Player horror stories


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Malaclypse wrote:
Mistah Green wrote:

Ever had enemies kill a character?

Ever had those same enemies steal a valuable magic item instead?

By the adventurer's code, killing people is preferable to stealing from them. At least when the adventurer is the victim.

Yeah right, people prefer Rez costs and losing a level to a side quest to get back their magic item.

I had a party I ran for 2 1/2 years. Got all the way into epic. They risked their lives many, many times. Only time you would ever see them panic is when something looked like it might harm their gear. Only enemy they still hold a grudge about is the one that stole their stuff and got away with it.

There was one and only one encounter they took one look at and said "screw you" (only more vehemently). That was a pair of Paragon Steel Predators. They would have won, but their gear would have been trashed. They just weren't going to do it.


The Admiral Jose Monkamuck wrote:
Malaclypse wrote:
Mistah Green wrote:

Ever had enemies kill a character?

Ever had those same enemies steal a valuable magic item instead?

By the adventurer's code, killing people is preferable to stealing from them. At least when the adventurer is the victim.

Yeah right, people prefer Rez costs and losing a level to a side quest to get back their magic item.

I had a party I ran for 2 1/2 years. Got all the way into epic. They risked their lives many, many times. Only time you would ever see them panic is when something looked like it might harm their gear. Only enemy they still hold a grudge about is the one that stole their stuff and got away with it.

There was one and only one encounter they took one look at and said "screw you" (only more vehemently). That was a pair of Paragon Steel Predators. They would have won, but their gear would have been trashed. They just weren't going to do it.

Ah, nostalgia for the rust monster. Used to be so much fun to watch macho man fighters run shrieking in fear from a little bitty thing like that.


Another horror player story, though the GM should have done something I guess.

It was a Ravenloft/Dragonlance mix/crossover/hybrid game thingy (we were in Ravenloft, but parts of Krynn were drawn into it, and we played through something like a modified and ravenlofted version of the original modules. Or something like that, isn't important).

We had a bunch of characters from all over, including my Ninja (dishonourable, of course, but actually good, which was a bit unusual for Scorpions. Back home his disguise was being a courtier) from Rokugan (Legend of the Five Rings), a sorcerer (I think. And I think he wanted to become a Gold Dragon disciple, too), a wizard of sorts, a cleric or cleric/paladin of Torm, and others from the Forgotten Realms.

So we see a bunch of draconians coming over a hill towards us, and the two arcanists just lob one fireball each at them, ending the fight before it really started. The GM announced the XP and divided them between the two spellcasters.

At that point, I (the player) calmly remarked that we were adventuring as a team, and even though we didn't happen to do something in the fight, we were still part of the party, usually defending the arcanists in more heated conflicts. And furthermore, we never split XP according to merit, and if we start, I just need to know because I'll roll for init and see if I can't get some of those enemies before the fireballs start flooding in. ;-)

Everybody understood that: The GM agreed, the rest of the party agreed, the wizard's player agreed. The future gold dragon disciple player.... threw a hissy fit like a two-year-old. When that didn't help, his character started talking to the cleric/paladin about how the ninja was a craven coward and worthless sneak thief. The ninja of course did nothing to deserve this sudden treatment, and there was no in-game explanation for such a sudden outburst. The guy was too bloody dumb to keep in-game and out of game separate.

I rolled a listen check and said that my ninja surely heard that and wanted to confront the irrational madman, to which the jerk replied "YOU CAN'T JUST MAKE CHECKS LIKE THAT THE DM MUST TELL YOU TO MAKE THEM!!!!11" (You could hear the caps, exclamation marks and ones I tell you)

And then the DM relented and said my character didn't hear anything (even though by all means, he had).

I then and there decided to kill that character after the smallest provocation, which would probably work out well being basically a murderer by vocation. I even prepared my old ninja-tos (I kept them even though we found magic short swords in the mean time and I used them) by treating each of them with wyvern poison.

Unfortunately, the jerk left the game - without really telling anyone that he wouldn't play any more - a session or two later.

And this wasn't the first time the same guy did something like this. There was a similar situation earlier.

This time it was in 2e, it also was Ravenloft, but this time all-evil, the sort of laid back campaign where you didn't follow too much of a story path but more tried to one-up each other with atrocities or plot one another's demise.

The guy (who at this time at least had the excuse that he was quite new - though that doesn't really excuse it, maybe explain it a bit) decided to play a female anti-paladin.

Now, in that campaign, you wouldn't want to play a female character with a high charisma score. Not if you would mind being ogled and maybe have some rude remarks made at you behind your back. About your back ;-)

So we (out-of-character) would often utter stuff like "we'll let the paladiness go first so we can stare at her ass" or other things that are sexist, chauvinist, and otherwise disrespectful. We were in an evil campaign, after all, and anyway, the most was out of character, all in good fun.

The player decided to act on it by trying to kill my wizard character. Out of the blue. No in-game provocations. My character survived a direct attack, and the deadly disease the paladiness planted on me was negated by the party thief, who paid it out of his pockets and told me that he (the character was a he, the player was female) would take care of everything - the lecher of course wanted to lay the chick. My character agreed, but was of course lying. He had a fireball always prepared for the express purpose of using on that b*$%! as soon as her booty buddy was out of sight and she was close to death. Fireball because she was a follower of Auril, Lady of the Cold.

Again, the gaming came to an end before my character got revenge - I stopped playing in all the Sunday AD&D 2e games because we had have a whole Summer (at least 8 weeks, probably more) where we never played - and we would only learn about this about half an hour into supposed playing time.

This was the main reason I decided to do retaliatory meta-gaming in the second incident - the idiot did it again.


KaeYoss wrote:
The future gold dragon disciple player.... threw a hissy fit like a two-year-old.

Got this image in my head. Ya know how dollar signs appear in some people's eyes? He had "X" in one eye and "P" in the other.


I wonder if there are some commmon characteristics of poor GM/DM/REFs?

* Biased
* Lack imagination
* Unable to think on their feet
* Petty

What are some others?

In service,

Rich
www.drgames.org


DrGames wrote:

I wonder if there are some commmon characteristics of poor GM/DM/REFs?

* Biased
* Lack imagination
* Unable to think on their feet
* Petty

What are some others?

  • Control freaks and ban-hammerers
  • Would-be "next Tolkiens" who don't want their "perfect story" to be "ruined."
  • Poor grasp of rules
  • Inconsistent
  • Overly-rigid


  • Socially maladjusted covers most of these ;p

    Liberty's Edge

    Kirth Gersen wrote:
  • Would-be "next Tolkiens" who don't want their "perfect story" to be "ruined."
  • I know to each his own and all, but i've never understood the utter hatred for linear story lines. After all, the most basic game is a story in which your characters play a part. The only difference between "next Tolkiens" and other DMs is the other DMs are more subtle with their storyline railroads (ie.-fudging, having red herring multiple options that lead to the same conclusion, etc.). IMO, YMMV, etc.

    Grand Lodge

    Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
    Xpltvdeleted wrote:
    The only difference between "next Tolkiens" and other DMs is the other DMs are more subtle with their storyline railroads (ie.-fudging, having red herring multiple options that lead to the same conclusion, etc.). IMO, YMMV, etc.

    If only there were DMs that didn't have their scripts planned out ahead of them... :)

    Liberty's Edge

    TriOmegaZero wrote:
    Xpltvdeleted wrote:
    The only difference between "next Tolkiens" and other DMs is the other DMs are more subtle with their storyline railroads (ie.-fudging, having red herring multiple options that lead to the same conclusion, etc.). IMO, YMMV, etc.
    If only there were DMs that didn't have their scripts planned out ahead of them... :)

    And see, I get that, but I guess that's really not my shtick. I like to have a storyline to follow. Kingmaker, for example, was painfully open ended...I just prefer something with a little more linearity is all I guess.

    Grand Lodge

    Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

    I know how you feel, my players are lost if I don't show them where the rails are. Just pointing out that there are more than two kinds of DMs. My wife likes to run freeform, making it up as it goes along.


    Kirth Gersen wrote:
    DrGames wrote:

    I wonder if there are some commmon characteristics of poor GM/DM/REFs?

    * Biased
    * Lack imagination
    * Unable to think on their feet
    * Petty

    What are some others?

  • Control freaks and ban-hammerers
  • Would-be "next Tolkiens" who don't want their "perfect story" to be "ruined."
  • Poor grasp of rules
  • Inconsistent
  • Overly-rigid
  • While I agree with you, aren't inconsistent and overly rigid polar opposites?

    Here's a few more:

    Low magic (a subset of control freaks).
    Low level cap. Starting at low level is fine, setting a level cap of something around 6 or so not because you want the campaign to end early, but because you want people to hit a wall and stop is a subset of several of those.
    "Our favorite edition was 2nd edition." Run away at maximum speed.

    Grand Lodge

    Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
    Mistah Green wrote:


    While I agree with you, aren't inconsistent and overly rigid polar opposites?

    Not if you bounce from one rigid unbending ruling to another rigid unbending ruling that is inconsistent with the first.

    Quote:
    "Our favorite edition was 2nd edition."

    Well, at least I know for sure you have been to the Den. :)


    Another incident I remember quite clearly was when I was DMing a game of 'Rappan Athuk' in 3.5 edition. Acclaimed as 'the worlds deadliest dungeon' I thought I'd give it a whirl (I was a young, immature DM at the time so it sounded good at first). The party consisted of a monk, sorceress, fighter, bard and cleric

    The party had just emerged from the dungeon laden down with loot. I forget how much exactly but it was THOUSANDS of gold pieces, plus some very nice magical gear. The best piece of magical loot was a +1 Unholy Greatsword of Wounding, taken from the body of an undead champion. I'll come back to that in a moment.

    As the party headed South towards the main town for supplies and selling items, they were confronted with an armed contingent of soldiers on patrol, led by a LG sheriff. The road was patrolled from time to time, and it was traditional for the local law enforcement to charge a toll.

    The sheriff steps forward and, seeing that the PCs were carrying piles of loot, demanded 50gp toll to use the road. Note that this equates to less than a 5% tax rate. The PCs, of course, refused to pay up. The monk in the party asked to sense motive the situation, and succeeding his roll, I informed him that it looks like the sheriffs 'sergeant' (a female behind him) seemed to be hinting at the sheriff, essentially she was manipulating him. He considered this and subtly informed the party.

    As the DM, I decided that this would be a good opportunity to give the players a plot hook (and avoid an unnecessary encounter) and had the sheriff offer the party an alternative. Hunt down a local bandit who had been harassing local merchants. I made it quite clear to the players that this was the best deal they were going to get.

    Imagine my shock when the Neutral fighter, armed with the before mentioned unholy greatsword, suddenly charges the sheriff. My shock turned to horror as he promptly CRITTED the sheriff and chopped him in two. All hell breaks loose as fireballs are let off from the party sorceress and sheriff guards drop like flies. The party monk easily chases down any retreating soldiers and kills them too before they can escape to the town for help.

    They spend the next hour trying to find a place to dispose of the bodies so that they wouldn't be found out. They ended up dumping them under a bridge. I asked them why they attacked and they answered "Well, we figured they were only pretending to be town guards."

    I immediately changed anyone with a good alignment to neutral, and threatened the rest that another stunt like that would move them towards chaotic evil alignment. (The monk was only concerned that he could end up non-lawful).

    It's funny in hindsight, but it was a shock at the time.


    TriOmegaZero wrote:
    Mistah Green wrote:


    While I agree with you, aren't inconsistent and overly rigid polar opposites?

    Not if you bounce from one rigid unbending ruling to another rigid unbending ruling that is inconsistent with the first.

    Point taken.

    Quote:
    Well, at least I know for sure you have been to the Den. :)

    Yes, I can Google terms I do not understand, same as you.


    Back in the old days when we were all 15 we had a high level rolemaster campaign set in 1st Age Middle Earth. One of my schoolmates, let's call him Mick was DMing, of sorts, he never really prepared anything.
    My character was a High Elven fighter/mage type (we were young...) and I somehow ended up without all my good gear after being teleported. He was generously offered new clothes and a nice sword and then returned to the party.
    That same evening all were sitting around the campfire when a stranger walked in, sat down and began to chat with us.
    My character noticed then that the flames of our fire seemed to be getting "sucked" towards the stranger and that our fire was slowly dying. I told the DM my character would take his waterskin and spray some water on the guy, to see what would happen next.
    What happened next was that the guy went up in a white-hot flame, incinerating (literally - he rolled a 100 on the crit) and burned my character to ashes... Good thing I had lost my fire resistance armor on the teleport...
    To this day, I never got an explanation.

    Back in the old days we also played shadowrun. As it happened, we found out that one of our party (funnily enough the same Mick who burned my char...) had tipped off the police about some of our dealings. So my character set up a scene for him to teach him a little lesson.
    She stood on a rooftop and when the guy arrived, got out of his car and stood beneath the roof, she told him that his kind was bound to run into trouble, etc. Then she blew up his car with a grenade from her launcher (she was lightly armored and unarmed apart from the - now empty - launcher). Next thing you know, she get's hit for lethal damage from the guy's elf assassin contact, who had been waiting in an office building a mile off.
    When I said, "Dude, you scr*#ed us, I blew up your car and you frelling KILL me?" he said, "you don't mess with a guy's car!"

    I somehow ask myself why I put up with him so long...


    Xpltvdeleted wrote:
    Kirth Gersen wrote:
  • Would-be "next Tolkiens" who don't want their "perfect story" to be "ruined."
  • I know to each his own and all, but i've never understood the utter hatred for linear story lines. After all, the most basic game is a story in which your characters play a part. The only difference between "next Tolkiens" and other DMs is the other DMs are more subtle with their storyline railroads (ie.-fudging, having red herring multiple options that lead to the same conclusion, etc.). IMO, YMMV, etc.

    I played under a DM who was notorious for this. The biggest problem I had was that his "perfect story" was already plotted out, and our characters had no impact on the story whatsoever; sure, we may beat the big bad monster, but according to the story is was going to be beaten anyway. There was no possible deviation. One player even went out of his way to not go where the story told us to go next, and the DM penalized him xp stating "You're not playing your character right..." This almost started a fist fight.

    Our characters didn't matter. At all. Several of us would come in with entirely new characters each session just to try out builds and classes because in the story it didn't matter what or who we were. Most of the time we didn't even know what was going on, or why our characters were even involved with the current adventure. The DM was basically reading to himself and his best friend, while the rest of us just sat and watched. This campaign even went into epic levels, and by the time it was over, most of us weren't even sure of what just happened.


    DrGames wrote:

    * Biased
    * Lack imagination
    * Unable to think on their feet
    * Petty

    What are some others?

  • Adversiarialiarity - make that Adverseness (i.e. take it personal if players want to go the easy way)
  • Competitiveness (i.e. wanting to "win" the game)


  • KaeYoss wrote:
  • Competitiveness (i.e. wanting to "win" the game)
  • Show them THIS!


    Xpltvdeleted wrote:
    Kirth Gersen wrote:
  • Would-be "next Tolkiens" who don't want their "perfect story" to be "ruined."
  • I know to each his own and all, but i've never understood the utter hatred for linear story lines. After all, the most basic game is a story in which your characters play a part. The only difference between "next Tolkiens" and other DMs is the other DMs are more subtle with their storyline railroads (ie.-fudging, having red herring multiple options that lead to the same conclusion, etc.). IMO, YMMV, etc.

    The issue is moderation, or lack thereof. It is the same as the difference between a father who wants his daughter to lead a happy life and disapproves of her choice of husband and a father who kills every boyfriend of his daughter's who doesn't have a million in the bank and a foot in the pants.

    Of course you will have a general idea about what will happen in your campaign: You'll have the plot and the major players identified, and some events that are all but guaranteed to happen.

    But a good GM is a GM who will roll with the blow when the characters do something that forces him to alter parts of his story line (or maybe the whole thing).

    A crappy GM is a GM who wants his party (of high level characters) to travel to an island on a boat and will hide the island from them when they just use overland flight or wind walk. A crappy GM is a GM who all but forces the characters to read from a script and lets them have no choices at all. Everything that deviates from his script just fails.

    I've been a player in such campaigns.

    But I've seen the flip-side of this coin, too! One GM had us just walk away from the final fight (in the second instance, it was the whole final dungeon we walked away from). He smiled, rolled with it, and punished us severely ;-) (He didn't force us to fight that fight, though).

    He did learn (the second time, he forgot that my psion could disintegrate repeatedly and that a mere 30 feet of caved-in ceiling wouldn't really hold us for long - and he never thought we'd do it AGAIN!) the third time around and made sure we had to fight that fight :)


    Mistah Green wrote:


    While I agree with you, aren't inconsistent and overly rigid polar opposites?

    Yes. They don't usually appear both in the same GM, but they're both bad extremes. Moderation's where it's at.

    Plus, there are people who are rigid (and don't allow players any leeway) and inconsistent (make different rulings all the time - usually to benefit them each time) at the same time.


    Then there was the time...

    I was DM and this guy wanted to play a Paladin. He'd been making noises about it so I asked him to write up his "Paladin Code". Just ten points of honor and goodness that he had to stick to or he'd lose his paladinishness. Seems I ruined his character concept for him.


    Simcha wrote:
    When I said, "Dude, you scr*#ed us, I blew up your car and you frelling KILL me?" he said, "you don't mess with a guy's car!"

    Hey, sounds understandable to me! Do you know how much it costs to get a decent ride up to specs????

    (/sarcasm)

    Sadly, all of my player horror stories generally involve the fact that I can't kill a single freaking PC, even if they are at -9 and standing in front of a red dragon. Either my dice screw me over or their dice screw me over LOL.


    Ugwump wrote:

    Then there was the time...

    I was DM and this guy wanted to play a Paladin. He'd been making noises about it so I asked him to write up his "Paladin Code". Just ten points of honor and goodness that he had to stick to or he'd lose his paladinishness. Seems I ruined his character concept for him.

    I asked a player to do that once as well. Of course in my case it turn out awesome.


    The Admiral Jose Monkamuck wrote:
    Ugwump wrote:

    Then there was the time...

    I was DM and this guy wanted to play a Paladin. He'd been making noises about it so I asked him to write up his "Paladin Code". Just ten points of honor and goodness that he had to stick to or he'd lose his paladinishness. Seems I ruined his character concept for him.

    I asked a player to do that once as well. Of course in my case it turn out awesome.

    I did this just a few sessions ago. I'm still waiting for it. I think he'll eventually produce it with some more nudging and help from me, but is having trouble formulating exactly what a paladin of Erastil's code would be. In his case, I think it is absolutely vital to give him some roleplaying guidelines and keep his paladin from being railroaded into trouble by other, more aggressive players who aren't on the lawful good train.


    I got nuttin'.

    Well, there was one time not a single player showed up, or told me they couldn't show up. I'm not running that game anymore.


    My "horror" story is more one of utter frustration. We were playing 3.5 Ebberon, I have a Ranger dedicated to the Silver Flame. Basically, he would hunt down undead and all other sorts of atrocities without remorse. The Silver Flame allows extremely few exceptions. Well, we had a new player join up and the DM made him a 1/2 Vampire race to play. He was part of the group for a good while without me knowing what the heck was going on. When I did finally catch on, I tried to kill him. Up front, no back-stabbing, just face-to-face combat. The Cleric of the Silver Flame (never followed the tenets) stopped me. He had crossed into Wizard and cast Command Word on me. The melee goes on with the others deciding whether to kill me, the 1/2 Vamp, and trying to convince me not to kill the Vamp.
    This goes on for a while, eventually the DM askes if we can come out of Initiative. No one says no, I say nothing. So now it is down to role-playing. Most of the people doing a good job, the Cleric still not following the Orders of the Silver Flame. I just sit there, all quiet, until one of the players finally asks me a direct question. I don't answer except to reply that I am still frozen. The Cleric finally lets me go, and I attack. Everyone was shocked and stunned, that is to say, the Cleric didn't understand what I was doing and the DM was simarilly confused. After dying very quickly (only having 9hp left), the other players asked why I hadn't been persuaded to at least give the vamp a chance.
    I responded something along the lines of "You remember that last Wizard we fought? You know, the one that deafened me?"
    The group just looked on in silence when they realized they had killed me for playing my character out exactly lik I warned the DM it would happen if/when my Ranger found out about the Vampire.
    The most frustrating part of all this was that the DM refused to strip the Cleric of his abilities after once again blatantly flouting the very soul of his religion.


    Sphen86 wrote:
    The most frustrating part of all this was that the DM refused to strip the Cleric of his abilities after once again blatantly flouting the very soul of his religion.

    Uh, that's how Eberron works. Lawful good and chaotic evil priests in the same religion.

    There are no personifications of the gods - religions are a matter of faith. Anyone can potentially use divine magic.


    That sounds more like a bad player than a bad GM. I take a very dim view of PCs killing PCs - unless it's *that* sort of game.

    And what's a half-vampire? Sounds like more "3.5 is on it's last legs, let's start creating crap to fill what few books we might yet be able to sell". Is it one-quarter dead (walks with a limp)? Does it get a zebra-patterned tan if it stays out in the sun too long? Does it have only one fang?

    The Exchange

    My horror story comes from a 2nd edition game I played in for a few months. I had never played 2nd edition before, but was pretty keen to get to learn a new system, as I usually am. I rolled up a Gnome Thief/Illusionist.

    Stat rolling was the first frustration. I rolled four blocks and chose the best of them in front of the GM. He said, "Are you sure you want to keep that one?" and I said yes. It was reasonably good. When I show up to the game a few days later, I find that the rest of the group basically rolled until they had demi-god level stats. My second highest stat (a 16) was one particular players' lowest stat. Oh boy.

    Another problem started out not so bad, but grew worse and worse. We had one player who loved to succeed, and would cheat in order to do so. He'd add 10 to the die roll if it was 1-9. He'd add more bonuses than he should. GM knew it was going (he confessed one day while we were drinking) on but never said anything about it to the player. Ugh.

    Then the GM invited a coworker to play, who was also a cheater. Worse, he was an arrogant, obnoxious, and blatant cheater. He was a thief, and in the 3 sessions I played with him before quitting, he never failed a single roll, for skills or attacks or anything. He'd start in-character fights over arbitrary things, contest other players' actions based on their alignment, and still the GM did nothing about these two players.

    The last straw was drawn one day when we had planned a particularly long session. We started at 8am (most of the players worked swing shifts) regularly, but this day we had planned on going 'till 3-4ish. I said I need to take a quick break to get some food, and offered to let another player hold on to my character sheet while I do so.

    I got a call about 15 minutes later saying that my character had died to a poison dart while opening a door. Sweet. I finished the session (introducing a new character) but afterward told the GM that I was done.


    LilithsThrall wrote:

    That sounds more like a bad player than a bad GM. I take a very dim view of PCs killing PCs - unless it's *that* sort of game.

    And what's a half-vampire? Sounds like more "3.5 is on it's last legs, let's start creating crap to fill what few books we might yet be able to sell". Is it one-quarter dead (walks with a limp)? Does it get a zebra-patterned tan if it stays out in the sun too long? Does it have only one fang?

    Not a horror story, but I played a game back in 2e where one of the characters was a half-vampire.

    Not a horror story, so it goes in a spoiler:
    My character refused to believe in such nonsense (as a player I thought it was silly). He then charmed my character, turned her into a half-vampire by drinking her blood, and then attempted to seduce her. The order here is important, and his ability to charm no longer worked. She went several sessions refusing to believe that she had turned into a half-vampire. She was cured of the half-vampirism by an artifact before the other character was able to prove to her that she was a half-vampire. Everyone had a great time with the whole experience.

    Shadow Lodge

    LilithsThrall wrote:
    And what's a half-vampire? Sounds like more "3.5 is on it's last legs, let's start creating crap to fill what few books we might yet be able to sell". Is it one-quarter dead (walks with a limp)? Does it get a zebra-patterned tan if it stays out in the sun too long? Does it have only one fang?

    One of the easier ways to be a half-vampire was for your mother to be bitten by a vampire while pregnant with you, but not killed by the bite.


    A few years back we had a regular gaming night where a couple players from our group of around 7 couldnt make it. The rest of us met anyway, and decided that one person would dm a d20modern one-shot for the rest of us (me, Austin, Carl, and Jordan) all played ourselves.

    So, we stat ourselves out as 1st level heroes, with the higest ability score being around a 13, I think, as we were trying to be realistic.

    So, we have Seth(me) the fastfood worker, Carl the grocery stocker, Austin the pharmacy delivery boy, and Jordan the Fed Ex shipper as characters.

    We begin the game, and the guy acting as GM explains that we are hanging out one night and decide to go for a drive.
    GM: So who is driving?
    Me: I am.
    GM: ok, so the rest of you are just riding with Seth?
    All: Yes.
    GM: Ok, so as your driving, you come across a graveyard.
    Jordan" Dude, pull in there.
    Me: I pull into the graveyard.
    *We all get out of the car and walk around for a couple minutes*
    GM: From around the tree, out comes a zombie. It slowly walks towards you.
    Jordan: I walk closer to it.
    Me: How far away is the car?
    GM: 150ft or so.
    Me: I run to the car and GTFO!
    Austin and Carl: We go with Seth to the car.
    GM:........................................................................ ........................................................................... .................................................So, your just gonna drive away?
    Me: Dude, there is a zombie in that graveyard! Im lucky I didnt crap myself!
    GM:.................................................

    That was the end of the game. On the one hand, yes, we were kinda harsh to it, but on the other hand, he knew we were trying to be a little realistic with it and the first thing we find is a freakin ZOMBIE? WTH dood?

    Silver Crusade

    LilithsThrall wrote:
    And what's a half-vampire?

    It iz dhampir.[/bela]

    Vampire Hunter D, Castlevania's Alucard, Bloodrayne, Blade, apparently one of the Kamen Riders...?!

    Wait...Kamen Riders. Red Mantis Assassins. Red Mantis is led by a vampire. Vampire Kamen Rider...

    WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

    Shadow Lodge

    Mikaze wrote:
    LilithsThrall wrote:
    And what's a half-vampire?

    It iz dhampir.[/bela]

    Vampire Hunter D, Castlevania's Alucard, Bloodrayne, Blade, apparently one of the Kamen Riders...?!

    Wait...Kamen Riders. Red Mantis Assassins. Red Mantis is led by a vampire. Vampire Kamen Rider...

    WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS

    +1 for Kamen Riders reference!

    Must go stat up a Red Mantis on motorcycle now... maybe he'll even play a childrens card game...

    Liberty's Edge

    Dragonborn3 wrote:
    ...maybe he'll even play a childrens card game...

    ...

    ...

    In America!

    Shadow Lodge

    Gene 95 wrote:
    Dragonborn3 wrote:
    ...maybe he'll even play a childrens card game...

    ...

    ...

    In America!

    I'm sooo glad someone got that! +(Whatever Number you want)


    LilithsThrall wrote:


    And what's a half-vampire? Sounds like more "3.5 is on it's last legs, let's start creating crap to fill what few books we might yet be able to sell". Is it one-quarter dead (walks with a limp)? Does it get a zebra-patterned tan if it stays out in the sun too long? Does it have only one fang?

    The Dhampir has actually been around for quite some time. In the Ravenloft campaign setting they are sometimes more powerful than actual vampires, since they get most of their powers and few of their weaknesses. The +8 level adjustment still hurts pretty bad though.

    The Half-Vampire template from Libris Mortis(only a +2 adjustment) is decent for adding a bit of flavor to the character, without turning them into a monster.


    Brian Bachman wrote:
    is having trouble formulating exactly what a paladin of Erastil's code would be.

    Must utter "women belong to the kitchen" at least once an hour. ;-)


    LilithsThrall wrote:


    And what's a half-vampire?

    Dhampir


    Harbormaster Sterd wrote:

    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.

    Do not forget that the reason we lost our magic was because a demonic tree had a fixed anti-magic zone of half of the earth, but we were out of range. Until the tree (with a move speed of 1 inch per year) suddenly moved enough to affect all of us (we were about 180 feet apart from each other) unless we passed a dc 50 will save. Then when I try to dimension door away he randomly rolls a punishment dice. Which landed on golems but he decided to be generous and give a brain in a jar.


    Most of the 'games go bad' experiences for me have been from players fighting, bringing lots of work stress with them, then fighting in character, followed by as players. However there are a few bad GM scenes that come to mind...

    One GM constantly encouraged characters to marry and cheat on eachother, to the point of teleporting pcs and having Solar's decend to marry them. If other people were trying to roleplay or do other tasks they would be teleported to the events.

    This GM went from seeing one married woman to the next, to the next in real life. Whichever woman he was with at the time would game and get most of the attention, have items like eyes of charming so they could dominate the other characters and always find more items tailored for them than the other characters. We only bothered with that game for two sessions.

    When he played ALL his characters got excited by combat and tried to ravage the nearest female of any race.

    -

    Another GM would make every combat difficult, so you had to all roll well and use all your disposable items or else you will die. There were no easy or moderate encounters. Just before two of you are near death he would throw in some item or event to save your butts and then glance around like he was such a legend of helping you out.

    The characters also had no reason to be together, and he had no interest in roleplaying recurring npcs or interesting plots, people were just chased or dumped in situations. Yes the players discuused reasons to have our characters together but the GM took no notice of our backgrounds or reason to adventure. We only bothered with that game for two sessions too.


    The Admiral Jose Monkamuck wrote:

    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.

    Now is the time!(from one of the pink panther movies).

    The end of my playing Living Greyhawk was when almost the whole party was wiped out because the GM failed to hint that we should not leave the Dungeon the way we came.


    Kirth Gersen wrote:


  • Would-be "next Tolkiens" who don't want their "perfect story" to be "ruined."
  • Is this not more or less what an AP is? I mean I understand that, depending on the DM and the culture at the table there is a fair bit of variance in how close a group is going to be expected to stay on plot but it strikes me that with something like an AP having players throwing zingers at the DM on a regular basis is very likely to derail the who;e thing and a whole lot of APs just won't work if the players don't follow along with a number of major plot points.

    Grand Lodge

    Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

    That's why Kirth doesn't run APs.


    TriOmegaZero wrote:
    That's why Kirth doesn't run APs.

    That still would not make sense to me except maybe as a contentious statement meant to be the starting point for a debate.

    I mean 'likes to run APs' would strike me as a pretty contriversial answer to the question "I wonder if there are some common characteristics to poor DM/GM/REFs".

    Grand Lodge

    Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

    However, APs are not written by the DM. So there is less attachment to the story, less 'you have to follow MY story', and 'would be Tolkiens' don't usually use material they didn't write themselves.

    Liberty's Edge

    When i started with a new group there was a guy from work that wanted to play. he never played tabletop RPGs before. He always plays paladans. Even when plays different classes he plays them like a paladin. He does not seem to get the concept of playing different types of characters after 2 years of playing.


    CapeCodRPGer wrote:
    When i started with a new group there was a guy from work that wanted to play. he never played tabletop RPGs before. He always plays paladans. Even when plays different classes he plays them like a paladin. He does not seem to get the concept of playing different types of characters after 2 years of playing.

    Seems like a pretty minor quibble unless there is more to it. Lots of players are fixated on one type of character and usually that is OK unless the archetype itself is disruptive or in the case of something like a player that always wants to play the wizard thus never allowing others to take that role.

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