Darn. I thought he was going for a Ratigan-style approach.
As some people here have seen and heard, my former DM is a major offender to me. By far the worst thing he's done is mock my homebrew races in front of the rest of the group, all the while lying about certain parts of the fluff. What made it worse was that the others didn't laugh. They didn't say anything. I knew that since they were new players, they didn't think they had any right to speak their own mind on the matter, for fear of "the DM's wrath" or something similar. I don't recall him ever apologizing to me about that, either. Second worst offense would be banning certain races for being "Special Snowflakes" yet then playing a spotlight-stealing Gary Stu Special Snowflake when I'm the DM. I'm actually starting to wonder why I let him get away with it in the first place.
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Why did you let him to play a spotlight stealing gary stu snowflake? In hindsight?
My worst DM offender was a guy who was a hardcore Tolkein-ist and he always buffed up elves and dwarves to be twice or thrice more powerful then humans. Because humans were weak. Nobody played a human in his games and were thoroughly discouraged about playing them.
I played a Human character once and was by far the most effective character in the party. Then he arbitrarily killed him with a "rocks fall, you die" and told me to make a new character that couldn't be a human. Because he hates humans. I simply packed up my stuff and left. Never spoke to the man again.
Why did you let him to play a spotlight stealing gary stu snowflake? In hindsight?
My worst DM offender was a guy who was a hardcore Tolkein-ist and he always buffed up elves and dwarves to be twice or thrice more powerful then humans. Because humans were weak. Nobody played a human in his games and were thoroughly discouraged about playing them.
I played a Human character once and was by far the most effective character in the party. Then he arbitrarily killed him with a "rocks fall, you die" and told me to make a new character that couldn't be a human. Because he hates humans. I simply packed up my stuff and left. Never spoke to the man again.
The idea sounded good, and aside from a few Stu traits, didn't seem like the type that'd steal the spotlight too badly.
And damn, I thought I was misanthropic but then I hear about this guy. Sorry to hear about what had happened to you, dude.
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I have a gift of playing with complete douchebags...
Then, how about this?
Thus, the campaign was played in two fronts:
1. A high-level party tasked with the duty of stopping the "avatar" from conquering the Material Plane with his army.
2. A epic level party that must travel to the BBEG's own demiplane (finding a way into the demiplane was an adventure itself) and destroy him before he reach godhood.
The main problem is, both (body and spirit) must be destroyed "at the same time" to prevent the BBEG's resurrection.
The players, in order to accomplish that enormous task, managed to defeat him in the Material Plane first, and then, with no time to lose, confront him in his sanctum, in the core of the demiplane.
After a gruesome battle, the party beat the would-be god... only to be rewarded with a cinematic that goes around the lines of:
"Oh, you have defeated me!!! So... this is defeat... and with this newfound knowledge, now I know everything!!!"
Thus, achieving godhood and proceeding to kill/enslave the PCs.
The next half hour was a detailed description of the newborn god returning to the Material Plane and destroying everything the PCs could care of.
I've never have seen/read something more awful than that.
Why did you let him to play a spotlight stealing gary stu snowflake? In hindsight?
My worst DM offender was a guy who was a hardcore Tolkein-ist and he always buffed up elves and dwarves to be twice or thrice more powerful then humans. Because humans were weak. Nobody played a human in his games and were thoroughly discouraged about playing them.
I played a Human character once and was by far the most effective character in the party. Then he arbitrarily killed him with a "rocks fall, you die" and told me to make a new character that couldn't be a human. Because he hates humans. I simply packed up my stuff and left. Never spoke to the man again.
Then he wasn't really a Tolkienist?
Have I told the story about the GM that gave my character horse genitals because he thought it was sexy?
Have I told the story about the GM that gave my character horse genitals because he thought it was sexy?
Do we want to hear that story?
I've had a lot of awful experiences, I'm starting to feel lucky that none of them have been perverse in nature though.
Character got wounded in a fight. Got fixed up by a doctor. Woke up with horse parts. GM expected me to be pleased. That's about it.
Character got wounded in a fight. Got fixed up by a doctor. Woke up with horse parts. GM expected me to be pleased. That's about it.
Huh, doesn't sound as horrifying as I expected it to be.
Adding to a list of things a GM has done, one of my GMs just decided halfway through to say "Hey! This guy is your new GM now" a guy who hadn't been playing up to that point and just joined in. First thing this guy does is set us up against a clown and an invincible monster and the tone changed and we couldn't get anything done. The game quickly died. I asked him why he gave that guy control of the game and he just said "I don't know."
Character got wounded in a fight. Got fixed up by a doctor. Woke up with horse parts. GM expected me to be pleased. That's about it.
That's... weird, to say the least.
Character got wounded in a fight. Got fixed up by a doctor. Woke up with horse parts. GM expected me to be pleased. That's about it.That's... weird, to say the least.
The last time I went to a doctor in a game he tried to rip off my flesh(I mentioned that earlier). The time before that he stabbed me in the heart and I woke up spellstitched against my will.
Some DMs just won't let you get patched up I guess.
My "lovable munchkin" GM is one of those GMs. He can't keep his hands off your character. The one true thing about playing in any of his games is expect to get mutated, altered, morphed, gene-spliced, or changed in more than one way during his game. I started one recent long term campaign of his as a simple 1/2 Drow... but by the end I wasn't just part human and part drow... no he had added celestial to the mix and altered me to the fire subtype and something similar to spell stitching.
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*cast reverse gravity*
Worst thing I've had a player do to me:
Not show up for the game. We call, no answer. We text, no answer. We log onto WOW, there she is...
"Are you not coming?"
"No! I posted on the meetup that I wasn't because I have to support my guild in a raid"
Checking the meetup invite shows she declined ten minutes after showtime. Classy..
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And just for you, who (might not) read any and all my posts:
Before entering an abandoned manor that turned up to be the hobgoblin's HQ, we find "Golarion's more dexterous bugbear", who managed to get (and hit) 6 AoOs at the party (one for each member), who had recently come out from a nearby sewer. Then inside de house, we encounter at the 2nd floor with a Enlarged bugbear with a greatsword (the GM is very fond of that weapon, nearly all the NPC had one) and after insulting the dwarf's mother combat ensues...
Then again, my dwarf spent his first round looking around the room we were fighting at and gathering as many details as possible. The GM proceeded to describe in detail the room as well as the attitude and equipment (visible) of the bugbear. On the next round, my dwarf proceeded to cast "Shatter" over the bugbear's non-magical greatsword, leaving him unarmed. Then the bugbear drew a dagger hidden in his boot (no AoO there) and continued to fight ... only to suffer from my second "Shatter" prepared for the day.
With his remaining HPs, the bugbear used the Retreat action to reach the far wall of the room... and pull a Large stick of metal (he described it like some sort of construction tool) that was hung there, resuming the fight.
Again, I cried foul at the GM, because he didn't mention anything like that was in that corner of the room, and didn't ask for Perception checks neither. Then, another player let it clear to me:
It was Hellsteel: If you aren't evil, you cannot see it.
But can you guess who had inscribed and prepared a Shatter scroll?
Two rounds later, the bugbear with the Hellsteel stick was no more. >:)
I had a player ditch an hour prior for some basketball thing.
That hour was before the game actually starting?
If that's so, I don't see much problem with it... for once.
After waffling back and forth for the previous day.
At the time I was driving an hour to DM at our friends house.
When people don't confirm I've learned to just say they aren't showing up. A lot of the time, I feel lucky if someone even confirms they aren't going to show at all.
When people don't confirm I've learned to just say they aren't showing up. A lot of the time, I feel lucky if someone even confirms they aren't going to show at all.After waffling back and forth for the previous day.
At the time I was driving an hour to DM at our friends house.
I participate in a bunch of different activities and it only seems like in my tabletop role playing groups that this is ok. It really bugs me. I have gotten to the point that if the person can't take the time to confirm something, I mention something, if it continues; then I can't take the time to send the invitation.
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When people don't confirm I've learned to just say they aren't showing up. A lot of the time, I feel lucky if someone even confirms they aren't going to show at all.After waffling back and forth for the previous day.
At the time I was driving an hour to DM at our friends house.
Same here. Although I only have to put up with that from one person in particular. Same guy who feels its ok to wait until the day of to let us know he's playing. When he's not playing he just doesnt show. I find it funny because in lieu of showing he'll ask if we all want to drop what we're doing and go out to drink. When I was in PARTYDRINKBEASTMODE for the first four years I knew him he just wanted to stay home and play WoW.
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After waffling back and forth for the previous day.
At the time I was driving an hour to DM at our friends house.
If they're waffling back and forth, I simply insist that they just take off and not worry about it. That way, they get to do whatever it is they want/need to do, and I know ahead of time that I have a free evening to plan around.
I've seen too many sessions where bad stuff happens, because a player really did need the night off, but gamed anyway out of fear of disappointing the gaming group. Or, wind up calling off at the very last second anyway. Let's just call it off ahead of time and make everyone's lives easier.
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Speaking of people not showing up, I once had a GM who would plan encounters for five and run them exactly the same even if only 2 people showed. I was the only one with good attendance and I suffered for it...
Our 3.5 GM used to divide all XP between the total number of players, regardless of whether they show up or don't, and give half Xp to those who didn't come... all other Xp is lost, even if the absent player's PC doesn't participate (in any form) in the fight.
On the subject of cancellations, one of my players in my last game lived with me, and didn't bother telling me whether she'd be at the game or not. I'd be setting up, I'd knock on her bedroom door, and discover the she wasn't home. This happened perhaps one out of every three sessions...
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Happened to me too, back when i lived with a roommate. Aside from their terrible TERRIBLE hygiene, lack of domestic skills and lack of buying food unless i forced them to, he was also late for every session we had, even though we freaking lived in the same apartment.
The last straw was when he brought in a girl mid-session and asked us all to leave so he could get intimate with her in peace. I simply told him to pack up his stuff and leave. That very day. Which, surprisingly, he did. Never again will i live with a roommate.
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...After a few moments of awkward answering, the DM steps in and says the party is moving on.What could have been a great roleplaying opportunity, cut off.
I hate that. There's a DM, whom I won't play under anymore, who was notorious for this sort of thing. All that mattered was his story; anything else that detracted from it was swiftly dealt with. Countless RP opportunities shot completely down in a fiery blaze of "Come on guys, shut up already and get back to the game..."
...Yes, while were discussing, in-character, plot points, strategies, just character interactions in general, we were told to shut up. Sometimes, we'd even be arguing, in character, and about to break out into PvP, over things the DM instigated(he liked to start in-fighting btw), and he'd tell us to "shut up and pay attention" if it took too long.
I've had a DM somewhat like that. He doesn't actually tell people to shut up if they try to roleplay. But we've pretty much come to realize that if we play in one of his games, any roleplaying we do is up to us. He's not going to give us any opportunities to roleplay with each other or NPCs. Roleplaying is something we have to make time for while he's looking something up in a book.
It sounds awful, but he's actually a decent DM. Just not a good DM for a group of people who like to actually roleplay their characters. When he's a player, his characters are usually just stats on paper.
I've also had a DM who seemed to be actively trying to find ways to not run the game. Every week the DM seemed to be looking for an excuse to do something else. If you don't want to play, just say so, for glob's sake!
At a local con we were playing the Land Beyond the Magic Mirror froom 1st edition. My brother and I had spent about 3 hours rolling up characters from some really weird DM rules. First thing that happens is we loose everything we had as we drop down in the first encounter.
At a local con we were playing the Land Beyond the Magic Mirror froom 1st edition. My brother and I had spent about 3 hours rolling up characters from some really weird DM rules. First thing that happens is we loose everything we had as we drop down in the first encounter.
As a player and GM I absolutely hate that crap. I just got out of a 2nd ed game and all I had was a stick the entire time. My new policy is if anyone starts a game like that I'm just going to politely dismiss myself right then and there.
Moral of the story? Learning from previous play experience can have it's consequences!
Alternative moral of the story: If you're going to get all meta and build your character around 'what the GM likes', expect it to bite you in the butt.
At a local con we were playing the Land Beyond the Magic Mirror froom 1st edition. My brother and I had spent about 3 hours rolling up characters from some really weird DM rules. First thing that happens is we loose everything we had as we drop down in the first encounter.As a player and GM I absolutely hate that crap. I just got out of a 2nd ed game and all I had was a stick the entire time. My new policy is if anyone starts a game like that I'm just going to politely dismiss myself right then and there.
I've run the 4th adventure of against the slavers line in 1st edition that starts this way a bunch of times and the players have loved it. Of course I've always used the pregen pcs and warned the players 1st, so.... If handled right theses can be fun adventures.
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For some, this would've been a worst thing ever, but my player took it well and played it out.
He was playing a wizard, I believe around level 4-6 range but I can't recall the exact level. Somehow I ended up taking his spellbooks from him. Instead of going all hate on me, instead he took a mithril chain shirt and a crossbow, slapped on a helmet, and became a crossbowman. At the time they weren't able to get back to a town so he sucked it up, used a couple wands he had but mostly shot stuff with a crossbow for about an entire level's worth of XP. Far from the most effective character he managed to do decently well considering. He did have PBS and Precise shot since he used a lot of ranged touch spells.
By the time I placed some new spellbooks for him, I made sure to up the treasure haul a bit to be in his favor, because that was a pretty awesome moment for him.
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Being kicked out opf game because I was not able to show up with what the DM thought was enough "consistency". So let me get this straight. Even though I gave him two weeks notice about missing one session I was supposed to miss a days work for D&D. I like D&D. I like being able to eat and pay my bills even more. Same DM second reason why I missed the game was because I caught a gastro. So I was suppoosed to show up at a gaming table unable to keep any food done and sick as a dog. Did I also mention I had to travel a hour and a half to get to his place. Thinking about it now maybe I should have been a jerk and contaminated the entire table with my gastro.
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I've run the 4th adventure of against the slavers line in 1st edition that starts this way a bunch of times and the players have loved it. Of course I've always used the pregen pcs and warned the players 1st, so.... If handled right theses can be fun adventures.At a local con we were playing the Land Beyond the Magic Mirror froom 1st edition. My brother and I had spent about 3 hours rolling up characters from some really weird DM rules. First thing that happens is we loose everything we had as we drop down in the first encounter.As a player and GM I absolutely hate that crap. I just got out of a 2nd ed game and all I had was a stick the entire time. My new policy is if anyone starts a game like that I'm just going to politely dismiss myself right then and there.
It can certainly work, under the right circumstances. I played in a 3.5 campaign once that was inspired by the tv series 'Lost'. The PCs were shipwrecked and most of them had lost all their weapons, armor and equipment. But we all agreed to it before we started and the GM let us find loot and get weapons pretty quickly after we arrived on the mysterious island.
My husband reminded me of an awful thing a GM once did to us in a really excellent campaign about ten years ago. We were playing mercenaries who'd signed a contract with a wizard to fetch some items for him to use in crafting an artifact. In between finding his items we had become involved in a war, and were helping our chosen side in a big battle when our wizard customer contacted us and said we needed to go get something ASAP. The terms of the contract dictated that we had to do it right then or dire things would happen - we'd become his slaves or something like that. So we had to pull out in the middle of battle, which came back to bite us later on when we needed to make nice with some of the people we'd deserted.
That GM loves to put players in that sort of "d*mned if you do, d*mned if you don't" situation.
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Just remembered one of the two worst experiences as a Pathfinder player I've ever had. The other one was also due to bad GMing, but was this guys first try and he had some problem players in the group making it difficult for him... this story though involved a GM that I'd been told was absolutely amazing and ran the most brilliant game ever. I swear to you all that none of this is exaggerated. Every word of this is how it happened, right down to the ridiculous length of time spent on exposition.
So I get invited to go along to this group. I'd been told in advance that we're playing as evil characters, so I rolled up a death obsessed tiefling alchemist (Level I think) and rocked up around start time. Because I was the new player, I was told that the GM would give me a quick run through of the setting and the story so far... quick is apparently a relative term. 45 blasted minutes of the GM talking at me. 3/4 of an hour spent listening to this guy ramble about how there are two armies, neither of which are apparently good or evil, and we've been double crossed by both of them, as well as betraying them left right and centre. To top it off, each army was split into several factions, each of which had their own name. All names were so long that they had acronyms or initialisations, each 5 letters minimum. Initialisations, in a fantasy game. After it wrapped up, I had less of an idea of what was going on than I did to start with. So I just nodded and smiled and said I understood, then joined the party.
Cue 4 hours of the rest of the players constantly stoking the GM's ego, telling him he was amazing as he made rules up on the fly, often contradicting rules he'd used a few rounds earlier. Some of the things he did throughout the night included:
- Reintroduced 'facing' rules. Turning around provoked attacks of opportunity
- Had us make perception checks, then when we all rolled ridiculously high, said none of us saw anything because no one specifically said they were looking behind us
- After the perception checks, ambushed us with 10 advanced werewolves
- During the werewolf fight, decided that energy damage is subject to DR as well as energy resistance, because apparently my bombs were overpowered.
- Deus Ex Machina'd us out of a TPK from the weres by having the blacksmith apparently be a crack short with a rifle who somehow killed 10 werewolves in a single round (10 shots, one per werewolf. So in other words, no way it works in the rules).
- Told us we had to storm a castle. The castle was guarded by orcs who had cannons. Actual cannons. Aimed at us and ready to fire.
- Had 3 NPCs give huge amounts of plot the in form of monologues/exposition. Seriously, around 2 hours of the 4 hour session (not including my 45 minute lecture before the session proper) was taken up by NPCs talking at us for about 40 minutes each.
End of the night I walked out and just never went back.
My husband reminded me of an awful thing a GM once did to us in a really excellent campaign about ten years ago. We were playing mercenaries who'd signed a contract with a wizard to fetch some items for him to use in crafting an artifact. In between finding his items we had become involved in a war, and were helping our chosen side in a big battle when our wizard customer contacted us and said we needed to go get something ASAP. The terms of the contract dictated that we had to do it right then or dire things would happen - we'd become his slaves or something like that. So we had to pull out in the middle of battle, which came back to bite us later on when we needed to make nice with some of the people we'd deserted.
That GM loves to put players in that sort of "d*mned if you...
this sounds like fun to me. of course , DM attitude while doing this makes a lot of difference.
Not to mitigate any of the BS this guy put you through, I've bolded the one thing I wouldn't take issue with.
Historically, several empires of the ancient era were fond of long names or statements that resulted in abbreviation. For example, Rome's "SPQR", translating as "The Senate and People of Rome".
Expecting you to memorize a complete list during a near-hour-long diatribe of his game world & the story thus far... less awesome.
When I bring in a new player, I try to give them a run down of the world-events, typically getting the existing players to chime in a bunch. If there's enough that's immediately relevant, I'll give him some cheat sheets. Or, better yet, a free Knowledge roll when I think the information will be relevant.
Fair enough. There's no way these ones were going to be easy to remember though. Unlike SPQR, which makes sense, We had things like one army being called the "EZSFZR" and the other being the "DNLMPW" (the second one may not be 100% correct, but I remember the first one entirely because I made a point of writing that one down since it was supposedly who we worked for).
Even though history did have examples of names being abbreviated, I try to keep it out of my games, for ease of reference for the players. To the same end, I don't give long complicated names to the organisations in the first place.
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The way I've handled it in the past for my homebrew world is to write up a reference document that contains the basic information the characters would be aware of as members of the Imperial Military's elite teams. It contains things like a brief history of the empire, the names of the noble houses and the most important political figures, as well as the structure of the military and society as a whole. It's assumed that all the characters know that level of info, because they've been raised and trained to be agents of the Imperial family, able to perform political, military and black ops functions.
As the players uncover more info, I add it to the document and they can peruse it as they wish. I keep a copy open on my laptop in case they want to check something in the middle of a session that they know they should be aware of. So far it's worked pretty well for us.
I'll preface this story with the DM is new and learning. While I get what he was going for it ended up really frustrating the other players and myself. If he hadn't ended the session right after and let the campaign go on break, I would have been walking away anyway.
The setting is mostly in a corrupt city for the first three or four levels before the party stumbles on a major revelation that on his Golarion the gods, except one, had basically abandoned it and that the world was set to end in around three years time (the world would collide with the sun).
At this point my lawful good character gets in touch with the remaining god and basically asks "wth man?" and he says he has saved the world enough times he just doesn't want to again and is tired of it. So my character basically decides at that point to pursue godhood and save the world herself. The remaining god says "cool story" and says the best way to achieve that is to seek out these 10 odd artifacts scattered around the world and perform a ritual.
So we spend the next couple months (note: Real Time) seeking these things out. Some involve challenges and fights that should have completely obliterated us, but we managed. These things were potent too. One could summon any outsider under your control for instance. Another allowed pretty much wishes. One could wipe the mind and memory of people. Most had drawbacks to them, but we used them cleverly enough to really do well with them.
Once we get the last one the deity tells us where to go for the final ritual to perform it. He's pretty insistent but my character basically tells him to wait since there is some stuff we need to take care of. He was acting strangely so you better believe there was a lot of sense motive going on and I was asking the one relic that could reveal any written or spoken knowledge if he was going to betray us. Was told nope.
Okay so we do the ritual. Lay all the relics in this pool in a floating city. Flash of light. Cool stuff...
And we're gods. We win. AWESOME.
At this point we're still playing he says which I find a little strange but we go with it. He wants to play out our actions over the next decade. So we start going over the basics. I raise up the other party members to deityhood. We raise up some other deities to fill out the alignment spectrum (can't be good without evil, etc). He lets us know when stuff happens over the years, like uprisings, wars, how we deal with people murdering out new followers...I think that gets the idea across.
Playing out those ten years takes us three sessions. Note we play for 8 hours in a go. We are more or less playing simGOD, picking out chosen, running the planes, really fun and cool stuff.
Along the way, my character starts to come to ends with the other characters. I was placed as essentially the overgod and them under me. I was creating a balanced world that required good and evil, placing the fates of mortals in their own hands. They must undergo trials and prove their faith sort of stuff.
Part of this is the deity's not taking direct action in the world. As some of the evil assigned deity's minions were slaughtering theirs they wanted to take direct intervetion against the deity and their followers. When I basically vetoed it there was a lot of hurt feelings both IC and OOC (they were losing followers and blaming me for not letting them directly assault the deity or his minions). By the end of the campaign, there was almost a god war between the other deity's and my character. It was really bad suffice to say and when I brought up this with the DM he said to just chill a bit and he'd handle it (this was year 9 or 10).
In the 10th year, one of the NPCs comes to us and says (paraphrased) "It's not real, it's all a dream". We wake up on the floating island which is hurtling toward the ground now...oh and anyone that was in or touching the pool took major damage (my character was missing both her feet and taking some hefty penalties). All the relics are gone. The deity has vanished. We've been screwed and had our time majorly wasted.
...we were yelling at him. Three entire sessions of work and effort trying to create a better world after saving it for nothing. It turns out the god stuff was supposed to be a half session to one session he had planned but we all got so into it he let us do as we liked...which was a huge mistake I think. We had put a ton of effort into crafting the world, picking our followers, electing our chosen, EVERYTHING.
So yeah...almost caused the party to start slaughtering each other over a vision. There are still hurt feelings over what happened in that dream-thing too. While I hope they pass, I'm dubious on it since all of us have our views and they aren't likely to change (I still stand by creating the world in that way is correct, while the others only care to create a utopia for their followers).