In my first game my GM ruled that my character became evil for trying to save some babies from the party.
Was there something special about these babies? Or were they just... babies that your party wanted to kill?
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In my first game my GM ruled that my character became evil for trying to save some babies from the party.Was there something special about these babies? Or were they just... babies that your party wanted to kill?
Nope, just goblin babies.
It was an unpleasant surprise for someone raised on fantasy literature that didn't revolve around twisted murderhobo morality.
Didn't play with that group again, and didn't play the game at all until finding some folks that were closer to the same page on heroic fantasy expectations.
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In my first game my GM ruled that my character became evil for trying to save some babies from the party.Was there something special about these babies? Or were they just... babies that your party wanted to kill?Nope, just goblin babies.
not really on topic i had put goblin babies in my game kinda as a trap (they where tied to the wall and try and bite and hold on to you) the party grabbed them up and started using them as trowing weapons.
"Oh No, a troll quick throw a baby at". great stuff
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In my first game my GM ruled that my character became evil for trying to save some babies from the party.
As first experiences go, it was rather lacking.
I'm quite happy that this bad GM didn't manage to drive you away from the game completely.
I sometimes wonder how many potential long-time TTRP-gamers have been driven away from staying with the game due to bad first experiences. :(
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I'm quite happy that this bad GM didn't manage to drive you away from the game completely.
I sometimes wonder how many potential long-time TTRP-gamers have been driven away from staying with the game due to bad first experiences. :(
Ha, I'm happy too! :)
But honestly, I wonder too. That's fairly light compared to some other bad first experiences folks have had, some not unlike the worst examples from this thread.
There can be some real creepers in the hobby. :(
Oh, man. :( I had some bad dudes as GM's, but luckily never someone like that.
In my first game my GM ruled that my character became evil for trying to save some babies from the party.Was there something special about these babies? Or were they just... babies that your party wanted to kill?Nope, just goblin babies.
It was an unpleasant surprise for someone raised on fantasy literature that didn't revolve around twisted murderhobo morality.
Didn't play with that group again, and didn't play the game at all until finding some folks that were closer to the same page on heroic fantasy expectations.
I guess because you saved evil babies you turned evil? Doesn't make much sense to me. Glad that didn't turn you off completely. I have yet to be lucky enough to find a group of people who are close to the same page when it comes to heroic fantasy expectations.
I don't really have any bad DM stories to share, which I guess I should be greatful for.
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When I was about 20 and had already left home, my father married again. The lady had a son my age that played D&D.
Anyway, the mother really disapproved of role-playing, but never did anything to stop us.
Years later, I asked her why she hated the game so much. I knew she was a committed Christian, and I'd assumed that this was the reason.
Turned out that this wasn't the reason. Her son, who was about 14 at the time, wanted his mum to play some D&D so that she could find out about it for herself. Excellent plan!
However, in part of the adventure her PC found some Orc babies. He asker her if she wanted to kill them. She, being a good person IRL, said no, of course not. But they'll grow up to be evil! Better to kill them now!
Long story short, she hates RPGs because they make you kill babies! Cheers, bro!
I explained to her that he, in his clumsy 14-year old way, was trying to set her a moral dilemma; if she'd said she wanted to kill them he'd have said that killing innocents is wrong, isn't it?
But, to a good person like her, the correct course of action was so obvious that there was no dilemma, and his efforts to create one just made the game seem like it encouraged or required infanticide.
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Lets see, the last game on saturday final encounter. 6 of us 14th level enter room. Floor is made of magma and has 2 huge magma elementals, on the other side sits a beholder inside a prismatic sphere. He promptly starts summoning sphere of annihilation(wish I had that spell). Luckily we had an invulnerable, superstitious, spell sundering barbarian who breaks the prismatic sphere and frees the SOA.
The beholder then summons a second SOA and attacks the 2 fighters forcing them to make fort saves DC30.After dropping the creatures and feeling good we find out that this whole adventure is inside of a giant beholder so there will be no teleportation, plane shift any quick escape due to strong antimagics..meanwhile the 2 spheres start moving toward one another.
It turns out that the beholder leader could summon up to 3 SOA's and the plan was to sit behind the prismatic sphere summon the 3 SOA's, drop the P sphere and send out 3 SOA's. I feel bad for these bastids going through this at the con.
Never had a GM do anything terrible to my characters. To my FRIENDS on the other hand... well that's a story for Off-Topic perhaps.
Not to mention the ridiculous house rule they use that if you want to speak while in combat, you are limited to 3 words. That's right, speaking in combat is limited to 3 words unless you want to use a standard action to speak. More bull crap.
Ah - the old Captain Kirk method of talking...in...combat! While I don;t like giant conversations to be going on during a fight where everyone gives a 5 minute speech about what they are doing and where they are going - a normal amount of speech in 6 seconds (say about 10-15 words i.e a couple of sentences worth) is perfectly acceptable.
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Not to mention the ridiculous house rule they use that if you want to speak while in combat, you are limited to 3 words. That's right, speaking in combat is limited to 3 words unless you want to use a standard action to speak. More bull crap.
That is a good rule. How many words do you want to be able to speak while trading blows, casting a spell or doing something strenous during combat? And entire monologue? Maybe an applause after the fact? Speech is a free action. It takes a very short time to do. A sentence tops.
Not to mention the ridiculous house rule they use that if you want to speak while in combat, you are limited to 3 words. That's right, speaking in combat is limited to 3 words unless you want to use a standard action to speak. More bull crap.That is a good rule. How many words do you want to be able to speak while trading blows, casting a spell or doing something strenous during combat? And entire monologue? Maybe an applause after the fact? Speech is a free action. It takes a very short time to do. A sentence tops.
I can talk very fast and speed-read in RL; I can say way more than one sentence in 6 seconds. I don't think there should be an actual word-limit, just something the DM should be able to reasonably facilitate on a case-by-case basis.
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Realistically speaking, everyone in combat talks at the same time.
If four combatants use their free action to talk, they usually talk TO EACH OTHER - meaning that, if everyone uses his full 6 seconds to talk, they all talk simultaneously while reacting to each other. Which can hurt the Space/Time-continuum.
So while I agree that 3 words is kinda arbitrary ("I kill you" vs. "Surrender immediatly, scoundrel!"), I do agree that the sentences should be short. Though it seems weird that using a Standard Action fixes that. I agree, however, that (e.g.) a Wizard who uses a spell with a verbal component shouldn't be able to use his full 6 seconds. Same for a Fighter who sprints in Full Plate.
I can talk very fast and speed-read in RL; I can say way more than one sentence in 6 seconds. I don't think there should be an actual word-limit, just something the DM should be able to reasonably facilitate on a case-by-case basis.Not to mention the ridiculous house rule they use that if you want to speak while in combat, you are limited to 3 words. That's right, speaking in combat is limited to 3 words unless you want to use a standard action to speak. More bull crap.That is a good rule. How many words do you want to be able to speak while trading blows, casting a spell or doing something strenous during combat? And entire monologue? Maybe an applause after the fact? Speech is a free action. It takes a very short time to do. A sentence tops.While I'd never argue for a three-word maximum, I don't think the ability to talk real fast is relevant to talking at a speed, volume, with sufficient enunciation, to be heard over the din of actual battle.
To get a better idea, I would need to get on a treadmill while someone swings a nerf bat at me, how much could I say that is clearly heard ten feet away? Now imagine shouting it to be heard over metal-on-metal collisions.
"I don't think the ability to talk real fast is relevant to talking at a speed, volume, with sufficient enunciation, to be heard over the din of actual battle."
Right, because when I seek to communicate, regardless of how fast I actually talk, I never think about enunciation and volume, right? I figured those were assumed.
The real question you should be asking, is how easily understood one can be, when talking fast. That can be very challenging. I can recite the Gettysburg Address in a few quick breaths, but if my group's INT 4 Barbarian misses most of what got said, it was all wasted.
My volume and enunciation are already assumed when I start talking; I'm not going to whisper to someone at a rock concert, for example. In the case of "the din of battle," I'll obviously try to speak at a volume loud enough for my compatriots to hear me, and as clearly as I can; why would I not consider that? That's like telling someone to make sure they open a door before they walk through a doorway.
"I don't think the ability to talk real fast is relevant to talking at a speed, volume, with sufficient enunciation, to be heard over the din of actual battle."Right, because when I seek to communicate, regardless of how fast I actually talk, I never think about enunciation and volume, right? I figured those were assumed.
The real question you should be asking, is how easily understood one can be, when talking fast. That can be very challenging. I can recite the Gettysburg Address in a few quick breaths, but if my group's INT 4 Barbarian misses most of what got said, it was all wasted.
My volume and enunciation are already assumed when I start talking; I'm not going to whisper to someone at a rock concert, for...
Speaking from direct experience as a stage actor, working in warehouses, and working inside construction zones with heavy industrial equipment running, how easily you're understood is the direct product of speaking clearly and precisely (also known as "eninciation"), with sufficient volume to be heard. A person's ability to do so is expressly impacted by the speed with which they attempt to speak.
I've dealt with callers for auctions and bingos. And I couldn't understand one word in ten. You understood the number (lot, price, bingo cell), but nothing they wrapped around those very few distinct words. No one else I talked to had a better clue unless they had years experience with that specific caller. And everyone lost what he was sayying if someone sneezed. Nevermind trying to follow what he might be saying if I were dodging a sword and his voice was muffled by a helmet's face guard.
Which is pretty much what I said. I work in a factory, and I moonlight in an industrial-metal band. There are times where, on stage, mid-song, I have to say something to one of my other members and make sure my message gets understood.
If you're going to try and tell me "the din of battle" is louder than playing decent sized venues at just under 100 decibel sound, I don't think we're having the same conversation.
Really, we're splitting hairs. Unless we're talking about instituting a Perception check to understand vocal messages mid-combat or something, we're just going to talk in circles.
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I remember when this thread was about bad things your GM has done to you instead of about how speaking works.
I remember when this thread was about bad things your GM has done to you instead of about how speaking works.
Well, the speaking thing was based on something someone's DM did to them regarding a 3 word max count for speaking in combat. So, it's a little bit related?
I once had a game that put us in a gladiator fight. This wasn't 1 or 2, or 3 or 4, it was a seven fight long gladiator fight, once a day, and every fight took the party at least a day if not three! No roleplay for three months with that group aside what we could force in while in combat and we apparently had to spend all our time not fighting in an anti-magic field prison thing. Finally we got to the seventh fight, against 2 krakens who were grossly above our CR(9th level party, only 2 people showed that day). I said I didn't like it and I wanted to get back to adventuring and I couldn't wait to finish. So we did half our fight, time ran out, stopped our session. However when I next met them they said they already played out the rest of that fight while they had free time at school, and that they volunteered for six more fights without me. Apparently only one guy got a vote. I quit after that session, after a six hour fight with a homebrewed Sliver monster that had regen and rolled to multiply when it died and gave every other Sliver buffs.
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Worst thing from one of my GMs ?
Saying nothing while another player threatened OOC that his character would rape and kill the character of a good friend of mine. And would do the same to any other character she created. I quit that gaming group after learning of this.
I can't even begin to express my outrage over this sort of thing happening, so I won't. The thread is too interesting to derail with my personal rants.
Considering I very rarely am a player, the worst thing a GM has ever had the opportunity to do to me was to give every monster that our party encountered +5 armor and +5 humanoid bane weapons that evaporated when they died. The party was level 1 and his reasoning was that "we were all powergaming anyway". Of the five member party, I was the only person who had played at all prior to that year, and everyone else built their characters for a roleplay heavy game. Needless to say, we started powergaming something terrible after that started.
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Worst things, eh? I got many:
1. All the characters are meeting at a conclave. When asked when I show up, I respond "Fashionably late. Approximately four hours" (my character is a bit of an antihero). I wait out in the hallway for THREE FREAKING HOURS real time for showing up four hours late.
2. Same character. I came in saying "my character hates elves." It was a personality trait. Didn't know that we had two elves at the table. Roleplayed the hell out of it, intense rivalries form, and eventually mutual respect is garnered between myself and one of the elven PCs as find ourselves needing the skills of the other. DM later takes me aside and reprimands me for being an antihero and playing against the party, AFTER the issue actually roleplays itself to finish.
3. Same game. We move along, plot advances. Suddenly, RANDOM MONSTER! IMPERVIOUS TO ALL SPELLS! IMMUNE TO ALL DAMAGE! NOONE CAN IDENTIFY IT! Guy in all black armor shows up from literally out of nowhere, says "shoot it in the eyes." I freak out, shoot the guy instead. DM tells me I wouldn't do that. *yeah, not playing a game where I need to be rescued by miracle NPCs*
4. Epic Level game a la lvl 25: be a B.A. celestial Paladin, holiest of holy. Have an awesome castle, filled with cohorts and followers. Every other feat spent on riding my awesome celestial Deinonychus; able to stand on his back at a full charge without issue. Get a message from my allies (other PCs). It's a long trip, leave mount at castle and fly to meet them. Chat. return home. Everyone is dead. EVERY. SINGLE. THING. Every follower. My cohort. My mount.
Well, ok. I have True Rez once a day. This is terrible, but I can fix this. EVERYONE IS TRAPPED THE SOUL. Everyone; followers, cohort, mount.
Oh look, a giant hell-pit in my front yard. Calling card from the guy that did this. Descend into pit. Guys like me (in terms of power) shackled helplessly to the wall. Small door at the bottum. Big bad devil guy behind the desk. DM makes it pretty obvious that I am a worthless speck (despite being above the standard cap of lvl 20).
"Ok. I commit suicide."
"You're character wouldn't do that!"
"MY CHARACTER IS A CHAMPION OF GOODLINESS AND PURITY, AND EVERYONE I KNOW AND LOVE IS DEAD, AND I AM ABSOLUTELY POWERLESS TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT! YOU GIVE ME A BETTER REASON TO KILL MYSELF! AND DON'T TELL ME THAT I CAN'T MAKE THE WILL SAVE TO DO SO, CAUSE I BREAK THAT DC 30 WITHOUT TRYING!"
I stopped playing with that group til after college. After high school, the really horrible things stopped happening, but the railroading and Super NPCs still persisted in anything that GM ran (car tires didn't pop, even if you unloaded on them, bad guys snuck across open fields in broad daylight, ect.) Other people have been DMing, and I have to say this; I like playing with the guy, but not for the guy.
This didn't happen to me, but it happened to a party mate. After a day of adventuring just before the end of the session he was told to roll his dice. He took a look at the guys sheet and said we all woke up to find his throat slit. He was dead. None of us were allowed to know how. Maybe some old enemy got to him or something. I start pointing out all the things I put up as defenses over night, like outsider watchdogs, spells, familiars, and apparently none of that did a thing he was dead and we weren't allowed to know how. So later in the day I bought the guy lunch and I managed to get him to tell us how he died. Apparently him and another player who we had previously booted from the group but still sat on sessions were passing notes, and he decided to be stupid evil and just kill our druid with a single stealth check, and nothing we could do mattered or could stop it. But we had to keep it a secret... Later on I'd polymorph that character into a possum after a really bad attempt on my characters life, which is a whole different story.
So yeah, a guy got killed by another character and all he got was a single fortitude save, nothing him or any of us could do.
College had one terrible GM experience that stood out to me. Shadowrun.
Never played it before, explained the system, how it works, roll up a character, play the game.
Noone told me "oh, if your character can't act three times in a round you are more or less worthless." So I got to sit there and watch as the DM's baddies fight another PC, acting once every fifteen minutes or so....
We played a game, must have been 2nd Edition (could have been 1st). The dungeon had all kinds of monsters but no treasure. We got down to the last level and we faced a Tarrasque. I don't know about now, but in those days, that was the monster to be feared. It was almost unbeatable. We fought for a long time and finally we pulled out a wish spell. The wish has changed over the years too. From what I have read in Pathfinder, it is much weaker. We ended up doing our best lawyer-speak to wish this monster away.
Mind you, we did not know anything about the properties of the Tarrasque of that time. Only after that fight was over did the DM tell us that ALL the treasure in dungeon came from the monster that we just wished away.
Everyone wanted to strangle that guy's neck.
Not sure if that was the GM's fault or ours, but then it wasn't the player's requirement to read the Monster Manual.
4. Epic Level game a la lvl 25: be a B.A. celestial Paladin, holiest of holy. Have an awesome castle, filled with cohorts and followers. Every other feat spent on riding my awesome celestial Deinonychus; able to stand on his back at a full charge without issue. Get a message from my allies (other PCs). It's a long trip, leave mount at castle and fly to meet them. Chat. return home. Everyone is dead. EVERY. SINGLE. THING. Every follower. My cohort. My mount.
Well, ok. I have True Rez once a day. This is terrible, but I can fix this. EVERYONE IS TRAPPED THE SOUL. Everyone; followers, cohort, mount.
Oh look, a giant hell-pit in my front yard. Calling card from the guy that did this. Descend into pit. Guys like me (in terms of power) shackled helplessly to the wall. Small door at the bottum. Big bad devil guy behind the desk. DM makes...
I don't "like" that this happened to you, but holy crap, I found it intensely interesting. I could totally see a powerful paladin say something similar(minus game mechanics references). Everyone has a breaking point, and it's down right terrifying thinking about seeing an epic-level Paladin "snap."
Or goes AP and kicks the guy's ass.
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Oh I actually do have one, sort of. It was something another GM did to my game that he wasn't playing in.
Backstory: This guy, Bill, was the penultimate arrogant GM. At the start of the school year, he shows up to the club (doesn't even go to our school, he just works with someone who does) talking about how he's a super experienced veteran, has EVERY book, and has GMd at cons where he gets paid to run games with a bazillion players. All the new members flocked to his table to be in his game, while I got maybe 2 flakes. I resigned myself to not being able to run that semester and decided I'd play in his game too. After the second week, only 6 people stayed with the game, and we had fun for awhile.
I, and about half of the other players, left the game later on because his personality was becoming increasingly unbearable. One of my friends, John, stayed in Bill's game.
The Thing He Did: So during a school break, I decided to run a one-shot over G+ with a few friends, John included. John wanted to play a sorcerer, which I had my reservations about (the specific set up I was using would be harder on full casters) but let him go with it. Since it was his first caster, he had Bill help him make the character. I didn't like Bill but whatever.
Now, when John finished is character and sent me the sheet... Bill had used his own house rules for building John's character in my game. He had too many spells per day and feats he neither qualified for (Bloodline Strike) nor could use in the way he wanted to by RAW (with arrows).
The spells per day was the important thing, so I brought that up to John and he said that's what Bill said was right, and he was "more inclined to believe Bill" because of how "experienced he was" (compared to my only GMing for a year), and after John talked to Bill again, he put Bill on the phone with me, saying "Neither of us were wrong and Bill should explain it." I had no desire to every speak to Bill again after I left the game, so this made me more upset.
Bill spouted on about some popular house rules for one-shot that give casters more spells per day, and though I was right when I told John he would only get 2 extra 1st and 2nd level spells from having a CHA score between 21-22, the range was actually 22-23, and..."
I cut him off and told him, while that's all fine and good, at MY table I have never seen casters have an issue in one-shots, so at MY table I am not going to implement that rule, and any rule changes that might go into character creation should be cleared with the ACTUAL GM for the game first and not just be done.
yadda yadda yadda now Bill lives in the Philippines and I don't have to see him walking around my city again.
What a tool.
Dying moment of AwesomeThat. IS. A Badass way to go.
This CE Gnoll salutes you.
Way to stand for your principles!
How about this:
Deadlands- Hell on Earth campaign,which has been running for maybe 20 sessions or so. We had acquired quite a lot of food, water, extra weapons and ammo - all of which were stored in the armored truck we were lucky enough to find. We're helping defend a small town against the raiders who were the focus Bad Guys of the story, when out of nowhere a small plane crashes directly into the truck, destroying everything except what we were carrying at the time.
I looked at the GM and said, "If you didn't want us to have that stuff, why give it to us in the first place?"
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Introduced me to RPGs. Now I'm poor.
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I haven't had the chance to play too much PFS or pathfinder in general. I have acess to D&D 4E though, only once a week.
Now,mind you, I am fifteen, and one of my issues is change, and I dislike crowds and noise. So, I walk in, holding my papers and find the table we normally use has been stuffed full of warhammer 40K stuff, the only other table is in the center of the store, a one room building. Mind you, this was only my third session with them, and I was barely warming up to them. I was jittery and paranoid when the game started, as I was talking more than normal, my hands never stayed still and I kept getting up and pacing, things I always do when I am stuck in a crowded area. So, as we are playing, I keep talking from the top of my head, they gave me no indication that I was doing anything wrong or irritating anyone in the slightest. Then, after borrowing the DMs mechanical pencil, I go to write something down, (middle of combat, I charged into combat as a bard, ignoring the teams combat plans, something I never do.) and the pencil apperantly stops working mid number, I ask dave if its out of lead or something, he takes it and starts disassembling it, isaac walks over to check something, and dave asks "how the heck is the lead broken in the middle?" Me being me, I make a remark, my heads still down, I am clearing focused on writing something, and dave jumps up and starts ranting at me. I just sat there confused and nervous as normal, after the game, he pulled me aside and we both apologized, me more so, because thats how I am.