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The one that always comes to mind (because my current group, running 3 years strong from the fallout of the DM in question), is the DM we had that continuosly paused combat and the narrative to check his computer based notes. Thats what we thought at the time. We finally figured out he was pausing the game to PVP WITH HIS DAOC CHARACTER.
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Worst things your GM has done to you?Killed my character.
Didn't happen to me, by one of my buddies animal companion kept getting killed.
After about the 5th one it got to be such a running joke that he named them after DM, then when that one died the DM's loved ones, in the hopes the DM wouldn't be able to kill them anymore.
Didn't work.
I've shared this story before, but it sticks out in my mind so I'll put it down again.
I didn't have a regular group in college but the university had a gaming club that met during the week on campus. I went to check it out one time, asked if I could watch one of the groups play and was invited to make up a character and join them. I made up a druid (2nd ed.).
It was a large group and took them a while to get going, but once we did we found ourselves immediately in an adventure in the woods (yay, druid!) sneaking up on a hobgoblin cave. I posted my druid next to a tree, cast chameleon (or something similar, it allowed me to hide outdoors)and entangle on the tall grass behind me, and prepared to snipe anything coming out. The next thing I know combat ensues and the DM informs me I have taken x damage which was enough to kill me outright.
I never even made a roll. Three hours down the tubes. I left and never went back. Pickup groups are dodgy at best.
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Later on in college I fell in with a group of physics and math majors who had a regular game. It wasn't DnD but some form of homebrew loosely based on DnD. The only thing was, these guys (often led by the DM) would often fall to bickering among themselves about game effects and how to resolve them using real-world mathematical equations. I recall one 2-hour delay while they figured out how much "force of will" was required to throw up a wall of force capable of withstanding 200+ mph straight-line wind effects using Bernoulli's equation. Argh!
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I was level 4, playing a total support Dirge Bard in Carrion Crown--I basically couldn't fight, only buff, debuff, and CC. Heck, I didn't even carry a weapon most of the time, just a flag (I was a Flagbearer, of course).
The party consisted of 8 PCs:
-Me
-A Sorcerer/Cleric attempting to get to Mystic Theurge pre-SLA errata (so he was useless for pretty much everything except in-between combat channeling)
-A totally useless Detective Bard with no combat ability (all his spells were divination, he had more Int than Cha, 8 Strength, mostly wasted his turns missing with a crossbow, etc.) and his non-combat ability was mostly irrelevant because his skills were either unimportant to the scenarios in the AP or unnecessarily excessive because everyone else with half as much focus on skills routinely succeeded with no problem anyway
-5 melee dpr/tanks of various classes (my buffs went a long way in this party)
The GM decided to use some scenario he found on the boards here to "enhance" one of the encounters in book 2. A town that should have been filled with a certain kind of enemy we were perfectly set up to defeat was instead full of Attic Whisperers. For those not familiar with them, they are weak undead enemies that basically do nothing except screw over spellcasters, and bards in particular (they can steal your voice and have an aura that cancels performances). It was frustrating to say the least, but we got through it with me just staying away and lamely blasting with Disrupt Undead (I used Two-World Magic to get it). No big deal, I can't expect to be useful all the time, I guess.
We ended a session just as we confronted the "boss" and his minions (note that this is not a spoiler because this stuff is not really in the AP, it's all from some fan made supplement). Now, this was set up to be really difficult. We were all level 4, and the encounter as written was EL 7, but the GM ruled that since we didn't clear the whole town yet, the rest of the attic whisperers were there with the boss, making it even more brutal. Unfortunately, a serious problem arose:
4 of the melee players were unable to attend the next session. So, it was a non-combat character, a really weak caster, an Ancestral Oracle hitter, and me, trying to buff them into something capable of taking on this epic encounter.
The GM didn't do anything wrong, per se, by not changing the encounter he set up due to the drastic reduction in the party's combat ability, but it did kind of suck. After one round, in which everyone but me was made mute by the attic whisperers (thus neutering the Oracle into, essentially, an Aristocrat with a Greatsword), it was clear we couldn't win so I bravely Chill Touched the big bad (and he failed his save, so he panicked, thank goodness) and tried to get everyone to run.
Here's where the "worst things" start, by the way.
Running away wasn't easy, even though it was clear to all of us that this was a TPK if we stayed. The GM made it clear the Oracle only survived the AoOs because he let him (exaggerated "how many hit points do you have left?" before dealing damage, etc.). Then ruled we had to run down a hill, which was difficult, so everyone had to roll acrobatics checks. Everyone but me failed, so he ruled they took something like 3d6 damage from tumbling down a hill (which is absurd on its own), so the Oracle ended up unconscious, and it was left to the halfling, gnome, and frail girl (me), none of which had more than 10 strength, to carry this big bruiser guy away. Thankfully, the GM let that slide, even though it would have been the one sensible thing to give us trouble for.
Anyway, we started fleeing, since we still had a couple of rounds before the bad guy stopped running, and we were just bee-lining it out of there. We should have been fast enough to get away, but the GM did the worst thing I've seen any GM do:
GM: "So, do you guys just run straight for the city limits, or do you try and hide somewhere in town?"
Me: (Assuming the GM is dropping a hint) "I was assuming we'd just run out as fast as we could--why, is there anywhere in town I would think we could hide that would be safe? Every building we checked out had Attic Whisperers inside."
GM: "Well, there is a temple to Pharasma..."
Now, obviously, to us, this seemed like the GM was taking pity on us and dropping a big hint to save us from the near TPK he must have assuredly felt sorry for inflicting upon us. From out perspective, he lit up a big neon sign outside the temple that said, "Safe Refuge from BBEG Here!" I mean, Pharasma is the goddess that most hates undead, and both I and the Oracle worshipped Pharasma, so it was a no brainer.
We entered the temple and shut the door behind us. The GM asked for Will Saves. I got a 20. I failed. With a 20. At level 4. The Oracle failed as well. The GM informed us that we were inflicted by Insanity, as per the spell. You know Insanity, that permanent duration 7th level spell intended to be used against PCs literally 3 times our level that can't be removed without a similarly high level spell, and that makes me act randomly? Yeah, the temple was corrupted and had an Insanity causing Haunt in it.
Here's my problem with this scenario if it's unclear:
I was ok with just dying and making a new character. No big deal. I was obviously ok with escaping. However, now Insane, I was left with the worst of both worlds. I was alive, but couldn't really control my actions or acquire the cure (too high a level for where we were/too expensive), so I would have rather just died so I could make a new character. The worst part was that the GM actually tricked me into this scenario by dropping a disingenuous hint--it was as if he wanted us to live (since wiping the entire group was a good way to kill your game's momentum), but punish us for losing, even though it was due to half the party missing the session that the GM decided to use an extra hard scenario.
Anyway, at this point, as if hiding in a trap wasn't enough, the GM informs us that the BBEG is on our trail. He's apparently peaking into each building in town (even though he'd have no clue we didn't just flee completely) and he'll be at the temple soon. He also implies that if the PCs stay, the ones not already Insane would have to save again when the trap/haunt/whatever it was resets.
Now, I was actually happy about this--it gave me a chance to die, and if the other two useless PCs died, too, maybe I could get them to make characters that actually contributed to anything. It should be fairly easy to die, actually, since I'd only have the chance to move 1/4 of the time due to the Insanity. However, when we started making a break for it, he ruled that another PC could drag me along at my full speed even if I rolled "do nothing," "babble incoherently," or "attack the nearest creature." He somehow thought this would make me happier.
He sat, counting out how many turns it took to drag me away (it was upwards of 20), and rolling the percentile dice to see how many rounds I had to attack the guy dragging me away. Then I had to roll my pitiful unarmed strikes against the guy, and even hit him a few times. The town was an island, however, so we had to cross a bridge to get out of town.
For some background, there were two bridges into this town. Both were rickety and breaking and required Acrobatics rolls to get across. One had killer bees nesting under it. The other, we used to enter the town, but had destroyed it in the process because the party of melee hitters and physically feeble casters was ill-equipped to make DC: 20 Acrobatics checks multiple times (my single rank was the only rank the entire party had in the skill!).
We also learned the hard way that the river that ran under that first bridge had a leech swarm in it that totally wrecked a couple of the guys who hadn't made it this session (the party was almost all melee and our caster was trying to MT, so we had no AoE to deal with swarms).
So, we were facing this bridge covered in a bee swarm we couldn't damage (the few anti-swarm things we had were denied by everyone but me being mute), and we were terrified of the water since only I had a rank in Swim and we couldn't fight Leeches either. We bumbled our way across this bridge, the boss got to us and the bees came. It was horrible and painful and I just wanted to say, "we all died, let's try again" but couldn't. I had to just sit there and watch the horror show (since, yeah, I couldn't control my actions).
Even through all this hell, the GM wanted us to escape--he tried very hard to let us get away, he just wanted us to suffer some more ability damage first (since the boss and the bees both dealt it). It took me pointing out that a confused creature who gets hit automatically attacks their attacker on their next action in order to die. It took nearly an hour after I went Insane, but I finally managed to suicide, though the Oracle and future-MT died as well.
I don't know if this is ironic or just unfortunate, but the sole survivor was the useless Detective who contributed nothing all night, but also made the important saves and stayed far from the front lines anyway, so he escaped unscathed (no permanent confusion or ability damage for him). In fact, the only rolls he failed all night (other than attack rolls with his useless crossbow) were the ones that led to him falling off the bridge into the water while we suicided. Turns out the leeches were only under the other bridge, so he was able to swim away.
Well, actually, no, he had no ranks of swim and had both an armor check penalty and a strength penalty, so we had to sit there while he rolled dozens of swim checks just to make enough progress to get out of the water, even though he was in zero danger and had a huge number of rounds to get out before he drowned.
So, yeah, the worst thing a GM ever did to me was make me beg for a quick death. The best part was that I did manage to die--how ridiculous is that? And he really made me work for that, too.
The only thing harder than dying in his game is not suffering a long term/permanent debilitating effect. In a more recent game, he used an enemy that gave our Rogue a -4 to all rolls for 30 days and arcane marked our sorcerer with a beacon for an assassin's guild that could teleport through the plane of shadows which was only removable with a Break Enchantment. We are level 5.
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As a GM, I killed my friends' animal companion because it was annoying. Another GM brought it back to life a couple sessions later. This was a large group shared world thing, several GMs rotated in and out. We're still friends to this day and that was 20+ years ago. He doesn't let me forget........
As a GM, and this is were my forum name comes from, I sorta offed two PCs for no reason. I was GMing for only two PCs, they had practically begged me to GM that day. Don't know if I was having a bad day, or what. Rolled up fresh level 5 PCs, second encounter in I said and a "Molten Dragon" rises from the lava and "bleh" - 20d6. Killed both, packed up my books and left. Still friends with both and again 20+ years ago. They also don't let me forget.........XD.
These are example of bad GMing.
In college I once joined with a pick up group and the GM shows up with no books, no notes, no dice, no anything.
Short list of his atrocities:(btw this is all 3.0)
- one PC was allowed to create his own race...the Celf pronounced Ka-elf which was a mix of cat and elf with a base dex of 22.
- PCs could buy ANYTHING in the DMG magic item section for 10,000 gold or less.
- the party cleric blinded himself when casting light....because he "mistakenly" cast it on his own eyes.
- we were level 1...our party dwarf fighter hit a kobold for max damage with his great axe...kobold shrugged it off and beat him within an inch of his life...this was not the BBEG.
This all happened in the FIRST adventure...sigh I never went back.
Back in 3.5 we started an epic campaign with characters somewhere between levels 21 and 25. I rolled a Monk, back then one of my favorite classes.
In the first or second combat my monk got poisoned with a Strength draining Epic Vile poison. You know, the ones that deal permanent, unrecoverable ability damage.
My Strength permanently dropped to 11 or 12, and that's with the bonuses of my epic equipment. Basically, within an hour of play he rendered the character I had been building for 3 or 4 hours completely useless.
Of course after an hour or two he was gracious enough to let me recover my original STR in some way but still... who the hell uses permanent ability drain poisons? That's just trying to ruin a player's game.
Of course after an hour or two he was gracious enough to let me recover my original STR in some way but still... who the hell uses permanent ability drain poisons? That's just trying to ruin a player's game.
Better question:
Who publishes permanent ability drain poisons?
I've shared this story before, but it sticks out in my mind so I'll put it down again.
I didn't have a regular group in college but the university had a gaming club that met during the week on campus. I went to check it out one time, asked if I could watch one of the groups play and was invited to make up a character and join them. I made up a druid (2nd ed.).
It was a large group and took them a while to get going, but once we did we found ourselves immediately in an adventure in the woods (yay, druid!) sneaking up on a hobgoblin cave. I posted my druid next to a tree, cast chameleon (or something similar, it allowed me to hide outdoors)and entangle on the tall grass behind me, and prepared to snipe anything coming out. The next thing I know combat ensues and the DM informs me I have taken x damage which was enough to kill me outright.
I never even made a roll. Three hours down the tubes. I left and never went back. Pickup groups are dodgy at best.
This is what I get for posting right before bed, I suppose. I forgot the important bit...the attack came from behind me as a hobgoblin snuck up on me. How he even saw me I have no clue. How he missed my entangle I have no idea. But he did, and he killed me in one blow. There's a fun night's adventuring, eh?
Of course after an hour or two he was gracious enough to let me recover my original STR in some way but still... who the hell uses permanent ability drain poisons? That's just trying to ruin a player's game.Better question:
Who publishes permanent ability drain poisons?
[Edit]: all of them negate magical effects that boost your saves or give you bonuses against poisons and while only one of the poisons there has a 25% chance of permanent damage, the rest require natural rest. Good luck getting enough to recover 30 ability points in the middle of an epic dungeon.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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How was your epic monk not immune to the poison I wonder?
So many possible stories.
I had a DM turn me into a squirrel once. I was in college and had joined a game run by a friend of a friend. This guy was heavily into SCA and I'd been told that he had house rules designed to make fighters more effective. Sure, I thought, fighters could use some love(this was 2e). I ended up rolling a wizard due to the fact that the entire rest of the party had no spellcasters, at all. In hindsight, this should have been a clue.
So we get into a fight and I threw some sort of spell at one of the bad guys, only to have it fizzle. Every spell didn't work. As sessions went by I came to realize that this DM didn't know how to handle spellcasting so every foe had a ring that gave them lesser globe of invulnerability. Every one. The rings stopped working when they died so PCs couldn't steal them. So I became a buffer caster, as best as I could in 2e where spell variety was at the DM's whim, figuring that when I got to 7th level I'd finally be able to affect foes. Nope. Ring upgrade to a full globe.
Then we fought a red dragon. We were super stacked with 2e style fire resistance - basically we were taking either 1/2 or 1/8 depending on the save. I immediately split away from the party as my crappy d4 wizard hp would not survive even 1/2 damage from the breath weapon. Of course the dragon ignores the rest of the PCs in order to fry me to a crisp. Afterwards, the DM provides a friendly NPC druid to hit me with a reincarnate - and I come back as a squirrel. No actual roll, DM just thought it would be funny. He'd apparently thought this up a while back and been looking for an excuse to kill me to effect this change.
At this point I was sticking with this travesty out of pure stubborness. I figured I could get to level 9 and finally be able to use spells offensively - I was trying the shadow specialist from Spells and Magic and almost all my actual school spells were single target debuffs. So triumphantly I dinged 9 and the next session the DM ended the campaign.
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How was your epic monk not immune to the poison I wonder?
Like I said, no magical stuff helps against the poison. As for class-based immunities, I don't remember, I probably took a prestige class or something.
[Edit]: Ah, the poison immunity of Monks was Supernatural in 3.5, which was/the DM probably ruled to be negated by the antimagic poison. It was more than 7 years ago, can't remember which it was exactly.
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Worst thing a GM has done to me?
Said the words "You're a girl, so a druid is too complicated for you, you're going to play a barbarian instead."
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Said the words "You're a girl, so a druid is too complicated for you, you're going to play a barbarian instead."
wow was he 15 or something?
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Did you show him some rage in real life? :D
FEMINIST HULK SMASH PATRIARCHY!
Worst thing a GM has ever done to me is not run his game. I generally always have fun with my group even when things are messy, or go wrong. Given its among my friends I'd always prefer to play as opposed to not play, and I do what I can to see that happens.
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Now I'm hoping for this to be a learning experience as to what not to do and that we keep things nice as we all appreciate our GMs for their work.
My friend was telling me about an encounter his party experienced where they were in a hallway and someone stepped on a pressure plate, making everyone roll for reflex. Everyone who successfully saved jumped away while the one person who didn't, stood on the spot. Turned out the trap was a "reverse trap" and the floor around the pressure plate dropped away killing everyone except for the one person who failed his save.
In my own games our GM never lets our plans successfully carry out or seemingly all our diplomacy attempts to backfire in our face. Essentially we've realised "let's not bother with plans or trying to be diplomatic, lets walk in and kill them".
In one example we had successfully tracked down a group of bandits to their hideout and captured one to find out they were doing a "beer run" to celebrate. So we ambushed the carriage with a sleep spell and drugged all the beer with slow acting poison. From there we stole all their worthy belongings to make it look like a robbery and were about to leave them to wake up, when a patrol team discovered us and it became a fighting entry in the end.
In another game I've heard of players who were away for a few sessions and came back to find out their character had lost an arm or a leg...
I was playing a female wizard who was dominated by a vampire who proceeded to anally rape her and the GM rolled some dice and said she was enjoying it despite her circumstances.
I did not continue to play in that game for reasons.
Gah! I hope none of the other players continued as well.
Worst thing? Playing with a stubborn killer GM.
His houserules:
No sneak attack (rogue become useless)
Everyone should be Lawful Good (except if the class say otherwise)
No undead control (even during a evil campaign)
No downtime or crafting magical items
No diplomacy, intimidate or bluff work
No one except a rogue can disarm trap
That's the one I remember.
My first game returning to the tabletop was with him, Gming the City of Spider Queen. This game has seen 68 death, 11 deus ex machina, 6 deal with an Efreet called Isnogood...
One of his ''big monster'' was screwed by a disruptive weapon? No prob, 9 new ''big monster'' spawn just to kill us...
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Gah! I hope none of the other players continued as well.
This one girl I know was kind of amused by the game but she was amused about possibly being a vampire and such. She's kind of an Ann Rice fan and enjoyed rattling on about how all vampires are bisexual and how awesome Lestat is. I honestly was surprised she was so entertained by it given the amount of ranting she does about the objectification of women in forms of media for laughs. Not that that I was particularly upset with her apparent amusement but I was surprised that someone who makes snide remarks if she is walking behind a guy, complains about how women are portrayed in media, and claims to be a hard feminist could be so amused by a female character being both mentally and physically raped and then being told she enjoys it.
People, right?
Worst thing? Playing with a stubborn killer GM.
His houserules:
No sneak attack (rogue become useless)
Everyone should be Lawful Good (except if the class say otherwise)
No undead control (even during a evil campaign)
No downtime or crafting magical items
No diplomacy, intimidate or bluff work
No one except a rogue can disarm trapThat's the one I remember.
My first game returning to the tabletop was with him, Gming the City of Spider Queen. This game has seen 68 death, 11 deus ex machina, 6 deal with an Efreet called Isnogood...
One of his ''big monster'' was screwed by a disruptive weapon? No prob, 9 new ''big monster'' spawn just to kill us...
Gross. This is horrible. I hope you and your players threw the book at him and left. :P
People, right?
That's a very..... specific kind of people.
Wow, that DM sounds like he should be playing 1st Ed since that's how things worked there, other than 'no sneak attack'.
My story was in a Political campaign, which involved doing up a character with copious backstory, 8th level, with magic items (some which had to be unique) , relations with other characters, etc. Took several weeks, many emails, 8 pages. First combat, first round, a mook fires an arrow at me. Nat 20, nat 20, nat 20, which in that DM’s game was insta-death.
He wanted to know why I didn’t want to do up another character or continue playing, he was actually puzzled.
(This is why I don't play with extreme crit tables or fumbles)
Ran the first part of the Vecna Lives! Module exactly as written. It caused issues with the group that were so bad we stopped playing together after 5 years.Oh, Lord, Vecna Lives. All of you youngsters out there pay heed: you can learn how not to write an adventure by reading some of the... non-classic modules. Board the choo-choo and take a ride through Return of the Eight, Vecna Lives and various other old-school adventures where the only freedom of choice you have is the order in which the PCs die! (I'm sure the Realms have their share of godawful ones - I hear things about the Avatar trilogy - but my studies make me more familiar with Greyhawk's worst module. Fate of Istus? No, thanks, I just ate.)
I never found Fate of Istus to be THAt bad. There were some forced failures and if you jiggle some things then it can be workable. Istus was being a major idiot though and would get her face stomped by the other deities for that plague.
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I made a terrible GM mistake and turned a PC into a vampire after his heroic death aiding in the killing of the BBEG. I thought it would be an interesting way to reintroduce the character... but didn't FULLY realize how overpowered he would be. He practically made all the other PCs worthless.
To their credit, they found it an interesting plot point; until, of course, the guy kinda used his new un-life to do whatever he wanted with the expectation of no consequences. After he used dominate against other PCs the third time, I found a particularly malicious way to off him with the intent of reviving him sans vampiric features via the cleansing, forgiving powers of a good god (Sarenrae or Iomedae or somebody similar).
I pit them against an Omox demon, made it grapple him, then use liquid leap to practically teleport them into a giant vat of acid. He melted the very next round while the Omox returned to whomp his buddies. They easily took it out that same round, though.
In retrospect, it was a terrible GM move to give him a vampiric nature and then punish him for using them, even if he did instigate lots of PvP moments. But it all worked out -- turned out most everybody wanted to abandon their current characters and start at level 1 with new characters. Now they get to see the impact their original characters had on the world, which they seem to love.
The worst thing a GM can do is forget that his players are there to play a game and be part of the story itself. Not to watch him read the story off a list while he proceeds to treat your characters like pieces in his own little game of checkers. Luckily I haven't had to deal with the kinds of things you guys have (yet) but it seems a lot of them stem from the GM wanting to play god or ego boost by forcing you to do what he wants.
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Going by stories my players keep bringing up, I think this one is probably the best one.
I made one of my player's character pregant. The male player's male character.
I was running Eberron and was doing a side adventure where the player's entered a zone close to Xoriat (the demi-plane of madness or somesuch). And I was actively trying to freak the player's out. Most of the stuff just kind of came up off the top of my head or in response to what the player's were saying. Somehow this turned out with the player's on a raft riding a river of sperm.
So I used some monster from the MM on them, but reskinned them as giant sperm monsters with their poison causing impregnation instead of ability damage. And managed to infect one of my male player's with it.
Not one of my proudest moments as a GM, but it accomplished the goal of keeping them freaked out at everything happening to them.
Most of the cruddy DM moments I've experienced were due to sheer inexperience with the game and not maliciousness but still:
1) First campaign we ever played, our DM was extremely stingy with magic items. I was insanely happy to finally get a masterwork sword at level 7. Next session he pits us against 2 kytons. Which had DR/+1. Nobody had magical weapons, several of us carried iron chains. We got slaughtered. Later on he pitted us against custom-made monsters based on one of his favorite book series. Did I mention this was his and our first campaign? One of those things was able to obliterate us and he threw hordes of them at us.
2) One DM wanted to implement a barter system, involving the CHA-based Barter skill. He mentioned this just before the end of character creation, when I had already completed my CHA- and INT-dumped fighter. A low Barter roll meant very high increases in prices and since we split wealth evenly the moment we got it, this was incredibly disadvantageous for my character. When I tried to delegate my purchases through the party face, the DM threw a hissy fit and threatened to remove the Barter system. That'd be fine with me but not with the other characters, all of which had high CHA
3) The same guy had us perform some cliche quest in which we had to retrieve an orb or something from an enchanted forest for an elf goddess. When we did so, we somehow freed every single magical beast from evil's grasp and we got a ride on an ancient golden dragon's head, followed by an exodus of unicorns, hippogriffs, nymphs etc... Ok, diabetes-level sugary Disney stuff but still kinda cool as a climax. Did I mention we were level 3 at the time and that the dungeon had been run-of-the-mill standard? None of us could take the campaign seriously after that.
4) Same dude again pitted us against a BBEG's minion general. This was some human warrior that he had applied the 3.5 Monster of Legend template to (which could not be applied to humans but anyway). This template gave some stat bonuses and such but also 3 or 4 out of a list of 15-20 special abilities. He had misread that or something and given him all abilities. Again, we almost got wiped, only to be saved by a deus ex machina NPC.
He was quite fond of high level NPCs swooping in to rescue our low level characters in general.
5) Two guys co-DMed by switching roles every session. They did so partly to test a character concept. This basically came down to a DM NPC with some custom class and custom items, some of which were immensely strong. The primary activity of this class? Hiding really well. That's it. No other skills, no combat abilities, just hiding. The character was completely useless to the rest of the party. Didn't even scout much. The DMs still demanded that we split up loot and xp evenly so we basically got screwed out of 20% of everything and saddled with a personality-less DM-pet that cluttered up our formations and initiative order.
6) Another DM created a dungeon filled with nothing but various triggered summon spells. Much joy to be had in a dungeon that offered no xp or treasure!
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I played the PFS Scenario 4-20 Words of the Ancients, and the DM decided that we should play high tier, even though our party level was 8 on the dot, so half the party wiped. He didn't tell us until the end that we were in fact playing up, and when we brought it up at the end of the Scenario, and we had to pay Resurrection cost and we only got low tier rewards.
worst thing a GM ever did, had a bunch of bar room toughs literally rape (via a donkey) my 1st edition magic user and described the violence and humiliation in great detail.
My heart goes out to you dude. :(
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worst thing a GM ever did, had a bunch of bar room toughs literally rape (via a donkey) my 1st edition magic user and described the violence and humiliation in great detail.
Man, stories like that and the one about the vampire domination/rape scenario above make me wonder what the hell is wrong with some GMs...
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Worst thing a GM has done to me?
Said the words "You're a girl, so a druid is too complicated for you, you're going to play a barbarian instead."
This didn't happen to me, but it did happen to my wife ...
The GM apparently saw himself as 'chivalrous', but the rest of us saw him as 'chauvinist'. No matter how capable or badass my wife's characters were, they were continually relegated to one of two roles - Damsel in Distress or Babysitter. She'd constantly be "rescued" by NPCs even if she were fully in control of the situation, or be given some child or child-like character to tend to.
We determined that this was because of female player rather than female character, as one game I played a female character who would have been a MUCH better choice for a babysitter (cleric of a family/hearth/home goddess vs barbarian) and she *still* got stuck with the kid.
This next one is second-hand ...
The GM was such a Tolkien Fan that he induced house rules that MADE you behave Tolkien-esquely. Halflings had to make escalating difficulty Will saves when away from home, or they would immediately go back. Dwarves had to make Will saves to not get drunk.
And the real kicker, Elves had no rules that made them do things, but any non-elf had to make a Will save to disbelieve ANYTHING an elf told them, as they were 'a wise elder race', even if it disregarded evidence or common sense. If an elf told you the sky was green, and you blew your Will save, you would have to assume that something was wrong with your eyes.
Houseruling major changes, on the fly, all the time.
Then getting pissed when you call to attention the fact that, those are not the rules people have been making their characters by, and that we agreed houserules be established at the start of the campaign, or be reserved for times when it was not critical.
-Nearyn
Painful memories! Strange how the NPCs all knew the rulings and how the rulings changed to their benefit at odd times.
Dropped my character into a game at random with no reason to join the party. Especially bad when one member of an unhallowed metropolis party's first action upon seeing my fastidious, obsessive compulsive character is to use my characters coat to wipe the blood of his blade.
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I think I mentioned somewhere before what happened when I played and my dad ran the games. We had round robin GMing at the time, but the main GMs were my mom and dad. This came about when my mom revealed the third GM was cheating when he ran. It also pulled in the rule of no GMPCs ever.
Anyways I had several things happen, but mainly the only thing I recall is spending every other week making a new character. The only time they lasted longer than two weeks was when my mom GMed. He literally focused on my character every time. Also despite having proven I could run a spellcaster of any type, a paladin, and a thief I was always informed that being a minor I was too inexperienced and incapable of running anything but human fighters. I had also run most of the races in AD&D at some point.
His worst offense against me is when I was banned for a few months due to grades. When I returned I found out to my horror he had allowed the guy who dislike women playing in the game to run my character. She had been played as not liking him, arguing with him, and even standing up to him despite him being a troll skyraider. He played as completely pliant, hero worshiping him and even making advances on him. The only reason the rest of what he wanted did not happen is my mom was actually able to rejoin the group after a month and laid claim to the character. That warrior was later killed my dad when he put us in a no win scenario. Either I held the pillars and let the party escape or we all die. Either way my character would die.
To my mom he made a dungeon of riddles. To get through a door you had to get the answer correct. My mom and the party rogue had gotten through them all. At the last door to get through you had to open the door while wearing a metal helmet. Neither she nor the rogue was wearing one. She was a wizard with all that entailed and he simply wore leather as most rogues did. She found his notes in the divorce and confirmed her suspicions he had changed the answer to spite her and the rogue. Her character was made insane and transported to another plane of existence. The rogue was turned to stone.
Worst thing?
Had us make 3rd level PCs, then saddled us with a NPC/DMPC that was 17th level (we peeked at his notes when he went to the bathroom), and sent encounters after us that we were helpless against so his GALLANT WARRIOR could spring in and save our lives every encounter.
Worst case of DM masturbation I'd EVER seen.
Sounds like the Wheel of Time published adventures. Each one had the players squaring off against enemies that were waaay too tough to actually fight(Dire Bear against lvl 1 pc's, for example), so that a high-level NPC from the novels could swoop in and save the day.
After the third or fourth time this happened, we started a mutiny and banned those adventures from our table.