I started a Wizard character that joined the party at level 5. He was found naked in a cave in the underdark. I managed to find a spell book after a couple of sessions so I wasn't completely useless, but I spent Months (real time) unable to buy new spells.
Also, for some reason, all enemy casters spell books were destroyed when they died.
I gradually realized that the DM didn't really know how magic worked in 3.5, and with the spell compendium out there I don't really blame him for not knowing how every spell worked. However, it did get annoying when he would just stop the spells from working when he had approved them in advance.
In the epic boss fight to end the campaign, he waved away 3 different spells (again, that he had preapproved) so I didn't really get to participate. Kind of spoiled the ending for me, but the rest of the campaign was pretty fun.
Actually, this can go both ways. I had a situatation when the GM announced he would be preparing a campaign about courtly intrigue, political assassination, espionage, sabotage and the like... and a couple players showed up with concepts like a neanderthal barbarian from a remote valley, a nerd wizard extraordinaire, and a socially inept paladin.
Which was when the GM declared he would refuse to play.
Similar situation there. Friend came up with a Steam-punk 3.5 campaign, complete with train hijackings and double agents and spying, a great social rogue plot. Three of the players show up with Orcs. Not Half-orcs, Orcs. Their names were Skinny, Fatty, and Drunky. And they were based off of Warhammer Orcs. Lots of Dakka.
My friend ended up scrapping his original plot and going with a mercenary thing. He still had the war going on, but the orcs got hired out by different groups for fighting rather than for spying.
Nasty things a GM has done to me? This one's not really nasty, just annoying. He ran a pre-gen 3.5 game, his first ever time GMing. Problem was, he just droned through the text. No inflection on the voices, acted like he was trying to get through the cut scene as fast as he can so he could get us to the loot. This caused major problems in everyone's perception as to what our quest actually was. We worked it out in the end, but please, GMs, if you're gonna run something pre-gen, study the material so you don't sound like a 3rd grader giving a presentation to the class!
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A cave we needed to get through. Squares on the floor, tons of them. Every square would tell us how many of the adjacent squares were trapped if stepped on. If you stepped on a trap square, you got paralyzed for a round and lost 1 hp due to an electric jolt...
Yeah. Minesweeper.
I played a game where the DM thought when you rolled a one that he should think of something "fun" to happen. Invariable the "fun" thing that happened was that you hit the PC next to you. At the time, my girlfriend (now wife) would roll an unusually large number of 1s, and since I was always backing her up, the DM had her hit my character each time. I wonder if part of the problem was my DM was also my roommate at the time and was jealous that my girlfriend was stealing me away (and he'd have to find a new roommate).
Currently, a GM that I game with doesn't know the rules too much and hasn't gotten serious enough to beat down some other players. These other players THINK they know how the rules work, but really don't. But since they are more "experienced" (have played longer, but not necessarily better) the GM bows to their interpretations. We get stupid things happen like:
P1: "You can't move through an ally's square during combat."
Me: "Uh, no, that is only if you try to charge." *looks at GM for back up*
P1: "Nope, you can't move through an ally's square unless you are spring attacking, I saw it on the Paizo boards."
Me: *see no help from the GM* "Sure, whatever."
Me (Mentally): "Ok, it is just a houserule they are using, whatever. Next feat, spring attack."
A cave we needed to get through. Squares on the floor, tons of them. Every square would tell us how many of the adjacent squares were trapped if stepped on. If you stepped on a trap square, you got paralyzed for a round and lost 1 hp due to an electric jolt...
Yeah. Minesweeper.
LOL, I did something like that to a group I was running. One character, a monk, went into a room and set off the trap. The player, believe it or not, had never played minesweeper, ever. The rest of the group is grinding their teeth while the player was saying, "I don't get it." Luckily she was exactly the right player and her character was the right character (amazing reflex saves and evasion) to do that room. For everyone else it would have been boring and/or deadly.
"Nope, you can't move through an ally's square unless you are spring attacking, I saw it on the Paizo boards."
Next time ask them where they saw it in the rulebook. :)
Believe me, it is just not worth it. I have on occasion read a bit of text out to them when they were doing something wrong (and it was seriously nerfing my character), but you really have to pick your battles when you are the new guy in the group.
What's funny is that even when they claim to have read something, they didn't actually. They were basing the spring attack claim from this:
=================================
Spring Attack (page 134): Can I use Spring Attack to make an attack from an ally's square?
Let's use a diagram of a 5-foot-wide hallway to help visualize this question. Periods are open squares. A is the acting character. Numbers are allies of A. X is the monster.
. . . . . A 1 2 3 X
Using the diagram as a model, the question is, "Can I use Spring Attack to move from A to 3, make an attack on the monster from 3's square, then move back to A and end my turn?"
The answer is "yes." The key to understanding this is the general rule, "you cannot end your movement in an occupied square." Spring Attack is a full-round action; it is not a move action, then an attack, and then another move action, it's one continuous movement with an attack happening in the middle. Thus, with Spring Attack you're not ending your movement until you end your movement for the turn.
To look at it another way, if the character just wanted to move from A to 3 and back to A, that would be a legal move because he's not ending his movement in 3, he's ending his movement back in A. With Spring Attack, the character still isn't ending his movement in 3; the feat gives him the ability to perform an attack as part of the continuous movement from A to 3 to A (regardless of whether that attack happens when he's in an occupied square).
(Even with speed 15, a character moving 15 feet from A to 3 and then 15 feet from 3 to A isn't ending his movement in 3... using a move action to move 15 feet and a standard action to move 15 feet doesn't mean he's actually pausing halfway through his movement to change actions.)
—Sean K Reynolds, 06/30/11
=====================================
They totally missed the bolded part. LOL
A cave we needed to get through. Squares on the floor, tons of them. Every square would tell us how many of the adjacent squares were trapped if stepped on. If you stepped on a trap square, you got paralyzed for a round and lost 1 hp due to an electric jolt...
Yeah. Minesweeper.
Cast protection from energy, electricity, and run through them all. Take that, dumb puzzle, lol.
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I haven't encountered this in many, many years, as it's very much a maturity issue, but...
GM Withholds Valuable Yet Obvious Information
Example:
GM: You come out of the woods to a riverbank. It's about fifty feet across.
Player: Is there a bridge anywhere nearby?
GM: No.
Player: How deep is the river?
GM: It looks like it's only two or three feet deep at the deepest.
Player: I probe the riverbed with a stick. Does it feel like the bottom is really muddy, like I might get stuck?
GM: No. the bottom is rocky, not muddy.
Player: Okay, I wade across.
GM: *giggles* You get about ten feet out. The bottom is very slippery. Roll a Reflex save. DC is 30.
Player: 30? That's a really high DC!
GM: Yeah, that's due to the slipperiness of the algae, and the sheer force of the rapids.
Player: Rapids? You didn't say anything about rapids! I thought it was a normal river!
GM: You didn't ask how fast the water was flowing. What was your roll?
Player: Gee, with a DC 30, I need a natural 20 to succeed. *rolls* Hey, what do you know: I failed!
GM: Okay. You get swept over the 100-foot waterfall.
Player: What waterfall?
GM: The waterfall that was 30 feet down the river.
Player: You didn't say anything about a waterfall, either!
GM: You didn't ask what was downstream. *rolls handfull of dice* Take 68 points of damage from the fall. Roll a fort save to see if you die from massive damage. And make a swim check.
We once had a GM infect 4/5 party members, 2 with lycanthropy and two as vampires, by setting DC25 saves to level 1's and setting the mobs on us at bestiary level. We suggested that it was imbalanced but he said it was the players fault for being stupid and not optimizing there characters.
This became worse as he then took control of players and ran them as npcs when combat was going south generally forcing then tank or healer to flee or engage the party.
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DM: So, you guys ready for the new campaign? What did you guys wind up making?
Me: I rolled up an Elf Ranger. He gets...
DM: Sorry, can't be an Elf in this game.
Me: Um, ok, are there no elves? I wasn't aware...
DM: Oh there's elves, you just can't play one. They all left civilization for their own land.
Me: Every single one of them? None of them wanted to stay?
DM: Nope. There's elves, but you can't be one.
Me: Okay, fine. Well, I'm thinking Gnome Sorce...
DM: No Gnomes either. They left too.
Me: Seriously?
DM: You can be a Goblin! You guys are starting in a Goblin city...
Me: *tableflip*
It's the people who don't pay attention that hack me off. In Josh M.'s post above the scenario was the DM's fault for not giving enough information on things that would be obvious just to screw over a player. I make damn sure the scene is described in detail and if a player falls on his kiester and gets flung over a waterfall it's the player's fault for not listening or paying attention.
Currently the only setting rules that I want in my homebrew are no dinosaurs and no dragons. I'm the primary DM, it's my setting, and I have my reasons.
So when one of my players (and longtime friend) asks to run a "side trek" adventure what does he put in? Dinosaurs and dragons because the module he wanted to run contained them. People who don't listen annoy me.
It's the people who don't pay attention that hack me off. In Josh M.'s post above the scenario was the DM's fault for not giving enough information on things that would be obvious just to screw over a player. I make damn sure the scene is described in detail and if a player falls on his kiester and gets flung over a waterfall it's the player's fault for not listening or paying attention.
Currently the only setting rules that I want in my homebrew are no dinosaurs and no dragons. I'm the primary DM, it's my setting, and I have my reasons.
So when one of my players (and longtime friend) asks to run a "side trek" adventure what does he put in? Dinosaurs and dragons because the module he wanted to run contained them. People who don't listen annoy me.
I agree. Here's the thing; I'm perfectly fine with restricted races, classes, etc. The more setting-appropriate my character is, the better. I want to get involved, I want to play along. I'm not one for bucking the system just because someone wants to ride a dinosaur and shoot missiles out of their arms in a fantasy setting.
Had the DM told me ahead of time what was and wasn't allowed, I would have been fine. I had a solid two weeks of time to make my character, with no known restrictions other than Pathfinder books were preferred, so I thought I was being conservative and just sticking with a core-only build, a relatively safe theme, being an Elf Ranger.
Never underestimate what passes for "normal" in a person's homebrew. But if you're a DM with a homebrew setting, you really need to inform the players ahead of time as to what's allowed and what isn't, at least in terms of races and classes.
DM: So, you guys ready for the new campaign? What did you guys wind up making?
Me: I rolled up an Elf Ranger. He gets...
DM: Sorry, can't be an Elf in this game.
Me: Um, ok, are there no elves? I wasn't aware...
DM: Oh there's elves, you just can't play one. They all left civilization for their own land.
Me: Every single one of them? None of them wanted to stay?
DM: Nope. There's elves, but you can't be one.
Me: Okay, fine. Well, I'm thinking Gnome Sorce...
DM: No Gnomes either. They left too.
Me: Seriously?
DM: You can be a Goblin! You guys are starting in a Goblin city...
Me: *tableflip*
GM Withholds Valuable Yet Obvious Information
Example:
GM: You come out of the woods to a riverbank. It's about fifty feet across.
Player: Is there a bridge anywhere nearby?
GM: No.
Player: How deep is the river?
GM: It looks like it's only two or three feet deep at the deepest.
Player: I probe the riverbed with a stick. Does it feel like the bottom is really muddy, like I might get stuck?
GM: No. the bottom is rocky, not muddy.
Player: Okay, I wade across.
GM: *giggles* You get about ten feet out. The bottom is very slippery. Roll a Reflex save. DC is 30.
Player: 30? That's a really high DC!
GM: Yeah, that's due to the slipperiness of the algae, and the sheer force of the rapids.
Player: Rapids? You didn't say anything about rapids! I thought it was a normal river!
GM: You didn't ask how fast the water was flowing. What was your roll?
Player: Gee, with a DC 30, I need a natural 20 to succeed. *rolls* Hey, what do you know: I failed!
GM: Okay. You get swept over the 100-foot waterfall.
Player: What waterfall?
GM: The waterfall that was 30 feet down the river.
Player: You didn't say anything about a waterfall, either!
GM: You didn't ask what was downstream. *rolls handfull of dice* Take 68 points of damage from the fall. Roll a fort save to see if you die from massive damage. And make a swim check.
I have to laugh, not in a cruel way but just wondering whether there is one game master who tours the realm to annoy players as i have experienced both of these incidents nearly word for word.
On a side note most GMS are not that bad its just theres one specific one who basically runs sessions in between mine whose personal goal is to piss people off. Which can be noted as when he took over organizing our group from me at the beginning of this year we moved quickly from 5 players to 3 to 2 to none.The general issue annoying GMs is that they have a picture in there head and think because they can see it you can see it.I am sure that if my old players posted here they would have a wall of hate for my methods of being a scatter brain.
Once had a GM (back in 1st and 2nd ed) that would make adventures to spotlight a particular PC. The capabilities needed and the rewards availabe would mostly tend to revolve around a single PC. Now it was not always the same one, so it wasn't as bad as it could be. He would rotate through them so every one would get a chance to shine.
But when it wasn't your characters turn, you often felt just along for the ride unless you made a very versatile character.
Also, if it was say your turn at 1st and 2nd level you got some minor specific goodies geared to you. However, until it rolled back around to your turn around 8th level you eneded up pretty under powered because there wasn't any gear specific to you when it wasn't your turn. (No magic shops.)
It wasn't horrible. But it got more extreme through the years rather than less.
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You should have gone all improved sunder, LOL. Can't shatter at will? I'll show you.
Here's one for an annoying GM:
Had a puzzle to open a door that required a quadratic equation. Seriously.
Lol I've done that, went with an Adamantine Great Sword for maximum smashage. The GM realized about 1/2 way through the 4 session what had happened. My response to his question as to why i would do such a thing "I assumed your issue was that it happened to be an at will power that only worked against Nonmagical gear and allowed a save if held. I removed those issues by going this route."
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Sometimes at will abilities turn the game into X-Men right away. If you have a cap, the ability is functionally meaningless. Lets say you have the power to open 4 doors a day. If the GM puts the item behind 5 doors, your power doesn't do anything. If your ability is to open as many doors as you want, the GM can't hide things behind doors.
If your only method of challenging PCs is closed doors, you NEED to be knocked out of your DM Comfort Zone by a PC that can open doors at will.
IMO, the Warlock (I guess we're still talking about the 3.5 version) wasn't a class I was really comfortable with because of its at-will blasting (so I let a player who wasn't that "clue-ful" play it). But I always felt that it should get a number of uses per day based on it's whatever the primary warlocky attribute was, and that the number of times it could be used would increase as the character went up in level.
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IMO, the Warlock (I guess we're still talking about the 3.5 version) wasn't a class I was really comfortable with because of its at-will blasting (so I let a player who wasn't that "clue-ful" play it). But I always felt that it should get a number of uses per day based on it's whatever the primary warlocky attribute was, and that the number of times it could be used would increase as the character went up in level.
Nah. That would make the warlock an awful, awful class.
So you camped in a cave and some wandering douchbag wizard decides to kill the entire parry for no other reason than to be a douchbag. Sounds like the DM was the douch.
One thing that got really annoying for me was that my GM made you throw your weapon at a roll of 1. This game ran for over a year with this. I was the only melee character in a party that consisted of a shield fighter (me), 2 druids, a rogue/sorcerer/arcane trickster, a witch, and a wizard. When we eventually got to higher levels (11-20) and me having around 5 attacks, then I found that I can go barely 2 straight rounds without rolling at a 1. I would throw my weapon (wasting that round), move to pick up my weapon the next round (also wasting that round), and then having possibly run back and attack with only one attack (not making much use of that round.)It got to the point that I had to complain several times to my GM that this was no fun at all, and it even got to the point where I had to get several people to side with me on this to have it changed. I didn't want to be the type to complain, but it got too frustrating to the point where the game was losing some of its fun for me.
Anybody got things like this to share? I still have more to share like this in the future.
Did you offer alternatives? Because I sort of agree with both you and your GM.
If a 20 means you get a chance for a crit then I think a case can be made for a 1 being a fumble. Maybe have to roll to confirm a fumble or something similar? A fumble coudl be a drop or the weapon turns oddly in your hand and you hurt yourself, etc,
BUT I also agree that a bad attack roll on one round shouldn't lead to having to chase your weapons around every single time.
I don't have all the books but are there rules for fumbles and failures other than a natural 1 always fails?
Actually, my house rule has always been that if you roll a 1, then the person you are attacking gets a free attack of opportunity against you (subject to normal attack of opportunity limits). Of course, I do it with NPCs too, so far I've never had players complain. :)
As for stuff that I've had to go through, I sometimes play GURPS and I suck horribly at math (Pathfinder isn't so bad it's all laid out, whereas GURPS is so highly point based and percentages and limitations and enhancements... I love the game, but character creation is hell for me without software help), so I like the character generator. Problem is sometimes the GM I play with will interpret something differently than the game's "Line Editor" who programs the datafiles (it's not a "house rule", he gets very mad if you call it that... Like for example if you choose to have higher lifting ST than striking ST the character generator bases whether you can wield a weapon on your Lift, then melee damage on your Striking. Well, even when I'm wielding a Desert Eagle handgun he wants to use Striking ST to determine if I can handle a gun that size... makes no sense to me and it's not the way the game is written... but it's how he sees it as working and he doesn't care what the GURPS Line Editor says) which means there's no way to handle it without completely remaking the character WITHOUT using the character generator, at which point my math is always totally wrong even after 10 times with a calculator. It's actually destroyed our games quite a few times since I suck so badly at math I can't make a GURPS character without the CG and that makes him so mad the game ends soon as one of these discrepancies comes up. It's not just me either, the other player(s) prefer the character generator too, although they don't necessarily NEED it as much as I do. They are at least half-way decent with math.
Ah I miss those days. I remember one session back in the late 90's where I had 7....Yes, SEVEN!....characters killed by the DM in one night. And had a blast!
Actually played in a meatgrinder once. 2nd Ed D&D, I was a Lawful Evil Necromancer/Evoker Red Wizard of Thay. 10 players, 1 survivor. Thing is, it was all our fault we died.
See, we were all hired in various roles taking the princess (she was a player) to get married in another kingdom (which was totally on the fly what we were doing, since the female player wanted to play a princess). So, we come to this road with a sign. Sign basically says there is a toll to enter the forest please leave 1 gold in front of the sign and you may enter the forest. Well, we were all thinking this was totally stupid, so we just moved on (after about a 5 min discussion). Except the princess told her manservant to obey the sign, so he did leaving one gold for her and one for himself. Well, we all got picked off by the bandit king (we never actually saw him) in various grisly traps and such along the way. Only survivors were the princess and her manservant (the only NPC in the party), as they paid the toll. :P One of the most fun games I ever played.
GM had us start a campaign in the woods. We went to sleep for the night. Woke up in a cave with some other people. Turns out we were captured by Goblins and now all our gear was gone. We break out of a barricade and have nothing to fight the goblins with but a board with a nail in it. GM kept throwing Goblins at us until we were overwhelmed then had an NPC come save us.
Its really the NPC that came to save you that was the no no here. Well that and just saying the adventure starts with a capture scene and don't bother with starting money would have been a good plan too.
I once had a GM who rounded all fractions in my disfavor, while rounding in favor of the other players. Reason? "You are playing a girl, and in my world, women just aren't as cool or heroic as men."
How long until you walked? Every group I've ever played in had at least one female player and/or one male player who regularly crossplayed (myself included). We would have been up and out before he finished the sentence.
I once had a GM who rounded all fractions in my disfavor, while rounding in favor of the other players. Reason? "You are playing a girl, and in my world, women just aren't as cool or heroic as men."How long until you walked? Every group I've ever played in had at least one female player and/or one male player who regularly crossplayed (myself included). We would have been up and out before he finished the sentence.
Agreed. I regularly play females despite being a straight male (only mention I'm straight since 99% of the time I get asked, so now I just put it out there so nobody has to ask) and while friends have joked about stuff like this with me, they've never actually DONE IT.
Reminds me of back in 2nd (or was it 1st?) ED D&D Men could have 18/100 STR, but women were limited to 18/50. I didn't know anyone who actually played with that rule, but I remember I was rather annoyed when I found that it was used in some of the old SSI games. I made a paladin with 18/50 STR and was like WTF I can't have 18/100 cause of that silly girl rule? Lame.
While it may be somewhat unrealistic for an athletically built woman to have the STR of The Governator in his prime, in a game I don't see a problem with it.
Once had a GM who refused to use a map for combat. Usually not a bad thing (I don't for games that don't focus on tactical combat, like World of Darkness or The Dresden Files), but in this case it seemed his purpose was to deliberately obscure positioning of the enemies on the battlefield. I remember one particular encounter where my Knight (this was 3.5) couldn't 5-foot step and full attack, but every enemy, on their turn, was then miraculously within 5-feet of me. He would then also not prompt us for attacks of opportunity, or warn us that we would be provoking for certain actions. Once we finally forced him to use a map to show positioning (even going so far as to draw the maps for him since his main objection was that he hated drawing maps) he continued to pull stupid crap like this. Our casters could never precisely position their area of effect templates to miss the rest of the party ("Sorry, you can't properly gauge where to put that fireball in the 6 seconds of your turn, if your gonna hit the troll your also going to hit the melee party members") but the enemies never seemed to have the same issues hitting us but missing their allies.
The worst part was that this was in the beginning of my days with D&D, at a time when I didn't know the system well enough to start my own game, and didn't have time to put in the planning required for one of the systems I had been playing since high school (I started off with 2nd edition World of Darkness and 3rd edition Shadowrun, wanted the 2nd ed D&D books, but they were "satanic" and thus not allowed in the house...thank Christ my mother never looked inside Clanbook Tzimisce...). So, as the saying goes I knew it was a crooked game, but it was the only game in town.
I do have to say that, as frustrating as it was, I value this experience as a method of gauging how to fairly run a game and not unduly frustrate my players. I prefer to annoy them with tough encounters and roleplaying dilemmas rather than restricting their tactics for ephemeral reasons of realism.
(I started off with 2nd edition World of Darkness and 3rd edition Shadowrun, wanted the 2nd ed D&D books, but they were "satanic" and thus not allowed in the house...thank Christ my mother never looked inside Clanbook Tzimisce...). So, as the saying goes I knew it was a crooked game, but it was the only game in town.
It's OT I know, but I have to tell you all this reminded me of an old friend of mine from Arizona. Her local gaming store refused to carry White Wolf books because they were good Christians. However, they ran a regular Call of Cthulhu game every weekend at the store.
OH and to at least make my post semi-on topic, I once was playing in a vampire game where my character was 8th gen so had full 15 blood and got into a fight. So, I was healing and spending blood for celerity left and right and my GM asked me "Wait... how do you have so much blood?" and I went over every blood point I'd spent the entire combat. At which point he informed me that every time I took a point of damage I was supposed to lose a point of blood, THEN have to spend another to heal it. I freaked and went all rules lawyer on him pulling the book out, finding the very rule he was referencing and pointing out that it directly said "This only applies to humans" He told me that had always been his house rule, he never realized I didn't know that but now it all made sense why my characters always seemed so much more powerful than even NPCs meant to be more powerful than me... At that point, he changed it because I put my foot down (and it was a one-on-one game at the time) and said I'll walk out.
(I started off with 2nd edition World of Darkness and 3rd edition Shadowrun, wanted the 2nd ed D&D books, but they were "satanic" and thus not allowed in the house...thank Christ my mother never looked inside Clanbook Tzimisce...). So, as the saying goes I knew it was a crooked game, but it was the only game in town.It's OT I know, but I have to tell you all this reminded me of an old friend of mine from Arizona. Her local gaming store refused to carry White Wolf books because they were good Christians. However, they ran a regular Call of Cthulhu game every weekend at the store.
That is rather bizarre, not just the Call of Cthulhu part, but the fact that the main backstory to Vampire, arguably the most successful and popular of the White Wolf games, actually assume Judeo-Christian cosmology to be true. From the beginning (Cain is the first Vampire, after all, cursed by God and all) to the end. (The official "canon" Gehenna scenario basically throws 15+ years of foreshadowing out the window, sticks a small group of vampires in a cathedral for 40 nights with God destroys the rest of the Kindred. The explanation for this is that, while the Antideluvians can promise their return and reign in blood or whatever all they want, it was God that cursed Cain, and the whole thing is going to end on His terms, not theirs.)
Anyway, back on topic, after making the previous post I remembered something else annoying about that game. We would travel all day long with no encounters, or only encountering NPC's finishing up a fight that we *might* be able to help with, but, invariably, just as we were resting (and always with the PC with the worst spot and listen) we would get ambushed, with absolutely absurd (25+ at 1st level) listen DC's to wake up.
At one point we were ambushed by a pair of Shadows while sleeping. At this point we were 3rd level, and the DM had given out maybe 400gp in treasure up until that point. When they (inevitably) killed the entire party, the DM reacted in amazement that none of us had a +1 weapon to actually be able to hurt the things. He ended up copping out and ruling that the whole thing was a dream, and then, because we had been complaining about treasure, he let us find a huge stash of gold coins...that were from an empire that fell thousands of years previously, and thus would not be accepted by any of the businesses in the small frontier town the campaign was based it...BUT there were collectors in the capital that would pay us thousands of gp for these collectible artifacts. Awesome way to get the party back up to speed, unless your running a game where said party has signed contracts with the militia of said frontier town to serve for a few years (which of course we had). In that case, we would need to get permission for a trip to the capital from our commander, who promptly denied our request (of course).
This same DM, when we switched to Pathfinder, would only allow us to use each cantrip we'd prepared a number of times per day equal to our casting stat, because cantrips were "broken."
Needless to say, none of us actually game with him anymore. We've invited him to join whenever his home group breaks up (about once a year, at least), but always as a PC, never actually running a game.
That is rather bizarre, not just the Call of Cthulhu part, but the fact that the main backstory to Vampire, arguably the most successful and popular of the White Wolf games, actually assume Judeo-Christian cosmology to be true. From the beginning (Cain is the first Vampire, after all, cursed by God and all) to the end. (The official "canon" Gehenna scenario basically throws 15+ years of foreshadowing out the window, sticks a small group of vampires in a cathedral for 40 nights with God destroys the rest of the Kindred. The explanation for this is that, while the Antideluvians can promise their return and reign in blood or whatever all they want, it was God that cursed Cain, and the whole thing is going to end on His terms, not theirs.)
I know that was the biggest part that baffled me and my friend. She was a devout Catholic herself and had no problem with it, but she did have a problem with Call of Cthulhu (more just she hated Cthulhu). All we could guess is they didn't like that they used Christianity, but then CoC was ok because it's not true because only Christianity is true? She never cared enough to ask, we just laughed about it. (Oh and a quick clarification just so nobody gets the wrong idea, I am NOT intending to make any claims myself about what religion(s) are or are not true, just mentioning that these players may have had that as a reason for hating Vampire but thinking CoC was ok)
Anyway, back on topic, after making the previous post I remembered something else annoying about that game. We would travel all day long with no encounters, or only encountering NPC's finishing up a fight that we *might* be able to help with, but, invariably, just as we were resting (and always with the PC with the worst spot and listen) we would get ambushed, with absolutely absurd (25+ at 1st level) listen DC's to wake up.
At one point we were ambushed by a pair of Shadows while sleeping. At this point we were 3rd level, and the DM had given out maybe 400gp in treasure up until that point. When they (inevitably) killed...
Yeah, I'm surprised you all toughed it out as much as you did... I would have been like outta there. I can sometimes be a hard player to get along with because I'm a rules lawyer yes, but I can accept house rules under two caveats.
1. Don't tell me the rule is in the book when it isn't (and the "golden rule of RPGs" doesn't cut it for this caveat) For example (and this is one of my house rules as an example, I make no claims that the book says this) saying that when you roll a 1 on an attack roll the creature you are attacking gets an attack of opportunity on you. A similar example I had an argument with a DM about where I said show me the rule in the book and and he said "I shouldn't have to. If you don't know where it is, that's not my problem." was he had a rule that if you roll a 20 to confirm a critical hit, then roll again and get a 20 that's an instant kill. The reason it was a problem was we had one of those times when his die kept rolling 20's (he was even rolling it in front of us) so like 3 players got insta-killed and we were all pissed. The only reason they weren't siding with me was they weren't rules lawyers so they had no idea if that rule was actually in the books or not.
2. It must make sense and not be some crazy thing (like that vampires lose blood when injured AND must spend a 2nd blood to heal the damage rule I mentioned earlier).
Yeah, I'm surprised you all toughed it out as much as you did... I would have been like outta there. I can sometimes be a hard player to get along with because I'm a rules lawyer yes, but I can accept house rules under two caveats.
Well it was only my second D&D campaign, and I had nothing to base my experience on. It did only last 6-7 sessions before going on hiatus due to work schedules. It eventually came back with 2 new players and then imploded when one of the characters fireballs started a forest fire. This never would have happened if the DM had bothered to explain how dry conditions were around us.
1. Don't tell me the rule is in the book when it isn't (and the "golden rule of RPGs" doesn't cut it for this caveat) For example (and this is one of my house rules as an example, I make no claims that the book says this) saying that when you roll a 1 on an attack roll the creature you are attacking gets an attack of opportunity on you. A similar example I had an argument with a DM about where I said show me the rule in the book and and he said "I shouldn't have to. If you don't know where it is, that's not my problem." was he had a rule that if you roll a 20 to confirm a critical hit, then roll again and get a 20 that's an instant kill. The reason it was a problem was we had one of those times when his die kept rolling 20's (he was even rolling it in front of us) so like 3 players got insta-killed and we were all pissed. The only reason they weren't siding with me was they weren't rules lawyers so they had no idea if that rule was actually in the books or not.
2. It must make sense and not be some crazy thing (like that vampires lose blood when injured AND must spend a 2nd blood to heal the damage rule I mentioned earlier).
I add to this that all house rules should be known about upfront. I like house rules, and obviously some things need to be fixed or altered for gameplays sake, but it should be made apparent at character creation. We had a recent Shadowrun game where the GM had reworked the movement rules to work better on a 1" grid. He prepared a full packet, complete with character creation rules and regulations, and shared it with everyone on Googledocs. It made sense, and I will be using it for any futher SR4 game I happen to run.
I add to this that all house rules should be known about upfront. I like house rules, and obviously some things need to be fixed or altered for gameplays sake, but it should be made apparent at character...
Ah yeah I agree with that one and used to add it to the list, but after so many GMs didn't if THAT caused me to quit games, well... I'd be playing less than I am now which is.. um... barely at all.
Like my last game (which DID implode) it was a GURPS game where my character was a witch. So, I used the character generation software, made my character. Chose my spells. Character done. OH I do Ritual Magic (basically you have all spells for free, but harder spells have really high penalties to cast, unless you spend points in them to lower the difficulties) differently all spells are based directly off of IQ not a skill then all the paths... Wait what? Ok, so not only do I need to go back and completely refigure all my spells, but I need to... completely rewrite how the character generator handles magic spells... The GM got very mad at me and in the end just let me leave my spells as they were... then later another problem with Striking ST determining whether you can wield or gun instead of Lifting ST as the character generator did (which, mind you, the GURPS Line Editor is the writer of the datafiles so the datafiles are very much RAW) and I would have had to again rewrite the character generator files to reflect that destroyed the game finally and it's pretty much when we quit gaming together (especially since Striking ST reflecting whether you can hold a Desert Eagle makes no sense to me... THAT would have been a very simple fix for me, unlike the spells thing which would have required changing the coding on nearly 300+ spells) :(
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For example (and this is one of my house rules as an example, I make no claims that the book says this) saying that when you roll a 1 on an attack roll the creature you are attacking gets an attack of opportunity on you. A similar example I had an argument with a DM about where I said show me the rule in the book and and he said "I shouldn't have to. If you don't know where it is, that's not my problem." was he had a rule that if you roll a 20 to confirm a critical hit, then roll again and get a 20 that's an instant kill. The reason it was a problem was we had one of those times when his die kept rolling 20's (he was even rolling it in front of us) so like 3 players got insta-killed and we were all pissed. The only reason they weren't siding with me was they weren't rules lawyers so they had no idea if that rule was actually in the books or not.
I seem to recall that this was a variant rule in either the 3.0 or 3.5 PHB. I don't have those books handy to cite... Does anyone else recall?
Regardless, even if it is offered as a variant rule, he should be stating up front that he is using it in the game.
For example (and this is one of my house rules as an example, I make no claims that the book says this) saying that when you roll a 1 on an attack roll the creature you are attacking gets an attack of opportunity on you. A similar example I had an argument with a DM about where I said show me the rule in the book and and he said "I shouldn't have to. If you don't know where it is, that's not my problem." was he had a rule that if you roll a 20 to confirm a critical hit, then roll again and get a 20 that's an instant kill. The reason it was a problem was we had one of those times when his die kept rolling 20's (he was even rolling it in front of us) so like 3 players got insta-killed and we were all pissed. The only reason they weren't siding with me was they weren't rules lawyers so they had no idea if that rule was actually in the books or not.
I seem to recall that this was a variant rule in either the 3.0 or 3.5 PHB. I don't have those books handy to cite... Does anyone else recall?
Regardless, even if it is offered as a variant rule, he should be stating up front that he is using it in the game.
Yeah it was in one of the option books he later did show me and I was like ok whoever wrote that rule was insane. While I can rules lawyer most books, there was a few I didn't own so I couldn't LOL
My group has that rule sometimes, but it's always been three 20's in a row. I've only seen it happen once.
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When my current group was just starting out, I always took the GM role because everyone else was learning how to play and uncomfortable with the notion of running all the behind-the-scenes work.
Eventually one of the group offered to run a session and came up with a one-night story all on his own. I was super excited because it was FINALLY my chance to play as a PC.
The session was a bit of a disaster. The GM railroaded us the entire game and wasn't prepared for handling anything unexpected, there were no battles, and he split the party into individual jail cells and forced one person at a time. At that time, we had to solve "Monkey Island puzzles" by looking around our cells and finding items to combine into what he expected us to use as a means of escape, and didn't allow us to use anything we came up with on our own. I think I rolled a dice one time that night for initiative and went home very crabby.
It's gotten much, MUCH better since then and we look back on that session and chuckle about it now.