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Ghill
2008-10-03, 09:51 PM
I have a number of friends who are into DnD, or just RolePlaying in general. At one point we had a group of more than twelve members, mostly due to our primary DM's (here after reffered to as The DM) general charisma and popularity. We had some stunningly dysfunctional group dynamics, managing to hit all the alignments, with two evil mages, three or four clerics (only one of which was good), and a pair of power characters (one with a mysterious 18.00 str, and a half-celestial with bad luck), and a BUCKET of fighters. (We played 2nd Edition due to the fact The DM favored it). Though the course of our first campeign we destroyed three airships, two airship towers (one of them twice), nearly started an undead-leaden plague with a wand of contagion, got half of our party turned into vampires, and sentthe vampire we were hunting to hell without killing him by breaking a wood-warped wand of power. I have an interesting DnD group.

Anyway, here are some of the funnier/more interesting play styles I discovered when we were setting up for a later campaign.

The Winged GM
A bit of an inside joke, TWGM was the half-celestial mentioned above and is famous for his ability to get in trouble with the law through no fault of his own during ALL campeigns (his character became known as an international terrorist). He is a master of interlaced plots, all of his characters (he has something like six now), are related through a bizzare family tree with a tradition of exterminating each other, resulting in a CR 20-something rival-cousin out to kill him.
His current campeign (involving only four players, two of which not from our large group) has some elaborate plot which we are as yet unaware of. We were originally sent cross-plane to deliver a potion to the mayor of a small town, but the planar-travel-device(PTD) 'broke' and we 'lost' it. We got stranded in a Sharn, recovered part of a forge hidden in the sewers for an important Lady of house Canith (probably misspelled). We also managed to get on a lightening rail which 'went the wrong way' after being explicitlytold which way it went by two different people. The rail was hijacked, our memories erased several times and elaborate dissapearances of entire cars without our knowing, and our warforged member (a powergamer) intimidated the people to the point of them hating us, in a vain effort to retain calm. After encountering the hijackers, (everyone but me had their memory wiped several times), and we still had no Idea what was going on!
Next we followed the tracks to a small village, which is the home of a Blood thirsty cult who are 'dissapearing' people who had been on the train from the ramshackle tent-camp set up outside. At this point we picked up another player (who rarely makes a session) and another has decided to leave (our only cleric, which I would usually have played as except that we needed a rogue and had a cleric. We no longer have any healing...) There are Ten houses in the village, and a festival is happening in two days. That is where we left off last time. He is nuts.
I checked, most of the plot is made up on the fly, all I know is that apparanetly everytime I mention planar travel TWGM rolls some percentiles. Also, he swore we had an Astral Stalker after us. We are all third level.

The Power Gamer
The Power Gamer GM is a powergaming player, who carried over his habits to DMing (he mysteriously rolled an 18.00 str for all three of his character so far).
He only prepares the first five of six rooms. Thats as far as you make it before you die. Our ranger stuck a knife in the floor to listen for sounds (indian style), and we zapped by electricity under the floor and in the walls. There was a number of spike pits, an organ (the instrument) that caused damage when played, and a room walled with Wall-mart smiley faces the shot out toxic gas. To cap it all, when we reached the end (surprisingly all alive, our risk taker was very lucky), when we stupidly shot a blast from a wand we found at the sword in the center of the room, the sword exploded and the rest of the treasure was unfindable. Not a great long-term DM

The Fail
The Fail GMwas our LE mage in the party, but he didn't play his alignment particularly well, and I was thankful to that.
He wasn't a particularly dangerous, or skilled GM either. Our mission was to guard a small oracle-child and a relic along a road through a Ancient, Evil, Forest. We had some trouble. A tree was toppled into the road, blocking our progress, and when we stopped arrows began to come over the far side. However that was where the risk ended. TFGM had counted on us standing there and getting shot so that the monsters would be a challange when they flanked us. Half our party (Ironically including the mages), grabbed weapons and climbed over the tree, destroying the ambushing enemy in three rounds of combat. Unfortunately I was left alone to guard the oracle child. Did I mention I was a CN cleric from an unrelated temple? Yeah. I was blinded with a flash of light and someone went after the child. I grabbed them and beat them senseless with a my mace, before realizing I was blind and that I didn't know who I was hitting. Fortunately the child was unharmed, and I had driven away the attacker.
Later, I prayed to Gonzo (my diety, get it?) for my sight returned, but it only came back black and white. In the end we arrived a travel-domain temple and stopped in. Me and a few other waited outside, figuring that the temple would be boring-our prescense would interfere. In the end the rest of the party sacked the place making over a thousand Gp, getting a chime of interruption, along with several other equally powerful items that I can't remember, and ended up leaving before they took everything of value. The were not caught. We stayed and the play that night. We were not caught.
No reward for a combat, loads of reward for pilffering a temple. Maybe he was evil.

Anyway, put up any interesting or unique DM styles or stories. This is fun!

ocato
2008-10-03, 10:06 PM
My friend has a very unique DM style of

No.
No you can't have that, no you can't do that, no you can't win this fight. He will kill us and then mock us. "I woulda just done X." He has a hard time understanding pluralistic ignorance and/or hindsight. He always acts like what he killed us with wasn't that hard and we just suck. "You should've just rolled a 20, then you'd be fine" being a phrase we heard sometimes. He was a great story teller and had some good quests... you just weren't going to finish a lot of them.

Fiery Diamond
2008-10-03, 10:25 PM
Gosh, that's awful.

Mm... I don't have any DM stories, since I've only had one DM (besides myself), and he introduced me to D&D. He's also my brother. He was kinda boring, but he had good stories. All Dungeon crawls involved puzzles -- kinda like a Zelda game, except without the final boss at the end.

-Fiery Diamond

Swordguy
2008-10-04, 02:22 AM
Since I'm pretty much the only person I know around here with the patience/creativity to DM anything (I've been a player twice in the last 17 games I've been involved with), most all my DM stories involve the DM being both perfect, handsome, generally awesome, and humble.

Not so much with the funny, though.

magellan
2008-10-05, 05:30 AM
really? you played in one of my games swordguy? May i ask, why didnt you think it was funny? ;)

BobVosh
2008-10-05, 05:35 AM
One dm that I could easily classify as having a "style" would be
"Too high, you die." In reference to level. Once the game passed level 8 he would do his damndest to kill us within CR.

Quietus
2008-10-05, 06:22 AM
One of my buddies DMs with a style I can only describe as :

The Lawful Evil

What this DM style entails is a constant battle of DM versus PCs, typically with him balancing encounters in such a way as to give him an edge, and rely on us doing something unexpected to sway the battle. He starts all new PCs at level 1 (dead PCs restart 1 level lower with their new chars, though), regardless of party level - it wouldn't be the first time I'd dropped a level 1 character into a party of level 6's. And he'll send a CR 7 at that party, or several CR 5/6's.

Granted, we usually manage to survive, somehow... but that's got a whole lot to do with the forced min/maxing some of the other players and I have to do to equal things out, as well as having creative players. Your typical bash-in-the-door style group, who relies on dice rolls rather than creative actions, would find themselves struggling, badly.

Lord_Kimboat
2008-10-05, 06:29 AM
I've got a couple

The Cheap DM
Yeah, that's actually me, it's mainly because I was percieved (quite unfairly mind you) of not giving out enough treasure. This includes things like xp, special items and general goodness. My players also seem to forget that I generally don't put them up against impossible, or even often really tough, encounters.

This is despite players who want to crank up characters to the max (which I really hate). I guess I'm just not a power gamer and don't want to stoop to that level.

Anyway, that's me but . . .

The Horror DM
This guy was cruel. He loved nothing more than giving you nothing to work with and want you to accomplish Herculien tasks. A couple of examples; I was marooned on an island and they only way off that I could find was to somehow salvage some stuff from another shipwreak. I had no weapons, no companions and a little bit of magic. Anyway, this shipwreack is already being plundered (or maybe just inhabited) by bloodthirsty fighters that believe in attack first and talk later.

I managed to kill a few on the top deck and was heading below when he asks, "how do you see down there? It's pretty dark."

Having nothing better I say, "Okay, I grab the clothes from one of the guys I killed . . ."

"They're rags. The guys up top were wearing rags."

"With they're AC?"

"They were monks, that's why they didn't have any weapons."

"Okay, I grab some rags and a bit of wood off a rail and make a torch."

"That's going to be a pretty crappy torch."

So yes, rags were treasure in his game and yet I'm known as cheep.

He was also renown at not letting people swim across rivers. He would complain about wounds getting infected, strong currents and dead creatures floating in the river.

The Glyphstone
2008-10-05, 10:34 AM
That first story up there is the best one I've heard in a while about a literal Railroad GM...