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View Full Version : Gamer Tales My DM really hates horses - two stories of inevitable death and carnage



Mastikator
2022-01-13, 11:39 AM
I've been playing in a campaign for a little over a year, meeting about once every 2 months on average. And these are two stories that have convinced me that the DM really loves killing horses, he doesn't hate having them in the game, not at all. If he hates having horses in the game why does he keep giving us horses? No, he loves to see them die horribly.

First story. We travel by wagons and horses to a remote little village, in the center of the village is a "clockwork mansion" AKA The Dungeon. The village is covered by some kind of mist and infested with weird undead monsters, we kill some of the monsters. We have not fully secured the village (in fact we are pretty sure there are definitely monsters inside the dungeon and they might make rounds outside). I and another player argue where we should park the horses. I think they should be parked far away from the village, the other player thinks we should put them in the stables. We go with the stables, I say good bye to the horses for the last time.
Because when we go into the dungeon it's full of fiends (among other things). We find the princess, kill the dragon/demon, loot the treasure. Make our way out and lo and behold the horses are dead, the DM informs us that fiends have eaten them.
I'm shocked, SHOCKED! Well not that shocked. I decide to take the high road and not say "I told you so" to the other player, mostly to use as a trump card the next time he's stubborn about risking party resources. It's not about "hah I'm right and you're wrong", it's about "stop putting OUR stuff in danger for the sake of muh authority".

We return to town, do another mission. Find a blue dragon baby. We decide to give it to the elves or something because it has had its wings clipped. That quest takes us into the haunted forest, deep in the forest there are ruins. In the center of the ruins lies the ancient temple of the tree goddess (or something). I'll skip by the temple story and just say we get the good stuff and now the dragon will eventually be able to fly again. That takes us to story number two.

Story number two. We have picked up a side quest to investigate some missing couriers that went to New Front- a frontier war camp on the edge of the haunted forest. This part I won't skip by fast because there are some interesting details that lead me to believe that the first horse would've died no matter where we parked it. How you might ask? Keep reading.
We arrive at New Front.
We are greeted with food and drink, they tell us they have excess food. We ask to be introduced to the captain of the camp.
We talk to the campaign and ask about the couriers, she tells us they decided to stay longer because the trip through the haunted forest was horrid (it was for us too, extremely deadly for anyone that isn't a 5th level party of adventurers :smallwink:)

I (my character) ask to talk to the couriers, one of them is in the stables where we parked our horse and wagon. I give salute and show my character's background military rank (which outranks everyone but the captain) and asks why the courier has stayed longer than necessary. He gives me an excuse about the danger. My character feigns compassion and offers to bring the courier out of the haunted forest unharmed, where we will go to the nearest town and the courier can take the long (and safe... safer) route back home. It's like pulling nails to get this solider to do his duty.

By this time Quinn (party leader) has gone to bed. DM asks for a con save with disadvantage then a wisdom save, she rolls poorly. Then I go to bed. And then the rogue goes to bed. The warforged ate nothing and doesn't sleep.
She is asked to talk to the DM in private I and the party's rogue roll high on the saves and we just have a long night rest.
Quinn and the DM comes back, all she says is that we are lucky to roll high.... ooookayyyy

During the night the warforged is up he sees that quinn has woken up early and is acting weird. He has several interactions where it becomes apparent that everyone in the camp has some kind of hive-mind effect going on. For some reason that is beyond my understanding he does literally nothing about this, doesn't wake us up. Nope. Carry on his business. Sigh.

Next day we wake up and I ask the captain if it's OK if we take the couriers with us, she says she won't force them. Ok, I just go straight to the couriers and tell them that we will take them back safely, they refuse. I then tell them (with knowledge I have from my background) that if they don't report back it may result in a court-martial, they look spooked but do nothing. I then turn to the captain and tell her about the risk of court martial and tell her if she aids them she'll be complicit and may end up being replaced by someone who will enforce the orders of her superiors.
Roll for initiative. Everyone in the camp attacks us, and surprise surprise Quinn attacks us too. I tell the other players to deal non-lethal damage so that we can take them alive, a couple of them go down to zero hp, next round they go straight back up. We start killing them. They turn into green goo. We kill "quinn" too and she also turn into goo.

We scout the camp and kill the remaining goo people. We then inside a tiny and deep hole, a hole so narrow our small sized rogue would have to squeeze to fit through, there we the BBEG. A plant that has been going Invasion Of The Body Snatchers on the camp and inside it we find Quinn, dead. If only the warforged had done literally anything she could've lived, oh well...

What on Earth has this got to do with horses you might be wondering? Well APPARENTLY THE FRIGGING HORSE WAS ALSO KILLED BY THE SAME PLANT. WHAT??? We rolled really high on arcana and nature so the DM told us that Quinn's body would provide nutrients for weeks. So
1) HOW DID A BIG HORSE FIT THROUGH A TINY HOLE?
2) WHERE DID IT EVEN GO, THE PLANT WAS FULL?

I tell you, no matter what we do, the DM will give us a horse and then murder it in the most gruesome way possible.

Next game I'm telling him I figured out that there's another plant. I know there isn't because the plant doesn't cooperate with other of its kind. But it's literally the only possible explanation- there was a second plant hidden in the stables. Otherwise the warforged would've seen the horse go into the tiiiny little hole and also the horse literally couldn't fit into that hole anyway.

Ameraaaaaa
2022-01-14, 12:14 AM
Well i say that gm comes from the shadow of the colossus school of thought when it comes to horses.

Pauly
2022-01-14, 01:33 AM
A lot of GMs dislike transportation devices, horses, ships, cars, starships and so on.

There are a number of reasons for this.
1) Sub systems are often more poorly written than the main rules and often have loopholes you can drive a truck through.
GM solution - kill the horse.
2) The GM knows more about horses than the players.
Player “I charge my horse into the river of fire”
GM “The horse refuses”
Player “But I’ve cast protection from elements on the horse, it won’t take any damage”
GM Solution - kill the horse
3) The player knows more about horses than the GM and uses that information to force the GM into increasingly advantageous rulings in their favor.
GM solution - kill the horse.
4) The rules about horses are written by someone whose knowledge of horses extends understanding they have 4 legs and the end with the ears goes to the front. For example D&D has more complete and workable rules for dragons than horses. Consequently the rules are completely unsatisfactory.
GM solution - kill the horse.
5) The players are using horses to skip planned content by moving faster or further than expected by the GM.
GM solution - kill the horse.
6) The GM has had bad prior experiences from any of (1) to (5).
GM solution - kill the horse before it becomes a problem.

Mastikator
2022-01-14, 02:51 AM
A lot of GMs dislike transportation devices, horses, ships, cars, starships and so on.

[stuff]

I know, but the GM gave us the horses as a part of the quest. It's a slightly messed up that we had to pay for the first set of horses though (and only if they died). From now on I'm neither buying horses not agreeing to paying for them when they die.

Maybe a pack donkey, they're cheap.

Pauly
2022-01-14, 03:42 AM
I know, but the GM gave us the horses as a part of the quest. It's a slightly messed up that we had to pay for the first set of horses though (and only if they died). From now on I'm neither buying horses not agreeing to paying for them when they die.

Maybe a pack donkey, they're cheap.

Yeah, that is messed up if he encouraged you to use themfirst, then killed them off that way. If you’d treated the horses badly or stabled them in obviously bad situations that would be fair enough, but it doesn’t seem to be that situation.

Mastikator
2022-01-14, 04:00 AM
Yeah, that is messed up if he encouraged you to use themfirst, then killed them off that way. If you’d treated the horses badly or stabled them in obviously bad situations that would be fair enough, but it doesn’t seem to be that situation.

That's why I was miffed at the warforged player at first. For being super insistent about putting the horses in an obviously bad spot (the stables in the village infested with fiends and undeads). Now I'm convinced the spot I had in mind would've resulted in orcs or wild life taking the horses, there just was no space where they could've survived.

The Glyphstone
2022-01-14, 01:11 PM
Can you get a magic item that casts Mount or Mass Mount? Then your GM can kill the horses to his heart's content, then you call up a new set to replace them.

Lord Torath
2022-01-14, 01:34 PM
That's why I was miffed at the warforged player at first. For being super insistent about putting the horses in an obviously bad spot (the stables in the village infested with fiends and undeads). And then he just sits there while watching Quinn wander off to get killed. :smallfurious:

Yeah, plenty of reason to be miffed at the warforged. :smallsigh:

Easy e
2022-01-14, 04:18 PM
A lot of GMs dislike transportation devices, horses, ships, cars, starships and so on.

There are a number of reasons for this.
1) Sub systems are often more poorly written than the main rules and often have loopholes you can drive a truck through.
GM solution - kill the horse.
2) The GM knows more about horses than the players.
Player “I charge my horse into the river of fire”
GM “The horse refuses”
Player “But I’ve cast protection from elements on the horse, it won’t take any damage”
GM Solution - kill the horse
3) The player knows more about horses than the GM and uses that information to force the GM into increasingly advantageous rulings in their favor.
GM solution - kill the horse.
4) The rules about horses are written by someone whose knowledge of horses extends understanding they have 4 legs and the end with the ears goes to the front. For example D&D has more complete and workable rules for dragons than horses. Consequently the rules are completely unsatisfactory.
GM solution - kill the horse.
5) The players are using horses to skip planned content by moving faster or further than expected by the GM.
GM solution - kill the horse.
6) The GM has had bad prior experiences from any of (1) to (5).
GM solution - kill the horse before it becomes a problem.

For me, I like to destroy the transportation because it is a cost that doesn't necessarily kill the party too. However, it does cause them inconvenience.

MarkVIIIMarc
2022-01-14, 06:55 PM
Killing the horses, or maybe one or two can:

Build credibility to a bad guy like when the red shirts die on Star Trek.

Create odd situations like making players decide who shares a horse.

Killing all ghe horses may be some kind of running joke?

Pauly
2022-01-14, 08:32 PM
That's why I was miffed at the warforged player at first. For being super insistent about putting the horses in an obviously bad spot (the stables in the village infested with fiends and undeads). Now I'm convinced the spot I had in mind would've resulted in orcs or wild life taking the horses, there just was no space where they could've survived.

Trouble is that using the stables isn’t such a bad option in that environment. It’s the most secure place in the immediate environment, and putting them in an insecure place in a safer environment further away has its own risks.

The GM put you in a heads he wins and tails you lose situation.

Mastikator
2022-01-15, 08:19 AM
Trouble is that using the stables isn’t such a bad option in that environment. It’s the most secure place in the immediate environment, and putting them in an insecure place in a safer environment further away has its own risks.

The GM put you in a heads he wins and tails you lose situation.

There are some details I left out, when I said the village was infested with undead and fiends I meant that the first thing we encountered in the village was dead horses and second thing we encountered were these creepy undead monsters that attacked us from the mist. AFAIK there might still have been undead monsters lurking about in the magical mist, hiding in places. And they're all so hungry they could eat a horse.
Also the quest message we had been given was that the mansion was attacked by "otherworldy beings" (aka fiends).

I wouldn't want to take a long rest there.

On the road to the Quest Dungeon we had one encounter with orcs, we were inside some kind of ravine, road in the middle and cliff on either side, the orcs scared the horses away, every attack the horses had to make wisdom saves to not run away and get themselves killed. It was a pure miracle that we kept the horses through the random encounter.

-

I asked my DM how the horse could've been eaten by the giant plant and he said that the horse was actually slaughtered and turned into food, during the time the warforged was staring at the stable the whole night? Turns out the DM is perfectly willing to shatter my disbelief if he gets to kill a horse.

Right now we're headed to a trade city to spend some downtime and level up. My prediction is that when we leave we will leave with horses and wagons, which will either die on the path to the next dungeon or die shortly after arrival.

TheStranger
2022-01-15, 05:35 PM
I wouldn't rule out the possibility that your DM doesn't have any particular purpose in killing your horses, they're just caught between two conflicting worldbuilding goals.

On the one hand, horses are really valuable/useful in a typical faux-medieval setting. So verisimilitude demands that the PCs have horses if they have the means, rather than wandering around on foot like (murder) hobos.

On the other hand, unattended horses are too valuable/useful/delicious for the bandits/goblins/dragons to just ignore while the PCs go dungeon crawling. So verisimilitude demands that unattended horses be attacked.

Both of those are entirely reasonable ways for a DM to think about their setting. They just don't work very well together, which is why IME most groups ignore one of those elements. Either the PCs go everywhere on foot, or the horses don't get attacked whether that makes sense or not.

Telok
2022-01-15, 08:52 PM
They're D&D horses, they have health & defenses like a naked 2nd level fighter. They die as a side effect of being anywhere near a 4+ level adventure if you aren't playing AD&D with henchmen & hirelings.

Horses are for NPCs, get yourself some tigers, griffons, or hippos to ride.

King of Nowhere
2022-01-16, 05:44 PM
I asked my DM how the horse could've been eaten by the giant plant and he said that the horse was actually slaughtered and turned into food, during the time the warforged was staring at the stable the whole night? Turns out the DM is perfectly willing to shatter my disbelief if he gets to kill a horse.

Right now we're headed to a trade city to spend some downtime and level up. My prediction is that when we leave we will leave with horses and wagons, which will either die on the path to the next dungeon or die shortly after arrival.

Surprise the dm. First, sell the food rations you were taking with you. then, as soon as you arrive at the dungeon you kill and eat the horses, and you burn the cart for firewood. Tell the dm that it would have happened anyway, and this way at least you got a few silver pieces back :smallbiggrin:

Devils_Advocate
2022-02-05, 11:23 PM
I wouldn't rule out the possibility that your DM doesn't have any particular purpose in killing your horses, they're just caught between two conflicting worldbuilding goals.

On the one hand, horses are really valuable/useful in a typical faux-medieval setting. So verisimilitude demands that the PCs have horses if they have the means, rather than wandering around on foot like (murder) hobos.

On the other hand, unattended horses are too valuable/useful/delicious for the bandits/goblins/dragons to just ignore while the PCs go dungeon crawling. So verisimilitude demands that unattended horses be attacked.

Both of those are entirely reasonable ways for a DM to think about their setting. They just don't work very well together, which is why IME most groups ignore one of those elements. Either the PCs go everywhere on foot, or the horses don't get attacked whether that makes sense or not.
There's actually no inherent contradiction there. What it adds up to is adventurers just plain going through a lot of horses. In a setting where journeys to dangerous areas are common enough, there may even be a large industry devoted to supplying travelers with the poor, doomed animals.