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rankrath
2007-09-23, 08:30 PM
Ok, inspired by the end of the shortest campaign I've ever played in, due to the worst DM I've ever had. We start the campaign in a tavern, and first thing that happens goes like this.
DM: ok, so a guy dressed in leather comes over the table you're sitting at and lays down a gold coin.
Paladin: thanks, but what's it for?
DM: You loose all your paladin abilities.
Paladin: WHAT?
DM: he's evil, you associated with him
At this point, we all got up and left.

So what's your horror story with DM's, or do you not have one, seeing as you are the DM?

Shas aia Toriia
2007-09-23, 08:32 PM
YOU ACTUALLY HAD A DM WHO DID THAT?!?!?!?!? :smalleek:

*Adds a few more capital letters and exclamation marks*

Drider
2007-09-23, 08:33 PM
Ok, inspired by the end of the shortest campaign I've ever played in, due to the worst DM I've ever had. We start the campaign in a tavern, and first thing that happens goes like this.
DM: ok, so a guy dressed in leather comes over the table you're sitting at and lays down a gold coin.
Paladin: thanks, but what's it for?
DM: You loose all your paladin abilities.
Paladin: WHAT?
DM: he's evil, you associated with him
At this point, we all got up and left.

So what's your horror story with DM's, or do you not have one, seeing as you are the DM?

that is a **** DM, but he has nothing on thatlankybugger's DM experiance

Shas aia Toriia
2007-09-23, 08:34 PM
Why, what did thatlankybugger's DM do?

BRC
2007-09-23, 08:35 PM
Don't paladins keep their powers unless they Knowingly associate with evil? I don't think that accepting a coin from some random guy in a bar is Knowingly associating with evil.

Mr. Moogle
2007-09-23, 08:36 PM
that is a **** DM, but he has nothing on thatlankybugger's DM experiance

And thank god no one else has had to live through Lanky's situation with PsykoDM ever again.

Shas aia Toriia
2007-09-23, 08:36 PM
Yes, but the point is that the DM is that bad, so. . .:smallfrown:

I cry on the inside knowing that there are DM's like that. Then I laugh.

starwoof
2007-09-23, 08:36 PM
Why, what did thatlankybugger's DM do?

Oh not much, just horribly gimped his character, refused to leave his house, threatened to kill him, broke a window...


Here it is. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23784&highlight=psychodm) Worst. Session. Ever.

Drider
2007-09-23, 08:37 PM
Why, what did thatlankybugger's DM do?

arrested for being a bad DM actually, it was a lot more screwed up than that

Shas aia Toriia
2007-09-23, 08:37 PM
:eek:

That's bad.

BRC
2007-09-23, 08:44 PM
Heres the story, copy/pasted from lankybuggers original post.
Yeah, I think this one counts. It's the first gaming session I can ever recall where it ended in an arrest.

The Character

Today I had a day off, so I decided to check out this gaming group a friend was in. He said the DM (now nicknamed PsychoDM) was a little weird, but seemed alright. Last night I was told to make a level 5 character, preferably someone who could tank, heal, or was a skill-monkey (the primary was a Bard, at the moment).

Enter Diego "Ash" Althaes, former scout for the Imperial army and now an Acolyte in the services of the Fharlanghn. He is a rather frail looking human youth with a windblown shock of ash gray hair (hence the nickname "Ash"), wearing only the robes common to many of the Fharlanghn's priests and wielding only a worn-looking, if well made Bastard Sword at his side. A sturdy, if also well-worn traveling pack sits comfortably on his back as he strides the road. The only curious thing about him, aside from the bastard sword, is a red ribbon wrapping one arm. It ends well short of his hand, but you'd almost swear it was occasionally letting a drop of blood fall. Looking behind him, you can see that this is the case, as every few hundred paces or so you can just make out dried blood following in his footsteps.

In game terms, he's a Human Rogue 3/Cleric 2. He started out as a Rogue, and he's found god after a particularly nasty battle, which resulted in the cursed ribbon being placed on his arm by his foe. The curse is slowly sapping his life from him. In game terms he only heals at half the normal rate for a character of his level. At the end of every day he must take a just a sip from a potion he's learned to brew (DC 19 Craft: Alchemy check, with a sale cost of 300 Gold for five flasks worth, with me being able to brew five flasks with one check) or take 1d4-1 temporary Con damage, no save. The potion lasts for roughly thirty sips before I have to brew more. The most frightening aspect of the curse for Ash is that the magic used to make it was incredibly rare, and normal avenues for removing curses just don't want to work. A diviner has told me that the only way he knows of to break the curse is to kill the one who gave it to me. PsychoDM told me to make an interesting character with plot hooks, so I unleashed my imagination. A cursed soldier who's found God, looking for the cure to his curse? Plot hooks aplenty with this one. The only thing I asked PsychoDM for in return for this curse was an extra feat, that feat being Skill Focus Craft: Alchemy.

The Game

At this time, I'd like to point out that I was the new guy to the group, and the only person I knew beforehand was a friend who was playing a Halfling Sorcerer. He'd been with PsychoDM since they'd started this campaign, four sessions ago. So, the game is about ready to begin. We're all seated around my living room table (normally games happen at PsychoDM's house, but it was being painted). Bowls of chips rest amid plastic and lead Warhammer miniatures and everybody is getting along fine. PsychoDM had already approved the character's backstory and character sheet (including the curse and the mechanics behind it and the potion), when he asks to see my character sheet just to double check the stats and such. I don't have a problem with this as I hadn't changed anything, so I hand it over and I see him frown. He then hands the character sheet back to me and informs me that I'll be taking 1d6 temporary Con damage a day, "to make things more interesting". This bothers me a little bit as that meant three decent rolls could kill me (or pretty much any character), but I don't complain. It doesn't make a huge difference, and I've got two metal flasks of the potion buried safely in my backpack, plus another metal flask of the potion in a side-pouch under my robes. I can brew up another batch by taking 10 on an Alchemy roll, provided eight hours of not doing anything and access to a small city to hunt the ingredients down (which would take a successful Gather Information check).

After the party meets up and gets the introductions out of the way (we're all on a mission to nail some minor Orc warlord), we head off in the direction of a city where we can get an exact fix on the warlord's location.

Random encounter time. The game has been on for half an hour, so some of the players are eager to get into a good scrap. We run into a group of eight bandits. Four of them have longswords, two have shortbows, two have spears, and all of them are wearing studded leather. I make a token attempt at dissuading the bandits from attacking, which they ignore completely. I move up and flank one of the bandits with the party's Fighter and Sneak Attack damage kicks in, because he's flanked. The guy drops with a single swing of my Bastard Sword, as I dealt him 20 damage.

This is where PsychoDM's first complaint comes in. He tries to tell me that as a Cleric, I can't use Sneak Attack damage, as it goes against my God's religion. I point out that either way, I'm putting holes in someone who's attacking travelers on the road, and that I'm pretty sure Fharlanghn doesn't like bandits using his roads to harm people. Plus he's Neutral, not Good, so I doubt he really gives a damn about the way I put holes in the people abusing his roads. PsychoDM finally agrees, but I did notice that all the other bandits seemed to be a level or two higher. I guess I'd been fighting Atgar the Flimsy Rookie Bandit. It didn't really bother me. It might have been an honest mistake on PsychoDM's part, as he might have forgotten to adjust for the fact that I'm one of the two tanks in the party and I have a +2d6 damage when dealing with flanked and/or flatfooted enemies. However, one of the bandits with a spear scored a Critical hit against me (behind PsychoDM screen) and it's at this point that PsychoDM announces he's going to start using a special critical hit system. He “rolls” and the strike hits my back. So that means it hits my backpack.

Shock and awe, when he rolls to see which item is completely destroyed, it's a flask of the potion. The hit hurts on top of all this, but a Cure Light Wounds on myself and I'm still up. This bothered PsychoDM for some reason, but whatever. After the fight when I take off my pack, I discover that the critical hit that took out my one flask had managed to hit both, because they were packed together. At least, he points out, you've probably gotten your dose for the day. Oh, thanks for the help. I'm sure it'll make a huge difference.

So, night rolls on. I tell PsychoDM I'm taking my dose and going to bed. Holding the d6 (and I'm sure I knew what for) he looks shocked, and tells me I don't have any more. The bandit got both of the flasks in my bag. I tell him I've got a third flask of the stuff that's not in my backpack, but in side pouch entirely separate from my backpack. Hence why it wasn't included in the item list he "rolled" on to see which items were destroyed when my backpack got ganked. So, I repeat that I'm taking my daily dose of medicine and then getting some sleep.

So, a few days in-game pass by as we travel, no further incidents. We get to a large city, and we're told we're going to have to meet with the local lord to get some information about the Orc warlord operating south of his city. A couple weeks south of the city, to put a fine point on it. Unfortunately, it'll take all day to get in to meet the lord. The party says they just want to skip straight to the meeting, and I tell PsychoDM I'm not going, I want to do something else in the city.

He seems surprised, and asks why. I politely tell him that while my party is waiting to speak with the lord, I'm going to use the time to get the ingredients I need and make my potions. I don't need to roleplay the stuff, I add, so it won't take much time. I doubt the lord wants me dripping blood all over his nice rugs while I wait, so I may as well do the party a favor and not make him angry. Thinking this is settled, I ask him how much it's going to cost me to rent a kitchen to have access to the fire I need to brew five flasks worth and what the Gather Information DC is to find the alchemical ingredients. He tells me I wouldn't skip out on the chance to meet a famous lord. I point out that I wasn't going to put off making more of my potion unless I absolutely had to, and this was a perfect opportunity.

Fine, he says. I'm forced to pay ten gold to rent a huge kitchen (like three stoves, which strikes me as odd but I'm an adventurer, I've got more than enough gold to choke a dragon). He says that the Gather Information DC is 19 and then has me roll. I make it, having rolled a 16 before my rather extensive modifiers. He then tries to tell me I've failed, as my cursed arm keeps creeping people out. I return that I'm not dripping enough blood for people to really notice it immediately (it's not gushing, I'm losing a drop of blood maybe once every couple minutes) for one, and if it were more difficult it should have been included in the DC. So he has me roll again, this time versus DC 21. An 15 (before modifiers) sees my way to gathering the information, and I can see his blood pressure rising.

I inform him that while I'm visiting the herbalist's shops I'm buying enough ingredients for two batches. He says this will increase the DC accordingly, and I point out yes, he's already said that if I ever needed to brew more than one batch at once, the DC for all of the batches would be at +3... Something I can easily manage with my +12 bonus to Craft: Alchemy. So it's now time to roll for the brewing of the potions. I tell him I'm going to use the Take 10 option (which automatically brings me to the requisite 22 I need for a success) as I'm not hurried and don't want to mess up. He flips out. He actually breaks his pencil in his grip and asks to speak with me in another room. I agree, and we go into my living room.

He tells me that I'm being a terrible player, and I'm trying to negate a disadvantage I've given myself to gain a free feat. He tells me that he's going to take the feat away from me, because I'm not roleplaying my curse. I point out that the only real use I had for the feat was as something to help alleviate the curse, and that taking a -1d6 temporary Con damage every day if I don't have access to my potion is not something that is going to be treated lightly by my character. By taking this curse so seriously, seriously enough I'd want to skip out on meeting a famous lord, I am roleplaying my curse exactly as it should be. Missing it for three days might just be enough to completely kill my character, so of course it's something he's going to be paranoid about. If he's extraordinarily lucky, he might last a little under two weeks without his potions. I add that he's not going to march off into the wilderness with our objective at least two weeks away, with only one flask. That would be begging for death.

He tells me that the feat is gone, so the brewing failed. I tell him that if the feat goes, the curse goes with it, and I'm not going to have it any other way. The curse is meant to be an interesting, if rarely used weakness. If I'm imprisoned for some reason, I get sick very quickly if I don't have my potions. If I'm separated from my possessions, I get sick very quickly. It's not meant to be something he constantly has to worry about all the damned time, and that if it was I would have had the mechanics we'd agreed on for the curse be reflected differently. If he didn't want me to have the curse the way it was, I would have not bothered with it. I don't want my character on the verge of death all the time. It's supposed to be a stabilized illness, not an out of control illness.

He finally concedes the point, and we return to the table.

Surprise, everybody thinks I'm a witch. Never mind the fact mages are as common as warriors, we passed a wizard's guild on the way into town, and we saw a cleric using his spells to help a farmer not a day behind us... I now have a small group of angry peasants outside my door, with the law. I calmly tell PsychoDM that I'm going to put a small cut on my arm, and that I'm going to walk outside. The peasants say I'm a devil who leaves the blood of children in my wake, and the town guard now needs to ask me a few questions. I look surprised, and then pretend to notice some blood drip down my arm. I calmly tell the guards that I'm a simple healer and priest, but I have a medical condition that means my wounds don't close naturally. I just didn't notice I was bleeding because it was such a small scratch. PsychoDM tells me to roll a Bluff check between ground teeth. I roll a natural 20 which isn't an automatic success, but it might as well be against these guards... my Bluff check, thanks to three levels of Rogue, was pretty high. Presumably a twenty for their Sense Motive still wouldn't have beaten my Bluff Check (I've never once seen these rolls he's been making), because he finally tells me I pass after a long silence. The guards disperse the crowd, and I walk back inside the kitchen where my potions are brewing.

The Breaking Point

For some reason the guy I'd rented the place off had come into the room and knocked the potions over, ruining my ingredients and about six hours of in-game time. I think PsychoDM tried to tell me something about how he was drunk and I should go meet up with the party but at this point, I as a player stand up and tell PsychoDM the game is over. I quit. He tells me that this is fine, I wasn't invited back to the next session anyways. He goes on to add, in a lofty voice, that he was wondering when I'd get the hint. He turns to his players (who are now putting away their things) as if expecting to continue the game. Bear in mind oh gentle readers, that this entire thing has been happening in my own home. We are sitting at my table and in my oven is a five pound lasagna we were cooking for dinner.

When the other players notice PsychoDM not moving, there's a heavy silence. PsychoDM calmly speaks: "I'm sure That Lanky Bugger has no problems with us finishing the session, guys. It's not like he's going to kick fellow gamers out. Besides, he can't eat all the lasagna himself, heh heh."

I don't say a word. I'm so shocked at the stupidity that has just dropped from this man's mouth. Finally I tell him that while no, I'm not going to kick them out, I will be kicking him out. The others are free to leave or stay for food and gaming of their own volition, but he is certainly no longer welcome in my home. He is required to leave, right the hell now.

He laughs in my face and says that I can't make him leave. So, he’s now threatening me in my own home. Fine. I tried to be civil about it but I didn't owe this jerk a single damned thing.

Right away I pick up the cordless phone and dial 911. I've asked nicely, and I'm not about to wreck my furniture by physically wrestling this guy outside. He was watching me on the phone. I guess he didn't think far enough ahead to figure out who I was calling, after a statement like that. When the operator answers, I calmly tell her that I've just asked a visitor who's no longer welcome to leave my home and he's told me that I can't "make him" leave. Would it be at all possible to send a patrol car by so that a police officer can "make him" leave, as I don't want to assault him? She tells me a car is on the way, and I hang up.

He calmly declares that it was all a hoax, that I would never call the cops on a fellow gamer. I tell him once more that he should leave, as I'm not going to press charges if he agrees to leave right now. He stubbornly sits in the chair, and tries (unsuccessfully) to get the others to continue the game. They sit around the table, completely shell-shocked. After maybe five or ten minutes there's a knock at the door. Outside my home there's flashing red and blue lights. I open the door, and simply tell the officers the situation in the plainest terms possible. I don't want him charged with anything, I just want him out of my home.

They tell him he has to leave and he does after he gathers up his stuff. He tried to take a couple of my Warhammer miniatures, but I corrected him and the other players backed me on that. I make certain he has everything before he leaves. I thank the officers and chat with them for a couple minutes, and then they leave as well. I don't even want to file a report, I just wanted to avoid an incident that might require one.

The Return

Ten minutes later, we're all hanging out in my dining room. This would have been the fifth session for them and now that they'd seen this display, they'd pretty much all agreed amongst themselves that PsychoDM would not be gaming with them in the future. We hear a furious knocking on the door, and someone is screaming about how he’s left something and I’d better give it back right now.

I look out the window and it’s PsychoDM. Again I call the cops and this time I’m informed that they’ll be taking him into custody. I didn’t even leave my house until after the cops (the same pair who’d been over before) rolled up. For a moment it looked like he was about to try to run, but I guess he figured out that the in-shape cops would catch his out-of-shape ass pretty easily. They escort him to the car, cuff his hands, and put him in the back.

I spoke with the cops for a little while longer, and though he’s going to have an impressive criminal record of petty crimes there’s nothing major he can be charged with. Most guys like him get nailed with big things when they try to run, or resist arrest. Looks like he’s going to get out of jail sometime tonight, when they’ve properly processed him. They take my statement, and get the rest of the people there to sign something agreeing with my version of events. They didn't want much paperwork on this one either, I guess.

After that incident, the group and I hung out and played some Final Stand by Tim Denee. I don’t think I’ll be seeing any of them again (except for the friend playing the Halfling Sorc), but it was a really nice session after PsychoDM got booted.

God, I really wish my role-playing was as functional as those guys at Critical Miss.

rankrath
2007-09-23, 08:52 PM
that is a **** DM, but he has nothing on thatlankybugger's DM experiance

Ya, you could say that, I feel much better after reading his post for some reason.

Ted_Stryker
2007-09-23, 09:14 PM
Heres the story, copy/pasted from lankybuggers original post...
Wow. That's funny because it didn't happen to me.

Seriously, I've never had anything even remotely close to the events in that story happen to me as a player, or even as bad as the stupid coin thing in the OP. Luckily, all of my game masters have ranged from adequate to brilliant.

Volug
2007-09-23, 09:22 PM
wow... that is... a really... Horrible DM.

I dont remember any BAD DM's. A couple boring ones, but not anything like that.....

Drider
2007-09-23, 09:25 PM
I kinda always feel a little sick after reading that story, kinda like the back of my throat wants to move to the outside of my mouth.

The_Hunting_Enemy
2007-09-23, 09:42 PM
Wow. Doubt any story could match Lankybugger's.
I have a surprisingly good DM. Anything he's done that isn't meant to happen has been for a comedic effect. (i.e, I comment that I may as well check the sheep carcass because no-one's gonna trap a carcass, and it turns out it's trapped. :smallconfused: )

Solo
2007-09-23, 09:42 PM
I kinda always feel a little sick after reading that story, kinda like the back of my throat wants to move to the outside of my mouth.

Makes me glad we can own guns where I live.

starwoof
2007-09-23, 09:43 PM
We have one of these threads every few weeks, and every few weeks someone brings up LankyBugger's story. And also every few weeks, nobody else posts anything because they can't beat Lanky. :smalltongue:

bugsysservant
2007-09-23, 09:48 PM
Actually, Lanky's DM doesn't sound REALLY terrible, just nasty, but as a person he sounds both dangerous and probably mentally ill. Rankrath's DM was probably more malicious, but physically harmless, just a sociopath who gets a thrill by "cleverly" abusing his players.

As for me, I have never had a really bad DM, the worst was probably only mildly incompetent, and he didn't want to be a DM anyway, and was a pretty good player.

starwoof
2007-09-23, 09:58 PM
My worst DM said that nearby fire negated my darkvision.

http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l121/starwoof2/morbo.jpg


It wouldn't be that bad except for he's a **** about everything that I want to do. Because his monsters can see through walls. And his campaigns are trains. Choo choo! Railroad express!


Yeah, see? I got nothin.

Lord Iames Osari
2007-09-23, 10:03 PM
My worst DM said that nearby fire negated my darkvision.

http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l121/starwoof2/morbo.jpg


It wouldn't be that bad except for he's a **** about everything that I want to do. Because his monsters can see through walls. And his campaigns are trains. Choo choo! Railroad express!


Yeah, see? I got nothin.

Uh, actually, I'm pretty sure darkvision does work that way. The thing about darkvision being that it functions only in the absence of light. Now, if your DM had ruled that a nearby fire negated low-light vision, then you'd have grounds to complain.

Crow T. Robot
2007-09-23, 10:06 PM
The worse I had was a few years ago. We stayed with his whole campaign because it was such a train wreak. He wasn't a bad guy, and just wanted to have fun, but he was too scatter shot, and unfocused.

Then we changed settings for the reason of he was bored with fantasy, and we went high tech, then I killed everyone accidently with a nuclear bomb. He bent over backwards to prevent that, but I rolled three critical failures in a row.

The worse one I missed was a super hero game I was killed in the second session by another player who "Thought it would be funny". And a vampire LARP that turned into an ego trip for the GM who was playing Jason (of friday the 13th) and was unkillable.

starwoof
2007-09-23, 10:06 PM
The hallway beyond the room we were in was dark, and it says in the description that light doesn't spoil it. I shoulda been clearer.

psychoticbarber
2007-09-23, 10:22 PM
It wouldn't be that bad except for he's a **** about everything that I want to do. Because his monsters can see through walls. And his campaigns are trains. Choo choo! Railroad express!

That's not me, right? ...because I'm pretty sure I never made that ruling about Darkvision, haha.

starwoof
2007-09-23, 10:27 PM
That's not me, right? ...because I'm pretty sure I never made that ruling about Darkvision, haha.

Of course it was you! Kekekeke! :smallwink:

Brawls
2007-09-23, 10:40 PM
I've actually had good luck with DMs, with some very exceptional ones. The worst I can say about my current GM is that he sometimes creates a little tension when he does things to his wife's character that she is not pleased with. Not saying that he is not acting appropriately, but the silence and glaring can get a little ominous on these few occaisions. That and he is a cheapskate with the magic, but I chalk that up to his control freak nature and it at least applies to our enemies equally.

Brawls

AKA_Bait
2007-09-23, 10:55 PM
Oddly, I've had very few DM's. I'm a bit ticked at the one I'm playing with at the moment though.

I have a character that is for all intents and purpose of the story an 18th level bard. I made the build specifically so that he would be the party face and a fantastic liar, such that his bluff check at this point starts at a 31 (21 ranks, skill focus: Bluff and a +8 modifier thanks to stat increases and a +6 cloak). He once managed to bluff lolth using glibness (he got eaten by her anyway, that's not what I'm annoyed with).

This past session the character tried to do his trademark lying to some much lower level minions. His check was an 80 (glibness again). It didn't work. When I asked the DM why, they replied that since the Lolth incident the evil folks were on to me and had an item to boost their sense motive checks. In order for them to have an item that on a natrual twenty, if they had full ranks in sense motive and skill focus: sense motive, they would still have needed a +40 item to beat that bluff.

So, since my DM didn't like me screwing up her plot by confusing and tricking her NPC's they all got issued epic items and my characters strongest point is totally useless.

Oh yeah, when we kill them, their items disentigrate too.

Icewalker
2007-09-23, 11:04 PM
Oh yeah, when we kill them, their items disentigrate too.

But of course!


Yeah, I've actually played under two different people, and tried to run campaigns myself, and thats it. One of the people was my friend, who tried to run one out of the book, it was kind of weak, and one of the kids was a smartass who already knew the adventure :smallannoyed:

The second is a guy who has been running a first edition campaign world for about 15 years as his job. Best DM ever.

I'm mediocre, I suck at the story-defining monologue, and I'm not great at picking up the pieces when my players break out of the story, although I do avoid railroading sometimes I just have to plead them not to screw over the story for fun, because I won't be able to fix it :smallfrown:


I actually think I'd do better running an online game. I can type better than I can talk, especially when it comes to stuff like the story-defining beginnings. I need to run a game sometime.

Eldritch_Ent
2007-09-23, 11:10 PM
The second is a guy who has been running a first edition campaign world for about 15 years as his job.

W... Wait... What? :smallconfused: How does that work?

Solo
2007-09-23, 11:14 PM
W... Wait... What? :smallconfused: How does that work?

And how can we be like him?

ocato
2007-09-23, 11:32 PM
Me: "Sneak attack for 5d6 and then skirmish for..."

DM: "You don't get sneak attack or skirmish"

Me: "Hm, he can't be immune to crits, the barbarian just criticalled him something fierce."

DM: "No, he's immune to you, because I'm tired of you."

Me: "hahaha"

DM: "I am dead serious. You deal no damage."

Me: :smalleek:

TheOOB
2007-09-23, 11:41 PM
In one of the games I played one of the bosses grew progressivly more and more powerful as the fight went on because he was getting annoyed that a level 4 TWF was beating the level 6 fighter alone. By the end of the fight we estimated he gained four levels of monk, and a total of 24 STR by how much damage he was dealing (he was orginally a sword fighter, but the rogue wouldn't let him cross the room to retrive his sword, apparntly he was an unarmed fighter too..

Solo
2007-09-23, 11:51 PM
Me: "Sneak attack for 5d6 and then skirmish for..."

DM: "You don't get sneak attack or skirmish"

Me: "Hm, he can't be immune to crits, the barbarian just criticalled him something fierce."

DM: "No, he's immune to you, because I'm tired of you."

Me: "hahaha"

DM: "I am dead serious. You deal no damage."

Me: :smalleek:

A mutiny is needed.

Hawriel
2007-09-23, 11:56 PM
I'll nominate myself for worst GM Ive had. Ive only done it a handfull of times. My buggets flaw is that im scattered and overwhelmed by the amount of work invalved.

I think it was my first or second time DMing I did one level in a dungeon the party was working through. I got a little over enthusiastic. The party ended up locked in a room with four iron golems. The party of 6 went to a party of 2. The cleric was I think the third to die. Exept for that last encounter and an argument over a player having heat metal casted on him it was going ok. Oh it was second ed.

Lavin
2007-09-24, 12:11 AM
Myself. No literally. I used to sometimes test out situations on myself, pre-session, just so I can have a better feel for how it's going to go over in session. Sometimes, As you might imagine, I get bored.

Me testing a situation:


Me: You see a sword.

Me v.1: I pick it up.

Me: roll

Me v.1: [rolls]

Me: *sigh* you pick it up...and you die.



Me correcting situation:

Me: [Looks at paper] *RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPP!*




Sooooo, I have long since improved my DM skills, and now just submit my players to whatever strikes my fancy. But for a while, I was my own worst enemy...

Lord Iames Osari
2007-09-24, 12:27 AM
Me: "Sneak attack for 5d6 and then skirmish for..."

DM: "You don't get sneak attack or skirmish"

Me: "Hm, he can't be immune to crits, the barbarian just criticalled him something fierce."

DM: "No, he's immune to you, because I'm tired of you."

Me: "hahaha"

DM: "I am dead serious. You deal no damage."

Me: :smalleek:

As Old Geezer on RPGnet would say, "Kill him and take his stuff."

bugsysservant
2007-09-24, 04:18 AM
Me: "Sneak attack for 5d6 and then skirmish for..."

DM: "You don't get sneak attack or skirmish"

Me: "Hm, he can't be immune to crits, the barbarian just criticalled him something fierce."

DM: "No, he's immune to you, because I'm tired of you."

Me: "hahaha"

DM: "I am dead serious. You deal no damage."

Me: :smalleek:

Sounds like me, only I would be joking. :smallbiggrin: After about five seconds of silent disbelief I would probably lose it, and the game would progress normally with me recieving lots of wierd looks. Sigh. *Wipes nostalgic tear from eye*

Dyrhet
2007-09-24, 05:57 AM
I once had a GM who encouraged us to work together, provided plenty of NPCs to fight, allowed us to get more skilled and powerful over time and provided us with an array of useful and functional equipment.

It was the worst game of Paranoia ever.

Tormsskull
2007-09-24, 06:53 AM
Ok, I've got a story for a bad DM. Not that it is going to touch some of the worst ones around here, but here goes:

We're playing Birthright (2nd Edition AD&D campaign revolving around ruling countries, leading armies, etc).

The PCs as a group are considered 1 ruler (acting in a council fashion). My character is a dwarven Wizard level 5, and he always memorizes gaseous cloud so that he can escape if need be.

After a few sessions, the PC group sets out to kill this creature that guards a temple. My character is rather intelligent (Intelligence 18 I believe), and is privy to a lot of information (as a member of the ruling body of the country he can pretty much do what he wants).

So we arrive at the temple, but we don't see the creature. Somehow, it emerges from the swamp in front of the temple, AND attacks in the same manner. And it is a hydra. So I ask the DM if my character would know anything about hydras, he has me make an Intelligence check, and I easily surpass it.

He tells me that my character can know anything about hydras that I as a player know. So I said fine. I tell the group to hang back and let me go into the temple and retrieve whatever it is we need because we can't kill the hydra (no fire to cauterize the heads).

So they fall back, hydra follows them, I try to open the Temple doors. DM says they won't open. I cast Knock on the doors. DM says it doesn't work. I cast gaseous cloud to move through one of the cracks in the door, DM says it doesn't work.

So now I realize that we can't win, and we can't retrieve the item inside, and I start complaining. The DM says "Stop being an idiot and just kill the hydra." I tell him that we can't kill the hydra because we don't have any fire, he again calls me an idiot, flips the MM open, and then says "That's stupid. I've always played that any magic can cauterize the hydras head."

So now our sorceror with magic missle uses them to cauterize the heads, while I sit the battle out because I am bored.

When the hydra dies, the doors magically open up, we retrieve the item, and head back to town. Now back in our castle we learn that there is going to be an attack on our castle. So I inform our generals to pull back a couple of units of our army to the capital province, the DM says that will take to long, the creatures will be arriving any minute.

I say ok, whatever, we'll just use the guards we have stationed in the castle. The DM says we only have 100 guards. I explain to the DM that he read the rules wrong, and since we has a high level castle in our province it is always assumed to have a certain amount of guards per level (I think 100 guards per level of castle, and we had a level 4 castle IIRC).

He flips out and says "Fine, you have 400 guards, but now the enemies have 400 soldiers too." So I say "Basically what you're saying is that it didn't matter what we did, this is how you wanted things to end up?"

So, plane-shifting spiders end up being our enemies along with elite assassin commandos that teleport into the castle, kill all of our guards, and then are after us. When we track them down they end up being way too powerful for us, slaughtering the fighter and the rogue in the party within a few rounds.

I use gaseous cloud and escape, leaving my friends to die, and the DM says "Your character wouldn't do that. What's your alignment?" I say "It's True Neutral, and while my character doesn't want to leave his friends to die, he know that there is nothing that he can do to prevent it." He says "Whatever."

He then asks everyone Out of Character what they thought about the adventure, how we messed so much stuff up that would have made the battle easier for us, etc. I tell him that I think that campaign was horrible, and he says he doesn't care about my opinion. I said "Ok, c-ya."

Since that DM is related to me, I still see him a lot, and myself and the other players rib him a lot about how that adventure sucked. He always tries to make excuses now like "It didn't happen that way." But we always make sure to remind him that it did.

KIDS
2007-09-24, 07:10 AM
LOL Rankrath that was an awesome happening. I've been fortunate to never have played with such idiots (though some bad DMs, that yes). Lankybugger's story is familiar to me and I find it regularly a nice and enlightening read too, along with sympathies to him....

Kurald Galain
2007-09-24, 07:35 AM
It was the worst game of Paranoia ever.
:smallbiggrin:



We're playing Birthright (2nd Edition AD&D campaign revolving around ruling countries, leading armies, etc).
Out of curiosity - if this was 2nd ed, how did you get a dwarven wizard in the party? Or a sorcerer? Oh and yeah, that DM is a d*ck.



And since we're on the topic anyway - I believe having mentioned this before, but my worst DM had a story going where every single PC, and I wish I was exaggerating but I'm not, was either ignorant (as in, utterly clueless), insane (as in, not making any sense whatsoever) or arrogant (as in, unwillnig to tell us anything), or some combination of the above. In effect we couldn't talk to anyone, period. Aside from that, most of the NPCs were uberpowerful, capable of outrunning a horse, shrugging off any amount of damage, and presumably insta-killing any of us had we dared try.
The plot started out nice but quickly turned incomprehensible, with us teleporting all over the place at the DM's whim, and weird things happening that didn't appear to make sense. The game broke down when we met a powerful NPC and the DM asked us to explain the goings-on to him, and was gravely disappointed when it turned out we didn't have a clue.

AslanCross
2007-09-24, 07:48 AM
I think I'm pretty horrible as a DM. I've only begun to loosen up lately when it comes to railroading stuff. Thankfully everyone in the group still enjoys, but I'm pretty sure experienced players would hate me.

I also forget a lot of special abilities that the monsters I've prepared have, so they end up being less of a challenge than they ought to be.

Tormsskull
2007-09-24, 07:51 AM
Out of curiosity - if this was 2nd ed, how did you get a dwarven wizard in the party? Or a sorcerer? Oh and yeah, that DM is a d*ck.


Birthright is a 2nd edition campaign, but we played it with the "convert to 3rd edition" rule set that is floating around the internet. (I think I got it from brithright.net)

banjo1985
2007-09-24, 08:28 AM
I've rarely had a DM that was terrible, though we have had a few average ones, and many campaigns that have never taken off. I'm probably the main culprit for that. I get a great idea, work on it for weeks, we play a few sessions, and then I start to tire of it because I'd rather be playing what I've written!

It's a shame really, as some of them really could have gone somewhere, but I just seem to make campaigns that I'd rather be playing in.

illyrus
2007-09-24, 09:06 AM
This DM can actually be a really good DM, but was known to either have really good or really bad campaigns.

First of all we were cursed with fat rings that could not be removed by remove curse or break enchantment and required a miracle/wish to remove or doing a quest for NPC X. Cutting your finger off on a successful save lowered your con by 1/2 that could not be fixed outside of a miracle/wish or doing a quest for NPC X.

At one point in the game our party and 3 NPCs were trying to help a town by dealing with some monster in the nearby mountains. The 3 NPCs betrayed us and after a short fight withdrew into the mountains. I was playing a neutral druid and during the night I went to find these traitors and see what they were planning. Assuming the form of an owl and spending a few hours in flight my character located them camping beside a cliff. They were planning to sneak up on us the next night and murder us in our sleep, including my character's brother. The biggest advocate of this plan went to sleep first in his sleeping bag. Having the natural spell feat, my character summoned a hippogriff that grabbed the sleeping bad guy and carried him off the cliff to fall to his death. The DM and all of us (save one player) had a good laugh about this. Apprently this player felt my character's action was bloodthirsty and complained to the DM about it.

A few days later the DM asked if I would change my character into a pacifist. I thought that was a poor idea and told him this but after finding out the reason (this one other player was complaining) I relunctantly agreed to go along with it. The rules were pretty simple, I couldn't kill or let anything be killed that has a higher intelligence than a dog. I could pretty much see this was heading to a train wreck. The rest of the players (save the one player and the DM) thought this whole pacifism thing was a really dumb idea and tried to talk the DM out of it but to no avail.

Back to our quest to remove the fat rings. We meet with NPC X and hear what we need to gather to remove each ring. A red dragon's scale, a minotaur's horn, a cockatrice's feather, and something else that I've forgotten. The expected way of handling this was to hunt down and kill each of these creatures, but taken my character can't kill anything I have to voice dissent at these actions. The first alternative was that we could just knock out each creature to remove what we needed, but it was ruled that the minotaur could die with the removal of his horn as could the dragon with his scale. So then the quest becomes to find the corpses of previously killed creatures and take from them what we need. Finding dead things and avoiding fights turns out not to be too much fun in D&D and the campaign fell apart two sessions later.

Greyen
2007-09-24, 09:13 AM
While I cannot match Lankybugger, my least favorite Dm was just a pain.

First he didn't know the rules well and would spend lots of time arguing over the rules. Generally we ran him over and powergamed his crap mobs anyway. That was ok. The worsrt part was shopping for anything with him, from high level items to food. Every single shop keeper and or innkeeper, and NPC we encountered that could have been downtimed or just rolled had to have a personality. We had 8 people playing, he was a good storyteller but a poor GM, and 1 trip to a city would take an 8-12 hour session of -

P1 -"I want to buy X"
P2 - "Oh yeah, I need some of X too. I'll go with him"
Gm - "You find an X shop. Inside you see a enter random NPC description here. They say (in the same bad accent he always used) what do you want? ......"

Needless to say buying an apple could be a half hour process. Now envision this for 8 players about level 12-15 in a huge city trying to fence the loot from whatever our last mission was. Hours of 1 on 1 with who ever the current shopper was. Painful.

Tengu
2007-09-24, 09:13 AM
Fat rings? Are those rings that make you fat when you wear them?

Bosh
2007-09-24, 09:37 AM
My first adventure:

Us: Let's play D&D!
DM: OK, I'll teach you how to make some characters.

Three hours later...

DM: OK you're in front of a big cave that has a wooden door.
Us: Um, why are we here?
DM: It's the adventure.
Us: OK.
Me: Hey you have the big fighter, why don't you open the door.
Fighter player: OK.
DM: As you open the door the arrow from the arrow trap shoots out and you die.
Us: this sucks, lets not play D&D.

downtym
2007-09-24, 09:46 AM
First of all we were cursed with fat rings that could not be removed by remove curse or break enchantment and required a miracle/wish to remove or doing a quest for NPC X. Cutting your finger off on a successful save lowered your con by 1/2 that could not be fixed outside of a miracle/wish or doing a quest for NPC X.

To all you GM's out there:

Note that cursed items like this might sound like a good idea, but there is the fatal flaw of a player calling your bluff and purposefully taking the option that absolutely cripples their character. For example, when playing a Fighter that cuts off his finger and loses half his Con, your only viable option is to retire the character as he wanders off into the sunset to find a "cure" for his condition that does not involve minotaurs, dragons, and a slice of ridiculousness.

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

The worst DM I've had wasn't all that bad, he just got frustrated easily. In a game of Shadowrun - a game where your character is encouraged to play a morally hollow mercenary - he had an NPC child approach our team to "rescue" his father from Evil Corporation 001. Being the kindhearted Runners we were - and with the promise that the father would pay us a particularly goodly amount - we set out to help this poor child (And get a fat paycheck for a relatively easy run).

One monstrous cluster-frack later (Let's just say it involved grenades, machine guns, I think there might have been a Wendigo, enough corporate mercs to level downtown Chi-town, a 100 foot fall/jump out of a corporate tower ("Dear Air Spirits, We love you. Signed, Runners Everywhere"), subsequent car chase, and running firefight) we manage to extract the NPC researcher.

Unfortunately, the NPC decided to not honor his child's promise and the Debts of the Son quickly became the Debts of the Father. In no short time, the NPC ended up stuffed in a basement until an appropriate payment plan could be arranged ("Just 10 easy payments at a low introductory APR of 95%! We accept kidneys, lungs, and other major organs that may or may not be redundant!"). It was at this point the DM became exasperated and made the statement that, "[The NPC] casts a spell and teleports out!"

Now, for those of you who have played Shadowrun, you know there's one major spell missing from any version of it: Teleportation. Why? Well, the level of abuse that comes with Teleportation is massive. And protecting assets - with lots of Runners attempting to liberate those assets - becomes impossible when some gunbunny/mage decides to start hopping around every environmental, magical, and physical defense known to metahuman.

So, I became agitated at this (To be fair, I'm a jerk, so I might have said something along the lines of, "That's complete and utter Bull." just with more expletives) and asked for an initiative roll since we had made it clear that we trusted the guy about as far as we can throw him. The results of this became unclear and water was muddied further when the GM stormed off after a few minutes.

When he came back, I laid the case that IF the NPC can teleport, he just signed his own death warrant because I'm going to lobby that we hunt him down, have our mage learn the spell, and summarily execute him so we're the only people in the world with the ability to teleport - a trick that would make our career of being really awful people that steal things infinitely easier. At this point, I suggested that we rewind and say that we last saw the NPC in the basement so I locked the door and from there we would have no idea what happened to him.

From this was born the "Schroedinger Scientist". Either he was alive because he teleported out or dead because we never bothered to check on him ever again.

What made this GM bad was how he tried to force moral questions on the group and then became frustrated when the group didn't take the answer he wanted - he wanted the group to release the NPC Scientist because it was the "Right thing to do" while we wanted to take his kidney out because it was the "Way to get paid so I could continue living". He also did not plan ahead in any way thus forcing what I affectionately call "Storyline Ad Hoc'ery" which is when the game's story wanders in these really weird paths and nothing ever gets resolved or ties together at all.

downtym
2007-09-24, 09:51 AM
Fat rings? Are those rings that make you fat when you wear them?

Yes. Over time they apparently make the character comically fat. Like something out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon or Willy Wonka's What-the-Heck-is-Going-on-Here Factory.

Tallis
2007-09-24, 11:27 AM
Ok, inspired by the end of the shortest campaign I've ever played in, due to the worst DM I've ever had. We start the campaign in a tavern, and first thing that happens goes like this.
DM: ok, so a guy dressed in leather comes over the table you're sitting at and lays down a gold coin.
Paladin: thanks, but what's it for?
DM: You loose all your paladin abilities.
Paladin: WHAT?
DM: he's evil, you associated with him
At this point, we all got up and left.

So what's your horror story with DM's, or do you not have one, seeing as you are the DM?


Bwuhh???
Wow, that's pretty bad.
My worst GM ever spent all his time hitting on my fiance. I don't play with him anymore.

Ranis
2007-09-24, 11:32 AM
"We're fighting a Belor at level seven?!?!"
"Yeah, he's going to take another swing at the Barbarian...:rolls dice:"
"Dude, this is what I was telling you. You have to throw encounters at us that we actually have a chance of beating. You can't just crack the Monster Manual open to a random page and pick the strongest monster on it."
"Oh, in that case, here's an NPC to help out....[arbitrary placement of random NPC]"

We beat the Balor. Yeah.

"Okay, let's see....you guys gained....90,000 exp. for that fight.
:smalleek:
"Okay, that puts us at level fourteen....."

Yeah. Apparently he didn't know that he had to divide that lump sum for all party members....

ravenkith
2007-09-24, 11:34 AM
Not as bad as Lanky buggers, but bears worth mentioning:

I'd been playing for over a year with this group in the same campaign. We got together about once a fortnight to play.

I was playing a mystic theurge, and at the time, there was some arguments about how broken they were from the DM.

He and I had talked about how wizards can really benefit from a problem-solving approach, and how combinations of spells can yield even bigger results than you'd normally get.

We'd theorized that adding the versatility of the cleric spell list to the lethality of the wizard spell list ought to enable some great combos.

He had sid that was exactly the kind of player he wanted for his next game.

It was a while back.

The DM liked the idea so much that he said he had something in mind for the character that would be 'pretty cool', but I had to decide blind whether or not to trust him with it, but I would find out about it all in game. If I went with it, I would have to give up a first level feat. I decided to let him run with it, especially as I didn't have any feats I direly needed to take.

Keep in mind that this is a Cleric of Mystra, to help explain WHY he uses both arcane and divine magic.

So we start the game, and we're playing through it, and, eventually, I learn that he's given me the Spellfire feat. Ok, I says, fine. I keep leveling up as a mystic theurge, wrap it up at ten levels of the class, and decide to take spellfire channeler levels, to emphasize his ties to magic. I only take a couple, as I rapidly learn my spells are falling behind, and then go into Incantatrix. The DM interprets the feat and class abilities as being able to absorb any spell, but only in so far as it affects my character, and only when I ready an action to absorb.

Early on, he gets pissed off at me for pulling spell combos that, by the rules, work. He bans a couple of them after the fact, to which I just shrug, and we move on.

Eventually, though, he just says the character is far too powerful. I'm flabbergasted, as I've pretty much stopped using save based spells because they, well, suck ass with a mystic theurge.

Nonetheless, I talked to the DM about it, and came up with the idea that my character actually suffered from multiple personalities.

Depending on which personality was dominant, he would only be able to use either his wizard abilities or his cleric abilities.

His default alignment was chaotic good. One side of his personality (the wizard) was very chaotic, with only one rule he wouldn't break - he wouldn't betray the party. Other than that, he was usually very selfish, fiendishly intelligent, and extremely self-centered. The other side of the equation was the cleric half, played as overwhelmingly good. He would give to the poor, heal the sick, tend to the lame.

Neither one of them was evil, however...the core alignment of chaotic good wouldn't allow that.

We keep playing, and he keeps nerfing spells as I come up with new combos, or new uses for old spells.

"You can't send a mount down an empty hallway!" being one of his more interesting attempts to stop me from using the spells I had learned. I complain a bit about it, but it all ends up going his way - he's the DM, after all.

We're level 17 at this point...all along, I've been having to show him the rules in the rulebook for various things in an "X does not work that way!", kind of deal.

He then puts us up against a big old blue dragon. In an enclosed space.

The party sorceror kicks up a wall of force to keep it away from us...a gut reaction, and we start talking about what to do. The dragon starts emitting mist (either a spell or an ability), and disappears in a cloud of concealment.

At this point, I realize we're all bunched up pretty tight, and in character, shout a warning to spread out, then teleport into the center of the large area the dragon was living in, taking a chance. Everybody looks at me as If I'm stupid.

The very next round, the dragon's head pops out from underground, on the other side of the barrier, and sprays all my allies down with stunning electric breath of dispelling, or some such - suffice to say, it was reaming the rest of the party, stripping buffs, cutting some of them down to negative hp, etc. The cleric of lathander is still up, however.

So, looking around, I spot the tunnel the thing had gone down (dm's ruling), and fly up behind it, and proceed to fireball it in it's reflex-save denied ass (dm's ruling), staying outside the reach of the tail. (the levels of the dungeon were elementally themed, and I'd guessed ice for this one, and been wrong).

It can't dig forward, because the space behind the wall is too small for it to get into, so it starts backing it's way out. I fireball it twice more with no save before it manages to get up out of the hole and in the clear, collapsing it's exit behind it.

Knowing what's coming, I put up an elemental resistance spell to lightning, and prepare to absorb a spell. Sure enough, the dragon comes back down the hole, and breathes all over me. The damage is mostly absorbed, but the spells he had running (dispelling breath, stunning breath), get absorbed into the power battery that is me.

I then open up with a full out spellfire blast that hits and damages the dragon pretty badly, rolling very well, in front of everyone.

Instead of coming down the hole after me, pressing the attack (probably half HP remaining for him at this point) the dragon backs up and retreats into the open, giving me a chance to throw on some buffs, and get out of the hole. I proceed to range the dragon from a decent distance, using blink & various attack spells (scorching ray, for one) to whittle down his hp, before finally being forced to polymorph into a hydra and meet it head on.

With resistance running, and the multiple hydra head attacks, I manage to get it down to 20 something hitpoints before it drops me to -1.

The entire party has, by now, been brought back up to full by the cleric of Lathander. At which point, the party fighter, now recovered from the stun, walks over and one shots it.

So, for 6 rounds, through smart play, with HALF of my class features, I soloed a stupidly-played dragon.

When the next session rolled around, I drove the 40 minutes to get to the DM's house, ready to play the game, only to find that when I get there, I am no longer welcome, as I clearly have been cheating, having almost defeated an ancient wyrm, by myself, and I have been irritating him by reminding him how the rules work (sometimes the same ones, which he always got WRONG).

I found out later that he had announced his intention to boot me after I had left the last game - meaning, he just hadn't bothered to call me during the two weeks before the game to let me know not to bother to come, and oh BTW, you shan't need to pay the tolls you have to in order to get here and get back again.

In addition, he had told me that I had been 'voted off the island' - but when I talked to the other players involved, they said that while they had been irritated by my reminding the DM of the rules, and the length of time it took me to prep my spells, it had been the DMs call.

It still makes me angry that he didn't even call me in the intervening two weeks.

Within a month, that campaign ended. The players involved started a different one. I'm not sure who ended up DMing that. <shrug>.

valadil
2007-09-24, 11:54 AM
No real horror stories here as I tend to game with people I'm already friends with as opposed to meeting new people through D&D.

One DM didn't want to deal with inter party conflicts, so he declared that we were an established adventuring party who all knew each other. Aside from the fact that my character was built to squick the other players out and this decision took most of the fun out of my character, there were some other problems with the game. For one we didn't find out the names of the other characters until the end of the first session. These were characters we were all supposed to know and be friends with. We didn't find out that one of the characters was female till the second session. I don't know what we didn't find out till the third session, as I stopped playing.

I had another DM who wouldn't tell us his houserules. I'd already quit the game by this point (actually its unclear if I quit or was booted for telling the DM his math was wrong) but there was a combat against some melee who did crazy damage. Afterwards the players demanded to know how this NPC did so much more damage than them. The DM explained that he made up a new feat, improved weapon specialization. It's just a straight up +3 damage and you can take it several times over. He then explained it was the players' fault for making gimp characters who didn't take this feat.

Another DM insisted on posing/acting out scenes from game so you could get more in character. He also occasionally insisted on using props. Often the props were knives. I did not feel comfortable with that and won't even talk to that DM any more. (Note that nothing ever happened from said knives, but it still made me uncomfortable.)

Almost forgot this one. A DM didn't have any plot for my character so I spent two thirds of every session in prison. It was literally just me sitting out and not playing. And he'd get pissed if I left the table during all this down time. I'm fine with a DM not knowing how to handle a character, but if that happens he really should tell the player and let them come up with a character that fits into the story better.

One DM decided that he was going to have vampires break into the party's hotel room in the middle of the night. We decided to fight them. He went ballistic and yelled at us, threatening to stop running the game, because we were supposed to talk to them instead. My character (this was in GURPs btw and is a large part of why I still don't like GURPs) was a gunslinger who pretty much lived for shootin' stuff. Again, if you're going to run a game for pacifist characters just tell the player to play something more fitting to the story. Yeah, it's lame if a DM can't come up with something for a specific character, but I'd rather have to save a character for later and make something new than endure a game where I get left out.

I feel a little bad posting this one as I feel bad for the DM in question. He was more misguided than bad, but it led to a bad game. My first experience with Paranoia was not fun. It had nothing to do with getting abused by other characters. In fact there was very little going on between the characters. We pretty much went down some hallways, found a robotic dog, a robotic cat, and Milton from Office Space. The DM roleplayed all of these, all at once. He did so very enthusiastically, but left little room for the players to do anything. I think he got confused by the idea of "entertaining the players," and did so by performing for us rather than giving us something to interact with. Months later I explained the idea of putting the players in the spotlight to him, and I think he understood what I meant and why his game failed, but he hasn't shown interest in running anything since.

I could keep going, but I've been typing too long and I'm worried someone may notice I'm at forums instead of typing up some code.

Leliel
2007-09-24, 12:57 PM
"We're fighting a Belor at level seven?!?!"
"Yeah, he's going to take another swing at the Barbarian...:rolls dice:"
"Dude, this is what I was telling you. You have to throw encounters at us that we actually have a chance of beating. You can't just crack the Monster Manual open to a random page and pick the strongest monster on it."
"Oh, in that case, here's an NPC to help out....[arbitrary placement of random NPC]"

We beat the Balor. Yeah.

"Okay, let's see....you guys gained....90,000 exp. for that fight.
:smalleek:
"Okay, that puts us at level fourteen....."

Yeah. Apparently he didn't know that he had to divide that lump sum for all party members....

NOOB! Not that I am in any way inexperienced due to a lack of people to play with. Heavens no.

*Two minutes later*

Umm...How do you divde exprience evenly?

Curmudgeon
2007-09-24, 01:03 PM
DM: "You all Teleport onto a disk-shaped platform floating in the air. Roll initiative."

That was the actual start of a Con game. I had a Rogue character. There was nothing but continuous aerial combat from beings that all had DR 20+ and were immune to criticals.

Oh, and he signed up for 12 players and then invited 8 more of his friends to crash the game.

My Rogue got off one lucky arrow shot for maximum damage, and managed to get 1 point past the DR of one enemy. In the whole 8 hour game.

There wasn't a single skill check in that 8 hours, either.

Rex Blunder
2007-09-24, 01:12 PM
In my very first game in jr. high school, the DM told us we could have any stats we wanted, so we all took 18s in everything and maximum HP. One player brought in an existing character he had used in other games - a fighter, with stats that were still suspiciously high, but actually may have come within hailing distance of a d6 at one point. For instance, his intelligence was 14.

The DM, and most of the players, referred to this character as "Dummy", since his Int was 4 lower than everyone else's.

PARTY: Let's send Dummy in the room first to check for traps.
DM: Dummy, do you walk in the middle of the room or the edge of the room?
DUMMY: Middle.
DM: You fall in a pit.
[Room 2:]
DM: Dummy, do you walk in the middle of the room or the edge of the room?
DUMMY: The edge.
DM: The walls fall on you.

Well, that's jr. high, and bad DMs, in a nutshell; but somehow I was still intrigued enough to go out and buy my own copies of the D&D books.

Chaos Bringer
2007-09-24, 01:20 PM
Not really a BAD DM persay, but this was a real d*ck move on his part. I was playing a really really stubborn sorcerer, and one thing led to another and he ended up in a situation that was basically have your arm torn off (by another player, he was a bigger d*ck) or surrender. As I was very stubborn and rolled some awesome (if misguided) will saves, his arm was torn off with him laughing about it. Then the DM had me taken to a healer, and the arm was reattached... to his buttocks. After some major arguments, it was decided i could still cast, but with a constant 30% spell failure rate. The DM waited 10 minutes and once he had an NPC hear that i could still cast, chopped off the hand :smallmad:

Elhann
2007-09-24, 01:24 PM
Mine cannot defeat lankybugger, but this is a case of four great faults of a DM: Railroading, DMPCs, overCR encounters and stupid non-plot.

We are playing a 3.0 Dragonlance cmapaign, and our group is fairly big: a minotaur fighter-barbarian, a kender rogue, and human ranger, kinght of Solamnia, monk, and me (red robed illusionist) We are around level 10

We arrived at some island on the west, with several refugees of a dragonized town. First thing we meet, is a Knight of Solamnia (read, paladin), who COMMANDS the group to go to their fortress. At this point, our knight and monk are NOT part of the group (yet) Once we reach the Solamnian fortress, a Solamnian high poobah, Jenna (leader of the red robed wizards) and Dalamar (leader of teh black robed wizards, read EVIL wizard guy) meet us and tel us to go and find some magic thingamajjaber from the tomb of a renegade knight. (Stupid non-plot evidence 1)

Once we reach there, we find as balck robed wizard, who we defeat. After defeating the CR 18 death knight inside the tomb (over-CR encounter ftw), just because we had to defeat it (stupid non-plot evidence 2. There was NOTHING to do in the tob. It was sealed, and the death knight was trapped inside a chamber. So, we just entered a tomb to destroy an absolutely non-threatening monster, who couldn't go out). Mind you, despite having a level 9 wizard in teh group, we had to take a white robed wizard to teleport us there, open the tomb, and stare. (DMPC 1)

After this, we ask Jenna (my Knowledge Arcana check, above 30, didn't recognize any of the runes in the cloak of the evil wizard who was trying to go inside teh tomb. A wizard without spellbook. She is unable t recognize it either, but Dalamar can tell us that the rune belongs to a renegae black cloaked wizard, and commands us to find him and determine what he is up to.

OK, we go to a cottage, fight some bad guys, but the wizard manages to evade us. There are some maps of a ruin in the north, and we head north. Somewhere in the road, a guy with a stone ambshes us. He says something about his amster, and summons five bulletes around us. Well, not us. The groupo is scattered, and teh bulletes emerge surrounding my PC, who thanks Lunitari wins initiative, casts fly and soars upwards, out of reach of the monsters. The group is badly hurt, so we make night in the next town. A couple days later, we reach the ruins.

The ruins are a hole on the floor. When we enter, there is a trap that shoots an arrow 20 feet behind the trigger, a lake with a water elemental, and a couple of ice devils. After teh devils, 2 dire bears, and finally, a room with a wall of glass which the evil wiz is trying to open. The adventurers storm into the room, and take care of evil wiz's guards. I cast my chain lightning on teh evil iz, but as soon as the lightning approaches him, it fizzles (antimagic field). OK, at least that means he won't be casting anything, and I cna concentrate on blinding or phantasmal killing his guards, while the minotaur greataxes the wiz's skull. What about, the wizards casts fireball? after I pont him that he cannot cast spells while inside an antimagic field, he supresses it, moment I use to stone-to-flesh him. Great, we have captured our target, we can leave.

Some days later, we arrive at the Solamnian fortress. There, Dalamar says he will pay us the next day, and we can go to sleep. When wwe wake up next day, what would you say? Dalamar refuses to pay? I wish!
A huge fraking red dragon caem tonight and stole the statue. Yes, you were sleeping in teh house next door, but the huge battle knights vs dragon wasn't noisy enough (Stupid non-plot gets stupider)
Dalamar decides we are a bunch of useless useless thig, and decides that we ahve to go and get the wizard back again. And this time, he will go with us. (DMPC, 6 levels higher than the group, I choose you!) Since we are useless, despite giving him the wizard he wanted.

OK, we reach some caves in the mountains, defeat the dragon's ogres with ease (Dalamar playing DM vs DM), and onc einside the cave, the evil wizard is about to be defeated, when Dalamar turns on us, takes his former apprentice with him (I remind you, a renegade wizard) and leaves a note challenging us to go to Malystryx Peak.

We decide Dalamar can bite us. Next inn we stop in, the innkeeper tells us we cannot stay there, as Dalamar has put a reward on our heads. (Isn't it railroadilicious?)

But lo and behold, the Solamnian grand-poobah decides to join us to hunt Dalamar (A lvel 16 knight of Solamnia, DMPC 2). When we arrive at Malys Peak, the whole group besides me feels sleepy.In their dreams, Dalamar appears to them and offers something if they take me to him. As I suspected, and the kender couldn't remain silent (he's a kender after all) I make the two solamnian knights (my honour is my life, and all that) promise that they won't allow this. Ranger and mino say they don't trust dalamar. Monk grins. I decide that since they have slept, it is my turn now, and I need to memorize some spells.

At this point I must say that DM was angry at me because I flew against his bulletes, dimension doored when an iron golem was after me, and defeated his pretty water elemental with a projected image, a shadow fire shield, and some baslting spells. Nvrmind my Knowledge checks, usually higher than 30 and always higher than 20, not revealing a single thing from ANY monster, my spellcraft checks to recognize a spell being cast failing because "you don't have that spell in you spellbook, so you cannot recognize it" and things like this.

He was quite proud of playing Dalamar (his DMPC 6 level higher than the group remember), so I ask the knight of solamnia to cat immunity from spells (Explosive runes) on me. DM doesn't suspect anything.

Once inside the Peak, we finally find Dalamar. Unnnoticed, I cast invisibilty. Walk up to Dalamar, take a sheet of paper I had already tampered with earlier (remember I had swapped some spells) and read:
"I prepared explosive runes this morning. 38 times"
A fittingly stupid end to an increasingly stupid campaign.

Saph
2007-09-24, 01:38 PM
Again, not really a bad DM, so much as an inexperienced one.

He wanted to try DMing. This was fine. He wanted to play a Conspiracy X / X-files themed game. This was fine. He based his plot on a few thriller novels. This was fine.

He allowed players to have spellcasting/psionic characters, and didn't take this into account when designing his plot.

This was not fine.

See, in D&D, there are anti-magic shields, abjuration spells, and enemy spellcasters to limit the power of casters. In the real world, there aren't.


Scene 1

DM: "Okay, the suspected terrorist you're supposed to be keeping tabs on is in the hotel room below you. It'll be difficult to listen in on him. You could try to plant a bug, or rappel down the outside, or-"
Party Spellcaster: "I cast scrying."
DM: " . . . Oh."

Scene 2

DM: "Your helicopter lands at the small town where the secret device was rumoured to be. Two cops approach you. One of them asks what you're doing here."
Party Thug: "I bet these guys are enemy agents."
Party Psion: "Yeah. DM, I use my psionic divination and ask if they're enemy agents. I made my roll."
DM: " . . . Yeah. They are."
Party Thug: "I shoot them."
Party Soldier: "Me too."

(Two quickdraws and seven bullets later)

Party Thug: "We take the device off their bodies and get into the helicopter to go home."

Scene 3

DM: "As you're flying off you see a speck in the air behind you. You realise it's a jet fighter, an F-15. It's heading right towards you."
Party Soldier: "I bet it's here to shoot us down."
Party Psion: "I use my psionic divination and ask if the plane's going to attack us."
DM: " . . . Yes."
Party Psion: "I use psychokinesis and heat up the plane's fuel tank."
DM: " . . . The plane blows up."
Party Thug: "Do we get back safely?"
DM: "Yes."
Party Thug: "That was fast. So what's the next mission?"

There wasn't a next mission, because there wasn't another session.

- Saph

Chaos Bringer
2007-09-24, 01:46 PM
That would make for a really fun campaign if he threw a bunch of overpowered stuff at you. Poor guy, magic ruins everything.

Kurald Galain
2007-09-24, 02:02 PM
Saph - that reminds me of another amateur DM I once had, who wanted to base his campaign upon ElfQuest (http://www.elfquest.com) and figured D&D would be good to model that world.

Well, except that ElfQuest elves have all sorts of innate magical abilities, such as telepathy, healing, and flight. Healing is easy (just play a cleric and heal away) but the other two aren't particularly available for beginning characters, even though they should for that campaign world, so he decided to make them skills.

So the two rogues in the party started with four ranks in flight each, obviating the need for hide and climb checks, and able to bypass or ignore nearly everything in his city-based adventure. Bad move :smallwink:

I don't think he ever DM'ed after that. Then again he was kind of weird period, the kind of guy that wants to join the local Wiccans because he believes that'll give him a chance to dance naked under the moonlight with hot chicks. The resident hot chick (being the gf of one of the players) was somewhat less than amused.

Zoraciel Ivtel
2007-09-24, 02:14 PM
Never play dnd with a sibling and his friends.

My brother was DMing, and his campaigns tended to consist of random goblin slaying instead of actual plots. The one time we actually played long enough to make it into a town, his friend, playing the rogue, found a pair of "platinum pants" that melted down into about 20,000 platinum pieces.

Meanwhile, I was in the common room of the inn completely broke and trying to heal people for gold so I could afford decent supplies.

The one good effect of this is that when a friend of mine told me he wanted to play a campaign, I agreed to DM and vowed to do better. My players are still happy, and many have told me that I'm the best DM they've ever had. :smallbiggrin: Yeah, I've got some issues, but at least they follow a plot and aren't shameless acts of favoritism.

Saph
2007-09-24, 02:15 PM
Yeah, the whole thing would actually have made for quite a funny game, if it had been intended that way. It was just that the DM wanted a X-Filesy creeping-mood-of-horror type game, paranoia spreading as you wonder just who's involved in the conspiracy, and, well, that just doesn't work when the PCs can read minds.

Cops: "Hey there."
Party: "Hello."
Cops: "We'd like to see your identification and ask what you're-"
Psychic: "Hey, they're Black Book agents!"

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
*thud* *bleed bleed*

Thug: "Cool! They've got the nuclear thingy we were looking for!"
Soldier: "And they've got money, too!"
Psychic: "Fastest mission ever, let's go home."

- Saph

KoDT69
2007-09-24, 02:20 PM
My older brother. His idea of an adventure was a constant train of encounters in an open field with WAAAY too much treasure. He figured every ogre, all 43 of them, MUST have Gauntlets of Ogre Power to be that strong :smallconfused: What a n00b!

PlatinumJester
2007-09-24, 03:06 PM
I've never had a bad DM. The worst I've had is my current one who nerfed several classes which was annoying but when I playe his campaign it was really fun so it doesn't really matter.

Ravenscroft
2007-09-24, 03:41 PM
DM: "You all Teleport onto a disk-shaped platform floating in the air. Roll initiative."

That was the actual start of a Con game.
Oh, and he signed up for 12 players and then invited 8 more of his friends to crash the game.


Did you complain to the Con organisers and ask for a refund?
Report the 08 DM-friends crashing the game as being intruders who had not (presumably) paid for said game.

Roderick_BR
2007-09-24, 03:48 PM
I had some bad DM's (nothing as bad as PsychoDM, of course).

First was a Vampire player (imagine the "holier than thou" stereotype. That's him).
This one is funny because he's also a bad player.
We played a Hero Quest adapted as a D&D session, only using the HQ's rules.
Vampire boy was the dwarf. While walking down a tunnel, he fell on a rock trap, meaning that the path got blocked.
Now, anyone will notice that, while the guy that activated it could go forward, the rest of the group would be stranded. What it means? Wrong way. What Vampire boy does? Goes forward, only to be locked into a dead end.
Vampire boy complains for several minutes, and the DM allows the elf to use a spell that allows the target to walk through stone, even though he couldn't legally do that (the dwarf was out of his line of sight), but he fiated it so Vampire boy would stop complaining.
Then, instead of Vampire boy returning to the group, he decided to walk across the stone, and check the other way (it was a bifurcation). So, obviously, the other way was also a dead end. He complained for several others minutes, on how the DM was a "bad DM".
Moving on. We returned some doors, and found the right way. By this time, the DM had to leave. Vampire boy then got his spot as the DM.
Then, at some point, the wizard entered a room, and was attacked by 4 skeletons. He used a spell that gives him a big bonus on battle (for 6 rounds, he was even stronger than the barbarian, it's like Tenser's/Mage's Transformation). Then Vampire boy made the skeletons surround the wizard.
Result: Surroundered, the wizard couldn't step away from the door. No one else could enter to help him (there had no space between the wizard and the rest of the group for them to walk), and he couldn't exit until all enemies were killed.
We complained that Vampire boy essentially locked the wizard in, and Vampire boy complained that he did it to balance the fact that the wizard used his strength spell, so it was "balanced".
And you don't want to hear how he plays in actual Vampire:Maskerade games...
He also complains when I use a shield to roll dice when I'm DMing, and demands me to don't "cheer" when I roll a natural 20, because I can make up what the result as a DM...

There's also another guy that plays fine, but it's a bad DM. First, he tries to make everyone lose their weapons. If he has no explaination, he says they vanished (he did it twice).
Then there's the god-like characters. His rogues are IMPOSSIBLE to hit, as they have Sudden Perfect Evasion, that can dodge anything, armies of half-orcs wearing full plate, and orc with a +20 to listen checks.
And finally, bad tought out encounters, where you can move on only if you find out EXACTLY what he wanted us to do.
He's not really bad, he just writes his stories as if we were expectators, instead of active characters. He's can't make flexible stories.
If event A need to happen when event B happens, we can't do anything to change event B. Event B NEEDS to happen, or the game gets stuck.

In my group, I was always considered a good DM, but I have a friend that is simple uter awesome at making fun stories, and lots of cool in-character tension with his plots.

I didn't see it, but I heard from some friends about a DM that told the players to go to some place to continue the mission, and when one of the players wanted to go to somewhere else, he would find an invisible wall blocking the way.

Kyle
2007-09-24, 04:20 PM
"Alright, you guys start outside a grey-walled city in the middle of a featureless wasteland."

"Cool. I guess we'll go into the city."

"You can't."

"Uh...why not?"

"There's no gate."

"Well, we'll follow the wall until we find a gate."

"No, there's no gate."

"Sure, why not? Anyone have rope? We can climb the wall and get into the city that way."

"Nope, that won't work either."

"Huh. Why not?"

"The walls are prefectly smooth, and stretch up to the sky farther than you can see."

"...Why is it we're here?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"Because this is where you are."

"'Kay. We start heading down the road to try and find someone."

"There's no road."

"What a suprise. We don't need a road, anyways. We just pick a random direction and start walking."

"You can't do that."

"Why not?"

"There's nothing outthere. Your characters wouldn't just walk off and starve to death."

And it's not as though the GM was new to the game, or even to GMing. He did, in fact, have at least a decade more experiance playing than myself. He was just awful at it.

Nerd-o-rama
2007-09-24, 04:34 PM
For some reason, that session description makes me think he was trying to make some kind of existentialist statement.

What'd you end up doing, if you couldn't go in, you couldn't leave, and apparently nothing was happening?

AslanCross
2007-09-24, 04:51 PM
"Alright, you guys start outside a grey-walled city in the middle of a featureless wasteland."...

o_O How'd this guy survive for a decade as a horrible GM? Railroading characters to go somewhere is one thing, but railroading characters to stay in the middle of nowhere? What? :smallsigh:

Kyle
2007-09-24, 04:52 PM
For some reason, that session description makes me think he was trying to make some kind of existentialist statement.

What'd you end up doing, if you couldn't go in, you couldn't leave, and apparently nothing was happening?
After trying to hack our way through the wall, cast spells at it, and disbelieve, all to no avail, we quickly became distracted talking about various non-game related issues, which upset the guy GMing as he had really wanted a turn at the head of the table.

The next session we began a d6 Star Wars campagin, and he returned to his usual m.o. of bieng the guy dressed all in black who doesn't talk much.

I sincearly doubt he'd intended for any sort of existentialist statement to be made with the "campagin". No doubt he'd planned some obscure way for us to get the ball rolling, and felt extremely clever for having thought up whatever it was he'd planned, but he just was not a good GM. The first campaign of his I played in, he actually made us describe how we were attempting to open doors; whether we were pushing, pulling, or sliding them. Not because it mattered, as they were doors on our airship, and not trapped, but because he thought it was clever.

Drider
2007-09-24, 05:23 PM
o_O How'd this guy survive for a decade as a horrible GM? Railroading characters to go somewhere is one thing, but railroading characters to stay in the middle of nowhere? What? :smallsigh:

1.Railroading someone to go somewhere
2.Railroad someone to stay in the middle of nowhere
3.???
4. PROFIT!

Shas aia Toriia
2007-09-24, 05:28 PM
How is asking how your doors are opened clever? If they're trapped, that makes sense, but on your airship? Bizarre.

And PsychoDM is freaky.:smalleek:

The Glyphstone
2007-09-24, 05:34 PM
Why hasn't anyone posted part 2 of the PsychoDM story, where he chucks a rock through Lanky's window?

Spiryt
2007-09-24, 05:43 PM
Why hasn't anyone posted part 2 of the PsychoDM story, where he chucks a rock through Lanky's window?

Beacuse somebody posted link, and everybody can read it? Heck it just had been necro'ed a little so it's not far behind this thread on 1rst page.

And for that reason I just read Lanky's story.
It made you feel scary. It gives a creeps. Send's a shiver up and down your spine. What else can be said?

Just Alex
2007-09-24, 06:22 PM
He's technically not a DM since it was a Legend of the 5 Rings campaign, but I think this applies.
The GM is a buddy of mine who was introducing a few friends of his that I didn't know to L5R. The my buddy wanted someone familiar with the setting to be another PC and make sure things go smoothly. Now, I had played in another game run by this guy, it was a sort of tongue in cheek, monty-haul styled Mage game that was actually kinda fun, since we could be all silly. The high point was probably when the team ran into a bunch of angry werewolves and the transmuter turned a metal playground set into silver, then had the forces mage hurl silvered slides, but I digress.
Since L5R is generally a more serious style game, I started making a more serious minded character. Before the campaign, my buddy asked me to make sure I took a bunch of magistraty skills and court skills, just in case the newer players don't listen and take straight combat stuff. I oblige. Since L5R is also a decidedly lethal setting, the GM asked if I would be horribly offended if my character died. Knowing the nuances of L5R, I said I'd be OK with my character's death. PC's die all the time in L5R, that's why they have the Kharma rules, after all. I just asked that if my character dies, he gets a reasonably heroic/honorable death, rather than Kolat poison you in your sleep style death.
We start the campaign, foil some villains plots, and generally start on with the story. We eventually come across the BBEG and his henchmen. Now, from the description, I know the BBEG is Kokujin, who's in canon story and knowledge about him is hard to miss for the character. He drops a sword and has his henchmen summon an oni, then he runs away. Now, in retrospect, I think the GM expected me to use out of game knowledge here. In character, I know that oni are tough little buggers and without magic or jade weapons, we're going to have a tough time. I can see mystic kanji on the sword that Kokujin dropped. Out of character, I know that the sword is a Shamesword (a very powerful sword with a heinous curse on it). In character, I only recognize that the symbols on it indicate powerful magic. Since we're only about a half mile from the city we're supposed to be protecting, I take what I consider a very logical in character action of damning the consequences and grabbing the magic sword. Magic sword in hand, I proceed to hack the crap out of the oni.
Now, I want to get the magic sword off of me and get decursed. In character, I figure out the curse fairly quickly. Basically, every day (more if I'm in a major populated area) I need to make a progressively harder save to avoid going on a murderous rampage. Since I picked up the sword, I can't get rid of it. If I throw it to the bottom of the ocean, it'll end up back in my room before sunset. Being from the super magic clan, I want to go back to my homeland and get the magic masters there to decurse me. Right as I get my character set to head out, the party gets drafted into the Imperial Legions to combat a giant Shadowlands army that managed to create a beachhead in southern lands. This is a major problem for me, as my homelands are at the far northern point. I present my case for avoiding the draft to the commander, but get shot down as I only know in character that the curse is making me more aggressive. A week later game time I've managed to stave off the effects of the curse, but it's only a matter of time before I fail a save. Fortunately, the battle is won now and I get to return home. Now the GM looks at the map. Figures out that it'll take me approximately 1 month to arrive back home. Since I'm traveling alone, the rage doesn't cause a problem.
Except for the fact that the target number increased every day of the month I was traveling. By the time I got back, the TN was around 70, which I had to beat rolling 3d10, with exploding 10's. One murderous rage later in my clan's capitol = one very dead PC in an amazingly dishonorable fashion.

To this day, I don't know what he expected me to do to survive that thing. I'm still friends with him, but I don't think I'll ever play a serious game under him again.

adanedhel9
2007-09-24, 06:29 PM
The worst DMing I've encountered:

Two of my players invited me to a game run by an uncle of theirs. This game was sort of an annual tradition that he would do for the younger generation. From these players, I had heard all sorts of horror stories about his game - how weird and chaotic they were, how vindictive the DM was - but the stories always ended with much enjoyment and many rounds of "That was a great game."

On top of this, the DM's kids were old enough (11 and 13, if I recall correctly) to really get involved; this was to be their first roleplaying experience. They were also bringing friends of their own. Now, I have no problem with that at all; in fact, I looked forward to it. I liked the idea of teaching the munchkins my ways.

Knowing the behavior of teenagers, the DM starts the game with a big preamble about how the players were going to have to be cautious, play smart, not rush into situation, etc. They were warned, and all the older players echoed. This seemed like a great start to the game.

The DM proceeded to turn everything we did against us. Yes, there were moments of stupidity, but there were moments of good playing and brilliance as well. Both were equally punished.

We check for traps at a door. The DM announces, "Since you searched, there'll be one there. Wouldn't have been if you hadn't searched."

The party wizard had burned all his spells, and since we started with next to no equipment, became more of a liability than a help. He opted out of the next fight by hiding. The DM killed the character by fiat for "not playing along."

If we spent too much time discussing our strategy for the next part of the adventure, we would be attacked by random monsters.

We ended up TPKing against a mob (20+) of hobgoblins while trapped in an enclosed space. We tried to talk to them, but, despite apparently understanding us, they simply attacked.

Spiryt
2007-09-24, 06:44 PM
Well adanedhel9, I read your post and I just wonder:

Why DM should do such things? To laugh a bit? Unload frustration?

In front of his own kids?

I have no idea.

Shas aia Toriia
2007-09-24, 07:05 PM
That was a good DM? Seemed more of a pain then as asset.

black wagner
2007-09-24, 07:14 PM
Certinally not the worst DM ive ever played with, in fact he has many good point, he's highly orginised, always has contigency plans.

BUT some of his interpretations of things can be a bit odd, kind of kills the mood.

(excerpts from various out of text conversations and edited for ease of typing)
DM: On the planes, alighnment and belief is everything. You can run across a Lawful Good Hill Giant.
DM: You dont always need to kill everything you run across, sometimes other solutions can be found.
DM: you need to get the fleece of a huge back sheep. You find the sheep, it is tended by a hill giant.
Players: We approach and engage in conversation.
DM: You find from him that they are owned by a hill giant chieftian a few miles away.
Players: We go forth and attempt to make deal with the chieftian.
A deal is made, we barter for the sheep and return and get our fleece.
DM: To Dwarven Cleric & Elvin cleric. You both awaken without the abiltys your gods grant you. You dealt with a giant when they are both your races sworn enemies, there is to be no parly with giants, all must be killed.
Players: WTF!!!! Fine, we return to the giants steading, slaughter the tribe wholesale, destrying the bodies to ensure they can never come baqck, go back to the flock, kill the shepard, destroy his body. Kill the rest of the flock, just in case, they are owned by giants after all.

From that day forward, everyone potential enemy dies, heads removed and burned (just in case)

DM: Killing is not the solution to everything. In the planes, belief and alighnemnet are everything, you could possibly encounter a lawful good red dragon....

and so it goes.

Everything still dies.

RandomNPC
2007-09-24, 09:00 PM
not a bad DM but the... oddest? of the 4 i've played under.

Star wars D20. we start off as part of a military group, two jedi and me, the sharpshooter. i do more damage than the jedi, when i can hit. out of the military group i was the only one using ranged weapons outside of 35 feet. the droids charging us didn't fire untill within 50 ft. at 80 ft. i was picking them off, all 19 other soldiers and our grenade toting madman of a captan sat there while the jedi charged and i covered.

now i'm glad he didn't DMPC the captain and 19 soldiers the way he could have, but when 2 jedi get a 21 unit military escort you think they would try to protect them wouldn't they?

Tai Sunstrider
2007-09-25, 01:27 AM
My personal gaming horror story, while nothing compared to lankybugger, is still pretty bad, it was also my own fault for being in that game because i already knew the guy running it was a total idiot. The game was White Wolf i decided i wanted to play a Bastet and the only Bastet worth playing is a Werecheetah in my book. I was walking home from the grocery store, as normal people in New York do every so often, and I'm almost to the door of my house, when this black van suddenly screeches to a halt across the street and a bunch of guys with guns pop out and start spraying the area (the area being me because i can't possibly dodge that many bullets, apparently being able to move and react at the speed of sound doesn't quite cut the mustard against these weapons) with poison darts. I wake up in a pitch black room tied with chains on a pallet. When I move lights come on at which point i realize I'm in Chrinos (hybrid) form, at which point I immediately point out that were-creatures have what amounts to dark vision, moving on, the GM says that the entire room is made of silver walls, floor, whole shebang. This doesn't bother me because bastet are only vulnerable to gold.Then he says that there is also a were wolf in the room, I laugh and say "You are kidding right?" , nope low and behold its one of the other PCs, I decide that now would be a great time to pretend that the descriptor for the racial stereotypes in this universe don't exist because if they didn't then that was a very dead PC. I immediately have to cover my shame partially by reverting to chrinos form the rest by using my tail and hands (this character was a girl... I used to randomly generate my characters descriptor, I've grown out of that), I look around some more trying to find a way out to no avail except for what appeared to be the outline of a door after a great deal of effort (and basically cheating which i didn't realize until i read that bastet can't normally go into the umbra until the reach a certain rank) me and the werewolf escape into a long hallway of doors we followed the hallway which lead to a massive arena and in this massive arena was a nexus crawler( i think it was one of the creatures that could turn you into anything it wanted to without rolling any dice) from my vantage point there was an exit i could only hope would lead outside but it was clearly too small for the crawler (apparently it cant use its cheese powers to turn that area into something it could readily rip through like , i don't know, toilet paper or something. also being a creature with enough strength to hurl a bus across the entire arena meant it still wasn't strong enough to punch through concrete) since i didn't know the werewolf i decided to not try and drag 600lbs of pissed off dog 120 yards to the exit. so after a great deal more effort and about 7 encounters i made it out amazingly enough with the were wolf in tow (not sure how he kept up at this point i didn't care) apparently we were at a military base that had an airport attached because we managed to stow aboard a cargo plane, finally after all of this, i manage to make my way back home and just as I'm getting to my doorstep a black van comes screeching to a halt (again) right in front of my house. I flip my character sheet over and say "I'm done you suck as a GM and as a player don't expect me to play in any game involving you ever again."

Solophoenix
2007-09-25, 04:39 AM
"Alright, you guys start outside a grey-walled city in the middle of a featureless wasteland."

"Cool. I guess we'll go into the city."

"You can't."

"Uh...why not?"

"There's no gate."

"Well, we'll follow the wall until we find a gate."

"No, there's no gate."

"Sure, why not? Anyone have rope? We can climb the wall and get into the city that way."

"Nope, that won't work either."

"Huh. Why not?"

"The walls are prefectly smooth, and stretch up to the sky farther than you can see."

"...Why is it we're here?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

"Because this is where you are."

"'Kay. We start heading down the road to try and find someone."

"There's no road."

"What a suprise. We don't need a road, anyways. We just pick a random direction and start walking."

"You can't do that."

"Why not?"

"There's nothing outthere. Your characters wouldn't just walk off and starve to death."

And it's not as though the GM was new to the game, or even to GMing. He did, in fact, have at least a decade more experiance playing than myself. He was just awful at it.


Your characters didn't happen to be called Estragon and Vladimir did they? Cookie for the reference.

Roderick_BR
2007-09-25, 06:37 AM
(...)
We check for traps at a door. The DM announces, "Since you searched, there'll be one there. Wouldn't have been if you hadn't searched."
(...)
Schroedinger's Trap?

It's sad when a DM asks players to think before acting and to plan things out, and don't get in fights all the time... and punishes players that do exactly what they were asked to do...

Godna
2007-09-25, 06:43 AM
Nah once i had a dm like that

Player: I search the door
DM: Roll?
player: 20 Woot
DM: You find a Trap on the door, but with same skill you used to find quickly found a button to turn it off.
Player: so no trap huh
DM: more or less but a 20 means you had to find something even if it wasnt there.
player: yay... i guess

same event for a 1 is either what door? or something along the lines of that or if they searched for traps

DM: Your very feble attempts at find a trap amuse the gods into putting 1 there which you failed to notice.

SKarious
2007-09-25, 06:46 AM
Your characters didn't happen to be called Estragon and Vladimir did they? Cookie for the reference.

If they were, they were probably waitng for Godot.
I need that cookie to dip in my cup of "blend #107". :smallcool:

manda_babylon
2007-09-25, 05:36 PM
Guys, seriously. Lankybugger's story is horrible. We get it. However, the OP didn't ask what Lankybugger's worst experience was, or even what the worst experience we've ever heard of was. They asked what OUR worst experiences were. Why does everyone feel the need to excuse their story with, "Well, it's not as bad as what happened to Lankybugger, but..."?

That being said, I had a horrible GM in multiple D20 Modern zombie games. We played three games set in the same campaign setting, and each time, the GM screwed/mistreated my characters in favor of another player, Sheena's characters, just so he could flirt with her (despite the fact that we had all been friends for years and she was/still is happily engaged).

Ex 1. In one game, the GM decided AFTER we had rolled our characters that instead of starting with weapons we had picked based on wealth bonus/occupation/etc., we would begin the game with whatever weapons we, the players, had in our homes. It should be noted that Sheena and I both lived with our parents at the time, and while Sheena's father collects firearms, mine is an anti-gun campaigner. My character was a Federal Agent, and the GM declared that there was no way he was going to let him have a gun. When we played, we were in combat right off the bat, where the GM laughed at us for not being able to defend ourselves, "I guess Sheena's character is going to have to save the day!" My character and his partner, another FBI agent, pulled out Glock 22s, standard issue, and proceeded to attack. He declared this was mutiny (which is was) and stopped the game.

Ex. 2: Eventually, he agreed to let us use the guns, since we refused to play without them, since it came out that the only two people playing the game who actually had guns in their home were, surprise - the GM and Sheena! Then, this stunning gem happened.

GM: "There is a Displacer Beast in the ceiling." (paraphrase)
Sheena: "I shoot it... (rolls) ****, I missed."
GM: "What'd you roll? Maybe you hit it!"
Sheena: "Is its defense higher than a five? Because if it is, I didn't hit it."
GM: (literally pouts)
Other player: (rolls) "Does a 17 hit it?"
GM: "Maybe, let's see... (rolls, visible to the table) "Okay, the Displacer Beast gets to roll to see if it was... displaced... when the shot neared it. It technically wasn't there when you fired, so you don't hit it."
Me: "What's the DC for determining if you hit it or not, once you beat its defense?"
GM: "I roll two d10s, for a d100 - if it's below 50, it was displaced. If it's above 50, it's there."
Other player: "What if you roll a 50?"
GM: "It EATS YOU." (said jokingly, but still not an answer)
Me: "I'll try shooting it. (rolls) "A Natural 20!" (Automatic success in our house rules)
GM: "Confirm it."
All: "We decided not to confirm crits anymore, remember? We decided it was stupid."
GM: "Fine. (rolls for Displacer Beast - everyone can see it is an 83)."
Me: (rolls damage)
GM: Wait, what are you doing?!"
Me: "...Rolling damage."
GM: "You didn't hit it!"
Me: "Yes, I did. You said if it was above 50, it's there to take the bullet. You rolled an 83."
GM: "I'll tell you when you hit something. You missed it."
Me: "Why?!"
GM: "Because it moved back into the ceiling tiles.
Me: "It can't move - It's MY turn."
[This fight goes on for about 2o minutes, and he finally allows me to roll my damage, just before it disappears]

Ex. 3: The Displacer Beast returns later, long enough to kidnap a player and displace with him. We chase the creature and are nearly killed by two NPCs. My character, despite having levels of Negotiator, is immediately disliked by the NPCs, though they do love Sheena's character, and exchange lots of innuendo with him.

We get to the room, which has one door. Our missing friend is hanging from the ceiling, tied around the waist to a giant hook. There is a stack of wooden containers beneath him, and the GM tells us that, "If you stood on the crates and jumped, you could reach his legs."

We ask about the Displacer Beast, and he says we can't see it. I declare out of character that the room is a trap. The GM tells me I'm metagaming. I ask if I can roll a Knowledge: Tactics check to see if I recognize this is a trap. He okays it. I roll a 14, plus my my 6 ranks in it - an unnatural 20. He says, "Fine, you know it's a trap."

As we wait and try to figure out how to recover our companion without setting off the trap, and try to figure out what the trap is, the GM says, "Tired of waiting, Ratchet and Clank (these weren't their names, but they were mechanical-sounding) move forward into the room. As they cross into the center of the room, the boxes shift - the floor is soft." Long story short, swarms of small creatures that emit a toxic gas come out of the boxes and attack us - because the GM sent the NPCs into the room without us.

We defeat the things after some effort, by throwing fuel on them and burning them. During the fight, another player rushes to save the kidnapped party member. He makes a Climb check and fails to beat the DC of 20, with a total of 12. [This will be important later] By failing his Climb check, he fails to Climb, and must wait until his next round to try again. There is no penalty, despite the fact that he is perched on rickety boxes filled with toxic creatures. [This will be important later.]

Ex 4: After recovering our friend, we go into the computer lab to recover the machine we've been sent to get - Ratchet and Clank vanish, but they are soon replaced by 5 NPCs - a military unit, who completely ignores the two FBI agents and their concerns, and go to confer with - you guessed it! - Sheena's bounty hunter.

The military unit leaves with the thing we were sent to get. We are told that if we want it, we have to prove ourselves "worthy" to their boss - they give us a cell phone and vanish. Into thin air. The FBI characters want to report in to headquarters, because this looks like a military unit gone rogue. The GM tells us our cellphones don't work. We point out that we were just given a cellphone, so it won't work either. His response? "It's a MAGIC cellphone." We decide to drive to headquarters, only to discover someone has stole our car. Attempts to commandeer one reveal that there are no cars. Anywhere. We decide to walk to headquarters. He informs us we are lost. [somewhat acceptable, as none of us are locals, but... we just drove here! Surely we remember something! ... Nope.]

Another player ends up with the phone, but when the Boss calls, he wants to speak to Roma, Sheena's character. The other player gives hers the phone. Now, we can all hear the conversation, because we can all hear the GM, and we are all commenting on the conversation. It is decided that Roma is relaying the information to us to discuss as a party [using the "Blah - now you know what the GM just said" technique.]

The Boss says something about the Anquitellia, the group the FBI agents have been sent to investigate. My character asks Roma to ask the Boss what his group's connection to the Anquitellia is - but to do it casually. The GM responds with, "Shut the hell up, no-one's talking to you, you little Pip-Squeak!"

This floors me, and everyone else stops and stares as him. At this point, we're not sure who he is talking to. I am pretty short, yes, and so was the character I was playing. However, I assume he's talking to me, since the Boss can't and hasn't seen my character before, and couldn't even hear my character talking. The GM blushes and says he was talking in character to mine. Another player points out that we had established the Boss couldn't hear anyone but Roma. The GM flounders and says that because my character is so loud (?) the Boss CAN hear him.

Ex. 5: This is the breaking point - after this, I left the game.

We are still walking down the street, having hung up with the Boss. We come upon Clank, the NPC from earlier. He is lying on the sidewalk, bleeding from a wound in his stomach. We, as a party, decide to save him. We try to figure out who has Treat Injury - I have one rank in it, and I am the only one who does. Even though my Wisdom is low, [+1, making my roll modifier a +2, total] I decide to give it a try.

I roll a 17. This makes my total a 19.

GM: "You didn't make it."
Me: "I didn't?"
GM: "The DC was 25."
Me: "Damn."
Other player: "I can try it untrained. I have a +3 in Wisdom..."
GM: "It doesn't matter."
Other player: "Why not?"
GM: "Because when Manda failed her Treat Injury check, she killed him."
Me: "WHAT?!"
GM: "You failed a roll. By more than 5, might I add. That makes it a critical failure. That means you killed him."
Me: "You're kidding, right? You don't kill people by not making a Treat Injury check. It's like earlier when he failed his Climb check. When you fail a Treat Injury, you fail to Treat the Injury. That's the penalty - your lack of success."
GM: "He's dead, okay? Stop whining about it."

At this point, other players begin to complain and to agree that skill checks don't have critical failures. I ask to see the D20 Modern Core book, to look up skill checks. The GM reached out and picked up the book. Instead of handing it to me, he [B]sat on it, and said, "You guys need to get your own copy if you're going to be rule-Nazi-ing."

I declared that was it, I was finished. I got up, packed up my stuff, and went home. Later, I found out no one else showed up to the next session either, and the game was scrapped.

The same GM tried to start a D&D campaign earlier this year, where he wanted each of us to pick one of the seven deadly sins, and use that as the basis of our characters. That sounded fine. We picked our sins - I picked Wrath.

Then, things started to get... odd.

He informed all of us would start at level 0 [yeah, I said level 0], as criminals in a prison. An army general would come and draft us into his army. If we refused, our characters would be killed. We would play a few sessions as level 0 characters, being trained by the army. We would each play missions as a party, to "teach" certain characters our skills. He also forbade us from playing evil characters, because he had "played with some evil characters in college, and it wasn't fun." And this was going to be a dungeon crawler, despite the fact that only two out of our nine players liked that style. The more he talked, the less enjoyable this sounded.

--I pointed out that I wanted to play a Bard. Yup - a Wrathful Bard - who was something like a serial killer. Because no one suspects a Bard. And there is no way an army training criminals would train someone to be a Bard.
--Sheena and I both wanted to play evil characters, and when Sheena said she wanted to be evil, he said, "We might be able to work something out."
--One player said he wanted to be a Paladin, so how would he have been in prison?
--Everyone was boggled by the level 0 characters, and, if we all "learned" our trades together, wouldn't we all have the exact same levels?

His response to our concerns?

"As with electronic games, if you don't agree with the plot line, or how your character progresses through it, you do not rewrite the game - you just go out and find another one."

So we did.

Mesfens
2007-09-25, 05:45 PM
I am playing a campaign where the DM openly tries to kill me. And in a conversational tone, like "I'm sorry, but {insert something here that causes me great pain} happens now." After the session he starts to recite all the future ways he can cause my messy death.:smallfrown: I have been blinded {and subsequently healed} four times in a row, poisoned, and the enemy mooks miraculously save against my blasts of lightning. {And quelle surpris ? They all have improved evasion. This was when the PCs were sixth level}
Is this an evil DM? Meh, we all have a good laugh at the end.

Solo
2007-09-25, 05:50 PM
Why would you agree to play another game with him after his blatant jack-assery?

I can only wonder what Sheena thought of him...

Fax Celestis
2007-09-25, 05:52 PM
I always pray I don't show up in these things.

Shas aia Toriia
2007-09-25, 06:03 PM
Well, one time, I had a DM that was horrible, I believe he is known as Fax Celestis around here. . .

Sorry, I'm just poking fun here. :smallbiggrin:

starwoof
2007-09-25, 06:16 PM
*Snip*

Damn, that guy sounds like a jackass. Reminds me of one of my DMs. I dunno though, there was this guy around here called ThatLankyBugger... :smallwink: :smallbiggrin:


*snip again*

This reminds me of me when I don't feel like DMing. Probably a bad thing to identify with something posted on the Worst DMs thread.:smalltongue:

Jack Mann
2007-09-25, 06:22 PM
I always pray I don't show up in these things.

Well, the worst DM I ever had was this guy who set an advanced version of That Damn Crab on us...

Kidding, kidding.

Worst DM I ever had? Well, there are a few who were pretty bad. Good guys, just lousy at DMing. There was the one who basically let us wish for more wishes. We went from level three to level twelve in one session, and got many overpowered magic items.

Then there was the guy who loved to toss his DMPCs in with us, then throw out battles that the DMPCs were needed to win. Except that he wasn't all that great at encounter design, so my incantatrix (which he suggested I play) took 'em out pretty easily. He then tried to kill my character, but I kept surviving, no matter what he did. I'll give him this. He tried not to be too arbitrary about character deaths.

Silkenfist
2007-09-25, 06:29 PM
Again, not really a bad DM, so much as an inexperienced one.

He wanted to try DMing. This was fine. He wanted to play a Conspiracy X / X-files themed game. This was fine. He based his plot on a few thriller novels. This was fine.

He allowed players to have spellcasting/psionic characters, and didn't take this into account when designing his plot.

This was not fine.

See, in D&D, there are anti-magic shields, abjuration spells, and enemy spellcasters to limit the power of casters. In the real world, there aren't.

*sobs silently*

I made exactly the same fault. My friends convinced me to run a game of Vampire: Dark Ages for them even though I knew nothing about the game. Buuuut two days with the core book and wikipedia and I had put together a campaign.

It...could have been a campaign. If I had taken into account the difference in power between mortals and vampires. And of course most of the puzzles, opponents and challenges were mortal ones (No, not the inquisition). I had spent most of the time delving into the background and the flavor parts and didn't quite bother to think about the exact potential of all disciplines.

Suffice to say....one guy with Auspex, one guy with Potence and one guy with Dominate brought down just about anything I had without even lifting a finger. To make the campaign at least somewhat challenging I improvised some high-generation enemies, who of course were present but unnoticed all the time. It destroyed the story entirely but at least it made them fear for their lives at least once or twice.

Fax Celestis
2007-09-25, 06:35 PM
*sobs silently*

I made exactly the same fault. My friends convinced me to run a game of Vampire: Dark Ages for them even though I knew nothing about the game. Buuuut two days with the core book and wikipedia and I had put together a campaign.

It...could have been a campaign. If I had taken into account the difference in power between mortals and vampires. And of course most of the puzzles, opponents and challenges were mortal ones (No, not the inquisition). I had spent most of the time delving into the background and the flavor parts and didn't quite bother to think about the exact potential of all disciplines.

Suffice to say....one guy with Auspex, one guy with Potence and one guy with Dominate brought down just about anything I had without even lifting a finger. To make the campaign at least somewhat challenging I improvised some high-generation enemies, who of course were present but unnoticed all the time. It destroyed the story entirely but at least it made them fear for their lives at least once or twice.

Nitpick: low-generation vampires are powerful.

Winterwind
2007-09-25, 06:55 PM
Nitpick: low-generation vampires are powerful.Depending on the player characters' ethics, humans can pose a problem, too. Killing or controlling others' minds are, after all, quite condemnable deeds. Also, the more blood the characters waste, the sooner they will have to feed again.

Mithhuan
2007-09-25, 10:16 PM
I was once asked to join a campaign. When I met with the DM to make my character, he old me that he was writing a story based on the campaign and all of the characters were his intellectual property. My character, which he created, was a dwarven fighter 2 cleric 5 with 3/4 ths of his skill points in craft: pottery. On my first (and last) adventure with this group we cleared 4 rooms of the dungeon. The first room had 3 deadly traps that despite 3 natural 20s on search checks the rogue could not find. The traps nearly killed every character except the DMs wife and her npc caddy (she had a bag of holding full of +5 weapons). The second room (also trapped) had 15 shadows that couldn't be turned. The third room (trapped again) had 2 umber hulks followed by 2 more umber hulks when the DMs wife didn't get to kill one. The fourth and last room we were roshamboing to see who would open the door, the npc slapped all 3 characters opened the door and walked through. The wife's character said something not repeatable here and followed the npc. I told the rogue to lock the door. DM says theres no lock. Ok, I said I'm spiking the door shut and told the2 other characters, ok guys its miller time, walked out and never looked back.

The bad thing was that his campaign was a series of published adventures.

Jerthanis
2007-09-25, 11:28 PM
The worst DM I ever had was actually a really nice guy who I like a lot, but he just didn't have the gift of DMing. Even to a slight degree.

We started out in a tavern. We were told that there was a lost city of gold, filled with treasure and ready to be plundered somewhere in the vicinity of this town. We, being greedy adventurers, sidle up to the bar and ask the bartender if he's heard anything about this lost city. The Bartender immediately responds that the secret entrance to the lost city is exactly six steps to the west of the door to the bar we were inside...

...uh... okay... was our only possible reaction.

We follow the directions and find ourselves in a straightforward, but inoffensive dungeon. Like, it was seriously a long hallway filled with hobgoblins and traps. We come out the other side to find a Young Adult Red Dragon. We were level 1. A flock of 12th level elves come into the scene and bail us out. They allow us a portion of the treasure, weighing us down with something like 20,000 gold pieces each. We shrug and that session ends.

The next session the DM decides to change directions on the campaign and we're riding into a castle-town. A guard confiscates all our gold and equipment, saying that it was a crime for us to slay the dragon, who was apparently a law abiding citizen or something. Left without money, or the means of getting any adventuring done we casually watch a witch-burning. The DM has decided that the country executes people for arcane magic. Eventually we get a strange quest from a shy knight named "Sir Kissable Lancelot" to deliver a love letter to a local blacksmith. We are promised masterworked equipment if we succeed at this harrowing task. The blacksmith, upon receiving the letter, sighed and put it with all the other love letters she had recieved that day from him. She admitted that the two of them were newlyweds, and the knight was being overly romantic. Still, she forged us our new gear anyway.

Anywho, shortly after that we got in trouble for some reason, so we were run out of town... our plan was to join up with the barbarians in the surrounding hills and revolt against the corrupt (?) government. That session ended and we decided not to continue it.

Tallis
2007-09-26, 12:07 AM
... he wanted each of us to pick one of the seven deadly sins, and use that as the basis of our characters. *snip*
He also forbade us from playing evil characters...

Um.....so he doesn't consider the seven deadly sins evil? I don't get it....


"As with electronic games, if you don't agree with the plot line, or how your character progresses through it, you do not rewrite the game - you just go out and find another one."

So we did.

Well at least he gave you some good advice there, that should be worth something, right?

kjones
2007-09-26, 01:18 PM
I am the worst DM I've ever known. The BBEG for my last big campaign was a Wizard 5/Fatespinner 2/IOTSV 7. Against a party of 8th level characters.

First round, wizard wins initiative, and laughs at the players while standing there and doing nothing.

Some players attack; he throws up two veils as an immediate action. Violet and indigo, IIRC. Now, they lacked cone of cold to counteract the indigo veil, so they were thoroughly and completely ****ed.

He then cast reverse gravity over and over until they all died. Some of the players kept trying to attack him, so he activated all seven colors of his veils. The cleric made it all the way to the violet before failing a save.

To my credit, it was 6AM, we'd been playing since 8 PM, and we were kind of just screwing around, but it was kind of unfair. I basically did a Prince-of-Persia style, "Oh wait, that's not what happened" at that point, since even though it was the end of the campaign, we may want to reunite at some point.

So, yeah. I'm a terrible person. I admit it freely.

wowy319
2007-09-26, 05:02 PM
I can't top too many of those stories, but my friends and I had a DM that made us make a DC 22 spot check... for a PAIR of MIND FLAYER SORCERERS in a well-lit hallway... that was only 20 feet long... at FIFTH LEVEL!!!!!

earlier in a solo adventure, he asks me to make a perform check for no reason. I roll, and get a decent check. all of a sudden, I get K-O'ed by someone (no save, no attack roll... choo-choo!). Apparently, performing is illegal on the exact same street I was told to perform on by the DM! Later, through god-knows-how-many unrelated plot events, I end up in a forest of kobolds. Kobolds who barely speak common, yet, for all their understanding of mechanical traps, don't know what holy water OR alchemist's fire is.

In the village, they demand I use my one-ounce vial of said alchemist's fire to light a bonfire that's at least 30 feet tall. I can't light it from the base... I HAVE to do it from the top.

And then, my glass flask of A. Fire that is DESIGNED TO BREAK UPON HARSH IMPACT fails to break when it hits the flippin' ground! I have to climb into the firepit, climb all the way up to the top again... at 5th level, I fail the DC 30 climb check, and the alchemist's fire falls into a barrel of water, thereby breaking after a 5 foot fall into a barrel of open water...

The kobold cheiftan (who obviously was not elected for his outstanding intellect) tipped the barrel over, and set the village on fire. WITH A ONE-OUNCE VIAL OF ALCHEMIST'S FIRE IN THE MIDDLE OF SPRING. I get blamed (which makes no sense), and am attacked by at least 15 kobolds. Now, that's only about CR 4 for a full party, but I was a bard at level 5.

I cast summon swarm and sound burst. I kill 2 kobolds with the burst, which is good. all of a sudden, my dear old DM is saying my swarm charges at me, murder in its eyes the second I summon it.

I point out that the summoned swarm is friendly to me as per spell description, but apparently, he can direct my swarm for me. instead of sending it after the minions like I would have done, he makes it duel the chieftan. The chieftan hefts his longsword, and slices away at my rat swarm. I summon a celestial badger. For some reason, I have to make a D100 roll to determine HOW MUCH OF IT I SUMMON. I summon all but the tail, so it takes 1 damage. It stupidly attacks the cheiftan, because I apparently have no control over my summoned creatures.

Morbo?


SUMMON SPELLS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!

Through miraculous rolls and DM groans, I take out the kobold minions. all of a sudden, I notice my swarm has taken full damage from the chieftan's attacks. I point out its DR 5/bludgeoning, and he says that the Kobold has been using his MEDIUM-SIZE GREATCLUB this whole time. I roll with it, and then notice that he hasn't been using the swarm damage like he was supposed to. no, they've been making attacks at +0.

Again by luck, the cheiftan dies. But the worst is not over.

No, no. once the fire dies, I have to change my alignment to neutral evil because a kobold's stupidity is somehow my fault.

And then, the dungeon. I have no disable device skill, and I have minimal ranks in search. All the kobolds fled or died, so there's gonna be nothing there but traps. WTF?

Inside, I have to fight a kobold skeleton that deals 3D8+5 damage a swing, with 2 attacks per round, plus various curses. Apparently, I have to use holy water. I had one flask left. I make it with 1 HP after killing it with the water, and heal up. entering the dungeon, I find myself dealing with easy traps. all of a sudden, I trigger a trap. no search check. A boulder chases me down this unbeleivably long hallway filled with fire traps, dart launchers and other gribblies.

This dungeon was made by the same Kobolds who didn't know how to light a bonfire.

Finally, a SECOND boulder rolls down from the other end of the hallway. apparently, the only hope I have is to duck down and hope that through physical improbability, the boulders will collide and leave a space big enough for me to hide under and starve in.

Just to get it over with, I duck. SURPRISE! both boulders were illusions with no disbelief save! I walk through the rest of the hall, fuming, when, with no spot check, I get grabbed by a skeleton. No reason, just grabbe by a skeleton. I stab it, and all of a sudden, my sword becomes a -2 cursed longsword, with no 24-hour period to ditch it. I still take 2D8 damage, and, in addition, the sword makes me completely green.

Finally, the hoard of treasure. A heward's handy haversack, Murlynd's spoon, an axe of berserking, a spellbook and thieves' tools (wow, I can sure use those...), and 4 folding oars, but no folding boat. How lovely. The only real useful item is a giant gold statue that takes up all the room in the haversack. So I have to lug all this loot up into the hallway, but I get no time to spend my wealth in the city. The queen herself apparently is asking random schmucks off the street to defend a keep beseiged by BALORS on the other side of the nation. I get drafted, and don't get any downtime. The game session ends, and I take an extra dose of my bipolar meds.

Needless to say, I never went back.

nobodylovesyou4
2007-09-26, 08:45 PM
well, the worst dm ive ever had wasnt horrible (despite what i might say sometimes), but he wasnt good.

the campaign was eberron based. first off, all the players hated eberron with a passion (too complicated for us). then, he said it was gestault (which the party also hated). then, to celebrate his purcahse of (imo) the most worthless book ever, sandstorm, he puts us in the desert. we hate deserts. and finally, he starts us off in a gladiator arena (not so bad, but still ugh).
well, i was a bard / warlock, and one of the other players was a rogue druid. who hated bards. and gnomes. which i happened to be. butthole. anyways, while i was asleep he cut the strings on my instrument (were still in this arena, mind you). so i wake up and cant do much of anything. the dm lets me tie my strings back together, but i get a -5 on all my perform checks because it sounds like crap. so we get out there and fight a kobold, level 4 fighter/something else, who has a ring which resses him to full when he dies. 4 times. ouch. after 6 rounds, he finally died the first time (and came back). he realized this would take FOREVER, so the next hit cut his arm off that was wearing the ring... convenient. well, he gave it to one of the pcs. (were level 3, btw). so, we gain our freedom somehow, and get to a town finally. of course, in the town was a random wizard with a deck of many things, giving out effects... for free! of course, we lakced the DMG for some reason that day, so he made them up on the spot, giving people things like extra attacks, +1 on all attack and damage, and an extra spell slot for each spell level they had. i thought this was bull****, so i didnt go in. we get an inn, and in the next morning the wizard is gone somehow and theres a giant hole in the street with kobolds pouring out. we go in, and the kobolds are standing there with their tower shields "linked into the wall" (how?). we manage to defeat them, and go in. thats where our session ends, then the dm says "well, in this tunnel was a bunch of zombies, 5 rooms full of them, and at the end was an orc wizard summoning them. i assume you defeated them, so get the XP." while that sounded like it could have been a cool adventure, we didnt get to do any of it. so, next session, we join a caravan and a warforged DMPC joined us. none of us liked warforged, either. anyways, we get stuck in a dungeon with a drider (who he roleplayed horribly), who wants us to help him fight drow. he sends us into a room with boxes, which we break. of course, we were supposed to stack them up, but he gave us no indication to that at all. he says "ill just assume you stacked them and didnt break them". ugh. anyways, we enter a door, and theres 4 treasure chests, each one containing an item that JUST SO happened to be specifically tailored to our gestault combinations, each of us. sigh. so as we go on, the warforged dies (we celebrate) and we get to a drow compound were supposed to steal documents from. the druid rogue (whos character hates everyone, literally) goes in to steal them. as hes about to sneak inside, a bell goes off. oh, god, alarm? no, LUNCH BREAK. every single drow in the compound leaves, ALL of them. wow. so he goes in and takes everything, and brings it all back. at this point, i stopped playing. partly because i didnt like the campaign, but also partly because i got kicked out (heh, check "worst players" thread for THAT story).

now, when it comes right down to it, he wasnt a HORRIBLE dm, but i really dont like his dming style, every campaign he does is eberron, despite all our best protests.

Tallis
2007-09-26, 10:39 PM
I'd say a DM that doesn't actually let you play the adventure and gives you no chance of failure is pretty bad. I'd get bored out of my mind.
I just joined a group where the DM tends to gloss over empty rooms. "Umm, there's nothings down that hallway anyway, so you just go down this way..". Just that kind of bothers me. If you're not going to let me explore and find out for myself why is it even there? I don't expect every room to have something cool, but I want to see for myself, not have you tell me there's nothing there and that my character is going the other way.
He does seem to have some cool story ideas though, so I'm giving him a shot to see if he improves.

nobodylovesyou4
2007-09-26, 10:48 PM
well, his campaign was playable, just less than desirable. and personally, i dont mind the skipping empty rooms thing, they bore me anyways.

aberratio ictus
2007-09-27, 06:32 AM
I can't top too many of those stories, but my friends and I had a DM that made us make a DC 22 spot check... for a PAIR of MIND FLAYER SORCERERS in a well-lit hallway... that was only 20 feet long... at FIFTH LEVEL!!!!!

earlier in a solo adventure, he asks me to make a perform check for no reason. *snip*

Needless to say, I never went back.

Err.... Actually, you did, as you played with him and your friends later, as you said.

wowy319
2007-09-27, 02:26 PM
Err.... Actually, you did, as you played with him and your friends later, as you said.

Actually, that was just bad word usage. I meant "they," but I said "we." That was an account told to me by my friends many times. Association, I guess. Sorry about the bad grammar.

Khanderas
2007-09-28, 04:36 AM
Once as a player, my friend who DM ed a d20 game that was 1920's horror game. I guess he wanted to make a spectacular game, because as level 1 normal guys (except we got a revolver with a handful of bullets and I got some ranks in boxing) we killed Dracula. Yes THE Dracula. We should have died but the roof caved in and sunlight hit him...
Myeah. not too likly. But we were all very very new.

Another time I was the bad DM. I was running a published campain for a few kids I didnt really like, and they "happened" to lose all their equipment because they stood up in the boat (drop your armor or drown kinda deal) and then managed to get their fingers chopped up by a giant fan in a cave. In my defense, my co-DM was the one who made up the fan, for HIS giggles (and he did giggle alot).

To clarify the boat thing. On a rowboat to the island where a wizard was doing bad things as directed by the PC's employers.
DM: You see something far away flying.
Players: what is it ?
DM: You have to stand up to see it well...
Players: we stand up and look towards the horizon.
DM: Roll a balance check. (failed) YOu fall overboard and your armor and weapons are making you sink. Best drop them or drown.
(Co-DM is giggling so much he had to leave the room, yes he was EVIL and really hated the players)

Talanic
2007-09-28, 11:04 AM
Well, some's from my group, some's from my DM's ex-DM. I've only had one DM, so of course he was the worst (and the best) I've ever had, despite being a good guy and trying hard.

He continuously gives the party challenges that are on the proper CR for the party. If only we had wealth-by-level. As it is, we were facing against clay golems at level 8 or so, with no magic weapons--in fact, our only magic item (no potions either) was a wand of summon monster I.

Repeat and repeat. We kept on going on in the game with only minimal treasure; when we did manage to get coin, he held us to the weight (50 coins = 1 lb; with no bags of holding or strength augmenting gear, that's not much before we're too encumbered to travel) and when finally giving us treasure, gave it to us in copper pieces.

The setting is Faerune, where you can barely swing a stick without hitting something magical. Nonetheless, there was no way for me to purchase mithril armor in a major city, or get enchanted weapons or alchemical equipment or even spells for the wizard. It was rather impressive that I managed to take out a mind flayer and a beholder at level 12 with no magical items other than a +1 dancing saber (+5 total, and I appreciate its power, but when it dances it uses my 3/4 BAB and no +str or +bardsong, so it almost NEVER hit against any monsters we fought, and when it did it only did 1d8 +1...meanwhile the average monster would deal 2/3 of my hit points in one hit, so I made HEAVY use of combat expertise and defensive fighting).


However, HIS ex-DM makes him seem just fine in comparison. In an epic-leveled campaign, the party was apparently required to take on Khelben Blackstaff--they needed his staff to trade for a jar of hellfire, and didn't actually have to kill him. They studied him for months to learn his habits and set up a trap on a portal that they'd determined that he only would use if his automatic defenses went off when he ran out of spells and was at low health, and used some very painstaking contingencies in order to be able to fight him alone and weak, while being excessively careful to not tip him off to their intentions.

The moment arrives and he teleports in at full health, drops a delayed blast fireball on them, and teleports to the bottom of his tower (from the top), which would require them to walk through all his traps. They grab the fireball before it blows and chuck it off the tower, setting off a huge explosion over Waterdeep. They figure out that Khelben's lover, Laeral, another epic wizard, has teleported in, and their super-careful plans have been basically torn to shreds.

He was actually surprised when they teleported out. They carefully explained to him that they were in Waterdeep. Waterdeep has the highest wizards-per-capita of any city in Faerune, and is also the largest city on the planet. "There are enough level one wizards here to kill us with Magic Missile."

Also, these epic characters that they played were frequently sassed off to and messed with by level 1 commoners that they could kill with a casual punch...but any plot-important NPC, should they try to kill him, would turn out to actually be a greater deity in disguise.

Arthur Eld
2007-09-28, 11:03 PM
I'm actually a good friend of Wowy's, and we've shared some bad DnD experiences. Here's another one.

We're a level 1 party. I'm a wizard, and my two other friends are a fighter and a cleric, respectively. We start out the game well enough, with some decent orc fighting and looting. Unfortunately, two themes that would become common throughout the campaign arise here.

First Theme: Giving the fighter FRIGGING AWESOME ****. Corollary to theme 1: I get the shaft doubly, once because he never gives out caster loot, twice because he doesn't know how magic works.

Second Theme: As Wowy mentioned, he has a different approach to summon spells. During this campaign, I managed to summon: The rear end of a badger, a fire beetle without legs, and a celestial owl without wings.

The bad news starts when we get captured by a raiding party of Yuan-Ti. We are taken to their secret undercity, and forced to fight a trial by combat. These are *cue buck toothed old man voice* "witch-hatin' folkses", and so spellcasting is expressly verboten. My trial begins. (We had separate trials. Mine was last, needless to say, the others did just fine.)

I have no armor, my only weapon is a quarterstaff. I have no prepared spells, and even if i did, a casting would get me pumped full of bolts. Nope, I'm gonna have to stick fight my way out! The warrior (a Drizzt inspired yuan-ti) charges me with dual scimitars. OH WAIT! I forgot to mention that this entire fight takes place in WHITE WATER RAPIDS, with slippery stones as the only platforms. To merely exist, you must pass a DC 20 balance check per round, and to move around, you must pass DC 20 jump and an additional DC 20 balance. Fun.

I jump. I fail. I fall into the whirlpool (did i forget the whirlpool? oh, right. There was a freaking whirlpool). I get sucked into the dark abyss. Oh well, right? I'll roll fighter, get some decent loot this time.

Nope, the DM has other plans. BOOM! An ancient geyser activates under the whirlpool, shooting me back up! YAY! I neglected to bring up the obvious damage from total immersement in boiling water. So now I'm the "One Shot From Death" (that's my hero title, yes it sucks, no i didn't make it up) and the whole city loves me. Except that whenever I speak to them in their native Draconic, they hate me and jack up their prices and beat me with stones. But they love me, really.

Fast forward past some BS city interaction where I tried to haggle a merchant 's prices for spell components down from 5,000 gp (I tried to haggle in Draconic initially).

We're on a mountain top, overlooking a river. Suddenly, my owl familiar takes off, as if crazy. No problem, empathic link! He's feeling "worried, frightened, and...important" (really). Um, okay, whatever. Summon Familiar.

DM: "No, it fails. He's just too darned DETERMINED to be summoned back to you."

Me. "fine, whatever. where's he headed?"

DM. "towards what looks like a royal caravan. with the queen."

Me. "Um...okay. I'll cast fly and fly towards this caravan."

DM. "Alright, I'll roll the Royal Archer's damage".

I landed quickly as I could, with a bunch of arrows stuck in me that did extra damage because they were...royal? Anyhow, the queen wants us to help her liberate her castle. Allow me to interrupt my own story here.

I am leaving NOTHING out of this plotline. Consider this from the queens point of view: An owl flies overhead. A wizard flies overhead, so she orders her archers to open fire. The wizard lands. She adresses the wizard and asks him to join her private army, apparently based on the virtue that he can fly. Or perhaps that he can take damage from those uberpowerful royal longbows.

Choo...choo. all aboard.

The party goes ahead in this obvious railroad. We've been granted a small legion of men, however, and we have to storm the castle. Unfortunately, its nightfall, and royal tradition forbids any attack made between dusk and dawn.

Wha...?

FINE. We trade watches, but apparently we weren't watchful enough, because we failed our DC ****** 30 spot check to see FIERY, UNEXPLAINED BOULDERS flying towards us. Our private legion is decimated, we are pissed.

Shockingly, we were still playing, because it was around midnight, we didn't have rides until morning, and we were bored as hell. We confront the castle gate, to find it blocked by a big fat chunk 'o kobolds.

Nooo problem. Me: "Alright, I'm going to cast fireball. It'll hurt us pretty bad, but it'll kill all these kobolds easily. We can heal up afterward." the rest of the group voices consent, so i cast. BOOM. There's a horde of dead kobolds, we're hurting bad, but at least its over.

DM. "You see this one...BIG...kobold. and he charges you." *points to me*

Somehow, he missed and the fighter took care of him. I was really pissed by now, but the final straw was still to come.

We get inside the castle, and we all make spot checks for the hallway. We see nothing. Then, BAM! Two mindflayer sorcerers attack! From that same, brightly lit hallway! 10 or so feet away! (We are a LEVEL 3 PARTY.)

Okay, I don't care what time it is, what's on TV (turned out to be a C-grade action movie in which a naked chick kills two horny dudes on ATVs with an exploding hand crossbow. really) or anything else. I'm done.

Aquillion
2007-09-29, 02:21 AM
A week later game time I've managed to stave off the effects of the curse, but it's only a matter of time before I fail a save. Fortunately, the battle is won now and I get to return home. Now the GM looks at the map. Figures out that it'll take me approximately 1 month to arrive back home. Since I'm traveling alone, the rage doesn't cause a problem.
Except for the fact that the target number increased every day of the month I was traveling. By the time I got back, the TN was around 70, which I had to beat rolling 3d10, with exploding 10's. One murderous rage later in my clan's capitol = one very dead PC in an amazingly dishonorable fashion.

To this day, I don't know what he expected me to do to survive that thing. I'm still friends with him, but I don't think I'll ever play a serious game under him again.First, I don't know very much about that setting at all, but...

Send a message ahead of you in some fashion, letting your clan know about the curse, and telling them that you travel to X location and fall asleep there so they can apprehend you safely. If you could convince a friend to go with you, they could tie you up so you're not a danger during the trip, too, or whenever you start to lose your grip... not a fun way to spend a month-long trip, but better than dying in dishonor.

You could also seek someone out locally to see if there is any way to slow or suppress the curse temporarily (even if this isn't allowed under the rules, declaring that you are investigating the option would give the GM a chance to throw you a bone.) Did you look for local people to remove the curse at all? Granted, that probably wouldn't be cheap or easy, but I can't believe that taking a month-long journey to your clan was the only option.

Can the weapon be transferred from one person to another, if the other person takes it willingly? I'm not clear on that point, but since Kokujin left it for you, I assume that's an option. In that case, you can explain the situation to a friend, have them take the sword and lock themselves up in meditation or whatever for two months, then go home and get help to remove the curse safely. Or you could lock yourself up and send a friend to seek help. Or you could try and trick an enemy into taking the sword, of course, like Kokujin did.

If dying an honorable death was important to you, and you thought that there was no way to escape the curse, you could also have chosen to die an honorable death in combat, throwing yourself into hopeless odds against the enemy after you were drafted rather than letting the curse claim you (hey, you said you knew L5R is lethal... and this is certainly the honorable way to go.) Your character knows the curse is getting worse and worse, and knows it's a month-long trip home; if they can't find anyone locally and don't have any way to send a message so they can arrange a safe arrival, it should be obvious what the honorable choice is.

I think there were options available to you as a character, and I don't think the DM was being entirely unfair. Like you said... you knew, in character, that you were saying 'damn the consequences' when you grabbed the strange weapon that was deliberately left by the evil guy trying to kill you; and it is a lethal setting, where walking into a trap like that has consequences. Even after semi-knowingly walking into that trap, though, you had options both to avoid death and to avoid dishonor if you had chosen to do so.

The DM warned you that you might die; the only even remotely problematic thing was that they ignored your request to die an honorable death. And as far as that's concerned... you knew, in character, that you were a danger to everyone around you, and that it was getting worse every day; you still decided to take a month-long trip home. You were in effect placing your survival above both your honor and the safety and stability of your entire clan, taking serious risks on the slender hope that you would still be sane enough to save your life. That is a dishonorable decision by any reasonable standard; even taking your own life would have been superior.

In any case, unlike most of the stories here, what happened to you made sense. It makes an interesting story of duty and death, the kind of thing people might re-tell to show how evil Kokujin is. It would've made a better story if you'd fought in the war willingly, because it was your duty, and sought a honorable death rather than be shamed by the curse; but if you're going for a setting that is both deadly and realistic, this strikes me as a fair way to play it.

Kurald Galain
2007-09-29, 04:37 AM
Me: "Alright, I'm going to cast fireball. ... (We are a LEVEL 3 PARTY.)
While your DM does seem to be an idiot, I was wondering how you managed to cast Fireball as a 3rd-level character?

Arthur Eld
2007-09-29, 12:58 PM
He gave us a necklace of fireball in one loot pile, which I snapped up (it was one of the few caster-friendly treats).

Mad Mask
2007-10-26, 05:54 AM
Here's my DM horror story:
In the party, there was a level 2 gesalt drow archivist/wizard 2 (me), a level 2 half-elf druid and some others that I don't remember.
The adventure begins with the party in a village where there is a tavern. And POP, a wounded guy appear and tell us that some people died and run. We follow him.
This guy goes to a tower where tons of peasants are digging, and some a bringing back dead corpses. They tell us of an archmage that asks the peasants to dig in exchange for money. The archmage appears, and tell us to not use any magic, and disappear.
Long short story, we return to the Tavern and a mysterious cloaked stranger cliché tell us that the archmage is searching for something and there is monsters under the tower. And he gets out of the tavern.
- Wait ! my drow said.
The guy doesn't stop, so I cast faery fire to not lose him (it's still at night). So the guy turns on my drow and stabs him with his dagger (when we are 30 ft. apart). The DM rolls in secret, and tells me to roll a fortitude save for poison.
I roll a natural 20.
The DM: Ok, you failed, you take 1d6 damage.
He rolls (in secret) 7 on his die. BAM ! My guy is half dead. And that continues to the other round, and then I die.

KazilDarkeye
2007-11-03, 11:01 AM
<snip>
The bad news starts when we get captured by a raiding party of Yuan-Ti. We are taken to their secret undercity, and forced to fight a trial by combat. These are *cue buck toothed old man voice* "witch-hatin' folkses", and so spellcasting is expressly verboten. My trial begins. (We had separate trials. Mine was last, needless to say, the others did just fine.)

I have no armor, my only weapon is a quarterstaff. I have no prepared spells, and even if i did, a casting would get me pumped full of bolts. Nope, I'm gonna have to stick fight my way out! The warrior (a Drizzt inspired yuan-ti) charges me with dual scimitars. OH WAIT! I forgot to mention that this entire fight takes place in WHITE WATER RAPIDS, with slippery stones as the only platforms. To merely exist, you must pass a DC 20 balance check per round, and to move around, you must pass DC 20 jump and an additional DC 20 balance. Fun.

I jump. I fail. I fall into the whirlpool (did i forget the whirlpool? oh, right. There was a freaking whirlpool). I get sucked into the dark abyss. Oh well, right? I'll roll fighter, get some decent loot this time.

Nope, the DM has other plans. BOOM! An ancient geyser activates under the whirlpool, shooting me back up! YAY! I neglected to bring up the obvious damage from total immersement in boiling water. So now I'm the "One Shot From Death" (that's my hero title, yes it sucks, no i didn't make it up) and the whole city loves me. Except that whenever I speak to them in their native Draconic, they hate me and jack up their prices and beat me with stones. But they love me, really.



I heard about this on another thread and that just makes him a bigger jerk.


I do have something to add though; what would it be like if of of these DMs posted here in their own way? Using the "existentialist" thing:

"Man my party are idiots. I drop outside my walled city with a door right in front of them. All of them failed the DC 30 Spot check to see it. There was a secret door that was so much easier to find though, and they didn't even bother to look for it (they said afterwards they searched for doors but, they didn't)

And that door was even easier to open to. All you had to do was move one pace southwest, drop 35 cp on the ground, spin around, say ""Klateau Barada Niktu"", then give me £5 OOC, do a backflip OOC and commit seppuku (whatever that is. meh, I'm sure it isn't deadly, after all only whiney samurai do that when their lord dies) OOC then IC. I mean come ON, that isn't so hard.

And another thing, it was my house, so they expected me to bring ALL the snacks, books, copies of character sheets, spare character sheets e.t.c. And when their characters tried to wander off across plains with no food they thought I was being crazy. noob morons!"

Just my interpretation. I am a DM, I am a noob, and I have obscure splatbooks, but I'm learning.

Bryn
2007-11-03, 12:00 PM
commit seppuku (whatever that is. meh, I'm sure it isn't deadly, after all only whiney samurai do that when their lord dies)
Seppuku was Japanese ritual suicide via disembowelment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku

KazilDarkeye
2007-11-03, 12:58 PM
^ I know that, I'm saying that the bad DM probably doesn't/is evil

Pironious
2007-11-03, 07:13 PM
My only DM I'd call bad (as opposed to simply inactive, in the case of a few PBP games) was one of the houserule DMs.

You know the one, where every rule in the rulebook has it's own houserule, and it throws balance out the window.

Apart from having completely screwed Wealth by Level and the feat system, the thing that really got me was the exp. Characters get exp for enemies THEY kill. Not the group kills, that they specifically kill. Which nerfs the heck out of any character who doesn't specialise in either beating things up with a large metal stick, or blowing things.

In addition, in this game of at least 10 PC, there was at least as many NPCs with the group at any given time. To offset this, the DM just threw ridiculous numbers of monsters at us. I recall at one point, something like 3 packs of wolves co-operating for an attack on a campfire. At least he tried to make some sense of it by adding some worgs at the back who were driving the wolves, but said worgs didn't turn at targetable until the end, so we had to fight our way through the wolf packs first.

Oh, and prevent his friend, the rogue, from being underleveled by his own rule, he handed out arbitrary "RP exp bonuses". Seeming I typically don't play characters who specialise in hitting stuff, generally it's more a defencive focus, and I don't really play casters period, I quickly decided to leave the game. Even making a completly broken character is useless if you can't level up.

Spiryt
2007-11-03, 07:18 PM
My only DM I'd call bad (as opposed to simply inactive, in the case of a few PBP games) was one of the houserule DMs.

You know the one, where every rule in the rulebook has it's own houserule, and it throws balance out the window.

Apart from having completely screwed Wealth by Level and the feat system, the thing that really got me was the exp. Characters get exp for enemies THEY kill. Not the group kills, that they specifically kill. Which nerfs the heck out of any character who doesn't specialise in either beating things up with a large metal stick, or blowing things.

In addition, in this game of at least 10 PC, there was at least as many NPCs with the group at any given time. To offset this, the DM just threw ridiculous numbers of monsters at us. I recall at one point, something like 3 packs of wolves co-operating for an attack on a campfire. At least he tried to make some sense of it by adding some worgs at the back who were driving the wolves, but said worgs didn't turn at targetable until the end, so we had to fight our way through the wolf packs first.

Oh, and prevent his friend, the rogue, from being underleveled by his own rule, he handed out arbitrary "RP exp bonuses". Seeming I typically don't play characters who specialise in hitting stuff, generally it's more a defencive focus, and I don't really play casters period, I quickly decided to leave the game. Even making a completly broken character is useless if you can't level up.

Crap, that guy was bad, indeed.
Did he actualy explain why worgs were untargetable? Lazurz barierz?

Pironious
2007-11-03, 07:32 PM
Crap, that guy was bad, indeed.
Did he actualy explain why worgs were untargetable? Lazurz barierz?

They weren't there yet. We didn't find there were worgs driving the wolves forward until they showed up on the battle grid.

daggaz
2007-11-03, 07:36 PM
I always pray I don't show up in these things.

Ahahahhahahaha! Seriously man, I just fell off my chair =P

Hagentai
2007-11-03, 08:36 PM
Ok, inspired by the end of the shortest campaign I've ever played in, due to the worst DM I've ever had. We start the campaign in a tavern, and first thing that happens goes like this.
DM: ok, so a guy dressed in leather comes over the table you're sitting at and lays down a gold coin.
Paladin: thanks, but what's it for?
DM: You loose all your paladin abilities.
Paladin: WHAT?
DM: he's evil, you associated with him
At this point, we all got up and left.

So what's your horror story with DM's, or do you not have one, seeing as you are the DM?

You did the right thing. Bad dms happen when players put up with them. Bad dms aren't dms who make mistakes. Even horrible ones. Bad DMs are ones who make these mistakes.. over and over again..and enjoy doing them to make themselves enjoy what there doing more.

Glawackus
2007-11-03, 08:40 PM
A guy I knew tried to DM on the same night that he ruined his relationship with a girl before he even started.

That game had more emo in it than a sackful of Drizzts, and we vowed to never let him DM again. :smallsigh:

nobodylovesyou4
2007-11-03, 08:49 PM
A guy I knew tried to DM on the same night that he ruined his relationship with a girl before he even started.

That game had more emo in it than a sackful of Drizzts, and we vowed to never let him DM again. :smallsigh:

heh, i think i just found a new saying. "more cliche than a barrel of CG drow".

BizzaroStormy
2007-11-04, 01:10 AM
well, the worst dm ive ever had wasnt horrible (despite what i might say sometimes), but he wasnt good.

the campaign was eberron based. first off, all the players hated eberron with a passion (too complicated for us). then, he said it was gestault (which the party also hated). then, to celebrate his purcahse of (imo) the most worthless book ever, sandstorm, he puts us in the desert. we hate deserts. and finally, he starts us off in a gladiator arena (not so bad, but still ugh).
well, i was a bard / warlock, and one of the other players was a rogue druid. who hated bards. and gnomes. which i happened to be. butthole. anyways, while i was asleep he cut the strings on my instrument (were still in this arena, mind you). so i wake up and cant do much of anything. the dm lets me tie my strings back together, but i get a -5 on all my perform checks because it sounds like crap. so we get out there and fight a kobold, level 4 fighter/something else, who has a ring which resses him to full when he dies. 4 times. ouch. after 6 rounds, he finally died the first time (and came back). he realized this would take FOREVER, so the next hit cut his arm off that was wearing the ring... convenient. well, he gave it to one of the pcs. (were level 3, btw). so, we gain our freedom somehow, and get to a town finally. of course, in the town was a random wizard with a deck of many things, giving out effects... for free! of course, we lakced the DMG for some reason that day, so he made them up on the spot, giving people things like extra attacks, +1 on all attack and damage, and an extra spell slot for each spell level they had. i thought this was bull****, so i didnt go in. we get an inn, and in the next morning the wizard is gone somehow and theres a giant hole in the street with kobolds pouring out. we go in, and the kobolds are standing there with their tower shields "linked into the wall" (how?). we manage to defeat them, and go in. thats where our session ends, then the dm says "well, in this tunnel was a bunch of zombies, 5 rooms full of them, and at the end was an orc wizard summoning them. i assume you defeated them, so get the XP." while that sounded like it could have been a cool adventure, we didnt get to do any of it. so, next session, we join a caravan and a warforged DMPC joined us. none of us liked warforged, either. anyways, we get stuck in a dungeon with a drider (who he roleplayed horribly), who wants us to help him fight drow. he sends us into a room with boxes, which we break. of course, we were supposed to stack them up, but he gave us no indication to that at all. he says "ill just assume you stacked them and didnt break them". ugh. anyways, we enter a door, and theres 4 treasure chests, each one containing an item that JUST SO happened to be specifically tailored to our gestault combinations, each of us. sigh. so as we go on, the warforged dies (we celebrate) and we get to a drow compound were supposed to steal documents from. the druid rogue (whos character hates everyone, literally) goes in to steal them. as hes about to sneak inside, a bell goes off. oh, god, alarm? no, LUNCH BREAK. every single drow in the compound leaves, ALL of them. wow. so he goes in and takes everything, and brings it all back. at this point, i stopped playing. partly because i didnt like the campaign, but also partly because i got kicked out (heh, check "worst players" thread for THAT story).

now, when it comes right down to it, he wasnt a HORRIBLE dm, but i really dont like his dming style, every campaign he does is eberron, despite all our best protests.

Didn't we set what was left in the building on fire before leaving?

Haedrian
2007-11-04, 01:30 PM
Well, he wasn't THAT bad, but he did some stupid things.

The whole party was sent by a town to spy on another town (railroaded due to the fact that we were all 'framed' as killing someone [seperatly]). We had a bit of party infights (admittingly over something stupid).

One morning we wake up, and all our stuff is gone. Apparently this town was scrying on us (or summat) to see whether we were acting well, then magically took our stuff. [yes, we were sent to SPY by that town].

We were taking refuge in a cave, and then in through the rain, a druid appears and talks to my character (also a druid), that if he doesn't return to the grove, he'll get booted out. So my character decides to wait until morning so he can prepare "longstrider" and "pass without trace" to abandon the party. Suddenly the animal companion walks into the cave, tugs at the party and brings them all out so they catch me planning my escape...

So they tie me up to prevent me goign anywhere, again the wolf doesn't do anything to stop them. Eventually they poison the wolf who goes unconcious (he finally DID try to protect me), and I'm tied up.

The next day I use produce flame to remove the ropes from around me, and I then throw the flame at the person (another player) who tied me up (and poisoned the dog), knocking him unconcious. As I walk over to finish him off (oh yeah, he magically stabilised as well) his pet raven flies in and always hits me, then flies out again so I can't hit him back (no attack roll or anything).
---
Later on, we're in this crypt looking for a particular medellion, the place is full of ghouls, suddenly i find the medellion around the neck of a large wolf. Who talks. Who also is surrounded by a bunch of wolves. Who also talks to the druid and tells him he has to kill him.
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Later we save a village who thinks that we're sent by the gods, and give us a lot of fat loot. They gave us potions of bull's strenght. For some reason, he misread the price as being 3000 coins each. Suddenly in the wilderness we meet a travelling merchant who stocks everything (except magical items). We all end up running around with masterwork stuff.
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Also monks came and led us to their headquarters, which happened to be an underground FORTRESS which umm, they passed through walls (no doors).


Well, was a pretty weird game.