Ode to the Lanky Bugger

[Tanuki Tales]

So, this was a short line of discussion in another thread I was in and I felt like it was something that would make an interesting thread topic.

The basic premise here is to share the absolutely worst, weirdest or most extreme gaming experience that you've ever had over your entire gaming career. This can be simply something that ultimately made you leave the table in disgust; you don't need to bring to our attention the likes of your own personal Chief Circle or regale us with the psychological and physical woes that Lanky himself had to suffer through. And you certainly don't need to try and top anything already shared in the thread.

I wish I had something that I, myself, could tell to all of you in some cathartic essay. But while I have had some gaming experiences that made me slightly annoyed, uncomfortable, perturbed or even elicited slight groans, I can honestly say that I've never experienced anything I would define as a "nightmare" or "pure Hell".

[The Oni]

I have just one such experience.

One player greatly disliked another player IRL who had been allowed to join the group by the DM, without the first being informed. This particular player played a Rogue (we'll call him Rogue A) and had a long history of harassing other players' characters, although it was mostly a mild nuisance and (usually) had IC justification. Some were worse; at one point, he coup-de-grace'd another player's Eidolon basically for no reason and he had to wait to resummon it.

Anyway, when this new player joined, his character, a samurai was locked up in a dungeon where a Thieves' Guild congregated. His stuff was in a locked chest. When the party leader went to unlock the chest so the samurai could get his stuff and join up with the party, Rogue A stole the key and refused to return it. Rogue B tired of this, stole the key from Rogue A, and gave the samurai his stuff.

The rogue proceeded to run up the stairs and bang loudly on the door of the next room, behind which about fifty thieves of higher level than the party awaited, no doubt resulting in the death of us all. The whole thing degenerated into a stupid argument wherein one of the other players even offered to use his "blivet" (our GM's roleplaying reward system) to prevent him from performing this incredibly stupid action, to which Rogue A responded with even stupider actions. The GM wouldn't put his foot down, mostly because Rogue A was his younger brother, and we continued to argue, basically ruining the rest of the session.

Eventually it got so ridiculous that I tore my character sheet in half (I'd worked quite hard to convince the GM to let me play a Hengeyokai, mind!) and left on a rather unpleasant note. When we returned for another session, the GM insisted that the sheet was unusable and I had to reroll a new character; my heart really wasn't in the new guy and the campaign died shortly thereafter.

[BWR]

One time a couple of classmates tried to join our group. They weren't really interested in rpgs but were going to give it a try. Sadly, the DM at the time was a really, really bad DM. Horrendously bad. Like "you find 3 Staves of the Magi and 6 Staves of Power at level 3" bad. And worse.

It ended up with the new players just ignoring the DM altogether, despite his increasingly loud protestations, and went around wreaking havoc in extreme murder-hobo mode. They never came back.

On a related note, said DM was so pissed at us on another occasion (for perfectly legitimate tactics) that he insisted a bullet came out of nowhere and killed the mage. We refused to accept it and a loud argument ensued which after a couple of days resulted in the DM relenting. And that was just one retarded aspect of the entire retarded adventure.

[Kesnit]

I have two, both from separate new World of Darkness games...

1) It was the first session of a Vampire game. I was playing a Daeva, complete with high Social skills and several dots in Majesty (a power that makes characters like you/trust you/think you are a friend/etc). Another player (we will call him J) was playing a aggressive, combat focused Gangrel. The ST had us doing some free RP, to let our characters meet before he started the plot. J's Gangrel starts throwing his weight around, acting all tough and such. Eventually, the other players and I started getting annoyed because he wasn't letting us get a word in. So I dropped the lowest level of Majesty on his character. "OK," I said, "I succeeded with Awe, so your character now likes mine." J jumps up and yells "I can't play a gay character!" I tried to explain that "likes" doesn't mean "is in love with," but by then, J had stalked away. The game died at that point.

2) Mage: the Awakening game. Same ST as before, but mostly a different group. My now-wife (then fiancee) was one of the players, there was 1 other woman playing, and 3 guys, plus the ST. The first plot arc focused on my fiancee's character, but that was OK. We all figured we'd get our turns in the spotlight eventually. Then the second plot arc started, and it focused on my fiancee's backstory. It also left the rest of us with little to do, since it dealt with the Spirit realm, and she was the only PC with the Spirit Arcana. I also started noticing that the ST was paying particular attention to my fiancee - really paying attention. Thinking I was just being a little oversensitive, I asked my fiancee about it later. She told me that, no, I wasn't overreacting. The ST really was hitting on her, and she was getting "rather annoyed." (The phrase she actually used was much stronger.) We quit the game.

[Arbane]

I am happy to report that no game I was in even comes CLOSE to the awfulness some people have gone through.

Like everyone in this RPG.net thread and its sequels. Which include an identity thief, a guy who was so enthusiastic about the game that he wouldn't take a restroom break, and DMing for a Brazilian Police Death Squad (not the characters, THE PLAYERS).

[Tanuki Tales]

Arbane, your first link requires to be logged in to RPG.net to view it.

[Deffers]

On the other hand, that second link has enough OHGODWHYYYYY just in the first post to last us a whole ten threads.

And apparently Rifts players have a baaaaaad reputation.

But I was guessing Rifts too, mostly because of all these numbers and sourcebooks..

[Emmerask]

other then that the story sounds so incredible that I cant really believe it...
I guess Rolemaster (though I do like it and dont think its actually that complicated, however it is intimidating at first^^)

I dont actually have any such tales, I guess that is good... however not very exciting!

[Tanuki Tales]

Sweet Tap Dancing Christ!

I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that Squeaky's life with Jake is officially worse than either Chief Circle or Lanky's misadventures. Reading that almost made me seriously think about giving up tabletop gaming in general.

[The Oni]

I wouldn't say I'd consider giving it up, I enjoy it too much; but I'm definitely gonna try to dial it back when talking with friends. I'd really hate to come across as that guy.

[lytokk]

Well, mine was one of those pretty typical ones that can often drive a person away from a game.
Eberron campaign setting, I'm a Halfling Paladin/Cavalier, so lawful good. Me and another guy were giving the normal DM a 6 month break from the campaign and running sidequests ourselves. During my run, the party went to Xendrik in order to research the warforged, and my paladin was off helping the halflings defend the plains since the Valenaar elves had for some reason decided to restart the war. My game ends, and he uses the DM powers to transport him Xendrik to meet up with the rest of the party.
We're adventuring to fight some bad guy who's trying to raise some undead, somewhere in the past, so a time travelling vampire necromancer. He puts some city in our way, underground where we're travelling, with a big door blocking the way. This is where he decided all of our characters needed to get a heroes "welcome". Whoever's in charge decides that if we sleep with some polymorphed racially equivalent female, we can go through. If we don't this is where the adventure ends. Now, play your paladins the way you want to, but I was playing mine as a beacon of light and morality. Couple onto the fact that my guy is the general in command of the halfing forces in the talenta plains fighting a war they're losing, which he got whisked away from in order to do this task. Suffice to say, he wasn't in the mood. Also he's coming to grips with having had his left arm chopped off and have a construct arm on in place of it (book of exalted deeds I think).
So starts the 20 minute roleplay of me trying to find another way around this, negotiate, diplomacy rolls, the whole shabang. He won't budge on any of it. The rest of the party is pretty upset for him having put me in that situation. He tries to put a charm person on me, which fails due to my really really high will save.
After about another 10 minutes of him looking through books to try and find some way to get me to do this, I finally give in, break character and go along, voicing my displeasure the whole time, and telling him the only reason I'm doing this is so we don't hold up the game anymore. I figure this is where we fade to black, and meet up with each other the next morning. He then decides to describe, in graphic detail the goings on in the bedrooms. The 5 of us in the party pretty much all yelled STOP at the exact same time. We were playing at our normal DM's house and he had a 6 year old daughter at the time, and we really didn't want her to hear any of this.
At this point I was fuming, forced to do something I don't want to do, breaking character, and then being forced to listen to it. If the main DM wasn't taking back over the next session I would have walked.

I'm sure other people have stories worse than this, but this is the only time I almost walked out of a game. The other time something like this happened was when the above character died, but it was the last game of the campaign anyway and he went out in a firey hellstorm, so can't complain that much.

[The Oni]

Oh, see, that sounds like the perfect opportunity to play your character completely straight and for laughs. In your situation, I would've had the abide by the city laws to the letter and have the Paladin sleep WITH her. In full platemail if possible, with a board in between the two sides of the bed, Puritan style.

But, nah - it sounds like the GM was just trying to get his own jollies, which is not a cool way to play a campaign if your players ain't down with it.

[Rhynn]

I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that Squeaky's life with Jake is officially worse than either Chief Circle or Lanky's misadventures. Reading that almost made me seriously think about giving up tabletop gaming in general.

Why? It was pretty much just your textbook "I've never been in a relationship before and have personal problems that make me unable to leave an abusive one until way into it" story that happened to involve a dude with an obsession with RPGs.

It is an amazing read, though, and now I'm going to be wasting hours reading the rest of the thread.

The Brazilian Police Death Squad Story reposted in that thread by our own Mr. Nexx is amazing, too. Definitely beats That Lanky Bugger's stories for fear of imminent violence...

[oudeis]

Re: 'That Lanky Bugger', could someone bring me up to speed on what was goin on between him and 'Return of Lanky'? TLB starts his thread, it runs for several months then dies. Several months later, RoL creates his own thread wherein he claims that TLB stole his story and was well-known as a quasi-identity thief in his local roleplaying community. What's the deal here? Which of them was being straight with us, or were they both full of ****?

[Rhynn]

Re: 'That Lanky Bugger', could someone bring me up to speed on what was goin on between him and 'Return of Lanky'? TLB starts his thread, it runs for several months then dies. Several months later, RoL creates his own thread wherein he claims that TLB stole his story and was well-known as a quasi-identity thief in his local roleplaying community. What's the deal here? Which of them was being straight with us, or were they both full of ****?

Return of Lanky was the new account of That Lanky Bugger.

I have no idea where you got your interpretation from, because the second linked thread certainly doesn't support it. He links his own original thread, then tells about a dude who "stole" the story in meatspace.

Edit: Also, I'd call 33 months "over two and a half years" rather than "several months" ...

[Kane0]

I don't really have anything that bad, though there was one time our party rogue had an OOC fight with the establishment's owner and was essentially kicked out of the place so we had to end the session early.

Oh, I take that back. There was one session that was supposed to be a lighthearted side-track where the DM did an Empire Strikes Back Dark Side Cave type thing for each character individually, which was no fun for anyone involved. The rogue nearly got killed thrice, the fighter came out with no complication what so-ever, the wizard became permanently incorporeal, the cleric came out with a revelation that completely broke his character concept and I was forced to promise to bring a demon lord to the material plane via damning countless souls to hell.

It all worked out much better a couple sessions down the track but at the time that part seemed a very bad move by an otherwise very good DM.

[oudeis]

Return of Lanky was the new account of That Lanky Bugger.

I have no idea where you got your interpretation from, because the second linked thread certainly doesn't support it. He links his own original thread, then tells about a dude who "stole" the story in meatspace.

Edit: Also, I'd call 33 months "over two and a half years" rather than "several months" ...

AH. I'd misread some of the posts in the second thread to mean that the plagiarist stole both the story and the login for Lanky.

[The Glyphstone]

AH. I'd misread some of the posts in the second thread to mean that the plagiarist stole both the story and the login for Lanky.

Nope. There was some confusion/uncertainty as to the authenticity of the third LB story, the one where he allegedly got stabbed, but no one ever really questioned the first two of his tales.

[Big Fau]

Bad: A previous player of mine tried to use a backgammon doubling cube as a d6, and intentionally sat on the furthest end of the table to hide that fact. He lasted all of half a session before I caught him.

And you guys know those big d20s? THe ones the size of a tennis ball? One of my former players had thrown a few of them my way. Hard. The only thing that kept him out of jail was the fact that we were under 18 and that he only grazed me. To this day I still wonder what I said that made him that angry; we haven't spoken since he got out of juvy a year later for an unrelated incident.

As for bad stories from my perspective as a player, I once played under a DM who wanted to run a zombie apocalypse game using D&D rules, but with the players as self-inserts and set in modern times. You couldn't play a spellcaster unless the DM felt your IRL personality would fit a spellcaster. I was able to cast 1st level spells. The DMPC was able to summon the LaVey Leviathan. The game lasted all of one session before he gave me back the reins, saying it was too difficult to come up with more ideas.

We stopped playing with that guy too, but for a reason completely unrelated to his religious beliefs (for the record, I know a few people who have read and agree with LaVey who were likeable; this guy just did something that made us not want to associate with him again).

[The Oni]

A previous player of mine tried to use a backgammon doubling cube as a d6, and intentionally sat on the furthest end of the table to hide that fact. He lasted all of half a session before I caught him.

Was he playing a rogue, by chance? 'Cause I'd have given him bonus XP for that!...and then made him play with regular dice.

[Big Fau]

Was he playing a rogue, by chance? 'Cause I'd have given him bonus XP for that!...and then made him play with regular dice.

Fighter actually. He was using a Shortsword with Weapon Finesse.

[The Oni]

Well if he wasn't generally rogue-themed, then no XP. And no dice.

Srsly though, how did he figure no one was gonna notice 32 base damage on a single attack?

[Sith_Happens]

Nope. There was some confusion/uncertainty as to the authenticity of the third LB story, the one where he allegedly got stabbed, but no one ever really questioned the first two of his tales.

Didn't someone find the likely-matching police report online?

[Big Fau]

Well if he wasn't generally rogue-themed, then no XP. And no dice.

Srsly though, how did he figure no one was gonna notice 32 base damage on a single attack?

Mid-levels, and he had no idea how to actually optimize. He saw that the party's Warlock was doing more damage than him with singular blasts, and decided to cheat instead of asking me to help him rebuild.

I wouldn't have kicked him out like that if he had just asked for the help. I have a very low tolerance for cheating.

Edit: The real mindboggler was that he had the doubling cube on him despite it being the first session. I still marvel as to how he had the foresight to bring it, yet not enough to ask for help.

[Kurald Galain]

I don't have a lot of creepy tales aside from the usual DMs-girlfriend crap. However, the weirdest player I've met was the guy who called himself a Chaos Sorcerer. No, not his character, his real-life self. That is, he firmly believed he had access to real magic, which apparently he gained from meditating to radio static. Before going out on the streets, he would cast a "glamor" on himself to make him look cooler, and when talking to people he would use some kind of mind magic to convince them.

Or so he claimed. Of course, when asked to show any of that, he came up with the excuse that I was too strong-willed and therefore not affected by his mystical powers. Yeah, sure.

Thinking back he was quite pleasant otherwise, didn't look too crazy except for an esoteric necklace or two, and not particularly creepy or unhygienic or whatnot. He just would start talking about his purported magical powers in every conversation.

[nedz]

Bad: A previous player of mine tried to use a backgammon doubling cube as a d6, and intentionally sat on the furthest end of the table to hide that fact. He lasted all of half a session before I caught him.

Didn't you spot the 192 Dex ?

[Tanuki Tales]

Why? It was pretty much just your textbook "I've never been in a relationship before and have personal problems that make me unable to leave an abusive one until way into it" story that happened to involve a dude with an obsession with RPGs.

Because I felt guilty by association for being both male and seriously into rpgs and other things of geek subculture. I felt a deep seated revilement and squick that resonated to my core and said to me, "Never like him. I will never be anything like that ever." It only lasted for a few moments, but it had me contemplating putting as much distance between ever being jokingly compared to that, let alone have parallels drawn, as I could.

[Morgarion]

The Brazilian Police Death Squad Story reposted in that thread by our own Mr. Nexx is amazing, too. Definitely beats That Lanky Bugger's stories for fear of imminent violence...

Gah!!! I clicked on the link and went back to the beginning of the thread and I haven't done anything else today.

[Equinox]

My worst experience was with a DM so overbearing that he basically took over playing my character for about an hour. He still made me roll the dice though, not sure why.

[The Oni]

Thinking back he was quite pleasant otherwise, didn't look too crazy except for an esoteric necklace or two, and not particularly creepy or unhygienic or whatnot. He just would start talking about his purported magical powers in every conversation.

Obviously his Chaos Sorcerer powers were partially affecting your mind.