The worst that a GM has done to me....
That would have occurred during 2ed. I was playing a fighter with the Swashbukler kit and a pair of sabres. Another guy was playing a ranger with a serious archery fixation. Our two characters worked well together. He would significantly soften things up as they came at us, and I generally finished them off once they reached us. The GM apparently felt that we were too good at what we did. So he inserted into some treasure that we acquired at one point a pair of magical coins. I conveniently got one while the ranger got the other one. These coins forced a change on our alignments. Mine was shifted from CG to CE and the ranger's went from CG to LG. He apparently figured that this make it impossible for us to work together. We continued working together fairly well, it was in my character's interest at that point to keep the peace so to speak. Shortly after the alignment changes though, an altercation did occur between our characters. It happened because we had been "captured" and forced to row a slave galley. We managed to break free and the LG ranger went berserk and was killing out former captors, while I was knocking them out. My reasoning was that I wasn't going to row my butt back to shore, I was going to make them do it. Our two characters started fighting. As part of 2ed rules, he also spent NWP ranks to be an expert pugilist, so the unarmed combat between the characters greatly favored my character. Evil was winning. :D Something the GM couldn't allow, so he then struck my character blind (bolt from the heavens kind of thing). Which he had blind-fighting, so he carried on with the beating of the ranger. So the GM then struck my character deaf as well, and for good measure, completely removed all sensory information. It was at this point I just packed up my stuff and left.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Not mine, but this old doozy is unforgivable.
Small party of mixed alignments, formed for a while. Party has a paladin. GM's friend comes on board as a CE wizard.
CE wizard's player proceeds to undermine the paladin.
GM lets it go without a word.
CE wizard then magically dominates the paladin.
GM lets it go without a word.
CE wizard forces the dominated paladin into sex, raping her.
GM has the paladin fall for it.
Some situations call for the table to be flipped over.
Others call for people to be beaten with it.
|
I once had a GM who does not use maps (I know...). He just kinda describes the room and we kinda tell him where we want to go and things just kinda happened. It worked ok until we wanted to go back to a specific room in a complex dungeon. His snide reply was "And how do you get back there? Give me directions."
He also had a habit of making PCs spend all their starting gold. I believe his fear was that someone will save most of his money and buy a item later that he would normally not be able to afford at that level. Of course we were all lvl 3, so we had to grudgingly give up the ~50 gp that we each have left after character creation.
One time, he got into an argument with another player who is playing a cleric. The player wanted to called his character "Father ________", but this GM said he couldn't because Father is a specific title in the church hierarchy (maybe in his game?) so the char must be called "Brother _________" instead. From that point on, all debates in which the GM unreasonably imposes penalties for no good reason other than flavor are known as a "Father vs. Brother Conversation."
Not mine, but this old doozy is unforgivable.
Small party of mixed alignments, formed for a while. Party has a paladin. GM's friend comes on board as a CE wizard.
CE wizard's player proceeds to undermine the paladin.
GM lets it go without a word.
CE wizard then magically dominates the paladin.
GM lets it go without a word.
CE wizard forces the dominated paladin into sex, raping her.
GM has the paladin fall for it.
Some situations call for the table to be flipped over.
Others call for people to be beaten with it.
Ugh. Agreed 101%. Am I alone in thinking that Player Character rape comes under the heading of "not funny?"
|
Not mine, but this old doozy is unforgivable.
Small party of mixed alignments, formed for a while. Party has a paladin. GM's friend comes on board as a CE wizard.
CE wizard's player proceeds to undermine the paladin.
GM lets it go without a word.
CE wizard then magically dominates the paladin.
GM lets it go without a word.
CE wizard forces the dominated paladin into sex, raping her.
GM has the paladin fall for it.
Some situations call for the table to be flipped over.
Others call for people to be beaten with it.
This sounds like more than a bad GM problem. This sounds like a bad human being problem.
|
|
Not mine, but this old doozy is unforgivable.
Small party of mixed alignments, formed for a while. Party has a paladin. GM's friend comes on board as a CE wizard.
CE wizard's player proceeds to undermine the paladin.
GM lets it go without a word.
CE wizard then magically dominates the paladin.
GM lets it go without a word.
CE wizard forces the dominated paladin into sex, raping her.
GM has the paladin fall for it.
Some situations call for the table to be flipped over.
Others call for people to be beaten with it.
Ugh. Agreed 101%. Am I alone in thinking that Player Character rape comes under the heading of "not funny?"
Well, there are at least two of us... plus those involved in the table beating.
Not mine, but this old doozy is unforgivable.
Small party of mixed alignments, formed for a while. Party has a paladin. GM's friend comes on board as a CE wizard.
CE wizard's player proceeds to undermine the paladin.
GM lets it go without a word.
CE wizard then magically dominates the paladin.
GM lets it go without a word.
CE wizard forces the dominated paladin into sex, raping her.
GM has the paladin fall for it.
Some situations call for the table to be flipped over.
Others call for people to be beaten with it.
While I agree that the scenario described above is not at all funny, I was in a situation in a Champions game where my brick PC was being teased by the female mentalist PC (our heroes had been in a previous relationship but were now broken up). My PC got fed up with her teasing and made a "presence" attack against her to "Get nekkid!" and I rolled so well she started to do so before the decency rule kicked in and she stomped off in a huff. We were all crying we laughed so hard (even the player of the female PC). Good times.
But to add my own horror story to the mix...
In college I did not have a steady group to play with, but there was a gamer's association at the university and so I went to check them out one evening. There was a group just getting started and they asked if I wanted to join them and I said sure. I didn't have a character but quickly rolled up a low level druid (this was 2nd ed) and submitted it to the DM who said it was fine.
The other players they were waiting on had showed up by this time (it was a fairly large group) and we set off on the adventure, which just happened to be based in the wilderness. Hooray for me! We were in the process of sneaking up on a cave of evil humanoids (either goblins or orcs or some such, I don't recall) from the depths of the forest surrounding it. I had positioned myself behind the cover of a tree, and put a snare spell on the ground behind me to thwart any would-be assassins, and as combat started I was killed. The DM just told me that something had snuck up behind me and did enough damage in one shot to kill me. I thanked him for wasting an hour of my time and left. Douche.
I'll add one of my own horror stories to the mix. This came from when I was first trying to get into rpgs, at last the non-computer kind. I was at college and I found a group that played Legend of the Five Rings. I knew nothing about this system or setting other than it was based on Samurii stuff.
First I tried to make a Ronin, I had a backstory, purpose, etc. I died in the first game session due to the messed up mass combat rules they had.
So second character was the first character's brother. I really liked the idea and wanted to a chance to try it out. He met the same fate as his brother in his first game session as well.
So far two characters dead in less time than it took to roll them up. So I sat down with the books and spent a lot of time making a Ninja from the Scorpian clan. I even spent a bunch of points to be blackmailing the Daimyo of another clan and had been trained in some of that clan's abilities just so I could pass as another clan. Cool cover story, good skills, what I thought was a well designed character.
Only problem was the GM couldn't think of how to introduce me. As I'm sitting there waiting they are RPing one of the characters being brought his bath water by the troops they had. So I make a joke about jumping out of the bath water.
The GM decides that this is how I will actually be introduced. So I jump out of the bath water infront of everyone in ninja outfit with my clan logo on it. It went down hill from there. Suffice it to say that this managed to be the lest satifying and fun of the three characters to play.
|
Many years ago -the game was Twilight 2000. We were heading down a river, all experienced soldiers stuck in Europe after the war trying to make our way back to the States.
So this was our first encounter - was some riff-raff shooting at our boat from the shore - we were actually pretty close so we begin an exchange of gunfire. I decide to chuck a WP nade to give us some smoke cover. I missed my throw; the ref decided to have a little fun and say that the nade was dropped inside the boat (didn’t botch or roll a 1). I didn't want my teammates to die so I immediately attempted to grab it before it popped and toss it in the water.
Next scene is my guy with both arms missing (burnt off) going "nooooooooo" as he falls over the boat into the water. Nothing happened to the rest of the guys or the nade which was still on the boat - just that great stupid visual. All in an effort to show how "realistic" his game was. No intelligence, no consideration for my guys knowledge and there was no chance of me pulling off what I wanted to do from the get go.
He could have told me up front but he wanted to show how deadly this game was compared to D&D - to make an example out of my character. Did I say that this was the first encounter in the game?
I saw alot of this type of nonsense in Call of Cthulhu - which is a great game run by mostly bad GMs.
Luckily for my players I never fell into the "LOL, your character goes insane and starts shooting at his friends", or "LOL, you're dead! Make up a new man!"
I had respect for the time it took to make up PCs and and had already ran the better designed/superior Chill Rpg which helped my temperament when running CoC (back in 86).
I actually had a campaign going and ran it closer to traditional horror or HPLs stories vs. the Anti-D&D epeen game which it was pushed as in it's day, just a set-up for fail.
The worst one that happened to a friend of mine is still talked about in our circle, even though it happened over 10 years ago now. In second edition, the DM threw the characters up against a dragon at 3-4th level. The 3rd level barbarian (kit for fighter, not class) with 2-3 hp left rolled a critical, and did just enough damage to kill the dragon, much to the party's relief.
As is our custom, if you kill the bad guy, you get to describe the final hit in as much gory detail as you please. The player playing the barbarian described how he two handed his axe and nailed the dragon between the ribs. The DM then made him roll a dexterity check with a penalty, (his dump stat) or be hit by the carcass of the huge creature as it fell over in its death throes which he missed, and took enough damage to die an ungraceful death.
Everyone ragged on that DM for months about that one. It was also the last campaign he ran, but not just for that. He also had a rule that every time you rolled a 1, you hit a friend with your weapon at full damage (accidentally).
L5R, I'm playing a Dragon Shugenja. The heritage tables give me an ancestral weapon (just a superior katana, nothing super) (yay) and a nemesis (boo). I was going to play a character that messed with fireworks.
First session, the nemesis shows up (a cousin of mine), shouting about how unworthy I am of the weapon, blah-blah, it's duel time. The GM says it's fine if I use spells in the fight, as I really don't stand a chance otherwise.
So the fight starts. Apparently the GM had built a dueling specialist (min-maxed to the gills), who cuts off my right hand, taking my spell scroll with it (lots of raises for that to happen). Making a willpower check, my character manages to pick up the scroll with his left hand, which promptly gets chopped off as well.
The nemesis mocks me and walks off into the sunset.
I (after not bleeding to death), calmly ask one of the other characters to tie the ancestral sword to a tree, sharp end out, and run I myself through with it.
The GM sits there looking shocked and asked why I did that - you could just get your hands regenerated, right?
Wrong. No such magic in Rokugan.
I had a GM tell us exactly how everything went and how our characters reacted to each of his little bits of description followed by the occaisional token die roll (again by him). We proceeded to sit and blink and attempt to get a word in edge-wise. Luckily we were only 8 years old, but our GM was a 15ish year old brother of our friend. Even though we were young and we had just discovered D&D it always stuck out in mine and a couple of my long-time gamer pals' heads as a situation that we never wanted to repeat ever again.
Incidentally, about six years later that GM was the inspiration for my group's coining and use of the term "Herbo" as a somewhat playful yet derogatory adjective defining a player that magically rolls 18's on their 3d6 when the GM looks away, grows magic items between sessions, drinks al the Dr. Pepper and generally has to have god-mode active at all times in order to have any semblance of fun.
|
I was maybe in early middle school and had been interested in learning about RPGs. So a friend came over and we sat for hours designing a low level character.
So he starts off by telling me I'm in a dungeon... no backstory as to why, but there I am. He asks me what do I do.
"Well, I walk forward."
He then informs me then I stepped on a dragon's tail, woke him, and he killed me (never rolled in any of this). I asked how come he couldn't have told me the dragon was there before. He said we'll it was pitch black and I couldn't see... something he didn't tell me because I didn't ask.
I was so pissed that it was years before I would try role playing again. This time I GM'ed and I have a steady dedicated group for years afterwards.
A Six-hour con game…
One hour of character creation.
Two hours of GM back-story.
One (and only one) combat where only the NPC could touch the monster (the rest of us ran, hid and healed each other) that lasted for over one hour.
Probably about an hours total worth of breaks.
But rest of the time, not very memorable.
Incidentally, about six years later that GM was the inspiration for my group's coining and use of the term "Herbo" as a somewhat playful yet derogatory adjective defining a player that magically rolls 18's on their 3d6 when the GM looks away, grows magic items between sessions, drinks all the Dr. Pepper and generally has to have god-mode active at all times in order to have any semblance of fun.
emphasis mine
Now, there's are things you just can't do!
Also, can't help to look back and forth between your definition of "herbo" and your user name. Stay away from my Dr. Pepper you bastard! ;)
Shamefully, most of my "horror stories" would be mine imposing on my players, such as physically splitting the group (of players) when the group (of characters) separated, or pitting my PCs against monsters with Tarrasque-like clause of death such as "the creature dies only on a natural 20 *after* its ridiculously high pool of HPs for a 2E monster are dropped to 0". I was younger then...
Not that it prevented my players from massacring my monsters 'though, not even the two-headed linnorm that required TWO natural 20s! Little bastards.
'findel
|
I've had my worst experiences at conventions. Its pot luck, though. I've definitely had some of my best experiences at conventions, too (TOTALLY a side note: when I see a female gamemaster, I secretly cheer... I've had the absolute best times at any convention while playing in games run by women). As for the worst...
There was a guy at DexCon (in NJ) in 2004 who just seemed totally unprepared, ran a 'rules lite' game (translation: he didn't know a rule), totally overmatched us at every encounter and had his pet NPC (translation: GM Mary Sue PC) literally stare down the opposition and go on 'impressing' us that this NPC was so "uber powerful". I was with a friend in that game and, based on some comedian's act we had both seen, we both chanted "Your powers are beyond our comprehension." and laughed. We followed that up by basically becoming Crow and Tom Servo and doing the MST3K thing for the rest of the adventure and had fun despite the GM.
Then there was a time I was with two friends and we were bored. One said he'd run a short D&D game for us. He'd prepare while we made characters. I don't remember what level we were but part of the process for making our character was bouncing ideas and basically cooperative story-telling until we had two PC's... a mother and daughter. Details are fuzzy but the "dungeon" turned out to be a two-room basement beneath the generic inn we started in. I don't even remember how we got there but there was certainly an indication of some sort of adventure - a secret way into a sewer, dungeon, or whatever. As it turned out, there were no secret doors, no monsters, no treasure, no nothing! We were so sure we missed something we spent forever looking for secret doors, loose flagstones, you name it. The GM was basically having fun watching us jump through hoops while getting frustrated. By the time we realized it, we both decided to fight it out just so one of us could say we killed something (other than the GM). I lost... sorta.
YEARS later, we were playing my long-running D&D game (newly upgraded to 2nd Edition)... and he teleported low (which in 1e and 2e was instant permadeath barring wishes). Of course he whined about how frustrating it is to have a character die that way to which I responded, "Not nearly as frustrating as being killed by your mother in a two-room dungeon in which you spent hours discovering absolutely nothing." I wasn't right... I'm sure his situation was a lot more frustrating... but it sealed up any possibility he thought he might have of winning that particular argument.
|
|
I've mentioned this before, but here's the worse thing that has ever happened to one of my characters.
I had a 3rd level Wizard in 1e. He was at a bar.
A bunch of NPCs grabbed him and had him be raped by a horse.
Maybe you've mentioned it before but this is the first time I'm seeing it... I know its wrong but I (really and honestly!) laughed out loud. Not at the subject matter... just at wondering just what sort of story this GM was planning to tell. Where the hell do you go from there? And how the hell do you expect to take anyone along with you?
Poor horsey...
|
|
I find it interesting that of the various "GM horror stories" related above, two were for GMs who were children (is anyone proud of what they did when they were fifteen?) and several were really player horror stories where the GM allowed a bad player to go on too long. (Of course, had the GM intervened, it would be the OTHER player posting his "horror story" about having his character concept nerfed by the GM...)
Sure, there are bad GMs out there - no excuse for the "you're dead with no rolls" or "haha, no adventure here" guys. But consider - GM'ing is hard work, way more time-consuming than being a player. Unlike being a player where you go up in level, a GM is "successful" when his own characters die and his plans are thwarted, because then the PCs are succeeding... so the rewards for actually being a GM are elusive. (And mostly come from good players... it's a feedback loop.)
So cut your GM a break - he or she is probably busting their butt just to bring you a game. Offer constructive criticism, participate fully, don't be one of <I>those</I> players, and I bet you won't ever have a GM horror story again.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I've only had one absolutely terrible experience. I had been invited over to my friend's apartment because his friend was going to run a game for us. He had been planning this game for over a year and finally decided that he had wanted some people to play it. He didn't tell us this of course, he just claimed we were going to run a one-shot session. He had us roll up level 15 characters, although I admitted that I had never played higher than about level 8. He told me not to worry. As we were sitting around, he jokingly asked us to roll for initiative. We all laughed and complied.
Then he became very angry. Suddenly we begin, instantly surrounded by mind-flayers that absolutely want to kill us. We fight for awhile, and the mind-flayers take off running, save for one grappling our totemist(or something like that, I don't really remember the class name). The totemist has no way of winning, so he uses dimension door and teleports as far as he can up, with the mind-flayer still on him. We fly up to catch him, as I am able to cast feather fall and can hopefully save him.
Nope. We suddenly find ourselves unable to fly. Apparently magic just stopped working. I fall, and a purple worm bursts through the ground and eats me, right out of the sky. It somehow knew where I was in the air, despite having no eyes. Next, our totemist and demon binder fall and hit the ground, despite having wings that were completely nonmagical. They are surrounded by an army of thousands of warforged that stretch to the horizon, that we conveniently never saw despite being 600 feet in the air. They kill our fellow players with thousands of fireballs.
We then learn that our kind GM had decided this was our fate the instant we stopped being serious and rolled for initiative, despite the fact that we were just playing off of his joke. He then tells us to roll up new characters so we can really start his year-long planned campaign. No thanks.
Figure I might also need to mention he was 23 years old, and normally a mature adult.
Just like with having children, there should be an age minimum and lengthy written test to pass before one is allowed to run a game.
First adventure: Me (barbarian) and a rogue (both 1st lvl) enter a mountain for glory and loot. First thing we see is a black cloaked mage exiting a room. So we follow. Into a room with 30 orcs just in time to see the mage leaving through another door and the door we went through shuts behind us. Leaving us with the orcs. So i rage and charge the orcs only to be told 'You're both dead'. No rolls, just death. BS!!
2nd adventure (same DM, stupid me): I'm playing a paladin with a pegasus mount. My mount gets shot with arrows, loses more than 1/2 hp so can't fly anymore. I was under the impression the pegasus could glide to the ground. No. We fell...Straight into a spiked pit. Dead. BS!!!
Luckily i didn't let that deter me.
Not mine, but this old doozy is unforgivable.
Small party of mixed alignments, formed for a while. Party has a paladin. GM's friend comes on board as a CE wizard.
CE wizard's player proceeds to undermine the paladin.
GM lets it go without a word.
CE wizard then magically dominates the paladin.
GM lets it go without a word.
CE wizard forces the dominated paladin into sex, raping her.
GM has the paladin fall for it.
Some situations call for the table to be flipped over.
Others call for people to be beaten with it.
I dont see what was wrong here at all to be honest. Its a mature roleplaying game when the group is adults. Nor should in charecter actions ever be considered offensive out of charecter unless its metagaming or bad role playing like your lg pally raping someone for no reason.
I will admit its not funny, and it requires maturity in the group. I guess it depends on how it was dealt with. I guess as long as it was in charecter, cant take the heat get your ass out the kitchen is what I would think.
The only thing that is funny about the situation is that you think because the CE wiz dominates, tricks, and "rapes" your charecter IN CHARECTER with appropriate rolls that you should deserve intervention. The only person who would be getting cheated would be the CE wizard.
Hmm... taste in situations aside, I think the GM fault lies in A) letting one player dictate the actions of another (not considering the opinion or desires of that second player) and B) the 'mixed party' concept, which I have yet to see work out in my own experience (not that much, I'll admiit, but what I have seen is bad enough). Not something to try until you're sure you have a group together that can handle an RP challenge like that.
Also, the paladin didn't rape anyone 'for no reason.' She was magically dominated, and the CE wiz used that to rape HER.
|
|
The only thing that is funny about the situation is that you think because the CE wiz dominates, tricks, and "rapes" your character IN CHARACTER with appropriate rolls that you should deserve intervention. The only person who would be getting cheated would be the CE wizard.
Read it again.
Remember that this is about GMs who cause problems.
Point 1 : It's a group game, and the DM brought a player along to an established group whose first character immediately tried to destroy another player's character.
In this instance: "Hey, I'm just playing my character." Begs the question: "Why, when you were creating your character, did you decide to make one who would destroy another character?"
Point 2 : The GM decided to make the Paladin fall.
So, the paladin loses a load of abilities and becomes a weak fighter because an evil person dominated his/her mind?
Unfair and unbecoming for a LG deity.
If a player joins a group and immediately starts trying to spoil somebody else's fun then that person is not worth playing with and the GM should be told to grow up or sod off. As the GM brought him/her to the group, it was the GM who should have done the telling.
|
|
I dont see what was wrong here at all to be honest. Its a mature roleplaying game when the group is adults. Nor should in charecter actions ever be considered offensive out of charecter unless its metagaming or bad role playing like your lg pally raping someone for no reason.I will admit its not funny, and it requires maturity in the group. I guess it depends on how it was dealt with. I guess as long as it was in charecter, cant take the heat get your ass out the kitchen is what I would think.
The only thing that is funny about the situation is that you think because the CE wiz dominates, tricks, and "rapes" your charecter IN CHARECTER with appropriate rolls that you should deserve intervention. The only person who would be getting cheated would be the CE wizard.
Sweet Jesus.
I hate Lightning Bolt. Especially 2nd ed ones. For two reasons.
1) Way back when, I had this awesome fighter that fought with a katana and a bow he made himself. It was a Darksun campaign (yeah, I know, katana-Darksun, but be that as it may..) and these weapons were superior, though not magical, since he made them while using psionics or some such. In an encounter the wizard in the group (this was a very strange campaign I'll add, so he wasn't a preserver or a defiler, because he came from someplace else, though he did defile when he casted his spell, argh!" I'm rambling again!) flung a Lightning Bolt that hit a barrel and got REDIRECTED so it hit my character and thereby destroying my bow. It was a totally arbitrary decision made by the GM and I was so annoyed (GentleGiant may remeber this insident since he was there ;) )(Annoyed is not the right word but I don't like to use the kind of words it takes to describe it :D)
2) We were fighting our way through Firestorm Peak, I think it was called. My all time favorite character, Gworeth (*gasp!*), got hit 4 times by Lightning Bolts. He charged forward, or flew or some such only to get in the line of fire by the groups two spell-casters that hit the monster with each their Lightning Bolts that went on to rebound on the walls and returned hitting him, and the monster, again. That costed me some nice gear. Especially a fancy new shiled he'd just picked up. That was the second shield in a short timespan that got destroyed so he refused to use shields again. Needless to say he survived, the monster did not.
First situation I can see no logical reason as to why the spell should behave the way it did. This was a GM call that was uncalled for.
Second situation, though in many ways more devastating to my character, I could see the "fairness" of it, though I didn't like the result. So bad GM and good GM.
|
|
One time, he got into an argument with another player who is playing a cleric. The player wanted to called his character "Father ________", but this GM said he couldn't because Father is a specific title in the church hierarchy (maybe in his game?) so the char must be called "Brother _________" instead. From that point on, all debates in which the GM unreasonably imposes penalties for no good reason other than flavor are known as a "Father vs. Brother Conversation."
"Next, on Celebrity Cleric Deathmatch, The Deep Fat Friar versus the Chip Monk!"
I've mentioned this before, but here's the worse thing that has ever happened to one of my characters.
I had a 3rd level Wizard in 1e. He was at a bar.
A bunch of NPCs grabbed him and had him be raped by a horse.
That's... special..
Any particular reason?
The only thing that is funny about the situation is that you think because the CE wiz dominates, tricks, and "rapes" your charecter IN CHARECTER with appropriate rolls that you should deserve intervention. The only person who would be getting cheated would be the CE wizard.
There is only one kind of 'wrongbadfun' and that is to destroy another player's fun, and that is what this was - deliberately, with malice aforethought, in a way that is very distasteful and frankly makes me wonder about the person doing it.
PS - "I'm only playing my character" is another way of saying "I want to act like a douche and never suffer the consequences." You made the character that way, after all.
I find it interesting that of the various "GM horror stories" related above, two were for GMs who were children (is anyone proud of what they did when they were fifteen?) and several were really player horror stories where the GM allowed a bad player to go on too long. (Of course, had the GM intervened, it would be the OTHER player posting his "horror story" about having his character concept nerfed by the GM...)
Sure, there are bad GMs out there - no excuse for the "you're dead with no rolls" or "haha, no adventure here" guys. But consider - GM'ing is hard work, way more time-consuming than being a player. Unlike being a player where you go up in level, a GM is "successful" when his own characters die and his plans are thwarted, because then the PCs are succeeding... so the rewards for actually being a GM are elusive. (And mostly come from good players... it's a feedback loop.)
So cut your GM a break - he or she is probably busting their butt just to bring you a game. Offer constructive criticism, participate fully, don't be one of <I>those</I> players, and I bet you won't ever have a GM horror story again.
Yes, Lamplighter, you're right - but this is not that kind of thread;-)
GRU
Sweet Jesus.
I dont see what was wrong here at all to be honest. Its a mature roleplaying game when the group is adults. Nor should in charecter actions ever be considered offensive out of charecter unless its metagaming or bad role playing like your lg pally raping someone for no reason.I will admit its not funny, and it requires maturity in the group. I guess it depends on how it was dealt with. I guess as long as it was in charecter, cant take the heat get your ass out the kitchen is what I would think.
The only thing that is funny about the situation is that you think because the CE wiz dominates, tricks, and "rapes" your charecter IN CHARECTER with appropriate rolls that you should deserve intervention. The only person who would be getting cheated would be the CE wizard.
Indeed, Mikaze, indeed...
To you, JudasKilled, You see normal people don't usually like to... erh, forget it.GRU
I've mentioned this before, but here's the worse thing that has ever happened to one of my characters.
I had a 3rd level Wizard in 1e. He was at a bar.
A bunch of NPCs grabbed him and had him be raped by a horse.
That's... special..
Any particular reason?The GM was being a douche?
And you needed one...after?
SORRY! I just HAD to say it!
GRU
I realize you're trying to make light of a bad situation, but you're coming off as little different from JudasKilled.I've mentioned this before, but here's the worse thing that has ever happened to one of my characters.
I had a 3rd level Wizard in 1e. He was at a bar.
A bunch of NPCs grabbed him and had him be raped by a horse.
That's... special..
Any particular reason?The GM was being a douche?
And you needed one...after?
SORRY! I just HAD to say it!
GRU
I did not mean to offend you and it seems like I did. Please accept my apology:-)
GRU
|
My worst experience involved a cumulative series of events by a single GM who believed that a "challenging encounter" was one that allowed for one solution you needed to find, and said solution often required a die roll with a 25% chance of success. He actually got frustrated with us once because we didn't use dispel magic (his believed "appropriate" response to the encounter) because the wizard needed to roll a 17.
Some of the individual elements of those sessions that stand out (we started at level 12):
- The game opened with a fight vs. a sundering ettin that destroyed a good 1/2 of our equipment and all our magic weapons (four on the first round of combat). We should have realized this was going to be the direction of things. The ranger in the party lost 4 weapons that fight.
- An immediate follow-up fight to the ettin fight vs. a bunch of high DR creatures (at that point only one character had a weapon left).
- At least three fights which involved the entire party under the effects of fear (except mine due to my high wil save) simply due to the sheer number of opponents with fear.
- Watching our halfling rogue die because of the white dragon that jumped out of a frozen lake, grappled the halfling, and fled into the water not to be seen again all on the first two rounds of combat.
- Watching my character instantly die vs. an enemy we couldn't notice who during the surprise round charged me with an average damage attack two points higher than my HP + 10 was an appropriate encounter.
- A designed one-on-one fight of a non-combat cleric vs. a mind flayer (because the cleric was the only character who would not get dominated).
- Designed encounters that completely neutered our group's summoner (wizard). Everything we fought had protection from good, which prevented the neutral creatures from attacking.
Really though, the story I still tell to this day involved a fight vs. a frost giant. When the fight was over and we defeated the giant he had it fall over and land on my character. While irritating in its own right (I was not permitted a save or any sort of "get out of the way" roll), the real trouble was that he made the other players describe in detail how they would get me out. The level of detail he required made the "digging out" encounter take two hours of table time. As an avid hunter, he wasn't satisfied with a simple "we cut it up", he demanded a level of specifics which needed to mirror proper butchering techniques. It was just painful.
|
|
Really though, the story I still tell to this day involved a fight vs. a frost giant. When the fight was over and we defeated the giant he had it fall over and land on my character. While irritating in its own right (I was not permitted a save or any sort of "get out of the way" roll), the real trouble was that he made the other players describe in detail how they would get me out. The level of detail he required made the "digging out" encounter take two hours of table time. As an avid hunter, he wasn't satisfied with a simple "we cut it up", he demanded a level of specifics which needed to mirror proper butchering techniques. It was just painful.
That reminds me of two friends I play the german game DSA with...both are Renaisance fair junkies and have their own medieval/pagan guild (ok, I have to post the link for them, though the site is in german)
They are very interested and well read in medieval history, craft and unfortunately hunting techniques. When one of them (they're cousins, I guess that made things worse...) played a hunter and the other one was GM, the hunter often set out to hunt game for our party, both left the room to play out that hunt and often use 1-2 hours just to discuss what game he found, what of the animals carcass he could use, etc. while the rest of us waited for them to return.
Fortunately that got much better, otherwise I'd have left the group for good.
The worst thing a GM was doing to a party I played in was in a second edition Ravenloft game. The Adventure revolved around an NPC fooling Rudolf von Richten into despicable acts, believing he is hunting vampires. Bad about this:
1: My character was the only one who met vo Richten before and even that was not one of the old mans most shining moments. The other characters never even heard of him, so none of the characters had any reason even to think the atrocities he commited were anything other than the deeds of an evil madman...
2: The traitorous NPC appeared exactly once at the beginning of the adventure (along the line of "that is my trusted servant Bob"), then never again.
3: The GM didn't do anything to get the story moving. When we weren't in the exact place he wanted something to happen, nothing happed. That lead to the result of the partys bard to organize a play of "Dr Faust" at the local tavern and the rest of the group mapping out more or less every suspicious place in town (no, the GM didn't throw in any red herrings, in fact he seemed to avoid needlessly distracting our group with any action)
4: When we were in the right place, we would have had to suspect something fishy going on to see through any of the tricks the almost unknown NPC. The GM gleefully ignored that most of the tricks (illusions of 1st and 2nd level) would't have worked because (2nd edition!) two of the partys characters were immune to such spells!
5: The GM handed us a map of the building most of the adventure took place (with or without us). That map unfortunatly didn't include the non secret back door that the villain used. Yes, we had explored the building at that time, that's why he provided us the map, because he didn't feel like playing through the description of a public building.
After 6 evenings of virtually no adventure at all, trying to help a character that non of us knew well and who behaved like a madman, the party left town.
The GM was experienced and although not one of the best I played with, did some pretty good adventures. But considering these were 7 sessions, it was certainly not just a bad day.
I know that it isn't a player story, it's a DM story, but even so...
I was playing a 3.5 campaign one time where my chara was a Scout and another was a Barbarian. I think we were around level three or four and the group was up against the BBEG of the entire campaign who, at this point, was at least seven or eight levels higher than the rest of us, though we didn't know that at the time.
I had just moved up to flank the BBEG with the Barb; I don't remember if I had Precise Shot yet or not, but in hindsight, it wasn't the greatest idea in the world. Anyway, the Barb rolled a critical hit on the BBEG and the DM then said that the BBEG used some kind of hyper-speed ability he had to dodge the crit and then threw in that, since the guy had simply moved out of the great-axe's way, the gaxe kept going and hit my Scout instead. He then forced the other player to roll for damage and it ended up being max...so my Scout was dead in one shot.
Needless to say, neither of us was very happy about that.
...I will not go into details, but his Barbarian stalked her in-game, and graphically descriptively proceeded to...Hopefully needless to say, we never played with them again.
Even though it was a players action, the GM is a moderator of sorts, as well, and something like that should be interrupted.(which we kind of tried, but were mostly too shocked/speechless to do properly)
Sad that this should be her first impression of the game...
some people tend to think that abuse is okay, as long as it dressed up as role playing. Because this IS abuse - when one player deliberately makes another uncomfortable, it isn't character vs. character anymore, it's just someone being an a.. hole towards another player.GRU
I was playing in a very short lived Ars Magica saga once where I had an experience I'll never forget.
Our party was newly arrived in Ireland when we were hearing tales of the "return" of Cú Chulainn. I can't remember all the specifics of the situation (this was like 11 years ago) but there was a theory that it was a diabolist using Cú Chulainn as a ruse/disguise. The people of the town were ecstatic and were hopeful that "Cú Chulainn" would save them from their woes.
Somehow one of our party got all wrapped up in frenzy too, played by Player-X... and his character started doing some very blatant spellcasting and basically bringing the party into the eyes of the commoners. Some bad stuff went down and all hell broke loose. Player-X's magus was eventually mobbed and beaten to a pulp.
Later on, the magus I was playing (a non-poltical Bjornaer, with no ulterior motivations) began retelling the story of the day's events (truthfully) to an elder magus at a nearby covenant.
At this point Player-X, who had no character participating in the scene, became red-faced and **screamed** at the top of his lungs:
"YOU LIE!! YOU F*****G LIAR!! YOU LIE!!"
o.O
I was totally dumbfounded and all the other players at the table were compeletly stunned - jaws dropped all around. Never before had I seen or witnessed such an insane outburst - never mind the whole out-of-character-ness of it all.
It killed the scene, the session, and the saga.
Never played with him since.
|
|
Damn, my post was eaten...
Okay, so I was jonesing for a DnD game one summer. I was far away from any games, but there was one going on an hour and a half away for DnD world game day. I decided to go.
The game store was pretty sweet, and my buddy and I got there early (since the game was suppose to start an hour after it opened). We were told the DM wasn't there yet and he'd be there in an hour to start up the game.
We hung out, played some games and were very excited. After waiting 3 hours, the DM finally showed up. That should have been the red flag to leave.
The DM walked in and immediately mentioned they were late starting, therefore he wasn't going to be running the game as an official game (no points or sign up).
He asked everyone how experienced they were. I assumed he did this to ensure the new players had easier classes and the more experience would fill in the other parts. When I mentioned this, he replied that "he didn't have the time to do that" and randomized them.
We then reviewed our character sheets. Turns out there were some pretty big errors (missing feats for 3rd level, darkvision, proficiencies, bad math), which I and another player pointed out. The DM stated that he had to run the game as written (remember that) and he didn't really have the time or ability to quickly check the rules to ensure we were right. Also, he didn't have a PH.
At this point, one would expect that we'd start the dungeon crawl. Instead, he took about 30 minutes to explain how we should roleplay each of the characters, including accents we should use, catchphrases and our general personalities. I found that a little odd, but assumed this was to help the new players out.
Once we actually started the game, I was surprised to find it pretty dificult. There was a lot of enemies, as well as traps and situations that required using up spells. I don't mind a hard game, but I was surprised to see that Wizards had made one for a game that was meant to gain more players.
What I later found out what the DM tripled the amount of monsters. Why you ask? Well, once we TPKed, he triumphantly announced that he had "Killed another party for the Xth time in a row."
When I later asked him about some of the rules decisions, he made mention that he had read the 3.5 books "once and then put them away so that he could continue running games the way he liked them."
The sad part is the owners were actually pretty cool. Too bad I'll never go back.
Edit: Re-reading this, perhaps I overreacted. Thoughts?
No, I don't think that you overreacted, but if the owners were, as you say, pretty cool, then it might have been a good idea to let them know that it had been a pretty bad experience and why...
maybe they could get hold of someone better next time. But in reality, I'd probably done what you did - walked out and never returned.
GRU