** Worst GM **
My experiences as a player only a couple of months, but that was sufficient time to learn many lessons about how to run a campaign and do's and don'ts of GMing.
The original GM (call him Jon) committed about as many of the faux pas of GMing as are humanly possible. (By the by, he is still active in the gaming world; I just saw a press release indicating he took a technical editing job for one of the few remaining gaming firms.) There were three main players, myself, a long term friend of Jon's (call him Keith) and a mutual friend of shorter acquaintance (call him Dave). Keith's characters showed an extreme form of divine protection. While Dave and I spent nearly as much time rolling up new characters between sessions as actually playing, Keith's PCs were blessed with immunity to all manner of negative effects. He did occasionally roll up new characters, but only when malaise overtook him. (``Send the character away --- he no longer amuses me!'')
On one occasion Keith's character was holding a grenade which detonated. Dave's and my PCs were felled by the explosion while Keith's character was merely grazed. Keith blithely indicated his character was stripping his colleagues of any funds or usable equipment. When Jon indicated that Keith's character's ``friends'' were still breathing, Keith quickly scribbled a note to Jon. Jon indicated that, after Keith's PC was done, Dave's and my PCs were no longer stirring.
Although the most glaring and irksome, favoritism was not Jon's only talent. He was equally capable at being arbitrary and capricious. You never really had any idea of what was possible and what wasn't. During one session, it might be reasonable for your character to get up, walk over to the faucet and get a drink without much difficulty, and during the next session, you might have to roll on a drowning table!
Jon also did some of the worst NPC portrayals I have ever seen. To describe these characters as cardboard would be to do a disservice to paper products everywhere. If there were ever more than one NPC interacting with the party at a time, it was nearly impossible to tell with whom any particular party member was speaking. Jon usually reached his frustration point after a minute or two of character interaction and declared a general melee. (An interesting society to say the least! Imagine the following scene. You walk into a department store, and you ask a clerk where to find the toilet paper. You suddenly realize that you are talking to the manager, and the clerk was either an illusion or teleported away. The manager answers a different question entirely than you asked, but undaunted, you try to follow-up on his cryptic comments. Enraged, the manager, who has inexplicably transformed back into the clerk, pulls out a hitherto unseen great sword and begins hacking at you.)
One would associate some lack of care for the fate of the NPCs under such circumstances, but alas, nothing was further from the truth. Each of Jon's NPCs or monsters was sacred. Nothing enraged Jon more than harming one of his antagonistic NPCs. Frequently rolls would be visibly fudged. NPCs teleported around the encounter area seemingly at random. Weapons' effects changed without warning or cause, and the NPCs commonly evolved abilities as the melees turned against them. Imagine the following scene (these items did not all occur in the same session in this close of proximity, but all of them did occur at one time or another).
Jon: the Kobold blasts you with his staff of fireballs and flies away with his wings,
Rich: But Jon, you said he was badly wounded and that we already stripped him. When did he grow the wings? OK, I'll roll for my character to hit. Wow! A natural 20! Cool! What should I roll for damage?
Jon: None! He has a cube of force!
Dave: Jon, you said I was able to tie him up; plus, you said it was an earthworm!
Jon: The fireballs home in on your two characters. Luckily Keith's character does a triple backflip and avoids all damage.
Keith: Jon, while I'm flipping through the air, I take careful aim with my crossbow and shoot at the Kobold; you know just like I used to do back home.
Jon: [Rolls a one in front of the party, puts the DM screen in front of the dice and states] Nice job! You hit the Kobold through the neck *and* are able to catch the cube of force before hitting the ground.
Dave and Rich: How much damage did the fireball do?
Jon: It doesn't matter; you're characters are dead again.
Keith: Jon, I go over to the Kobold and cut off the wings. Can I graft them onto my own back and fly?
Jon: Great idea! Sure, now you have wings!
Needless to say, Dave and I quickly figured out another means of role-playing.
** Worst Player **
I've been blessed with only one truly antisocial player in all the years of GMing. We'll call him Michael. The gaming group has always done more than just role-playing. We have always stuck together and played other types of games, done trips, attended movies, etc. Michael's mother came up to me and asked if her son could join the gaming group. Two of the other players' mothers had told her about the group. In both cases, the players, call them Todd and Chuck, had had some minor scrapes with school officials and the law. After playing in the campaign for a bit Todd became an honor student, and Chuck was elected to the student body government. (Todd went on to study history in college, and Chuck became a police officer.) Michael's mother explained that Michael was a good boy, he just needed a positive peer group and some role models. (Yeah, right!) I didn't really have the option of turning her son down without good reason since I was running the group through the auspices of the community youth center. The horror, the horror.
Michael immediately turned the gaming group against him. He took utter glee in having his imaginary friend backstab (literally) the other characters. Michael continually made inappropriate and embittering comments to the other players. I took Michael aside on several occasions and explained ``things'' to him. I spoke with Michael's mother and told her that her son was just not appropriate to the group. Soon afterward the head of the community youth center told me I *had* to keep Michael as part of the group or else we gave up our meeting place. Eventually Michael came around somewhat at the gaming table. One day though Michael just stopped showing up. When I queried what had happened to him, I found out he had been taken into protective custody for assault with a deadly weapon.
** Second Place Worst Player **
There have been unpleasant situations where players have turned to the ``dark side.'' In the Palladium role-playing game (tm) there is a class known as Summoners (tm). The rulebook explains that most summoners eventually take on an evil disposition as time goes on. I stole the class for my own campaign, and I have had several Summoner PCs over the years. The most recent of these followed a classic example of corruption. Let us call the character Reamer. Reamer started off claiming to summon only faeries and other fey folk, but as time went on, Reamer began to dabble more and more with summoning dark forces. Slowly Reamer's motivations became less and less honorable. I knew that the PC had slipped irrevocably to evil when Reamer's controlling player told me that Reamer was going to summon the most powerful demon he could and the instructions would be to ravage the land! Shortly thereafter Reamer summoned an eldritch fiend he was unable to control and sold out the remainder of this party in exchange for seven years of power. Reamer *immediately* became an NPC.
** A Bronze Medal **
I had another player whose character became more and more involved with vile chaos magics. The trouble began when the party first found the dire manuscript. Almost to the last member, the party advocated burning the tome, but this character, call him Pee-Wee, said he would hang on to the dark book. Pee-Wee began reading the book, and it was only a matter of time before one of the spells in the book proved useful to the party. It was not long before Pee-Wee began casting truly horrific spells. (In one case, he inserted an undead cuttlefish into his own abdomen for an extended life span. Yuck!) The last the party saw of Pee-Wee was when the party was captured and Pee-Wee cast a blindness spell on the remainder of the party to improve his chances of escape. Pee-Wee too joined the ranks of NPCs.
In service,
Rich
The Original Dr. Games since 1993.
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