Man Null, it's too bad this thread didn't come up four or five years ago. I lived in Tempe from 04-09.
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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.
We had a player like that once. 'Twas a damn shame too, because he's been one of my longest-known best friends, but the guy is a pathological liar. Lies so much and so often, it can't possibly be on purpose.
In game, he'd insist on rolling all his dice off of the table, on his "lucky binder," and never rolled lower than a 16 on the die. Even when we played small games, with 3 players around a card table, he'd do this.
We got tired of it, and demanded all rolls be on the table with witnesses. Suddenly he wasn't rolling a 19 everytime...
Would also manipulate RAW and conveniently "forget" certain things, like level adjustments for templates. He once made a half-dragon rogue with no level adjustment, and didn't see the problem...
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We have to go back to 1977, and attribute this to childish enthusiasm rather than honest incompetence.
The first edition Monster Manual had just come out, and we had a new player who desperately, desperately wanted to GM. Our regular GM said that this would be OK.
So our 1st-level characters went into the dungeon, walked down the hallway, and opened the first door.
I believe it was 5 Demogorgons, 6 Orcuses (Orci?), several red dragons, and basically every cool monster the guy had found in the MM, because he really wanted to try out all their powers.
On first-level characters.
One of the greatest lines in our history: One of the players, unfamiliar with the new monsters, gazed at the massive host and asked, "Are you friendly?"
We didn't even bother to roll for the fight, and the guy never GM'ed again (at least around us).
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Sit right down and let me spin you a tale...
You linked there. YOU LINKED THERE.
*drags TOZ outside and applies a chainsaw to his head*
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
????????????? Did everyone start with 600,000 gp?
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Sit right down and let me spin you a tale...You linked there. YOU LINKED THERE.
*drags TOZ outside and applies a chainsaw to his head*
HEADON. APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD.
HEADON. APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD.HEADON. APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD.
HEADON. APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD.
...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.
I laughed out loud when I read your post. I went through a similar situation. A level 1-2 party, captured by the town-guard. We were able to escape, but every time we did so the entire town-guard came to recapture our party, locking us up with ever stronger bonds. Three sessions entirely devoted to escape and recapture and when we finally gave up and sat - despondent in our cells, a horde of barbarians attacked the town and freed us (for no discernible reason).
That was several years ago - and with some trepidation we went into a new game with the same GM just recently... and he has much improved.
This isn't about my GM...he used to be my GM, then I got smart and left and have yet to regret it. This is some stuff I heard last night from a friend who still plays under the guy...for some reason.
Supposedly this was a 'hardcore' game...which, in the DM's mind, apparently meant that he gets to be a jerk and get away with it.
Now, as a DM, I've always thought it was their job to tell the PCs what they're experiencing, such as any strange feelings or odd sounds they may hear. One of the 'rules' of this 'hardcore' game is that if you don't say you're doing it, then your character didn't do it. This includes eating (and I would imagine using the privy afterward, but this wasn't brought up). The party wizard, who just discovered a new spellbook in the most recent loot, starts studying it, and, apparently, forgot to eat or drink because he was so absorbed in it...for six whole days. Now, there was never an indication from the DM that he was feeling weak, or that he or anyone else heard his stomach complaining due to lack of food, or that he was looking ill, nothing at all...until those six days had passed and the party got into a fight. All of a sudden, the wizard has massive negatives to his stats and abilities, and he only then realized that he was starving.
From the DM's description after this was found out, the wizard was so hungry that he could barely control himself as the fight was finished; he needed food, and he needed it now! It was a matter of survival. So, going with that mindset, the maddening hunger, the PC had the character tear into the freshly killed bandit corpse in front of him to sate his hunger. So, the DM dropped his alignment to chaotic evil for this act, which the DM was responsible for...
In the same game, another player, who is playing the brother of the wizard, a giant of a man (7' 10" or so, so I'm figuring half giant or something, with at least a 20 strength) who was a heavily armored defensive fighter, specializing in protecting the wizard (though apparently not from starvation), had this happen. He and the wizard have stayed back in a ruin to study some of the inscriptions there when a few cultists attack. The wizard manages to beat down one or two of them with his staff, while the fighter is still struggling with his first one. He's hit the cultist every round, but as the DM put it, he "just wasn't dealing as much damage" for some reason.
The reason? The fighter had never said he had been keeping his weapons in shape (even though he had said he was maintaining his gear, apparently 'gear' doesn't include weapons), so his large-sized gladius was dealing 1 point of damage per hit. His strength bonus wasn't included in the damage either because it was in such a bad shape...what was it? A wet noodle?
And a related story about this wet-noodle gladius...before the game even started, the player wanted a large gladius, you know, because he's large. The DM said that it would still only do 1d6 damage, because if you made it larger, it would become too unwieldy for him to use without using both hands and he would get penalties for using it one handed...even though it was made for a character of his size.
Needles to say, these players are getting VERY upset at this current campaign.
I could go on with examples from this campaign, or from the ones I've experienced under this guy before, but I'll stop here for now and give someone else the floor for a bit ;)
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this one is about a bad gm who loved pvp, turning on a bad player who was a bully.
i was going to tell this one at dragoncon during the panel "worst.gaming story.ever"
this incident taught me two things: a dm's homebrew is never as good as he thinks it really is, and pvp sucks.
2nd edition dnd, during a prop friendly game back in 1994, i was invited to a group already in progress.
party consisted of a thief, a cleric, a mage, and a paladin.
i was envited to play anything i wanted and i intrested in, a half elf fighter with swashbuckler kit.
during the course of the campiagn, and the dm and the thief sat together and crafted a home brewed "magic tech" that consisted of magic gems that were attuned to players to perform at will magic abilities. these gems were later placed in a "freddy claws" gauntlet.
by the time i reached level 9 in 1997 the thief (lvl 16) turned and backstabbed me, and proceeded to beat the crap out of me until the dm cued him i was within single digit hit point numbers. this happened several times each week at the end of the game. usually with a witty comment that took the thief all week to think of, based on what movie was hot at the time.
the thief then points out he wanted me to play as his body guard and was "teching me" until i got the hint to join as his submissive consort and body guard.
later he tells me i should have played what he wanted me to play, and to expect more beatings like this because he was stroking the dm's need for pvp.
in our down time i ask the mage if she has access to those nifty gems, and she tells me yes. so with the dms enthusiastic permission, we craft them in secret.
on his freddy gauntlet if memory served he had: dispel magic, invisibility, barkskin, and detect magic,
we made 4 gems set in a arcane locked in a large metal sphere puzzle:
nystuls magical aura, hold person, fire trap, and phantasmal killer
i then spray painted a basket ball silver because of the lines served as a "puzzle". i bring it in game the next day.
with the first backstab, we play out the beating as scheduled.
i toss the ball at his face, forcing the player to catch it on impulse as my last character action. the mage teleporting me away from blast radius as her next action.
then he detects magic of the aura and dispels it. fire trap hits as he pulls off his barkskin, and phantasmal killer hits him hard enough to let me finsh him.
remember, we can cast this homebrew crap "at will"
the dm then reaches over and takes his character sheet, and made a grand spectacle of ripping it up (in poor taste, rip thief played from 1989-1996)
the player who had the thief lunged over the table at me.
sheets, dice, books, metal minis, pencils, and silver basket ball all went up in the air.
the dm as punishment for the other players outrage, teleports my half elf from his home-brew greyhawk to ravenloft.
naked, in falkovnia. =[
oh, and i had a black eye had for a week.
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I have a couple stories, all from different dms.
My first one was actually from 3.5. I was excited to be playing dnd since I'd been wanting to do something like that for a while. I'm just handed a character and told to play a rouge. Everything is going fine until the dm decides my character is suddenly being raped by bugbears. I did not get a save, did not get to do anything to see this coming or even have a chance to stop it. She was just getting raped by bugbears and I wasn't aloud to do anything until the other characters in the party killed all of the bugbears. Mind you I was the only female player there.
The second one was also 3.5. I was playing a rouge whose back story had it saying she had done a little prostitution in her past, but didn't do it any longer by the time the compain started. The dm, against my will, made my character still sleep with anything that moved, included a horse at one point, always had her get stds, no say in the matter ever. My character, that I talked with the dm about, had stopped doing stuff like that to have a better life as an adventurer but nope, I didn't have a choice in the matter and my character just did whatever the dm thought would be funny. If it wasn't the only compain I was in with my friends, or if I didn't like the other characters role playing skills I would have quit this one.
The third one is something on the same lines, but with a different dm and actually playing pathfinder. I was doing a 14 year old, clouded vision oracle. It was annoying to deal with arguing with my dm about him saying I could see things when my character clearly couldn't but I could deal with that. My character had the trait charming. Because I had that trait, my dm decided that my character was clearly trying to sleep with every character that I used diplomacy on. He would also tell me exactly how my character was doing it, even though I would tell him that I didn't want her to be doing that, that he let me play a child character so I wouldn't need to deal with stuff like that, but nope again I didn't have a choice in the matter.
I mean, it's hard enough with the fact a lot of the time I'm the only girl playing in my groups. I don't understand why my dms, all different dms in the above stories, have to do stuff like this to my characters. It annoys me and one of them had done something similar to a friend of mine and now she refuses to ever play any table top rps ever again.
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Sit right down and let me spin you a tale...You linked there. YOU LINKED THERE.
*drags TOZ outside and applies a chainsaw to his head*
HEADON. APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD.
HEADON. APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD.
HEADON. APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD.
HEADON. APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD.
I cannot explain how much I hate you right now.
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This one is a bit complicated. Let's say we had a DM with a DMPC, which became a PC, and isn't playing anymore with us. Someone else took the job of DM for our enjoyment... and he's doing as well as the previous one sucked. Note that the new DM is a freakin' pleasure to play with, so you can better understand the dichotomy.
So, our worst DM is also a worst PC story :
As "worst PC story" :
Pretty much any character from "this player".
Their roleplay varied from "non-existant" to "over the top speaking guy with a hood trying to play kool and totally the best at his job since his parents were killed and he was raised in a monastery where he was the best and everyone loved him but after 15 years he understands the monastic food isn't for him so he leaves and becomes even more powerfulbetter and he doesn't afraid of anything and he's a bit psychopath and dominates people and cut their hands blableuble.".
Once, his parents were killed, and he was raised by monks. He then passed ten years into a clerical monastery. His character was a level 10 kukri fighter.
Once he was the King of Thieves, raised by assassins (who killed his parents) as per some novel he was reading at the time. His character was a 20 Str level 8 THF & bow fighter.
The player himself showed at the table once per month, and played with his phone all session or distracted other players without participating in the game. His great (selective) memory allowed him to use archetypes and buy equipment based on what interpretation gives him an advantage, forcing me to double check any character he was coming with. And I always had tons of things to change. Also, he was using d20pfsrd, which wouldn't be a problem in itself if only he understood at least half of it considering his negative english comprehension. His first character for our first PF campaign was a 1st level 3.5 monk with some pathfinder powers, boosted stats, and offense of a 4th level character. Awkward discussion ensued when we found about it.
His second character would be a wizard or druid, because I once explained why they were "better" than other classes in Pathfinder straight core. He heavily complained because he couldn't take them, calling the DM and game "s~&$", while it was clearly said and explained before the very first session that Wiz/Druids were not playable classes in the actual campaign setting. So he rolled a homebrew'd sorcerer, which took nonlethal damage for each spell cast, gaining a bonus to the DC of his spells as a compensation. After some sessions without suffering a single attack, the DM put some witch-hunter archers and made them ready attacks against spellcasters during a tough fight. The player whined, raged, called b%#+$~&+ on this tactic that forced him to roll concentration, fled and soon choose another character.
At first he used 20-point buy to cheese a 7/7/7 character. When we told him this character would never be accepted (even our barbarian had 14 Charisma and did not even use intimidation), he understood what he did wrong and created a stunning 8/7/7 character.
Then he whined when his fighter with +2 will at level 11 got charmed.
Tl;dr =
Player :
Cheating, whining, name-calling, threatening to "finish this outside", never participating, distracting other players, giving headaches.
PCs :
Munchkinized, bland-as-hell, never built according to their backgrounds, put others at risk. At best, they don't even exist.
As "Worst DM" :
Well, "this player", a long, long time ago.
Thanks to him we had :
- The invincible DMPC (a monk with better kill-KO ratio than the barbarian, seemingly impossible to hit, and with awesome stats)
- The game centered around the DMPC and based on a manga
- The "you can't have shiny things", where at level 5 my fighter still didn't find any rusty full plate. Did I mention the monk already had everything he needed and even way more than his WBL ?
- The "play this book" sessions, where you have to do exactly what happens in the novel or you fail.
- The game session where sand people kicked us out of town and stole our weapons after we saved them from a monster, because we had the bad taste to ask them nicely for rations and water before going to kill for free the second monster in the desert we didn't have a map of. The plan to recover our weapons and steal some GPs as a compensation for their jerkitude automatically failed because the guards suddenly upgraded from 6 1st level NPCs to 20 6th level fighters during the night. Oh, and the village's "mayor" put us on our knees and pissed on us from 10' away - more about this in the following point.
- The NPC inferiority compensation complex. Each and every powerful NPC we ever met dominated us once way or another. Slapping the back of our heads, (litteraly) pissing on us, cutting our fingers... with a seemingly abnormal concentration of all of this on one player of our group the DM took jealousy in. Even if the NPC had probably no reason to ever do this, well, he exerted dominance nevertheless. "Slapping someone on the back of the head and putting him on his knees" became a meme for us, sort of like the previous TOUCH THE CUBE! story. The guy clearly had a repressed inferiority complex which he expressed in real life by always sticking to someone else, switching morality and personality everytime he could feel equal or superior to someone successful. He basically dumped his frustration during our game sessions whenever he could in the most ridiculous ways possible.
- Finally, railroad campaign. Not as crippingly obvious as the "play this book" sessions, but don't bother trying something that isn't on the DM's "preparation" sheet, it will fail horribly.
Hilariously, we pretty much clearly decided to get a new DM the day this player threatened to leave and keep with him the 3.5 books and minis because we made clear to him he was becoming REALLY annoying.
On the table, we had in front of us :
- two bottles of cola, some cookies
- a Paizo battle-mat with our minis and pen to write on it
- my huge collector, simili-cuir edition of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook
- a netbook opened on d20psfrd.com
We didn't say anything, and tried not to laugh over his dreadful threat. It was hard.
(I tried to throw a dagger in the balls of the guy pissing on us. I rolled the most awesome natural 20 of my life, just after the one I rolled to Smite Evil-punch an evil god in the face at 10th level.
Unsurprisingly, the damn jerk said it didn't work, and declared my attack roll useless.)
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...Being the only girl in your group and being treated like this really sucks (actually, it's extremely offensive to be treated like this) and I'm glad you didn't dump DnD/PF because of it.
My first DM used to have our characters get raped everytime he got annoyed with us (and no, our characters were male).
As you mentioned, any DM can go overboard with this stuff with players of any sex. But there's a very creepy / scary component to this when it happens to your character exclusively and you're the only woman in the group.
Hell, even fellow players can do this. I can't tell you how many otherwise nice groups have been really marred by the fact that if my female character seeks to have any characterization of a normal sex life, the rest of the party assumes they can now freely pimp her out for anything and everything. I get tired of playing the ice princess character, but the only other option always turns out to be a game of "the prostitute and her many pimps". :/
One frightening experience at a con was when I joined a game and all the guys were joking about beating their wives and girlfriends. They stopped and looked at me and said "We're really great men. We would never hit a woman. We're just joking, don't be offended," and the friend I walked in with said "No, she's cool." And they then proceeded to joke some more about beating women. If you're with a bunch of old friends in mixed company, this kind of thing can fly, but as the only woman in a group of mostly strangers, where the one person I did know thought I was "cool" with domestic abuse...nervewracking. :/
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.
Dragon that learned Craft [armor] and decided to acquire a few fabricate scrolls.
Who helps the dragon put it on? How long does it take to put on a metal house?
Unseen servant. What, you thought that dragons should waste their spells know for burning hands or fireballs while their natural attacks and breath weapon are more efficient? ;)
Ok, seriously. In settings with dragons having human-like personalities and intellects it's quite possible they decide to benefit from equipment and items when they can.
Personally, I am not a fan of humanizing dragons that is quite common this days, as it misses the theme of dragons being entities of primal, inhuman power.
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That last part is actually quite creepy as well.
I've met most if not all of these players at subsequent cons and had no issues. But this was my first con, my first game with these people, and it was not a comfortable experience.
I guess I would say rape jokes / situations and domestic abuse jokes are things one should consider walking wary of - and not just for women, honestly. In a group with long time friends, such things can easily be recognized as jokes and letting off steam. With new players with unknown pasts, hot buttons and experiences, it can be a horrendously negative experience with little warning.
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I thought Unseen servant can only lift up to 20lbs?
My turn.. Im bringing it back old school to a time when I played a little game called "rifts"
So we decide to raid the bad guys hideout and take care of him once and for all, but I know this will not be an easy battle so I do some prepwork batman style and create a zipline off the mountain into a very thin forrest with very little tree growth below just in case things got hairy.
We made our way into the bad guys camp only to find out that we had been.. AMBUSH!! I yelled and out from the buildings jumped a s&$& ton of bad guys that we had no chance of victory against.
We RAN like any sane person would in the face of total defeat. We used the zip line as intended and barely escaped, but we knew we had little time to think of a plan. The enemy would be on our trail shortly. My friend played a wizard type illusionist character at the time. He also is sort of a genius.
He came up with a plan to create a rain forrest for us to have better cover to hide in. He could create basically anything he wanted if he made max rolls.
We did everything we could to help him. Made his abilities as high as we could get them. We used all of our resources for this last ditch chance.
He rolled to create an illusionary rain forrest to hide us, but it wasnt just one roll it was 10. Each roll would count as trees, creatures, rivers, ect
He rolled critical success after critical success to the point he had impossibly made an entire forest including wildlife, rivers, all of it seemed real to whoever saw it. It was literaly the coolest thing i have seen happen ever. He pulled off a miracle.
Genius mixed with some miracle rolls.
The GM got so frustrated that he rage quit. Yelling at us saying we ruined his campaign and that he was quiting. He promptly took all his things and went home.
Later after he had calmed down i have found out that we were soposed to be captured. His entire story depended on us being captured.
rOFL
"Didnt know who was f@*@in with!"
I am SO glad that I do not have stories like those to tell... :D
I have a couple stories, all from different dms.
My first one was actually from 3.5. I was excited to be playing dnd since I'd been wanting to do something like that for a while. I'm just handed a character and told to play a rouge. Everything is going fine until the dm decides my character is suddenly being raped by bugbears. I did not get a save, did not get to do anything to see this coming or even have a chance to stop it. She was just getting raped by bugbears and I wasn't aloud to do anything until the other characters in the party killed all of the bugbears. Mind you I was the only female player there.
The second one was also 3.5. I was playing a rouge whose back story had it saying she had done a little prostitution in her past, but didn't do it any longer by the time the compain started. The dm, against my will, made my character still sleep with anything that moved, included a horse at one point, always had her get stds, no say in the matter ever. My character, that I talked with the dm about, had stopped doing stuff like that to have a better life as an adventurer but nope, I didn't have a choice in the matter and my character just did whatever the dm thought would be funny. If it wasn't the only compain I was in with my friends, or if I didn't like the other characters role playing skills I would have quit this one.
The third one is something on the same lines, but with a different dm and actually playing pathfinder. I was doing a 14 year old, clouded vision oracle. It was annoying to deal with arguing with my dm about him saying I could see things when my character clearly couldn't but I could deal with that. My character had the trait charming. Because I had that trait, my dm decided that my character was clearly trying to sleep with every character that I used diplomacy on. He would also tell me exactly how my character was doing it, even though I would tell him that I didn't want her to be doing that, that he let me play a child character so I wouldn't need to deal with stuff like that,...
Wow. That is really really creepy.
I can't believe that three different DMs were responsible for such similar stories. Seriously, that is some disgusting behaviour. I'm surprised you didn't just abandon the hobby entirely, after what could only be defined as repeated sexual harassment.
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.
Play a live game online using a virtual table top app. Trust me theres tons of them and you don't have to worry about there being no players in your area again.
I thought Unseen servant can only lift up to 20lbs?
Dragon sized Folding Plate, maybe?
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 had a player like that once. 'Twas a damn shame too, because he's been one of my longest-known best friends, but the guy is a pathological liar. Lies so much and so often, it can't possibly be on purpose.
In game, he'd insist on rolling all his dice off of the table, on his "lucky binder," and never rolled lower than a 16 on the die. Even when we played small games, with 3 players around a card table, he'd do this.
We got tired of it, and demanded all rolls be on the table with witnesses. Suddenly he wasn't rolling a 19 everytime...
Would also manipulate RAW and conveniently "forget" certain things, like level adjustments for templates. He once made a half-dragon rogue with no level adjustment, and didn't see the problem...
Lol. Cheaters, they think everyone else was born yesterday. As a rogue, I find this amusing.
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One truly beginner dm, ran kingmaker for two sessions. An un-exciting world, we kept hearing bunnies disturb us, but no real threats. A hardy warrior couldn't sleep outside in a forest without being fatigued. You needed to haul a tent round or the dm punished you. Crits that would absolutely kill a bandit two times over were turned into K.Os, hits were made into misses because the dm tried to use a luck system. Then a will-o-wisp almost killed us all at first level.
Then we weren't given much xp, and the bar to level was raised (we had already levelled by the rules). Rage quit. Threw my character sheet at the dm and left.
Campaign ends on a cliffhanger. The villain is still out there. A battle with a god looms. Nations are roused into war against each other, the balance of magic hanging by a thread.
We break for a casual campaign run by another GM (a separate game with no connection to the former). During it, the original GM decides that all our previous characters died in fire and everything they ever did was for nothing.
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One truly beginner dm, ran kingmaker for two sessions. An un-exciting world, we kept hearing bunnies disturb us, but no real threats. A hardy warrior couldn't sleep outside in a forest without being fatigued. You needed to haul a tent round or the dm punished you. Crits that would absolutely kill a bandit two times over were turned into K.Os, hits were made into misses because the dm tried to use a luck system. Then a will-o-wisp almost killed us all at first level.
Then we weren't given much xp, and the bar to level was raised (we had already levelled by the rules). Rage quit. Threw my character sheet at the dm and left.
In the DM's defence, Will-O-Wisps are SUPPOSED to kill you in Kingmaker. They're random encounters that you're supposed to run like hell away from. I can see how a rookie DM might not notice the threat they pose, and just toss them at you like it was a regular encounter. The rest of it does sound a bit nonsense though.
He could be used to 3.5 magical darkness which actually blocked darkvision. In PF deeper darkness is needed to block darkvision if used in area where ambient light level is dim illumination or darkness.
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Regarding the posts by women players whose characters (and by extension the players themselves) were railroaded and forced into humiliating circumstances by their DMs. What sort of asinine, s^%/ for brains, one handed typists are these people? The one GenCon I got to attend there was an Eberron game and only one woman at the table. It was her first foray into D&D ever, and I'm proud to say every male at the table was nothing but courteous and helpful towards her. If I ever saw or even overheard such behavior as has been mentioned going on around me in my FLGS I'm afraid there'd be a slow motion table flip and then some crazy wire-fu action in which the offending screwtards end up wearing their butts for ballcaps.
-_-
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Was playing Saga Ed. Star Wars and one player died so I picked up her lightsaber (guy playing a female character it should be noted) and being able to use it (jedi/mando combo) started putting it to use.
The GM allowed the Jedi to be cloned (effectively resurrecting her at same stats/level).
So the player decides that since I touched her lightsaber I needed to die.
The GM and this player plan for who knows how long for a JEDI to hire several higher level assassins that aim only for my character and they easily kill him. I stood up. Said thanks for the game and never went back.
1. Jedi wouldn't care enough that another used their lightsaber to have them killed
2. a JEDI wouldn't hire assassins.
3. They planned this in a reach-around session that the GM was OK with. Instead of indicating that maybe this was an ASSHAT plan or suggesting the Un-Jedi-like activities might harm the players status as a Jedi, he went along with it.
4. This player was the only one allowed to have a Bloodline (sorry been a while so might not be the right word... special abilities based on family lineage...)
It could be partially explained in-game because cloning tended to induce madness due to corrupted connection to force. But I don't think that player and GM thought about that.
Seems like I've been blessed with DMs who were truly excellent. As I've been DMing much more that playing, my worst DM stories were probably created by me :/
'findel
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Regarding the posts by women players whose characters (and by extension the players themselves) were railroaded and forced into humiliating circumstances by their DMs. What sort of asinine, s^%/ for brains, one handed typists are these people? The one GenCon I got to attend there was an Eberron game and only one woman at the table. It was her first foray into D&D ever, and I'm proud to say every male at the table was nothing but courteous and helpful towards her. If I ever saw or even overheard such behavior as has been mentioned going on around me in my FLGS I'm afraid there'd be a slow motion table flip and then some crazy wire-fu action in which the offending screwtards end up wearing their butts for ballcaps.
I've seen people in an established group speak up when one player starts abusing another twice. Once a player snapped and started screaming and swearing at another player (who was being mildly annoying in a teasing manner) and her husband and another gamer spoke up, and another time a player was feeling testy and was nasty to another player for a simple rules mistake (it was a discussion of new rules not being used by anyone in the game, so wasn't actively messing anything up in the game itself), and a couple players called him out. That time there was an apology.
I've never seen it when a GM does it to a player, and I've been in many games where other players would not step up if there was an issue. One game, one guy was egregiously socially offensive. He was socially offensive to everyone (the FLGS literally had to assign an employee to do a smell test on this guy every time he entered - his odor would drive customers out of the store sometimes), but latched onto me as a favorite target. It was a meetup group, with 12-14 players, and I would have to plan carefully how to sit to avoid sitting close to him (wandering hands), and he would still spend the whole sessions dropping niceties like "My character is a lesbian elf chick! She uses a bow because chicks can't fight!" "Where's the brothel! My character wants to work at the brothel!" "You can't be a paladin, chicks can't fight! Your character's stupid!" (this last was to me and my paladin of Sheyln) Afterwards 3-4 guys would inevitably come up and say something about what a jerk he was and how they should tell him off. Somehow, though, that never happened.
It's hard to speak out. Who wants to stand up and "cause a problem" when it can be ignored. If the woman isn't speaking out, it must not bother her, so why should he stick his neck out? If a guy speaks up, he gets ribbed for being a "white knight". If the woman speaks up, she's being too sensitive, she can't take a joke.
I've only had one DM constantly obsess over uncomfortable sexual situations with my character - that, combined with too many of his out of game prejudices coming up in game (despite a few requests from me to stop because it had some personal discomfort for me), forced me to leave that game, despite enjoying many other aspects of the game.
Tough situations.
Misogyny smelly would be romancer. Sigh. Some people are real scum, and shouldn't be allowed in inhabited areas, let alone at gaming tables.
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Yeah, but it's really a small minority of people, and a small number of groups.
I run into these people more at meetups and cons - I think it's because those people have a hard time find a home group that will accept them, and they desperately want to play.
The social minefield is tougher at cons and meetup groups also because nobody knows the other players very well, and what can be laughed off or discussed and worked out in a home group among friends (or at least familiar aquaintances) blows up quickly into ugliness at public gatherings.
The shy are more scared to defend themselves, the bullies feel driven to assert themselves, and the regular peopole just want to get through the game without social awkwardness - it's a recipe for some people to get walked all over by others.
I try to be aware and step in, especially when running one of these games, before things get bad. But they still often do. Ah well. It's not like I don't fall flat on my face in social interactions myself.
It's sad -- no one can save him from his crippling nostalgia.
I have a player like this. He gripes and moans about how much better 1e was because you didn't have to make so many choices when creating characters and paladins had to have either very high or very low CHA scores and could only be Human and how much better it was that other races had level caps and run on sentence runs on. He's also the guy I mentioned in another thread who refused to read any book written by a woman or has a woman as the main character and mumbles under his breath about my letting the wife of another player participate in our games. But, to his credit, he's never hit on her or tried to sell her to a brothel. And I'm assuming he bathes, because no one's ever complained about a smell.
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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...
LOL. These are the things I would like to see in person. I would probably fall over laughing.
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Man. The stories from Jess Door and Bakurako made me feel disheartened and sick to the stomach. I'm glad you guys didn't bail on the whole hobby after that.
I've been lucky to avoid PvP situations. Occasionally there would be an evil campaign, or a campaign designed to be competetive (rival thieves guilds sending 1 rep each to find a hidden item in a castle), but the players never fought amongst either, just their characters once in a while.
EDIT:
And I would never stand for a "rape for fun" campaign. I would stop it, whether I was player, GM, or just observer. That kind of behavior has no place in a game. Games are supposed to be fun. They shouldn't make people sick and traumatized.
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Man. The stories from Jess Door and Bakurako made me feel disheartened and sick to the stomach. I'm glad you guys didn't bail on the whole hobby after that.
My first gaming experiences were all good. I would guess if I'd been introduced to the game by people who pulled some of these shenanigans, I wouldn't be a part of the hobby today. But I had enough exposure to the awesomeness of gaming with a good group that i recognized the people were the problem, not the hobby.
The worst stories sound horrible, but for me they've been a small, though notable, portion of my gaming experiences as a whole. I'm glad my first two groups, though all male except for me, consisted of men that didn't ever give me reason to be insulted or worried.
EDIT:And I would never stand for a "rape for fun" campaign. I would stop it, whether I was player, GM, or just observer. That kind of behavior has no place in a game. Games are supposed to be fun. They shouldn't make people sick and traumatized.
I agree. I understand some groups have no limits to such things, but if they are taking things to that level then it should be ok'd by everyone at the table. For all they know the female at the table could have actually been a victim. In the case of the posters it was not even a part of the storyline. The GM's were just being jerks.
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I've posted this one before:
My paladin walks into town and starts talking with the locals to gather info.
GM: "You meet a prostitute."
Me: "I'm not here to judge. I'll ask her if she has heard of <blah blah plot stuff> in the town."
GM: "Make a will save."
Me: "Okay." *rolls badly* "Dang."
GM: "She seduces you and you go have sex with her. She charges..." *rolls* "10 gold."
Me: "Er, what? Was that an enchantment effect?"
GM: "No, she was just really persuasive."
Me: D:
GM: "Now roll to see how good you are in bed."
Me: !! D: !!