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We've all got some or at least now off another group with a hard ass DM.
Now this is the place to b~$!! about them, you know the time you tryed to disable that trap with a CR29 when you were 10 level only to have it blow up in your face and then theres only a friggen brick wall behind it!!!!!
Ive got a mate and his DM only gives them 20 points to make a character....come on!!
I know we need them and without DM's we wouldnt have DND in the first place but come on people there are DM's out there that we're built to stop players......so lets here these horror storys.
A long time ago in college I was asked by a new friend to join a 2E game. Since, I had not played any DND for 10+ months I jumped at the chance. I was stoked and went home and pulled out my books, dice, and various other paraphernalia, happy at the opportunity to join a new adventuring party and meet new people.
When I got there and started to unpack my bag. The DM noticed I had brought *all* my books (I was really excited.) I pulled out the Players’ Handbook, Monster Manual, Deities & DemiGods, and the Dungeon Masters Guide. Upon seeing the DMG he said “You’ve read the DM’s Guide??!! Players are not allowed to look inside this book, only DM’s” and next… “I’m sorry you can’t play DND with us because you have ‘CHEATED’ by reading the DM’s guide.”
Needless to say I failed my saving throw on this ‘befuddle’ spell and could only stare blankly at him with my mouth hanging open. You cannot win an argument with an ignorant person, so I just left, and thanked the universe for giving me a lesson in how NOT to act.
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I've got a few of these, and could write a book... unfortunitly, time is of the essence at the moment, so just some fun little summaries...
First year university. I join my friends in there first attempt at 3e, and decide to finally play a druid, which I've been really wanting to play for 2 years. I found out, after 9 sessions, the DM hated druids, and made an example out of me. High points:
- Crit Hitting a gargoyle and being told nothing happened... because druids suck.
- Having my druid levels being replaced as a cleric who couldn't turn and use any new weapons or armor.... by Loki.
- Going invisible and being told by one of the other players the backstory... which no one knew about. It's fun to be yelled at by a player who's using metagame knowledge and having him backed up by the DM.
So to say the least, it wasn't fun.
Two years ago I created a cleric of Olidimarra, we’ll call him “Actonus”, and the rest of the party pretty much played supporting cast. While this was our DM’s first attempt at DMing and he had little knowledge of the mechanics of the game, and even less perception of relative power, he was one of the best off-the-cuffs DM I’d ever seen wing adventures.
We ended up at shrine in a port town for some reason that evades me at the moment, but gave generously at the offering plate at the entrance. When we were spurned by clerics who turned out to be evil (I think Nerull), I took back my offering and made some pointed comments.
That sent our DM off, and I knew that the way the clerics “sold out” to kill us that I wasn’t scamming my way out of this one. I tried to cover our escape with Obscuring Mist (Actonus wasn’t going to just stand there and die), but was hit successively by two flame-strikes. Now I realize they have a 10’ radius, but they were precisely place (both of them) to catch myself and another party member. Although I mentioned that I should have total concealment, I didn’t pursue the issue. The kicker is that one of the flame-strikes dealt more dice-damage than the spell is capable of doing; while it could have empowered, I doubt that it was. It was probably an oversight of an angry DM. I died right there.
Friend was still alive; we wanted to run down the stairs. DM notes that the stairs are 5 feet high each and 5 feet apart. We didn’t notice this on the way up? We would have had to make climb checks to get in the front doors? So my friend has to jump….to his death.
The campaign ended on a sour note, and we never heard or saw from our nomadic DM again after an arguing match ensued. Too bad too, because outside of this instance, he was pretty good and definitely has potential.
An another note, I have been a DM of many game systems and genres for almost 20 years (man that’s scary). I will also admit that I have made many a mistake that would earn mention on this thread, and have lost some good players because of it. I would hope that I can say that I have learned from my mistakes and that I run a fair, and more importantly, fun game.
when I was in Korea, our chaplin was the DM, But later on this guy steve said that he was a DM as well, Opting for some darker adventuring, we created characters Steve said he didnt care about alignments,or role-playing stuff, so we created hack and slash characters, every thing seemed fine until we encountered 4 vampires in the middle of the day out in the middle of a forrest, followed by a white dragon that night, the next morning with some orcs, that afternoon with a troop of Drow still outside this went on for about another hour befor we just asked steve what we were doing. he said he was rolling random encounters for us until we got to the villiage that was supposed to be about a month travel and that was only two days... I dont mind playing from the hip but damn,
steve even had certain critters he liked and so naturally they were unbeatable... even with high level characters...
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One of my friends who plays in my current D&D game is a great off-the-cuff DM--he can make any NPC come to life, describe any town as if he had just been there yesterday and has wonderfully detailed cultures.
The only problem is that in 1st edition/2nd edition, he rarely bothered to consult the rules. He loved the cliffhanger ending to each game so much, he always forced the players into it.
His bad guy NPC's were unbeatable and always escaped, always. Every battle was a battle to the death and just when the last PC was about to drop dead--some bad-ass powerful patron NPC (he even had the "Q" from Star Trek in his campaign) woudl show up to make it all better.
We eventually figured out he had nothing prepared--he was just running the whole game off the top ofhis head and that we could "guilt" him into letting us eventually have our way. We knew that we just had to push "his" buttons and not his world's and if we whined enough, he'd ease up on us.
He also had the stupidest magic items in his game--most of them sexually oriented in some way. He gave my wife's character a "device" one time that was cursed...it would provide "entertainment" against her will if she failed her saving throw. My wife said "no it doesn't." He couldn't believe it. "I'm not going to play in this stupid game with some stupid magic dildo chasing me around the dungeon."
It pretty much ended right there for us. Several of us got together and gave him a long lecture about his DMing style and he was quite hurt by the whole ordeal, as he figured he was a great DM and had been at it since the mid 70's.
He's working up a 3rd edition campaign right now and says he's really paying attention to CR's and recommended wealth guidelines and such in order to keep his next campaign balanced. We're willing to give him another shot, because he does have a lot of redeeming qualities as a DM.
A long time ago in college I was asked by a new friend to join a 2E game. Since, I had not played any DND for 10+ months I jumped at the chance. I was stoked and went home and pulled out my books, dice, and various other paraphernalia, happy at the opportunity to join a new adventuring party and meet new people.
The DMG II is worse - then your players start critiquing your rule calls based one the tips in that book. Players certianly should not be allowed to read it - its evil.
I've got a few of these, and could write a book... unfortunitly, time is of the essence at the moment, so just some fun little summaries...
First year university. I join my friends in there first attempt at 3e, and decide to finally play a druid, which I've been really wanting to play for 2 years. I found out, after 9 sessions, the DM hated druids, and made an example out of me. High points:
- Crit Hitting a gargoyle and being told nothing happened... because druids suck.
- Having my druid levels being replaced as a cleric who couldn't turn and use any new weapons or armor.... by Loki.
- Going invisible and being told by one of the other players the backstory... which no one knew about. It's fun to be yelled at by a player who's using metagame knowledge and having him backed up by the DM.
So to say the least, it wasn't fun.
I hate druids too...these are some good ideas.
Brutal; funny, but brutal!
O! The stories I could tell - about me! Lol. Seeing as I started DMing at 11 for my little brother (10), I have to admit I had some bad moments. Luckily my mom was always there to set me straight (usually by grounding).
You may think I'm kidding, but it's true. Anyway, as weird (and sometimes unfair) as it was, I have learned many lessons about DMing and have been at it ever since (17 years later).
I think there is nothing wrong with players reading the DM guide. For me, it helps to play with educated players, but I do let any new players know that I do not tolerate rules lawyers.
My brother is a rules lawyer and I have recently started playing in his campaign world. All of the other players except one are new to DnD and playing with him is like going through DnD boot camp! I feel so sorry for them. Besides being a freak about the rules he is a good DM, so I don't mind really.
Any way, I am enjoying reading the DM horror stories.
I joined a group through a game store posting a few years back. The DM appeared to have done waaay too many drugs in the 60's. Nice guy but always kind of dazed and didn't really understand balancing encounters. I think before 4th level we had somehow survived encounters with a mob of ghouls and ghasts, a rhakshasa (we all died but it was just a dream/illusion?), and a deck of many things which required a quick trip to the Hells to free a companions soul( at 3rd level?, where do you go from there? oh yeah, he wanted us to take on an adult red dragon next). After we were all killed again by a cloud kill spell from half-fiend wizard (ooops. save vs. TPK) we got someone else to DM. I think we were really adventuring through his acid trip...
I've definitely had some bad experiences, but fortunately, I cannot remember enough detail to post them. I have ran across the absolute worse experience that I have ever heard about. And I figured that everyone else would enjoy it. You can check it out here:
http://thingsihate.org/article/123/the_worst_dungeon_master_ever_part_one
I've definitely had some bad experiences, but fortunately, I cannot remember enough detail to post them. I have ran across the absolute worse experience that I have ever heard about. And I figured that everyone else would enjoy it. You can check it out here:
http://thingsihate.org/article/123/the_worst_dungeon_master_ever_part_one
Ledax, I've got to say that the article is extremely well written (almost as if the event happened yesterday) and it is extremely funny. I highly recommend checking it out.
I've definitely had some bad experiences, but fortunately, I cannot remember enough detail to post them. I have ran across the absolute worse experience that I have ever heard about. And I figured that everyone else would enjoy it. You can check it out here:
http://thingsihate.org/article/123/the_worst_dungeon_master_ever_part_one
GREAT article...it's like a Campaign Workbook article in reverse.
The DMG II is worse - then your players start critiquing your rule calls based one the tips in that book. Players certianly should not be allowed to read it - its evil.
Luckily, my players skipped over that part when I got the book. Most of them just look for new PrCs and magic items and then lose interest in the book, whether they find something good or not. I haven't ever heard anything directly, or asked them about it, but I seem to get the feeling that they think guides for how to run a better game by focusing on player wants is some type of Oprah-esque mumbo-jumbo. I personally I've tried to take said advice and incorporate it into my games, and I think it makes it much better for all.
Now, for a horror story... a story of my own inexperience as a DM. When I started playing D&D, I went straight for DMing. I had no experience as a player, other than in games like Baldur's Gate and NWN, which hardly count since they are so different (and inferior, I must say) to pen and paper.
So, I was making sure I followed CR and treasure guidelines, running as balanced a campaign as I could. But the party kept breezing through encounters that should have been very challenging. I now realize that it was due to poor monster tactics and overly-short adventures on my part. At the time, however, it just seemed like the party was over powered, so I lost sight of truly balancing things.
I started to throw big mobs of monsters at them, each on with a CR equal to the party level. I started throwing monsters at them 4 CRs higher than the party. Despite all this, they were still doing well, and liking the actual challenge. I was running what was, more or less, a one-shot adventure focused on clearing out a large cavern complex of undead. The party started at 5th level, and made it to 6th by the end.
They handled the hordes of humanoids in the upper levels with ease, as I planned. They waded through the waves of shadows and wights without much problem by resting after every fight. They shouldn't have been able to, but again, this is a story of an inexperienced DM.
Then they came to the final room, and the s*** hit the fan. I had decided that, since they could wade through all these other things so well, they could handle something REALLY tough. Something like 5 shadows. And 5 mummies. And 5 wights. Simultaneously.
Oh, and a 10th level vampire sorcerer.
That's a CR 12 creature, amongst a mob of 15 lesser undead from CR 3 to 5. The party was level 6. They were screwed. The vampire made himself invisible and flew, casting defensive spells. The mage in the party used Spellcraft checks to realize their unknown foe was casting some pretty big spells relative to their level, also considering the other undead. The sweat formed on their brows, but they still trusted me. Stupid them.
The shadows nearly dropped two of the four PCs with their strength drain, the mummies got two paralyzed, but the wights went down like cannon fodder in the end. The shadows and mummies were ALMOST cleared out, when the vampire got done preparing himself with spells. Then fire rained from the sky.
The first fireball roasted the last mummy or so, in addition to hurting the party bad. They realized their foe was beyond them, and I saw them try to retreat for the first time ever. Then came the sorcerer's Wall of Stone. Now the cave is closed off. Don't worry, there's a small pool in the corner with a current. They can escape there.
So, the party heads to for the water. Wall of Stone. Now there's a Climb DC separating them from potential freedom, and none of them have the skill, and the melee combatants are drained from the shadows. Hmm. In a really stupid move on my part, I tried to ad-lib a solution, by saying there was a hole in the cave cieling they could get out from.
One player pointed out to me that 1) That still required climb, and actually an even bigger challenge considering the domed cieling and distance, and 2) Why would there be a hole in the cieling of a vampire's cave?
Then I realized I had rolled 5d6 for the fireballs instead of 10d6. They had been hit by two such fireballs at this time, so I had to retroactively roll another 10d6 for the two combined spells. The monk looks at me and says, "I'm ash," when I got done with the first 3d6. The adventure stopped when the dice damage was all totalled.
We still joke about that vampire in the group, and remember it as a testament to DM fallability... or at least mine. I have to say, that I've never done anything that stupid since, and I feel that I run pretty good, balanced, considerate adventures that my players really enjoy now.
My sister was running a game into Ravensloft in which she had this new villain that she was wanting to unveil. Some half demon goddess thing. The villain attacked several of our characters homes, and families (A great way to make friends and influence people.) and basically riled up the PCs to come and kill her. After running a gauntlet of one over powered demon hoard after another, we made our way to the villain’s castle only to find that it is encased in some kind of a force field. One hour later we had hit this force field with everything under the sun to no effect. (Many of the things we did should have blasted through the shield like tin foil.) Finally I was about at the end of my rope. I drew an artifact staff that my character had been caring around for a while, set it up against the barrier and preceded to attempt to break it. Three deities showed up to stop me! Three! Hell, one should have been more than enough! The three deities begin to tell us this so sad tail of this demon chick, and how she is just misunderstood and how we should help her redeem herself. My sister looked around the table at a bunch of cold angry stares. We told her that after attacking our families all hope of our characters showing any kind of compassion that didn’t involve putting a sword through this chick wasn’t likely going to happen. At which point she threw a tantrum (My sister was 32 at the time!) the force field cam down, the villain cam out of her castle lowered her weapons and was cut down by the group with out even trying to defend herself! Needless to say there were some heated words after the game. It seems my sister had gotten so attached to the villain that she had decided that she didn’t want us to kill her. That incident was over two years ago, and most of our players won’t go on a game she DMs. Even I am leery. It probably would have been different if this had been the first time something like this had happened, but it was a pretty common occurrence when she was running a game. And it wasn’t like she was a new Dm. She had been Dming for ten years at that point.
I have played with a DM railroader. He seems to think he is directing some great story. The problem is that he will do anything to have us follow his story. No matter what we do he only gives us as much information as he wishes. None of the players are happy with this heavy handed style. He continues to support his belief in this, claiming story style DMing is desirable and in many books. I think he should read rule zero, if your players are not going to enjoy it don't do it.
If he tries to bring machine guns into DnD one more time. Arrg!
...It seems my sister had gotten so attached to the villain that she had decided that she didn’t want us to kill her...
Possibly the worst thing a DM can do. I've been there myself, but my cardinal rule as DM now is: the bad guys are there for the PCs to kill -- period.
Later :)
Jack
THIS is corny.
In one of my first games I DMed (I was about 8 or 9), my group actually encountered the little Dungeon Master from the Dungeons & Dragons animated series.
(sigh!)
Ultradan
THIS is corny.
In one of my first games I DMed (I was about 8 or 9), my group actually encountered the little Dungeon Master from the Dungeons & Dragons animated series.
(sigh!)
Ultradan
"Caution Cavalier, I am the real Dungeon Master." I assumed you talked in backwards Yoda-like riddles too? :)
One of my DMs was VERY special. First, when we where on a ship, we discovered it was cursed. It would continue moving in circles and the enemies on it kept resurrecting each day. The only way to vanquish the curse was to throw ALL our equipment and posessions to the sea!! Then we faced some strange aberration monsters (invented by him) that drained us two levels with each touch (no save); actual levels, not gained 2 negative levels. Of course, we didn't stand 5 rounds. WHAT WAS HIS PROBLEM, ALL WE WANTED TO DO WAS HAVE FUN!! Sorry, I had to release it.
¡¡Viva México!!
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I remember my PC who went all the way through "temple of the elemental evil",an elf thief 5 / wizard 10 (2nd edition).
I was playing with a new DM who liked "unfair fights" and "scaringly big monsters" (equivalent of encounters CR 15-16 for players level 10-12).
On our way across a mountain, an old big white dragon lands a few yards from us and says : "you're on my land ! Gimme each two nice and valuable magic items !"
Everybody was intending to do as he wanted.
Roleplaying my PC, I reply that I prefer go around his land, that I've no intention to give any magic item.
The DM wants to impress us all, the dragon bites me : "20" and a critical roll !!
The DM says : "The dragon bites you, swallow you up, and 1 round later, spits what's left of you !"
I really found that it was no fun at all, since I was trying to roleplay and interact. No negociation, no "second chance, I'm not kidding !", nothing. I had not played that bad, and I'm still very frustrated after that PC's death.
The worse was to come (no complain to the DM that time, though), when my "fellow" PCs looted what was left of my body, without trying to raise me !
And when they reached the white dragon's lair, half-frozen, they were outrun by a bunch of winter wolves (I think more than 10), 3 or 4 cold giants and the white dragon and his mate and one or two kiddies (I may forget some monsters) : they were level 10 or 11, and they met all those creatures together (or almost). Fortunately, I didn't play that session (I was dead).
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
However, I've seen although "players' horrors", but that is another story ....
My horror story involves a brief gaming session while I was in the Army. I grew up playing with a group of friends that I game with now that Im out, but I was looking to game while I was in. I met up with this guy who wanted to run a 2nd edition game. I decided to create a human fighter. My strengh was pretty good at 17.
Anyway, in the first gaming session we came to this dwarven mining town. For some reason that now escapes me I got in to a brawl with a dwarf, both of us were unarmed. I managed to roll a natural 20 on my attempt to wrestle him down, followed by, I swear this is true, a few 18s and 19s for my rolls. NOTHING I did worked. He said, after the dwarf put my face in the mud, and embarrased my character, that he feels dwarfs are just stronger than humans, no matter what.
Whatever, I kept playing for awhile because his wife made great cookies every gaming session.
When i first started palying I decided to write an adventure. At the time I think I only had a DMG. I did not even think to look at the CR's for monsters so the first adventure had 1st level PC's going up against a Balor. bwa hahaha. I am the Evil DM! Fear my wrath!
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This is another case of being new to town and having no better options for a game to play in. I replied to an add for players at a local game shop. I met the guy who was to be DM and he seemed to know his stuff. When we created 8th level characters and could pick pretty much any magic items we wanted I was a little suspicious, but had to give the game a chance. This was my first opportunity to play in years. When started to play, there were a couple beers present, but that was not necessarily a bad thing. As the game went along things got crazier and crazier. First the guys that I was playing with started smoking pot. Then the DM would completely dictate the outcome of actions. If we had been playing a freeform game where that kind of action resolution was called for it would have been fine. But instead out of the blue I would roll and he would decide that the action had failed no matter what the die result. I was and eighth level character, and I could not kill an imp. Not an advanced imp, or any other exception, but a plain imp. He didn't say "the imp gets away" Which I could have handled, instead he allowed me to spend round after round attacking and failing at his whim. Then it got even weirder as the DM started to chew on a plastic sword he was using as a prop and spitting little pieces of plastic at all the players. This guy deffinately had issues. I had to completely cut off our fiendship because he was crazy and obsessive. The world is full of psychos.
Tam
THIS is corny.
In one of my first games I DMed (I was about 8 or 9), my group actually encountered the little Dungeon Master from the Dungeons & Dragons animated series.
(sigh!)
Ultradan
In my first game, I did exactly the same thing. creepy eh?
Brutal; funny, but brutal!
Why do so many DMs hate druids?...They suck; mediocre healers, can spontaneously summon pathetic pets that suck more than their animal companions do and can transform into animal forms that are always weaker than even their own human form. I love when my players play druids. What's the deal?
Brutal; funny, but brutal!Why do so many DMs hate druids?...They suck; mediocre healers, can spontaneously summon pathetic pets that suck more than their animal companions do and can transform into animal forms that are always weaker than even their own human form. I love when my players play druids. What's the deal?
Oh, my, my, my... You've played with the wrong druids, friend. A couple of feats like Augment Summoning and Fast Wildshape can make for a brutally efficient druid killing machine. I know. I have one in my group and I have a reputation as a cold-blooded brutal DM. No, seriously.
The last combat this BA nature boy was in, he summoned a bear, a tiger, and wildshaped himself into a bear as well and proceded to grapple the living crap out of a succubus, Damage Reduction and all. Just one example of how vicious a druid can be.
Brutal; funny, but brutal!Why do so many DMs hate druids?...They suck; mediocre healers, can spontaneously summon pathetic pets that suck more than their animal companions do and can transform into animal forms that are always weaker than even their own human form. I love when my players play druids. What's the deal?Oh, my, my, my... You've played with the wrong druids, friend. A couple of feats like Augment Summoning and Fast Wildshape can make for a brutally efficient druid killing machine. I know. I have one in my group and I have a reputation as a cold-blooded brutal DM. No, seriously.
The last combat this BA nature boy was in, he summoned a bear, a tiger, and wildshaped himself into a bear as well and proceded to grapple the living crap out of a succubus, Damage Reduction and all. Just one example of how vicious a druid can be.
I must say this. Impressive.
...how vicious a druid can be...
Add a lycanthrope to the top of it (as my player's druid is) and it gets mean.
THIS is corny.
In one of my first games I DMed (I was about 8 or 9), my group actually encountered the little Dungeon Master from the Dungeons & Dragons animated series.
(sigh!)
Ultradan
I've used Venger as a repedative bad guy for fifteen years. so far after playing with over two dozen people, olny one recognized him from the cartoon, and that was my wife! Needless to say I've beefed him up over the years (And when he finds a magical item he actually puts them on and uses them as opposed to attacking with a pile of laundry). Try using him as a Patriarch vampire half fiend archmage. Anyone who recognises him will only laugh for a second.
I've played a DM for years, and although I consider myself to be harsh, I still do everything I can to keep my players alive, and I would never just target one player over another. I learned this lesson as a player whose DM favored one of the other players -his girlfriend. If I managed to get myself a better weapon, a nice treasure item or some advantage, she (the girlfriend's character) immediately had to have it. One session she and half the party, while riding on a Rok, snuck up on me, while I was in a forest (I was an elven ranger) and I had my raven companion in the air looking for just such a thing! No saddle (she was a halfling), no airborne riding proficiency (not even a land-based riding proficiency) or bow weapon proficiency, but she shot my raven while both were in flight. I think I killed her halfling thief a half dozen times before I finally just quit the game.
It wasn't a DM, per se, because it was a different RPG, but I once played with a "storyteller" who disliked one of the characters in the group. All enemies would target this guy and when my character was killed, he had someone step in and bring her back on the condition that she assassinate his character.
In a more D&D spirt, a group of us decided out of the blue to play one night. We hadn't played with the guy who DM'ed, but he said he played alot. We had to track down an uber-powerful NPC (of course, it was his character). This character's name was "Pain" (no, really). Anytime we asked a villager, farmer, town guard or anybody where we might find him (yes, we had to say that we were looking for Pain) he would roleplay their shocked and frightened reaction ("PAAAAIIIINN!!?). Needless to say, this got annoying fast. We finally found him only to discover that he had some powerful immunities...most notably "damage". We gave up when the characters were awarded with a weird tattoo that allowed the character to do kung-fu and a powerful magic item called "the shorts of Smurf" - it made anything you said immediately come true. At this point, the owner referred to someone as "(insert expletive) for brains" and the victim started talked slowly and with a limited vocabulary. On one hand, I suppose he was a great DM because the rest of us who were there still talk about that session and it's been something like 20 years.
...only to discover that he had some powerful immunities...most notably "damage"...
Any damage?!? Please tell me no.
That would probably be the dumbest character I've ever heard of, and I've seen some doozies (including a few embarrassing creations of my own).
Jack
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One of my high school friend s tended to overdo it on the traps in his dungeons. Best example was a dungeon where our party went down the 30 foot stairs to the entry door. The lead character opened the door...
...and the bottom half of the stairs fliped over on a hinge at the base and instantly crushed half the party to death.
Once we realized he was serious, we looked at each other, looked back at him, and told him we were leaving the dungeon immediately. He tried to talk us back in, but we weren't having any. It was obvious to us that this dungeon was much too dangerous for 10th- to 15th-level characters to try and we'd go look for something safer. Maybe something with a dragon in it.
My first DM, the guy who both taught me how to play and convinced me to play only about six times in the past 25 years, was the worst.
All characters were pregenerated by him using the 3d6 method so the character sheets were basically collections of 9s, 102, 11s and 12s. His essential philosophy was that everyone was average so there should be no high ability scores or bonuses from same. Sadly, this is also his philosophy in real life.
Weapons were also randomly determined... as were spells, even for clerics!
Adventures consisted of getting to a dungeon and then exploring it until you died. And this is where some more "interesting" rules came into effect. You see, his view was that because a dungeon was such a dangerous environment you could not rest there so there was no recovery of spells or overnight healing. Oh, and you weren't allowed to exit the dungeon to find a safe place to rest. If you tried that, the inhabitants would attack.
Anyway, I'll stop there. Suffice to say I learnt the basic rules from his and DMed thereafter.
...only to discover that he had some powerful immunities...most notably "damage"...Any damage?!? Please tell me no.
That would probably be the dumbest character I've ever heard of, and I've seen some doozies (including a few embarrassing creations of my own).
Jack
No...really...he was immune to damage. We eventually got creative and buried him under an avalanche or with some stone to mud speels or something and got out of there. At this point we were still under the mistaken assumption that there might be something salvageable - like we needed some special weapons or something. Sadly, that was not to be :(
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I have been playing D&D in its various incarnations for over 25 years. Most of the time I have been a DM, and I know I made many of the mistakes young DM’s make. I have also seen many mistakes made. While I sympathize and fully agree with the posts here about “killer DM’s”, the worst DM’s I have ever run into are the ones that are subtly bad, that bend and break the rules repeatedly to set the characters up for failure. Not glorious, spectacular failure, but prolonged, agonizingly slow failure. Here is an example of what I mean:
Our party dared to venture out of the safe walls of our city in an effort to reach a set of ruins we had heard about. The plains outside the city were known to be the roaming grounds of bands of orcs, so we went carefully. Time and again, we were surprised by these orc bands, seemingly able to materialize out of the plains in full daylight to toss javelins into our midst with deadly precision. They tried to rush off with any party members that had the misfortune to fall, leaving their fellows behind to deal with the survivors. All of this is fair enough, if not brutal, until we tried to counter this behavior. Chasing after the orcs carrying off our unconscious members on this grassy plain led to encounters with more hidden orc bands, as if they had nothing better to do than squat in the grass and wait for us to come by. We told ourselves we had bad luck with a random encounter and tried something else. Placing a scout out front to search for ambushes led to the scout being slain, his skills apparently useless to detect 10 orcs and an ogre 30 feet in front of us, while they had no problem detecting him. We decided we needed to learn more about these stealthy orcs and resolved to capture one for interrogation. Our next ambush resulted in a 100% kill rate on the orcs, apparently all of them dropping to –10 HP before a single one could be cured back from unconsciousness. Another ambush resulted in all but two of the orcs being killed outright again, the two escaping with another unconscious PC between them. They managed to outrun our group despite this burden and somehow failed to die when we our mage landed multiple magic missiles on them, doing enough damage to destroy their fellows but somehow not phasing the pair as they made off with our friend and a good chunk of our supplies (when we asked the DM why the orcs we dropped all perished with the lightest blow and yet these two took multiple hits, the DM said that the two fleeing with our friend had ‘a lot more HPs’ than the other orcs in that particular band). We called ourselves unlucky and tried again, this time our strongest fighter grappled the last remaining orc rather than risk killing him. The grapple worked, but the next round, the orc struggled to draw a light weapon, did so and then killed himself in a coup de grace fashion while the stunned party looked on with no opportunity to intervene. We finally crossed the plains and made it to a forest where some fairly decent hobgoblins were known to lair. We came upon the orcs and a couple of ogres attacking the hobgoblins and decided to help the hobgoblins out as they were getting pummeled by the orcs (I guess they were learning their lesson as well about these crafty orcs). We fought hard and won, saving a few hobgoblins that managed to go unconscious but not die. We also rescued a single orc (out of the 20 or so we slew) that had not died on the field of battle. He was healed so he could walk and marched into the hobgoblin lair. At last, we were going to learn about these orcs and how to encounter them. That night, a feast was held in our honor. After the meal, the chief hobgoblin expressed his gratitude for saving his son (one of the three we managed to save) and was happy enough to reward us with no small amount of treasure. We called for our prisoner to be brought forth so the hobgoblins and we could learn more of our mutual threat. Yeah, you guessed it – we ate him for dinner. Nineteen weekly games sessions and our group of 5 4th level PC’s has yet to capture an orc. We are still getting ambushed when we cross the plains.
I've played DnD for about five years, my first exposure to the game being our Principal DMing a game using 1.0 rules on a Year 6 school camp. Basically our home town was being attacked by "strange monsters" (they turned out to be goblins), and we, as the heroic young virile people of the town, had to hunt them down. Well, long story short, we tracked them to their cave lair (the party's paladin using Detect Evil every other round) and entered. As the party's Dwarven Fighter it was my job to break open doors and rush inside whenever our lazy theif couldn't be bothered picking the lock. Here's what happened the first time:
"Tim (DM and Principal): Okay Eric (Me, the Dwarf fighter, you break open the door and rush inside, your waraxe and shield at the ready. You find yourself in a room that looks to be the goblins' kitchen, with stew bubbling away and a pig turning over a spit. The occupants of the room are three goblin women. They scream when they see you, pick up carving knives, and hurl them at you, each one piercing your splint mail and dealing 16 points of damage in all (this is a level ONE fighter). You fall unconcsious (sp?) to the ground."
I had to be dragged outside and healed back to one health by the party cleric while the others rushed inside and dispatched the goblins. While I was waiting outside, however, a slot in the wall opened up and the face of the chief goblin looked out (We had encountered him before, so we knew who he was). Thinking quickly, I lit a flask of oil and threw it at his face. I heard a scream and the slot shut.
We had explored the goblin complex and had come to the final door, knowing that the leader of the goblins waited behind. The door was locked from the inside though, and reinforced with metal, and it was beyond my (or anyone else's) ability to break it down. The party assassin (this was back when assassins were a main class) suddenly remembered we had passed a room filled with barrels of oil and voided the thought that we could blast the door open. We all happily agreed with this
(The first rule of adventuring is: "if in doubt, set it on fire"- Order of the Stick).
The paladin, ranger and I took three barrels and placed them against the door. We lit them from far off (I can't remember how- could have been a wick, or a spell), and a loud explosion and a lot of smoke ensued. The DM said we would suffocate from the smoke if we stayed, so we retreated to another room to wait for the smoke to clear.
Three hours later (Game time), the smoke still hasn't cleared and we have to wait another hour. THE DOOR'S STILL THERE! No different from when we exploded THREE BARRELS OF OIL RIGHT NEXT TO IT!!! The quick-thinking assassin said: "I say we throw the dwarf into the door to try and break it open." Everyone (except me) agreed. I was thrown into the door. Imagine my surprise when I passed through the door (it turned out that we HAD destroyed the door, and the one I was thrown through was an illusion), landed on the floor in a room full of enemies, was shot at three times by goblins with short bows (these all missed), had a throwing axe thrown at me by a hulking brute of an orc (this missed), was Magic Missiled by the goblin illusionist (this hit, but for only 2 damage, leaving me with four hp), before being dispatched by an angry goblin chief whose face looked to have been burnt off (he threw a +1 dagger at me). I fell to the ground unconscious (again- realizing that I hadn't had one round of melee combat in the whole adventure), and everyone rushed in to be slaughtered by the goblins and orc (only I, the cleric who healed me, the Wizard who cast Color Spray eventually, allowing the thief to sneak attack everyone, and the assassin survived. Out of a party of ten).
It was my first semester of college and I had found a group that played in the student union at my college. We spent the first hour making my character and (for most of the time) buying equipment. I apologized to everyone for holding up the game, but they were happy to have a new player. They had played once prior to me joining and it had been a rough session. Things could only get better, right?
We get to our first encounter, a rope bridge across a swiftly-flowing river. Now, we all knew there had to be an ambush here somewhere. We approached cautiously, weapons drawn. Once we were all on the bridge, the goblins moved in on us. The two bushes on either end of the bridge were apparently extra-dimensional gates, because about ten goblins rushed out of each of them. Twenty goblins were more than a match for a party of 1st-2nd level PCs. Instead of robbing us (which would be the only reason that I could see justifying the cost of the portal gates that they must have installed in the shrubbery), they pushed us off the bridge.
The DM told us that we were forced to take off our armor and drop all of our equipment, or we would drown. I’m glad I spent all that time buying that stuff. So, we washed up in this town where we wandered around for a bit and my thief stole a steak knife from a cart in the market (thus becoming the only party member with a weapon). The town seemed pleasant enough until the marauding dark army came riding in, killing everyone in sight. We bravely…ran away, much to the DM’s confusion. He asked us why we weren’t defending the town. That was the last time that I played in his game.
I usually (99.99% of my time) am a DM. I played a couple of times as a pc and one of thoses was something to remember.
I started as a first level fighter on a home made campaign with some home-rules, we were the last survivors of a circus and so we choose some abilities and overall we started with an ECL of 2.
We started moving along some forest and all the way we were having hordes of birds! atacking us, later some orcs and orcs and orcs... then we went into this looooongggg tunnel where we spent 3 days just walking and making a LOT of fort saves...
Of course as soon as one of us just colapse the saves weren´t need it anymore.So we arrived at some city and we were equiped really well! They gave us full plate armor, MW swords, bows and so on... Really nice for a 2nd level party...
In the way we were ambushed by orcs, around 7/8, the wizard cast sleep and the leader went down, i made a 5 feet step and coup de grace... and all hell went loose... he said a coup de grace finished in the beggining of my next round..
i asked about it being his house rules, said no, it was according to the rules, and... as others players were also saying "the rules saying other thing..." he went along and i coup de grace the orc leader. The all band died in acouple of rounds.
Later that night....
I was the one that offered to be in guard duty, the wizard said his familiar could be with me with an order to alarm everyone if he saw something, the DM said no... no reason why..
So here i was alone on guard duty. Then a orc appears, i didn´t not see him coming altought he asked for two rolls of mine (spot ? listen? ) and i roll a 19 and a 18!
Then that orc goes to a sleeping pc and coup de grace him...
Yap, that´s right, not atacking the one on watch but going to coup de grace a sleeping one...
I couldný even scream a warning (free action) because the DM said so...
Discussion issued... my first and last session on that campaign
Oh, i started with a ring of protection +3 as a result of a inheritance table...
Had just decided to get back into D&D after many years off. Created a 1st lvl cleric and got into the first dungeon with my new party.
DM: You see something on the far wall behind some crates.
Yours truly: I move across the room to investigate.
DM: The room is cold.
Yours Truly: Uh ok, when I get behind the crates, what do I see?
DM: It's really cold over here. Take 36 points of cold damage.
Yours Truly: What!!
Yeah, Brown Mold encounter at 1st level. Thanks Eric, where ever you are...
This isn't actually a horror story, just a bit of a strange game story. I once played in this 2ed game that was a bit of a strange duck. It started off fine, with a party of about 5-6 PCs. But with each game, some could make it, some couldn't and someone new would usually show up. So to balance this out, the people who weren't there had thier characters go into "sleep-mode" and just sort of followed the party zombie-like. And, since this was a Loooooong campaign over dozens of sessions over a few years, this horde of followers just kept growing. It got to be a standing joke that we had our own zombie-horde!
Anyways, we went into this one cavern complex hunting a Lich. Now, I was playing a half-ogre fighter/cleric named Smash. Lovely fellow. Liked his whip. Anyways, I couldn't find his sheet one game, but I had another half-ogre fighter/cleric (Iwas partial to them at the time) made up for a different game, so with a few tweaks, Smash became Amos Dreadnaught. Amos was NOT a nice guy. Played with the corpses after each battle, got him into trouble more then once. He ended up being the pivot point a party split that had an assasin, a rogue and myself leave the party, yet stay in the dungeon. Our motive? We really wanted to kill another player's Paladin. (He was just too goody two-shoes...) So, after some sneaky planning and a bit of double-cross, it got set up that I was to offer him a Bless spell just before a major battle. Of course, this meant that he had to put down his Holy Avenger (so MR wouldn't screw up the spell) and hold still (forgoing his saving throw.) I instead cast Hold Person and proceeded to slit his throat with my dagger. Or, at least that was the plan. At the last second, I changed my mind and thought he would be useful in the upcoming battle, after which I could set up the same scenario with a Cure spell, right? Of course, if you DM has the ENTIRE party die in a massive Tidal Wave of undead... (No exageration. Literally.)
But never fear! We had placed a magic spike into the ground before entering the caverns, which we had NO idea what it did. Turns out it anchored us in time, so when we all died, it would bring us back to this point. Of course, we had no memory of the caverns, no memory of the party drift and split and no memory of my oh-so-lovely betrayal! Not to mention the +7 Bastard Swords and +5 Spell Returning Full Plate armor that we had collected from every other monster in the caverns! (We wondered why he wasn't worried about us becoming Uber-Characters...) But other then this one Monty-Haul session of the campaign, it was a good Game with a Good DM. We still talk about this game years later.
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Alright, here is one on the lack of control. There was a group 5 or 6 of us playing. As freshmen in High School we were quite honored that an upper classman (a Junior, I believe) wanted to join our game. After several hours of playing, the new guy killed us all! It turned out that he was an assassin and took delight in killing PCs. We even had to hand over our character sheets as trophies. Our poor DM was dumbfounded...
In my first game, I did exactly the same thing. creepy eh?THIS is corny.
In one of my first games I DMed (I was about 8 or 9), my group actually encountered the little Dungeon Master from the Dungeons & Dragons animated series.
(sigh!)
Ultradan
Er... that's so weird.
In my first campaign (although one could hardly call it that... it involved one guy running around. At the time I thought "level" was what level you where... hey it was second edition! Sue me!)So at the end of one of the dungeons their was this dungeon master. And he could control everything within the dungeon. And the druid had to fight him.
The weird thing was... I had at that point never seen the D&D TV show.
I met some guy through a posting on a bullitin board in a local game shop.
As a DM this player stomped out of a game because his PC failed an opposed strength check at a door with a hobgoblin and was unable to throw the door into the hobgoblins face.
Then when we let him Dm the game he told me he was going to kill my character. In the first encounter my character was ambushed and died in an attack with no chance of escape or fighting back. then he told me that what I get for not letting hium have his way in the game I DMed.
I don't play with him anymore! And (yes I am going to rub it in) while I have a group of 8 players that I DM once a week with 3 other players waiting to join, no body I know wants to play with that kook.
I met some guy through a posting on a bullitin board in a local game shop...
Funny,
Isn't that how these horror stories ALWAYS start out?
Ultradan