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This.I've seen a lot of players talking about GMs they don't trust and so forth.
But I'm wondering just how bad it really is at other tables.What's your horror story about what a GM has done?
That's a pretty rough situation. Did you happen to associate with the guy outside of the game? Because while your response was true, it didn't seem like it was worth your time. I would have just said "You insulted my wife, we aren't having fun, and we seem to tick you off. We're out. And maybe you shouldn't be swearing around kids."
That's why I don't put up with bad DMs anymore. If they are my friends out of game, I tell them. Otherwise I leave my reasons short and sweet and leave. I had to do that recently, as the game wasn't my cup of tea (I could post it in here I guess). I ended up just telling the DM that I needed to save up time to spend with my wife to be and dropped.
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Probably not worth it, but I enjoy arguing, and some of it needed to be said.
Since I was the new guy it didn't hurt for me to burn that bridge. So no, we didn't associate outside the group. I don't know if it would have helped any.
Mostly I was sad the group broke up, because it left my friend without a group while I was overseas. Of course, he was probably better off without that one, and we have a pretty solid one now. Hopefully it will stick together while I go away again. We're pretty good friends with them for the year we've been meeting. The fact we go do things other than gaming like dinner and movies helps.
This.I've seen a lot of players talking about GMs they don't trust and so forth.
But I'm wondering just how bad it really is at other tables.What's your horror story about what a GM has done?
Well, that was... insane.
GRU
I'll third that one - I have met a great many people who assume that they are clever, and this means they are infallible, and hence they do not do things wrong, other people do. I'm sure this guy remembers you as a the player who destroyed his gaming group maliciously and deliberately ... and not a lot will make him change his mind, because he's living in his own version of reality. Sad, really.
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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.
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'm thinking the next stop for that GM was F.A.T.A.L.
*shudder*
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Designed encounters that completely neutered our group's summoner (wizard). Everything we fought had protection from good, which prevented the neutral creatures from attacking.
That's not really bad GMing, more bad game design.
No 1st-level spell should ever have been able to shut down most spells from two schools of magic.
Depending on the nature of the scenario (outer-planar travel), the GM can't help but have every creature possess Prot vs Alignment, even if he's not trying.
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 PC...
Aaah; ...a Warhammer player, no doubt.
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I am probably partly to blame for this, but here goes...
I was part of a roleplaying group in my city, any could join they just had to sign up on the meetup group and turn up.
I really liked the group and it had been very successful, I was DMing a busy, over-subscribed game at our monthly meet-up and I wanted to play as well so I put out a request: "Hey, if anyone would like to GM a midweek game I would love to play."
The shyest, most socially awkward person in the whole gang volunteered, I offered to help him with the rules and stuff - even leant him my Red Hand of Doom when he said he wanted to find something solid and published to play...
He somehow combined several terrible GM cliches all-in-one...
-Created some kind of uber-PC who kept on cropping up and being cooler than us (used to appear by jumping out of players' chests, magical swords sprang out of his arms, blargh).
-Competed with the players, tried to 'win' every combat
-Got confused by rules but hated being helped by more experienced players
-Never accepted alternative approaches to encounters and especially would never let us avoid a fight, no matter how many skills or clever tricks we threw at the challenge (my ranger was killed by an angry bear after a natural20 on my wild empathy).
-Used published adventures but didn't actually read them, so kept on having to read bits of encounter at the table while the group chatted.
In the end I created a pixie PC, utterly useless but really hard to kill, just to survive. In the end nobody could 'make it to the game anymore' except for me (feeling bad about my role in the whole debacle).
I started a new game later and came to realise he was a wallflower, a socially awkward person who goes to games to have a 'safe' environment to hang out with people, rather than being very into the game. That's cool, I just wish his once moment of confidence hadn't involved volunteering to run a game.
Nice guy, shoddy GM - can't help but think I should have been more brutally honest with him after one or two sessions.
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.
Not exactly agreeing with Judaskilled here or with table flipping or beatings, but what kept the Paladin in question from simply killing the CE Wizard PC? Or confronting them in game? What did the other characters do? I think something's missing from the description of the situation.
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Designed encounters that completely neutered our group's summoner (wizard). Everything we fought had protection from good, which prevented the neutral creatures from attacking.That's not really bad GMing, more bad game design.
Except that it was a 100% homebrewed game. Yes Protection from Evil was in some ways game-breaking for summoners, but he didn't have to make every encounter an outsider. He knew from the beginning that somebody wanted to play a conjurer/potion brewer (who was pretty darned underpowered for a wizard at that level), yet roughly 60-70% of the encounters were against immune creatures. What GM designs their encounters to make one player almost always sit out?
Aaah; ...a Warhammer player, no doubt.
As far as I'm aware, he never played a game of Warhammer in his life.
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my 1st attempt at D&D i joined some guys at the local comic shop. I made a 3rd level rogue (2nd ed). took about an hour.
OOC i mumbled something about "i cant wait to shoot something" the dm decided that meant my character was bored and suicidal, because he declared my character popped a shoot from his crossbow at the commanding officer of the military (guess what happened... its actually worse), and proceeded to run an adventure for everyone else at the table.
that turned me off from RPG's for almost a decade (i was like 12 or 13 at the time, i tried playing again when I was 20 and haven't stopped since)
damned elitist comic shop nerds
OK, here goes.
Setup :
Shipwrecked in a jungle. While salvaging stuff from the ship, a tyranosaurus comes out of the jungle and attacks (we're all 8th level). I'm playing a half-drow warmage. There's also a half-orc fighter/cleric, a human paladin, and a human fighter.
The F/C casts a fog spell that covers 30 feet in diameter. The GM rules he can't cast it 5 feet off the ground (letting us look under it to find the dino and move away). So we have to walk with it centered on the F/C. I decide I'm going to move away from the others by letting them continue on. I cast ring of blades and walk back towards the ocean.
GM Rules that despite the fact we can see the setting sun through the top of the cloud (it's only 10 feet high), and despite the fact we were allowed to walk toward the jungle without roles, I can't stop turn 180 degrees around and walk away from the jungle without a navigation skill check. He rolls it for me, I fail (I never see roll).
He rules I walk out right under neath the dino. Fine. I have ring of blades up, and the dino attacks me (grab with mouth). I declare that since I have initiative on the dino, I'm going to cast flame strike sudden empowered (class ability).
GM stops the game and argues with me for 20 minutes that I should dodge the attack instead. I state I have no reflex save, couldn't grapple my way out of a paper bag (12 str), and the dino has size and str out the wazoo, I have no chance of dodging. GM tells me I have a really really good idea I can dodge this thing because it's so slow.
I grumble and agree to the GMs request. I roll a 17. I figure woohoo, maybe I dodge it. No, I'm grappled in it's mouth. Now I can't cast anything because I'm taking 20 hp per round. The Dino is taking 12pts of damage per round MINIMUM from the ring of blades that are ripping it's head apart. My compatriots are chopping it's legs up at this point, and the GM says the animal won't let go of me. That's like saying a bear that bites into a porcupine isn't going to be trying to get those quills out of it's mouth.
So my character dies, mysteriously the dino takes 3 times what a dino is supposed to have for HP and keels over right after I die. The GM then admits that I needed a 20 to dodge the attack he talked me into dodging.
I quit playing shortly thereafter.
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.
Actually, it's hilarious (or would be if your character generation wasn't wasted on it)!
I so need to write up a Bayushi Bathkiller PrC/advanced school now :D
It's like the naked chick out of the pie, but instead of pie, it's water. And instead of naked chick, it's death.
All hail the Underhand!
He said we'll it was pitch black and I couldn't see... something he didn't tell me because I didn't ask.
Reminds me of this maze/riddle we had to solve. We racked our brains for ideas to get through this thing quickly, and in the end the GM tells us that we could have just looked at the whole maze, since the walls were only 5 feet or so high (we could basically have climbed on top of the walls and went on a straight path). Of course, he didn't tell us because we didn't think to ask (never mind that it's perfectly obvious to someone who actually sees it.)
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
I've been in games where I get the acute feeling that the GM thinks he's losing in those situations, where the GM tries to kill the PCs (hard to consider these actions anything but an attempt to kill the PCs), and pout when it doesn't work.
so the rewards for actually being a GM are elusive.
I can't agree to this. There's so much to GMing, so many ways a GM is rewarded! Tell great stories and see that the players enjoy them. Give them a really tough encounter - they will prevail, but it will be hard, making it all the more rewarding. And then there's stuff like torturing players or manipulating them into doing just what you want them to do, all the while thinking it was their idea.... ;-)
So cut your GM a break - he or she is probably busting their butt just to bring you a game.
Except those from the examples above where they aren't putting any effort into it - not bothering to learn the rules, not bothering to gauge the party strength to provide appropriate encounters that will neither overwhelm nor bore the players, and so on.
I'm not saying GMing isn't hard work at times (I run a game, and I see what other GMs put into their games), but that doesn't mean there are no crappy GMs out there.
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The paladin fell how? You think the paladin because while mind controlled got raped lost its class? Thats retarded, there a TON of interesting roleplay that can come from this.
Yes. The paladin fell because the wizard raped the paladin via dominate. This is the main issue with the DM.
If you think this is good DMing, we have nothing else to discuss.
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.
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Yes. The paladin fell because the wizard raped the paladin via dominate. This is the main issue with the DM.
The paladin fell how? You think the paladin because while mind controlled got raped lost its class? Thats retarded, there a TON of interesting roleplay that can come from this.
Indeed. The rest is an issue with the player and can be argued, for good or ill.
This however, is an asshat of a DM.
That reminds me of two friends I play the german game DSA with
Aaarrgh! The horror! The horror!
;-P
<-- not a fan of DSA
I dont see what was wrong here at all to be honest.CE wizard forces the dominated paladin into sex, raping her.
GM has the paladin fall for it.
{emphasis added}
Because, y'see, female characters who get raped totally deserve to lose their powers for it. They were asking for it, after all...
Edited to specify female characters rather than women in general. Wouldn't want to make it seem as if I were generalizing to real world attitudes based on an in-game situation.
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Explain to me what part of the paladin code makes you fall for being violated against your will. Explain to me how portraying rape as a good thing makes for a realistic story. Explain to me how that story is fun for other players. Explain to me how it is not the GMs job to maintain a healthy group.
Well, the paladis certainly shouldn't have fallen because of this. The paladin couldn't be called responsible for his or her actions while dominated. Next time there should be protection from evil on the character and a stern invitation to hearing before inquisition (along with some serious two-handed arguments) held in hands.
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Explain to me what part of the paladin code makes you fall for being violated against your will. Explain to me how portraying rape as a good thing makes for a realistic story. Explain to me how that story is fun for other players. Explain to me how it is not the GMs job to maintain a healthy group.Fall for? The paladin was dominated via spell.....much like getting charmed bya monster.
The paladin in this game "fell" AKA lost their powers and class abilities. This was the GM's ruling, that the paladin somehow broke their code or somehow deserved to be stripped of their powers for being forcibly violated (by another PC none the less).
No one is arguing that "bad stuff happens" or that it can be role-played maturely. The issue is the DM made a bad ruling by saying the paladin lost their class abilities for something another player did to them.
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Are you being obtuse? What part of the code makes you an ex-paladin for being raped? I'll come back to your other points after this one.Someone else posted that you would lose pally s&%& for being raped, I told that poster they were wrong. Im confused lol.
Good, we're on the same page then. The issue is that the DM in that game ruled it exactly that way.
3.5 I played a Sorcerer (there was a wizard and a warblade and a swordsage I think)
the wizard and me, we were low-powered, the classes from book of nine swords were munchkined a bit (not too obvious, but the class without munchkin is already well of)
after a small starting-adventure the DM decides that the times of troubles begins, our magic has a serious chance to fail. The Warblade works without problem, even tough his stances and everything are far from mundane.
The DM didn't give us much gear, so we were quite low for our lvl.
In short, we were 2 mages without gear who couldn't really cast spells, and 2 well geared swordsages ...
To this comes that the DM didn't like me that much, I admit I was a bit difficult once my spells started failing 90% of the time, so they started to produce wonderous effects. Once he turned me into a woman for several days, because my character was a hedonist, I played a slutty woman, he wasn't amused, so I changed back.
Next time I was transformed into a wolf when we were to reach a city.
But this wasn't enough. We also joined a fight (we were about lvl 6), between Elminster and Bane. He discribed during half an hour the situation, reading from a book. Elminster and Bane casted every spell available, everything was rolled for them. We tried to cast of fight, but there wasn't much to be done.
It even went so far that I jumped on Bane to hold my hands before his eyes. (Perhaps bad roleplaying, but I wanted to my character to die)
However due to some rolls behind the DM screen, I didn't die ...
That's pretty much were our group ended.
Anyway, it was second gaming group, I didn't know better and this helped me to become a better DM, so it had a good end somewhat.
[A healthy group? I dont understand how allowing players to dictate there own actions how they see fit IN CHARACTER makes for a unhealthy game. They are charecters.......not you....maybe you should reread that part.
The deal is, if three players want to participate in a cooperative game, and they all roll up LG characters and get set to go, and player #4 rolls up a CE character and attacks them instead... well, that 4th player is being a dick. Not for having a CE character, but for assuming the other 3 players have no say in what kind of game will be played.
I've played and DMed all-CE campaigns, and had a lot of fun, but they all required agreement that that was what we were going to do; it can't work if it's unilateral.
Another anecdote: as DM, I had one group in which half of them decided to be NG, the other half CE -- I introduced story elements to which the PCs reacted, ending up with them splitting into 2 groups along alignment lines. I then asked each player to roll up another character of the opposite alignment, and we alternated weeks: first a NG-party cooperative game, the next week a CE bastard game, and so on. Everyone had fun with that campaign.
In general, player-vs.-player works only (a) if all players agree, and (b) if it's a short-term spin-off, not a long-term campaign.
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I've seen a lot of players talking about GMs they don't trust and so forth.
But I'm wondering just how bad it really is at other tables.What's your horror story about what a GM has done?
The DM who decided that having my character attacked and raped so she could be 'rescued' by the rest of the party would be a good way to introduce me to his gaming group. I didn't stick around past the opening scene there.
If there's a group consensus that rape isn't out of bounds for a game, that's up to the group, but it's not a game I want to be involved with, and I had no warning that he had anything of the sort in mind pre-game. Really, as a rape survivor and someone who's spent a lot of time volunteering with victims' advocacy and domestic abuse support group, I've spent more time in real life dealing with the repercussions of sexual assault than anyone should have to. I don't need it showing up in my recreational activities, too.
When it comes to roleplaying, I'm a lucky, lucky man it seems. I have some "horror" stories, but they're not in the same league as some of the stuff that's going on here.
A lot of the stuff I'll have to tell here are as much amusing as they are bad.
I'll start off with player Against. It's not his name, but it might as well be, because he's against. Not against anything in particular, just generally against.
As a player, he first played the CN (and CN only because the GM wanted to avoid the party falling apart, the guy deserved to be CE, which would have meant his death, since my character was so Good it made some paladins jealous) wizard.
He was an elf wizard, but didn't worship any of the elven gods, because "that's too cliché" (sounds reasonable at first, but it really was the beginning of a pattern). The character started as NG (first stating LN, but he got them mixed up he said), but that only lasted a session or two. He got a warning when he was asked by the parents of the child we saved how they could ever thank us and he said "money" by way of a reply with not as much as a millisecond of time between the question and the answer. And when he asked how easy it would be to take the (apparently genuine, and magic) weapon off the statue of some good god, he was switched.
Anyway, he was famous for saying "I'm CN, why can't I just kill everyone?", I think the character moonlighted as a smuggler for drugs, once stopped a kid stealing from him with magic missiles, and so on.
He once took one level of cleric because he didn't want to rely on others for his healing (no, you don't have to think about it, it really doesn't make any sense). He said he'd change the deity for that - but despite my character (a follower of the main elven god Corellon, who is also god of magic, which would seem like quite a fit for a wizard), he chose instead to go with Selune, goddess of the moon.
He was to pick up a higher-ranked priestess from the capital for his inauguration, and since he couldn't cast teleport (that was transmuatation back in 3e, and he chose that as his banned school), he cast shadow walk. Which uses the shadow plane. Home of Shar, his new godess's nemesis.
As I said, more funny than horrible.
We continued with a StarGate game (simulated with d20M), and he played an Irish undercover terrorist (or something like that) who stole weapons from the StarGate project for his group of "freedom fighters".
He than played a half-drow priestess of Eilistraee (using the heaviest armour he could find, just because it's the exact opposite of her and her priestesses' usual depiction of wearing almost nothing). He attempted to make people convert in order to heal them - and only relented when the rest of the party told him he'd be thrown out of the party if he didn't cooperate. Of course, he was, again, quite different from the rest of the group, especially when it came to outlook.
That was the general theme. If the party was all-evil (in the type of game where you enjoy yourselves and just do some wholesome mayhem, complete with senseless slaughter and atrocities), he was the barely evil guy who tried to get the party to stop doing bad things.
And then the guy decided to run a game as GM. Boy was he bad at that. Again, it was funny, we decided that the chance to play it very character-based (the story was on rails, anyway) and just get together to have fun, but there were some blunders:
And then one day in the session he told us that we were in the guild now (no way not to be, we couldn't refuse or anything because that was the story), and that we all had to take a level of rogue now. No matter whether the character was fit to be a rogue. Or would incur crippling XP penalties (this was 3.0), or were maybe working towards PrCs or something and would have that messed up.
He eventually relented but required us to get some "thief skills".
We had a chat session to see what my old character would be doing in the future. I said he wanted to join this organisation of evil elves who aggressively fought human expansion, terrorist style. So I had to show that I was ready to join by going and killing some lumberjacks in the woods. I did so, and was invited into the terrorist group.
Then game the "epilogue": A few weeks later, my character came upon a village in the middle of the forest. There were no men, only women and children, all horribly starved to death. He said it was meant to be some sort of moral afterthought or something. I guess women and children will totally starve in the woods if their mean die in the forest or something, they can't get back or get help or fend for themselves.
Of course, the whole area was mired in a naval war, so no ships for hire. We only found one ship that wasn't at sea fighting their asses off. Of course, it was a halfling ship (see hinophobia above).
It was alright, though, since that led to one of the most awesomestest (triple superlative, because it calls for it) scenes ever seen in RPG!
Despite other people having changed there characters (including my change), the request was denied. The character couldn't even commit suicide for some reason.
So we thought this was a perfect opportunity to so how far this no-death policy went and try to get rid of the character at the same time!
We walked into Waterdeep and started killing people indiscriminately.
For those who don't know, that's one of the biggest cities in the Forgotten Realms, and even for this high-magic, high-powered setting, it is a power centre. Lots of high-level and epic-level characters, including several archmages who are also Chosen of Mystra, goddess of magic and most powerful of all the deities. Oh, and even the city guard had a special forces team consisting of CR 15+ individuals.
Still, we held out for quite some time (a couple dozen rounds of combat against the city watch/guard) before we decided to go.
But when we took some prisoners and started to torture them - that was about the time the Book of Vile Darkness came out and we were eager to test drive the whole torture implement section of the equipment chapter - the GM backpaddled and said "NO DETAILS! You get your information, okay?"
That's funny. The game had been anything but Care Bear: The Hugging. Of course, we now had a fail-safe way to get information: Start describing what torture implements we'd use and we'd know everything. A shame, though: The characters had a portable torture chamber. A portable hole that held nothing but one of everything from the torture equipment section (or more).
We could certainly order some, of course. But we'd have to pay cash up front. And before you think that you could order it and steal the money right back after the diamond was there - no.
See, the Forgotten Realms Diamond Industry was more Badass than the Aspis Consortium, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the Illuminati, Scientology and the Empire rolled into one! There's no fooling them.
You want a diamond (had to be a big one worth at least 10000 gil)? You paid up front. The money would be put in a magic box, along with a piece of paper with the order on it. When the box is closed, it teleports the contents to the Secret Diamond Hideout or something - totally untraceable, you see. Only then would the diamond be delivered.
Of course, this didn't stop us from overpowering the clerk and trying to blackmail his Shadow Government employers. He didn't know anything, of course, so no amount of torture would work (we did it anyway, of course. Need to relax and tend to hobbies, sort of thing).
Anyway, nothing helped, of course, even when we cut pieces (fingers and so on) off that clerk and teleported them along with our demands.
We ended up using the magic box as a magic field toilet. :D
As I said, it was more fun than frustration, but mostly because we made our own fun, not because the campaign made any sense.
In response to the OP:
In college, a number of us replied to a DM who was looking for players. We quickly realized this particular DM was looking for participants to assist him in a homoerotic fantasy romance story, and was not really interested in playing D&D. I had no issue with his hobbies -- but did hold it against him for not being honest about it up front. When 4 players want to explore dungeons, and the DM insists that the only "dungeons" in his world are gay brothels specializing in S&M... well, that's not a formula for a long-term campaign. It wasn't that bad, though, because we caught on quickly and went looking for another game.
The worst was the DM who would pretend to be reasonable, but then ban almost everthing, until you correctly guessed the exact type of PC he wanted you to have. Then, in the game, he'd ban half our actions, because they wouldn't fit his railroad story lines. This latter campaign was especially unenjoyable, for me, because it made me look back and realize I'd been guilty of some of the same offenses in the past. Useful learning experience, though.
So I mentioned "one of the most awesomestest (triple superlative, because it calls for it) scenes ever seen in RPG!"
It would be bad form not to share after that tease, so here goes:
For those who just tuned in, we had a party that included a b%&%~~$ insane gnome wizard (alienist) who was afraid of halflings. We also had to get onto a ship, and the only one available was owned by halflings.
So what to do?
The first problem was getting the ship - including the sailors, since we knew jack about sailing.
Not too hard, really. My character (a shapeshifter with very good social skills) went ahead, as a halfling and told them he was this big (hur hur hur) halfling hero who was so awesome and who needed their ship and crew to go recover an awesome treasure which was awesome (that's how halflings talked).
The rest of the party would stay away - not to alert the halflings, and to keep the fact that this was a halfling village from the gnome. They were to wait until we were a couple hundred feet off-shore (still within reach of dimension door) and then port over (since "spell limitations" demanded it, the wizard had to hide in the portable hole).
I fooled the little rubes, we set sail, and all of a sudden there was a psychic warrior and a death priest on the ship, and their halfling folk hero turned into a demonspawn in front of their very eyes. They were told that they would get out of this alive (yes, I had a good bluff mod - because we were going to kill them out of general principle, of course) if they did what they were told.
Then, we went below deck, let the gnome out and told him to stay in his cabin, because those crazy sailors were afraid of gnomes (another good bluff check - thank the Dark Forces the gnome was about as perceptive as a deaf mole, and more gullible than... someone very gullible.)
This kept him in his cabin for a full day or so. Then he had a brilliant idea: He'd turn invisible and explore - if they can't see him, they can't panic, jump overboard, and leave us to our fate adrift on the ocean!
He got on deck, saw several halflings.... and just froze out of fear.
Eventually, the invisibility wore off, some of the sailors noticed him and were startled by the sudden appearance of the miniature madman.
This tore the gnome out of his paralysis, and in his madness and fear and insanity and madness (he was easily crazy enough for 10!), he decided the plague must be exterminated.
He started to cast reality maelstrom - a spell that rips a whole into reality and sucks anything nearby through into another dimension!
We saw all this, and even gut the jump on him! We had to stop him from casting! The psychic warrior sort of panicked and used the dreaded Mind Blast. It managed to stun everyone except for the gnome, who proceeded to cast the spell.
At this point, the fun really started: the maelstrom appeared and swallowed all the sailors (no chance to make that save), half the party (my stunned character, as well as the gnome made their saves) - and the ship, of course!
So there I was, stunned and in the water. Luckily, the gnome managed to keep me above water until I recovered. At that point, I shapechanged into a sea elf and got us to safety.
But what about the rest of the party, the ship, the halflings? They were sucked to (roll dice, consult planes table), Acheron, the Infernal Battlefield! Right on top of the Bloodwar, where millions of Devils endlessly fight millions of Demons!
That was real fun for the death priest and the psychic warrior, running from fiends and finding a hiding place until the cleric could pray for spells and plane shift home. The halflings were toast, of course.
The first thing they did when they got home was totally thrash the gnome's lab (the gnome became invisible and hid). I managed to talk them out of totally slaughtering the little gnome (He did save me, and he was too full of chaos and mayhem to let go to waste to boot!), but we still laughed till our jaws ached that day!
the only "dungeons" in his world are gay brothels specializing in S&M
I wonder about the general reaction if the average adventuring party goes there, kicks down the door, and starts to totally torch the place and all inhabitants, as a matter of course. I mean, they're adventurers, and if you tell an adventurer about a dungeon, he'll go in there preceded by a couple of fireballs.
Talk about awkward - and unrewarding, because I don't think that they tend to have much in the way of magic equipment.
Not exactly agreeing with Judaskilled here or with table flipping or beatings, but what kept the Paladin in question from simply killing the CE Wizard PC? Or confronting them in game? What did the other characters do? I think something's missing from the description of the situation.
At a guess, the DM telling that paladins wouldn't do that / No PVP / "You don't know he did that, and you have no reason to detect evil, stop metagaming" at a wild guess - been there too many times ...
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the only "dungeons" in his world are gay brothels specializing in S&MI wonder about the general reaction if the average adventuring party goes there, kicks down the door, and starts to totally torch the place and all inhabitants, as a matter of course. I mean, they're adventurers, and if you tell an adventurer about a dungeon, he'll go in there preceded by a couple of fireballs.
Talk about awkward - and unrewarding, because I don't think that they tend to have much in the way of magic equipment.
You'd be surprised. }; )
There's magic and cash to be had everywhere if you look hard enough. That's where the term "greyhawking" comes into play.
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Well, more annoying than horrible, but I had a GM running an online game who decided every time my archer character rolled a 1 on an attack, the bowstring would break.
Considering I was rapidshotting on a computer dicebot, this would happen once a session- sometimes twice after I started carrying 10 extra bowstrings.
5% chance of having your weapon rendered useless each time you attack.
What ticked me off is having to roll to confirm criticals, but having fumbles be automatic. Or rolling a 1 and then anything decent for the second and third atack (which were cancelled because of the breaking string on the first attack.) Didn't sit right with me.
I didn't stick around too long.
What ticked me off is having to roll to confirm criticals, but having fumbles be automatic.
That's just bad game design; confirmation of fumbles is generally considered an essential component of using fumbles rules in the first place. In fact, there are a lot of optional rules that have unforseen effects that have to be accounted for.
I use fumbles, but they have to be confirmed, and they can be negated with hero points. Hero points can be gained by confirming critical skill successes, and sometimes in combat. So PCs fumble more often than NPCs (since they generally live longer), but PCs also gain the ability to fudge things in their favor -- hero points -- that NPCs lack.
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 think there was some confusion over the sense of the phrase "fall for it." As someone who rarely plays a paladin, I didn't think of it in the sense that "fall" would mean she lost her powers, but rather that she "fell" for the spell, in the way women in real life are said to have "fallen" for a line, or a trick, or whatever. I think, perhaps, that I am not the only person who initially read it that way.
Before I say anything else, let me be perfectly clear; I think the original situation was terrible. The DM invited a guest player whose sole intent was to be disruptive and possibly traumatic, and then proceeded to make the situation worse. As a player, I would not go back while that person DMed, and I am not sure that I would feel safe playing with the group if they thought it was no big deal.
However, I could see it as a valid storyline if planned between the players and the DM. I would keep the rape in the backstory, or at least off-screen, but organized churches (and culture generally) historically DO blame and punish women who are raped, and to extend that to the opinion of a personified and fallible god (as most polytheistic game-gods are) wouldn't be a stretch, imo. Obviously, I would not have such a character Atone but, perhaps, start a quest to replace her old god on the basis that he's doing a bad job.
Exactly my feeling on the matter, but when I brought it up, it was ignored.
I specifically quoted you and agreed -- how exactly is that "ignoring" you?
Uhm, yeah.
Couple years ago, in our early 20's, we had a game group including some guys we'd not otherwise hang out with, for lack of other players. Naturally, we were on the lookout for other people to play with...
Now, the little sister(just turned 14 at the time) of a friend of mine, was interested in the game, and me and the friend helped her make a character. Because we thought it to be easier for her, we basically recreated her. A young female human bard looking like her and working as a popular local singer in the bar...something she could nicely identify with, liking singing and all that.
Well, one of the other guys we played with had a liking(unbeknownst to be serious, we took it as jest when he "playfully flirted" with her) to my friends admittedly pretty sister, having seen her before because we oft-times played at their house.
I will not go into details, but his Barbarian stalked her in-game, and graphically descriptively proceeded to rape her while staring at the girl. His buddy had fun, me, my friend, and his sister were basically shocked, the DM just let him proceed going into details, saying if we didn't find in-game ways to prevent that, it happens. The girl was close to crying, so we stood up, and walked away from the table.
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)
I'd have attacked and killed the character. Hey, he's got to be flat-footed and no armor, anyway.
Please note that, while I managed to escape, I WAS attacked with rape in mind in my early 20's.
It was 20 years before I wwas able to relax enough to actually have a physical relationship. I'm now married with a daughter who will be turning 17 this month. If it had been my daughter in that situation and I'd been present, not only would the character have died, I'd probably have tried to whack the player as well.
Just a hint boys...this sort of thing will not lead a future relationship.