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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...
Hopefully bad GMs work through their problems when they are no longer teenagers???
As a teenager, one of my GMs tortured my PC, cut off both of his arms. Shortly after we discovered a method to allow me to tie a wand of scorching ray to my head and shoot scorching rays at my enemies. He said that on a roll of "1", it would "malfunction". You can guess what happens next. Sigh. lol.
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.
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The worst thing a GM ever did to one of my characters was to turn my PC into a literal superhero as a reward for saving the world. The end result was a character that was effectively invulnerable, could fly faster than light, could build up enough destructive power to destroy an entire planet and could pass through solid rock like a ghost.
He also granted a wish, so I wished my character had not been granted all those powers. The GM was not happy. He asked why I didn't want to have a superhero and I said "I want to PLAY my character, not RETIRE him!"
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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.
ruled that my bag of holding was constantly filled with dog poo
because i made a pokaball with a bag of holding, necklace of adaption, and endless feed bag
he did not like mounts ......
137ben, yes, the GM wanted to run a neolithic version of "Heroes" or something. He gave similar "rewards" to the rest of the party. We all rejected them. Our characters were level 16 at the time, and we weren't ready to become gods. We ended up getting a space-faring sailing ship and continued to adventure across the galaxy, but within more manageable power levels.
It was a fun campaign, and continued to be fun even without our super powers.
I was in a game where the GM was using material that converted terminator stuff (among the hodgepodge of other systems he loved to mash into one system) to D20 Modern. The biggest thing that pissed me off is when he changed the NPCs mid fight from T-400s to T-1000s just so he could kill my android. I haven't been back since.
Another happened to me last night. The GM tried to tell me that the grab universal monster ability can be used PULL my character as a FREE ACTION to said creature with no save from my character. I called bull on that. She retorted that the monster can and will do that. No. That ended my future gaming in that campaign. Not to mention the ridiculous house rule they use that if you want to speak while in combat, you are limited to 3 words. That's right, speaking in combat is limited to 3 words unless you want to use a standard action to speak. More bull crap.
Playing a 12th level Rogue who was horribly undergeared as a 6th level one. Definitely set in stone my most strictest attention to WBL.
Remember guys, just because the party has tons of gold on them, unless they can spend it or utilize it at all times, it does NOT count for their WBL. 5000 gp in gems is worthless to the fighter who really needs that +2 sword.
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The worst thing a DM did to me was railroading the adventure.
I hate it if, no matter what you do, things happen.
Same DM also have a very stereotypical picture of our characters in his mind and enforce this picture to us.
Example: one player plays a gnome druid(lvl 12), she is/was a little bit naive due to raised up in an isolate forest.
A few evenings ago the group was in danger and the gnome was sent to contact our allies to get support. In this town was a carnival, so the DM let the player roll WILL.
Even as he succeed the roll, he said: "your character is attracked by the carnival and spent several hours there"
Turned my sorceror into a living rod of wonder. So if I ever cast the spell the table was rolled on. But not the standard table, a 1d1000 table. I ended up during a fight summoning a death sladd against us by accident (was Curse of Crimson Throne) which nearly killed someone. And my attempt to banish it again instead trapped everyone in bubbles.
Though there was the time I got bait and switched with my own backstory. Be a Hellknight, and turns out nope, you were in fact played a fool by a guy pretending to be a hellknight who recruited you. And so forth. Yaaaay.
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
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
Whenever I suggest a house rule to my group I give everyone the option to rebuild their characters with knowledge of the current rules.
I'm pretty generous about rebuilds in general, too.It gets rid of the issues associated with mid-campaign rules changes.
^ The way it should be done, if it must be done.
-Nearyn
The GM ran a campaign with absolutely no down time. I had a wizard with the minimum possible number of spells known. The same GM ended the campaign, with:
After defeating the BBEG, but not the hoard of minions that would eventually overwhelm and kill us, we escaped using a portal to the LG plane. Once there a powerful LG outsider Banished the LE member on sight. No trial, no questions, no appeals. (This was in spite of us just destroying a Demonlord on its own plane.)
Never playing with him as GM again.
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The most recent one for me was with my normal World of Darkness GM. Normally he's fantastic, but I found this particular game fairly grating.
Going to spoiler this, because it's a veritable wall of text.
I proceeded to be ignored for the majority of the game, rarely if ever getting a word in edgewise. When I played to my character, who did have a respect for authority, it invariably ended up with him missing ALL of the damn action because I'd be ordered to do something that would take me away from anything exciting. I never got to utilise my explosives expertise. On the one instance where I did make it to a major fight, I was told that I had been affected by the exotic drugs being smoked in the room I'd been in previously, and was unable to comprehend what was happening.
The defining moment of my character, where he cheerfully got in a sanctioned bare knuckle boxing match with a giant brutish brawler of a PC in order to resolve a dispute between two officers PVP in our WoD games being encouraged as long as it didn't detract from the story or the fun), all while happily declaring that he hoped there were no hard feelings and that he'd buy the big fella a drink afterwards, was declared a loss to me by GM fiat despite the fact that I was winning the g*%@!+n fight due to the fact that I'd built him as a dirty fighting bare knuckle brawler as well as an explosives expert, because apparently it wouldn't make sense otherwise. I was apparently drugged by the guy acting as my second and was knocked out by the captain as it was considered "unsporting conduct"
The worst part for me though was this. This game had a standing rule that unless you had a very good reason, missing more than 5 sessions in a row would result in your character being retired or killed, no chance to bring them back. What I didn't realise was that apparently the fact that I was working 12 hours a day, 5 days a week for a month in order to get through crunch time on a high priority project, then travelling to Adelaide, Perth, Johannesburg, Beijing, Guangzhou and Hangzhou in order to complete the implementation of this project (totalling over 6 weeks away from home including the time I spent in Guangzhou attempting to recover from a severe upper respiratory tract infection which plagued me with secondary infections and damage to my respiratory tract for over a month after returning home) wasn't considered a good enough reason. So I got back and found out that my character had sacrificed himself to blow up an enemy ship while I was away. This was before I was able to become a vampire, or do anything. I'm supposed to have joined back into this group over a month ago now, but I'm finding it hard to care.
This whole situation really surprised me, because like I said, this GM is normally fantastic. The werewolf I was playing in another game of his that was a mix of all the World of Darkness subgames is one of my favourite characters ever, and the storyline for that game was amazing. This time it just, frankly, sucked.
Worst experience was in an RPGA competiton game at Gencon 1990.
Basically, the party encounters a band of stangers on the far side of a stream.
Suddenly , with no input from the players, not only were we on the other side of the river, but we were sitting around a fire sharing a drin k with the,m, while they were stealing our weapons and about to attack us.
Unfortunately, despite our bitter complaints about the appauling GM we got given, we were eliminated from the competition.
Worst experience in a game ever, and completely put me off playing "competitive" rpg games for life.
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Worst experience was in an RPGA competiton game at Gencon 1990.
Basically, the party encounters a band of stangers on the far side of a stream.
Suddenly , with no input from the players, not only were we on the other side of the river, but we were sitting around a fire sharing a drin k with the,m, while they were stealing our weapons and about to attack us.
Unfortunately, despite our bitter complaints about the appauling GM we got given, we were eliminated from the competition.
Worst experience in a game ever, and completely put me off playing "competitive" rpg games for life.
Stories like this are why I avoid all competitive and organised play. I've heard too many of them from friends and acquaintances.
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I have two examples.
The first and latest was a sci fi game with no fluff what beyond 'yeah, this is deserty type planet' or 'welcome to the wookie home world'. I think we even stopped at Nar Shaddnar but I couldn't tell as there was no impression that this place was any different then anything else we've visited.
The second one... lets just say that we were level 9 and still using our level 5 starting gear. Loot was hard to come by. Fun GM otherwise, I often mirror his approach to GMing when it serves my purposes.
The road of the GM to become good is long and fraught with perils. I spent years being a bad GM, experimenting, trying to find my groove until I became the GM I am now. Just cut the new GMs some slack and offer input or ways to improve, when asked or when you're just talking with your GM away from the table.
My worst experiance?
My GM sending us into a cave as lvl 3s...filled with kobolds...and effectively no gear (we have the basic starting gear, no pots, no wands, or anything since he never gave it to us). And it was a time intesive dungeon...
Turns out... kobolds are VERY good at traps... and crossbows...
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I was in a game where the GM was using material that converted terminator stuff (among the hodgepodge of other systems he loved to mash into one system) to D20 Modern. The biggest thing that pissed me off is when he changed the NPCs mid fight from T-400s to T-1000s just so he could kill my android. I haven't been back since.
Another happened to me last night. The GM tried to tell me that the grab universal monster ability can be used PULL my character as a FREE ACTION to said creature with no save from my character. I called bull on that. She retorted that the monster can and will do that. No. That ended my future gaming in that campaign. Not to mention the ridiculous house rule they use that if you want to speak while in combat, you are limited to 3 words. That's right, speaking in combat is limited to 3 words unless you want to use a standard action to speak. More bull crap.
Grapple rules state that if you initiate a grapple from range, you move the person to an adjacent square to the grappler. Grab initiates a grapple so I think the GM might have played that correctly.
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Worst thing I encountered was a GM who didn't let the players roll dice. You told him what you were doing, and HE rolled you action behind the screen.
I was playing a gunslinger in a campaign. GM started the first and second sessions while I was at work without telling me. When I came to the second session, I came to find my gunslinger in the negatives three HP away from death and with a broken gun.
The gunslinger in the Reign of Winter game I'm playing in at the moment had something like this (the broken gun part, not the being away when this happened bit) in the last session of The Snows of Summer. He'd had a misfire... then the GM disarmed him, had one of the enemies pick up the gun and try to shoot before the player had had a chance to clear it... and rolled another misfire. Gunslinger was left without a gun for the big climactic fight of the adventure, having to rely on a crossbow. Which meant he couldn't use any of his grit to help. Needless to say, he wasn't particularly happy.
Another happened to me last night. The GM tried to tell me that the grab universal monster ability can be used PULL my character as a FREE ACTION to said creature with no save from my character. I called bull on that. She retorted that the monster can and will do that. No. That ended my future gaming in that campaign.
So, uh, this is sort of true, actually. If the monster hits you, they can make a CMB check to grapple you, and when you are grappled, you are automatically pulled adjacent to the creature.
So, if that's what happened, you're wrong. Otherwise, it was probably the GM misunderstanding the sequence of events.
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My god friends... how you guys have suffered
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I could make a list of awful things people have done. The thing that got me most was a group that killed my character on a day I wasn't there. I told them ahead of time I wouldn't show, and they killed my character. He had dozens of ways to defend himself, but he died, and didn't take any actions to protect himself. When they moved on to another game later I didn't join them. I had 100% attendance outside of that one instance too, while other people showed up half the time or less and never had that treatment. Nicely enough a few of the players were apologetic and did object, but I didn't hear that until a few years after.
I also had a group where the GM allowed his friends to walk in and make commentary. This commentary also happened to be telling us how to play, what we did wrong, what we should do, how we should play, if our characters were acting in alignment, and so forth. He did absolutely nothing to stop them when they yelled at us, screamed, and called us terrible names. That was ridiculous. Only guy I've been with who let someone curse out another player, and he always sided with them or made excuses for their behavior. Left that one for 101 reasons. He still hates me for not liking his friends and think they were inappropriate.
Another one had a girlfriend. She got as many rerolls as she said the word 'sweetie' and was always the hero and always knew the best way to handle things and always revealed the plot that we didn't know about. Mary Sue abound, she was perfect and incorruptible. Left that one because if you were a player you were just a side character to her. He also wanted us to love her and her ideas, and if we didn't we were always wrong, almost retroactively, and she was fragile and couldn't handle being anything but the star that everyone loved. He still hates me for not being a big fan of his girlfriend.
Another one revealed plot important details to us all the time. He told us who was the bad guy when he showed up, told us 'just wait until... *Spoiler*' and gave the game no sense of shock. It was also heavily railroaded. He was pretty shocked when I killed a plot important NPC and freaked out. He thought I'd let the villain live and that I'd show him mercy. Nope, dude tried to start the apocalypse, no mercy. Left after he berated me for killing the NPC saying I was the worst possible person and that I just didn't get it. I didn't mind that much though, he already told us the ending... and most of the middle.
My god friends... how you guys have suffered
All part of the hobby if you play with all sorts of people. The worst part is I know people who still play with the people in my examples, and invite them to games I play in... Bleh.
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Worst thing I've done as a GM (this was back in 2nd Ed days, so I'm a bit hazy on the details):
Have a trap that cursed a number of PCs with the ability to cast a 5d6 fireball at will where the more they used it the sooner they would self-immolate. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to finish the game since a few players left for college before we could get back together again.
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We were on the Plane of a Dragon God, asking him for help.
The Dragon God was in a very bad mood and enraged when the wizard said something "not included in the script".
The GM asked for a Wisdom check against fear and my cleric was the only one who succeded and stood firmly on his place...
Also, was the only one who was instantly crushed with a Colossal Dragon's paw for being an arrogant mortal.
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Oh, and almost forgot this one.
One GM, while running a game set in Ravenloft, decided to have my character be the victim in a replay of a certain homosexual rape scene from Pulp Fiction.
For some reason they thought it was funny.
So, this not only ruined gaming with this particular DM but also completely turned me off of Faerun. This takes place about a year before PF was published.
My DM allowed me to play an Elan Psion, despite a general hatred of psionics by my group (myself excluded: love that stuff). Which was freaking cool. Took the racial feats that allowed me to buffer against four damage/pp rather than two. Shenanigans would ensue, including falling from a castle two miles in the sky and surviving.
Our trouble begins with the final encounter of the story arc.
This one king-fellow got his hands on an artifact that would incinerate his own kingdom if switched on, but didn't care for going mad with power at the other applications.
Our heroes arrive just in time to try to put a stop to him. The artifact was psionic in nature, so I was the only member capable of interfacing with it to save the kingdom. The ruler-bad-guy was in a force field so no one else could stop him.
I get locked in a psychic struggle with the fellow. And won the struggle. He goes down, but the artifact wasn't so easily stopped: all that energy had to go somewhere. I sacrifice myself. TO SAVE A KINGDOM.
My reward? I get raised as a HUMAN and can't retrain any of my racial feats.
Later, we venture to the Underdark in a sequel campaign and I get eaten alive by a deathkiss beholder.
Moral of the story: Faerun sucks.
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Moral of the story: Faerun sucks.
Only that none of your stories elements of horrendous GM behaviour would be especially pertinent to Faerun.
I've already told this story, but this is the thread:
I joined a party mid-campaign as a negative-channeling cleric. Aasimar, death domain, spent all of my feats on better/ more channeling, the works. The other members of the party were another (less focused) negative channeling cleric, a wizard, and a bard. We step through a portal and suddenly all magic stops working. Upon discovering this, the wizard starts bawling for her intelligent starknife not to leave her. The GM has the item give her one last message: the god of magic is missing, possibly even dead.
In a party where everyone is a full caster, he pulls this. I'm probably unfairly bitter because my PC was built around channeling, but the other cleric was the only one in the party who really had any combat capability without magic.
How about stopping the game to berate me for hours about what a bad person I must be in real life because my character killed one of his NPCs?
This was after said NPC began screaming for his master (the "powerful" Necromancer) to come and kill us, and nothing we did to try to stop him from screaming would shut him up (we tied him up, stuck a sock in his mouth, tried to knock him unconscious). The GM had little understanding of the rules and could not rule effectively on rendering a character unconscious, so the guy ended up dead, the game immediately ended, and I ended up being lectured for it.
He brought it up again a few times over the years until at some point he must have realized what a douche he had been, because I haven't had to hear about how "evil" I am for a long time now.