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I know everyone likes to tell stories of their gaming experiences. Here's an opportunity to tell us about the most awful things that ever happened at your table, both in-game and out of game.
Feel free to retell a tale you've already told in another thread. I'll start.
In-game: It's difficult to come up with a worst in-game option; our group doesn't usually experience anything that dismal. We did have a character who was totally consumed by scarab beetles one session, likely because the GM didn't like the character class the player had chosen (even though he approved it).
We also had a player's character spend several months of real-life time (during a weekly game) in a coma, because no one in the group could figure out the GM's hints for how to revive him. It turned out that my character could have awakened him by casting a specific spell on him. #facepalm
Out-of-game: We had a player who drove a couple of hours from another town to play for years. Eventually he moved even farther away, but continued to come to sessions whenever he could. After a few more years we started seeing him less often and assumed his non-gaming life had taken over. We were playing that campaign less often too, so it seemed like it was just life separating us. But after a couple of years of no contact from the player, the GM of that campaign made a horrible discovery: he found out that our old friend hadn't just fallen out of touch - he'd been murdered.
We keep his mini in a little shrine in the gaming room.
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Out-of-Game: I once had a player literally stand up, shout at the top of his lungs like a giant toddler, and rip up his character sheet. What caused this, well In Game, he failed an SR roll against a death knight, that was all. Threw his sheet like confetti and never returned.
In-game: I as the DM decided not to pull punches on the random encounter chart with a 1st lvl party of vet players. the result was a CR4 3.5 Dusk Giant attacking them. It should have been manageable, except I also implemented the armor as DR rule which made the thing unhurtable. The party was destroyed and no one returned for a reboot session.
Out of Game: two of my players had a crush on another player of mine and she decided to play them against each other in ways that was obvious to anyone but those involved. This lead to a big fight between the players that, accompanied by another two players punching each other in the face for entirely different reasons, lead to the group being disbanded (note to self, bad group chemistry should be addressed MUCH earlier).
In game: A long time and well liked player brought a friend one night. We were constantly having new people drop in for a game or two, and this wasn't unusual. The premise of the game was designed to get new players involved (people made characters based on themselves).
Helped him make a character, and started. He starts asking about buying things, and proceeds to have his character mix up drugged candy with which to rob people, and pipe bombs that he decides to place randomly around the city. All while playing as himself, mind you.
The rest of the players were getting increasingly frustrated with his actions, and asking him to stop failed, they tried to stop him more directly, at which point he decided to bomb them. The only reason he wasn't immediately shown the door was that he got a ride from the good player.
Out of game: A clash of personalities during a Dark Ages game. One player had decided that her character was a queen of a country that I don't think even existed yet, and another player was playing his usual troublemaker. So, eventually the troublemaker decided to make some trouble, and eventually fired an arrow at the "queen"'s carriage.
The queen flipped out, plotting all manner of punishments and torments to inflict upon the troublemaker, whom she had managed to incapacitate. The troublemaker escalated it out of game, shouting and throwing a fit, which elicited a similar response from the queen.
Eventually the troublemaker did the ever classic "tear up sheet and storm off". Nobody really had much to say after all the tension.
In-game - too many that is hard to pick a "worst thing." Most were just minor things.
Out of Game - During a 3rd edition game, I was using a homebrew alternative where instead of your character level equaling your caster level, you had variable levels in different schools of magic. So for example you might be a level 5 character, cast Abjuration spells at level 3, Conjuration at level 7, etc.
As the DM, I was trying to assist all of the players at the same time, when one of the players wanted to roll his spell levels. I asked one of the other players that was finished to serve as the witness for those rolls.
The player that rolled was so psyched that he had gotten enough levels to cast his favorite spell that he had been researching for a while. However, when I touched base with him, I realized that he and the player watching him had done it wrong, so he had to roll again to take some levels off (as he had inadvertently given himself too many levels.)
He rolled the school that he needed three times in a row, making it where he couldn't even cast the spell he wanted. When I explained it to him, he got incredibly furious, shouted at me at the top of his lungs, and ragequit.
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Out of Game - We had a good group back in college, six of us with two of them taking turns at DM'ing. Our primary DM was married to one of the players (which never created problems thankfully). One of the players befriended another girl and invited her into the group. These two had a physical relationship off and on for a while.
Well... one night the married GM, his wife, and the other gal player all get hammered and the GM ends up sleeping with the other gal... who ended up getting pregnant with, what she thinks was, his kid. The rest of the group found out about it, and apparently some crazy plan was hatched to keep the GM and his wife together, so the pregnancy was heaped upon the other male player she'd been sleeping with... He denied the kid was his... and everything pretty much fragmented from there.
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I got into a fight inside of a friend's garage, retooled to a gaming den. I was the GM and one of the players was doing lines of coke (unbeknownst to the rest of us) every few hours. He made some stupid choices and got his character killed. He jumps up and screams at me and takes a swing. I proceed to beat him till he stopped fighting back. Then we toss him out.
Fast forward two hours and he comes back with some of his junkie buddies. So we had to beat four of them to a near pulp to dissuade them from coming back again.
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Wow, Hama, gotta say that one is impressive, you had a Real Life random encounter and handled it quite well. I'm also sorry to hear about your fried Grey, it's difficult when a good friend has such a bad family and I wish you and your friends all the best.
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I've been playing with most of my guys for nearly 30 years (and more in some cases) and we've NEVER had anything remotely resembling the real life things mentioned in this thread.
Literally just a roll, failed to pierce SR with a fireball, flew into giant-toddler rage, ripped up character sheet (we had been playing for two years, such a waste), stormed out.
Never seen anyone do that before or since, I play pretty serious games, but not THAT serious, geez.
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It used to be the rage quitting happened once in a blue moon. Now it seems both men and women can't handle the stress of something not going their way. Even something in a rpg.
In game a player who wanted to play a Drow in a Forgotten Realms campaign. Expected to be treated like Drizzt at first level. No fear or hate because he was Drow. Eventually the player accused the DM of being racist. right just because your black means that the racism a Drow receives is the same thing (rolls eyes).
Had the displeasure of playing with a male chauvinist pig. As a guy I never experienced that kind of BS out or in a rpg setting. Thankfully once was enough. The player besides being a attention seeker at the table treated the female npcs badly. The DM was having none of it. Eventually he sent us to a castle where we were supposed to hunt and defeat a vampire.
After a few encounters we come across maid cleaning up. The player says something really rude and disgusting which I can't print here. Essentially telling him she is not helping him. The player gets angry and in character removes his gauntlet to slap the maid across the face. He does and takes two negative levels. Player getting angry hits her again another two negative levels. Getting very angry does it a third time another two negative levels/ He went from seventh to first level in three hits. You guessed it the "maid" was the vampire. At that point the player rage quits and was never seen again. Last I heard many years ago he was beaten up pretty badly at another game for making the Dm girlfriend cry.
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Outside
Was with three ex-friends
One was someone I had know since college. Who apparently had no respect for me as a person and a dM. Never said it to me face. Yet decided to tell a very close friend how he felt about me one day. My friend was explaining to me that he kept saying "why are you telling me this". Yet it kept going over his head. My friend who really never liked the other guy told me. You come to my house, laugh at my jokes, partake of my food, say you like my game. Yet talk absolute thrash and show no respect behind my back. So I gave him the similar treatment. I never called him back. Ignored any of his calls. Not that he called back but id he did I was not answering. Total lack of respect from someone I thought was a friend
Another were a duo of brothers. Who because of real life being too hard to handle. Decided to retreat into the world of mmos. If they could not show to a game. Would wait to the last minute to let the rest of the group know. Refused to do game notes. The other brother really showed up to sleep or play on his IPad. Anytime you tried to bring up their behavior in and out of the game they became super passive aggressive. Eventually when one of the brothers swore up and down he would show. Decided not to show up and did not even bother to call. Enough was enough and we as a group decided not to call them anymore.
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Literally just a roll, failed to pierce SR with a fireball, flew into giant-toddler rage, ripped up character sheet (we had been playing for two years, such a waste), stormed out.
Never seen anyone do that before or since, I play pretty serious games, but not THAT serious, geez.
Did you make sure to tell him that Graveknights are immune to fire anyway?
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By far the worst thing that happened at my gaming table was back in 1991, when I was a senior in college.
It was the start of my senior year. It was evening, and the members of my gaming group that hadn't yet graduated were in my apartment just getting ready to start up our AD&D campaingn. My phone rang. It was a former member of our gaming group who had graduated two years earlier and gone on to grad school at UC-Berkeley. She was really, really upset.
Two of our other former players (a married couple) had just graduated over the summer, and had themselves been accepted to grad school at UC-Berkeley. They had been planning to move in with the friend who'd called, and we knew that they had been driving cross-country to save money on moving expenses.
Through her sobs, our friend on the phone said that both of our friends had been shot and killed at a rest stop in Yuma Arizona in what seemed to have been a robbery gone bad. The police had called her because her name, address, phone number, and a map to her house were taped to the dashboard of their car.
It turned out that the assailants got $38 in cash and two credit cards. They spent the cash on beer and shots at a local bar. They were apprehended the next day when they attempted to use one of the stolen credit cards at a Wal-Mart: the cashier noticed that the signatures didn't match, and called security.
So, the worst gaming experience of my life was learning that two of my best friends from college were murdered for $19 each.
I would have if anyone had bothered to do a good old Knowledge (religion) skill check, they did not.
Haladir, that is absolutely awful, makes you wonder sometimes. $19 friggin dollars.
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In game: a player deciding to take his disagreement with my (as the GM) judgement call to the paizo forum during the session and then shoved his phone in my face about two thirds of the way through the session about how the boards are raging over my call. Later on, I had realized I made the wrong call but will never allow the player at a table I gm at again, society play or otherwise.
Out of Game: too many issues with things on roll20. Not the site itself but some of the players and GMs.
Rolemaster.
We get to the big bad. My character attacks, rolls open ended, twice, open table (Rollmaster had a "roll high enough and add" roll - and damage was based on how well you rolled). Crited (Crit Chart). Rolled instant death for the bad guy. Sort of anticlimactic story-wise, but all the players loved the huge open ended roll.
Next session GM said he would make all rolls behind his screen, including all player attack and skill rolls.
I handed him my character and said if he wanted to play my character he needed it and walked out.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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I played a Fighter/Wizard/Eldritch Knight from level 2 to level almost-14 in PFS. The idea had been to play a melee type that used magic to broaden his options both in and out of combat (I did not yet own UM so I couldn't play a magus). Unfortunately, I started feeling the pain of my half BAB by around 4th level, and the build doesn't really catch up to even the baseline accuracy of most 3/4 BAB classes until around the level where I'd be retiring the character. He became less and less fun to play as I leveled up, as the gap between his abilities and the abilities of his parent classes (or even of a 3/4 BAB hybrid class) continued to widen. I probably would have abandoned him, except I wanted to finally complete the PFS retirement arc and he was my highest-level PC. I was glad when I was finally done with him.
But that's not my story; it's the background for my story.
After having retired my EK, there later came up a discussion on the PFS forums about the power level of CRB Prestige Classes and whether they were underpowered or not. I cited my experience with nearly 12 levels of gameplay with my EK, and explained how I was often frustrated by my experiences. Then my local Venture Captain (whom I won't name, and if you already know who my VC is, you probably already know this story anyway so it doesn't matter) chimed in with "Don't let Jiggy fool you" and said he knew first-hand just how dominatingly powerful my character was. How did he know how my character really performed? Because he'd seen him in action, a whole six times. Nevermind the thirty-some-odd times I actually played the character myself, he saw the character second-hand a whole six times, so clearly he knew. When told it was pretty uncool to claim that I was wrong about what my experience had been, his reply was "I'm not saying you're wrong about what your experience was, I'm just saying that what happened is ."
He's still the VC for my area. I'm no longer a PFS player. :/
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I have another good out of game one. Anyway, we accepted a girl into our regular group, and she seemed really enthusiastic, almost too enthusiastic. She wrote a 10 page character backstory, and we spent hours chatting about it and tweaking it. In the interim, we hooked up, because she was quite intriguing and very pretty. So we start the game and the first several sessions are fine, she seems ok, she doesn't expect special treatment because she's the GM's girlfriend. Then, after a stupid mistake, her character gets killed. She goes nuts, starts freaking out all over the place, crying, yelling, the works. We try to calm her down, the party shells out for a resurrection, she apologizes, and the game goes on. But things start going downhill from there. She starts missing sessions on account of "not being well", is very irritable in and out of game, complains about that death all the time, makes even dumber decisions, her behavior at the table slowly becomes unbearable. Of course, our relationship suffers too, we rarely see each other and we almost always end up fighting.
In the end, she explodes on one session when the party decides to give one magic item to a character different than hers and ragequits. I meet with her later and we get into a horrible fight, and break up.
And then, the stalking begins. Because she was pretty familiar with my routines, she is everywhere. Wherever I go, she is there, never talking to me, and actually leaving if I approach her. Several times she was standing in front of my building all night looking at my window. So I go to her parents, and find out that she has several disorders which she keeps quiet and after I tell them what she did, they take her back to a mental health institution that she was in and out of for most of her life.
I also find out it's kind of a pattern with her too. She gets released, finds a group, hooks up with the GM or one of the players, and after a few months her condition begins to deteriorate.
Fun.
Wow, not one, but two murder stories - s!#& you guys don't play fair. Not only that, but the married GM getting one of his female players pregnant? O.O wow.
My group had a dysfunctional player who grew worse over time. This woman apparently had been ruthlessly bullied by her own family and all through high school so in her 20's was just an emotional mess. She was obsessed with the fact that everyone she ever met would turn against her, and was hyper vigilant and oversensitive to any of this ever happening again. Unfortunately,
Of course - I find this out after dealing with her s@@% for years.
The first I saw of it was when we played a CHAMPIONS super hero game after the first X-men movie. The GM wanted us to make super powered versions of ourselves. Fine. We all had various powers. During the second session my friend decided that if he had powers, he would become evil. He started passing notes back and forth with the GM, and roleplaying in game his descent into darkness. It was fairly obvious what was happening, but it was being done well so I, and almost everyone else didn't mind.
At a critical moment fighting a bad guy, my friend switches sides to join the bad guy.
This player - at this point 32, shouts how this is is just awful, and goes and cries under a desk in another room in the house for HOURS. Refused to come out until people went home.
FYI - It wasn't her house.
She pulled other kinds of various s&$# over the years, but man that one really took the cake.
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Hey! Leave my mom out of this!
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A number of years ago new player joined our group, after playing with a different group that shared a GM with us. Then the new player hooked up with one of our regular players, and they eventually got married. After 5 years of marriage, they realized they weren't really suited to each other and amicably divorced. The spouse moved out of town and is still friendly with the rest of the players, so it's not an awful situation.
But it did mean that one of our campaigns was brought to an untimely end, as the other partner in that relationship was the GM of this particular campaign. The GM didn't want to continue the campaign after the divorce. It was sad, as we'd developed an interesting group of PCs and we had a shared backstory that was leading us toward the resolution of a huge mystery. We'll never know what the GM was planning, as the GM refuses to divulge the secret.
Wow, some interesting stories here, mine will seem rather tame.
Anyway, back in the early 90s we are all gathered at a friend's house to play MERP, I'm DM. We start around. 6 or so there's about five of us crammed onto my friends very small kitchen. It's all good, having fun, crit charts ftw.
Then my friend gets a call about 900 pm. It's "John" and he wants to come over. John can't find anyone at the bars to hang out with and wants to come hang out with us for a while. No big deal, John's a gamer like the rest of us and one of our good friends. As the call ended my friend who took the call said I think he's been drinking. None of us give it a second thought.
Then John shows up. Not only had he been drinking but he was Drunk with a capital D. John crams in with us and proceeds to pull out a concealed, loaded 9mm pistol and is kind of waiving it around with a s%=) eating grin on his face.
Now we all knew John wouldnt hurt anyone, he was just being an a$$. But combine his actions with being drunk and you can see our concern. We talk John down, the gun is put safely in a drawer. John proceeds to the couch and passes out.
John has calmed down over the years and we are still somewhat in contact. He has no memory of the event besides what we told him happened.
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I once slept with my DM so my in game character could have a free Ring of Elemental Control Fire.
Which I never really thought of as being the WORST thing to happen... But I don't have any other stories that really compare with what has been posting.
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I once slept with my DM so my in game character could have a free Ring of Elemental Control Fire.
Which I never really thought of as being the WORST thing to happen... But I don't have any other stories that really compare with what has been posting.
Did you enjoy it at least? Also, that's a good thing. Trust me nobody enjoys bad stuff.
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Now that I remember, we actually had a table flip. An actual table flip, yes. It happened in that friend's garage (it must be cursed). His brother came to visit from another city and wanted to play. So I gave him one of the pregenerated characters that I usually have around to play for that session. Man did the dice NOT favor him that night whatsoever. He failed almost everything he tried to do. He spent half of the session in negatives constantly being revived and dragged around comatose. So near the end of the session when he failed some minor roll, he flipped out and flipped the table, stalking out of the garage.
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Did you enjoy it at least? Also, that's a good thing. Trust me nobody enjoys bad stuff.I once slept with my DM so my in game character could have a free Ring of Elemental Control Fire.
Which I never really thought of as being the WORST thing to happen... But I don't have any other stories that really compare with what has been posting.
Oh yeah... We had slept together before. I do not recall if we slept together after this though. I moved away not long after my ring was collected. I don't think anything ever came of this transaction either.
But yeah... the sex was satisfactory (on my end) and obviously good enough to net me a profit :)
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Oh... No... I was the instigator in this instance. I was making a pyrokineticist and the item REALLY was on theme for my character... but we were like level 7 or 8... So there wasn't ANY way I could have afforded it without a little ASSistance.
I also once sent my GM (a different GM) topless pictures of Angelina Jolie (which... like I got from the internet... so idk why this worked) in order to get a level bump. Better than a Deck of Many Things by FAR!
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I LARPed Vampire the Masquerade and other WoD games for a good 10 years (starting when I was 14) with what was officially the University RPG Club. So there's a whole boatload of interpersonal drama I could go into there, if I liked, but to be honest, it was mostly pretty petty and unimportant. And almost universally didn't involve me directly.
The biggest thing there was, we had two games, run separately by the two members of a couple. He cheated on her, they broke up, and it became increasingly clear they were both terrible people.
And that she specifically was an awful GM when her boyfriend wasn't a player...the only way anyone ever achieved anything was by joining the enemy, who were all hypercompetent and always knew everything we did before we did it. We were just doomed to lose. I eventually left after she assassinated my character for petty OOC reasons.
He was a much better GM, but an even worse person, and last I heard had left town in the company of the 19 year old player he'd seduced as part of the cheating/breakup (he was nearing 30 and mostly knew her from GMing for her...a position of some authority in a LARP, and he was one of the most manipulative people I've ever met...it was kinda creepy).
But none of that is the worst thing I've actually seen gaming. The worst thing I saw gaming was a guy threatening another player with a knife. We were all in High School for this one, and we were in a gaming store discussing character creation/what kind of game we were gonna do, and one regular brought a new friend of his. There was an argument about GM authority and how far it extends, typical philosophical differences in gaming stuff, between the new guy and a different established player (a very chill guy)...and the new guy pulled a knife, hidden by his body from the clerk, and threatened my friend. I must admit I didn't do anything, since he just verbally threatened and held the knife...I was in shock a little. The friend in question calmly said he wouldn't sit here and be threatened and left, which defused the situation.
Needless to say, the guy who brought him got a talking to, and we never gamed with (or saw) him again.
I have some other awful stories involving people I've gamed with but not been close to doing bad s#@+ (one guy I gamed with casually while we were both in Boy Scouts murdered his grandmother and is currently in prison...another guy I played in one game with apparently raped a friend of mine, though I hadn't seen that guy in years when I found out about that). But those don't really involve gaming directly as they happened years after I was no longer even associated with those people.
Damn. That wound up longer and more messed up than I thought it would. This s%@# is why I only game with close friends and friends of theirs these days.
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I once gave out a headband of intellect to a player who brought me sushi. That's the worst I have.
Wow..some of these stories are pretty intense,
Worst I can think of:
IN game- Numerous, but the one that comes to mind is early on in Skulls and Shackles one PC (or rather the player) had decided that he wanted to be the antagonist of the story and proceeded to assault the other PCs whenever possible and due to the way the story was going he made a pretty successful run at almost killing 3/4 of the party several times only to be stopped at the last minutes by the intervention of others. Oddly enough it was the same character who ended up sacrificing himself to allow the rest of the party to escape after an encounter went bad later on.
OUT of game- This one was weird. We were playing CJ Carella's WitchCraft with a rotating group. Four core people, myself included and a couple of others who would show up once then never come back. One such couple (a random guy the GM knew from college and his GF) entered the game as, and I quote , "Self proclaimed Jedi" and his High Bast lover/minder. While it started out weird but okay, eventually the two just started bickering about what to do next, ended up fighting each others characters in game, killing one of them off(the Jedi). That's how that night ended, the next session he showed up and she didn't, he didn't speak more than a dozen words then left early. Never came back. Later we found out his girlfriend had left him that night, to be with another guy about 15 years older and moved out to Utah without notice. The creepy part was that right before she left she declared that she was a vampire (in real life not in character) and was going to be with a member of her own kind. This story was verified independently of him so I have no reason to believe he was making it up.
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Out of Game - During a 3rd edition game, I was using a homebrew alternative where instead of your character level equaling your caster level, you had variable levels in different schools of magic. So for example you might be a level 5 character, cast Abjuration spells at level 3, Conjuration at level 7, etc.
Wait a second - this is a cool idea!
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Later we found out his girlfriend had left him that night, to be with another guy about 15 years older and moved out to Utah without notice. The creepy part was that right before she left she declared that she was a vampire (in real life not in character) and was going to be with a member of her own kind. This story was verified independently of him so I have no reason to believe he was making it up.
"Vampires of Utah"...the sitcom writes itself.
Worst in game: at the end of the penultimate book of a otherwise successful adventure path one player decided to maze the rest of the party and teleport the antagonist away. Thus deprived the other players of the satisfaction of the conclusion and the player didn't follow the rules for maze either. No one was very happy.
Worst out of game: we have a fairly placid group but one player properly threw their toys out of the prom regarding guns and the gunslinger class to the point that no one in our group can play a gunslinger again.
threw?
Thank you grammar nazis!!!
Lol ; ) edited!
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"First Mr. Potato Head got caught spiking the punch..."
"...then a couple of action figures showed up carrying projectile-launchers..."
"...and then Barbie and Ken were both hauled off for severe dress code violations."
"As if they had anything to expose!"
"D'OH-HOHOHOHOHOHOOOO!"
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All I can say to this thread is:
Holy s%$~.
In game, there's a lot but one stands out.
A PC faked the death of an NPC that was the occasional lover of my character. When my character found out about it in game, she realized that she couldn't travel with somebody who would do that and left. It was a Star Wars game and my character had been the hard-bitten mercenary who was given force powers at an ancient Jedi temple. She was going through a life change and wandered off to walk the world for a while.
OOC, for one PBP on another site, the GM simply disappeared and never came back. It was a fun game, but none of us knew her info IRL, so we sort of shrugged. Three years later, she comes back with a different handle. Apparently she had been in a major car accident and had a traumatic brain injury. She didn't remember our game at all, and in fact she came back as a different person in essence. On one hand I'm glad she survived, but I do miss the person she had been.
Thank you grammar nazis!!!
Lol ; ) edited!
That's not grammar, that's usage. :D
And is it common to throw one's toys out of a prom? Is that a real expression?
