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View Full Version : A place to vent.



Ionizer
2008-10-30, 04:00 PM
This topic is a place to vent all your Role-Playing experiences. Be they awesome, sucky, or just memorable, this is the place to post them. Ill start.


In a long-running 3.5 DnD campaign, my swashbuckler/rogue had recently been killed (The DM had accepted more characters into the party than he could handle, so in a subplot, half the party was turned into vampires and went on their merry way, but not before slaughtering half of the "Good Party" first). Anyway, my new character was an Elven Ranger (Archery style). This was about level 11 at the time. In an extremely low-magic campaign (as in, the only magic weapons in the "Good Party" are the Death-Touched Dwarf's Large Greatsword Ancestral Weapon [he was raised into death-less-ness after the "Evil Party" killed him, he was also able to retrain his character to take advantage of the gi-normous sword he'd been given in the afterlife by his father] and a half dozen +1 Longswords with minor abilities [extra 1 damage vs spellcasters, half-flaming, which is an extra 1 fire damage per swing and other useless abilities like that] that were held by the Paladin DMPC's Bard Cohort [who was half-controlled by the DM's long-distance girlfriend, meaning the bard would charge into melee wielding one of the pigstickers, never use skills, never play music and never use any spells besides Cure Light Wounds and Detect Magic] in an extra-dimensional scabbard that she hoarded like Gollum hoarded his Precious). Also, the DM didn't scale back encounters based on the "Low-Magic" basis (partly because we had mister uber-Dwarf, a Half-Giant Psychic Warrior/Barbarian who Expanded and Raged every encounter, the DMPC Paladin who was prophecized to save the world from Tiamat because Tiamat had killed all the other gods except Bahamut, Miss Bard, and a cleric of Bahamut [actually a coincidence that he picked Bahamut because he didn't know all the other gods were dead yet] who was rapidly approaching Cleric-zilla status). Anyway, 1d8+3 damage doesn't cut through the DR of CR11 monsters (the DM was especially fond of Skeletal dragons, which was even worse) even if you are shooting 4 or 5 times a round.

Anyway (again), we eventually found out that Tiamat killed all the gods and that we needed to go meet with Bahamut to continue the quest. We eventually found him on a big mountain, after we received the Plot Exposition and were sent to kill Tiamat (or seal her away, or whatever) Bahamut gave us each one wish. Uber-Dwarf wished to be with his ancestors (and was replaced with a super Psion who I suspect preyed on our DM's flimsy understanding of the Psionics system), the Half-giant wished for some kinda better armor or something, the Cleric, Paladin and Bard gave up their wishes, saying that just being in the presence of The Platinum Dragon was reward enough. My wish was, and I quote, "I don't want to know about any of this! I don't want to know the gods are dead! I don't want to have to save the world! I just want to go into the woods and eat Berries!" So Bahamut waved his hand (paw? claw?) and erased my memory and teleported me into the wilderness to live my simple life eating berries. For the rest of the campaign, whenever the DM threw something even the least bit challenging at us, everyone would shout "This is too hard! I just want to go and eat berries!"

(BTW, my next character was an Elven Wizard 8/ Fighter 2/ Arcane Archer 1 who was pretty much forced into slave labor because I made the mistake of taking the Craft Magic Weapons and Armor and Craft Wonderous Item feats in a campaign that had NO magic treasure besides Scrolls and Potions. The party was on a boat crossing the ocean and I was always below decks crafting. I got back at them a little because I mentioned that I got seasick very easily. Whenever they got their newly crafted items, they were sticky and smelly. :smallwink:)

ken-do-nim
2008-10-30, 06:14 PM
Sigh, yet another DM who didn't realize that 3.5 isn't a workable system for low-magic-item fantasy and unbalances things accordingly. I hear this one often.

I'd say my worst role-playing experience is that I recently joined a kick-ass campaign and now it has stopped meeting because the DM is too busy to game. What a letdown.

tahu88810
2008-10-30, 06:18 PM
Yuck, DMPC prophesied to save the world AND the DM's girlfriend? @_@

Dyvim Matt
2008-10-31, 11:10 AM
One of my friends runs a Medieval fantasy game using HarnMaster rules (no classes, no levels, very skill-based à la BRP/Call of Cthulhu/RuneQuest) but keeps adding house rules to make the game more DnD-like. His players keep complaining, but he won't stop adding skill restrictions (only thieves can learn how to set traps for instance, a ranger could not because it's a warrior occupation...) It makes sense in DnD, but not in that game. Plus, he won't stat out NPCs to save his own life. So he arbitrarily decides if and when enemies hit the PCs, if and when they die, etc. He rolls dice only to keep up appearances, or so I'm told. Plus, the NPCs get rule-breaking magic weapons that the PCs will never get, no matter what. Seems to me that the rules only apply to PCs, and NPCs are "above the law", and even above house rules... Some of his players, noticing that I have a more balanced style, have asked me to run a Mage: the Ascension game.

Now, this is one of my favorite games, so I won't complain. But a game where the magic rules are so open-ended can give a lot of headaches for the GM, and since my players are very creative, my head explodes whenever they try a spell... For instance, last session, during a car chase, they decided to get rid of the bad guys by "summoning" (to keep it short) an 18-wheeler and magically messing up with the steering so that it would crash into the bad guys' car. How am I supposed to referee this?!? I wanted to play RuneQuest, since it's easier on my sanity, but it was very obvious they were having a lot less fun than playing Mage... So as a GM, I had to indulge them. Mind you, as I said, it is my favorite game, but it ain't easy...

EDIT: The world-saver DMPC thing is also part of my players' other DM's bag of tricks by the way...

snoopy13a
2008-10-31, 12:06 PM
Shouldn't a low magic campaign have low-magic NPCs/Monster to fight?

Instead of monsters with high damage resistance, why not just your normal monsters or NPCs with more hit dice?

only1doug
2008-11-01, 09:54 AM
One of my friends runs a Medieval fantasy game using HarnMaster rules (no classes, no levels, very skill-based à la BRP/Call of Cthulhu/RuneQuest) but keeps adding house rules to make the game more DnD-like. His players keep complaining, but he won't stop adding skill restrictions (only thieves can learn how to set traps for instance, a ranger could not because it's a warrior occupation...) It makes sense in DnD, but not in that game. Plus, he won't stat out NPCs to save his own life. So he arbitrarily decides if and when enemies hit the PCs, if and when they die, etc. He rolls dice only to keep up appearances, or so I'm told. Plus, the NPCs get rule-breaking magic weapons that the PCs will never get, no matter what. Seems to me that the rules only apply to PCs, and NPCs are "above the law", and even above house rules... Some of his players, noticing that I have a more balanced style, have asked me to run a Mage: the Ascension game.

Now, this is one of my favorite games, so I won't complain. But a game where the magic rules are so open-ended can give a lot of headaches for the GM, and since my players are very creative, my head explodes whenever they try a spell... For instance, last session, during a car chase, they decided to get rid of the bad guys by "summoning" (to keep it short) an 18-wheeler and magically messing up with the steering so that it would crash into the bad guys' car. How am I supposed to referee this?!? I wanted to play RuneQuest, since it's easier on my sanity, but it was very obvious they were having a lot less fun than playing Mage... So as a GM, I had to indulge them. Mind you, as I said, it is my favorite game, but it ain't easy...

EDIT: The world-saver DMPC thing is also part of my players' other DM's bag of tricks by the way...

If you think summoning and crashing a 18 wheeler is hard to ref... you should try our TMNT campaign.

The PC's took up wrenching Limbs off of robots to disable them and one player who was a mutated cat disabled his opponent robot by urinating into a break in its carapace (the players argument was that cat urine is incredibly corrosive).