A dragon in someone's campaign, in magical full plate... again?
What blacksmith is making this stuff? A maneuverable plated suit the size of a house, complete with harness and made for a giant flying lizard. Fantasy sure gets weird doesn't it? Been hearing more about full plate dragons of late.
Dragon that learned Craft [armor] and decided to acquire a few fabricate scrolls.
Who helps the dragon put it on? How long does it take to put on a metal house?Unseen servant. What, you thought that dragons should waste their spells know for burning hands or fireballs while their natural attacks and breath weapon are more efficient? ;)
Ok, seriously. In settings with dragons having human-like personalities and intellects it's quite possible they decide to benefit from equipment and items when they can.
Personally, I am not a fan of humanizing dragons that is quite common this days, as it misses the theme of dragons being entities of primal, inhuman power.
Yep, the unseen servant doesn't have the strength to lift the giant pieces of gargantuan dragon plate into position. It might not even be able to lift and manipulate the leather and buckles (and certainly not the harness) for a house sized piece of armour.
If the dragon needs to use hirelings to help with the dragon plate, then they can be killed off/sniped. Leaving the dragon unable to get out of its armour, and unable to sleep. Or it can leave its hoard and go get help. :/
Just because stacking natural armour and magic full plate grants a higher ac, doesn't mean it is a good idea.
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I like to incorporate sexuality in my games, but when the time comes around to the actual event, it's "fade to black."And by "fade to black" you mean Umbral horse penis?
You mean Evard's black tentacles? That guy must have been weird.
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You mean Evard's black tentacles? That guy must have been weird.I like to incorporate sexuality in my games, but when the time comes around to the actual event, it's "fade to black."And by "fade to black" you mean Umbral horse penis?
Didnt Order of the Stick have a scene where the mage cast "Everards spiked tentacles of forced intrusion" on a chimera? I believe that was the scene where the other characters decided not to piss off the caster.
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For all you who have to endure these jerks just to play — I wish I could run a game for every one of you.
I'm not the world's greatest GM, but reading this thread sure makes me feel like it.
Should I tell the story of the time my character woke up with horse gentials because the GM thought it would impress me?
I fail to comprehend how that was supposed to impress you...
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For all you who have to endure these jerks just to play — I wish I could run a game for every one of you.
I'm not the world's greatest GM, but reading this thread sure makes me feel like it.
It's not about how good we are... It's about how others are worse... ;)
Should I tell the story of the time my character woke up with horse gentials because the GM thought it would impress me?I fail to comprehend how that was supposed to impress you...
I believe the point is that neither do they.
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First 4chan, now fatal, can't we just come together and roll for anal circumference?
I agree, and more than likely this will be covered in the upcoming 2nd quarter release: Ultimate Orifice.
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I'm hoping the material isn't just a rehash of the "Complete Orifice" book which came out in 2006.
I'm hoping the material isn't just a rehash of the "Complete Orifice" book which came out in 2006.
No worries. CO wasn't OGL in the first place... Which means they will need a band of socially awakward gamers to come with new unsavory and early teen-grade jokes.
I was later told he had a vast collection of bestiality porn.
So... yeah.
If you do include sex in games I prefer the "fade to black" method instead of the "roll acrobatics."
A most reasonable approach indeed.
Other awful dm stories.
DM ran a largish game of runelords. Killed players over and over, even new people (not sure how he thought that would go). A despot with little man syndrome. He was enjoying himself as our chars died.
Very few rewards, skipped a lot of rp, just a meat grinder with added "you guys are pretty s+%$".
Later, we could laugh about it, but he sure was a dick. Game eventually collapsed in the third book.
Every now and then I am tempted to retell the grand and sweeping epic drama that was the most (in)famous GM in Sydney and his amazing downfall. I reckon it would take me an age to write and be a herculean tale of woe, yet that would just be MY story, others would no doubt be able to plumb further depths even unknown to me.
It involves women, stolen goods, a real life 'Shadowrun', Police, a bit of a dust up, and eventually even Prison. All because of the blossoming sexuality (or coming to self acceptance thereof) of one GM and his quest for fame and influence.
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I've had several bad GMs, but the worst was my father. I think I spent a year making a new character every single week because every single session he would kill my character. Usually for some inane reason because I was 12 and thus in his mind had to learn characters die.
I also always had to play a human fighter of my age. The same age part did not bother just always playing the same race and class did especially as I have always liked spellcasters.
He also allowed the troll to turn my character into his personal slave. He did this while I was banned from the game due to grades. Thankfully my mother stepped in and put her foot down on that when the player of the troll decided what his character was going to do with mine. (We were playing Earthdawn at the time)
My father was a 'The GM must always win' type and every game ended in a TPK. I walked away with lessons in: How NOT to run a game.
Also lessons on: How to avoid destroying the game while playing.
Every now and then I am tempted to retell the grand and sweeping epic drama that was the most (in)famous GM in Sydney and his amazing downfall. I reckon it would take me an age to write and be a herculean tale of woe, yet that would just be MY story, others would no doubt be able to plumb further depths even unknown to me.
It involves women, stolen goods, a real life 'Shadowrun', Police, a bit of a dust up, and eventually even Prison. All because of the blossoming sexuality (or coming to self acceptance thereof) of one GM and his quest for fame and influence.
Do tell, Shifty. That sounds like a corker.
Also, SHIFTY SNAP.
I've had several bad GMs, but the worst was my father. I think I spent a year making a new character every single week because every single session he would kill my character. Usually for some inane reason because I was 12 and thus in his mind had to learn characters die.
I also always had to play a human fighter of my age. Te same age part did not bother just always playing the same race and class did especially as I have always liked spellcasters.
He also allowed the troll to turn my character into his personal slave. He did this while I was banned from the game due to grades. Thankfully my mother stepped in and put her foot down on that when the player of the troll decided what his character was going to do with mine. (We were playing Earthdawn at the time)
My father was a 'The GM must always win' type and every game ended in a TPK. I walked away with lessons in: How NOT to run a game.
Also lessons on: How to avoid destroying the game while playing.
...and hopefully a few lessons on parenting :/.
...As a dude, I couldn't really see why another dude would really want to get into the heavy detail of sexual encounters, even in the context of those encounters being notionally 'straight'.
From a roleplay perspective, sure they could be a vehicle for the story line, however I think from a 'roleplay' perspective they were a vehicle for the GM's own fantasies. Especially as one of them always got into fetish themes. It was like a romp through the dark side of 4chan.
Frankly, I tended to find the content rather jarring, as it was usually dropped into the storyline out of 'context' and with little provocation.
Not really my bag, but I just thought it was curious that of the three that liked a bit of 'smut chat' at the table (with other dudes) all three ended up coming out eventually.
4chan dungeon?
Hhmmmm *makes some notes*
On sexual encounters in games, I've had it be a part of the world. I don't quite like the PG rating at times, seems squeamish and puritan, sex is a part of who people are. If they are opposed to it and celibate, its attempted negation is still important. So I've had chars that got into sexcapades, generally dashing types. Had a ballet dancing noblewoman warmage, but alas she was unluckly in love. Forever alone warmage. Most players aren't interested in this avenue, but it can be amusing.
Last game, after traversing dangerous sharp crystal tunnels, the party met many ghosts which they could fight or interact with to get through. One was a high up courtesan, mistress of the seven sighs, that sort of thing. Before she could be laid to rest, she wanted to pass on her teachings and ride shotgun in someone's head as they were doing the act. One pc went hell no, my monk isn't into that. Another pc jumped in with their ninja, and conveniently there was a suitable npc around. Now that sexual adventurer character is on permanent bonuses to seduction. Learned from the best.
So sex is in my games, don't force anyone to go that
I've been known to command "Fade to black! Fade to black! For the love of God, Fade to black!!!"
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For all you who have to endure these jerks just to play — I wish I could run a game for every one of you.
I'm not the world's greatest GM, but reading this thread sure makes me feel like it.
Holy hell, yes. This thread has been great for GM confidence building.
Provided their games aren't being related in it.
Seriously, everyone. Condolences.
I mean damn. o_0
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Should I tell the story of the time my character woke up with horse gentials because the GM thought it would impress me?I fail to comprehend how that was supposed to impress you...
That was what tripped me up too. I mean how the hell does one get to that conclusio-
I was later told he had a vast collection of bestiality porn.
So... yeah.
oh
...
Heartily concurred.
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I've been known to command "Fade to black! Fade to black! For the love of God, Fade to black!!!"
Makes me think of this. (SFW)
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Not sure if this is the worst, but certainly it was one of the oddest.
We were playing a custom version of Ars Magica 4e set in modern times (sort of like what would have Mage been if it had been developed directly as an Ars Magica extension, rather than inspired by), in a game con:
DM "You walk into the bathroom"
Player "I check the tub"
DM "With an almost endless feeling of dread, you see many skulls. MANY SKULLS. MANY ONE-MILLION-YEAR-OLD SKULLS"
Then the DM proceeds to stand and shout the same phrase several times, until asked by one of the other DMs to tone it down a bit.
During that same game:
DM "Yes, both a terminator and a nosferatu walk down from the flying saucer amidst the Northern Lights"
DM "Though the wave is several miles high, you can try to surf on it"
DM "DREADFUL MILLION-YEAR-OLD SKULLS"
And all this happened while THE DM's MOTHER SAT NEXT TO HIM KNITTING. It was like Twilight Zone or something. Though being honest, I still had a fun, if unsettling, time.
Several years later I had the same DM show up at my Space 1889 table in another game con. About an hour into the game, when confronted by russian spies, he goes:
"I swallow a handful of nails, then gulp down a gallon of nitroglicerin, run toward the russian spies and shoot myself in the stomach. Do svidaniya, m+&@+$$$&~#*s"
All they had to do is remain silent while the spies walked around not noticing them.
Admitedly, the guy was quite amusing, and to this day, goes by the nickname "Centaurus", regardless of the situation.
The worst things I commited as the GM was boring the gamers. Now I wonder if I should treat all the things I read about here as a warning what I should not do, or as a challenge I should stand up to! ;)
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I've learned over the years to double check EXACTLY what is meant by a lot of common phrases.
"This will be a heavy RP campaign." Apparently this was meant to let us know that we were expected to try and speak with whatever tone, accent, or grammer he imagined for the various races/tribes/nations. Also, we were supposed to be able to come up with epic odes, chants, speeches, etc... on the fly. He would like to have seen (but didn't require) costumes and makeup.
"We don't use any pansy point buy for abilities. Real gamers roll the dice. What you get is what you got." I thought I was doing pretty good to have a 14 for my high ability. Somehow every one else had multiple 18'2 and nothing below 12. "What? I never said you could only roll once. Everyone knows that would be stupid." Apparently the others would spend all day if necessary rolling 6 sets of 3d6 until they got the best god-like set of abilities.
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Let's not turn this into "Roll Stats versus Point Buy..."
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Last session, the DM decided he would play my character in my place, just to advance the narrative of the campaign. Not only he did some actions and took some choices I would never have played, but he actively placed my character against another player's one (we're playing clerics of different faiths), because "the religious splinter within the group will be a defining element of the next adventures" - again, something we players have always underplayed in a friendly competition of sorts, just for the laughs.
I've been DMing and playing RPGs since the late '80s, and this was the first time I was that close to having a fit, and leaving the table with a big "$#&£§ you!".
Wrongbadnonono.
Last session, the DM decided he would play my character in my place, just to advance the narrative of the campaign. Not only he did some actions and took some choices I would never have played, but he actively placed my character against another player's one (we're playing clerics of different faiths), because "the religious splinter within the group will be a defining element of the next adventures" - again, something we players have always underplayed in a friendly competition of sorts, just for the laughs.
I've been DMing and playing RPGs since the late '80s, and this was the first time I was that close to having a fit, and leaving the table with a big "$#&£§ you!".
Wrongbadnonono.
Where were you during all of this? Were you sitting at the table while the DM played your character?
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A-yuh.
I was momentarily DMPC-ized (devoid of even my character sheet) as my character was "possessed" by his own deity - perfoming feats of magic way beyond my ability and acting quite like a jerk towards the other PCs and the overall balance of the group.
The only thing I could do was giving a general degree on how much I was agreeing with the actions performed.
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Short of bombing a save against a mind-control effect I wouldn't have tolerated that. Especially since he outright said "I'm going to make you and another PC enemies".
Heh I love these threads. Some right cracking stories out there.
Played in this mostly homebrew dark heresy game revolving around a hybrid of Martian successor nadesco and neon genesis Evangelion. The setting was amazingly described and the story interesting. As a group we really enjoyed his first session wherein we as different characters played from the perspective of the Operations Director, the Mech Pilots and Emergency workers/soldiers rescuing people from damaged sections of a huge space ship. High concept. Nicely executed pacing. Interesting npc's. Cool Mecha vs alien leviathan action.
Three things conspired to mean than their never was a second session.
The first:
The GM was a lazy bum. Despite having very little in the way of real life and the rules outlined already from a homebrew website he found. It took him 6 months to prepare and organise that one session and then never even started prep on the second despite healthy demand for over a month.
The Second:
The ridiculous statblocks of the enemy monsters. I'm sure if any of you are familiar with Evangelion, you will know that the Godzilla esque monsters are supposed to be OP. We won through shear luck, being completely unfamiliar with the rules and the system. He specifically told us that we we're not allowed to read the rules because he wanted us to be in the dark about what to do. Suffice to say, several of us ignored him and realised the guy had gotten several fundamental rules wrong and that the Leviathan we took down was league more powerful than we should have been able to handle. To which his response was: 'the enemies don't care that your not powerful or skilled enough, deal with it however you can'.
These first two could be forgiven, if not for the Third:
Okay so the party consisted of an Ops Director (myself), two big mecha pilots and two soldiers from these special 'Valkyrie squads' that got to do everything from pilot fighter jets to rescuing civilians. Then we realised several things. There was already 2 full squads of Valkyrie soldiers, two other mecha pilots, and my character was replacing an existing ops director who was in charge of a full complement of command staff. Each of which had well defined backstories, their own picture art, detailed statistics and personalities. Each essential to the plot.
So we each thought. Hold up. You mean there's already a version of each of our characters that are of equal importance to the plot, that we share xp and resources with, that are all built with a full understanding of the rules and actually know how to do their jobs better than we do? Then why are our characters even needed, when the GM has a literal army of GMPC's to play with? What are we just meat shields and placeholders, used to justify these utterly insane CR encounters? If we couldn't handle them without the help of these GMPC's, then we're never going to feel any sense of achievement.
We coined the term 'GM masturbation'. Whereby we as players could seemlessly exit the stage and leave the GM to 'play with himself'.
Sexual innuendo aside. Am I wrong in thinking this guy misses the point of GMing a campaign here? His campaign probably continued in some fanfic or other. Proving that we as players were never really needed in the first place.
Suffice to say there was never any second session. And a damned shame too.
Short of bombing a save against a mind-control effect I wouldn't have tolerated that. Especially since he outright said "I'm going to make you and another PC enemies".
Word to the muthaship. THis is flat out BAD DM behavior.
Taking control of a PC and forcing them to do thigns they wouldn't normally do? Check.
Purposely starting in-fighting between PC's? Check.
Either one of these would warrant a time-out and game discussion. But both? I would have left the game. Not an exaggeration.
Pretty much none, admittedly. But doesn't make it any less of a douche move. I can't really think of any reason you should do that at all. If your plot requires that to reach a necessary point, you're already too far off what I'd be okay with as a player and fellow GM.
I don't like my deities that interventionist, though. I'm okay with the random chance for a miracle or something if a particularly pious character asks for it and it's thematically appropriate, and I'd be okay with it if the PC agreed to momentarily be a vessel for their god's will, but having said deity just hijack your mortal coil for their own personal use just rubs me the wrong way regardless which side of the GM screen I'm on.
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As a DM, I've had PCs acting without their direct control a couple of times myself.
Once, a particularly careless rogue was possessed by the ghost of a murderer (Chopper, from the RotRL AP) after two botched saves, and in his sleep wandered around causing minor harm and making ominous offers to a certain demonic patron. The player knew something serious was going on due to tiredness he suffered each day, the various hints left around, tracks leading to the rocky isle, etc.
The situation was solved by the group as a whole, and overall it was received as a good narrative trick.
However I never acted directly in place of the player (everything was done "off-screen", so to speak), neither I made actions that were against the character motivations or the group balance/spirit.
It was something that made me quite nervous too, but I gambled on the relative conditions of the possession (the ghost was very limited in its abilities, acted in a disorganized manner, and its influence was limited to the Sandpoint environs).
Blatantly playing against the PC's habits/intentions and causing unrest in the gaming group however made me quite upset - even more so as I was the unwilling target of such behaviour. And that's a fair understatement.
I'll try to talk to the DM, but I'm not relly enthusiast about playing again at his table.
Yeah those are very different circumstances, with visible limits and limitations. Getting bodyjacked by a god and basically turned into whatever the GM wants you to do, and deliberately starting strife with another PC on top of that, is over the line.
My dm is the same with rules.
He has no idea what's going on. He just makes it up. Always sets stuff against us.
Every fight starts "We're surrounded" or "We're ambushed!"
He forces us to stop travel. "Rain is to heavy" "The mud is magic, and your cart can't go through" "boulder kills all your horses, your cart can't move" "Orcs attacked your cart - your cart can't move"
The orcs part, there probably wasn't even any hardness or anything. it was like, 2 hits and it died.
Now he's on a grappling spree. Everything is large sized, and he adds like +8 to their grapple (even knowing their size is already in their cmb and stuff on stat blocks...)
Everyone has guns.
He just does whatever we build as characters. Player brought in gunslinger, now half the npcs use guns. They hide everywhere too.
NPC's know the exact duration of our spells.
and more...
Everyone has guns.
He just does whatever we build as characters. Player brought in gunslinger, now half the npcs use guns. They hide everywhere too.
Guns are expensive. You should always loot them and sell them. That'll at least be a healthy chunk of change.
They will always be broken by the killing blow.
Anyone have access to make whole? ;-) Put them in a pile and cast it before selling.
Edit: mending might work too. gotta check the spell description.
Remember magical mud? And in that world you expect guns to be fixed by a players spell? ;-)They will always be broken by the killing blow.Anyone have access to make whole? ;-) Put them in a pile and cast it before selling.
Edit: mending might work too. gotta check the spell description.
DM can always trump players. Though if you throw enough options about how to circumvent his plans he may (and I stress MAY) eventually realize that you've got 1001 ways to fix a gun (in this case) and allow some leeway.
Of course if not your only option available is to leave the table.
Let's not turn this into "Roll Stats versus Point Buy..."
I don't think that's what he was saying at all.
My dm is the same with rules.
He has no idea what's going on. He just makes it up. Always sets stuff against us.Every fight starts "We're surrounded" or "We're ambushed!"
He forces us to stop travel. "Rain is to heavy" "The mud is magic, and your cart can't go through" "boulder kills all your horses, your cart can't move" "Orcs attacked your cart - your cart can't move"
The orcs part, there probably wasn't even any hardness or anything. it was like, 2 hits and it died.
Now he's on a grappling spree. Everything is large sized, and he adds like +8 to their grapple (even knowing their size is already in their cmb and stuff on stat blocks...)
Everyone has guns.
He just does whatever we build as characters. Player brought in gunslinger, now half the npcs use guns. They hide everywhere too.
NPC's know the exact duration of our spells.
and more...
If a random boulder killed all of the party's horses, I think they should all go cleric and spend a lot of time in prayer, because they are clearly cursed. Dm fiat seems real stupid so often.