth). He even retgoned a magic school I had paid to be built in the orc mafia kingdom separately from the wealth reset. We got to the dragon finally, a cr 12 white dragon. We were level 7. We won easily enough (A MONTH of in game time to prepare to fight a white dragon with no other encounters that day) but next day a high level ranger apparently working for the fbi, a high level orc druid with an antimagic orb and 20+ orc archers came and attacked us. After attacking he demanded surrender. There was no way to win so we did surrender. He apparently had come to arrest me for raising undead and there were three things wrong with that. 1) gm had okayed me raising undead at the start of the campaign. 2) his jurisdiction was only on the earth material plane (and we were on a completely different plane). 3) I had never raised undead while on the earth material plane. He had apparently come to arrest me for casting spells that are illegal in his jurisdiction while in a completely different jurisdiction. After a kangaroo trial (other player argued on my behalf, judge pretty much ignored him), I got executed. This marks the first time he auto kills me. This also marks the start of the true railroading. After I died, apparently SATAN intercepted my soul and forced me to be an ambassador for him I lost all my items other than my headband of int, my sword (which satan upgraded), and an amulet I had wrapped around my sword. He also gave me a cloak of charisma. I then got sent to fey plane to negotiate with the two fey courts. Then I got framed for murder of fey princess. Then I spent several sessions running the **** away from the cr 22 knight of each of the courts. I was level 7 and completely split off from party. One of the knights (nymph cleric 15) even summoned a glabrezu on me which in turn summoned a vrock on me. Thankfully I had sneaked and saw the knight summoning the demon so I expected it and the gm kept having only 1 encounter (of 1 monster each) per day. The demons died to enervation spam. I should not that by this point I had 5 1/day enervation gem amulets from the cultists earlier and I had been crafting the gems onto my sword and according the crafting rules, I now had an at will enervation sword (was using the gems as the cost to upgrade sword with same ability and the transition from 4/day to 5/day is the exact same as 4/day to unlimitied). Satan gave me a broom of flying and guided me to the gmpc’s grandmother’s house (the great wyrm red dragon) which was empty with a note saying “changed caves, if satan, **** off”. A bit after this one of the knights said he wanted to ally with me so he was with me when the other knight (the nymph cleric) caught up with me at the current mountain home (satan had been plane shifting and teleporting me around) of the gmpc’s grandmother. I cast control winds to have a tornado centered on me (solo killing 2 high level demons is great for leveling fast) but the cleric knight just sat under a rock and was unaffected by being in the middle of a tornado. I took the chance to cast defensive spells then greater invisibility then hopped on broom and cast dimension to be in the air outside the tornado aoe and dismissed the tornado. Then I webbed the cleric and spam enervation till she surrendered. Then the other knight (doppelganger rogue) killed him and revealed he had killed the fey princess. He showed up a bit later on but I had delay teleportation on pretty much constant at that point so I just spam cast enervation til he retreats. Now here is the thing: I only got partial xp for the demons and no xp for defeating the knights. NO XP. I met back up with the party, cleared out a mine they had apparently been imprisoned at and took over it. I finally got my cohort (I was given an artificer in a gold mine just as I finished developing a spell to make plants, including magic plants like ore vine grow instantly).
Then after a bit we finally went back to the earth plane and first thing GMPC does is pick up phone and accept job to hunt vampires in london. By this point I had to effect on the plot outside of winning or losing in battle for the past few months of gameplay and been nerfed multiple times with gm even using retgone (I hadn’t picked any gamebreaker feats or such. Not cheese, but previously I had sacred geometry. Which was in a splat the gm gave me for my birthday. It was my only splatbook). So at London I spam casted lesser planar binding to summon 30+ 2 hd scout type outsiders and about 3 hound archons. Because we had to canvas London. LONDON. It ended up not really mattering because we ran into one in the street (not like 30+ scouts looking for days would be any more effective than plot contrivances). We killed that vampire, and that night cast commune to narrow down location of head vamp to 2 sq miles. A few minutes after that a guy knocked on our hotel door. Divinations returned nothing so I cast halt undead which worked and brief fight ensued. He parlayed and told us it was a new vampire stirring up trouble. Guess what? He was lying. Guess what? He was the head vamp. The head vamp we had minuets ago pinpointed to be about 10 miles away. He gave us directions to the crypt. Later that night he kidnapped me. Points of fact: I was surrounded by 30+ scout type outsiders, I was currently glowing like the sun due to spells (greater luminous armor, I got 1 perception check while sleeping vs a level 15 rogue assassin vampire, THE 30+ OUTSIDERS DIDN’T NOTIVE THE BRIGHTEST OBJECT IN THE ROOM DISSAPPEARING. The vamp then brought me to the crypt and turned me. He gave me vague orders which allowed for me to prepare spells (multiple copies of disobedience the uber protection from control and compulsion effects spell) and cast disobedience. I also cast waypoint, a custom spell from since the beginning of the campaign that acts as a beacon for travelling and teleporting to anyone that knows the “code”. The outsiders knew the code. My outsiders teleported in (hound archons carrying a bag of holding containing the ones not capable of teleporting). When the head vamp came by I cast wall of stone to seal up the passageway and any cracks he could escape through while unconscious. He then got a face full of web and 30+ magic missile (CL 1 and 3). He didn’t die from that and dispelled the disobedience but the second round of magic missile got him before he could order anything. I recast disobedience and immediately there was a servant vamp breaking the wall with a scroll of stone shape. Because if you haven’t noticed yet, the gm will do anything to ensure that what he wants to happen will happen because he is addicted to railroading.
Then was the final breaking points that caused me to leave the game. A holy knight joined up with the party and gm straight up said he would auto kill me. This carried a couple of points
1) He kept insulting religion to the point that even though I am not particularly religious I was offended.
2) The holy knight was an expy from a book we both read that shouldn’t be able to kill me (I hadnt done anything evil (the undead was because it is the most effective way to ensure they don’t rise as uncontrolled undead and I had shifted to LG since then anyway) so the major artifact level sword point blank shouldn’t be able to harm me that and it cant harm those who surrender) and the sect’s main goal is to redeem evil not kill it anyway. so he was also ruining characters from a book I liked.
3) He seriously just kept insulting religion
4) It would be the third time he autokilled me, this time just to make sure I don’t *gasp* benefit from the previous time he autokilled me with a free vampire template.
5) By this point it was very much apparent that I had as much weigh in on the story as an insect does.
6) It was just going to escalate with the gm sending things that are grossly stronger than the party just for me to evade until I'm ready to curbstomp it because while he complains about me being op, he never had me face more than one encounter per day, it was almost always against a singular enemy, and my character always knew in-game days what the enemy was going to be before the actual fight happened. That and the Gm kept giving out stuff like the artificer in a gold mine among others without really considering it only to decide against it and retcon it

[EldritchWeaver]

Gestalt + mythic - in particular an incorrectly handled - is gamebreaking. No wonder that the GM did away with it. Could have been nicer about it, I suppose. Sacred Geometry is OP and generally instabanned. Otherwise, blatant railroading, inablity to follow WBL guidelines and retconning anything failing to live up to his mutable standards are a good reason to leave the group.

[King of Nowhere]

my group is only mildly disfunctional. it would probably collapse, the players are a family (mother, father and 2 sons) and they've all been close friends of mine since I was a kid and the couple wasn't married yet, so nobody is gonna leave.

It all started because we all like tabletop gaming, and we'd meet regularly over it, and then someone brought out heroquest, and I knew D&D from before, and so I convinced them to try it. However, most of them never went past the heroquest concept, except the eldest son.
So at first everyone was ignorant of the rules, and that's to be expected. We played about one year, then we had a 5 years skip as I moved to another country, but when I came back we restarted, and we've played another couple of years, so 3 years total. And yet nobody except the elder son has any clue about their character mechanics.
I mean, after the mother reached level 16 with a wizard, when she cast a spell and I ask "what's the saving throw difficulty class (notice, I do not use acronyms that can be confusing)?", she only learned one month ago how to calculate it. And every time I ask her to roll a saving throw - she never knows her modifiers, and her character sheet is often not updated - upon failure she often looks on her character sheet and asks if anything she has would save her. "But I have knowledge (arcana)! Doesn't that count?" When she fails a saving throw against a spell. "But I have +X to will saves" when she fails concentration, and so on. To the point that now "But I have " has become a recurring joke. I'm even considering gifting her an artifact that will let her roll something different from what she was supposed to once per day. She also has the tendency to interrupt plot-critical moments to ask if anyone wants coffy or cake or anything, which is not bad [I]per se, but she interrupts at the wrong moment and then she goes into the kitchen, losing plot-critical stuff.
The elder son is the only one who actualy learned the rules, and the only one who really cares about the setting and the direction of the campaign. So he's the only one who comes up with proposals if I do not prod the party towards a preplanned quest. he has a lot of charisma in real life, and he can't shut it down, not even when playing an orc barbarian with a cha of 5. As a result, he's the face and leader of the party and he conquered plenty of allies through diplomacy - something I justified in-game by saying that he's the only one with a long-term vision, and that he got allies by first defeating them in battle, and then giving them favorable conditions. The main problem is that he takes up a lot of time, both in combat and outside. In combat, because he's the only one who's got a good grasp at strategy, so he basically directs the others. Outside, because he's the only one who knows the campaign world enough to understand their options. The other players are fine being shadowed by him, because he really is the only one who knows what is happening. The result is that when he start discussing plans with me, the other players fall asleep. In a few cases literally, as the father can fall asleep very easily and even in the middle of giving a speech. Now we do most of those discussions (him testing several hypothesis, and me telling him what he would know from his network of spies and educated guesses his character may do) privately.
The father has even less system mastery than the mother. he naturally fits with healbot cleric, and when I gave the party a mean to heal otherwise (the spirit of a dead cleric joined with them, and he can only affect the mortal realm by healing), it just meant the party had 2 healbots instead of 1. Once I killed his character with a destruction spell, and nobody remembered that 1) he had a reflecting shield, so the spell would have been bounced, 2) dwarves have +2 racial bonus to saving throws against spells, and that +2 would have allowed him to pass. He tends to fall asleep when I talk about the plot. However, when presented with a noncombat problem he shines, because he is very creative. Granted, most of his schemes should never work - like the time he infiltrated a guarded mansion by disguising the whole party as plumbers - but they are funny enough that I generally handwave them. Also, a good principle of DMing is to give each player the chance to do what they like, and he specificallly likes that stuff, so I ended up encouraging him by giving him an artifact that is basically marvelous pigments on steroids, so he'd always have handy what he needed for his plans. Last time, he protected the party through a place that was hit by perpetual sunburst by conjuring a lot of sun lotion. And I expected nothing less. Then he goes back to sleep. And in combat he still asks me how many d8 he has to roll for the various healing spells.
The younger son is very quiet and introverted, he rarely speak and when prodded he goes with the flow: "do your character want to do something particular" "oh, whatever the others are doing is fine". He forgets most of his class features regularly; he's the only druid to almost never use wild shape, and his animal companion is a joke because he never uses buff spells. it became another recurring joke, so I decided his personal artifact would be the upgrade of the companion to "clown-wolf": it's the same wolf as before, but it casts hideous laughter for free as long as it's utterly ineffective in combat, which means every time. I mean, last time it managed to hit the enemy (I think it was a pit fiend) with a natural 20, and we all cheered for the wolf that managed to do something useful... until we remembered damage reduction. Cue more laughter.

Yet, when I asked my players if they were fine and if they wanted to disband the group and go back to other kinds of gaming, they all declined. Somehow, we reached an equilibrium where we all get what we want. The father wants to be a supporter for the rest of his family, and come up with zany schemes, and I give him plenty of chances to do both. The elder son wants to be the protagonist and direct the action, and he gets that. The mother wants to spam fireballs and roll plenty of d6s, something I encouraged with another artifact that adds a few d6 of damage to her favourite spells. The younger son... I still haven't figured out what he seeks, but he seems happy to tag along. I'm probably the one who is less happy about the situation, but as long as at least one person gets to appreciate the depth of my worldbuilding, I'm fine too.

Overall, I'd say I rolled around 5.

[PokéTriforce]

I was DMing. One of the players...let me start by saying that I'm about to speak ill of the dead. He was killed -- IRL -- when a stray bullet hit him. He had just recovered from a car collision, too! He died at the end of 2017 (or was it beginning of 2018?). He died before he reached the age of 50. Anyway, this was when my friend was part of a campaign I ran in 2013.

I knew him well enough not to trust him. He would roll his 20-sider and quickly pick it up before anyone can verify the number. Then, he would call it anywhere between a 17 - 20 (mostly 19 & 20; but would sometimes call it a 17 or 18 to keep others from noticing).

One time, he didn't grab it fast enough. It was a "12". He said it was a "19". He asked if he should roll to confirm the crit. I told him he doesn't crit on a "12". As I was starting to explain he still hit (based on his attack bonus), he DEMANDED that it was a "19"! He tried to get others to side with him. I told him that he can either accept the "12" (which would still be a hit), that I clearly saw...or re-roll his 20-sided die WITHOUT picking it up until someone impartial called out the number it lands on. I told him that the NEW number would REPLACE this one -- REGARDLESS of this one being a confirmed hit (just not a crit...nor threat). He accepted his "12".

I was one of the three or four DMs that put up with his "17 - 20" rolls. I'm, also, one of two DMs that wouldn't allow him to get away with it, either.

As I said, even though I knew he lied, cheated, and stole (in life)...I also knew that his heart was in the right place, when it mattered. At least, I don't believe it was in his right elbow, or something. He left behind a wife & daughter.

Anyway, that was something I thought I'd share (about his roll of "17 - 20").

[Boggartbae]

I was DMing. One of the players...let me start by saying that I'm about to speak ill of the dead. He was killed -- IRL -- when a stray bullet hit him. He had just recovered from a car collision, too! He died at the end of 2017 (or was it beginning of 2018?). He died before he reached the age of 50. Anyway, this was when my friend was part of a campaign I ran in 2013.

I knew him well enough not to trust him. He would roll his 20-sider and quickly pick it up before anyone can verify the number. Then, he would call it anywhere between a 17 - 20 (mostly 19 & 20; but would sometimes call it a 17 or 18 to keep others from noticing).

One time, he didn't grab it fast enough. It was a "12". He said it was a "19". He asked if he should roll to confirm the crit. I told him he doesn't crit on a "12". As I was starting to explain he still hit (based on his attack bonus), he DEMANDED that it was a "19"! He tried to get others to side with him. I told him that he can either accept the "12" (which would still be a hit), that I clearly saw...or re-roll his 20-sided die WITHOUT picking it up until someone impartial called out the number it lands on. I told him that the NEW number would REPLACE this one -- REGARDLESS of this one being a confirmed hit (just not a crit...nor threat). He accepted his "12".

I was one of the three or four DMs that put up with his "17 - 20" rolls. I'm, also, one of two DMs that wouldn't allow him to get away with it, either.

As I said, even though I knew he lied, cheated, and stole (in life)...I also knew that his heart was in the right place, when it mattered. At least, I don't believe it was in his right elbow, or something. He left behind a wife & daughter.

Anyway, that was something I thought I'd share (about his roll of "17 - 20").

There's a player in my current group that just rolls the dice so that only he can see them, and he always rolls higher than 16. It used to make me upset, but then I realized that I don't actually care, as long as we're playing and having fun. Most optimized melee builds only miss on a 1 or 2 anyway.

Just sharing my story, but not saying you were wrong to call him out on it.

[Doctor Awkward]

There's a player in my current group that just rolls the dice so that only he can see them, and he always rolls higher than 16. It used to make me upset, but then I realized that I don't actually care, as long as we're playing and having fun. Most optimized melee builds only miss on a 1 or 2 anyway.

Just sharing my story, but not saying you were wrong to call him out on it.

Possibly a minority opinion, but I take great offense at people who cheat in a game where everything is made up.

If one is content to cheat to win then there's no real point in even playing. Especially true in a table-top RPG because such a definition of "winning" has skewed the whole point of playing.

[Boggartbae]

Possibly a minority opinion, but I take great offense at people who cheat in a game where everything is made up.

If one is content to cheat to win then there's no real point in even playing. Especially true in a table-top RPG because such a definition of "winning" has skewed the whole point of playing.

I used to do stuff like stack bonuses of the same type when I was younger, but then I realized that there is no winnining, everything is made up, and I don't actually need that extra +2 to craft checks. If it's a small enough bonus, I don't need to cheat my character sheet, and if it's a large enough bonus, then I shouldn't.

But I the fact that you can't win also means that I dont care what other people do at the table, as long as everything goes smooth and everyone has fun, you can fudge numbers and rolls all you want.

I'm pretty sure that I'm the one in the minority though.

[mistermysterio]

I used to do stuff like stack bonuses of the same type when I was younger, but then I realized that there is no winnining, everything is made up, and I don't actually need that extra +2 to craft checks. If it's a small enough bonus, I don't need to cheat my character sheet, and if it's a large enough bonus, then I shouldn't.

But I the fact that you can't win also means that I dont care what other people do at the table, as long as everything goes smooth and everyone has fun, you can fudge numbers and rolls all you want.

I'm pretty sure that I'm the one in the minority though.

While this is true, the problem is that the number fudging often leads to less fun for the group overall, in my experience. The cheater tends to end up guitar soloing and taking over all of the would be "cool" moments, and those moments mean a lot less, since that person always gets them. Since they always roll 17+, they are always effective at everything, even when their character isn't built for certain things. i.e. my rogue has a +10 mod to stealth and I roll a 5, so I end up with a 15... Mr. cheater has a +2 mod but rolls a "17", and so he ends up with a 19 and so my stealthy rogue, in this instance, is comparatively louder and more easily noticed than his barbarian or whatever. Now, when I roll 12 or better, there isn't any way for him to have a higher total than me, but the fact that he will be equal to or often better than my stealth-specialized rogue 60% of the time or so will probably get to me, in the long run.

He is stealthier than me, a better face than the bard, craftier than the wizard, etc.. not ALWAYS, but far more often than typical randomness should allow. If he played it without cheating, than those times where he is stealthier than my rogue would be fun/funny/exciting. Instead, they turn into a "here we go again..."

Additionally, he potentially takes away from the DM's fun as well - the DM has to either tune encounters to account for the inflated values of the cheating player, or allow the player to roll over the stuff he has planned already - adding more time to planning before sessions and less excitement for the DM, since things are a lot less random in terms of how they turn out.

[PokéTriforce]

There's a player in my current group that just rolls the dice so that only he can see them, and he always rolls higher than 16. It used to make me upset, but then I realized that I don't actually care, as long as we're playing and having fun. Most optimized melee builds only miss on a 1 or 2 anyway.

Just sharing my story, but not saying you were wrong to call him out on it.

Possibly a minority opinion, but I take great offense at people who cheat in a game where everything is made up.

If one is content to cheat to win then there's no real point in even playing. Especially true in a table-top RPG because such a definition of "winning" has skewed the whole point of playing.

Let's see what 9 players I had in that campaign...

...First of all, I just want to say that it started as 6 players. Then, 2 others were invited. The next thing I knew...there were NINE players?!? This meant that I had to make sure this game worked for (was fun for) -- in my opinion -- way too many people!

Player 1: (minor) Son of my friend (player #2). This kid wanted to have his character look and act cool. I don't think he even considered the story at all. He just wanted to become the one the others payed attention to.

Player 2: Not liking IRL conflict, he didn't have trouble plotting in-game conflict. However, he also spent time helping his son with whatever his son wanted to do.

Player 3: This lady used her "cleric" to help her (18 or 19 year old) daughter's PC (a rogue) steal -- even from the party. She once had her character blow up a church to stop all the monsters inside.

Player 4: Her mother and her seemed to only be out for themselves. Their goal seemed to be gaining as much treasure as they could.

Player 5: He believed his character should be a small humanoid from Oz. In other words, he kept trying to make his character(s) as close to MUNCHKIN as he could get! His goal seemed to be "Kill (anything that moves). Gain XP. Repeat." Each time we ended the session, he would let me know about all the skills he used. He kept asking for more & more XP...trying to justify why he deserved so much extra.

Player 6: This is the "17-20" roller. He just wanted to be known as the player that never loses/always wins.

Player 7: Player 6's friend, who kept encouraging him. His character's actions tended to mimic the actions of any character that he (player 7) believed was "winning".

Player 8: She was still learning how to play. She wouldn't do much. I kept trying to encourage her to just have fun with her character. She was afraid that she would do something wrong. Eventually, she started playing on her own (rather than just following popular opinion on what her character should do).

Player 9: How do I explain him. Comic relief -- in HIS mind, anyway. He did what he thought would be funny. At least, he kept with the adventure.

While Players 1, 3, & $ didn't pay attention to the story...um...I was going somewhere with this. I just don't remember. What I DO remember is player's 3, 5, and 6 had to deal with me. I already told you about player #6. I'll save players 3 & 5 for another time.