What do you think?
Is it using the 3.5 version of Mage's Disjunction on the party?
Is it tricking the high level Paladin into committing evil acts and holding it against him?
Or can you think of something MUCH WORSE?
Telling a Wizard that all spells he gets is 2 per level, and that there are no magic item shops in the game, proceeded by handing out uber-useless magic items. Of course, that goes great with banning crafting feats.
Further, all enemies are book burning obsessed goblins.
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Yar.
The most evil thing a DM/GM can do?
Invite some friends over to play a tabletop RPG game like Pathfinder and then not let them play, turning it from a game to GM story-hour. Worse still if the GM doesn't bathe. Worse still if he's rude and insulting too.
I think that's the most evil thing for a GM to do.
~P
Kidnap his players for ransom, then murder them in cold blood and flee the country?
Other than that....
The thing that irritates me is when a GM tells me what my character would do, and then imposes some result for purposes of "plot" that I don't believe my character would ever agree to, or fall victim to.
I'm not sure I'd be any more opposed to raping the female characters than I would be to raping the male characters...
I'm not sure I'd be any more opposed to raping the female characters than I would be to raping the male characters...
Tentacles of forced intrusion are indiscriminate.
Yar.
I now have to wonder how long it will be before this thread gets locked for being inappropriate or against the rules of conduct for this site, or at least gets half it's posts deleted.
*shrugs*
~P
Completely misdirect the players about their fate and then pull the rug from under them at the last second. I have seen a grown man reduced to tears when his Dark Fate - which was translatable as either 'an unfortunate marriage' or 'an early death' - realised that what he thought was the former due to the nature of his bride-to-be, was actually the latter when he got assassinated on his wedding day ...
No the first time that DM pulled it on us, either, but I have to say we hijacked his plots and took them to Cuba more than once in retaliation ...
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Post on a forum about a Jade Regent campaign, telling people to get characters made up for it.
Help them create incredible backstories and interesting characters.
Have all of your players drive up to/ride the bus about 10-20 miles to get there.
When everyone gets there, bait and switch to a Vampire the Masquerade campaign instead.
Get pissed when no one else wants to play and proceed to waste everyone's time when *GASP* you don't have the Jade Regent AP and nothing is prepared.
Sadly I was a player in this game that never was, taking the bus about 15 miles to get there. Luckily I got a ride back.
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Also... pugwampis...
Post on a forum about a Jade Regent campaign, telling people to get characters made up for it.
Help them create incredible backstories and interesting characters.
Have all of your players drive up to/ride the bus about 10-20 miles to get there.
When everyone gets there, bait and switch to a Vampire the Masquerade campaign instead.
Get pissed when no one else wants to play and proceed to waste everyone's time when *GASP* you don't have the Jade Regent AP and nothing is prepared.
Sadly I was a player in this game that never was, taking the bus about 15 miles to get there. Luckily I got a ride back.
That's my favorite awful DM story I've ever heard. Something about someone sitting down and thinking, "I know-- I'll get everyone extremely excited about another campaign when I don't even have it! That's brilliant-- then we can just play Vampire once they're in my house and can't leave."
I'd love to hear more about his thought process as translated by you. It's just fascinating to me how stupid that it.
EDIT: The worst thing a DM ever did to me was let a completely random out-of-left-field friend run a session of the game and kill my character because I picked up a piece of scenery. To clarify, we were in a sewer, I picked up a teddy bear-- when we met the Ghoul King, the teddy bear belonged to his son or something and he made me fight another PC to the death for it.
That was fun. It was like a two hour session, cut short, my character died and that person never ran a game again.
Post on a forum about a Jade Regent campaign, telling people to get characters made up for it.
Help them create incredible backstories and interesting characters.
Have all of your players drive up to/ride the bus about 10-20 miles to get there.
When everyone gets there, bait and switch to a Vampire the Masquerade campaign instead.
Get pissed when no one else wants to play and proceed to waste everyone's time when *GASP* you don't have the Jade Regent AP and nothing is prepared.
Sadly I was a player in this game that never was, taking the bus about 15 miles to get there. Luckily I got a ride back.
That's my favorite awful DM story I've ever heard. Something about someone sitting down and thinking, "I know-- I'll get everyone extremely excited about another campaign when I don't even have it! That's brilliant-- then we can just play Vampire once they're in my house and can't leave."
I'd love to hear more about his thought process as translated by you. It's just fascinating to me how stupid that it.
Honestly, all I can think of was probably the GM thought that since we drove/rode so far out of our way to get to Cocoa Beach and most of us were game starved, he figured we'd just do it since we had taken the time to get there. I guess in some twisted way the logic was sound... but...
He was sorely mistaken when we all just left his home. This was fairly recent too. Ended up just buckling and running a Kingmaker game. Always the GM, never the player.
Had a dm rule that my character's full cover only blocked my shots and not the enemies as well. That was the same dm that over ruled the existence of stealth for lawful neutral characters. i.e. me. Yeah that was a short campaign.
I don't mind the plot stick usually. I do mind the "well I'm a lawful good dm" stick.
That is my least favorite dm. Probably not the most evil thing one could do, but certainly the most annoying I've come across.
Aside from setting people up and wasting a lot of time/gas/energy?
Taking control away from the players. GMs are supposed to act a referees, and control the game world around the player characters. They do NOT get to break the rules or control the actions of the player characters.
I can't stand it when a GM tells me what MY character is thinking and/or doing.
Aside from setting people up and wasting a lot of time/gas/energy?
Taking control away from the players. GMs are supposed to act a referees, and control the game world around the player characters. They do NOT get to break the rules or control the actions of the player characters.
I can't stand it when a GM tells me what MY character is thinking and/or doing.
Yeah, mind control is a very very difficult power to use as a DM and a very hard pill to swallow as a player. Half the time, it is used to mind control the fighter/barbarian and then club the wizard to death. As a DM, I rarely use it and usually not like that. If I do use it, I actually let my players keep their character and tell them "You're a bad guy now. Go ahead and kill your teammates :D". Luckily, my friends don't mind smashing each other a bit, but even in games I've run with total strangers, I find this method to be the best way to handle mind control because at least the player still has a semblance of control over their character.
Now, a GM telling you what your character would do as a personality... well that's silly thing for a GM to say. Unless something is totally, grossly different from your alignment (ie NG tortures and rapes a captive, etc) I usually don't say anything and even if I do, it's usually a warning. And usually only to divine casters and monks since that's all it'd really matter to.
Now, a GM telling you what your character would do as a personality... well that's silly thing for a GM to say. Unless something is totally, grossly different from your alignment (ie NG tortures and rapes a captive, etc) I usually don't say anything and even if I do, it's usually a warning. And usually only to divine casters and monks since that's all it'd really matter to.
This happened to my friend ooc during a game. It was a long drawn out thing but GM was upset that party did not do things the way he wanted so pulled something like mind control to make them go the way he wanted. After friend and other players said something he said no your characters would of been alright with this.
I can't stand it when a GM tells me what MY character is thinking and/or doing.
That's not really a DM being evil, though, that's a DM being a Richard Cranium. A DM being EVIL is - as I understand it - a DM doing something diabolical but within the rules of the game and the social group. Something that makes the players go "WTF?" or "OMG!"
This happened to my friend ooc during a game. It was a long drawn out thing but GM was upset that party did not do things the way he wanted so pulled something like mind control to make them go the way he wanted. After friend and other players said something he said no your characters would of been alright with this.
I have on one occasion offered the dice and my sheet to the gm and told him to have fun playing by himself. If I cannot control my pc, unless there is a very very good plot related reason necessitating it, then there isn't much point to me being there.
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I have on one occasion offered the dice and my sheet to the gm and told him to have fun playing by himself. If I cannot control my pc, unless there is a very very good plot related reason necessitating it, then there isn't much point to me being there.
This happened to my friend ooc during a game. It was a long drawn out thing but GM was upset that party did not do things the way he wanted so pulled something like mind control to make them go the way he wanted. After friend and other players said something he said no your characters would of been alright with this.
Player agency or the ability for players to affect the fate of their character and the game world is very important. If players feel like their choices have no effect on the outcome then frustration is a common response.
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I don't know if it counts as "evil" but as a gm I played a bait and switch on my players. I had them all make 20th level character's with the leadership feat and strongholds and the works. Let them spend their time developing their "kingdoms" telling them to make sure to include how their trusted cohort fit into everything and had them fill out a full character sheet for their cohorts. Then started the adventure at banquette for these great heroes being held by the emperor when all their character died suddenly and were instantly raised as undead versions of their former glory at the command of the emperor's nephew. I then took all their carefully optimized and annotated character sheets added the intelligent undead template and told them that they where playing their cohorts now and they should probably think about grabbing the emperor and running before their optimized NPC versions of their heroes got their bearings.
I don't know if it counts as "evil" but as a gm I played a bait and switch on my players. I had them all make 20th level character's with the leadership feat and strongholds and the works. Let them spend their time developing their "kingdoms" telling them to make sure to include how their trusted cohort fit into everything and had them fill out a full character sheet for their cohorts. Then started the adventure at banquette for these great heroes being held by the emperor when all their character died suddenly and were instantly raised as undead versions of their former glory at the command of the emperor's nephew. I then took all their carefully optimized and annotated character sheets added the intelligent undead template and told them that they where playing their cohorts now and they should probably think about grabbing the emperor and running before their optimized NPC versions of their heroes got their bearings.
I'm not sure if that makes you a dick or awesome. It might be both.
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Evil, eh? Alright.
As GM, tell your players to create the most powerful characters they can imagine, no limits, for an epic game you're planning. They can use any material they want.
On game day, ask for all their character sheets, pass them their new sheets (a party of level one kobolds) and tell them that they must defend their warren homes from invading god-beings.
In Vampire, World of Darkness. I had a player playing a combat oriented vampire, but one with a 6 humanity (or was it 7?). Either way, he was at the max he could have and still kill without making checks.
So, during the game, he was on the astral plane, working with some werewolves to stop some really sicko vampires (the 'bad guy' vampires, can't remember the organization name) from using a bunch of kids to gain some uber powerful artifact by sacrificing their souls.
Well, he was laying on the couch, resting, waiting for the rest to finish the plans. I mentioned it was almost dawn, and he said he wanted to go somewhere hidden from the sun, and someone else told him no worries, on the astral plane, you're not affected by sunlight as a vamp. So I asked him if he wanted to go to the roof of the building and watch the sun rise.
He said sure, and went up to watch the sunrise for the first time in his life (he was a born vampire). As he watched it, I asked him for a humanity check, and 3 other people at the table (who'd played before) suddenly groaned and called me an evil b***ard. The player made his humanity check, and passed it and went up by one humanity. It was now almost 'saint' level, and he could lose half his humanity just from losing his temper, much less killing someone.
Player agency is important, but sometimes it can break a written AP. I had a CN dwarven rogue/barbarian who by his nature assumed everyone was lying to him and was trying to lead him into ambushes (total paranoid). Unfortunately, in the adventure path we were playing, the main "ally" npc was lying to us and trying to lead us into traps, and if I did not allow myself to be duped, there simply was no way to engage in the encounters which forwarded the story. So I just had to hand-wave it and get on with the adventure, instead of role-playing the character as I originally conceived of him.
This was not an issue of a GM taking away my player agency, but of the author of the adventure path doing so (although in every other way, the adventure, which was published by paizo, was quite clever and enjoyable.)
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Player agency is important, but sometimes it can break a written AP. I had a CN dwarven rogue/barbarian who by his nature assumed everyone was lying to him and was trying to lead him into ambushes (total paranoid). Unfortunately, in the adventure path we were playing, the main "ally" npc was lying to us and trying to lead us into traps, and if I did not allow myself to be duped, there simply was no way to engage in the encounters which forwarded the story. So I just had to hand-wave it and get on with the adventure, instead of role-playing the character as I originally conceived of him.
This was not an issue of a GM taking away my player agency, but of the author of the adventure path doing so (although in every other way, the adventure, which was published by paizo, was quite clever and enjoyable.)
That is a general flaw in published adventures in that they assume that the one (maybe two) ways they have set up are the ways the players will try to complete the adventure. I tend to adjust published adventures to allow for player innovation. If their idea is cool and could work then why not let it work?
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Changing rules mid game..
Had an iron kingdoms game where the GM changed the rules to punish the players (not the characters) at every opportunity. As it was one of the few times I got to be a player I just kept making characters and watching the game rules change to limit each character.
Last character was a diplomacy paladin, when the GM swore it was a diplomacy based game. Spent the next few sessions trying to use diplomacy and always having to fight.
Also had a pathfinder game with "house rules" that were never written down and only seemed to penalise player characters. When written down by players and trying to have same rules applied to NPCs was told, that's not how the rules work.
I have run a game where the rules did change based on the environment, this was very much like plane shifting where the magic can be different. It was not taken well, though having it applied equally to the NPCs and having the ability to discover (ask NPCs) how things worked in game made a difference.
I think the main thing here is bad communication is the most evil thing a DM/GM/ST can do. If they can't communicate with the players, then its not worth playing and wasting players time with. Everything else is degrees of hurt ;)
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Also had a pathfinder game with "house rules" that were never written down and only seemed to penalise player characters. When written down by players and trying to have same rules applied to NPCs was told, that's not how the rules work.
Sounds like 4E.
In a Vampire game I was running, there was a powerful merit (Age) that required the player hand in a character background to take. One player took the merit, but did not hand in a background. So, I made one for him. Every game.
Each game he found his character sheet changed slightly and had a completely different background for his character as his character regressed through about 12 or so layered false identities he had been programmed with.
Oddly, the player ended up loving the direction it took his character.
I don't know if it counts as "evil" but as a gm I played a bait and switch on my players. I had them all make 20th level character's with the leadership feat and strongholds and the works. Let them spend their time developing their "kingdoms" telling them to make sure to include how their trusted cohort fit into everything and had them fill out a full character sheet for their cohorts. Then started the adventure at banquette for these great heroes being held by the emperor when all their character died suddenly and were instantly raised as undead versions of their former glory at the command of the emperor's nephew. I then took all their carefully optimized and annotated character sheets added the intelligent undead template and told them that they where playing their cohorts now and they should probably think about grabbing the emperor and running before their optimized NPC versions of their heroes got their bearings.
Oh.. my... gosh...
You are required to make a module of this now, because this is the most epic idea I've heard.
I'm so doing this at some point.
Rocks fall.
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The most evil thing a DM can do is to act like the game is the DM vs the Players. That, it is definitely not.
Joined an "Iron Crown" game when i couldn't find a good D&D game once.
was my own fault I suppose, but.. dang.
character 1) shot through the head with an arrow in round 1, combat 1. this, after 4 hours of character creation because all the silly rules and math the game had to "make it more realistic".
pulled a character out of "the pile". (should have known, that many old chracters meant alot of dead people), renamed him and got picked up abit later.
Same night- broke my sword arm. Game has "handedness".. neat for realism- not so neat for breaking an arm.. sword/board dwarf warrior reduced to.. board.. dwarf.. warrior..
couldn't hit anything cuz. not a dual wielder.. nothing swung at me since i had no weapon..
hmm.
yeah.. didn't go back.
-S
Not the most evil, but certainly the most rude. In my previous group, we were all having a great time gaming. Joking, laughing, killing things, rather humorous RP segments. It was rather great.... Then, as the weeks went on, the rest of the group (they all lived in the same apartment, roughly 5 of them) start having personal problems. It finally culminates in a 'group meeting' in which my girlfriend gets blamed for everything (since, being non-confrontational, she made for a rather good scape goat), all done by the GM, and the man won't listen to reason or logic (seriously, we were only there maybe 6 to 8 hours every saturday, sometimes stayed the night to game on sunday). Didn't go back for a few weeks, GF gets game starved, we deal with it for a few more weeks before the one-sided targeting of my GF's characters (even when he wasn't the dm, and the second dm was running, he still did it) pissed both of us off. We have not been back since.
Perhaps the most 'evil' DM call I've seen personally, by the same DM, was this. I picked up several applications of Godless Healing as a Magus. In character my character gets into a theological discussion, and comments that he can certainly respect Irori's way of ascension. DM instantly slaps my character with "your patron deity is Irori, you can no longer use Godless Healing." Proceeded to tell me I cannot retrain those feats, nor can I go back to not having a patron deity, given that the character 'pays lip service' to a deity.
Suffice to say that no matter how game-starved my GF and I get, what with the rest of our friends not having any openings in their groups, we resist the urge to head back to that group to game...
Most evil thing I've done as a DM? It wasn't intentional, but in 3.5 I sent some trolls with Reaping Mauler class levels against the party. It was only 3, but uh.. heh... Turned out a lot worse than I expected XD.
The most evil thing a DM can do is to act like the game is the DM vs the Players. That, it is definitely not.
Is it bad that I do this as a player whenever the DM has a story they want to railroad us into?
The most evil thing a DM can do is to act like the game is the DM vs the Players. That, it is definitely not.Is it bad that I do this as a player whenever the DM has a story they want to railroad us into?
Are you actually asking if it is bad to spread bad behavior by example? Seriously?
Also... pugwampis...
One DM I had briefly LOVED critical fumble rules. And his were even dumber and harsher than the normal kind. If you rolled a 1 on an attack roll, you hit yourself and had to roll another d20, if that came out a 1, you CRIT yourself.
No matter how illogical hitting yourself would be, such as with a bowshot or (as in my case), using a reach weapon where you literally could not hit the area you're standing in with it.
We were playing Legacy of Fire.
He had pugwampi attack us in some old church up on rafters and such. Where we needed climb checks to get up and then balance checks every round once up lest we fall back all the way to the floor, take damage, and have to scale up yet again. All of it with the pugwampi's misfortune ability on us, so every roll was 2d20, take the lower. On top of his insanely broken critical fumble rules, which now had an absurdly high chance of hitting and even critting ourselves.
We were level 2.
I, both before I started playing and witnessing the horrors, during them, and after, complained very vocally and incessantly about how stupid his crit fumble rules were and how my raging barbarian w/ Power Attack would kill herself on a normal hit if damaged a bit even w/ minimum damage rolled. And if she crit (x3 weapon), she'd auto die even if at full hp! He finally relented after that miserable endeavor spoilered above, but was extremely unhappy about it, and killed off the entire campaign over the loss of his precious fumble rules just days later before we even had another session. In retrospect, I'm amazed I was so hard up for a game back then that I put up with that DM D-baggery at all...
Also, as an addenundum... even w/o his houserule, pugwampis are the dumbest most broken monsters I've ever seen. Unluck in 3E is a 3rd level, single target round/level will negates spell that has the exact same effect. Pugwampis are an "appropriate challenge" for a level 1 party and generate that same effect over a huge area constantly w/ no save to resist at all. That's just bs.
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Last character was a diplomacy paladin, when the GM swore it was a diplomacy based game. Spent the next few sessions trying to use diplomacy and always having to fight.
Pretty much the bane of my gaming existence, being told 'no, really, *this* game is going to be heavy on intrigue and building and maintaining resources across the city' or whatever BS, and falling for it *again,* and it turning into "Haha! Sabbat invasion! Werewolves attack! Seige! War!"
Pretty much every Vampire (or Werewolf) game, ever, falls to this, and I keep a Brujah with 5 dots of Potence on standby to replace whatever I wanted to play, since, inevitably, the whole game is going to devolve into dragonsbreath shotgun rounds and stakes to the heart and creative uses of plastic explosive.
Bait & switch and adversarial DMs (No matter what you try, it fails! Even if it's what I told you to do! Ha! I'm the GM, biotch!) are my pet peeves. But that's not really evil, just jerkish.
Probably the worst is when a GM decides to structure a game in such a way as to 'teach someone a lesson,' such as to punish a paladin player for making a choice that goes against the GMs personal beliefs. "Yeah, you saved the goblin children, and they grow up to attack and eat all the other kids in the orphanage you built, because they can't be redeemed, you namby-pamby liberal!"
I. LOOOOOAAAAATHE. Pugwampis.
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I see this is a thread of cunning in-game evil and not of using an extensive knowledge of a player's psychological make up to fine-tune a game to run them into the ground and leave nothing but a gibbering wreck, fit only for pushing trolleys at a supermarket.
Okay.
I see this is a thread of cunning in-game evil and not of using an extensive knowledge of a player's psychological make up to fine-tune a game to run them into the ground and leave nothing but a gibbering wreck, fit only for pushing trolleys at a supermarket.
Okay.
Heh, I had a DM like that once in a 3E game, too. He gave each of us a notecard before the campaign started with rough guidelines on what our characters needed to be. Mine was to be a good aligned caster-ish type that was accused of being a witch (we all started as slaves/prisoners being carted off to prison in chains w/ no possessions at all) and thus needed to have magical ability and female. I made her a warlock and wanted to model her after a cheery, plucky magical girl anime heroine like Sailor Moon or Cutey Honey, including transformation sequences, using Charm invocation and diplomacy to bring an end to fighting and advocating the power of love.
...Unbeknownst to me, DM had every other PC make evil characters. Like, super evil. Like, enjoyed prolonging a fight just to make the opponents suffer more then turn their wretched mangled bodies into undead spawn.
I constantly tried to roleplay my character, but the DM actively twisted the results of my actions/attempts to just make things worse. Like the time we encountered enslaved children that had been surgically attached to constructs (this was a grim setting, if you hadn't figured it out yet) and were attacked by them. DM noted we could aim to only hit the machine areas and NOT kill the kids. My character vehemently insisted that the party not slaughter these poor innocent mentally dominated children. Actually got the party to agree somehow. However, while as hitting an unarmored child would've been a one-hit kill, dismantling the metal bits required a lot of attacks, and we were getting battered by their attacks pretty badly, party getting frustrated. Finally, we down the first one. DM declares that as the constructs are directly connected to and powered by the bio-essence / life force of the children, destroying the machine killed the child anyway. I was horrified in character and angry out of character. The party was VERY angry with me mostly IC, but also a bit OOC. Needless to say, they proceeded to say screw it and massacre the children as my character broke down crying...
That was by far the most atrocious example, but seriously, every time my character tried to resolve things peacefully or in a "more good aligned way" in blew up in her face and turned out worse than if she / the party had just walked in and killed everything. Every time.
I eventually quit the game because much as I enjoyed reading the Marquis de Sade's Justine, I had no desire to play her in a game. :(
Sunder/disintegrate the gear at every opportunity. Cut limbs. Rape the female characters. Do I really need to go on?
Rape the male party members too, with ogres.
The poor wizard.
I see this is a thread of cunning in-game evil and not of using an extensive knowledge of a player's psychological make up to fine-tune a game to run them into the ground and leave nothing but a gibbering wreck, fit only for pushing trolleys at a supermarket.
Okay.
Yeah, I once had GM like that.
Awesome.
Of course, the two players that had nervous breakdowns may disagree, but still awesome.
I see this is a thread of cunning in-game evil and not of using an extensive knowledge of a player's psychological make up to fine-tune a game to run them into the ground and leave nothing but a gibbering wreck, fit only for pushing trolleys at a supermarket.
Okay.
as a trolley collector at my local supermarket i deeply resent that comment. seriously, the high-end contractors actually employ good people.
EDIT: i just realised that my comment seems serious. i completely understand how my job looks to outsiders, and to be honest after seeing the competition's people i can't blame you. all good, and no real offence taken.
How about leaving a PC in a barrel in a sewer for almost an entire session (you know, one of those you did when you were young and could play from noon till your eyes and brains just had to sleep?). Just because said player decided to go do something the DM/GM didn't like or approve of... He stayed there for like 10 hours, RL time. This was back in the 2ed days. We still talk about that from time to time...
Oh! Btw, I was the GM (shame on me :-/)
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How about leaving a PC in a barrel in a sewer for almost an entire session
Ah, the famous, 'I've got a scene coming up where we can introduce your character.'
Six hours later.
'Okay, we'll pick up next week, and sorry player X that we didn't get to introduce your character yet...'
To be countered on the other side of the GM screen by the player who hasn't written up a character sheet by the third session in, and still seems to conveniently have whatever skill is necessary for the current situation. :)
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1. Order a delicious pizza.
2. Inform the players that the rules for the pizza are as follows: Whenever a PC kills an enemy, that player gets to have a slice. When an enemy kills a PC, the GM gets a slice.
3. TPK the PCs.
1. Order a delicious pizza.
2. Inform the players that the rules for the pizza are as follows: Whenever a PC kills an enemy, that player gets to have a slice. When an enemy kills a PC, the GM gets a slice.
3. TPK the PCs.
At least you had the decency to buy the pizza and not make them buy it, and plus if the PCs are lucky they can off a couple of enemies before they die.