whats the most embarrasing thing youve done as a player or a dm?
Roof trap with five cockatrices in it set off remotley by a creature (moderate level Drow with something that allowed him to see invisible PC types) watching for the party from high up on a cavern wall. I have not looked at 3.X edition cockatrices but these where the old ones where if you looked at them then it was save or spontanously combust (thats save or die in game terms). One player managed to survive the encounter by making an improbable string of lucky saves and fleeing but it was essentially a TPK as the campaign was over at that point.
Beyond the fact that the encounter was outragous, in that the players really had almost no way of stopping it, and it was insanely lethal, the whole sequence of events that lead me here was faulty.
Now this was years ago, and I was still a teenager as where my players, so I'll write some of this off as youthful inexperience. But the encounter was actually the result of me trying to kill the party - two players in particuler who where annoying. It might have started with me just wanting to challange them more but it got beyond that. Essentially I faced them down with a bigger nasty and they killed it - so I found an even bigger nasty and they killed that etc. Finally I made an ambush with creatures that that would force the players to make save or die rolls using handfuls of D20's.
I 'won' but somehow squashing my players by making then do save or die rolls by the handful just never had that sweet syrupy taste of victory that I had expected...Victory was not sweet - it tasted like ash.
Now I have nothing against TPKs, what was really wrong with what I did was that I set them up to die.
Now I make my adventures without even considering my party and just designing them to be true to the NPCs motives and the world and I spell out who does what and why in the adventure before my PCs come into contact with it. Then I play 'let the dice fall were they may'.
I sometimes lose my temper, especially when it's one of those days where everyone wants to argue with me when I'm DMing.
I can't really pinpoint a particularly embarassing moment from long ago, but I remember something from a few months ago.
I'm trying to speed things along, as I want the players to get to a good stopping point for the night. They enter a single 20' x 20' room with a single monster in it. I decide to not draw it out on the battlemat and just run the encounter "old-fashioned style" (you know, just your imagination).
The players started arguing about reach and space and who could fire arrows and who could melee and flanking and I got so pissed off that I swept away the miniatures and drew out the encounter, yelling
"Here is your f!!#ing encounter, in all of its glorious minutia"
Annoyance in my players degenerated to laughter as they realized what I had said. "Glorious minutia?" my wife replied...."man, you're a bigger dork than I realized."
Kind of embarassing, I guess.
Twice I've done stupid things in games. The first time was for a one off game where we played a D20 update of Gamma World in a Polyhedron magazine. We spent a good portion of the evening making up characters and ordering pizza. We started the game and the first thing the pcs fought were a bunch of mutated dogs, the fight was fun, but half way through the fight I remembered one of the guys had just buried his dog that day. Ick. Later when the characters were exploring a few caves they had a choice of three paths, the first two lead them through some chokers or some shriekers and a lavender fungus (or something like that). The last path, the one they chose took them to a dead-end with a pool of deep water, and a Chuul. The chuul quickly ate the 3rd level characters whose last sight was of their npc guide running screaming with the last torch out of the cave.
The second time I was running a vampire game in which the PCs were part of a mob family that was run by vamps at the top, but none of the street level guys knew about it. Several months into the game, one of our players needed an out. And so I concocted an elaborate plan involving a trek through the sewers to find a rival gang (really nasty vamps) and some subterfuge and a bargain with a couple of changeling pookas (animal shapeshifter tricksters). The game was running slow, with bickering between the players who kept trying to kill my innocent, but deceiving pooka. It was getting time to wrap up and I was feeling frustrated, the pcs finally reached the lair of their enemies, and then everyone wakes up the next morning, remembering it all as just a dream. Oh man, I thought they were going to lynch me. To this day, anyone who was in that game forbids me from ever using faeries, in any game, period.
Forgot to take the belt of gender transformation out of an adventure and it ended up in the hands of a PC whose player is having real life "gender issues", ouch. I'll never forgive myself for that one.
Drink 19 beers while I was DMing. What ever happened in that game anyway? Luckily, that was ten years ago and I don't do that anymore.
Ultradrunk
Drink 19 beers while I was DMing. What ever happened in that game anyway? Luckily, that was ten years ago and I don't do that anymore.
Ultradrunk
Our whole gaming group recently sobered up. Last 3 gaming sessions were non-alcoholic. I found that I like certain people better "slightly" inebriated, but that it's a "fine" line between "slightly" and "too drunk to game."
The gaming efficiency is better, but the arguments between players are a little more heated now that everyone's sober.
Twice I've done stupid things in games...
No offense, but none of us have done stupid things only twice :)
Regards,
Jack
Stupidest PC moments:#1 Raiding a highlevel(15th or so) liches lair at 4th lvl, and getting paralized by a ghoul. The Pc was still stuck in place when the lich got home.
#2: Running thru 3FoE to "save a friend calling for help" hitting a grease spell and suddenly hugging a very immovable stone wall= *splat...ouch!* Spent the next 3 rounds trying to stand, while Kenkus laughed manically at me.
#3: Seeing oily, greasy substance on the floor and throwing an alchemist's fire at it. "Owowow....Drats! I'm bald!"
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I remember a time not to long ago where i was running a particularly cocky party of adventurers. As a DM, i did remind them from time to time to play smart or it could come back to haunt them. Of course, they didnt listen. They were a bit arrogant(took unnessary risks.) So during this particular adventure they were to gain clues to the Cult of the Dragon God(which should have been a hint in and of itself) and bring back said information to the Magistrate. Low and behold, they ran across a young dragon (way more powerful than these guys could handle--or so they thought) by being stupid and "exited stage left"--as they say--and ran through a tunnel of trash and dead bodies(where one particular underdark race left their kills) during their escape. They did make it to the other side but not w/o their wounds. You see, this area was crawing with what they thought were leeches, but in actuality were--my favorite--rotgrubs. Due to the fire damage they had to inflict on their persons to stop the rotgrub infections, they were quite weak when exiting the garbage tunnel. They were promptly captured. The Magistrate denied any and all knowledge of said characters and the prisoners were sold to a party of Gnolls for food. To be prepared as beef jerky for their long scouting missions and such. Moral of the story, play smart. The game was fair and results were attainable. Too bad these characters thought they were the chosen ones. Needless to say, these players played smart in every campaign since. Even though they were mad at the time, they look back and laugh at the fool descisions they made. Funny stuff.
Module: Cult of the Dragon God. My designed adventure.
Levels: 3-5 for up to 8 characters.
Hack & Slash: moderate
Investigation of mystery:moderate
CR: depending on wisdom used by adventurers. This is where they failed. They played this like a 1st edition module and tried to enter every room--especially the one marked with the Dragon God Sigil. We all know we dont enter all the rooms. They know this now too. Ha!
Thoth Amon the Atlantian Mindflayerian
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Twice I've done stupid things in games. The first time was for a one off game where we played a D20 update of Gamma World in a Polyhedron magazine. We spent a good portion of the evening making up characters and ordering pizza. We started the game and the first thing the pcs fought were a bunch of mutated dogs, the fight was fun, but half way through the fight I remembered one of the guys had just buried his dog that day. Ick. Later when the characters were exploring a few caves they had a choice of three paths, the first two lead them through some chokers or some shriekers and a lavender fungus (or something like that). The last path, the one they chose took them to a dead-end with a pool of deep water, and a Chuul. The chuul quickly ate the 3rd level characters whose last sight was of their npc guide running screaming with the last torch out of the cave.
The second time I was running a vampire game in which the PCs were part of a mob family that was run by vamps at the top, but none of the street level guys knew about it. Several months into the game, one of our players needed an out. And so I concocted an elaborate plan involving a trek through the sewers to find a rival gang (really nasty vamps) and some subterfuge and a bargain with a couple of changeling pookas (animal shapeshifter tricksters). The game was running slow, with bickering between the players who kept trying to kill my innocent, but deceiving pooka. It was getting time to wrap up and I was feeling frustrated, the pcs finally reached the lair of their enemies, and then everyone wakes up the next morning, remembering it all as just a dream. Oh man, I thought they were going to lynch me. To this day, anyone who was in that game forbids me from ever using faeries, in any game, period.
This Vampire game sounds cool; whats it called? Thanx
Thoth Amon the Atlantian Mindflayerian
Stupidest thing ever done, as a player or DM: Lost my temper.
It's just a game, people.
M