Total Party Hatred

[Lycan 01]

Have you ever done anything to make your entire group mad at you? I don't mean mad as in "Oh, you suck..." or "Hey, that isn't fair!" I mean mad like "**** YOU!!!" or "Thats it, I'm ****ing leaving..."

Apparently, I managed to do so Saturday with my CoC group.

Spoiler

Show

As punishment for their trigger-happy and plot-holing attitudes last session, I started this session quit simply with one goal in mind: Kill them all.

I told them that all their characters were sitting in the office of their Paranormal Detective Agency, doing various things - reading, fixing something, et cetra. Well, an old lady came in and asked for the demon trumpet that belonged to her nephew - the trumpet was able to raise the dead as zombies, and was a gift from Nyarlathotep. I'd hinted that Mr. Nyar might show up all week, so naturally they handed it over, no questions asked.

As the old lady opened the front door to leave, a hand reached through the doorway, grabbed her face, and blew her head apart. In strolled The Black Man, one of the 1000 Masks of Nyarlathotep. I decided to be cliche, too, just to prove who he was: Old black man wearing black sunglasses, a black fedora, a black suit, a black tie, black gloves, and black shoes.

They proceeded to freak out.

Now, my main targets were players 1 and 2. Player 3 was my GF, and she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Player 4 was an old player with a new character - I said he was late to their business meeting, so he was spared. Player 5 had been informed of what was to happen, and I had made him an extra character sheet in order to perform the following trick...

Players 1 and 2 both started freaking out IRL, so their characters did nothing. My GF said her character simply tried to hide behind her magazine, since she knew she was FUBAR and didn't want to fight fate.

It was at this point that player 5's character walked in - and had his face backhanded off by Nyarlathotep. He acted very convincingly - he sat there in shock, then started to "get mad at me" about it. He then held up his character sheet to rip it - only to have it plucked from his hands by player 4. Player 4 was, naturally, the owner of the late Bushido Joe, who had died at the hands of player 5's character. Player 4 then proceeded to not only shred player 5's character sheet... but he also tried to eat it.

That wasn't part of the plan...


Anyway, now we get to the good part...



Upon seeing player 4's face get removed from his body without the rolling of any dice, player 2 simply said: "I quit... I just ****ing quit... This isn't right..." while player 1 actually said "Now you're just being a b******... Thats it, I'm leaving..." and got up to put his shoes on.

Now, my feelings were hurt at this point. Not only were my closest friends insulting me, but they were showing an obvious lack of trust in me and my Keeping skills. Luckily, me and the other players talked them down, and the game continued...

Player 2 had his heart ripped from his own chest, and then was kept alive by Nyarlathotep's dark magic so he could see his own beating heart dangling in front of his face. Massive sanity loss, of course... He was left catatonic on the floor.

Player 1 went insane when said heart was thrown at his face, and was sent screaming to the floor by the impact. Nyarlathotep then calmly walked over, pressed his head down onto the ground with the tip of his shoe, and then proceeded to curb stomp his head in.

And then, in a truely Lovecraftian twist, players 1 and 2 then woke up screaming in their beds.

Upon discovering the truth, the two players apologized for their behavior, and agreed that they had learned their lesson. Of course, the trumpet was discovered missing the next morning, and they didn't recover the sanity they lost in the dream... But they didn't care. They said the whole thing was awesomely done in retrospect.

Player 4, however, was extremely pissed to learn that player 5 was still alive.

So yeah... have you ever pissed off your group or party to such extent before?

[Oracle_Hunter]

aaaaaaaaaand that's why you should never seek to "teach your players a lesson" while GMing.

Particularly not after a session where passions had already run high.

Um... I guess I haven't ever cheesed off my players quite like that. I have seen players get agitated in games that I'm a player in, and I've had bad situations while I DM'd... here's a good one:

Spoiler

Show

This was in 2e D&D, in my very first campaign. I decided it would be a good hook for the party to have to rescue the thief who set-up by a BBEG. First I give the 2nd level thief a honey-pot mission via mysterious contact (steal an object from the Manor's vault in return for ridiculously powerful magic item)... which he accepted without thinking because he was the greediest person I've ever seen

Needless to say, he gets caught and thrown in a secret prison, where he was stripped naked and poked with sticks (I'm not making this up!) by the mildly sadistic jailer. The problem was that it took the party several sessions to actually rescue the guy, so he just sat around being bored at every session. Not a good plot, and it rescue mission involved the PCs fighting Vampiric Mists and Wererats... without forewarning or magic weapons capable of actually harming either.

Not my best adventure, to say the least.

[Lycan 01]

Wow, poor thief. XD


Meh, I figured it still made for a good session. I had to think of some way for them to get rid of the trumpet - it was a major plot hole, as I'd never intended for them to have it. It was only because they shot EVERY NPC in the head during the previous session that they came into possession of it.

Plus, the fact that it was all just a dream seemed pretty cool... *shrug*

[Oracle_Hunter]

Wow, poor thief. XD


Meh, I figured it still made for a good session. I had to think of some way for them to get rid of the trumpet - it was a major plot hole, as I'd never intended for them to have it. It was only because they shot EVERY NPC in the head during the previous session that they came into possession of it.

Plus, the fact that it was all just a dream seemed pretty cool... *shrug*

Yeah, the problem with "it was all a dream" is... well, this. Plus, players get cheesed off if they are faced with an overwhelming force out of the blue (maybe less in CoC, but that's what it seemed like from your story). However, if you want to do the "dream sequence" thing, it might help to add some more reality-warping elements to it (perhaps having the furniture in the room swap around without warning, or changing the color of the wallpaper) to cue the PCs in that something isn't quite right. That can calm down player hysterics without direct GM intervention.

Still, in the end your players liked the scenario and it solved some in-game problems. Well done!

[ocato]

Last time I DMed (some time ago) I was tired of my players rampaging through every encounter and mashing the faces off of everyone they saw without fear or danger. I'd tried throwing harder and more monsters at them but they just killed them faster and leveled faster and got more loot. So, I decided to get really vindictive and rolled a character (using their same character generation rules) who proceeded to murder all of them but one, who magically ran away at like 3 HP. They were not pleased to frolic through my campaign and suddenly have all their precious L13 characters die ignobly at the hands of a reoccurring NPC that they no respect for who decided to reveal that he wasn't a slouch.

I never revealed his exact stats, and I don't really want to. He is 3.5 compatible and remains in a folder marked "Plan B" on my hard drive, in case I ever have to use him again.

[Jack_Simth]

Last time I DMed (some time ago) I was tired of my players rampaging through every encounter and mashing the faces off of everyone they saw without fear or danger. I'd tried throwing harder and more monsters at them but they just killed them faster and leveled faster and got more loot. So, I decided to get really vindictive and rolled a character (using their same character generation rules) who proceeded to murder all of them but one, who magically ran away at like 3 HP. They were not pleased to frolic through my campaign and suddenly have all their precious L13 characters die ignobly at the hands of a reoccurring NPC that they no respect for who decided to reveal that he wasn't a slouch.

I never revealed his exact stats, and I don't really want to. He is 3.5 compatible and remains in a folder marked "Plan B" on my hard drive, in case I ever have to use him again.

What happens to people in real life who kill virtually everyone they run across?

Police get involved, and soon, there's a bounty on those people's heads. Bounty grows with time and murders, and eventually it gets big enough to attract the attention of someone who's much more than what the rampagers can deal with - and the rampagers go down.

In slightly more game-mechanical terms, if you're simply killing every NPC you run across, quite a lot of that will be viewed as murder - and you'll eventually kill someone with relatives/business partners with enough clout to put such a bounty on the party's heads - and with the Divinations available in D&D, it'll eventually be known who did it. The more random murders, the more people putting money into the bounty, the more, stronger people interested in claiming it.

Your "Plan B" guy makes perfect sense for the situation as you outlined it.

[Vortling]

I've had a few BBEGs get away when the players really wanted to kill them but nothing on the level of players quiting on me.

By the way, what is up with CoC. I don't think I've heard a single story about that game where the players had fun for the whole game. It's always "Yeah we were having fun for a little bit and then [player/GM/multiple players] got annoying and the game went to pot."

[Lycan 01]

I suppose Nyarlathotep counts as Plan B for me, then.



Oh, as a side note...



They'd intended to blow off the old lady's head when she asked for the trumpet. They figured that either she was Nyarlathotep and they might get the jump on her, or she was a normal woman who didn't deserve their "hard earned" trumpet. But one them decided not to, since if she was human, Nyarlathotep might go after her instead of them. So they stayed their hands...

I blew her up anyway, just for that extra sanity loss moment.

[arguskos]

I've had this happen on accident. For example, I make it very clear that my D&D games are lethal, and dangerous. I say this in the very first session, and ensure everyone remembers it for the game. It's something I believe in strongly: adventuring worlds are SCARY.

So, when the party decides it would be fun to single-handedly assault and burn down a 15,000 population town, people take notice. Esp. people that have celestials they can summon/command. When the hound archon hero riding a brass dragon appears and attacks w/o warning, I don't feel bad. In fact, when they kill it, and a day later, a group of planetars shows up, I still don't feel bad. They even managed to kill THOSE too (and that's well above the party level, so I was fairly amazed). Finally, a solar shows up to smite these foul evil heathens, and devastates them all. They got pissed off and started yelling at me. I calmly explain that when they burned a town down, they got some celestial attention (there were no less than 3 good-aligned temples in that town, which the party knew, since they had asked before hand), and that after they slaughtered two groups of celestials and a good-aligned dragon, people got severely upset, and sent a solar to finish this once and for all.

I apologized for the TPK, and offered to begin a new campaign, if they wanted to roll new characters and start over (with the caveat that stuff like this WOULD happen if they were epically retarded again). They agreed, and we moved on (though at least one player never forgave me, and hates me to this day over that incident).

-argus

[Swordguy]

I've had a few BBEGs get away when the players really wanted to kill them but nothing on the level of players quiting on me.

By the way, what is up with CoC. I don't think I've heard a single story about that game where the players had fun for the whole game. It's always "Yeah we were having fun for a little bit and then [player/GM/multiple players] got annoying and the game went to pot."

People who play CoC by D&D definitions of "fun" (ie, killing stuff and looting corpses) are, by that games printed definition "...playing the game wrong, and deserve the horrors visited upon them by the imaginative Keeper."

Hell, part of the core concepts of CoC is that the universe is at best a bleak and uncaring place, and at worst actively malign against you. The Keeper is supposed to do capriciously bad things to the players as part of their listed job description. If people can't deal with that, then they shouldn't be playing in the first place.

[Brauron]

People who play CoC by D&D definitions of "fun" (ie, killing stuff and looting corpses) are, by that games printed definition "...playing the game wrong, and deserve the horrors visited upon them by the imaginative Keeper."

Hell, part of the core concepts of CoC is that the universe is at best a bleak and uncaring place, and at worst actively malign against you. The Keeper is supposed to do capriciously bad things to the players as part of their listed job description. If people can't deal with that, then they shouldn't be playing in the first place.

I concur wholeheartedly.

Heh, I had a player quit my game in disgust because GM-manufactured karma bit him in the rear...I found out he was cheating on dice rolls, especially Library Use checks because he wanted to amass as large a collection of Horrible Tomes as possible. Okay. The next library they come across has hidden within it the fabled 12th volume of the Revelations of Glaaki (which he didn't know about because he'd only studied the main rulebook for loopholes he could exploit, and RoGv12 is in the Keepers Companion), which draws the attention of the GOO Y'golonac to readers who have actively sought evil. This PC's lust for evil books struck me as actively seeking evil...So he cheats his Library Use check, announcing that he'd rolled "008" when he'd in fact rolled "080". I tell him he finds a leather bound book with the words "Revelations of Glaaki XII" in faded and peeling gold leaf on the cover.

He reads it. It takes him an unusually short amount of time to read it, and then he begins dreaming of an obese, well-dressed man who sits with his face in shadow, offering him all the women, wine, and power he wants. He always wakes up ravenously hungry, and soon is gaining weight like crazy. His palms itch and he starts thinking about doing horrible things, like cannibalism, torturing women, etc.

He got really upset when the fanged, slobbering mouth opened in the palm of his hand and began talking to him in the voice of the man in his dreams, urging him to lower and more sickening depths of depravity.

He quit after one morning his character woke up to discover that his hand had chewed his ear off.

[drengnikrafe]

Someone who used to be a part time DM...
He gave all the PCs a boatload (I'm talking millions) of gold, and told them to get whatever they wanted. Several hours later, he reveals that that was just a dream sequance, and they don't get the stuff.

We don't play with him anymore.

[nobodylovesyou4]

We dont hate the GM in question (we just dont play under him anymore), but i happen to recall one level 1 3.5 game where he decided to give us the Shadowstaff and a potion that casts bestow curse on you three (yes, three) times.

[Doomsy]

People who play CoC by D&D definitions of "fun" (ie, killing stuff and looting corpses) are, by that games printed definition "...playing the game wrong, and deserve the horrors visited upon them by the imaginative Keeper."

Hell, part of the core concepts of CoC is that the universe is at best a bleak and uncaring place, and at worst actively malign against you. The Keeper is supposed to do capriciously bad things to the players as part of their listed job description. If people can't deal with that, then they shouldn't be playing in the first place.

Damn straight. I don't pull my punches in CoC. If a player tries to run it like a loot and shoot game he ends up paying for it. If you allow your PCs to act like that it is because you are playing it softball and bending the rules pretty bad to keep them going. Not only do you have to deal with the Mythos in CoC, you have to deal with the cops. If my PCs just flat-out decided to murder a NPC for very little cause they would end up in a 1920s prison trying to figure out if the man with the Glasgow accent, wild eyes, and peculiar carving hobbies is their cellmate or their new boyfriend fairly quickly. Even when they storm cults they have to be pretty careful and think things out or they will end up in jail.

Judges just do not BUY the whole 'He was a spawn of darkness beyond mortal ken' defense. On the plus side, I like to use incidents like that to build up interesting modern stuff revolving around seized artifacts and books in government holding.

[KillianHawkeye]

Judges just do not BUY the whole 'He was a spawn of darkness beyond mortal ken' defense.

I've never played CoC, but wouldn't this lead to a high percentage of "Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity" pleas in PC-related trials? I mean, we are talking about a system that tracks your character's Sanity, after all.

[arguskos]

I've never played CoC, but wouldn't this lead to a high percentage of "Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity" pleas in PC-related trials? I mean, we are talking about a system that tracks your character's Sanity, after all.

In 1920, that sentence led to the nuthouse in a straitjacket, not freedom. Just sayin'.

-argus

[Brauron]

Another story from my CofC campaign, illustrating my emphasis on the notion that "ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES."

The PCs were in a meeting with the leader of a local branch of the main cult baddies, who had contacted them, expressing an interest in trying to resolve their differences peacefully.

One player (the same player who lost an arm, and then a character, to stupidity that I mentioned in the Epic Deaths thread), gets bored with the diplomatic proceedings (this character was a gun-toting maniac who worshipped Theodore Roosevelt, even cultivating a similar mustache), pulls out a gun that had been missed when the PCs had been frisked at the door, and proceeds to blow a grapefruit-sized hole through the cult leader's head.

The cult leader's head regenerates, he says, "Do you have any idea how much that HURTS?" and proceeds to draw a gun and put a similarly-sized hole through the PC's head. This PC didn't have any paranormal regenerative powers, unfortunately.

The cult leader than gets up, heads for the door, and tells his bodyguards, "Kill them all. This was a waste of my time."

3/4ths of the investigative party is wiped out in that scene. The remaining two PCs manage to overpower the guards and escape through some lucky dice rolls on their part and a horrendous firearm malfunction on the part of one of the cultists.

That was the day the shoot-and-loot player learned that CofC doesn't work that way. Because the other players nearly killed him for getting their characters killed.

[quillbreaker]

So, when the party decides it would be fun to single-handedly assault and burn down a 15,000 population town, people take notice. Esp. people that have celestials they can summon/command. When the hound archon hero riding a brass dragon appears and attacks w/o warning, I don't feel bad. In fact, when they kill it, and a day later, a group of planetars shows up, I still don't feel bad. They even managed to kill THOSE too (and that's well above the party level, so I was fairly amazed). Finally, a solar shows up to smite these foul evil heathens, and devastates them all. They got pissed off and started yelling at me. I calmly explain that when they burned a town down, they got some celestial attention (there were no less than 3 good-aligned temples in that town, which the party knew, since they had asked before hand), and that after they slaughtered two groups of celestials and a good-aligned dragon, people got severely upset, and sent a solar to finish this once and for all.
-argus

I'm always amazed that a world needs adventurers to save it, but when the adventurers step out of line, suddenly the helpless village actually has unstoppable celestial legions behind it.

[Arbitrarity]

Maybe the adventurers are only needed for convenience? Our party in a recent game was hired for being cheap, disposable, and semi-competent.

I wanna play a CoC game. Running, hiding, and being very, very careful, sounds fun

[arguskos]

I'm always amazed that a world needs adventurers to save it, but when the adventurers step out of line, suddenly the helpless village actually has unstoppable celestial legions behind it.

It was the capital of a nation. It wasn't even part of a quest!! They just decided to burn it down. What am I supposed to do? Let my characters get away with that?? Sorry, but I warned them when they asked if they could do it, that it wasn't a good idea.

If I was playing an evil campaign, and there was a good reason to raze the city, then fine. Otherwise, I see no reason to not punish them for being psychotic murdering bastards, esp when no one is the party is chaotic, evil, or even had tendencies in those directions.

*shrug* Like I said, we worked it out. It was just a moment that A). made them pissed off at me, and B). made me pretty damn confused as to why.

EDIT:

Maybe the adventurers are only needed for convenience? Our party in a recent game was hired for being cheap, disposable, and semi-competent.

This is a good note. It wasn't the case in that game (the party was between jobs atm), but it is a good point. For example, in my current campaign, the party was hired because they were there, and they turned out to be decently competent, so ding! Got a good patron, and steady, good work. Also, they seem to enjoy killing cultists, so everyone wins.

-argus

[valadil]

I pissed off my players pretty good last time I ran a game. I can see why my plot annoyed them, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Basically I put them in an adventurer's tourney that was rigged in the NPC's favor. The whole point was to introduce the cheating group as new villains (the tourney would show them as powerful, but despicable). It seemed like a reasonable plot, but at the time the players got really upset, and rightfully so. I'm still struggling with figuring out how to run that kind of plot in the future.

[Ralfarius]

It was the capital of a nation. It wasn't even part of a quest!! They just decided to burn it down. What am I supposed to do? Let my characters get away with that??

Uhh, you kind of did let them get away with it. You just 'got them back' after the fact. If this was a nation's capital, why wasn't there serious resistance? I mean, they shouldn't be the only people around capable of putting a major city to torch with a small group. Shouldn't there have been other, similarly powerful adventurers about who would have jumped at the opportunity for a sweet, high-loot encounter?

[arguskos]

*sigh* See, there was resistance. They single-handedly assaulted and burned the city. They destroyed the whole city guard, the contents of three temples, and the wizard's guild. And then burned the city down. After that, I didn't have much sympathy for them.

Yes, I acknowledge that I probably handled it poorly, but really, what am I meant to do here? After they did that, I wasn't really sure what to do. What would your DM do if you slaughtered 15,000 people, a Wizard's Guild, the whole Town Guard, and 3 Holy Temples? Give you the loot and ignore your actions? Or realize that the doing things like that pisses powerful individuals off (like the high priests of those temples, in this situation), and act accordingly? I did warn them before they started this it would turn them evil, and probably get them killed, but they did it anyways. I see it as fair. I warned them, they proceeded to carry through, and then were punished for their actions. It seems reasonable in my eyes.

I guess this is a learning experience for DM's everywhere: don't do what I did, it's unfair to the players. Instead, just don't let them do it to begin with, and save everyone the headache.

Lesson learned. Guilty feelings assigned. Moving on now.

-argus

[Oracle_Hunter]

I pissed off my players pretty good last time I ran a game. I can see why my plot annoyed them, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Basically I put them in an adventurer's tourney that was rigged in the NPC's favor. The whole point was to introduce the cheating group as new villains (the tourney would show them as powerful, but despicable). It seemed like a reasonable plot, but at the time the players got really upset, and rightfully so. I'm still struggling with figuring out how to run that kind of plot in the future.

Well, ideally you'd let the PCs see the baddies cheating, and give them some time between fights to try and "get even" or prove that they are cheaters. Additionally, give them an opportunity to spot the cheats beforehand (through investigation or Spot checks) and a chance to thwart them.

Reminds me of a time my PCs got framed for roughing up a prisoner they were interrogating

Spoiler

Show

The PCs had captured a member of a cult (let's call her Zola) who had been trying to kill a local merchant for nefarious reasons, and had attempted to Zone of Truth something useful out of her. One of the PCs was a member of the Watch, and so he wrote down her deposition and then left deposited with his commander for the trial the next day. Of course, the cult had bought off an officer in the Watch, and he swapped out a forged copy of the deposition during the night.

Hilarity ensued when the deposition is read in court, casting the interrogation in a spotty light, and providing no useful information at that. The judge asked the deposing PC to confirm this was his writing and, a failed Forgery check later, he said "it sure looks like it, but it's not what I wrote!"

The cult's ringleader was in the audience for the trial (who the PCs knew about) and they just fumed while he chuckled softly to himself.

Moral of the story: you can cheat your PCs in-game, but don't leave them without options to retaliate.

[Fiendish_Dire_Moose]

I've done my part but my current DM, back when we were all still learning 3.5 had a few big F-ups.

Spoiler

Show

The first of which started back when we had no clue how to figure out wealth by level. So, we were starting level 5 with only 300 gp.
Somehow we managed. With little homebrews and general just having fun we took on insane chalenges, and got gipped on every payday.
So, we'd have to bluff and diplomacy our way just to get a +1 sword.
Anwyay, cue several games, several checks, and aquiring immense power and getting to level 9, we were finally confronted with the BBEG.
Now, in this session alone we had managed to deck ourselves out to what could be considered proper wealth by level, by now we were level 9.
So, the BBEG as part of a context sinsitive move renders us unconcious, kills me and our druid's animal companions, kill my character's wife, and stuck us in his prison.
Not angry yet, we were expecting to be in over our heads.
However, we were in prison for two year, "two years" which was ten minutes of game time. DM ruled that this somehow equated to a loss of two levels, which we barely got any EXP as is.
Then some evil adventurers in the jail staged a break out. In the uproar we were able to get into the BBEG's house. Where not only did we learn that he himself kept no magical items, but he didn't even keep ours, not even the entirely plot focused book we'd been carrying. This made us angry and of course we protested. However the GM had that as solid and not changing. Basically the 6 sessions it took us to gain four levels and atleast +2 items was lost. No regaining it. Yes this makes for a decent game where you hate the BBEG A LOT! But this being the case, we were already tired. What was once optimised characters for level 9 were now level 7 with less than 100gp between the group. We abandoned that game for something more favorable.


Same GM, same still learning the rules. Now, we didn't get very many chances to play, and I had just spent weeks talking with the DM about how he needed to learn to properly plan a game where we can actually play, instead of driving 10 miles to the only place we can play just to play for one hour.
So, he's promised me that he has spent three weeks on this game. Getting every angle so as to allow the game to run for atleast 3 hours if we do it quickly.
15 minutes into the game I make one diplomacy check. And the game is over. I about stabbed my DM.

Basically, at that stage in our gaming, our DM didn't understand, and kind of still doesn't, that in D&D; when in doubt, go for fun. And not piss off your group.

[drengnikrafe]

Hearing all this CoC stuff made me look up Sanity as a variant rule. Then, I read about other variant rules.

My PCs are going to hate me the next time I do a campaign....

[Yahzi]

What would your DM do if you slaughtered 15,000 people, a Wizard's Guild, the whole Town Guard, and 3 Holy Temples? Give you the loot and ignore your actions?

I confess: after my players forced the population of an entire village through a fine wire mesh looking for hidden gems, I decided to pay them back.

I sent them underground to the great Orc lair, where armless, blind dwaves were used as wagon-pullers and the local Stuckey's kept babies in honey for the trolls to eat.

After that they were good for three whole sessions!

[Swordguy]

It's always cool, a campaign or two down the road after players do something like rape an orphanage whilst burning down a puppy and kicking a nun, to have the new characters come across the looted skeletal remains of their old PCs, dead in the wilderness far from friends or succor, as a quiet reminder of old mistakes...

[Blackfang108]

In 1920, that sentence led to the nuthouse in a straitjacket, not freedom. Just sayin'.

-argus

No no no.

a 1920's Sanatarium was not that nice.

Crazy people were tortured, experimented on, shock therapy, etc.

Being in a nuthouse before the mid-1900's was absolutely horrible.

EDIT:

Also, I can think of three things that one of my DMs did that ROYALLY ticked people off.

1.) Forced draw from the Deck of Many Things. 3 card min. I draw the Sun.
I also gain a "get out of one bad situation."
So he makes me age. and I have to waste it. the other sadistic DM in the group even said that he had gone too far.

2.) Another character goes blind from GOD POISON. a GREATER RESTORE didn't heal the poison, and it was cast about 10 seconds after he was infected. he ended up turning the character into Daredevil, but still, a blind rogue can't search for traps, no matter how good his hearing.

3.) (same campaign as #2) My character, a Neraphim Berserker/Chaotician, (fun combo. I recommend it.) changed race. To what, I don't know, because it happened (for no real reason other than The DM wanted it to) at the very end of that session, and that campaign fell apart before the next session (RL issues between the DM, his (now ex) GF, and his (now former) roommate.

I miss that character...

[Zenos]

My players get pissed if I even mention Rust Monsters.