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So I started this thread because I have a terrible DM. I am now at the point where I want to just quit. However there are no other games that I can get into because I dont know anyone else here in Mesa AZ.
So, I figure if i hear other people stories about their crappy DM(or players) I wont feel as bad. lol
My DM does not know the rules.. what dm doesnt know the rules to his own game? He does not control the players attentions. If you do not have precise shot and you fire at an enemy fighting a friend and you miss.. you hit your friend. (cant stand this.) He makes any NPC the most annoying thing in the world. They all can do impossible things never die or have any consequences for stupid decisions .. also Constantly fluffs the dice rolls to go against you.
Then I got the players.. They do not think, they are not serious about the game, they also do not know the rules. i have one dude that cheats on his dice rolls like crazy and the DM never says a word.
They also have no idea how alignment works so they just pick a chaotic neutral, neutral or lawful evil or whatever evil they think they can get to pass and alignment that seems to allow them to do anything they want. then they act like douche bags taking nothing seriously then point to their alignment to cover whatever stupid idea they thought of.
I could go on and on.
they are good people, but man.. I cant stand it sometimes. Makes me cringe. Maybe they are just how younger people play the game.
i don't know guys.. maybe im the asshat here?
Tell me your stories :) thanks
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No, I don't think you're being the asshat. I understand the need to cut up and try stupid ideas and fudge some dice rolls every now and again for the sake of occasional comic relief, but if you're not going to take the game at least a little seriously ("you" meaning them, not YOU, nullvoid), why even bother to DM or play in the first place? Why wouldn't they just trash-talk around a video game console?
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I had group like this as well. & I agree with sigilwraith.
The worst thing I have ever seen was: he told me and 3 other players we could play a specific class, then let another play play said class. On top of he claimed to use R.A.W. and then when we proved that we could do something he didn't like he said "Well I'm the DM so oh well."
Then the players he played favorites with would mock anyone who wasn't an
Optimizer and gamed the rules.
It may be tough, but consider trying to find another game. Much like every other real life relationship, some personalities just don't mix.
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There was the time we played in a guy's campaign where we started the game in prison. After a few hours of his NPCs talking at us, we started trying to escape. Every time our rogue tried to pick the lock, he failed without a dice roll. The DM's response: "Because it's magic". So we start casting spells, or trying our spellcraft checks. "No, not that kind of magic" he says. Oh... So it's the kind of magic that means you won't let us do anything until you've finished exposition?
About four hours later, he still hasn't allowed us a single attempt at escape, or even to interrupt his characters' lengthy monologues. We're still in prison. Not the same prison we started in, though. He did at least have us transferred... to another prison.
None of the players ever came back for a second session.
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I find myself once again marveling at my good fortune over the years I've played this game. My "worst GM" experience would still have been a great campaign that I enjoyed immensely. Sure I've had some GMs who do some things better than others, but every GM I've ever played with did their best and were mature and secure enough to listen to players, even when they ultimately ruled against them.
I'm sure if I tried hard enough I could muster up some sort of outrage about some rule not being adjudicated properly, or some gap in character treasure, or some obvious metagaming of an encounter or something...
But I just don't have the desire to do so. At least so far all I have is a pat on the back for the folks who have taken on the daunting challenge of creating and running a campaign.
Was your DM Andy Kaufman?
lol That is hilarious .. I am sorry.. but .. lol i cant believe you stayed that long.
That my friend is dedication. *claps*
respect shiftybob
:)
At this point I am just going to wait till the next game and tell the GM and the players what my thoughts are. If I don't get a satisfactory response back I will go ahead and quit.
At the very least it will be funny to see what they say back.
If he gives me that whole I'm the GM, I'm god! what I say goes..
.. I'm just going to laugh and leave.
@Shiftybob: NullVOID is right... you are a hero.
@NullVOID: Good luck. May the Schurtz be with you.
My worst GM experience was sadly the last time I play, because is no one else to play (small town), before we start the campaign we established some house rules, but after some sessions he just changed them without advertising to no one and applying them in the worst moment, he always have their upper powerful NPCs that are unbeatable or just appear to do some Deus Ex Machina, and the worst of all, the last day in the middle of final battle he nerf me a feat. And yes I talked to him a his only response was "You do not have to play if you don't want, is not an obligation".
Wow.. Those are some fighting words Edduardco lol.
that guy is grade A douchbag. sorry buddy.
look on the bright side.. you made me feel better about my s+*!ty dm.
@NullVOID: Glad you're feeling better, I still hope to find a new group
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The worst GM I ever had to deal was in a rotating GM game. As a player he was alright, but once it was his turn to GM he showed it turned into an utter disaster that got him kicked out of the group.
1) Massive fudging of the rules. The worst of which was a fixation of dice rolls above all else. It didn't matter than my Ranger had a +25 to perception vs. the wizard's +10. if I rolled a 10 and the wizard rolled a 15, the wizard did better.
2) GM vs. PC mentality. "Oh look, I threw an encounter at the party that was 8 CR above the party level. Aren't I clever?"
3) Aside from all the stupid, it was the most boring adventure ever.
4) When we finally called him out on not knowing the rules and making a boring adventure, he started b#*+!ing out players for not knowing the rules. Once we pulled out out the CRB and proved that he was wrong, the guy threw a temper tantrum and stormed out of the room.
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So I started a campaign once with a new GM I never played with before. Our PCs were training with a higher level druid. We got captured while sleeping somehow during the night in the forest. We wake missing all our gear in some cave with other humans druid is nowhere to be found. We find out we have been taken hostage by goblins.
We manage to break free from a poorly constructed wooden gate. We ended getting assaulted by goblin pack after goblin pack. They just kept coming and we had no equipment. After the last PC fell the druid shows up and cleans the place out because hes a super stud and chastises us for doing so poorly with our training.
Between sessions we had an email discussion about how lame of a start the campaign was. The GM said that n his defense he was new to PF and had to test the system. So basically we had no shot at getting out he was going to send everything at us until we failed. I asked him why suck up the campaign when we could have just run some battle simulations if he wanted. He never responded. Game got switched to Call of Cthulhu shortly after because the GM was losing interest in his game.
Off topic Null you should try and join PFS. Its low commitment and a great place to screen players for a possible home game. I did it that way and have an awesome group that's been going for a few years now. So glad I don't suffer from lazy, uninterested, God GMs any longer :)
You guys are awesome.. Loving the Stories and I thank everyone for taking the time to tell em.
I would really love to grab an entire collection of real life bad GM stories and put them in a book for us to read. ShiftyBobs is going on the first page.
dude that would just suck.
Everyone loves hearing about bad DM's it seems.
@PAN That is what will probably end up happening. It sounds fun the only downside for me really comes down to the hours of play. I have really gotten used to playing 6+ hours at a time lol. I can always can just take another DND vacation and concentrate on one of my MAN hobbies as my girlfriend likes to call them. Love camping, poker, working on cars, building things.. ect
I think a lot of these stories show why inexperienced DMs should stick to published adventures.
My worst experiences have always been in home-brew campaigns and/or where the DM plays favourites.
The encounter was set up such that the PCs were flying on griffons a few thousand feet above the ground. They had griffon-riders (1st level experts) so that no one had to Handle Animal or Ride.
A white dragon swoops down out of the clouds and attacks! The druid attempts to cast call lightning, which does additional damage on cloudy days. The DM said no, it's not cloudy. Well then, said the druid and ranger, we have Perception scores of 20+, we saw it coming. Nope, said the DM, it's cloudy and the dragon had total concealment. It went around in circles for a bit before the GM basically said "DM fiat" and cut off discussion/argumentation.
We never sat down with that GM again. This wasn't the only ruling of that sort he had made, just the final straw.
I don't know if I would have laughed or left, maybe both.
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Here is a thread dedicated to bad GM's and games.
Three little items made a certain campaign one of the worst I've ever played:
Our DM developed a metropolis called the Kingdom of Light; to everyone's surprise he only really developed an inn and castle. After our characters (started at level 12+) picked out their appropriate gear, the DM suddenly had us traveling into the northern mountains; no quick urban brawls, no chatting up the locals. The whole thing felt like we started up NWN1 and could only talk to people in the temple.
The second coffin nail involved our characters being suddenly captured after my character (human sor, necro focused) successfully wrecked the four groups of trolls that were intended as ambush encounters. At this time, I'd like to thank Necrotic Skull Bomb for its stellar performance.
Once everyone came to, we realized we were in seperate holding cells. I make a spellcraft check (was around upper 30s), no crazy auras; Detect Magic, no nonsensical dimensional lockdowns. Sounds easy for a lvl 12 sor with Dimensional Door right? Doesn't function. No reason was offered, just doesn't function. Fine, I think, I'll see where this is going. Once our rogue gets us out, we stumble into an arena holding a barely-chained adult white dragon. The DM allowed his friend to play some Stormborn race with cold-resistance (barbarian) so the dragon wasn't the threat it could be. Some mages and a major villain were stationed off to the side on an upper-level walkway. I position myself to dimensionally jump onto the walkway (spellcraft check again, same results) and cast the spell. I was teleported back to the jail cell. No explanations, nothing. My character was jailed while the DM's buddy and his girlfriend enjoy the melee. Then I was denied exp for not participating in the battle.I should have left then. During the session. I decided to give it another go. Several quests later, we were facing off against an orc army marching down a forest path. I decided to split the forces with a prismatic wall. With half their forces gone and the leftovers routed, we get ready to heal and whatnot while leaving the wall active to discourage any stragglers. A few SECONDS later, the DM decides to land an old red dragon next to my sorcerer. NEXT to him. No spot, listen checks allowed. It felt like a stupid script just activated and now there's a surprise boss-fight. The dragon focused on my character exclusively. Nevermind the giant blueskinned barbarian eating away at Smaug with a frost-enchanted battle-axe.
Needless to say, I never returned to that group.
Edit: corrected spell name
My friend just gave me this about one of her players:
Fighter Level 1 with 5 Feats.
15 Point Buy
STR: 26
DEX: 26
CON: 26
INT: 24
WIS: 24
CHA: 24
Here is a thread dedicated to bad GM's and games.
...Three little items made a certain campaign one of the worst I've ever played:
Our DM developed a metropolis called the Kingdom of Light; to everyone's surprise he only really developed an inn and castle. After our characters (started at level 12+) picked out their appropriate gear, the DM suddenly had us traveling into the northern mountains; no quick urban brawls, no chatting up the locals. The whole thing felt like we started up NWN1 and could only talk to people in the temple.
The second coffin nail involved our characters being suddenly captured after my character (human sor, necro focused) successfully wrecked the four groups of trolls that were intended as ambush encounters. At this time, I'd like to thank Necrotic Skull Bomb for its stellar performance.
Once everyone came to, we realized we were in seperate holding cells. I make a spellcraft check (was around upper 30s), no crazy auras; Detect Magic, no nonsensical dimensional lockdowns. Sounds easy for a lvl 12 sor with Dimensional Door right? Doesn't function. No reason was offered, just doesn't function. Fine, I think, I'll see where this is going. Once our rogue gets us out, we stumble into an arena holding a barely-chained adult white dragon. The DM allowed his friend to play some Stormborn race with cold-resistance (barbarian) so the dragon wasn't the threat it could be. Some mages and a major villain were stationed off to the side on an upper-level walkway. I position myself to dimensionally jump onto the walkway (spellcraft check again, same results) and cast the spell. I was teleported back to the jail cell. No explanations, nothing. My character was jailed while the DM's buddy and his girlfriend enjoy the melee. Then I was denied exp for not participating in the battle.I should have left then. During the session. I decided to give it another go. Several quests later, we were facing off
Wow. What is it with jerk DMs and tossing people into "magical" prisons? Seriously, who sits down to write a campaign and thinks "I know what will be fun! I'll prevent all my players from actually doing anything!"
I should mention, regarding my story, the DM in question has played in my campaigns for a long time, and the really strange thing about it is the guy actually has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the rules. He's been playing D&D just about every week for the last 10 years, so I assumed I'd be in safe hands when I wanted a break from DMing. I guess technical know-how clearly does not equate to fun times.
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The encounter was set up such that the PCs were flying on griffons a few thousand feet above the ground. They had griffon-riders (1st level experts) so that no one had to Handle Animal or Ride.
A white dragon swoops down out of the clouds and attacks! The druid attempts to cast call lightning, which does additional damage on cloudy days. The DM said no, it's not cloudy. Well then, said the druid and ranger, we have Perception scores of 20+, we saw it coming. Nope, said the DM, it's cloudy and the dragon had total concealment. It went around in circles for a bit before the GM basically said "DM fiat" and cut off discussion/argumentation.
We never sat down with that GM again. This wasn't the only ruling of that sort he had made, just the final straw.
Haha. I think the cloudy/not cloudy paradox is my favourite story so far. That's gold.
Haha. I think the cloudy/not cloudy paradox is my favourite story so far. That's gold.The encounter was set up such that the PCs were flying on griffons a few thousand feet above the ground. They had griffon-riders (1st level experts) so that no one had to Handle Animal or Ride.
A white dragon swoops down out of the clouds and attacks! The druid attempts to cast call lightning, which does additional damage on cloudy days. The DM said no, it's not cloudy. Well then, said the druid and ranger, we have Perception scores of 20+, we saw it coming. Nope, said the DM, it's cloudy and the dragon had total concealment. It went around in circles for a bit before the GM basically said "DM fiat" and cut off discussion/argumentation.
We never sat down with that GM again. This wasn't the only ruling of that sort he had made, just the final straw.
Mine too.
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My friend just gave me this about one of her players:
Fighter Level 1 with 5 Feats.
15 Point Buy
STR: 26
DEX: 26
CON: 26
INT: 24
WIS: 24
CHA: 24
They playing as Kryptonians?
My friend just gave me this about one of her players:
Fighter Level 1 with 5 Feats.
15 Point Buy
STR: 26
DEX: 26
CON: 26
INT: 24
WIS: 24
CHA: 24
I would not mind hearing the explanation for this.
Well, this story is not mine, it was from a previous DM my current group of friends had to bear with, I'll keep it short.
They encountered some mysterious knights with some abbreviated letters in their armor, needless to say, they started dying one by one once they interacted with them, no saving rolls, no attacks, no nothing. My friend who told me this managed to make out one of the plates which had F.M. (Famine Knight), so he threw a piece of food at him.
The DM said to him; "The Famine Knight leaves, but you die in the process"
My friend, indignated, asks him why did he died, and to that the DM replies: "Because you threw the food at him, you had to place it in the ground".
Needless to say they had a killer DM, so they were weary of me at first thinking I would do the same, needless to say, they liked my campaign a lot since I gave them flexibility ;p
So I started this thread because I have a terrible DM. I am now at the point where I want to just quit. However there are no other games that I can get into because I dont know anyone else here in Mesa AZ.
So, I figure if i hear other people stories about their crappy DM(or players) I wont feel as bad. lol
My DM does not know the rules.. what dm doesnt know the rules to his own game? He does not control the players attentions. If you do not have precise shot and you fire at an enemy fighting a friend and you miss.. you hit your friend. (cant stand this.) He makes any NPC the most annoying thing in the world. They all can do impossible things never die or have any consequences for stupid decisions .. also Constantly fluffs the dice rolls to go against you.
Then I got the players.. They do not think, they are not serious about the game, they also do not know the rules. i have one dude that cheats on his dice rolls like crazy and the DM never says a word.
They also have no idea how alignment works so they just pick a chaotic neutral, neutral or lawful evil or whatever evil they think they can get to pass and alignment that seems to allow them to do anything they want. then they act like douche bags taking nothing seriously then point to their alignment to cover whatever stupid idea they thought of.
I could go on and on.
they are good people, but man.. I cant stand it sometimes. Makes me cringe. Maybe they are just how younger people play the game.
i don't know guys.. maybe im the asshat here?
Tell me your stories :) thanks
We came down hard on a cheater. He was in a game I ran and a game a friend ran. He would roll tiny dice, hide them, move them, out-right lie about the numbers. His average was so high, it was impossibru. Friend did the math.
When we imposed strict rules on how he was to roll his dice, suddenly he started having very mixed rolls, and he had less fun because he couldn't stand to lose in any way, shape or form. Oh well lol.
We got a bit bored with the main quest in runelords, so we went out to check the lay of the land, fight some monsters, level, that sort of thing. See what the dm can throw at us.
He throws a hobgoblin ambush at us, x5 our numbers, thrash us. They kill our horses and feed them to us. Npc comes to save us. Yay?
Roleplayers are the worse type of people to play games with. The stories above prove it.
:D
I would not mind hearing the explanation for this.My friend just gave me this about one of her players:
Fighter Level 1 with 5 Feats.
15 Point Buy
STR: 26
DEX: 26
CON: 26
INT: 24
WIS: 24
CHA: 24
He just wrote them down and refused to explain why he had them.
Roleplayers are the worse type of people to play games with. The stories above prove it.
:D
I don't know what to say to this...
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We came down hard on a cheater. He was in a game I ran and a game a friend ran. He would roll tiny dice, hide them, move them, out-right lie about the numbers. His average was so high, it was impossibru. Friend did the math.
When we imposed strict rules on how he was to roll his dice, suddenly he started having very mixed rolls, and he had less fun because he couldn't stand to lose in any way, shape or form. Oh well lol.
One of my friends used dice that couldn't be easily read, like dark grey numbers on black. He always had to pick them up to read them. "Wait is that a 3? Nope a 17."
For a long time we had someone sit next to him to watch his dice rolls. If he wasn't a longtime friend, probably would've kicked him. Though he was a great RPer, made many sessions enjoyable on that end.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Speaking of that guy, the worst DM Schtick came from him.
Drow elves.
Contingent delayed blast fireball tattoos.
On all of them.
As a race.
To prevent us from looting them.
Cause drow are jerks like that.
So glad I was playing a rogueish character (had enough for evasion, lol).
We came down hard on a cheater. He was in a game I ran and a game a friend ran. He would roll tiny dice, hide them, move them, out-right lie about the numbers. His average was so high, it was impossibru. Friend did the math.
When we imposed strict rules on how he was to roll his dice, suddenly he started having very mixed rolls, and he had less fun because he couldn't stand to lose in any way, shape or form. Oh well lol.
One of my friends used dice that couldn't be easily read, like dark grey numbers on black. He always had to pick them up to read them. "Wait is that a 3? Nope a 17."
For a long time we had someone sit next to him to watch his dice rolls. If he wasn't a longtime friend, probably would've kicked him. Though he was a great RPer, made many sessions enjoyable on that end.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Speaking of that guy, the worst DM Schtick came from him.
Drow elves.
Contingent delayed blast fireball tattoos.
On all of them.
As a race.
To prevent us from looting them.
Cause drow are jerks like that.So glad I was playing a rogueish character (had enough for evasion, lol).
yikes...
He just wrote them down and refused to explain why he had them.I would not mind hearing the explanation for this.My friend just gave me this about one of her players:
Fighter Level 1 with 5 Feats.
15 Point Buy
STR: 26
DEX: 26
CON: 26
INT: 24
WIS: 24
CHA: 24
LOL. At that point I give them new character sheet tell them to stay within limits. I will get them in the story when the character is "properly" made.
I remember that one of my friends wanted to DM a high level game of Anima: Beyond Fantasy, where each of the characters started off with some deeper connection to one of the god figures of the setting. One of the players (who I think he might've been interested in at the time, I'm not sure) had a connection with the God of Chaos, and one of the things that happens with people attuned to the God of Chaos is that the longer they stay in one area the more weird stuff happens around them. So, logically, he created a little table he'd occasionally roll on when he wanted to inject a bit of random weirdness into the game. Unfortunately, he felt the need to roll on this table somewhere in the vicinity of at least once every 30 minutes, if not more often. There was also the fact that he used this table to spur most of the stuff that happened during our airship ride from point A to point B when we decided we didn't want to interact with most of the stuff on the ship and just wanted to move on with the plot.
There was this weird tendency he had to, instead of putting an interesting character or situation in front of us and letting the roleplay flow from that, he'd occasionally just wave his hands in front of himself and say "Roleplay," without giving us something to bounce off of.
And then he made the regular city guards in the capital absurdly high level (these guys had to have been at least level 6 or so, and the book says that most people are level 0, with the best of the best usually getting to level 3-5), and threw in one of those "win by surviving X rounds," fights at us, and then made the guy we had to survive against so powerful it was almost impossible to get out of the way barring several open rolls on dodge, and he was likely to end you in a single hit. In fact, my character died within the first two rounds trying to put up a fight against this guy.
He also practically flat out said that the aforementioned Chaos-attuned girl and the guy who was attuned to the God of War were the main characters of the story, and that the rest of us weren't very important.
I still game with this guy, he's a great player, but, needless to say, I tend to try and avoid any game that he runs.
That little story ended up being a lot longer than I expected...
...There was this weird tendency he had to, instead of putting an interesting character or situation in front of us and letting the roleplay flow from that, he'd occasionally just wave his hands in front of himself and say "Roleplay," without giving us something to bounce off of...
Wait, he literally just waved his hands around to signify the times you were supposed to roleplay? That is mighty peculiar. How long did he give you to "roleplay"? How often? And what the hell were the players' responses to this?
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My story is from the other side of the table. GM'ing to a group of D-Bags. Right out the starting gate they start attacking and killing friendly NPCs that were obviously vital to the plot line. So, being the nice guy that I am I let it slide and just introduced more powerful NPCs to keep things moving. What happens then? They complain that the CRs are to high and they still didn't get it that it is wrong to attack an 8 year old girl for defending herself with an iron skillet after they broke into her house... (that is just one of many instances) needless to say the campiagn ended abruptly with the goal never even coming close to being accomplished.
I think if I were the GM with those guys I'd be taking my dice and trying to sneak out lol.
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LOL. At that point I give them new character sheet tell them to stay within limits. I will get them in the story when the character is "properly" made.He just wrote them down and refused to explain why he had them.I would not mind hearing the explanation for this.My friend just gave me this about one of her players:
Fighter Level 1 with 5 Feats.
15 Point Buy
STR: 26
DEX: 26
CON: 26
INT: 24
WIS: 24
CHA: 24
Actually at break the other players took his sheet dropped 2 feats which he didn't even qualify for (BAB/Level requirements) and gave him 10 to all stats. He came back was told to roll initiative. he rolled said he got a 28. They said are you sure. he said it says right here on my sheet. They countered saying it says +0. He was shocked.
She didn't say a word. When he complained about them ruining his character she handed him the GMPC* she made in case he bailed. He apparently decided to continue playing this character. Simply to avoid having to deal with her scanning his sheet.
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One of my worst experiences was also one of my first.
We travel in the wayback machine to my junior high days, when I first got into fantasy lit via the Dragonlance novels. Met a guy who mentioned he and his friends were playing in a Dragonlance D&D game and invited me to join. I happily accept and bring along another friend of mine.
Turns out they are playing the modules based on the Chronicles line of novels, and the are playing the pre-gens (Tanis, Raistlin, etc.).
What made it so utterly boring was that all the other players and the DM were absolutely determined to make the game turn out EXACTLY like the novels did.
DM: You encounter a group of gully dwarves...
Group (to my friend): You are playing Raistlin. You need to cast Charm Person now.
My friend: I didn't memorize that spell. Can't I just put them to sleep with my Sleep spell and we can just ignore them?
DM: Actually, you did remember that you might need to cast Charm Person so you memorized that spell instead.
Group: OK, there you go. Now cast it.
My friend: Um, sure. I cast Charm Person.
DM: You meet a friendly female gully dwarf named Bupu....
and so on. No room to improvise or do anything original really. The DM fudged all the dice rolls or sometime didn't even bother to roll any dice at all if they would result in even the slightest deviation from that occured in the novels.
Luckily I stuck it out with the group and as we all got older we all became much better roleplayers and gamers. I am still friends with some of these same guys to this day, 20+ years later.
The worst is just playing in a game where the DM wants to make players as weak as possible. No healing, constantly nerfing the players abilities, throwing too high CR encounters at us with ability damage attached and no way to heal it. Not to mention making us do climb checks with stupid high DCs for things like climbing a mundane ladder.
I a DM that made our level 8 party walk through a portal and fight an ice balor (CR 20+). We told him we didn't want to walk through the portal, because there was a CR 20+ ice balor on the other side. He didn't care, and that group kind of disintegrated and re-integrated without that DM. Big time player poaching, but that happens when the DM is a know-it-all psychology major wannabe.
I've also had some DMs that were too story oriented, and another that was so passive we had to pretty much run the session for him.
Fortunately, most of the rest have been pretty awesome.
I used to do most of GMing, but lately, I've mostly been a player. I did GM a short campaign recently, and kind of inadvertantly messed with the players' heads by filling the big city with nice people.
Wait, he literally just waved his hands around to signify the times you were supposed to roleplay? That is mighty peculiar. How long did he give you to "roleplay"? How often? And what the hell were the players' responses to this?...There was this weird tendency he had to, instead of putting an interesting character or situation in front of us and letting the roleplay flow from that, he'd occasionally just wave his hands in front of himself and say "Roleplay," without giving us something to bounce off of...
He didn't give much time, mostly because we usually made it pretty clear that we didn't want to roleplay with whatever situation he'd presented at that time. He wouldn't do it very often, usually only during the scenes that he intended to be solely for roleplay purposes, not plot advancement. So, over the six or so sessions before the campaign died, he might have done it maybe once or twice. Most of the time we'd stare at him blankly for a few moments then try to do something to advance the plot.
He doesn't do it anymore, but the people that still play in the occasional game he runs haven't let him live it down.
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Oooh. I have another good story.
I was running a very long running campaign, and suffering from a bit of DM fatigue, so I decided to set up a bit of a rotating DM situation. One of the players was keen, so we let him run a session.
The PCs are hanging around at the local tavern when a creepy old man approaches us. He asks us if we want to join the Assassin's guild. We all say no, because none of us are rogues or assassins (It should be noted, the DM's regular character is an assassin, so maybe you can see where this is going). Creepy guy insists that we should join the assassins guild, and pulls out a magical cube. We still say no. Apparently we have to roll will saves to prevent ourselves from touching the cube, and we all fail, despite some of us rolling 28+. All of us touch his cube, and are permanently magically compelled to be in the Assassin's guild, never to speak about the Assassin's guild, and to automatically accept an assassination quest (yes, even the paladin). The quest is to kill a guy in the house next door. So we grudgingly accept. We decide to set fire to the house, and stand in the doorways, readying actions to carve up anything that steps outside. DM says we can't set fire to the house, because it's not Assassin-ish enough. We say, the house is made of wood and straw, and we're not assassins, we set fire to the damn house. Argument continues for about half an hour, until DM finally throws his hands up in the air, allows us to burn it down, but says the house collapses and does obscene amounts of damage to anyone next to it. Three characters fail their reflex saves and die.
Needless to say, the next session I went back to DMing again, and ruled that everything that had happened in the previous session was just a horrible nightmare caused by some bad cheese they ate at the tavern that night. A couple of players buy some more of the cheese, and later sell it on for great profit to some drug smugglers.
To this day, whenever anyone feels like they're being railroaded into anything at the gaming table, they pull out an imaginary object and shout "TOUCH MY CUBE".
EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it. I don't think the creepy old guy even mentioned the Assassin's guild until after he'd made us touch his cube. He just wandered up to us, pulled this cube out and said "TOUCH IT". There was something weirdly sexual about the whole thing.
We came down hard on a cheater. He was in a game I ran and a game a friend ran. He would roll tiny dice, hide them, move them, out-right lie about the numbers. His average was so high, it was impossibru. Friend did the math.
When we imposed strict rules on how he was to roll his dice, suddenly he started having very mixed rolls, and he had less fun because he couldn't stand to lose in any way, shape or form. Oh well lol.
One of my friends used dice that couldn't be easily read, like dark grey numbers on black. He always had to pick them up to read them. "Wait is that a 3? Nope a 17."
For a long time we had someone sit next to him to watch his dice rolls. If he wasn't a longtime friend, probably would've kicked him. Though he was a great RPer, made many sessions enjoyable on that end.
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Speaking of that guy, the worst DM Schtick came from him.
Drow elves.
Contingent delayed blast fireball tattoos.
On all of them.
As a race.
To prevent us from looting them.
Cause drow are jerks like that.So glad I was playing a rogueish character (had enough for evasion, lol).
Yes, exactly, small dice that were very hard to read.
Oooh. I have another good story.
I was running a very long running campaign, and suffering from a bit of DM fatigue, so I decided to set up a bit of a rotating DM situation. One of the players was keen, so we let him run a session.The PCs are hanging around at the local tavern when a creepy old man approaches us. He asks us if we want to join the Assassin's guild. We all say no, because none of us are rogues or assassins (It should be noted, the DM's regular character is an assassin, so maybe you can see where this is going). Creepy guy insists that we should join the assassins guild, and pulls out a magical cube. We still say no. Apparently we have to roll will saves to prevent ourselves from touching the cube, and we all fail, despite some of us rolling 28+. All of us touch his cube, and are permanently magically compelled to be in the Assassin's guild, never to speak about the Assassin's guild, and to automatically accept an assassination quest (yes, even the paladin). The quest is to kill a guy in the house next door. So we grudgingly accept. We decide to set fire to the house, and stand in the doorways, readying actions to carve up anything that steps outside. DM says we can't set fire to the house, because it's not Assassin-ish enough. We say, the house is made of wood and straw, and we're not assassins, we set fire to the damn house. Argument continues for about half an hour, until DM finally throws his hands up in the air, allows us to burn it down, but says the house collapses and does obscene amounts of damage to anyone next to it. Three characters fail their reflex saves and die.
Needless to say, the next session I went back to DMing again, and ruled that everything that had happened in the previous session was just a horrible nightmare caused by some bad cheese they ate at the tavern that night. A couple of players buy some more of the cheese, and later sell it on for great profit to some drug smugglers.
To this day, whenever anyone feels like they're being railroaded into anything at the...
Great story, wow that is weird.
This one is from the campaign I am currently a player in:
My fellow players even after us being generously welcomed into the Great Wyrm Copper Dragon's Lair... well they decide to attack it. It is in +5 Full Plate...
They preceded to die. They got mad that I sat back and watched. They build new characters. When I lead these new characters to the dragon. They attack it yet again. This continued 7 more times. Each time taking up a full session...
They finally got mad at the GM and after calling both her and me some very unsavory names left the campaign. That was after their 10th try at the Dragon.
Thankfully we found some new players so that I didn't have to play the entire party for one of her campaigns... Again...
A dragon in someone's campaign, in magical full plate... again?
What blacksmith is making this stuff? A maneuverable plated suit the size of a house, complete with harness and made for a giant flying lizard. Fantasy sure gets weird doesn't it? Been hearing more about full plate dragons of late.
Who helps the dragon put it on? How long does it take to put on a metal house?