The Worst Game of DnD I have ever played

[starwoof]

I've had some bad games, but this one takes the cake and runs away with it laughing.


A few months ago, one of my close personal friends (we'll call him Claudio) tells me that he has been talking to one of our friends from high school that we used to play dnd with. We'll call the high school guy Eddie. Back in high school we would sometimes play with Eddie's dnd group, which had two other guys and sometimes a girl in it. It was pretty fun then.

So a few weeks after that, Claudio asks me if I want to play dnd with Eddie and some other guys. I said yes, because that sounds like a lot of fun. We don't get to play dnd nearly as much as we like, and any chance I can get to shirk of DMing is fine by me. We ask our friend Steve if he wants to play as well, to which he gives us a hearty affirmative. We leave Claudio to set up the details with Eddie, because he's the one who got us back into contact and me and Steve think it would be a little awkward for us to call.

Days pass by. I ask Claudio if we need to bring anything; books, sheets, etc. He says no, just our dice. I asked what level we were but was unable to get an answer. This didn't surprise me. Nobody ever wants to talk about party dynamics and such BEFORE we sit down to play.

Whatever though. We cram ourselves into Claudio's pickup and head off for the college. We arrive slightly late because we had to get some stuff done last second, but were there. We tromped up the stairs to Eddie's place and he lets us in with a slightly awkward hello. Typical stuff for seeing people you've not spoken to in 4 years. We greet his girlfriend and start asking for the important stuff. We also note that there aren't any other players, which we were assured there would be.

Eddie: So you guys brought your books, right?
Us: ...
Me: Claudio said you had books.
Eddie: I don't have my books with me, they're in Seattle...
Claudio: I thought he had books cause he didn't say to bring any...

Well this is distressing. We don't really need books, I guess. We could all just knock out some four minute fighters. But the DM needs books. At this point me and Steve were both starting to get some pings, which we squelched. We just need to stop by my place and grab our books, we tell Eddie, and then we'll be right back. He's gonna go get some food and deal with an errand, and we'll meet back at his dorm in an hour.

In the truck:
Me: I don't know if I have the books.
Steve: What do you mean, 'you don't know'?
Me: I mean they might be at my place, they might be at Rob's place, and they might be at Rick's place. But most likely they are at all of those places.
Steve: Claudio, drive fast.

Well it turned out they were half at my place and half at Rob's, so we manage to get back pretty close to our time limit. Eddie lets us back in and we take seats at the table and start to make characters.

Or we would have, if ten people didn't walk in through the front door. Apparently Eddie's girlfriend was having people over for... something. They were eating stuff and talking loudly for the next few hours, which made concentrating hard. Just remember that for the rest of this story there are ten people yelling in the background. Excellent ambiance... for a sports game. -_-

Eddie: Lets move over to the coffee table...
Us: Sigh.

I am so opposed to coffee tables.

Character creation was shorter than I'm used to but longer than it could have been. I eventually settle on taking a weak concept and making it somewhat effective and is a throw back to one of the characters I played years ago; that of a fighter that dual wields bastard swords with oversized two weapon fighting.

Eddie: You realize that your attack bonus with those weapons is not going to be very good, right?
Me: Yes.
Eddie: Okay. I just want you to know that you'll have trouble hitting monsters.
Me: That's fine.
Eddie: *looks at my sheet* Looks fine. Your feats are okay.

Its really hard to convey here, and my memory is fuzzy at the exact words he used, but he definitely thought I was powergaming, even if his words said otherwise. At the time I didn't think much of it as I am ALWAYS being accused of powergaming. And normally it might be true. Also I was a little pissed about how he kept saying how weak my dude was to everyone. I'm not perfect.

But he did okay my character. So I set off to help Claudio finish faster.

About halfway into character making, Eddie is looking bored. Now a normal DM might be polishing his scenario at this point, looking through books for monsters, or otherwise doing something dungeon mastery. But not Eddie.

Eddie: I'm gonna make a dude to accompany you guys.

Steve and I covertly exchange dark looks. DMPC. Run. But were willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, after all, he used to DM for us in high school and that was pretty fun.

Play starts. We have backstories that we share with the DM and each other. Steve and I have a fairly ornate background story about how I am a disenfranchised son of a noble lord and he's my grudging bodyguard set by my father to keep my out of trouble. We always have backstories, even for a one off like this.

Were now walking alongside the agent of the king or whatever sent to do something somewhere to some guys. The DMPC is talking at us but we mostly ignore him.

An overturned carriage is on the side of the road, so we decide to investigate it. At this point were still having fun; dnd games tend to start slow, especially when the DM and players aren't familiar with each other. My noble son is investigating the wreck when an arrow screeches out of the woods. Initiative! I'm first. Were surrounded by goblins in the trees. One of them is riding a bear. I think I figured it was a black bear at the time, because that would be reasonable and the GM didn't describe it as anything other than 'a bear'.

I pick through some difficult ground to engage this bear, since I am a melee guy and cant reach the goblins in the trees. I reckon our elf can deal with the goblins, which he agrees with since he doesn't want to fight a bear. DMPC holds his action, assuming we can fight them ourselves. We appreciate this on one level because it means the DMPC isn't trying to steal our glory. On the other level, there's a lot of bloody goblins here and we wouldn't mind some help.

The bear's init comes around, and it rolls to hit me. Eddie doesn't have a screen and he didn't bother hiding his roll, but he announces that the four he rolled did in fact hit my AC. And then I died. Because it wasn't a brown bear but in fact a polar bear, which would have been a hard fight for the three of us ALONE, being CR 4 to our three man level 3 party.

Eddie is smiling at this point, with a really smug look on his face. I take care to remain neutral.

Eddie: Well I guess that broken dual wielding build wasn't as good as you thought, huh?
Me: No, I guess it wasn't.
Eddie: Those feats you took from those complete books are so broken. I don't know how you slipped them past me.

Slipped past indeed. He had many opportunities to tell me not to play this character in a way more direct than attempting to convince me it was weak.

Initiative wraps around. Claudio and Steve are both a little peeved I think, but they do their thing. Then DMPC's init comes around. He jumps off his horse, draws a sword, charges the bear and does some kind of combo attack that drops all of it's hp in one strike. Combat ends.

The people behind us are still chatting away loudly.

I'm glaring at my sheet still.

Steve looks uncomfortable.

Claudio at least manages to appear happy and polite.

Eddie is sitting there like a smug... thing I can't say on this board.

Steve and Claudio start to make up some reasons to leave early. Tiredness, gotta get up, stuff like that. I grunt in assent. We leave Eddie's place and start to trek across the campus back to Claudio's truck.

Claudio: Well that was... fun.
Steve: DMPC.
Claudio: What? (he isn't hip to the jive yet)
Steve: I lost interest the moment he started to make his own character.
Me: Yeah.
Steve: The least he could have done was pull that combo crap before you died.
Me: He shouldn't have been there at all.

It turns out that our memories from high school are a little hazy. We thought we enjoyed playing dnd with Eddie, but it turns out we actually just like to play with the other people from his group. There was another guy, his name was... Jack. He had an adversarial friendship with Eddie. He could deflect all the bull that Eddie tried to pull as a DM and as a player, and made him seem like a better person.

Without Jack, that was all turned toward us. We resolved to do two things from now on:
1. Bring our books no matter what.
2. Don't let Claudio plan anything.



And that's the story of the worst session of DnD I have ever played. Cheers.

[Acanous]

well, that's not too bad. At least you're doing better than That Lanky Bugger.
Whenever I'm feeling like my session's gone to crap, I just think about Lanky and feel better.

Seriously though, I don't know of any combo attack a level one char can do that would drop a polar bear in one shot, barring flaw-feat Spirited Charge, and even then you'd need a mount.

[Steward]

He must have cheated. I mean, how could your AC be 4?

Honestly, these stories make me think that the only reason some people even bothered to learn how to play D & D was because it was the only way they could get other people to put up with them for more than two minutes. Seriously, who goes to all the trouble of setting up a game like this just to screw with some guy you knew from high school?

[holywhippet]

He must have cheated. I mean, how could your AC be 4?

Honestly, these stories make me think that the only reason some people even bothered to learn how to play D & D was because it was the only way they could get other people to put up with them for more than two minutes. Seriously, who goes to all the trouble of setting up a game like this just to screw with some guy you knew from high school?

I think he meant that the DM rolled a 4 and it hit his AC. Polar bears have +13 on their melee claw attacks so it could hit AC 17 or less.

One of the other players in my Shadowrun group put it fairly well - a DM can kill you if that want. They make the game world so they can drop an unwinnable fight on you at a whim. On the flipside they could give you fights that you'll never lose short of throwing yourself on your own weapons. It's up to them to balance it out so there is a chance of failure, but not a high probability unless you do something stupid.

I'd personally just walk away from a DM who feels free to throw you into a fight like that.

[Tavar]

Wow. Real classy there, not actually bringing up a problem. Reeaal Classy.

[starwoof]

well, that's not too bad. At least you're doing better than That Lanky Bugger.
Whenever I'm feeling like my session's gone to crap, I just think about Lanky and feel better.

Seriously though, I don't know of any combo attack a level one char can do that would drop a polar bear in one shot, barring flaw-feat Spirited Charge, and even then you'd need a mount.

Yeah, I didn't get stabbed at least.

I'd personally just walk away from a DM who feels free to throw you into a fight like that.

We did just that, but we did it in a pseudo-polite way.

[Shadowknight12]

Yeah, that was all pretty awful. My worst campaign was the time I played with an insanely OCD, elitist, everything-must-be-done-as-I-demand-it DM and his buddies, and the taclord managed to consistently out-damage my striker. Then the taclord (who wasn't one of the DM's friends) talked back to the DM's Mary Sue NPC and got hit with a DM-fiat curse that applied penalties to pretty much every roll. Then it was revealed that the seemingly original plot was actually going to copy a successful fantasy videogame that had come out recently.

It wasn't too distressing, looking back to it. I don't recall getting upset, mostly utterly flabbergasted at how normal and actually appealing everything had been at first glance. It was like biting on a perfectly edible-looking apple and finding it was utterly rotten on the inside. Quite an astonishing sensation.

But yeah, normally that's the reason I don't game that much. It's hard to find good players/DMs.

[Traab]

You know, I really dont understand the dm mindset sometimes. I see so many stories on these boards where the dm decides he doesnt like the character someone rolled up then proceeds to make sure they die as fast as possible. Is it THAT hard to just say at the start, "Hey, sorry man, but those feats look a bit too optimized/cheesy for my tastes, mind doing them a bit differently?" That way the dm doesnt need to feel obliged to attacked a level 1 fighter with an ancient red dragon just because he doesnt like the ultra optimization the player chose, and time isnt wasted by making them hold up the rest of the party mid adventure while you roll up something that might actually meet his approval.

[Shadowknight12]

You know, I really dont understand the dm mindset sometimes. I see so many stories on these boards where the dm decides he doesnt like the character someone rolled up then proceeds to make sure they die as fast as possible. Is it THAT hard to just say at the start, "Hey, sorry man, but those feats look a bit too optimized/cheesy for my tastes, mind doing them a bit differently?" That way the dm doesnt need to feel obliged to attacked a level 1 fighter with an ancient red dragon just because he doesnt like the ultra optimization the player chose, and time isnt wasted by making them hold up the rest of the party mid adventure while you roll up something that might actually meet his approval.

A lot of people have an ingrained conditioning to avoid direct conflict at all costs. This can stem from multiple sources, but it all boils down to the same thing: They can't do what you're proposing. It doesn't matter why. It may be a lack of self-confidence, childhood rearing, their idea of impoliteness, fear, etc. Instead, what they do is find "acceptable" (and by this, I mean "unlikely to provoke a confrontation") ways of getting what they want.

Instead of saying "I don't want you to play that," they simply find a "legal" way to kill the character. This doesn't (in theory, of course) provoke a confrontation, because it's been "allowed" by the game. Don't blame the DM, blame the game. Blame the dice. Of course, this is all in their heads. Everyone with the barest minimum of insight realises what's going on. Still, there's no reasoning with these people. Trying to force them into a confrontation will just get them to withdraw even further, making them put on their fake smiles and assure you (lying through their teeth) that yes, of course, everything's fine. And when you look away, they're back to their old antics.

There's no cure for this problem. You just got to learn to spot these sorts of people and anticipate their actions.

[Traab]

You just got to learn to spot these sorts of people and anticipate their actions.

Or spot them, then avoid them forever afterwards. Ugh.

[Shadowknight12]

Or spot them, then avoid them forever afterwards. Ugh.

Spotting these sort of people before you find yourself about to play with them requires considerable foreknowledge. Most of the time, you realise what's going to happen after you've already agreed to play.

[Quietus]

Overall, I think that tendency to avoid conflict is a good thing. It helps us get along as social creatures, otherwise we'd all be fighting with each other over the littlest thing. That's why we have the phrase "Pick your battles".

But I think when it comes to something as foolish as a character you don't like in your game.. it's better to bring it up early. Simply going "Man, I'm not comfortable with dual bastard swords" solves a LOT of problems. Sure, it'll annoy the player for a bit, and it's not a pleasant thing to do - particularly when, holy crap, dual bastard swords overpowered? Really? But there'll be less hurt feelings if you come out and say that then, than if you let someone waste their time building the character, let them think you're okay with it, then go LOLPOLARBEAR on them. Doing that doesn't solve anything. You have my condolences, starwoof.

[Kaun]

Yeah the worst game i have ever got stuck in was the first time one of my friends ran a game.

I dont still judge him by this game because it was his first time behind the sheild but it went something like this.

The 5 players arrive at DM's house at about 6pm and start generationg characters (it was either 3x or 2ed i cant remember exactly but im leaning more towards 3x.)

This took a couple hours all up including basic back grounds and we were all level 1.

He starts us out on an small island some were, gives a vague discription of our seroundings and then announces that we are being ambushed by half a dozen ogers.

So about 30 mins of combat later we are all dead!

No real chance to run or escape, maybe if 4 of us had sacraficed ourselfs one of us could have survived.

I figured this was a plot move to capture us or ... i dont know something but no it turns out he figured we could beat them.

The funny thing was the whole time through the game he kept anouncing things like "Wow this oger totaly crit again!!!" and "Man i cant belive he killed you in one hit hahah!".

We decided to play cards for the rest of the night.

[starwoof]

I think I should clarify that the 'combo attack' that the DMPC was pretty clearly pulled out of the DM's back pocket and in no way supported by the rules. I was less ticked about the bear killing me than the DMPC being there and only using his DM magic powers to save everyone after I was dead. That fact more than anything really showed that he was specifically out to kill me.

[malleus818]

mm.
On a side not, i also hate playing at coffee tables.

Our group is small, 2 of us right now lol, cause we moved to the middle of nowhere. In our case our DM has to have a DMPC, in fact every gamei have played over my 20 some years of roleplaying there have always been DMPC, and i have played in many many groups. I think the main reason was that numbers went up and down so much having a stable character was good.

But it all depends on the DM, i dont like having a PC but i have done it, and in those cases i am more then willing to die to further a plot, actually as a PC i have done as well.

I have had great Dms who have had PCs as well because we use to play a game where we would rotate amongst 5 of us different DMS, it worked brilliant.

THat being said Worst game i ever played.
Local store, owner ran the game. His "business partner" a girl, ahem, always played as well.

It was one of those games would run like this.

We arrive at store, plan to have a month or to long game, first time playing with them, 4 regular players, me and my friend. We arrive at store.

Me:So i guess i will start working on my character?
Owner: Nope here you go, your a thief.
Me: Oh (I like to play a fighter, of any sort, but fine).
Owner: ya i make everyones character, oh and everyone can only be basic races, your a halfling.

Girl: hey i finished my character, (ummm???) i gave myself an extra feat, cause it makes her cool, and shes that devil girl thing, what they called? Teifling! (and yes she spoke like that, and yes thats almost 99% the way the conversation went.

So skipping ahead everything went like,
PC1: I attack with my sword.
DM: Miss.

PC2: i cast magic missle.
DM: a little damage.

GIRL: i attack, while flying and shooting lightning bolts (i exaggerate a little).
DM: you killed it.

Oh and the game would also go.
roleplaying
PC1: 5 mintues
PC2: 5 mintues
Girl: 15 mintues
PC3: 5 mintues
girl: interuppting 5 more mintues.
PC4: 5 mintues
Girl 10 more.

The most frustrating part???? they were not dating, they never would be dating, they did not want to date (and i can 100% assure that.) it was absolutly the most annoying game ever.

and good on you, use those bastard swords!

[starwoof]

Bastard swords are the manliest weapon in the book.

Without extenuating circumstances I am pretty much opposed to the DM having his own character sheet. It should be a stat block or nothing.

[Tvtyrant]

Worst one I was ever in had to do with personal issues between the DM and one of the players (girl competition stuff). The DM had a DMPC that was a Ranger/Paladin thing that had +3 weapons at level 4. A lot of them (bow, rapier, shortsword, and lance). The player was playing a Rogue that had a level in Monk so he could flurry ninja stars for SA damage. We entered into combat with some Worgs and the DMPC wades into combat and gets crunched (3 worgs, the rest of us hung back and essentially watched). The Rogue ineffectually flings shuriken from hiding at the Worgs, the Half-Orc barbarian with 3 18s (good roles) proceeds to kill one of the Worgs on a charge, and I (heal bot cleric) sit back and heal the Barbarian. The Barbarian downs the other Worgs over three more rounds, and the DMPC is slowly bleeding out on the ground.

I'm out of slots by this point, so I attempt to make a Heal check on the Rangadin. I fail, and he goes down to -5. The Rogue walks up, coups the DMPC, and loots himself a shiny new shortsword. Me and the barbarian player are trying not to look involved as the DMs face gets blood red and says "roll for initiative." A Troll breaks into the clearing (getting a higher initiative then the Rogue of course) and attacks the Rogue with a claw. The claw doesn't kill him outright, but he goes down (to -9 of course, so the DM can coup him). The Barbarian's player spends close to 5 minutes looking at his sheet trying to decide what to do (he has 18 dex remember) and finally knocks over his cup of coffee by "accident" onto his character sheet. While everyone scrambles around trying not to get coffee on themselves, the Rogue gets a call from the girl and leaves.

[nihil8r]

rofl@tvtyrant

starwoof, you should have stopped the game from happening as soon as the 10 other people showed up. that should have been your ominous warning that this game should not be. oh well, sorry you had to experience such a terrible game ... if anyone did anything even remotely similar to that to me i would never acknowledge their existence again

[malleus818]

I dont know if this counts. But i love to roleplay, including some times ineffectual characters, like a two weapon fighter that relies on str and dex, hmm, and my the other two are like me. But we had a third member who power gamed, and owned everybook, AND had a photograhpic memory.

talk about frustrating, could break the game at level 1.
very annoying.
lol the troll one was pretty sad.

not much better then when a character dies, and his TWIN brother appears to avenge him. sigh. why do we get so many tools playing.

[Tyndmyr]

You know, I really dont understand the dm mindset sometimes. I see so many stories on these boards where the dm decides he doesnt like the character someone rolled up then proceeds to make sure they die as fast as possible. Is it THAT hard to just say at the start, "Hey, sorry man, but those feats look a bit too optimized/cheesy for my tastes, mind doing them a bit differently?" That way the dm doesnt need to feel obliged to attacked a level 1 fighter with an ancient red dragon just because he doesnt like the ultra optimization the player chose, and time isnt wasted by making them hold up the rest of the party mid adventure while you roll up something that might actually meet his approval.

God, yes. Give me solid parameters, and I can have fun building an interesting character within them. Even if those parameters are "core only", they are better than no guidelines. I hate working with a subjective "that's cheesy, but I'm not going to actually tell you what I think, so I'll passive-aggressively screw you randomly".

Yeah, I've had some pretty terrible DMs. My current group has three quite solid ones though...one of which has learned to DM in our group. We've tried to train everyone, but interest and ability vary. Still, having three is a huge blessing. Definitely consider training good players to DM...the world needs more good DMs.

[kamikasei]

Is it THAT hard to just say at the start, "Hey, sorry man, but those feats look a bit too optimized/cheesy for my tastes, mind doing them a bit differently?"

I don't think it's necessarily a desire to avoid confrontation. The vibe I get in a lot of these situations is that the DM views the player as having tried to get something past them, and that rather than simply saying "no", the player needs to be punished for having asked in the first place.

[Tyndmyr]

I dont know if this counts. But i love to roleplay, including some times ineffectual characters, like a two weapon fighter that relies on str and dex, hmm, and my the other two are like me. But we had a third member who power gamed, and owned everybook, AND had a photograhpic memory.

talk about frustrating, could break the game at level 1.
very annoying.
lol the troll one was pretty sad.

not much better then when a character dies, and his TWIN brother appears to avenge him. sigh. why do we get so many tools playing.

Er...*looks around guiltily*....was this player named Travis?

[Kaervaslol]

You should have punched him in his passive agressive face.

This reminds me of a similar experience of mine. I was playing a multiclass rogue/fighter in a 2e game. I had like 100% detect traps, but it seems my skills were worthless because the DM had it against me. I was pissed. Unfortunately for me, the DM at the time was a experience muay thai fighter and I would have gotten my ass kicked.

After the initial rage receded, I confronted him about it. The next session all the traps were easy. I was like , dude I'm not asking you to make it easy, I'm asking you to make it fair. If I have 100% detect traps, and I rolled a 23 how the f did I not detect a silly mechanical trap?

[Arbane]

Eddie: You realize that your attack bonus with those weapons is not going to be very good, right?
Me: Yes.
Eddie: Okay. I just want you to know that you'll have trouble hitting monsters.
Me: That's fine.
Eddie: *looks at my sheet* Looks fine. Your feats are okay.

Its really hard to convey here, and my memory is fuzzy at the exact words he used, but he definitely thought I was powergaming, even if his words said otherwise. At the time I didn't think much of it as I am ALWAYS being accused of powergaming. And normally it might be true. Also I was a little pissed about how he kept saying how weak my dude was to everyone. I'm not perfect.

(SNIP)

Eddie: Well I guess that broken dual wielding build wasn't as good as you thought, huh?
Me: No, I guess it wasn't.
Eddie: Those feats you took from those complete books are so broken. I don't know how you slipped them past me.

I just don't get this part. He thinks it's too strong, so he says it's too weak? Bwah?

[Shadowknight12]

I just don't get this part. He thinks it's too strong, so he says it's too weak? Bwah?

He's not saying "it's too weak." He's saying "You thought you were better than me, huh?" with an implied "Proved you wrong, eh? Who's the man? I'm the man! My threatened ego can rest easy now that I've squashed your character. Because only I matter."

[starwoof]

I'm not really sure what his reasoning was. I think he assumed my to-hit rolls would be tanked, but in fact they were pretty decent. He may have been mad that I 'beat him', though that wasn't my intention.

[Friv]

not much better then when a character dies, and his TWIN brother appears to avenge him. sigh. why do we get so many tools playing.

Oh, revenge characters. A revenge character was part of the worst session of the worst campaign I ever ran.

I ran a game at one point where two of the characters (a Lawful Good elven wizard and a Lawful Evil human fighter) had been bickering over party leadership for a while, culminating in threats, yelling, and the party breaking into two groups (the fighter player and his girlfriend in one, the other three party members in the other). The next session, the girlfriend was unavailable, so it was 1 v 3. Through a convoluted series of events which I may well go into detail on later, he got into a massive fight with a small army of goblins that was about the right level to be a serious but not overwhelming challenge for the entire party.

Part of the reason for this was that when the rest of the party heard the goblins yelling, the wizard was the only one who could understand that the fighter was being attacked, and she said 'to hell with it' and didn't bother translating for the rest of the party.

So the fighter died.

He came back with his next character, a wandering scholar tracing the journeys of his former character. It was pretty brilliant as a hook, so I said yes. This turned out to be a mistake, because it became clear that the player ardently blamed the wizard for "turning the party against him". His cunning plan was to gather evidence to prove that the wizard was responsible for murdering a hero of the realm, and to have her arrested and executed for it. There were only three flaws with his plan:
#1) It's not actually a crime to not go into deadly danger to save someone else, so the wizard was innocent, and thus there was no evidence to gather
#2) Absolutely no one in the world except the wizard knew that she could have gone into danger, so there was no way for the historian to have developed this theory.
#3) The wizard had substantially better Charisma and Diplomacy than the historian.

I pointed out most of these while trying to convince him not to deliberately sink the group, to which the historian's player assured me that he knew what he was doing.

Sadly, the game ended before I could watch him single-handedly destroy it. It was almost train-wreck beautiful, by then.

[Tvtyrant]

Friv, I believe the historian would have made it a most enjoyable game, and I am truly sorry for your loss. :P

[Friv]

Friv, I believe the historian would have made it a most enjoyable game, and I am truly sorry for your loss. :P

I'll see about putting together the full campaign log, and then you'll see that it was really a shock that we made it as far as we did. That campaign just lurched from one near-disaster to another until everything finally hit critical mass.

[Silus]

Worst game that I can remember was a whole two sessions. The first session was GREAT (it's the source of my Goblin Union story). The second session though, not so much. It's not a matter of "OMG that player was terribad", bit rather a DM Improv Fail.

So we're on a goblinoid garrison and I had just finished devolving the place into a riot over worker's rights and such (as a lvl 1 Bard mind you). So general stuff happens and we're more or less forced to be servants to meet the garrison's new Overlord who is coming to inspect the place to see if he wants to take over. So we're expecting...something normal. You know, Advanced Hobgoblin with class levels or something? But no. You know who walks through the door?

This guy:

Spoiler

Show

Ruby Rod and all.

So I can't speak for the other two players, but I just stared at the DM. Seriously? HE is gonna take over a garrison of goblinoids HIMSELF? Some other stuff happened (I think there was another riot or something) and apparently an Allosaurus or something got loose and was attacking the Flesh Golem butler....I dunno, I stopped caring after the "Overlord" walked through the door. Only game where I actually stopped caring during the game. Usually the "stop caring" thing quickly turns into "Let's see if we can't salvage the situation". But no, I actually stopped caring.