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Tanuki Tales
2014-07-30, 04:06 PM
The title pretty much sums up the point of this thread: I give unto thee, oh Playgrounders, a repository for your tales of misery and woe concerning the worst gaming experiences of your lives. Be it that you were a player, a GM/DM/Storyteller/Narrator/etc or just an observer of the festivities, what was/were the most uncomfortable/terrible/head banging/soul killing campaigns that you found yourselves unfortunately party to, even for a brief length of time*?


I'd love to kick us off, but even when laboring under the yoke of the worst DM I dealt with (during high school and the guy took out his relationship impotency issues on the group), the game was salvageable because everyone else was pretty much awesome. So anything that could have turned my experience into one of the stories to follow was quashed under camaraderie amongst my fellow players.


* My pity and heart go to those who either couldn't escape or were so sucked into the terribleness of their game that, like the troopers they are, they had to see it to the bitter end.

nedz
2014-07-30, 04:14 PM
We had a session break up because of a fist fight once, triggered by some pointless PvP, but we were about 12.

Otherwise:
Having all of my setting notes stolen from a friends car just before a 3 day session. The game went on, though we did lose 1 day.

Yora
2014-07-30, 04:38 PM
I was gone one session in the Pathfinder group I was a player in, and that day the GM decided that the party would go to the Tomb of Horrors. Everone died of course, but the GM reset everything and they tried again. The next game I was back with the group and when play resumed in one of the rooms near the entrance, everyone decided that they really don't want to be in that place at all and the smartest thing would be to just leave. Screw your dungeon. we're going home...

I don't remembe quite why, but the result was that everyone wanted to make new 1st level characters. The big upcoming storyline the GM had promised for 8 levels never materialized. I don't know to this day what the whole point was of the king sending us into the wastelands beyond the border to look for monster strongholds.
The GM was the only actual case I've ever known of someone being GM purely because he enjoys laughing at the players when they ran into bad things they couldnt have possibly avoided. Though two of my good friends where in the group and two of the other three players were allright, I took that opportunity to not make a character for the new campaign.

screw you guys I'm going home...

Arbane
2014-07-30, 05:45 PM
I'm happy to say none of my Bad Gaming Stories even come close to some of these. However, I am required by law to post a link to Trekkin's epic (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?275152-What-am-I-supposed-to-do) tale of GM idiocy, player stubbornness, terrible fanfic, and katana-based electrochemistry.

Also, AB3's BINDER OF SHAME (http://albruno3.blogspot.com/p/the-binder-of-shame-rpg-rants-and-other.html): some truly awe-inspiringly terrible game stories that I choose to believe are grossly exaggerated for comic effect, as the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Pex
2014-07-30, 08:13 PM
It was a 3.0 game. The game with 1d4 + 1 ability score buffs that last 1 hour per level. The spellcasters chose the stereotypical route of buffing everyone with those spells. They liked it. They wanted it. I joined the group as a rogue archer. There was a wizard, sorcerer, cleric, cleric/war priest, and another rogue. The wizard and the clerics did the buffing. There were two fighter NPCs with the party. I think they were officially Cohorts, but I don't know for certain. My character also had followers without Leadership as part of campaign story.

Every game day was the same. The spellcasters buffed themselves, they buffed each other, they buffed the fighters, they buffed the sorcerer, they buffed the rogue. Some of them empowered. "What do you need? What do you want? Do you have Bull Strength already?" etc. By my third session I felt the tiniest bit annoyed they never buffed me. Didn't even ask if I wanted anything.

One game session I asked, "May I have a Cat's Grace?"
"You'll have to wait. We need to buff everyone else first."
Other rogue gets a Cat's Grace.
When they were done I asked, "May I have a Cat's Grace?"
"Sorry, we're out of spells."
Next game day, same session, I remained quiet. No buffs for me, again.

Next game session after everyone buffs before the game starts, I made sure they were done, I asked, "May I have a Cat's Grace?"
"No, don't be greedy."

During the week I email the DM about the situation. He agrees it's a problem, but it's really up to the players.

Next game session we engage in an adventure far from civilization. All of the bad guys are undead that explode when destroyed. They all have magic DR. I have no magic arrows. Session ends. During the week I post on our message board: "It would be a good idea for the cleric to cast Greater Magic Weapon on my arrows. I can then help destroy the undead from afar and no one needs to get hurt when they explode."
"How dare you DEMAND a spell! Who do you think you are telling us how to play our characters? Go buy your own damn +1 arrows!"

Next game session everyone buffs again. "Fine, here's your Greater Magic Weapon." "Next time buy your own arrows."

That was my last session.

Segev
2014-07-30, 08:19 PM
Did you ever ask them WHY they were refusing to buff your character, alone of the others? I'm wondering if they were truly that clueless, or if they were aware of the oddity of their behavior. And, if the latter, what caused it.

Silus
2014-07-31, 01:04 AM
Oooooh boy, here we go.


So it was, like, my first campaign ever as a player. I was playing a Half-Machine Human Ranger, level 6. The rest of the party consisted of a Dwarven Fighter, a Ghost Adept (The DM didn't allow "proper" magic classes), a (I kid you not) Prinny...something, and...some kind of rogue.

So I'll spare you the long winded story, but here's the gist of it.

1) The Prinny, a homebrew race made by the DM, COULD. NOT. DIE. It was a racial feature. The Prinny literally could not die, only be beaten unconscious.
2) The DM had a thing about caster classes, allowing the PCs to only run Adepts while not keeping the same restrictions for the NPCs.
3) While a semi-serious game at first, things started to go down hill when, I kid you not, the DM brought in Captain Hook and Tinkerbell.
4) Apparently an Elf Psion Rogue can see +180ft into inky blackness and shoot down a flying ship with expert precision.
5) Having the lvl 20 Psion/Rogue DMPC attack the party and mop the floor with us (Keep in mind, low magic, low wealth, low optimization game and the DM apparently knew Psions and rogues backwards and forwards)
6) Giving us a "fighting chance" by getting "Help" from Pazuzu in the form of a Spelljammer ship my character could pilot. Then later screwing us over by saying "On the ship you got onto wasn't the one you could pilot, that one was further down.

I literally wanted to strangle the life from this guy. He ended up being that one guy in the group that nobody really liked, but we kept around because we needed the numbers and didn't want to bother looking for another player.

This one I actually brought to the forums here for help on.

Ok, so Palladium game, first time playing, I'd not been informed on how combat works (How SDC and HP are two different things for example and how poison bypasses SDC).

So right out the gate, my character goes off hunting and encounters this two-legged scorpion thing. The DM hands control of the monster over to another player so he could deal with something. The monster attacks my character, hits her, and hits her with poison. Bam, 12 of my 25 HP shaved off right there. Well I liked this character, so I say "Screw this I'm outta here". So I turn to run. Turns out this thing is about as fast as I am. The DM gives me a 1/100 chance that a deity will save my butt. Amazingly I make that and I escape, but now owe a favor (Of unequal weight) to a vengeful, childish god of war. Yay. Even months after the game I'm still pissed at the DM and the player for not informing me beforehand about how combat, poison and SDC/HP work before throwing me in the deep end.

Cut to a session or two later. We're in the'ol hive of scum and villainy and my character is approached by an NPC bearing a sword. He offers my character the sword, and I as a player get super wary. So I accept the sword, careful not to touch it, because up until now I was only aware of curses that transfer via touch or by wielding. Turns out this one transfers by simply accepting the sword for nothing. What's the curse you may ask? All you clothing and armor (WHICH COSTS A HELL OF A LOT IN PALLADIUM) rots away to rags by the end of the week, as does any newly acquired gear. So I hastily try to find a way to get rid of the sword to undo the curse. I opt to get jumped by the city guard and give them the sword. The DM however says that by my saying "Please take the sword just don't hurt me" with the intent of the "just don't hurt me" to sell the whole "I'm giving you my sword" thing counts as "asking for something".

Well it didn't matter because the Mind Mage apparently had implanted the memory of me giving away the sword as a false memory so the party could sell the sword and leave me cursed. What's worse, everyone in the party was in on it but me.

Such rage have I never felt before. Like legitimate "I'm one poorly timed joke/jab away from committing actual literal violence against these guys". Since then I feel that I've made it clear that I don't like being manipulated at all, and that any hint of screwing over or manipulating will result in me just withdrawing from the session (Usually by putting in headphones with music turned up while playing some emulators on my computer and giving violent death glares at the offending parties).

tsotate
2014-07-31, 01:25 AM
I'm happy to say none of my Bad Gaming Stories even come close to some of these. However, I am required by law to post a link to Trekkin's epic (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?275152-What-am-I-supposed-to-do) tale of GM idiocy, player stubbornness, terrible fanfic, and katana-based electrochemistry.


I'm only up to page 5 of that thread, but it's already one of the most epic trainwrecks I've ever heard described.

Tanuki Tales
2014-07-31, 04:31 AM
I'm only up to page 5 of that thread, but it's already one of the most epic trainwrecks I've ever heard described.

That's Chief Circle and the Ao-Sue for you. :smalltongue:

Synar
2014-07-31, 04:54 AM
I've got one question over the sue files. Are the DMs described here and at the website the same (I guess both are circleChief and the answer is yes)? Is it the same game? The same players? Is it from the point of view of the same player? And in which order do you read the files anyway? I'm just so confused.

nedz
2014-07-31, 05:58 AM
It was a 3.0 game. The game with 1d4 + 1 ability score buffs that last 1 hour per level. The spellcasters chose the stereotypical route of buffing everyone with those spells. They liked it. They wanted it. I joined the group as a rogue archer. There was a wizard, sorcerer, cleric, cleric/war priest, and another rogue. The wizard and the clerics did the buffing. There were two fighter NPCs with the party. I think they were officially Cohorts, but I don't know for certain. My character also had followers without Leadership as part of campaign story.

Every game day was the same. The spellcasters buffed themselves, they buffed each other, they buffed the fighters, they buffed the sorcerer, they buffed the rogue. Some of them empowered. "What do you need? What do you want? Do you have Bull Strength already?" etc. By my third session I felt the tiniest bit annoyed they never buffed me. Didn't even ask if I wanted anything.

One game session I asked, "May I have a Cat's Grace?"
"You'll have to wait. We need to buff everyone else first."
Other rogue gets a Cat's Grace.
When they were done I asked, "May I have a Cat's Grace?"
"Sorry, we're out of spells."
Next game day, same session, I remained quiet. No buffs for me, again.

Next game session after everyone buffs before the game starts, I made sure they were done, I asked, "May I have a Cat's Grace?"
"No, don't be greedy."

During the week I email the DM about the situation. He agrees it's a problem, but it's really up to the players.

Next game session we engage in an adventure far from civilization. All of the bad guys are undead that explode when destroyed. They all have magic DR. I have no magic arrows. Session ends. During the week I post on our message board: "It would be a good idea for the cleric to cast Greater Magic Weapon on my arrows. I can then help destroy the undead from afar and no one needs to get hurt when they explode."
"How dare you DEMAND a spell! Who do you think you are telling us how to play our characters? Go buy your own damn +1 arrows!"

Next game session everyone buffs again. "Fine, here's your Greater Magic Weapon." "Next time buy your own arrows."

That was my last session.

It sounds like you were the outsider in a tightly knit clique. Not much you could do about it I suspect.

DigoDragon
2014-07-31, 07:47 AM
Last year in a D&D campaign. We were a team of three (Ranger, Fighter, Wizard) trying to figure out how to sneak into this prison so that we could spring free one of their war prisoners (a prince, held by the enemy nation at war with the nation that hired us to rescue him). I (the wizard) listed the spells I prepared that would help sneak us in, but I needed ideas on getting past two archers on the battlements. The Ranger had one idea about sneak attacks and the Fighter thought about a disguise to sneak in.

The Ranger and Fighter ended up arguing over the better plan and it escalated into a shouting match that spilled over to OOC issues. I tried to diffuse the argument by diplomatically laying out the merits of each plan and which one I'd be better suited to assist on and then I turned to the GM for help on calming things down. The GM got up and walked away, throwing me under the bus to handle the argument myself.

That group never played another session together since...

janusmaxwell
2014-07-31, 08:18 AM
So I'm in a Pathfinder game where the DM has created a custom setting. No dragons, most of the world has been subjugated by Orc empires, and the context of our characters is that we're all humans living 2nd class lives who get involved with this grand "Resistance movement" to overthrow the tyrannical Orcs.

Related note...ever been so angry at somebody it feels like you'll start bleeding from the eyes?

Anyway, I was the wizard of the group and it was my first time playing a wizard. From the standpoint of only ever playing videogame wizards. So yeah the group and I quickly realized I had f---ed up and chosen most of my spells from evocation so I could be a huge damage dealer, while being from the "Universalist class". I was quickly shown my error and told to take a wide-variety of other spells that weren't based on burninating things.

That was me and my f-up...but then there was the ranger...jesus god in heaven there go my eyes again. He played a "Chaotic Neutral" Ranger. His character stuff was that he and his dad were hunters allowed to go outside the city in exchange for some of whatever game they caught given to the Orcs standing guard. The DM tells the Ranger in our second session that his dad had been killed and eaten by a wild critter.

From the player's standpoint he decided to play that his Ranger had snapped...from everyone else's standpoint, he played his Ranger like a retarded f---ing evil Deadpool...which the DM thought was hilarious. (NOBODY else did...)

The player decided to 'ranger' and make some arrows out of the bones of his characters dead father. The DM allowed it and said they were 1d4-1 and he only had 6 of them.

Ranger's character and my character knew each other but this relationship quickly became a combative one due partially to my initial screw-up with wizarding but mostly cause...

The DM decided it would be funny to roleplay as the voice of the Ranger's dead father, as a voice in his head that would berate him, tell him not to trust anyone, and to kill a certain member of the group because "He's always hated you!" (GUESS ****ING WHO!?)

At one point in the campaign, we are sent by the resistance to meet the resident "Gandalf" for assistance. A fairly important plot NPC and a wizard that my character can FINALLY learn some useful spells from (Orc held city means mages that aren't Orcs get killed on sight, makes learning magic harder) and he asks a few favors from us.

The first favor involves...something about getting a crystal with a demon trapped inside it and bringing it to him. And in any encounter when the Ranger shouted "I DO (X)!" while everyone else is conversing OOC about what to do about (X) the DM would allow it, because the Rangers Chaotic Retard was amusing to him. So when we find the Crystal with the demon that was CR 18 or higher (Level 6 characters) and the Ranger grabs it before we can decide if it's trapped, The demon forces HIM to make a will-save or smash the crystal, which would've freed it. (And killed all of us like nothing)

I almost wish he had failed that will save just for the "Sweet release of death" from that campaign...but no, he makes it and role plays that the insanity inducing voice of his father was stronger and telling him to not believe the demons lies of power and wealth if the Ranger would release him and let him "MAIMKILLBURN".

First quest for Gandalf done. Second quest? Taking a Deck of Many Things and destroying it in a certain location/dungeon that is on another continent, hell and gone from the location/area we had been exploring up to that point.

Getting there is no problem as the wizard just warps us to where we need to go, mostly. The problem is that this Deck was given to the freaking Ranger who kept goddamn USING it and making the F-ing grapple checks, sleight of hand checks, and awareness checks to keep the rest of us from taking it away from the idiot, as well as making it clear that the 'Tard insanity meant he would PK anyone who took it away from him.

Over the course of traveling to the place to destroy the deck, the Ranger ended up with:
1) Summoning 6 giant ants
2) Summoning about 15 peasants, who his insanity meant "IDGAF" and "YOLO"
3) He got a Several wish spells, one of which was used to undo a colossal party fight/**** up by way of time warp shenanigans, and the other one was used in the very last session when literally everybody (Except the DM) had gotten sick of his BS and tried to split the party by scattering, and he wished for all of us to be together again so we still had to listen/deal with him.
4) He became a werebear
5) He gender-swapped
6) He skin became poisonous.
and (7)...the part that made me realize just how far this campaign had fallen, was a decision between a random person in the world dying, or losing his most prized possession.

The random person? The DM decided it would be the wizard who 'ported us to this new continent. The prized possession? The remaining 3 dad-bone arrows. The Rangers choice: "Screw the Wizard, he was a ****! These are my Dad!"

and remember, this DM thought the Ranger's insanity was "Funny" which is why he allowed the NPC Gandalf to be killed, and allowed all those draws from the Many Things deck because every time there was a conversation or the rest of the party was distracted/not paying attention he'd go "I draw a card!" despite everyone in character and out (Besided DM) telling him it wasn't funny anymore and ****ing stop it.

Deck gone, we're on a strange land. And in/out of campaign we've ALL pretty much said "This is a wash" plus the Ranger has made the full alignment shift to Chaotic evil.

Hence we happen upon a tribal fishing village, and before anyone can say a single word, the Ranger says "I START SHOOTING AT THE VILLAGERS!" sending them screaming for the hills.

It didn't last long after that, but the kicker was end which was just a DnD nut-punch to me personally.

I realize now that the DM and the Ranger were using the game and characters and such to bully me. Hence all the bull**** about the "Rangers Insanity" making him snap at my wizard character all the time and call 'him' an idiot (Using IC conversation as an excuse to insult me to my face...****head mother****er)

Anyway the last meeting ended in a PC Fight, with my wizard being sick of dealing with this colossal douche and evil prick and Fireballing the ranger while he's standing on a dock. Dock explodes and Ranger is thrown into the water.

Ranger, with DM helping him, rises out of the water in wearbear form and shoots me with an arrow. All on one turn. Level 6 Ranger versus level 6 wizard, it freaking hurt. Another note in any campaign I play is that my dice HATE me...even more than I hated the ranger. Hence why my starting salvo of a fireball and my follow-up next turn with a lightning bolt didn't even drop him below half-health.

His next turn, he get's many-shot or something like that and fills me full of quarrels like Boromir. I hit the ground dying and he puts one more in me for good measure. He didn't shoot that one from point blank though. He was still in the water while my characters body was up by the houses about 200 feet away and failed the wisdom/knowledge roll to see if I was actually dead yet...and decided to shoot me anyway to "Make sure".

The arrows he used on me, besides 1 or 2 regular? They were his remaining "Dad-bone" arrows and he felt it appropriate since "Dad always hated him". This included the last arrow he shot into my prone, dying body. At this point the DM asks about the arrows and chimes in.

"As you loose the last arrow you feel the weight of your dads voice lift from your mind. Your madness is broken and the crushing weight of your crimes falls on you!"

I don't even get a chance to be pissed right the F--- off about the dad arrows being the "source" of the Rangers madness and it making his choice to kill the very important NPC wizard over the 'precious' arrows even more of a colossal F you. The Rangers PC goes "I don't think so, I mean he did attack me..."

At that point he start's negotiating with the DM regarding his supposedly now cured madness. He was so eager to "roleplay" as long as he could act like a paint chip-eating inbred ----stain, but now that he has to start roleplaying somebody who killed a supposedly childhood friend due to madness and has to feel bad about it, he starts wheedling and saying "Well he started the fight so I was just protecting myself"

God the memories alone I'm so angry I can barely see straight. That's it for now, I just need to calm down or something...

Synar
2014-07-31, 08:26 AM
So I'm in a Pathfinder game where the DM has created a custom setting. No dragons, most of the world has been subjugated by Orc empires, and the context of our characters is that we're all humans living 2nd class lives who get involved with this grand "Resistance movement" to overthrow the tyrannical Orcs.

Related note...every been so angry at somebody it feels like you'll start bleeding from the eyes?

Anyway, I was the wizard of the group and it was my first time playing a wizard. From the standpoint of only ever playing videogame wizards. So yeah the group and I quickly realized I had f---ed up and chosen most of my spells from evocation so I could be a huge damage dealer, while being from the "Universalist class". I was quickly shown my error and told to take a wide-variety of other spells that weren't based on burninating things.

That was me and my f-up...but then there was the ranger...jesus god in heaven there go my eyes again. He played a "Chaotic Neutral" Ranger. His character stuff was that he and his dad were hunters allowed to go outside the city in exchange for some of whatever game they caught given to the Orcs standing guard. The DM tells the Ranger in our second session that his dad had been killed and eaten by a wild critter.

From the player's standpoint he decided to play that his Ranger had snapped...from everyone else's standpoint, he played his Ranger like a retarding f---ing evil Deadpool...which the DM thought was hilarious. (NOBODY else did...)

The player decided to 'ranger' and make some arrows out of the bones of his characters dead father. The DM allowed it and said they were 1d4-1 and he only had 6 of them.

Ranger's character and my character knew each other but this relationship quickly became a combative one due partially to my initial screw-up with wizarding but mostly cause...

The DM decided it would be funny to roleplay as the voice of the Ranger's dead father, as a voice in his head that would berate him, tell him not to trust anyone, and to kill a member of the group because "He's always hated you!" (GUESS ****ING WHO!?)

at one point in the campaign, we are sent by the resistance to meet the resident "Gandalf" for assistance. A fairly important plot PC and a wizard that my character can FINALLY learn some useful spells from (Orc held city means mages that aren't Orcs get killed on sight, makes learning magic harder) and he asks a few favors from us.

The first favor involves...something about getting a crystal with a demon trapped inside it and bringing it to him. And in any encounter when the Ranger shouted "I DO (X)!" while everyone else is conversing OOC about what to do about (X) the DM would allow it, because the Rangers Chaotic Retard was amusing to him. So when we find the Crystal with the demon that was CR 18 or higher (Level 6 characters) and the Ranger grabs it before we can decide if it's trapped, The demon forces HIM to make a will-save or smash the crystal, which would've freed it.

I almost wish he had failed that will save just for the "Sweet release of death" from that campaign...but no, he makes it and roll plays that the insanity inducing voice of his father was stronger and telling him to not believe the demons lies of power and wealth if the Ranger would release him and let him "MAIMKILLBURN".

first quest for Gandalf done. Second quest? Taking a Deck of Many Things and destroying it in a certain location/dungeon that is on another continent, hell and gone from the location/area we had been exploring up to that point.

Getting there is no problem as the wizard just warps us to where we need to go, mostly. The problem is that this Deck was given to the freaking Ranger who kept goddamn USING it and making the F-ing grapple checks to keep the rest of us from taking it away from the idiot, as well as making it clear that the 'Tard insanity meant he would PK anyone who took it away from him.

Over the course of traveling to the place to destroy the deck, the Ranger ended up with:
1) Summoning 6 giant ants
2) Summoning about 15 peasants, who his insanity meant "IDGAF" and "YOLO"
3) He got a Wish spell
4) He became a werebear
5) He gender-swapped
6) He skin became poisonous.
and (7)...the part that made me realize just how far this campaign had fallen, was a decision between a random person in the world dying, or losing his most prized possession.

The random person? The wizard who 'ported us to this new continent. The prized possession? The remaining 3 dad-bone arrows. The Rangers choice: "Screw the Wizard, he was a ****! These are my Dad!"

and remember, this DM thought the Ranger's insanity was "Funny" which is why he allowed the NPC Gandalf to be killed, and allowed all those draws from the Many Things deck because everytime there was a conversation or the rest of the party was distracted/not paying attention he'd go "I draw a card!" despite everyone in character and out (Besided DM) telling him it wasn't funny anymore and ****ing stop it.

Deck gone, we're on a strange land. And in/out of campaign we've ALL pretty much said "This is a wash" plus the Ranger has made the full alignment shift to Chaotic evil.

Hence we happen upon a tribal fishing village, and before anyone can say a single word, the Ranger says "I START SHOOTING AT THE VILLAGERS!" sending them screaming for the hills.

It didn't last long after that, but the kicker was end which was just a DnD nut-punch to me personally.

I realize now that the DM and the Ranger were using the game and characters and such to bully me. Hence all the bull**** about the "Rangers Insanity" making him snap at my wizard character all the time and call 'him' and idiot (When he was actually insulting me...****er)

Anyway the last meeting ended in a PC Fight, with my wizard being sick of dealing with this colossal douche and evil prick and Fireballing the ranger while he's standing on a dock. Dock explodes and Ranger is thrown into the water.

Ranger, with DM helping him, rises out of the water in wearbear form and shoots me with an arrow. Level 6 Ranger versus level 6 wizard, it freaking hurt. Another note in any campaign I play is that my dice HATE me...even more than I hated the ranger. Hence why my fireball starting round, and my follow-up with a lightning bolt didn't even drop him below half-health.

His next turn, he get's many-shot or something like that and fills me full of quarrels like Boromir. I hit the ground dying and he puts one more in me for good measure.

The arrows he used on me, besides 1 or 2 regular? They were his remaining "Dad-bone" arrows and he felt it appropriate since "Dad always hated him". This included the last arrow he shot into my prone, dying body. At this point the DM asks about the arrows and chimes in.

"As you loose the last arrow you feel the weight of your dads voice lift from your mind. Your madness is broken and the crushing weight of your crimes falls on you!"

I don't even get a chance to be pissed right the F--- off about the dad arrows being the "source" of the Rangers madness and it making his choice to kill the very important NPC wizard over the 'precious' arrows even more of a colossal F you. The Rangers PC goes "I don't think so, I mean he did attack me..."

At that point he start's negotiating with the DM regarding his supposedly now cured madness. He was so eager to "roleplay" as long as he could act like a paint chip-eating inbred ----stain, but now that he has to start roleplaying somebody who killed a supposedly childhood friend due to madness and has to feel bad about it, he starts wheedling and saying "Well he started the fight so I was just protecting myself"

God the memories alone I'm so angry I can barely see straight. That's it for now, I just need to calm down or something...


At least now you know these boards, the next time you play a wizard, you will easily defeat any mad ranger. :smalltongue:

The_Werebear
2014-07-31, 08:33 AM
Sadly, the worst session of DnD I ever played was my first. It was at summer camp, (where I will admit, the I was the new, overly earnest kid that does not fit in very well). I managed to join with the DnD group, and everyone dutifully rolled up new characters. I played a gnome illusionist. In our first encounter, the monsters ignored my illusions and the rest of the party to beat me unconscious. I was revived with only a few hit points, then beaten unconscious again. The rest of the party, by the way, was taking great pleasure in this. Then, in the next room, the magic fountain we drank from blessed everyone else, and cursed me.

At this point, I let out some anger and said "well, can I play something else because this isn't working." The DM got this evil smile and started working with the other players to figure out the worst thing to turn me into. He actually paused the session for the night, and spent the next two days coming up with ideas with the other players. When we started again, I was informed that I had been transformed into a "Dire Rhea" and would have powerful kick and claw attacks, but would...explosively soil myself on a nat 1 or 20.

That was pretty ugly. I stuck with it, and eventually they knocked it off enough to just kill me and bind my soul to the party's necromancer as an Allip (magically compelled to drown myself). That, however, worked out better, as I was pretty much invulnerable to further issues from anyone but the Necromancer, to whom I was too valuable an asset to abuse.

Glad I stuck with DnD though. I have many more good memories than drek like that.

thematgreen
2014-07-31, 09:16 AM
I encountered a DM who forgot he shouldn't be trying to screw over and kill the party constantly, and that plot armor and "fudging" dice to keep his prized BBEG alive was not fun for anyone but him. He delighted in DM Rule 0 TPK Shenanigans.

I'll go into detail if anyone wants it

lytokk
2014-07-31, 10:15 AM
I encountered a DM who forgot he shouldn't be trying to screw over and kill the party constantly, and that plot armor and "fudging" dice to keep his prized BBEG alive was not fun for anyone but him. He delighted in DM Rule 0 TPK Shenanigans.

I'll go into detail if anyone wants it

I think thats the point of this thread actually.

Fumble Jack
2014-07-31, 11:21 AM
A recent one for me.
A friend of mine, whom is a player in my current 3.5 D&D game happened to have his house alone for the day and offered to host for the days session. We all accepted and one of the players was already there. We have played at his house before, which was why we agreed. Another player whom doesn't game with us as often due to distance but is always a welcome member to our group, because he dives right into a character whether support or main and we all have a good time when he comes to play, informed he'd like to join us and would roll up a temp cleric for a support role since he wouldn't be able to make it to every session.

Time comes we all arrive at my friend's place and find another friend there we'll call him F, it was his neighbor so it wasn't too surprising, except that I thought he would be at work at the time. I had not invited F to play in the game prior. I had my reasons, he can be disruptive at times as a player and it also made my gf (plays the rogue in our group) a bit uncomfortable as they had a bit of a falling out on their friendship the year before.

On the only suitable table we have for gaming at my friend's house(plays wizard in group), there is also the setup for a hookah on the table. It seems that's what Wizard, F and our other player(monk) were doing in addition to mariokart waiting for us to show up. One of the players was our ride (duskblade). So we go to get the game set up and started. I had an npc, a bard whom I was going to have left out of the session, since our temp cleric was going to cover back up healing and support. Again F is disruptive, and starts smoking the hookah and invites Monk, Wizard, Temp Cleric and Duskblade to join in. Temp cleric refuses and wants to focus on the game, so do I. Unfortunately due to how the hookah was set up, my gf and I keep getting smoke blown in our faces. Granted they do realize this and try to adjust it or blow it away from us not to much avail. My gf had to switch seats to be away from the smoke. Only F continued with the Hookah for awhile, then became disruptive showing me things on his phone.

Now as it was not my home, I would not be in the right to just ask him to leave, more so since F had been there prior to our arrival. F had never met Temp Cleric prior to this day and his chihuahua syndrome, semi napoleon complex I guess, started showing up. He pulled out his pistol to show people, left it visible in front of everyone and then put it back where he had it. The only way to get F to stop being disruptive was to allow him to play the bard I had as a temp, so that I wouldn't be guilted by F into being a hypocrite for letting Temp cleric play and to just get on with the session and get the day over with.

The sad thing is, the behavior unnerved Temp Cleric and he has yet to show up to another session, though it may be as much part due to the time it takes for him to come up and hang with us as well as what occurred.

For those of you who would ask, yes it was loaded and he did have a license to carry it.

Arbane
2014-07-31, 02:55 PM
I've got one question over the sue files. Are the DMs described here and at the website the same (I guess both are circleChief and the answer is yes)? Is it the same game? The same players? Is it from the point of view of the same player? And in which order do you read the files anyway? I'm just so confused.

Yeah, same game. The difference is that the thread here is Trekkin reporting on the trains as they wrecked, and IRolledAZero is the forensic analysis once the smoke cleared.

Hexenarethi
2014-07-31, 04:20 PM
Ugh... the worst gaming experience I've ever had... and this is serious, was just last night. In the campaign before, I got a SWEET new magical staff! In the current adventure, I rolled a natural 20!!! A sphere of fire spell activated, killing two kobolds and seriously burning others.


Now here comes the bad part. We got a cleric on our team, and my character wanted to know if there were still spells left in there. The answer was, "Yes." Yippee!!!!!!!!!!!! But... my DM asked, sort of taking control of the cleric, "Have you used a spell on this to take a life?"

Yes. Apparently, it had belonged to an epic-level sorcerer who had been betrayed by his apprentice. With his dying breath, the sorcerer cursed the staff.

Now, in 4 years, my character will become an undead. Yippee, Yippee, Yippee.:smallannoyed:

hymer
2014-07-31, 04:49 PM
Ugh... the worst gaming experience I've ever had... and this is serious, was just last night. [Stuff]

Don't be ridiculous, you're going to have a lot worse experiences than this.
Seriously, though, sounds like you should be searching for a way to break that curse. After all, you've got four years to work with. I shouldn't wonder if the DM plans an adventure around that.

tsotate
2014-07-31, 04:56 PM
Seriously, though, sounds like you should be searching for a way to break that curse.

Break the curse? What's the downside of becoming undead for a caster?

Sure, there are better paths to immortality, but this one's free.

SamaelOfChaos
2014-07-31, 05:02 PM
When I tried to show what DnD is all about to my little bro (he was still a little kid back then), my lovely group decided, after the quest ended, to poison his character, kill him and then describe in detail what they do to his corpse and his animal companion (he was trying to play a druid). Let's just say it didn't end well and it's one of those things I regret leading to, so to speak :smallfrown:

hymer
2014-07-31, 05:03 PM
@ tsotate: Point taken. But it sounds like Hexenarethi doesn't want the PC to become undead. Could also be that s/he would lose the character at that point, if it becomes an evil undead NPC villain.

Marlowe
2014-07-31, 08:29 PM
Had a strange experience on the PbP boards here a couple of years back. Hardly the worst experience ever, but one that I still wonder about.

Campaign starting conditions (DnD 3.5) were meant to be 32-point buy, level one start, and very limited starting cash. The PCs were all supposed to be people of quality, rendered impoverished by social unheaval. Fine. If all we start with is a weapon and some leathers, we'll manage.

Except that when the players were selected, there was one character selected who stood out. He had much better stats than 32 points (and no sign of him have rolled for them), had much more equipment than we was supposed to, had an almost offensively bishonen character portrait (long white hair, intense eyes, thick, pouty lips, cleft chin...you know. It was bordering on exploitative of men), had a character "background" that started with the phrase "[Character] looks like a maiden's wet dream" and went on from there, and was some homebrew character class that had d10 hit dice, full BAB, "Spellcasting" (that's all it said. "Spellcasting" No mention of spell list, progression, or per-day) and darkvision.

The character sheet was this googledocs mash-up that took forever to load and was a pain to read.

Some of the other players commented about the...oddness and were positively snarled down by the player concerned. We got a brief note from the DM about him having "OKed the Class" and some sort of explanation from the player that he'd "had problems with mythweavers" and hence the strange character sheet; but no explanation for the stats or extra gear.

Campaign starts and we get our mission while attending the opera. We get a basic bust-up-some-bad people job, some poison, a "device" (bomb? We never found out) and a map of their place, including a secret tunnel into the basement. Some of us start planning over the map and a couple of others declare they'll be going out to gather information on the enemy, and will rejoin the party at a set location at a set time later that night. Then this guy makes his first post.

His character starts SHOUTING (in a highly conspicuous opera box while the opera's still going on) at those going out to stay here, and described himself physically preventing them from leaving. Including grabbing their characters by the collar and dragging them back. I was really expecting the DM to tell him to cool it, but the DMs seemed inclined to let him have his way. As far as this player was concerned we were going to do it his way (which was essentially to disguise the female characters as serving wenches and have them poison the bad guys food while the men sneak through the tunnel to deliver the "device". We knew nothing about whether or not this place we were supposed to be busting even had servants. None of the female PCs had any real disguise skills; and we'd have been splitting the party with the unknown device in the middle ) and he was very aggressive about it.

I made the mistake of trying to joke with him OOC by suggesting that he was doing a very good job of destroying the white-haired pretty-boy archetype by playing him as a suicidal lout (he was manhandling a sneak-attack Thug Fighter!:smalleek:) with no social skills; and it turned out he was serious. And just as aggressive OOC.

Those that were planning to leave left anyway, while this guy ranted to the DM about the need to move on because nobody was co-operating.

Well, aside from some Gather information checks, the campaign died there. My character was the only one to make the meet-up up as planned. It seemed nobody wanted to post anymore. With all the sudden hostility in and out of character, I wasn't surprised.

So your basic "That Guy destroys a session" story. Except, of course, it's PbP so several weeks were wasted instead of one evening. Not the worst story here, but still quite unpleasant, very atypical for this board's PbP community, and I still wonder why the DM let this guy into the group at all with such an abberant character.

Tanngrisnir
2014-07-31, 11:39 PM
snip

This made me seriously wonder whether or not the DM was also the offending character using a second account, utilising the game as a way to force people to watch him play out his fantasy story. Sort of like a secret, terrible DMPC.

Marlowe
2014-08-01, 12:08 AM
This made me seriously wonder whether or not the DM was also the offending character using a second account, utilising the game as a way to force people to watch him play out his fantasy story. Sort of like a secret, terrible DMPC. Possible. The guy seemed awfully sure of his "plan". Like he knew details that we didn't. Or then again, he might just have been exactly as stupid as he sounded.

My own theory is that they were buddies in RL and the DM let him in as a favour. If so, I've got to feel a little sorry for the DM, because he murdered his own campaign by doing so.

Not as sorry as I feel for myself and the other players.

Sith_Happens
2014-08-01, 12:48 AM
So here I am at the eighteenth session of what had been to that point a great campaign with a fun group and a good-but-not-stellar DM. My Wizard/War Weaver (BUFFS FOR THE BUFF GOD! BFC FOR THE BFC THRONE!) had just had enough downtime to scribe a ton of new spells that I was looking forward to using, the plot was building up to the climax, everything seemed to be going well.

Cue game start. The party needs to get to an ancient temple/dungeon and, depending on whether the BBEG beat us there, either secure it against his entry or undo whatever Evil Plot things he did to the place. Since time was of the essence, I explain to the party that I could create enough Phantom Steeds to get us there in one day instead of five, though due to it being a large party this would take most of my upper-level spell slots. No problem though, because once we're there I can map the place out with a buffed-up Arcane Eye, then we'd rest for the night and enter the temple in the morning with our prepared casters (which, counting the two Rangers, was most of the party) that much more prepared for what's to come. The party agrees that this is a good plan, which is pleasantly surprising because myself and the Cleric's player were normally the only ones not inclined to rush headlong into everything, which was a major reason why we'd ended up barely scraping through the previous temple.

Now, I blame myself for this next part for forgetting the First Law of RPG Travel: You always arrive exactly when the DM wants you to. Specifically, we get to the temple just in time to see the BBEG walk in. Crap. So suddenly we're rushing headlong into the place as usual, but this time with me already down half of my 4th level spells and all but one of my 3rd-levels. Because these things always get worse, what does the BBEG sick on us in the first room before proceeding deeper into the building? A Greater Earth Elemental, the one thing the party was least built to handle (our best damage-dealers being either precision damage users, dual-wielders, or both). Naturally, the ensuing fight consumes most of what combat-useful spells I did have.

So here I am at the beginning of a dungeon and already with almost no spells left. Naturally, I decide that we'd all be better off if I stayed behind. At which point the DM tells me I'll need to separate myself from the table. Knowing that that's not at all an unusual thing for a group to do, I comply. Of course, due to OOC boredom I eventually change my mind and send my familiar to check on the party, then run and catch up with them upon being told that they hadn't left behind any still-functioning obstacles. I figure if nothing else, I still have a Dimension Door I could use to get us the hell out of dodge if necessary.

After a more or less unremarkable trek through the rest of the dungeon, we reach a Solar sentry guarding the teleport mechanism into the last room, where we'd find whatever it was we ultimately needed to deal with. Before engaging said mechanism for us, the Solar requires each of our characters to state what we'd be willing to sacrifice to see our quest succeed (which, if something it could physically take then and there, it would) and what our ultimate goal in life was. Come my turn and, due to playing an altruistic Lawful Good Wizard who would want to give up something meaningful but values things only in direct proportion to his practical need for them, I can't think of a sacrifice. When it becomes clear I have a bad case of role-player's block the DM has the Solar express some very mild disappointment at my character's lack of sacrifice and move on to the "life goals" question. At which point I get to expound upon my character's desire to use magic to make the world a better place, but the emotional damage from being put on the spot and failing to deliver had already been done.

Once everyone finishes their turn at Deep RPingTM, the next step is obviously for the Solar to teleport us into the last room as promised... Just in time to catch the BBEG on his way out. Noticing our sudden arrival and it not being our first encounter with him, he stops to do the evil gloating thing... Partway through which the DM asks me to make a Fortitude save. Seeing as the BBEG is still much higher level than us at this point in the campaign and I'm playing a Wizard, I naturally fail. At which point the DM describes, without anyone having rolled initiative at any point, the BBEG launching a ghostly chain at my character which impales him, annihilates his body, and pulls his soul back into the BBEG's gauntlet hookshot-style, trapping it there.

Needless to say, I'm both startled and extremely miffed at this sudden development, and politely ask the DM to stay for a bit after the session ended so I could speak with him. When I ask him what's up with the thinly-veiled Rocks Fall, he explains that he wanted to up both the drama and the BBEG's threat level by having him kill someone off, and my character was the natural choice due to having shown himself the biggest threat to the BBEG of any party member during our first encounter with him (which was supposed to be a "the BBEG roughs you up and leaves you nearly dead" fight but instead ended with him teleporting away to lick his wounds after I overestimated his defenses and assumed he could handle being shown just how crazy Polymorph + War Weaver can be).

By the end of that conversation and its follow-ups over Facebook the DM admits that he'd made a huge mistake, but insists for continuity's sake that I still make a new character. Halfway through doing so I realize that I'm just not feeling it anymore, explain the circumstances to the group in the most polite way I can, and excuse myself from the campaign.
TL;DR: My involvement in a long and otherwise high-quality campaign comes to a sudden end when I end up spending the better part of a session being less than useless, get Stuffed in the Fridge at the end, and find myself lacking the will to reroll in the hope that it was just a fluke (which, according to the other players who stayed to the campaign's end, it was).

Marlowe
2014-08-01, 04:36 AM
TL;DR: My involvement in a long and otherwise high-quality campaign comes to a sudden end when I end up spending the better part of a session being less than useless, get Stuffed in the Fridge at the end, and find myself lacking the will to reroll in the hope that it was just a fluke (which, according to the other players who stayed to the campaign's end, it was).

It always makes it worse when it was going great...right up to the point where it suddenly wasn't. :smallfrown:

KuReshtin
2014-08-01, 05:15 AM
I have had a few bad ones, including the Serenity RPG game that basically never happened, since one of the players (let's call him Cage) decided to start arguing that some of the skills described in the rules were 'illogical' during character gen, and pretty much wasted an entire session with that even if I as the GM told him to give it a rest and move on.

His main issue was that he didn't think that the Dodge skill would be an appropriate skill to use to prevent getting hit in a gun fight. He claimed that you couldn't use that skill to dodge a bullet. He then refused to accept that the dodge roll when trying to not get hit in a gun fight wasn't the act of actually dodging the bullet, but merely moving your body out of the way as you see someone pointing a gun at you and hoping that your sudden movement will be enough to make you not be in the spot your foe is aiming at when he pulls the trigger.
This explanation did not compute at all in his mind.

During the first actual playing session we had with that group, Cage and another guy (the captain of the ship) decided to take the ship and leave the rest of the group since they didn't agree with how a job they'd accepted panned out. Since they ran into a bit of difficulty in completing the job, these two guys decided to **** off and leave the others to be taken prisoner by the law on the planet they were at.

After that session, we didn't play Serenity anymore.

Also, Cage also rage-quit the group after a session where the rest of the group actually had a lot of fun.

Cage seemed to hate my character in a GURPS game that we played with the same group of players a while later, because we had all been told to think up our characters out of session and each of us had had separate meetings and discussions with the GM on what the characters would be. This meant that we didn't have the normal setup of one healer, one magic caster, one fighter and so on, but each player had a chance to play what they wanted without pressures from the group expectation. My character presented himself as a traveling story teller (he would have been a bard if he could hold a tune, but alas...) but he was also on a personal mission to find and kill the band of bandits that had killed his 'parents'.
Because my character was presented as a story teller/bard, that image got set in Cage's head and when my character then turned into a pretty proficient knife wielder who was good at killing people, that didn't sit right with him, and his character started trying to pry more and more information out of my character as to how I was so good at that stuff. When I decided that it was something that I wanted to keep to myself, he did everything he could at every turn of the game to try to 'expose me for the liar I was'.
This came to a head during one session when the group had been trapped in a magical tower that had time/space portal doors that sent you to a different time in the tower each time you opened a new door.
Another of the group members (Beorn) and myself managed to get out of the tower and decided to grab a ladder to look into the only window the ladder could reach to. The kitchen window. I climbed up as my compatriot held the ladder, which was a bit rickety, steady from below.
As I looked in through the window into the kitchen where I and Beorn had just come from, we saw a young woman tending what looked like dinner cooking on the stove. There was also a cat in the kitchen, just sitting around.
Then, the woman picked up the cat and started walking out of the kitchen, and at that point, the cat looked at my character, locked eyes and then the cat's eyes started glowing deep red.
This was a bit unsettling to my character, and the GM had me roll a Cool check, which I utterly failed. I decided that it would be funny if my character would be so startled by the events that he'd take a step back as a reflex, not realising he was standing on a ladder.
Obviously, this caused him to fall down the ladder heading right for Beorn, who got to roll a Reflex save to try to get out the way. Unfortunately for him, he failed that roll as well, so he ended up breaking my fall resulting in my character busting his knee while Beorn dislocated a shoulder.

Everyone in the room had a good laugh about how events turned out, including Beorn's player and myself.

Later, when the group had managed to somehow get back together again, the other characters asked what was wrong with Beorn and myself, since we were injured. My character obviously didn't want to admit that he'd fallen off a ladder, so he started weaving a story of how the two of them had heroically fought a big demon-cat, as big, or even bigger, than a tiger. (Actual scan of the story I wrote down to be able to tell it to the group) (http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/kureshtin/images/Handwriting.jpg)

Since Cage had been in the room as a player when our ladder incident happened, but his character hadn't, he immediately decided that his character in game didn't think the story was plausible, so he would go out to where I had described the fight with the demon-cat taking place to find evidence that there hadn't been a fight there, so he could prove me a liar, even if my story was backed up by Beorn.

Cage then got pissed off since the GM told him that his character had to roll a Sense Motive roll to determine if his character believed the story or not, and when he failed that roll and the GM told him that his character believed the story, he got sullen and a session later, he quit the group.

Gnomvid
2014-08-01, 05:31 AM
Cage then got pissed off since the GM told him that his character had to roll a Sense Motive roll to determine if his character believed the story or not, and when he failed that roll and the GM told him that his character believed the story, he got sullen and a session later, he quit the group. [/SPOILER]

I believe this was where he later when asked stated that he'd now tried role playing and so had finished it and therefore didn't need to do role play again, and to that there's only one thing to say good riddance!

This post incidentally pretty much sums up my worst gaming experiences as well.

Sartharina
2014-08-01, 09:53 AM
So here I am at the eighteenth session of what had been to that point a great campaign with a fun group and a good-but-not-stellar DM. My Wizard/War Weaver (BUFFS FOR THE BUFF GOD! BFC FOR THE BFC THRONE!) had just had enough downtime to scribe a ton of new spells that I was looking forward to using, the plot was building up to the climax, everything seemed to be going well.

Cue game start. The party needs to get to an ancient temple/dungeon and, depending on whether the BBEG beat us there, either secure it against his entry or undo whatever Evil Plot things he did to the place. Since time was of the essence, I explain to the party that I could create enough Phantom Steeds to get us there in one day instead of five, though due to it being a large party this would take most of my upper-level spell slots. No problem though, because once we're there I can map the place out with a buffed-up Arcane Eye, then we'd rest for the night and enter the temple in the morning with our prepared casters (which, counting the two Rangers, was most of the party) that much more prepared for what's to come. The party agrees that this is a good plan, which is pleasantly surprising because myself and the Cleric's player were normally the only ones not inclined to rush headlong into everything, which was a major reason why we'd ended up barely scraping through the previous temple.

Now, I blame myself for this next part for forgetting the First Law of RPG Travel: You always arrive exactly when the DM wants you to. Specifically, we get to the temple just in time to see the BBEG walk in. Crap. So suddenly we're rushing headlong into the place as usual, but this time with me already down half of my 4th level spells and all but one of my 3rd-levels. Because these things always get worse, what does the BBEG sick on us in the first room before proceeding deeper into the building? A Greater Earth Elemental, the one thing the party was least built to handle (our best damage-dealers being either precision damage users, dual-wielders, or both). Naturally, the ensuing fight consumes most of what combat-useful spells I did have.

So here I am at the beginning of a dungeon and already with almost no spells left. Naturally, I decide that we'd all be better off if I stayed behind. At which point the DM tells me I'll need to separate myself from the table. Knowing that that's not at all an unusual thing for a group to do, I comply. Of course, due to OOC boredom I eventually change my mind and send my familiar to check on the party, then run and catch up with them upon being told that they hadn't left behind any still-functioning obstacles. I figure if nothing else, I still have a Dimension Door I could use to get us the hell out of dodge if necessary.

After a more or less unremarkable trek through the rest of the dungeon, we reach a Solar sentry guarding the teleport mechanism into the last room, where we'd find whatever it was we ultimately needed to deal with. Before engaging said mechanism for us, the Solar requires each of our characters to state what we'd be willing to sacrifice to see our quest succeed (which, if something it could physically take then and there, it would) and what our ultimate goal in life was. Come my turn and, due to playing an altruistic Lawful Good Wizard who would want to give up something meaningful but values things only in direct proportion to his practical need for them, I can't think of a sacrifice. When it becomes clear I have a bad case of role-player's block the DM has the Solar express some very mild disappointment at my character's lack of sacrifice and move on to the "life goals" question. At which point I get to expound upon my character's desire to use magic to make the world a better place, but the emotional damage from being put on the spot and failing to deliver had already been done.

Once everyone finishes their turn at Deep RPingTM, the next step is obviously for the Solar to teleport us into the last room as promised... Just in time to catch the BBEG on his way out. Noticing our sudden arrival and it not being our first encounter with him, he stops to do the evil gloating thing... Partway through which the DM asks me to make a Fortitude save. Seeing as the BBEG is still much higher level than us at this point in the campaign and I'm playing a Wizard, I naturally fail. At which point the DM describes, without anyone having rolled initiative at any point, the BBEG launching a ghostly chain at my character which impales him, annihilates his body, and pulls his soul back into the BBEG's gauntlet hookshot-style, trapping it there.

Needless to say, I'm both startled and extremely miffed at this sudden development, and politely ask the DM to stay for a bit after the session ended so I could speak with him. When I ask him what's up with the thinly-veiled Rocks Fall, he explains that he wanted to up both the drama and the BBEG's threat level by having him kill someone off, and my character was the natural choice due to having shown himself the biggest threat to the BBEG of any party member during our first encounter with him (which was supposed to be a "the BBEG roughs you up and leaves you nearly dead" fight but instead ended with him teleporting away to lick his wounds after I overestimated his defenses and assumed he could handle being shown just how crazy Polymorph + War Weaver can be).

By the end of that conversation and its follow-ups over Facebook the DM admits that he'd made a huge mistake, but insists for continuity's sake that I still make a new character. Halfway through doing so I realize that I'm just not feeling it anymore, explain the circumstances to the group in the most polite way I can, and excuse myself from the campaign.
TL;DR: My involvement in a long and otherwise high-quality campaign comes to a sudden end when I end up spending the better part of a session being less than useless, get Stuffed in the Fridge at the end, and find myself lacking the will to reroll in the hope that it was just a fluke (which, according to the other players who stayed to the campaign's end, it was).
Aren't you the guy that polymorphed the party into hydras? It's a shame you didn't stick with it, because... well, I can fully understand what the big bad did there. Except for the Speed of Plot error, which was bad.
http://missmab.com/Comics/Vol923.jpg

Sith_Happens
2014-08-01, 04:44 PM
Aren't you the guy that polymorphed the party into hydras?

Bingo. Turns out that when you finally come face to face with a villain who's been running around the setting doing assorted Epic-worthy things, you end up expecting him to have the AC and hit points to match.:smalltongue:

Velaryon
2014-08-03, 02:00 PM
I know my worst gaming experiences pale in comparison to some of the ones already mentioned. I've never had one so bad that I got up and walked out, for example. But here are a couple of my worse ones:

After college I had a regular RP group made up of a few college friends and some other people that we added here and there. We had a couple of fantastic campaigns at first, but things slowly declined for awhile. One guy almost always GMed (let's call him "Joe"), and after awhile he was pretty clearly suffering from GM burnout but wouldn't admit it. After a successful Star Wars d20 campaign he ran a somewhat less successful Iron Heroes game, which a couple of people weren't really feeling. I had left the group for a couple months because I was working nights and came back for what turned out to be the last session of the Iron Heroes game. He crammed in some Construct creatures that I'm fairly certain aren't part of that game system, and so for the one session I played my character (who relied heavily on precision damage) was completely useless. At least two others were less than satisfied with the game so it was abruptly dropped and Joe offered to run an L5R game.

So we broke early for the night and came back the next week to make characters. A couple people had played L5R before but most of us had not, and we didn't have the books so we needed some help figuring out our options. Midway through making characters, Joe and one other guy pull out an old d%-based Middle Earth book and start talking about that - and soon enough they want to play that instead and start making characters for that. But a couple of others in the group (myself included) had no interest so after some debate we decided to just play D&D.

That campaign lasted a couple months and everyone loved it, then the DM abruptly dropped the storyline he was doing and dumped us through a portal from Forgotten Realms to Eberron. We made the best of our strange new surroundings and were starting to find some new plotlines to explore when the game was dropped suddenly.

Another guy offered to DM for a bit, and got us started on the d20 A Game of Thrones RPG (which is one of the most poorly organized books I've ever seen, incidentally). Problem with this other guy (let's call him Bob) is that Bob can't ever finish a campaign. He dreams up these huge, epic ideas for a multi-year long game that he just does not have the time to put together. He runs it for awhile and then just abruptly drops the game because he doesn't have the time to run it. That's disappointing but after it happens a few times, maybe you should start to think on a more manageable scale, hmm?

So after a couple sessions, Bob predictably doesn't have time to run a campaign so it's back to Joe. He runs a one-off Exalted with about half the group and then we do D&D again. Another short game before it ends because he has no idea what to do next.

This happens a couple more times before we start in on Star Wars Saga Edition, with Joe running again. A couple of us offered to run a game instead but he was sure he was up for it this time. Well, after a session or two he decided he wanted to change the time period of the game (I forget if it started in Rebellion Era and moved to New Jedi Order or vice versa).

Not too long after, both Bob and Joe landed jobs in different states and moved away. The rest of us started a d20 Steampunk campaign that was awesome for a couple years, and eventually Joe moved back and became a player instead of the GM. But for awhile there we couldn't keep a game going because he insisted on GMing but couldn't stick with anything.



This story is just a classic newbie DM with a campaign idea ripping off his anime du jour and an overpowered DMPC.

My friend (let's call him Tony) has played D&D for five or six years at this point but isn't exactly what you'd call an expert on the game. He still usually needs someone to help him make his character or at least show him the classes and feats and such that will help him pull off the character he's got in mind. He's also not a very diverse roleplayer and pretty much only ever plays stereotypical rogue or barbarian types (regardless of what class he's actually playing, he always plays the character as if it's one or the other... or a mix of both).

One day Tony tells us all he has a great idea for a campaign he wants to run. He wants to set it in Ravenloft, which we as a group have played in many times even if we're not always faithful to the spirit of the setting. Too often, instead of a blend of fantasy and Gothic horror it just ends up being a typical D&D game but heavy on the undead encounters. But we have fun and that's what counts.

Anyway, we are a little surprised but give him the benefit of the doubt, make characters, and come to the session. What we get is a DMPC who is obviously ripped straight out of whatever anime he was really into at the time (I suspect it was something Naruto but I don't watch the show so I can't be sure). I have doubts he even made a character sheet for this guy. The session consists of us getting into encounters that are too much for us until the DMPC jumps in and saves us all with his magical DMPC abilities that as far as I can tell aren't based on anything that exists in D&D.

To give you an idea of what a train wreck this game was, not only did my enchanter never tell any of the other PCs his name, but nobody even noticed because they were all distracted by the DM's uber-PC that never let us do anything.

Inevitability
2014-08-03, 02:32 PM
I saw this thread a few days ago, but didn't really have anything to tell that I didn't post already in my 'worst DM' thread.

Now I do. :smallfrown:

I really wanted to play some 5th Edition D&D. Sadly, my town is devoid of people who game, but I managed to get two people I know well (won't get into details) to try it out. Both roll up characters, I create a giant setting with lots of stuff to do.

Things start well enough. Player #1 (who is more interested in the game than the other player) has a nice rogue character with a backstory about how he used to be a priest who got depressive after a violent attack on his chapel and mostly lost faith in (demi-)humanity and its inherit goodness.

Player #2 had a cleric mostly build for non-combat and based around social skills. Nothing too fancy, although it was clear he didn't really put a lot of time in it.

The first hour of gaming progresses well. Players learn of an assassination plot, warn the intended victim, and are dispatched together with a bunch of guards to the presumed house where the assassin can be found. There, someone starts shooting at them from the first floor, instantly knocking one of the guards out. Player #2 and his guards start breaking down the front door, Player #1 decides to sneak around and get in through a back door.

That's when things go south. Player #1 insists on determining every single guard's action. So the combat boils down to:

-I make a single attack for my NPC.
-Player #1 does his stuff, often having a small speech on his turn and instructing all of the guards individually.
-Player #2 makes a single skill check, moves a bit and gets a little closer to his goal.
-Player #1 describes what every NPC does, which is redundant since he already told what they were going to do on his own turn.

When first confronted with his behavior, Player #1 got upset and stated that he could talk as much as he want, since 'talking is a free action'. I decided to let it fly for the sake of keeping things moving.

While commanding a squad of soldiers is still sensible, it became clear the player just wanted to control a lot of board pieces when he decided that the five pigs he once bought were joining in. This meant that in addition to having to hear all actions being stated twice and enduring the speech, I and player #2 also had to endure a minute of: :Pig A moves there, pig B moves there, pig C oinks, pig D sniffs a piece of trash..."

Eventually, I saw that player #2 was getting bored from only getting to have 20 seconds of action where player #1 was getting five minutes. I politely asked player #1 if he could stop having his pigs do meaningless stuff as it wasn't doing anything but slowing the game down.

Player #1 then got ANGRY. He literally got a tantrum because he couldn't slow the game down. He got up, walked away, all the while exclaiming the game was stupid and I couldn't DM. Player #2 and me were just speechless.

So, that's the story of what is officially my worst gaming session ever. Not only do I feel bad for making things get to this stage now, I also hate that all of the material I wrote for the setting is now lying around gathering dust. Player #2 offered to try to make a compromise, so I hope things will settle down.

Kish
2014-08-03, 03:12 PM
Ugh... the worst gaming experience I've ever had... and this is serious, was just last night. In the campaign before, I got a SWEET new magical staff! In the current adventure, I rolled a natural 20!!! A sphere of fire spell activated, killing two kobolds and seriously burning others.


Now here comes the bad part. We got a cleric on our team, and my character wanted to know if there were still spells left in there. The answer was, "Yes." Yippee!!!!!!!!!!!! But... my DM asked, sort of taking control of the cleric, "Have you used a spell on this to take a life?"

Yes. Apparently, it had belonged to an epic-level sorcerer who had been betrayed by his apprentice. With his dying breath, the sorcerer cursed the staff.

Now, in 4 years, my character will become an undead. Yippee, Yippee, Yippee.:smallannoyed:
As hymer said, that sounds like an obvious "so you have four years to break the curse" plot component. The DM may yet be unfair to you, but unless you left out details along the lines of "the DM crammed the staff into my character's hands and forced her/him to use it without identifying it first" (or, of course, "It had been magically identified, this curse just got thrown in afterward") I don't think you have anything to complain about yet.

Sith_Happens
2014-08-03, 03:46 PM
As hymer said, that sounds like an obvious "so you have four years to break the curse" plot component. The DM may yet be unfair to you, but unless you left out details along the lines of "the DM crammed the staff into my character's hands and forced her/him to use it without identifying it first" (or, of course, "It had been magically identified, this curse just got thrown in afterward") I don't think you have anything to complain about yet.

Or "curses have a high chance of dodging lower-level identification techniques," because they do.

Angelalex242
2014-08-03, 04:10 PM
The nastiest thing I have to report didn't happen to me, it happened to a friend. I've posted the story before, and it basically boiled down to 'sexual harassment at the D&D table', including actual fondling of said girl's thigh under the table, and sexual expoitation of her characters.

KuReshtin
2014-08-04, 07:25 AM
As hymer said, that sounds like an obvious "so you have four years to break the curse" plot component.

I once had something kind of like that happen to me. I didn't take it as something really bad, though, so we instead tried to find a solution to it, as described below. Turned out to be pretty epic. :smallbiggrin:
My rogue character was very infatuated with shiny things. gems, golden trinkets. Anything shiny, he was enamoured with.
So, the group found themselves in this desert town in the middle of nowhere, and my character was wandering around the marketplace to try and find some nice new things that I could 'liberate'.
All of a sudden, this beggar-looking guy comes up to me, holding out a gemstone and telling me to 'take it, it's yours!'. Since my character likes shiny things, I grabbed it from the beggar's hand to inspect it.
As soon as I grabbed it, the beggar started laughing and turned and ran away.
I looked at the guy running away, and then looked at the new, shiny gem I'd got for free, shrugged my shoulders, packed the gem into my gem-bag and then went about my way.

Next day, the group got a mission to head outside into the desert to find some McTrinket for the employer, and set off. After about an hours travel, the GM tells me that I feel as if I just got stung by a hornet, taking 1HP damage. Thinking nothing of it, we keep traveling, and after another hour or so, the Gm tells me the same thing again. I look around for any sign of insects that would be able to bite or sting me, but can't find anything. This goes on for the duration of the mission outside the town, causing the cleric to have to use a healing spell now and then, since I basically take 1HP damage each hour we're outside the town.

As we get back to town, the next day, we go to the local wizard guy to try to figure out what's wrong with me, and I then realise that the bites seems to have stopped as soon as we got back inside the town walls.
Turns out that the gem I got from the beggar was a cursed blood garnet. it also seemed as if most people in town knew about it, and the curse also included that if the blood garnet was not willingly taken, it would return to the current 'legitimate owner' of it. So, even if I packed it into the pocket of one of my companions, or stashed it with someone else, I would still be stung for 1HP each hour.
This annoyed me a bit, until the Gm said that the wizard claimed to have a cure for the curse, but we'd need to head outside of town again to go hunt for some giant spider eggs in a giant spider's lair out in the desert as it appeared to be some ingredient needed to break the curse.

So we head out into the desert again, and I keep getting stung by these curse-insects, starting to get annoyed at it.
We manage to defeat the spider and bring back some spider's eggs to the wizard to make him break this curse.
The wizard laughs delightedly when we present him with the spider's eggs, cracks one open and gulps down the contents like it's some delicacy.
This leaves out group standing around, looking a bit confused at each other.
When I ask him why him eating a spider's egg would help break the curse, he says that the spider's eggs didn't have anything at all to do with breaking the curse.

He then thanks us for bringing him the eggs as he'd not had any decent, fresh spider's eggs to eat for a long time, and then takes the blood garnet, places it on the floor and steps on it with the heel of his boot, shattering it into millions of pieces.
He then declares that the curse is broken.
My character gets annoyed as hell about this, since he could have just told us about it before we had to go out into the desert where I kept getting 'bit' for the two days we were out on this spider hunt of his, to which he just replies that if he'd done that, he 'wouldn't have got any of these delicious spider eggs'.
Realising that the wizard is way too powerful for our group, the rest of the group grabs me before I leap at him to try to cut out his tongue, and quickly leave.

Later on, I found the beggar sleeping against a wall in the town while I was sneaking around with an invisibility spell and a cat's grace spell cast on me so that I would not make any sounds and could not be seen by anyone.

My revenge was to walk up to him, carefully take aim, and then kick him in the face as hard as I could. As I described, in great detail, how carefully I was taking aim the rest of the group, who were only listening to this little adventure of mine, laughed their heads off as they realised what I was about to do, and they broke out in a giant cheer as the boot connected with the beggar's nose and he fell down, limply, and I casually walked away.



The nastiest thing I have to report didn't happen to me, it happened to a friend. I've posted the story before, and it basically boiled down to 'sexual harassment at the D&D table', including actual fondling of said girl's thigh under the table, and sexual expoitation of her characters.

Sounds like a very bad thing, but probably something that shouldn't be discussed a whole lot further, as there's recently been a thread about something like that already closed down for getting out of hand.

Segev
2014-08-04, 09:12 AM
Re: the blood-curse gem.

Did it only curse you when you left town? If so, that sounds like something easily mitigated. Get a hireling who doesn't want to leave town anyway, and give it to him. Work out a deal with some trusted friends so that you just pass it off to whoever's going to be in town for a while when people need to leave town.

KuReshtin
2014-08-05, 05:10 AM
Re: the blood-curse gem.

Did it only curse you when you left town? If so, that sounds like something easily mitigated. Get a hireling who doesn't want to leave town anyway, and give it to him. Work out a deal with some trusted friends so that you just pass it off to whoever's going to be in town for a while when people need to leave town.

Only started when we left town. The GM explained that most people in town (we were outsiders and didn't know anyone) knew about it and didn't want anything to do with it.
Also, my character liked shiny things and really, REALLY didn't want to give it up, so instead we decided to try to find a cure for the curse.
It wasn't a big deal. it was an enjoyable gaming session so really shouldn't have been in this thread. Just that the story of the curse brought back the recollection of the story and I wanted to share it. :smallbiggrin:

oxybe
2014-08-05, 07:08 AM
Two stories for the price of one post! The first one involves the best rage-quit I've been privy to and the second involves the party going so off-rails we left the ground and never touched down again.


So me and two other guys are hanging out at the FLGS, bored out of our gourds.

We'll call them L and J. Both have gamed for years with me and I've even shared rent with L for a while. Nice guys.

So in walks G. G is... socially awkward. Not a bad guy at all, friendly and often well-meaning, but he has issues picking up non-verbal cues or even subtle verbal ones.

So G walks in, books in hand and tells us he's looking to try his hand at GMing. We were bored so we say "Why not?". G sets up a screen, brings out his notebook and we grab the PHB behind the FLGS's counter (L occasionally worked at the counter when the owner was away and was trusted by the staff and customers... dude had one of the spare keys) and start making characters.

So we roll up characters. I can't remember what I rolled. I remember there was a bard, because he tried singing once, but the particulars of who played the bard, I can't say.

G starts us of as part of an airship crew, flying above a large city and trying to defend it from invaders.

At this point, one would fully expect to be boarding other ships mid-air and doing sweet swashbuckling right? Nope.

We were rank and file grunts of the airship, so most of the session was simply us loading cannons, firing & missing because we have like, a +3 to hit at best. And this goes on and on and on... G keeps making descriptions of broadside attacks by the airships, swerving, maneuvering... none of this being done by the players mind, who are in the galley shooting cannons rather ineffectually.

So L gets rather bored from wasting cannonballs and goes a s'ploring. Pretty mundane stuff: stores of ammunition, powder, some food & medical supplies, spare wood/cloth/nails/tar to patch the ship, etc. Then he finds the engine room.

This is where the whole thing starts falling apart. Before we were just bored. Now G starts inserting his own brand of humour into a scenario we were actually taking seriously. L finds out that the ship is powered... by farts. Just, big old fire elementals, passing wind which immediately exploded, natch, and caused the combustion needed to power the engines.

G is giggling at his own revelation that it's powered by elemental methane, but none of us three are laughing. Eye rolls are shared and G describes the smell a bit, giggling a bit more but L just asks him to drop it and he returns to his post.

More ineffectual airship combat occurs when L asks the question that's been hiding in the back of our brains: the town described to us was huge. Like, a modern metropolis huge. How much of the city has been damaged by the rather obviously missed broadside barrages.

G obviously didn't want his city destroyed but failed to consider the damage those iron balls falling at a rather serious speed could do to the town beneath us.

So we get "they all miss the town". L, at this point, has stopped giving a flip. He is in this game because neither me nor J brought our Magic the Gathering decks and the store is dead and there is no one at his home to game with.

G, rather miraculously, gets the hint that L is losing patience with this game. We had been playing for at least two hours and had 0 input on the direction of the game, just coasting along on his "deadly" airship combat where no one can land a hit on the broadside of the fart-powered, barn-shaped,slowly-moving zepplins.

So he starts bringing in even more "humor" which consists of describing cannonballs ricocheting off each other in midair, doing flips and whatnot and eventually running out of ammunition and, in desperation, firing out the kitchen sink. I kid you not.

At this point we are all rolling our eyes and trying to steer G into getting a better pacing for this game. I don't thin any of us had been more tired getting nothing accomplished.

G does actually give us a decent combat though, since once we had fired off the sink we had little other choice but to board the enemy ship, or wait to see which ship's elemental stopped farting first.

So we get a nice little combat going and NPCs sabotage the engine so it crashes the enemy ship. At this point L, again, points out that we're above a densely populated city and this large... explosive... ship will cause serious damage. So G has our ship tether the crashing vessel and, as we're losing altitude, manage to glide to safety outside of town with no casualties taken.

L, at this point, has had enough. A mix of boredom and a dull session full of bad humor and no agency just causes him to snap. He gets up, takes his character sheet in both hands, rips it very nicely down the vertical, tosses it in front of G and leaves without a sound. G is speechless. Me and J stifle laughs, because I had not seen L do something like that in a long time.

Me a J do apologize to G and explain to him where the session faltered and I left to catch up to L, who was outside the FLGS having a smoke. I gamed with G a few times after and he seemed to have gotten better at reading people, and last I heard he was GMing a group regularly too.

We still do laugh about how bad the session was though.


As you can probably guess, this one is about linear storytelling. The GM in question, we'll say B, is a fan of a certain book series. I don't know which one, I really don't read much fantasy. Either way, he likes this one series.

So he makes a campaign based around the books, but doesn't tell us this in advance. I was actually let in on this by M, another player, an old friend who introduced me to B. M was lent the book series by B so once we met a few familiar plot elements (and NPCs...) it was apparent to him.

So the game starts off with the party basically naked, except for a single nice dagger but no recollection of who we are, just our class based stuff (fighter knows how to fight, barbarian can rage, cleric gets spells from god, etc...). Now I'm playing a wizard and when i am told we have no starting gear, I ask "No spellbook?" as well as "No holy symbol for the cleric? B throws us level 7 PCs a bone and lets us get our "you can cast" items, the barbarian quickly finds a big stick and the rogue is perfectly happy with a free masterwork dagger by his side.

A quick fight sets up a combat pecking order as my transmuter is in a much better position to defend himself and the party then the poor barbarian, who is only has a mundane greatclub to his name and no real optimization going on.

So we get to town and are immediately looked upon with suspicion. Turns our the daggers are a proof we are cursed (we never found out what the curse was, BTW) and no matter how hard we try to get rid of it, it will never leave our side. The idea of a curse that doesn't really affect us in any mechanical way other then leaving us permanently tethered to a masterwork dagger made me chuckle but whatever, right?

Well the "whatever" shows up in the form of two NPCs "big muscly guy" and "hot chick", both of which M tells me B ripped strait out of the book, as he did with the cursed daggers. BMG and HC have us do quests for them, akin to the old "Elminister needs 4 brave heroes to go pickup his laundry" plot but only slightly more aggravating, since BMG and HC both follow us as we nearly get killed, what with us being given the equivalent gear of a level 1 PC by the duo. Note that these two do actually swoop in from the sidelines to save us, but just sit and watch as we struggle otherwise.

So for several sessions we get no treasure and are led by the nose by these two NPCs who threaten physical harm to us should we disobey them. We had been told on more then a few occasions that we would soon have more control, but we couldn't see it coming. After the cleric and rogue go down in one adventure (three guesses why?) and upon resting, me and barbarian hatch a plan.

We are tired of these two's BS. We are tired of having to be forcefully marched on a quest we want no part of and were press-ganged into. We had been watching these two and were pretty sure they were 100% non-casters.

So I prepare my spells and hand the barbarian a rope and tell him to tie it around his waist. BMG and HC look on in curiousness as barb does this. I proceed to tell him to hold on tight as I first cast levitate on the barbarian then immediately cast Polymorph, turning myself into the form of a young gold dragon. I then proceed to fly off (at a movement rate of 200ft clumsy) as fast as possible (run speed, so x4) in a direction, holding tightly to the rope the unencumbered barbarian was tied to, recasting the spells as the 7 minute duration neared it's end.

I still like to think at what people below might have been thinking, seeing a now-free man hooting and hollering while cloud surfing at breakneck speed northwards, being pulled along by a gold dragon.

Either way, it was late and B called it a night so he could plan something for next session. Next session never happened.

Now, admittingly for this story I was younger and could have handled it better, but no one was enjoying the company of Mr and Ms "I am so great, watch as I quickly kill those that displease me. Also, do this task while I supervise and scrutinize", we were social pariahs and no idea why beyond "we are cursed" (and never found out what the curse actually does, despite asking around) and we were kept under-geared the entire campaign.

Krazzman
2014-08-05, 05:37 PM
To make it short:
We once gamed with our old group resulting in me actually leaving. Because of reasons I played a neutral cleric going for rebuke and planning to take master of shrouds. Group (halfling rogue and a fighter) leaves me alone with a riddle door. I thought they would return soon but they do not. The riddle gets solved by me and I am jumped by a ghoul. His paralysis touch works despite my nat20 as the dm was nice enough to roll for me. The first time that weekend he did something like this.

And yet another dm of this old group is the reason I don't like dsa. But tthat's an other tale.

MesiDoomstalker
2014-08-05, 08:51 PM
Oh theses are fun! I have two stories with the same group. There are 5 of us (including myself). I'll describe them briefly.

Not-Drizzt/DM-1: Good friend of mine, but makes her mind up about things and doesn't budge. Refuses to play 3.5.
The Silent One: Always plays the same character, silent rogue-ish type that is some kind of psychotic. Super-best friend with Not-Drizzt.
Cackling Wizard: My best friend, introduced me to this group.
Red Wizard/DM-2: Cackling Wizards brother, vastly prefer's 3.5 to 4e.

The first story takes place about 2 months after Cackling Wizard introduced me to DnD (3.5) with a couple of our mutual friends (not the group above). For various college-related reasons, that group broke up. Note that I am still very new to DnD as a whole, mechanically and fluff-wise. Cackling Wizard invites me to a new group with a mutual friend (Not-Drizzt/DM-1) and his brother (Red Wizard) and their friend (The Silent One). I was informed Not-Drizzt is DMing and was told they needed a cleric.

I go over to the Wizard brother's house to build my character, and told we are doing 4e. Up till this point I didn't even know there were multiple versions. So they show me the character builder for 4e and they feed me advise, primarily Red Wizard. However, his advice is primarily geared towards 3.5 Clerics. "Smash people's face for the lord" was the phrase repeated very often. So the cleric I built (in 4e I remind you) is very focused on dealing damage (rather poorly in hindsight).

First session starts, we meet other characters. Cackling Wizard is playing a Minotaur Fighter and Red Wizard is playing a Red Wizard (see? the names mean something!), the Silent One plays some kind of immortal thing-a-ma-what that is super homebrew that he and Not-Drizzt came up with. We were dolled out gear and started play at level 5. Everyone else got standard gear for that level, except The Silent One who got Starweave leather or something. I forget the exact name but the point is its an Epic with a capital E piece of gear. Naturally, his AC is sky high and untouchable. The reason I got was "This character has a history for us. He wears Starweave. We wouldn't be faithfully recreating him if he didn't wear Starweave.

Ok fine, whatever. I've read enough of 4e rule book to know AC is not the only defense score Not-Drizzt can target. Fast forward to the middle first session, trekking through a Dragon's lair. Most of the group is at about half their Healing Surges, except Red Wizard who only has 1 left. The Silent One has not been targeted, more or less hit, and almost every attack is A) hitting AC and B) hits the rest of us no matter the roll. Not-Drizzt and The Silent One claim I'm a bad Cleric because the party keeps taking heavy hits. I'm like "I thought Cleric's healed wounds, not prevented them?" They blow it off, and we fight the Dragon (miraculously, Red Wizard doesn't die).

Fast forward a few more sessions of The Silent One never taking damage, the rest of the party in constant peril and claims of my bad Cleric-ness. We're tromping through a swamp for.... some reason. We were given cross-roads and told, left or right. Going back wasn't an option. Anyways, Not-Drizzt gets an evil smile and tells me to make a Atheltics check. I roll, getting a decent result for being untrained and no Strength to speak of (Remember: 4e Cleric don't need Strength). I get snatched up by an Ancient Black Dragon (we've leveled once since the first session, so level 6). As the rest of the group freak out, I start unleashing everything in my arsenal to break free, none of which actually lands (Ancient Black Dragon). The rest of the party start fighting the Very Young Black Dragon in the dragon's nest (not cave) and Not-Drizzt informs us that the ABD took me because A) we were in her nest and B) I was the shiniest. I was wearing Chainmail and Cackling Wizard was wearing Full-Plate, but because I was a Half-Elf Cleric, and he was a Minoutar, my armor was super shiny and not at all covered in the various ichor of the freaking swamp which I was neck deep in at least twice earlier that day.

Over the course of the fight, a different Black Dragon fights the Ancient one (which is the only reason I didn't). In typical fashion, the Very Young one goes straight for the Wizard, who without me there to heal him, goes down. And then drowns in the mud, without some kind of save. Eventually, the Ancient drops me during its tussle with the other dragon (my efforts had no effect whatsoever on the outcome and I'm fairly sure I was on hold till the Very Young was killed). Cue kersplatting on the mud. If not for the fact I had an item that prevents me from falling below 1 HP once with me, I'd have died from the fall. Not-Drizzt thought I could take 20d20 and live for some reason. Then The Silent One blames me for not being there to save Red Wizard from dieing. Session finally ends and game ends not too long after that (with me severely frustrated).

Found out later Not-Drizzt was fudging her die rolls (up), which was the main reason I wasn't able to keep the party healed. The damage output she was giving us was insane for our level and shared between 3 people instead of 4 (since The Silent One got his armor otherwise he wouldn't play).

Skip forward about 2 years and a few short lived and wildly unsuccessful games later, I'm much more experienced (dare I say more than the others). Red Wizard says he'll DM this time around, since Not-Drizzt had DM'd the other last half-dozen games. It was going to be Forgotten Realms and he was adopting a 3.5 campaign he made for 4e. He mentioned that the finally was against "some big evil thingy" (exact quote) and that actions we take (or don't take) during the campaign determine when it arrived and in what state (weakened, empowered, etc).


I roll up a Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamaut, who is a recovering opium addict. Red Wizard and I agree that he'd take a small dose once a day to keep him in check and balanced and said he would do it on first watch when the party slept so he'd avoid doing it while others in the party could see it (he was deeply ashamed of the habit). I mistakenly let it slip he was an addict to the others. Immediately I was told Paladin's can'd drugs by Not-Drizzt and The Silent One. I told them, show me where in Bahamaut's Dictum's that prevents usage of drugs. A lot of repeating of "But Paladin's can't!" without any real evidence. Then the Silent One tells me I can't play a Paladin because "One, he's a druggie and two, I hate Paladin's with their holier than thou attitude." I repeatedly informed him that the character was very down to earth. He was only concerned with his own redemption and not that of anyone else unless Bahamaut's will commanded him otherwise.

Cackling Wizard rolled up a Cackling Old Man Wizard (think a less extreme Old Man Jenkins). The Silent One rolled up a Psychotic Avenger with poison for blood. And Not-Drizzt rolled up a "Neutral" Drow who was raised on the Surface. By regular Elves. And hates Drow. And is totally not at all like Drizzt.

Game starts, and we have to go to this one old Dwarven Forge and get some ancestral relics. We hop a ride with a trade caravan heading in that direction. Mid-way through, there is some ruckus int he woods, and the caravan leader told us to go check it out. We found a small hut and a little girl with a bunch of toys. Red Wizard hands me a note saying "Your divine senses scream danger. You are sure the girl is undead and an abomination to Bahamaut's wishes." Girl offers us some information on how to get into the Forge secretly. I refuse, call her out on her undead-i-ness and charge. Note this is completely in-character for my character and a Paladin of Bahamaut. Ensue battle where we trounce her easily and The Silent One constantly bitching about how we shouldn't have attack, purposefully does nothing of use, blames the incident on my character's drug addiction (which he didn't know about IC) and general "Paladin's suck" talk. Session ends and Red Wizard informs us that by killing the undead girl, the big evil thing's return was stalled an additional 4 weeks (note: we don't know when it was supposed to arrive, so 4 weeks could have been a lot or a little, I don't really know). The Silent One and Not-Drizzt both chime in "So what, we'd get to the Forge faster!"

Several more sessions go by, with repeated attempts of metagaming to find my opium addiction, repeated calls for Paladin's suck, etc etc etc. Finally, we get to a point where we are discussing passage through a part of the Forge with some Dreugars. My Paladin has lots of social stats so I start to speak until Not-Drizzt intterrupts. "I've got this! Druegar's fear Drow! And Drow are really Intimidating! I roll an intimidate!" I ask "What's your intimidate? Mine's +14."
"7. But I'm a Drow. Their super intimidating just by being Drow. I get a bonus."
"So do Dragonborn. And thats why you have a +2 on your sheet for Other on Intimidate. But unlike you, I actually have Charisma score to speak of and Intimidate trained."
"Druegar won't be intimidated by brute force of a big Dragonborn. Only the subtle intimidation of a Drow will work!"
she rolls, the die number fairly good (can't remember specifics). Druegar laugh in her face, basically stating no Drow scare them and in fact, they should deny us just for letting our "Pet Drow" speak. I quickly patch things up with a nice Diplomacy (which I actually RP'd apologizing and playing along with the Pet-Drow comment, unlike Not-Drizzt who just "stood over them and glared").

Finally, we reach the inner sanctum of the forge and retrieve the weapons we were looking for. At this point, the Silent One picks up one (a dagger, of course) and tries to shank me. Thanks to my high Perception, I beat his Stealth roll and prevent a Sneak Attack. Not-Drizzt (thankfully) and Cackling Wizard stay to the sidelines. I thoroughly trounce him as he burns through tons of One-Use equipment he "found" on his way there and his Dailies dropping me to Bloodied, only to be healed back up by my Lay on Hands. Essentially, I out lasted him by use of Lay on Hands and end up killing him with a speech, to the effect of "I have tolerated your blasphemy and your torment and your ridicule for too long! Bahamaut has granted me sanction in this moment. May the Platinum Dragon have mercy on you."

The Silent One goes ballistic, saying I cheated, that Paladin's can't kill people, that I should have let him live. I asked him "when you tried to attack me, would you have let me live? Where in Bahamaut's Dictum's does it say a Paladin can not defend himself from an attacker with intent to kill? Or to remove a persistent Evil from the world he had, by fate, had the misfortune to ally himself with? If I was a "Holier than Thou" Paladin as you've repeatedly claimed, I would have never associated with you. I'd have left the group or demanded he leave. I tolerated your character because mine believed you were just a troubled, misguided soul and that with some gentle push in the right direction, he could be redeemed as my character had. But by attacking him, without warning or provocation proved that was not the case. You were Evil, no matter what your character sheet says." He sputtered and fumed, but both Wizard brothers backed me up. "If you want to instigate PvP, accept the consequences. And attacking a Paladin of Bahamaut because he killed an undead girl is an evil act and well within his right and his religion to respond with equal measure. Thats the only reason I can see why you attacked him at all, in game."

The session ended after that. And so did the campaign. We tried starting a new one, this time one of the 40K games, but it sputtered and died too. The Silent One and Not-Drizzt aren't part of the group anymore. They left "of our own accord". Luckily, just in time for our old group to not be tied up in College-related things to get back together and start gaming again.

Sith_Happens
2014-08-05, 09:27 PM
So the cleric I built (in 4e I remind you) is very focused on dealing damage (rather poorly in hindsight).

"Poorly" as in you didn't build the character well, or "poorly" as in 4e Clerics aren't meant to be damage-dealers in the first place? Because from what I've heard "Laser Clerics" (i.e.- run around blasting everything with holy light) are very much a thing.

MesiDoomstalker
2014-08-05, 10:35 PM
"Poorly" as in you didn't build the character well, or "poorly" as in 4e Clerics aren't meant to be damage-dealers in the first place? Because from what I've heard "Laser Clerics" (i.e.- run around blasting everything with holy light) are very much a thing.

Poorly as I took a bunch of melee feats to buff my melee damage, took a bunch of melee powers and then took the biggest hitting weapon I could find (and didn't grab proficiency for). I rarely hit (though if it was becuase of my poor optimization or DM fudgery, I'm not sure) and even when I did, I did measly damage.

Sith_Happens
2014-08-05, 11:58 PM
I rarely hit (though if it was becuase of my poor optimization or DM fudgery, I'm not sure) and even when I did, I did measly damage.

Based on the story, I'm actually going to guess "DM fudgery." She couldn't have anyone besides The Silent One actually doing anything, now could she.

Earthwalker
2014-08-06, 04:28 AM
I have a couple of nice stories from my early RPG life. Both from the same Gm, let’s call him Bob. First story is playing Runequest 2nd Ed. We are a group of Orlanthi adventurers doing what work we can. Think there was 5 players in total and we ran around up to all kinds of no good, getting in fights and hunting chaos on the side. Raiding ruins and generally being adventurers.

The GM did not provide a lot of plot but we had fun and we seemed to be doing well. Things started to turn bad when at night I was woken to the sound of screaming. One of the player characters was on fire, he died from the damage before anyone could do anything.

We try to investigate everything, the person on guard (we will call him mad axe man) didn’t see a thing. We look for tracks around the dead players bed roll. Try to work out how it happened. Search around the camp but get no clues or useful information (despite someone rolling really really well). All we can think of is someone managed to fire some spell from the tree line and hit the poor player.

Days past and we were in a new area, again another rude awakening, another PC on fire. Dead before they could do anything. Just take xD6 damage, dead. This time another player was on watch and saw nothing. Again no clues. We decide to head to an Orlanthi temple and pay for a divination to see what is happening. The Divination comes back with something like “Your actions have cursed you”. Super useful and took all my coin.

Cutting the story a bit shorter. Myself and another character also die being burnt in our sleep. The only character to survive is Mad Axe Man. The explanation for the fires, why had we all died.

The GM had a private meeting out of game time with Mad Axe Man. It turns out we had killed his son on an adventure and the father wanted pay back. He would give Mad Axe Man 200 coin to kill us all. (I spent 1000 coin on the divination, so 200 was not a great deal of money, in DnD terms, your level 7 and someone pays you 200 gold to kill your party)
The fires were “simple” Mad Axe Man, would sneak over to a sleeping person. Cover them in lantern oil. Then set them on fire. Then get back to his bed roll without the player on guard noticing. All of this happened with no rolls from any other player, or from Mad Axe Man as far as I can tell. The GM did roll some dice behind the screen (Clearly rolling our checks against Mad Axe Mans)

When all this came to light I was stunned. I had played with the group for over a year never once was PVP on the table. Of course no one ever said this is or isn’t a pvp game. I never got a single roll to defend myself. When the GM explained he was rolling for me, I asked him what my spot and listen skills were. He was out over by 15 % on both. As soon as Mad Axe Man took the job to kill us, he had the GM on side and it was impossible to spot him or stop him.
Lesson to learn, find out if it’s a PvP campaign before starting. (Or in my case, don’t play in PvP campaigns)
Second story will follow.

Earthwalker
2014-08-06, 07:56 AM
Shadowrun story this time. Bob is Gming. I am playing an Ork Phy Adept, We also have Rick playing a face / decker. Jim playing a cyber gun guy and Mike playing another gun guy. We are light on magic but it will be fine. We get a job. Find these three people. And get a blood sample from them. We are given a container for the blood and a week to get it. The mission goes well. We do find out one of the people is the son of a Yakuza boss, we manage to get his blood but we do get seen, his was the last we needed.

So we phone to arrange a meet with our Mr J. I take the blood and put it in a locker at the train station. Then hide the key to the locker under a bench near where the meet is going down. My character had trust issues and didn’t want to walk into the meet with the blood or a key. I would get the key once I found out things were on the up and up.
So the meet is on the third floor of an office building, odd but we go with it. We scout out the area, the decker runs searches on who owns the building. It all seem ok, no connections to anyone we know. We get in and get to the third floor and the ambush hits. Stun glass, snipers on the buildings close by shooting into the room (only on the east side). People start dropping quickly, mainly from stun.

A player in a different group once gave me some helpful advice. “If you are in a building on fire act quick, jump out of the window. You then have much more time as you fall to think of how to deal with that problem” I take it to heart and state I am firing a burst from my SMG into the window (one on the west side of the building) then diving out to the floor.
This start a bit of arguing from the GM. The glass is bullet proof it won’t shatter (I ask how the snipers are shooting then) We do some rule delving and find the barrier rating of the glass, can’t be too high or his snipers wouldn’t work. Turns out a burst from an SMG firing explosive rounds total blows a meter wide hole in the glass.

Next the jump down, more arguing that the fall should kill me. We rules delve and I roll and manage to live, badly injured but alive. Then I am told I am in too much pain to move, my legs are badly damaged. I take a dose of kamikaze which allows me to ignore pain for a while. Then I book it. Running as fast as I can out of there till I can find alley to hide in. After a while I need to move out before the Kamikaze wears off. I am jumped by 4 guys who shot me with gel rounds taking me down. Turns out an astral mage tracked me from the building and told them where I was. (impossible in the rules now)
(I got the impression it was scripted for us to be captured, me running as long as I did was me arguing to use the rules for things, getting out the window, surviving the fall, being able to move while on a serious wound)
So we are captured. It’s the Yakuza, they want the blood samples. Now we have a face, perhaps they should do the talking. The bad guys first action is to shoot the face. Then state they will get medical help if we cooperate. Rick just sits there quietly fuming at what had just occurred.

With the face dead I start talking. Trying to broker some deal, I offer to give up the blood if they heal Rick and let the others go. I am trying to negotiate from a position with virtually no leverage. If I hand over the blood it does appear we will just die though. It goes on for about 2 or 3 hours real time. Me trying to come to a deal. In the end it gets to a gun at my head and the bad guy saying tell me before I count to three or your dead.
I don’t tell and make a willpower test to not speak. Bang I am dead.

The bad guys turn to Mike and Jim who have not talked the whole time. And ask for the blood. They say, “only the ork knows where it is”. (Which is true) so the yakuza let them go. End of adventure.

Jim and Mike collect karma but no money, me and Rick are dead.

At the end me and Rick are a little upset. I ask what we were supposed to do, Bob goes on saying we should have bargained or tried to reason with them. I point out I did all that over 2 hours. Every point he raised saying we should of tried I did. Once I pointed that out he says. Well you were an ork, they don’t listen to orks. So that was it I died because I was an ork. An inescapable ambush followed by a negotiation I could never win.
I think the worst of it was the two guys that didn’t say anything just got to walk away.

Me and Rick no longer play in the same group as Bob.

Fumble Jack
2014-08-06, 02:38 PM
This happenned last night. Ok so I was running my 3.5 game. The pc's had recently survived an encounter with the BBEG. The warforged monk was badly injured and in disrepair. They needed to return to town to get help from the Gnome artificer to piece him back together.

They discover the town under attack by a faction allied with the BBEG and the people are trying to fight off both the invaders and the fiends that attempted to be the law in the town. The party, except for the Duskblade sneaks by the fighting to get to the gnome. They succeed, while the Duskblade launches himself into combat. By sheer dumb luck the people manage to win the fight. The Duskblade feeling successful and after a failed wisdom check runs after a fleeing enemy chasing them right into the enemy camp. He meets with the leader of the forces that were assaulting the town. Instead of trying to bluff, intimidate, or be diplomatic, he goes irritate and fight her. (can't fully fault here as his character is brash) The main issue he's in the middle of their encampment.

She decides to cut her losses and depart with a prisoner that may hold valuable information and return to her factions leader. He's later thrown in with a large group of other prisoners whom are already broken in spirit. The faction leader tells him the ritual is almost ready and has an amulet ready for things to begin. Meant to scare and break him and also alluding to the fact this guy wants to become a lich.

What he does to try and get the other prisoners going is, howling, jumping, screaming and stomping. Which honestly scares the bajeebus out of the others. The faction leader calls to the subordinate that brought him in to discipline him. She begins to summon something.

At this time he asks if he has a chance to disrupt it. Im giving him the benefit of the doubt saying her spell won't be done for another round so sure. Which is when he tells me that he scooches down, reaches behind him, while casting true strike on himself, defecated in his hand, then tosses it at her. I incredibly flabbergasted ask him to repeat that, thinking maybe I heard him wrong. Nope he confirms again. Tosses it as an improvised weapon, and called shot. He rolls low on the die, not a botch, but just under what he needed to actually hit. If it wasn't a called shot, he would have hit. Then OOC explains to us all how this action was meant to be inspirational & tries to argue the psychology of how with the rogue player a graduated psych major. I have never so badly wanted to escape my own game, what made it worse, Duskblade was my ride there and back I still need brain bleach for this uggh

ReaderAt2046
2014-08-06, 02:54 PM
Oh theses are fun! I have two stories with the same group. There are 5 of us (including myself). I'll describe them briefly.

Not-Drizzt/DM-1: Good friend of mine, but makes her mind up about things and doesn't budge. Refuses to play 3.5.
The Silent One: Always plays the same character, silent rogue-ish type that is some kind of psychotic. Super-best friend with Not-Drizzt.
Cackling Wizard: My best friend, introduced me to this group.
Red Wizard/DM-2: Cackling Wizards brother, vastly prefer's 3.5 to 4e.

The first story takes place about 2 months after Cackling Wizard introduced me to DnD (3.5) with a couple of our mutual friends (not the group above). For various college-related reasons, that group broke up. Note that I am still very new to DnD as a whole, mechanically and fluff-wise. Cackling Wizard invites me to a new group with a mutual friend (Not-Drizzt/DM-1) and his brother (Red Wizard) and their friend (The Silent One). I was informed Not-Drizzt is DMing and was told they needed a cleric.

I go over to the Wizard brother's house to build my character, and told we are doing 4e. Up till this point I didn't even know there were multiple versions. So they show me the character builder for 4e and they feed me advise, primarily Red Wizard. However, his advice is primarily geared towards 3.5 Clerics. "Smash people's face for the lord" was the phrase repeated very often. So the cleric I built (in 4e I remind you) is very focused on dealing damage (rather poorly in hindsight).

First session starts, we meet other characters. Cackling Wizard is playing a Minotaur Fighter and Red Wizard is playing a Red Wizard (see? the names mean something!), the Silent One plays some kind of immortal thing-a-ma-what that is super homebrew that he and Not-Drizzt came up with. We were dolled out gear and started play at level 5. Everyone else got standard gear for that level, except The Silent One who got Starweave leather or something. I forget the exact name but the point is its an Epic with a capital E piece of gear. Naturally, his AC is sky high and untouchable. The reason I got was "This character has a history for us. He wears Starweave. We wouldn't be faithfully recreating him if he didn't wear Starweave.

Ok fine, whatever. I've read enough of 4e rule book to know AC is not the only defense score Not-Drizzt can target. Fast forward to the middle first session, trekking through a Dragon's lair. Most of the group is at about half their Healing Surges, except Red Wizard who only has 1 left. The Silent One has not been targeted, more or less hit, and almost every attack is A) hitting AC and B) hits the rest of us no matter the roll. Not-Drizzt and The Silent One claim I'm a bad Cleric because the party keeps taking heavy hits. I'm like "I thought Cleric's healed wounds, not prevented them?" They blow it off, and we fight the Dragon (miraculously, Red Wizard doesn't die).

Fast forward a few more sessions of The Silent One never taking damage, the rest of the party in constant peril and claims of my bad Cleric-ness. We're tromping through a swamp for.... some reason. We were given cross-roads and told, left or right. Going back wasn't an option. Anyways, Not-Drizzt gets an evil smile and tells me to make a Atheltics check. I roll, getting a decent result for being untrained and no Strength to speak of (Remember: 4e Cleric don't need Strength). I get snatched up by an Ancient Black Dragon (we've leveled once since the first session, so level 6). As the rest of the group freak out, I start unleashing everything in my arsenal to break free, none of which actually lands (Ancient Black Dragon). The rest of the party start fighting the Very Young Black Dragon in the dragon's nest (not cave) and Not-Drizzt informs us that the ABD took me because A) we were in her nest and B) I was the shiniest. I was wearing Chainmail and Cackling Wizard was wearing Full-Plate, but because I was a Half-Elf Cleric, and he was a Minoutar, my armor was super shiny and not at all covered in the various ichor of the freaking swamp which I was neck deep in at least twice earlier that day.

Over the course of the fight, a different Black Dragon fights the Ancient one (which is the only reason I didn't). In typical fashion, the Very Young one goes straight for the Wizard, who without me there to heal him, goes down. And then drowns in the mud, without some kind of save. Eventually, the Ancient drops me during its tussle with the other dragon (my efforts had no effect whatsoever on the outcome and I'm fairly sure I was on hold till the Very Young was killed). Cue kersplatting on the mud. If not for the fact I had an item that prevents me from falling below 1 HP once with me, I'd have died from the fall. Not-Drizzt thought I could take 20d20 and live for some reason. Then The Silent One blames me for not being there to save Red Wizard from dieing. Session finally ends and game ends not too long after that (with me severely frustrated).

Found out later Not-Drizzt was fudging her die rolls (up), which was the main reason I wasn't able to keep the party healed. The damage output she was giving us was insane for our level and shared between 3 people instead of 4 (since The Silent One got his armor otherwise he wouldn't play).

Skip forward about 2 years and a few short lived and wildly unsuccessful games later, I'm much more experienced (dare I say more than the others). Red Wizard says he'll DM this time around, since Not-Drizzt had DM'd the other last half-dozen games. It was going to be Forgotten Realms and he was adopting a 3.5 campaign he made for 4e. He mentioned that the finally was against "some big evil thingy" (exact quote) and that actions we take (or don't take) during the campaign determine when it arrived and in what state (weakened, empowered, etc).


I roll up a Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamaut, who is a recovering opium addict. Red Wizard and I agree that he'd take a small dose once a day to keep him in check and balanced and said he would do it on first watch when the party slept so he'd avoid doing it while others in the party could see it (he was deeply ashamed of the habit). I mistakenly let it slip he was an addict to the others. Immediately I was told Paladin's can'd drugs by Not-Drizzt and The Silent One. I told them, show me where in Bahamaut's Dictum's that prevents usage of drugs. A lot of repeating of "But Paladin's can't!" without any real evidence. Then the Silent One tells me I can't play a Paladin because "One, he's a druggie and two, I hate Paladin's with their holier than thou attitude." I repeatedly informed him that the character was very down to earth. He was only concerned with his own redemption and not that of anyone else unless Bahamaut's will commanded him otherwise.

Cackling Wizard rolled up a Cackling Old Man Wizard (think a less extreme Old Man Jenkins). The Silent One rolled up a Psychotic Avenger with poison for blood. And Not-Drizzt rolled up a "Neutral" Drow who was raised on the Surface. By regular Elves. And hates Drow. And is totally not at all like Drizzt.

Game starts, and we have to go to this one old Dwarven Forge and get some ancestral relics. We hop a ride with a trade caravan heading in that direction. Mid-way through, there is some ruckus int he woods, and the caravan leader told us to go check it out. We found a small hut and a little girl with a bunch of toys. Red Wizard hands me a note saying "Your divine senses scream danger. You are sure the girl is undead and an abomination to Bahamaut's wishes." Girl offers us some information on how to get into the Forge secretly. I refuse, call her out on her undead-i-ness and charge. Note this is completely in-character for my character and a Paladin of Bahamaut. Ensue battle where we trounce her easily and The Silent One constantly bitching about how we shouldn't have attack, purposefully does nothing of use, blames the incident on my character's drug addiction (which he didn't know about IC) and general "Paladin's suck" talk. Session ends and Red Wizard informs us that by killing the undead girl, the big evil thing's return was stalled an additional 4 weeks (note: we don't know when it was supposed to arrive, so 4 weeks could have been a lot or a little, I don't really know). The Silent One and Not-Drizzt both chime in "So what, we'd get to the Forge faster!"

Several more sessions go by, with repeated attempts of metagaming to find my opium addiction, repeated calls for Paladin's suck, etc etc etc. Finally, we get to a point where we are discussing passage through a part of the Forge with some Dreugars. My Paladin has lots of social stats so I start to speak until Not-Drizzt intterrupts. "I've got this! Druegar's fear Drow! And Drow are really Intimidating! I roll an intimidate!" I ask "What's your intimidate? Mine's +14."
"7. But I'm a Drow. Their super intimidating just by being Drow. I get a bonus."
"So do Dragonborn. And thats why you have a +2 on your sheet for Other on Intimidate. But unlike you, I actually have Charisma score to speak of and Intimidate trained."
"Druegar won't be intimidated by brute force of a big Dragonborn. Only the subtle intimidation of a Drow will work!"
she rolls, the die number fairly good (can't remember specifics). Druegar laugh in her face, basically stating no Drow scare them and in fact, they should deny us just for letting our "Pet Drow" speak. I quickly patch things up with a nice Diplomacy (which I actually RP'd apologizing and playing along with the Pet-Drow comment, unlike Not-Drizzt who just "stood over them and glared").

Finally, we reach the inner sanctum of the forge and retrieve the weapons we were looking for. At this point, the Silent One picks up one (a dagger, of course) and tries to shank me. Thanks to my high Perception, I beat his Stealth roll and prevent a Sneak Attack. Not-Drizzt (thankfully) and Cackling Wizard stay to the sidelines. I thoroughly trounce him as he burns through tons of One-Use equipment he "found" on his way there and his Dailies dropping me to Bloodied, only to be healed back up by my Lay on Hands. Essentially, I out lasted him by use of Lay on Hands and end up killing him with a speech, to the effect of "I have tolerated your blasphemy and your torment and your ridicule for too long! Bahamaut has granted me sanction in this moment. May the Platinum Dragon have mercy on you."

The Silent One goes ballistic, saying I cheated, that Paladin's can't kill people, that I should have let him live. I asked him "when you tried to attack me, would you have let me live? Where in Bahamaut's Dictum's does it say a Paladin can not defend himself from an attacker with intent to kill? Or to remove a persistent Evil from the world he had, by fate, had the misfortune to ally himself with? If I was a "Holier than Thou" Paladin as you've repeatedly claimed, I would have never associated with you. I'd have left the group or demanded he leave. I tolerated your character because mine believed you were just a troubled, misguided soul and that with some gentle push in the right direction, he could be redeemed as my character had. But by attacking him, without warning or provocation proved that was not the case. You were Evil, no matter what your character sheet says." He sputtered and fumed, but both Wizard brothers backed me up. "If you want to instigate PvP, accept the consequences. And attacking a Paladin of Bahamaut because he killed an undead girl is an evil act and well within his right and his religion to respond with equal measure. Thats the only reason I can see why you attacked him at all, in game."

The session ended after that. And so did the campaign. We tried starting a new one, this time one of the 40K games, but it sputtered and died too. The Silent One and Not-Drizzt aren't part of the group anymore. They left "of our own accord". Luckily, just in time for our old group to not be tied up in College-related things to get back together and start gaming again.

I'd just like to say that your paladin is one of the very few examples I have seen of a paladin played in a manner worthy of paladinhood. Well done!

MesiDoomstalker
2014-08-07, 12:23 AM
I'd just like to say that your paladin is one of the very few examples I have seen of a paladin played in a manner worthy of paladinhood. Well done!

Thanks! I spent a lot of time developing him in my head. He's still tucked away for the next time I get to play a Paladin.

KuReshtin
2014-08-07, 06:12 AM
I had an absolute stinker of a gaming session on Tuesday.

The FLGS has a weekly RPG night each Tuesday, and we all take turns running games now and then.
It's currently the turn of Ben to run a game, and he's devised a scenario in the Horror d20 system, dealing with a zombie apocalypse.

During the session, we had one person having brought out his mobile phone OOC and sat, texting someone, not paying attention to anything or anyone. This caused him to several times have to ask what was happening, as he wasn't paying attention.
We had two guys interrupting anyone and everyone, including Ben as he was trying to describe settings and NPC actions, whenever anything In game related popped into their head, seemingly not able to contain a thought for more than 2 seconds. This caused them to several times have to ask what was happening, as they weren't paying attention.
We had two other people who started talking about OOC things that had nothing to do with the game, even if the DM was talking and describing settings. This caused them to several times have to ask what was happening, as they weren't paying attention.
There were at times three of these guys thinking we should bring along a bunch of NPCs with the group to use as meat shields when we ran into zombies.
One of the guys actively tried to derail the campaign by baiting the DM into arguments about details that had no real bearing on the game. And he also openly admitted to baiting Ben.
When confronted about it, his only response was that he's 'paying to be here to play, so I have every right to do what I want and have fun', obviously not giving a crap about whether that behaviour caused the others in the group to not have fun.

At one point, I lost it and told him to sit down and shut the F up and pay attention instead of F-ing about, and he responded that if that was the case, he'd just sit and not say anything at all for the rest of the session, because I'd told him to sit down and shut up.

Let's just say that I'll be taking a break from the RPG Tuesdays for a while, cause I got fed up with their antics and I need to distance myself from them for a while. Also, I figured that since I was the only one who seemed as if I couldn't stand the OOC antics and random shouting of whatever popped into their heads, I can leave them to play it their way and I'll just do something else instead.

I almost left mid-session, but stayed until the end as I am usually the guy that gives Ben a ride home afterwards. There are others that can do it to, or he can walk home, as it's only about a 10 minute walk for him, but still.

Segev
2014-08-07, 07:44 AM
Zombie horror game with players who aren't paying attention?

Oh, I'd have fun with that as a GM. I'd describe with unusual clarity the approaching zombies, and pause to let players who are paying attention react. Anybody who asks what's going on due to clearly not paying attention will be asked what they're doing. They obviously hadn't, IC, noticed what was going on. "As you look up from your cell phone, you see..." and describe the situation as it's evolved to that point. Don't go back and let them react to what's already happened that they missed.

If they get attacked because they don't get out of the way, I'll actively prod them for their defensive actions. If they ignore me, I assume they stand there and take it.


Not usually a fan of solving OOC problems with IC actions, but for a horror game, blurring that line is appropriate, and it's often the only way to get players to take "put the phone away and pay attention to the game" seriously.

comicshorse
2014-08-07, 09:53 AM
One of the guys actively tried to derail the campaign by baiting the DM into arguments about details that had no real bearing on the game. And he also openly admitted to baiting Ben.
When confronted about it, his only response was that he's 'paying to be here to play, so I have every right to do what I want and have fun', obviously not giving a crap about whether that behaviour caused the others in the group to not have fun.


He's paying for the game ?

DontEatRawHagis
2014-08-07, 11:09 AM
Had a major freak out at a game of Spycraft a long time ago. Not me but another player.

We were playing comic book villains(of our own making). This player decided he was gonna play an illuminati member that could easily fake his death.

We were running a standalone session due to half the party missing.

We were assigned to rescue a Super Villain from a prison. The Player decided to pretend to be dead and arranged his body to get put into the prisons morgue.

My friend and I told him we were gonna go through the front door pretending to be from the government to question the SuperVillain but he liked his idea better.

Our characters were not optimized for combat so when we found out that the SuperVillain took control of the prison for his own ends and wanted us dead with about 100 prisoners and guards on his side my friend and I decided to give up and escape.

Sadly the Player was deep within the prison so we couldn't get to him.

In response he flipped out saying how if we followed his plan he would have survived. We told him that it was too dangerous to sneak in that way.

Needless to say when 20 guards killed him we were blamed for his failing and he left the group.

Kid Jake
2014-08-07, 01:30 PM
He's paying for the game ?

It's not so crazy; I make a little money tailoring games for groups who either don't have a DM or just want to let their DM have a chance to play for a change. I've never came across someone that wanted to pay for a game just to ruin it though.

KuReshtin
2014-08-07, 03:48 PM
He's paying for the game ?
We all are. It's a token fee to the FLGS to have access to the premises after hours and have a place to gather.

It's not so crazy; I make a little money tailoring games for groups who either don't have a DM or just want to let their DM have a chance to play for a change. I've never came across someone that wanted to pay for a game just to ruin it though.

The problem is that he doesn't think he's ruining the game. He's goofing off and has a great time goofing off, not taking things seriously, but he has no thoughts whatsoever about whether he ruins the game for anyone else.

Unseenmal
2014-08-08, 12:55 PM
This game was bad because of some one that claimed to know everything about D&D.

I forget the names of the players and characters (except for my own) so I'll use substitutes. I was the newest member of the group, I only knew the DM before this campaign. This was back when 3.0 had first come out so none of us had any real clue about good/bad classes to play or what optimization was. We were all about 10th level and had just finished a huge plot arch of us "saving the world" and were about the embark on the next plot arch.

The Party (3.0 D&D):
Seth - CG Cleric - Not important until after the setup
Jim - CN Wizard - IMPORTANT
Mike - CG Fighter - Not important until after the setup
Joe - LN Monk - Not important until after the setup
Me - CN Halfling Rogue named Gaius (retired) -> CG Human Ranger/Rogue/Vigilant (NOT Vigilante) Prestige Class. I forget the book it's from but they're basically special forces. All about camouflage and ambushes, etc.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The DM had a houserule that burning magic scrolls or spell books basically caused an explosion based on the potency of the magic. It was cool if you had a scroll but it wasn't useful for the situation, you could hand grenade it. So you had to weigh the pros and cons of it.

This rule will be important later.

The setup - Kinda long - very sorry
Jim's player claimed to have been playing games like D&D for 20 years. But if you sat at the table with him for more than 1 session, you'd know he couldn't play his way out of a wet paper bag even if you spotted him a knife.

Anyway...
My Vigilant was female while I as a player am not. I wanted to mix it up a little. So her back story was that she was childhood friends and future wife with the retired Rogue I was playing. She was a farm girl that learned some of the rogue's skills but decided to become a ranger in service of the crown. In the vein of being a farm girl, I made her name Elizabeth Susan but she went by just Beth. She was being sent to assist the party with whatever needed, as an emissary of the crown and to keep an eye on the wizard. As it was rumored that Jim was evil and carrying an extremely potent evil artifact. He was actually neutral but he did have a book similar to the necronomicon in his backpack. Although the player seemed to play his character NE. Like sit down and read the entry for NE in the book and that is EXACTLY how he played Jim. Side note, this game is why I began to NOT like the alignment system. I can still hear him in my head "But he's CHAOTIC NEUTRAL"

She is introduced to the party as Gaius' fiance' and he asks them to treat her as a sister. They all agree.

Anyway, as soon as she joined the party and Gaius is gone, Jim began the standard sexist remarks towards her (All IC). He took it upon himself to rip into her every game session for weeks, at every turn. Names, cat calls, pinches, unwanted advances, etc. But the thing that irritated her (and me) the most was the constant mis-use of her name. He called her Peggy Sue, Mary Sue, Becky Sue...basically any other name with Sue attached. Kinda my fault for giving her that name but still, she was a productive and helpful party member. She even saved his life.

All the while she is sending info back about Jim and his deeds to the king. At the same time, she is keeping Gaius (my retired rogue) informed as well. All this is done via notes to DM.

She is tasked by the King to retrieve the book at any cost and return it to the temple for safe keeping. Here is where I as a player made a mistake. Instead of notes, I openly role-played this part while the other PCs slept in game and the players could hear me.

While everyone is asleep, during Betty's turn on watch, she retrieves the book from Jim's backpack.

The next morning Jim, using the OOC information from me and the DM, suddenly and without warning asks his familiar who went through his stuff. His familiar flies over and lands on my shoulder. Jim goes NUTS. Accusations fly, initiatives are rolled but cooler heads prevail when Beth provides them with a writ with the King's seal asking her to recover the book. Jim refuses and takes the book back. But all is settled for now.


The attack
Later that session, we are in a pretty good fight with some Giant Ants or something. During this fight, unbeknownst to me both IC and OOC, Jim turns and attacks Beth with a spell that insta-kills her due to low HPs from fighting 2 ants by herself. I think she ended up somewhere near -45 HPs. Not much left but a few giblets and a scorch mark. DM's description.

OOC, I lose my ****e and nearly go after Jim's player but instead, I go outside and smoke a cigarette. I ask the DM to join me and I tell him my plan. Let me state now, he was not really a fan of it but he really wanted to end the game anyway so we could play Vampire instead. So he let me roll with it. I return to the game, apologize to Jim's player and sit there for the next 4 hours doing nothing. Waiting. Plotting.

All the while, no one said anything about...not one other player IC or OOC said anything about the completely evil act they were accomplices to. Nothing to me about let's take it back or let's think about this. But he's CHAOTIC NEUTRAL!


And finally....The payoff or "Revenge and How Best To Serve It"

Next game I bring in a new PC, a Psion (Psionics Book was just released at the time...looking back I don't know how I understood it). I made this PC be in complete AWE of the rest of the party because he had heard of their deeds and wanted nothing more than to adventure with these "Great Heroes"

In the background, Gaius hears of his fiance's death, goes insane from grief and begins hunting. Hunting the most dangerous game. Hunting those he once called "Friend".

3 game sessions go by with everything back to "normal" except for some strange occurrences...like the sounds off in the distance or a shadow just out of the corner of their eyes

And then in game session 4... "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."

I wrote this session for the DM and he just read it to the rest of them

Under cover of a moonless night, Gaius sneaks into camp and steals the Cleric's holy symbols, all 3 of them. He takes all of the wizards spellbooks as well as that evil artifact one. He sets up a timed trap to drop all of the wizards spell books into the fire at the same time the trap also lets loose a rust monster he captured. He triggers the timer on the trap and Gaius disappears.

While it takes the party a few rounds to get organized the rust monster has time to eat up some of the better goodies lying around...like the fighter's entire inventory of magic weapons and armor. The rust monster was just a distraction so that they would not notice the spell books burning.

The DM describes to the party that, in the middle of their fight with the rust monster, their spirits are suddenly found floating up and away from what appears to be an explosion not unlike a low yield nuke. They are all dead no save, no resurrection because honestly what's left to rez?

The DM looks at me and I step in and....imagine the scene from the movie Half Baked where one guy quits his job: "F*ck You! F*ck You! F*ck You! You're Cool (DM). F*ck You and I'm out"


And I never played with that group again.

Sith_Happens
2014-08-08, 04:31 PM
I can still hear him in my head "But he's CHAOTIC NEUTRAL"

I just realized we're nearly to page three and only just now have a story involving one of these players.

jaydubs
2014-08-08, 08:29 PM
<snip>


I have to say I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, he was being a jerk by picking on you/your character. On the other, I consider stealing from other characters PvP, so in my mind you initiated. By creating a character whose motivation is at odds with another party member (being sent to confiscate his book), you're partially responsible. I'd ask further, did the other players/characters wrong you in some way that would justify killing their characters? Because if so, it's not mentioned in the story.

The better response would have been to tell him OOC character that he was being a jerk, and to stop it. And if that didn't work, to bring it up with the DM. I'm a fan of dealing with OOC problems OOC precisely to avoid incidents like this.

The Oni
2014-08-09, 12:08 AM
Now, in 4 years, my character will become an undead. Yippee, Yippee, Yippee.:smallannoyed:

Honestly this sounds like a fantastic plot hook. And unless your game has a really fast time-scale, a four-year ultimatum should be fine.

The Random NPC
2014-08-09, 01:58 AM
I have to say I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, he was being a jerk by picking on you/your character. On the other, I consider stealing from other characters PvP, so in my mind you initiated. By creating a character whose motivation is at odds with another party member (being sent to confiscate his book), you're partially responsible. I'd ask further, did the other players/characters wrong you in some way that would justify killing their characters? Because if so, it's not mentioned in the story.

The better response would have been to tell him OOC character that he was being a jerk, and to stop it. And if that didn't work, to bring it up with the DM. I'm a fan of dealing with OOC problems OOC precisely to avoid incidents like this.

The way I read it, the DM via the king told him to steal the book, so really the DM started it.

Velaryon
2014-08-09, 02:43 AM
I thought of another one. This time it's not a D&D story, but Aberrant, which we mostly used to play superheroes and not focus so much on the inevitable-progression-of-taint thing.

I'm playing a gambler, a wannabe high-roller who suddenly gained superpowers so subtle, he's not even sure he has them. In addition to suddenly having the most incredible luck in the world, he's got the ability to manipulate entropy fields nearby to cause bad luck for enemies and to raise or lower the intensity of people's emotions. He's a charming but slightly naive guy who's trying to be a mix of Lando Calrissian and Sean Connery-era James Bond, but played a little bit for laughs.

My two teammates, however, are much more obviously superhuman. First, there's The Alchemist - or as I nicknamed him, Pillow Talk - who can create objects out of thin air or transmute materials to other materials. The nickname is derived from his fondness for Egyptian cotton and preference for turning enemies' weapons into pillows.

And then there's Kevin Jones, a bouncer-turned-professional-stuntman (or was it the other way around?) who basically has the powers of Thor (except for flight) and a motorcycle like Ghost Rider, except it emits lightning rather than fire. Kevin, like most characters played by this particular friend, is a "shoot first and don't bother to ask questions" character who is easily provoked to violence.

Circumstances I no longer remember led to my character and Kevin scouting out a clinic where the doctors claim to be able to remove the tumor-like node in the brain that causes super powers. We suspect these clinics, which have sprang up rather suddenly, of being a front for something more sinister and are trying to find out more information. Pillow Talk waits outside as backup in case something goes wrong. When the receptionist asks if we're novas (the term for super-powered folk), Kevin conjures up a ball of lightning as an answer, just holding it out for the receptionist to see. She asks him to dismiss it and he claims for some reason that he can't. She says something vaguely insulting because she's never heard of a nova who can't dismiss their own powers, and in a random fit of stupidity/rage, Kevin fries her with the lightning while my jaw drops in shock. Kevin then sits back down like nothing is wrong, while everyone else in the room stares at him, afraid to move or say anything.

A few minutes later a SWAT team shows up, having been called by someone else in the building. They come in aggressively, and Kevin makes a poor attempt to talk them down which leads to them identifying him as the culprit and opening fire. Their firearms don't pierce his supernaturally tough skin, but they do start to make him angry.

My character makes a last-ditch attempt to salvage the situation and uses his emotional manipulation powers to try and calm Kevin. After all, these SWAT guys are no threat to him. So I roll my power, and get nothing but botches (basically a crit fumble). Kevin goes from pretty pissed to OMGSUPERRAGEMONSTER!!! and starts ripping up not only the entire SWAT team but anyone else nearby. My character is not supernaturally tough, so he takes cover and tries to calm Kevin down but to no avail.

Kevin takes out the entire SWAT team, some civilians, and at least one member from a superhero team that shows up to try and subdue him before Pillow Talk finally puts him down by conjuring a mortar cannon pretty much right in his face and blasting him at point blank range with it. The final death toll: 32 people. Also, the GM's story is completely derailed as our team powerhouse is now the BBEG for absolutely no reason.

SickBritKid
2014-08-09, 06:33 AM
I had a guy quit a campaign because I was antsy about switching my ranger from a Longsword to a Rapier as his primary weapon. He constantly bugged me to do so and that taking Weapon Finesse would be my best option. I just didn't find rapiers to be very "Ranger-y", so I was hesitant at first(I wound up switching to a rapier main coupled with Weapon Finesse, and a house-ruled Finesse allowing you to add Dex to damage instead of strength after the guy left, mainly because a rapier I found amongst some loot was ALSO Keened, meaning highly-frequent crits). The guy who quit also wrote a very scathing letter to the DM about such, saying I was "intentionally weakening my character", as well as some complaints about other people in the group.

The guy was a douche, but I felt kinda bad about having a hand in driving him away.

Then there was the time that the couple in said campaign quit because the wife wanted a grossly-op'd character and couldn't grasp how Hit Dice and Level Adjustments work because her Dragonfire Adept wound up shifting into a full-fledged DRAGON. And she seemed doubly pissed because the DM, justifiably, wanted her to make necessary adjustments to said character lest she wind up making, well, everything utterly trivial.

Diachronos
2014-08-09, 06:50 AM
I had a guy quit a campaign because I was antsy about switching my ranger from a Longsword to a Rapier as his primary weapon. He constantly bugged me to do so and that taking Weapon Finesse would be my best option. I just didn't find rapiers to be very "Ranger-y", so I was hesitant at first(I wound up switching to a rapier main coupled with Weapon Finesse, and a house-ruled Finesse allowing you to add Dex to damage instead of strength after the guy left, mainly because a rapier I found amongst some loot was ALSO Keened, meaning highly-frequent crits). The guy who quit also wrote a very scathing letter to the DM about such, saying I was "intentionally weakening my character", as well as some complaints about other people in the group.

The guy was a douche, but I felt kinda bad about having a hand in driving him away.

The issue was all on him, there's nothing you should feel guilty about. So what if you didn't want to use a certain weapon/feat combo? Was it honestly hurting your damage output that much?

SickBritKid
2014-08-09, 07:52 AM
The issue was all on him, there's nothing you should feel guilty about. So what if you didn't want to use a certain weapon/feat combo? Was it honestly hurting your damage output that much?

Honestly? Yes.

My damage output was fairly dismal because I never hit unless my character was using two-handing his longsword(which is usually what happens when I close to melee: I have my character begin the battle at range with his bow for some early damage before having him whip out his Thinblade, with convenient Lesser Crystal of Return for Quickdraw action, and Charge the nearest opponent using both hands. Then he Quickdraws his Lightblade, also equipped with a Lesser Crystal of Return, and proceeds to murder everything in sight with his swords).

My Ranger's strength is only 14 while his Dex was 17 at the start of the campaign. Once I switched to the Finesse/Rapier combo, I became effective in combat. To sum things up from my DM's perspective, I became a "Glass Cannon without a lot of cannon." I quickly changed things by taking Two-Weapon Rend and Keening both of my weapons.

Then, after a massive loot sale at our most recent Metropolis, I boosted my Ranger's AC to 31 through a combination of making a SWEET Mithral Breastplate +1(complete with some nice enchantments), a Ring of Protection +3, and an Animated Mithral Heavy Shield +5. On top of that, I equipped him with an awesome Keen Holy Thinblade and Keen Holy Lightblade. Pair that with a house-ruled "Add Dex to Damage when using Finesse-capable weapons", and my Ranger is a Lightning Bruiser that would make a Fighter blush.

At the same time, the guy was still a big douche about leaving. Especially because his character was one of the better characters in the party(a cloistered Cleric with a knack for Archery-ing the **** out of bad guys) who also had a great rapport with my Ranger, leading to some funny interactions during the campaign.

The modern party's a lot better, on the whole. After the guy, followed by the couple much later on, left, I wound up joining the DM's other DnD group and things became awesome. Mainly because my Ranger's now got a far more colorful group of adventurers around him, from a Spellscale Bard who he begrudgingly regards as his best friend to a ditzy Raptoran who "plays the Song of His People" in the form of ear-shattering screeches, not to mention a grumpy dwarf who enjoys "chopping things with his ****ing axe" and a Dragonfire Adept Tibbit named Kat whom we've all nicknamed "Napalm-breath Kitty."

Diachronos
2014-08-09, 09:25 AM
Honestly? Yes.

My damage output was fairly dismal because I never hit unless my character was using two-handing his longsword(which is usually what happens when I close to melee: I have my character begin the battle at range with his bow for some early damage before having him whip out his Thinblade, with convenient Lesser Crystal of Return for Quickdraw action, and Charge the nearest opponent using both hands. Then he Quickdraws his Lightblade, also equipped with a Lesser Crystal of Return, and proceeds to murder everything in sight with his swords).

My Ranger's strength is only 14 while his Dex was 17 at the start of the campaign. Once I switched to the Finesse/Rapier combo, I became effective in combat. To sum things up from my DM's perspective, I became a "Glass Cannon without a lot of cannon." I quickly changed things by taking Two-Weapon Rend and Keening both of my weapons.


Fair enough. Though I still think the fault was him alone over the way he made the suggestion. Especially if you'd originally avoided the Weapon Finesse/Rapier combo for flavor reasons without realizing just how much more effective it was going to be; not forseeing poor attack rolls and things like that isn't the same as "intentionally nerfing yourself".

Demons_eye
2014-08-09, 10:45 AM
I have to say I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, he was being a jerk by picking on you/your character. On the other, I consider stealing from other characters PvP, so in my mind you initiated. By creating a character whose motivation is at odds with another party member (being sent to confiscate his book), you're partially responsible. I'd ask further, did the other players/characters wrong you in some way that would justify killing their characters? Because if so, it's not mentioned in the story.

The better response would have been to tell him OOC character that he was being a jerk, and to stop it. And if that didn't work, to bring it up with the DM. I'm a fan of dealing with OOC problems OOC precisely to avoid incidents like this.

If the DM sent the request for him to do it its the DM that started it. Otherwise he would have no reason to steal form another player. Also I don't consider stealing a form of attack. So its hard for me to imagine it as a PvP.

The other characters did nothing seeing him kill her. They were guilty by not doing anything at all. They didn't kill him for killing someone in the party, they didn't bring him to be judged by som one for his crimes, not even talking to the guy about why party killing was not cool. They were ok with him killing someone else over petty reason simply because he was chaotic neutral.

They were ok with someone killing someone for a petty reason in game that the character shouldn't even have found out about but no one was willing to fight the wizard when the ranger showed a legal decree from the king.

Rater202
2014-08-09, 12:31 PM
I just realized we're nearly to page three and only just now have a story involving one of these players.

have you ever been in a group that inverted that Stereotype?

I've been in a D&D fourth Edition Game, and an Exalted game where my token evil PC became the objectively least evil character on the "Goodguys" side

The Exalted game was fun, but the D&D not so much.

This was my first 4th ed game, back when it first came out, and my second ever D&D game, with th same group as my first.

I didn't know these people very well, becuase this was a meet up at the local game store and see if anybody is running deal.

Since I'd been playing with them for a year though, I felt comfortable Asking the GM permision to play an Evil PC.

Basically it was your stereotypical tiefling-evil, warlock, infenral path.

The other PCs were mostly good alined, but they were your stereotypical murder-hobos.

Eventually we find a book written in (Originally) Supernal, despite my character having been able to read Supernal, I couldn't read it.

I pointed this out, GM retconed it to Abyssal, which my PC could read as well, so he retconed i to Draconinc, which every PC could read, before he eventually said it was some bizarre language that none of us could read.

Anyway, the only thing in the book we could make out was a map of the region we were n, with an X on an other Location near by.
so we go there, an theres a stone on it, with the Holy Symbols of Pelor, Bahamut, and Hieronius carvedd into it, and the stone was radiating good magic.

GM then says that my character could sense that it was the kinda good magic made not for keeping something evil out, but keeping something evil in

I share this with the rest of the party, who, even though only the Paladin knows my character is evil, don't believe me, and open the thing anyway.

Inside is ,in addition to multiple magical protections to prevent anyone other than someone good from getting to the end of the tomb, a puzzlebox.

GM takes me aside again, once I'm in the same room as the puzzle box(couldn't leave the first room because of the protection, and the only rason he went in at all was because he was literally pushed down the stairs), o tell me that I could tell that the Puzzle box was more evil than my master, and that my master would very much like to have the box back in the tomb.

So I try to convince the others to put it back, and because the GM won't let us use social rolls on other PC's and the others were meta gaming on knowledge of my PC being evil, they don't.

Next session, GM pulls me aside again, tells me my character has become obsessed with the box.

I try to roleplay it, trying to open the box at any opportunity. Eventually an other PC takes the box away.

Eventually, shortly after a fight where all the other PCs are distracted, GM asks me to make a will save. I failed, and he told me that my character had an over whelming urge to try and take the box back from the PC.

Since I had been trying to be non-antagonistic despite being evil(even though most of the rest of the party had been antagonistic to me) I tried to pick-pocket it from the other PC. I roll high, he fumbles his notice roll, my character sneaks off to try and open it again.

I'm now halfway across town, have not been seen by anyone since the fight.

Other PCs, who haven't even noticed that the box was missing, notice I'm gone, track me down, beat me up, and drag me to the local temple.

Priests(entirely at the GM's control, not at heading of PCs) break the compulsion on my character, and then for some reason place a curse that will kill my PC if he lies, no save.

So I'm being puinished for doing what the GM told me to do, essentially

It gets better.

Later conflict, party is fighting a giant snake in an under ground lake, said lake has an island in the middle.

The fight starts when the PCs were swimming across the lake, all of a sudden giant snake comes busting out of the water.

GM says that we have one round to get to shore before we roll initiative, because the snake is big an clumsy so it can't attack immediately.

Most of the arty tries to swim back to shore, but my character is on the wrong side of the snake, so I try to swim to the island instead.

I rolled highest on my swim check, and the island was closer to me that any of the PCs were to the shore, but I still am the only one who doesn't make it to land.

Snake picks my character up and bite him, doing exactly enough to take me to half health.

So combat starts.

The rest of the PCs on the shore are talking about how o fight the snake and using up their actions doing nothing while my character is being attacked.

I My turn comes around, and thanks to action points and crits I take out a third of the snakes Hit points in one round.

Now, if something in your mouth beat you a third of the way to death and set you on fire, you spit it out, right?

Instead, the snake bites down and kills my character.

It gets better.

Remember how I mentioned that the Paladin was the only one who knew my PC was evil?

That's because his player wanted to change characters when he found out evil PC were allowed, but instead of reolling, we roleplayed in character my PC converting him to the darkside.

after successfully converting the Lawfull good Paladin of Bahamut to the Evil Paladin of Asmodeus, my Warlock received a boon in the form of a one time instant resurrection.

As soon as my warlock was killed, the PC Cleric of the Raven queen prayed to his Goddess to take my PCs soul right then and there, interfereing with the worshiper and magic of an other God(Remember, Asmodeaus is a God in 4E). She does so, despite this being the sort of thing that normally pisses of the god who was interfered with as well as all the rest of the gods. Nope, no problems.

I don't get to use my autorez, even though it was suppose to take effect as soon as I died.

It gets better. My next character is a wizard

During a fight later in the Campaign, we get attacked by a Dracolich.

My Previous PC, the Warlock who is supposedly impossible to rez now, is riding it.

It gets better. I was asked to retire my Wizard, because the Party needed a striker. since our PCs had purchased a house, and the town it was in was an important target in the BBEG's war plans, my Wizard stayed behind to hold down th fort and help protect the town.

Next time the PCs were in town, the players use him as a meat shield and then casually murder him after the fight.

It gets better.

My third Character was the cousin of my first character, Good aligned, Starpact Warlock reflufed as getting powers from a deal with an Angel serving Pelor. Motivated by finding my first Pc and bringing his cousin to justice for his crimes

Character is mocked for being a religious warlock, other PCs claim he's just like his cousin, and once tried to turn him in in his cousin's place for the reward money.

DM Nate
2014-08-09, 12:48 PM
I'm going to invent a drinking game where you take a shot every time you should have left your gaming group, but didn't.

Rater202
2014-08-09, 01:20 PM
I'm going to invent a drinking game where you take a shot every time you should have left your gaming group, but didn't.

In my defense, I was like 15 and I'mpretty this store was the only place in town to game.

I just had the bad fortune to be gaming with all the jerkyface one at once.

jaydubs
2014-08-09, 02:06 PM
If the DM sent the request for him to do it its the DM that started it. Otherwise he would have no reason to steal form another player.


The way I read it, he had asked or chosen to write into his character background the bit about looking for the book, and the retrieval was a byproduct of that choice. If you choose to bring in a character that will cause intraparty conflict, you're partially responsible if/when that conflict comes to fruition. It's like bringing a paladin into an evil party. You can't shrug off what happens as "playing my character." Of course, I could be wrong about that, and if it was the DM's idea in the first place, responsibility lies with the DM. Responsibility lies with the DM anyway for not controlling the situation, but that's another concern.

Let's acknowledge first that Jim was being a jerk. He was. The DM, the Vigilant's player, or one of the other players should have put a stop to it. But I'm going to put it aside for the moment.

The Vigilant was a spy, sent to steal a magical artifact from a party member, and who had in fact attempted that theft. She didn't seem to be sorry or repentant about attempting the theft. She might be inclined to try it again. If you're chaotic neutral (or neutral evil), it's a pretty sensible (and in character) move to murder her. It's still a crappy thing to do, but it's crappy for entirely OOC reasons. Killing other PCs upsets other players, so we generally don't do it unless it's agreed to be part of the campaign. Hey, that's the exact same reason stealing from party members is bad!


Also I don't consider stealing a form of attack. So its hard for me to imagine it as a PvP.

It upsets other players and sets up an antagonistic relationship where they are working against each other. It pits one character's plans/capabilities against another, where 1 is detrimentally harmed. PvP doesn't have to involve directly attacking another player. Tic tac toe or monopoly are both PvP games that don't involve directly attacking the other player. But once you start putting yourselves head to head, working against each other to the other player's detriment, you're in it. And stealing does just that.


The other characters did nothing seeing him kill her. They were guilty by not doing anything at all. They didn't kill him for killing someone in the party, they didn't bring him to be judged by som one for his crimes, not even talking to the guy about why party killing was not cool. They were ok with him killing someone else over petty reason simply because he was chaotic neutral..

The other players did in fact step in to prevent a fight. But they had no way to anticipate the actual killing blow anymore than the Vigilant's player did. And afterward, they chose not to take sides in an at least partially OOC dispute between 2 players who were both being disruptive. I'd argue that that is no justification for engaging in a dramatic TPK revenge plot, especially since he could have easily only targeted Jim in particular.


They were ok with someone killing someone for a petty reason in game that the character shouldn't even have found out about but no one was willing to fight the wizard when the ranger showed a legal decree from the king.

If the magical tome was important enough to spy after, it was important enough that its attempted theft could not be considered a minor concern. Also, unless they are lawful and loyal subjects of said king, the decree doesn't really mean anything. If someone tries to steal my car, and he then shows me a decree from the Prime Minister of the UK (I'm not from the UK), I would tell him to shove it.

Demons_eye
2014-08-09, 02:58 PM
The way I read it, he had asked or chosen to write into his character background the bit about looking for the book, and the retrieval was a byproduct of that choice. If you choose to bring in a character that will cause intraparty conflict, you're partially responsible if/when that conflict comes to fruition. It's like bringing a paladin into an evil party. You can't shrug off what happens as "playing my character." Of course, I could be wrong about that, and if it was the DM's idea in the first place, responsibility lies with the DM. Responsibility lies with the DM anyway for not controlling the situation, but that's another concern.

Let's acknowledge first that Jim was being a jerk. He was. The DM, the Vigilant's player, or one of the other players should have put a stop to it. But I'm going to put it aside for the moment.

The Vigilant was a spy, sent to steal a magical artifact from a party member, and who had in fact attempted that theft. She didn't seem to be sorry or repentant about attempting the theft. She might be inclined to try it again. If you're chaotic neutral (or neutral evil), it's a pretty sensible (and in character) move to murder her. It's still a crappy thing to do, but it's crappy for entirely OOC reasons. Killing other PCs upsets other players, so we generally don't do it unless it's agreed to be part of the campaign. Hey, that's the exact same reason stealing from party members is bad!


Far as I read DM sent him to watch Jimi to introduce her to the party with easy. He asked to be servicing the king. King told him to watch out for Jimi the wizard and she reported everything back to him. Nothing about the book to start with.

You can't say it works one way. Acting in character works both ways or doesn't work at all.




It upsets other players and sets up an antagonistic relationship where they are working against each other. It pits one character's plans/capabilities against another, where 1 is detrimentally harmed. PvP doesn't have to involve directly attacking another player. Tic tac toe or monopoly are both PvP games that don't involve directly attacking the other player. But once you start putting yourselves head to head, working against each other to the other player's detriment, you're in it. And stealing does just that.

Other games like Tic Tac Toe and Monoploly have winners, there isn't a Winner in DnD. You can work against each others goals in Dnd and still not be PvP. I still don't see stealing as PvP.



The other players did in fact step in to prevent a fight. But they had no way to anticipate the actual killing blow anymore than the Vigilant's player did. And afterward, they chose not to take sides in an at least partially OOC dispute between 2 players who were both being disruptive. I'd argue that that is no justification for engaging in a dramatic TPK revenge plot, especially since he could have easily only targeted Jim in particular.

The players did nothing after the killing. Even in character they should have done something. I think what happened is reasonable if that's what the Rangers husband would have done. And considering its the players old character I think he would know what his character would do. And thats justification enough for it if his justification for killing her was thats what my character would do.




If the magical tome was important enough to spy after, it was important enough that its attempted theft could not be considered a minor concern. Also, unless they are lawful and loyal subjects of said king, the decree doesn't really mean anything. If someone tries to steal my car, and he then shows me a decree from the Prime Minister of the UK (I'm not from the UK), I would tell him to shove it.

They were spying after the wizard. He was later tasked with grabbing the book. If it was such a big deal why didn't he kill her right there? That's more understandably. Killing her latter shows that he planned on killing her. Planned, that's evil. Its true about the loyalty/lawful thing.

jaydubs
2014-08-09, 04:33 PM
You can't say it works one way. Acting in character works both ways or doesn't work at all.

<snip>

The players did nothing after the killing. Even in character they should have done something. I think what happened is reasonable if that's what the Rangers husband would have done. And considering its the players old character I think he would know what his character would do. And thats justification enough for it if his justification for killing her was thats what my character would do.


You got it. That's exactly what I'm saying. Either Jim and the Vigilant's player both went too far and should have held back for OOC reasons (not pissing off other players and disrupting the game), or they were both right in acting out their IC motivations (which resulted in multiple player on player kills).

And I fall on the side of saying they both went too far.

The reason I have mixed feelings is that, assuming the story is true, I sympathize with the poster's frustration. Jim was acting really out of line. I just can't support the idea of responding in kind.

SickBritKid
2014-08-09, 07:49 PM
Fair enough. Though I still think the fault was him alone over the way he made the suggestion. Especially if you'd originally avoided the Weapon Finesse/Rapier combo for flavor reasons without realizing just how much more effective it was going to be; not forseeing poor attack rolls and things like that isn't the same as "intentionally nerfing yourself".

Yeah. I originally wanted to avoid the rapier because I wanted to make my Ranger more Aragorn-esque. Plus, I didn't like the downgrade from a d8 to d6 for damage rolls. However, once I picked up some Elven weapons(as well as the DM House-ruling across-the-board Weapon Familiarity for all races, as my Ranger was using the Elven template for his racial abilities, while being half-elf in-character) and the like, I was able to effectively get the best of both worlds. The thing is, I was always unsure of going that route but it had a lot to do with the fact that I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my ranger at first.

But yeah, once the dude quit the campaign, things got a bit harder for our group for a time afterward because of how powerful his Cloistered Cleric/Celestial Bow combo was.

Sith_Happens
2014-08-09, 08:31 PM
4th ed
...
will save

WUT.:smallconfused:

Rater202
2014-08-09, 11:25 PM
WUT.:smallconfused:

Okay, this was like five or six Years ago and I haven't been in a 4E game in a while.

cracking open my books, He probably asked me to roll my Cha/Wis.

Or maybe I'm mis remembering and he asked my Will Defense

Segev
2014-08-11, 02:41 PM
What amazes me is how many of these stories sound basically like the entire rest of the gaming group was out to get the player. Why don't they just tell him not to come back?

braveheart
2014-08-11, 03:54 PM
These are just some examples of my GM who is normally pretty good, flopping and failing

1. my pathfinder group was supposed to meet but it wound up being only me monk the GM and the party wizard, so we decide to have some fun, we get my character a cursed item that lets the wizard scry on me constantly and had the monk infiltrate the cultists (who were the main bad guys of the campaign). my monk, because of rules shenanigans, managed to swap my social stats to use wisdom instead of charisma and bluff got my wisdom twice so I had no worries about lying my way in. we got some cultist robes from the worlds "almighty epic wizard" (who was the GM's character from another game) shopkeeper. So I make my way in, the wizard scrying on me and using message spells to talk to me acting like secret agent HQ. when I get there I find out that I'm wearing a higher ranking members robes so the cultists fear and respect me, except for the commander who thinks I am intruding on his turf. I do some sneaking and establish myself training the recruits. then I find out that the commander has a way to talk to his boss, so I sneak up and listen in. then I hear that boss cultist is pissed at commander cultist so I come in to stir up more trouble for commander cultist. I come in, boss is gone and commander cultist is scared. more role-play as bad guy trainer, (im not letting them heal so that they will be easier to kill later) and I sneak in to the commanders room and mr. wizard back home tells me that the mirror is actually a portal. I go in and find that boss cultist is the "almighty epic wizard shopkeeper" who is just finishing an item I had commissioned earlier and is in cultist robes. I hide and she sees me. she then closes the cultist plot in the most boring way imaginable, the made the construct that they worship and is trying to kill them off.

I am disappointed but offer to kill off the cultists for her for a fee. I leave the portal and find that commander cultist is in the room, he sees me and attacks. before he can do anything "almighty epic wizard shopkeeper" shows up and kills him. tells me to go kill the rest so I decide to do this the fun way and have them kill eachother. I command the recruits to split in half and tell each half to kill the other to prove their loyalty. right before they start "almighty epic wizard shopkeeper" shows up and chain lightnings all of them in one action.

that was 5 hours of playing to have "almighty epic wizard shopkeeper" show up and kill everything. :smallmad::smallmad::smallfurious:

nedz
2014-08-11, 04:56 PM
These are just some examples of my GM who is normally pretty good, flopping and failing

1. my pathfinder group was supposed to meet but it wound up being only me monk the GM and the party wizard, so we decide to have some fun, we get my character a cursed item that lets the wizard scry on me constantly and had the monk infiltrate the cultists (who were the main bad guys of the campaign). my monk, because of rules shenanigans, managed to swap my social stats to use wisdom instead of charisma and bluff got my wisdom twice so I had no worries about lying my way in. we got some cultist robes from the worlds "almighty epic wizard" (who was the GM's character from another game) shopkeeper. So I make my way in, the wizard scrying on me and using message spells to talk to me acting like secret agent HQ. when I get there I find out that I'm wearing a higher ranking members robes so the cultists fear and respect me, except for the commander who thinks I am intruding on his turf. I do some sneaking and establish myself training the recruits. then I find out that the commander has a way to talk to his boss, so I sneak up and listen in. then I hear that boss cultist is pissed at commander cultist so I come in to stir up more trouble for commander cultist. I come in, boss is gone and commander cultist is scared. more role-play as bad guy trainer, (im not letting them heal so that they will be easier to kill later) and I sneak in to the commanders room and mr. wizard back home tells me that the mirror is actually a portal. I go in and find that boss cultist is the "almighty epic wizard shopkeeper" who is just finishing an item I had commissioned earlier and is in cultist robes. I hide and she sees me. she then closes the cultist plot in the most boring way imaginable, the made the construct that they worship and is trying to kill them off.

I am disappointed but offer to kill off the cultists for her for a fee. I leave the portal and find that commander cultist is in the room, he sees me and attacks. before he can do anything "almighty epic wizard shopkeeper" shows up and kills him. tells me to go kill the rest so I decide to do this the fun way and have them kill each other. I command the recruits to split in half and tell each half to kill the other to prove their loyalty. right before they start "almighty epic wizard shopkeeper" shows up and chain lightnings all of them in one action.

that was 5 hours of playing to have "almighty epic wizard shopkeeper" show up and kill everything. :smallmad::smallmad::smallfurious:
Sounds like the DM was bored and just hand waved the final combat — which you had probably already won. I'm not sure about DMPCing the Commander though — that could have been played. Incidentally what was the party wizard doing whilst you were manipulating the cultists into killing each other ?

braveheart
2014-08-11, 04:58 PM
Another time with the same GM.

this time we were playing in pokemon tabletop united. my character and another one decided to join the evil team who steal pokemon in order to free all the captured pokemon. so we get inside and are imidiatly left alone, we make our way to the basement level, using our pokemon to unlock doors and we find a hallway full of padded rooms. all of which are empty. we seach as carefully as we can and find nothing working our way deeper and deeper. until we find single sheet of paper listing the stolen pokemon that are no where to be seen. as we continued deeper we still found nothing until we found a door we could not open no matter how hard we tried. then the gym leader of the city busts in with her SWAT team and finds us. then we wake up in the gym with no memories of what happened.

we went through the bad guys prison had absolutely nothing in it except one ****in piece of paper and we left with nothing at all not even our memories

:smallmad:

braveheart
2014-08-11, 05:01 PM
Sounds like the DM was bored and just hand waved the final combat — which you had probably already won. I'm not sure about DMPCing the Commander though — that could have been played. Incidentally what was the party wizard doing whilst you were manipulating the cultists into killing each other ?

he was making all of the necessary knowledge checks and telling the monk everything she needed to know about the cult.

also I know I had the fight but I still wanted to finish it. also the cult was the primary plot point of the campaign and that was the largest facility. the campaign died about 2 sessions latter because we lost our goal.

Gale
2014-08-11, 08:57 PM
Well, here's my story.

Beginning of freshman year at my university I joined a D&D 3.5 campaign with some members of a club on my campus known as "The Guild." I had never role-played before so I was pretty excited about it. Then almost immediately we encountered problems with the Ninja in our party. Not only did he feel his character was stronger than ours but he began threatening to murder us at almost every occasion for the most trivial of reasons. I actually asked him out-of-character if he was being serious with all this and he confirmed that he did in fact want to kill most of our characters. Eventually, the Ninja stopped showing up for a few weeks due to personal distractions and when he tried contacting the DM about rejoining the group he simply ignored his messages; and no one cared.
The rage-quit came in later due to the party's sorcerer. She never told anyone her character’s name telling us to just refer to her as "The Sorceress” which I couldn’t help but find a little pretentious. Regardless, she was a terrible player. Rather than paying attention to the game she would always be browsing Facebook on her laptop or playing a flash game. She never wanted to talk to the other player characters or NPCs instead preferring to fight her way through everything; and she was a terrible fighter. Every single area of effect spell hit us because she was too lazy and pompous to place it any better or use a different spell. Her only excuse for hitting us with them was that, “We could take the damage.”
I was getting increasingly aggravated with her until one session the NPC who had been giving us missions suddenly instructed us to wipe out a town full of innocent people. Everyone refused of course—except for her. She happily went into town and began annihilating people. For some reason I didn’t want to kill her so my bard tried using Charm Person, but it failed. I then tried making a trip check with my whip which I again failed. My frustration had peaked at this point. I pulled out my rapier and was about to fight her to the death until the DM abruptly stopped me out-of-character and basically said, “No, you can’t do that.” I tried arguing with him for a moment before admitting defeat. I knew no matter what I said I wasn’t going to get a chance to duel with her to the death so I just packed all my stuff away in my bag and stormed out. I was 100% done with her shenanigans.
Later, my friend somehow convinced me to come back despite all of this. Apparently, the NPC from before, who we’ll just call Mal, had proceeded to aerosolize a toxin into the town after I left and we had all died. We appeared in the afterlife, fought some skeletons, and got resurrected in the future where Mal had basically taken over the world. The party basically acted like the sorcereress never killed anyone to avoid creating problems. She didn’t stop casting area of effect spells at us though and giggling to herself when we complained about it. Eventually, the party rogue and I grew tired of her. After getting hit with another AOE I texted his phone and just said, “Kill her.” The rogue was heavily optimized so he simply snuck up behind her and Sneak Attacked her killing her in one hit. He then proceeded to put her corpse inside a bag of holding which he then dropped inside a portal hole so she would be lost in the Astral Plane forever. Unsurprisingly, she stopped showing up after that; and no one cared.

Sith_Happens
2014-08-11, 10:47 PM
For some reason I didn’t want to kill her

Well there's your problem. I'd have made it through two friendly-fire incidents before ganking her in her sleep and snidely remarking that "I thought she could take the damage."

Mr Beer
2014-08-11, 11:00 PM
Well there's your problem. I'd have made it through two friendly-fire incidents before ganking her in her sleep and snidely remarking that "I thought she could take the damage."

Yep. As Ian Fleming said "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it's enemy action." I would assume she's trying to kill me and take preventative measures i.e. night-time ganking.

Diachronos
2014-08-12, 01:03 AM
I pulled out my rapier and was about to fight her to the death until the DM abruptly stopped me out-of-character and basically said, “No, you can’t do that.” I tried arguing with him for a moment before admitting defeat. I knew no matter what I said I wasn’t going to get a chance to duel with her to the death so I just packed all my stuff away in my bag and stormed out.
..................................
After getting hit with another AOE I texted his phone and just said, “Kill her.” The rogue was heavily optimized so he simply snuck up behind her and Sneak Attacked her killing her in one hit. He then proceeded to put her corpse inside a bag of holding which he then dropped inside a portal hole so she would be lost in the Astral Plane forever. Unsurprisingly, she stopped showing up after that; and no one cared.

I think it's weird that the DM didn't let you do anything about it early on, but he let the rogue one-shot her and basically drop her body into black hole.

Eldan
2014-08-12, 02:41 AM
I think it's weird that the DM didn't let you do anything about it early on, but he let the rogue one-shot her and basically drop her body into black hole.

It was apparently a good time later, from that description. Maybe at that point even theDM realized this wasn't working.

aberratio ictus
2014-08-12, 04:35 AM
my character and another one decided to join the evil team who steal pokemon in order to free all the captured pokemon.

I find it fairly interesting that in this world, freeing captive pokemon constitutes an evil team.

huttj509
2014-08-12, 07:21 AM
I find it fairly interesting that in this world, freeing captive pokemon constitutes an evil team.

a) Go stealing peoples' pets and setting them free in the wild. See how kindly people take to it.

b) In the video game, the ulterior motive was to make everyone free their pokemon, so only the evil guys had pokemon. Though this didn't make the idealist figurehead very happy when it was revealed.

aberratio ictus
2014-08-12, 08:41 AM
a) Go stealing peoples' pets and setting them free in the wild. See how kindly people take to it.

That's hardly a sensible comparison, mostly since peoples' pets probably won't survive in the wild where Pokemon would, and peoples' pets aren't usually forced to fight each other regularly.

But we probably shouldn't derail this thread any more, I'd say.

Diachronos
2014-08-12, 09:42 AM
I find it fairly interesting that in this world, freeing captive pokemon constitutes an evil team.

It was more the way they went about it. It's not evil in concept, because they were trying to protect Pokémon from cruel trainers. But when you're stealing them and beating them in the process, you're being hypocrites and idiots.

Also, there's the fact that Ghetsis was using the "free your Pokémon for their own good" shpiel so that nobody else would have a way to stop him from taking over the world. Plus, when you consider his relationship with N it's pretty clear that Ghetsis has enough evil in him to make up for all of Team Plasma's good intentions

The Random NPC
2014-08-12, 11:07 AM
I find it fairly interesting that in this world, freeing captive pokemon constitutes an evil team.

I originally read that statement to mean the bad guys were stealing pokemon, while Braveheart and co. were going to free them from captivity. Like in a hostage situation.

braveheart
2014-08-12, 12:02 PM
I originally read that statement to mean the bad guys were stealing pokemon, while Braveheart and co. were going to free them from captivity. Like in a hostage situation.

actually that was the situation

Milodiah
2014-08-12, 02:24 PM
So, this isn't D&D, it's a story of Delta Green; for those of you who don't know, it's a superb variant of modern Call of Cthulhu which adds X-Files style government conspiracy to the usual horror from beyond the stars theme.

Anyway, I'm the GM/Keeper; the PCs are an FBI field agent, an Arizona State Police forensics specialist, and a private detective, who have been sent by their respective agencies to investigate a bunch of disappearances on an Indian reservation (Puppet Shows & Shadow Plays, for those who know DG). It all goes...decently, the woman playing the forensics expert is a simply wonderful roleplayer, and the younger kid (about 8th grade or so) playing the detective isn't too creative but can always be counted on to contribute something.

The fellow playing the FBI agent, however, probably should have sent up some minor red flags in character creation. Insisted on rearranging his already good stat rolls into being a 6'6" bodybuilder with dump stats in all the wrong places, provided as a character name some Japanese thing even though he was Caucasian (I don't recall what it was, but I would bet money on it being a Naruto character), insisted on giving him only one name rather than a first and last name, and invested heavily in throwing (as in knives) as opposed to something more useful like First Aid or Psychology (aka Sense Motive). Odd build for a freaking FBI agent, but I figure it's not too bad, it's not like he's asking for dual katanas or anything.

Game starts, not too bad, not exactly the best roleplayer but at least he doesn't immediately initiate PvP (which I have had happen once). Then they find a certain key piece of evidence, a Winchester rifle hidden in a closet that has definitely been used for some pretty brutal hand-to-hand combat.

He hides it again, stating he's going to come back and steal it later.

An FBI agent, concealing evidence, so that he can commit felony theft of a firearm.

Er.

Anyway, the ranking officer of the Arizona State Police is designed to be an unlikeable fellow, and I always depict him as having an abrasive and somewhat sexist personality. Nothing genuinely offensive to the players themselves, obviously, but enough to give them a reason to dislike him in-character as well as out. The party, as well as the major here, drive out to a suspicious area the PCs spotted from a helicopter earlier. Turns out it's a car half-buried in the desert, and the major hands out shovels and tells them to start digging; major naturally doesn't pull his fair share.

FBI agent takes this as justification to beat him to death with the shovel.

He says he's going to 'try to make it look like an accident', but botches the roll and ends up just straight up slugging the guy in the head with it. State policeman pulls his nightstick, FBI agent tries to massacre the guy with the shovel, and the other PCs (and the GM) pretty much watch in horror. He wins the freaking combat he initiated, and the state policeman has been beaten unconscious with a shovel for daring to be a boorish individual.

FBI agent then immediately phones his superior and tries to make it sound like an accident. Fails the roll.

So, here they are, standing in the desert with a 9/10ths-dead state policeman bleeding out on the sand, a crazed FBI agent holding the other PCs at gunpoint, with a chopper full of SWAT troopers on the way to contain the situation. And nobody's even noticed anything supernatural yet.

He eventually tries to just reinsert the same character again by claiming it's an identical twin brother with the same profession, skillset, clothing, attitude ("I promise it'll be different this time guys, I swear"), and name. But by then he's just derailed the game so badly that it pretty much just dwindles to nothing, the players just say they don't want to keep this session going.

Fortunately, the two good ones still play with us (I'm running a D&D campaign for them) and...That Guy has gone back to just playing Magic: The Gathering.

Tanuki Tales
2014-08-12, 05:19 PM
That's hardly a sensible comparison, mostly since peoples' pets probably won't survive in the wild where Pokemon would, and peoples' pets aren't usually forced to fight each other regularly.

But we probably shouldn't derail this thread any more, I'd say.

I'll just say that, on an instinctual level (for non-sapient Pokemon) and on a conscious level (for the more sapient ones), Pokemon know that being with a trainer is both preferable to being in the wild and that it's their fastest ticket to becoming as powerful as possible. At least, a lot of the peripheral materials either hint heavily at this if they don't outright say it. Also add on to all this that most Pokemon are monstrously more powerful (and there are many who are also monstrously more intelligent) than humanity and that some even specifically predate on humanity and a picture is painted where humanity are more the kept pets than the Pokemon.

But that's all I'll say on the matter.

Milodiah
2014-08-12, 07:39 PM
Judging by what happens when you step into the tall grass, I'd say that most Pokémon are just violent *******s regardless of whether or not they've been obtained and controlled by a trainer. They're not being forced to fight at all, they choose to fight nearly every time you see one in the wild!

lytokk
2014-08-13, 08:12 AM
Perhaps a pokemon's aggression has less to do with being evil little bastards and more to do with wanting to make themselves look as powerful as possible to perhaps impress the trainer enough to capture them, work with them, and make them even more powerful. All that ratata or zubat wants is to be someones pokemon

Tanuki Tales
2014-08-13, 10:03 AM
Lytokk has more the spirit of it, but let's drop that discussion (or take it to a proper thread) and move back to the suffering conga-line we've been enjoying reading.

Rater202
2014-08-13, 02:59 PM
Perhaps a pokemon's aggression has less to do with being evil little bastards and more to do with wanting to make themselves look as powerful as possible to perhaps impress the trainer enough to capture them, work with them, and make them even more powerful. All that ratata or zubat wants is to be someones pokemon

No.

you are making Pokemon sound Like Digimon.

both are good Mon series, but the two are utterly incompatible.

Tanuki Tales
2014-08-13, 03:21 PM
No.

you are making Pokemon sound Like Digimon.

both are good Mon series, but the two are utterly incompatible.

I reiterate, please take this to a different thread.

Sith_Happens
2014-08-14, 12:27 AM
So someone in the 3.5 subforum linked this (http://community.wizards.com/forum/whats-player-do/threads/920121), and, well, it's a doozy.

Marlowe
2014-08-14, 03:03 AM
Snip.

Maybe if you ever do play with this guy again, the adventure should be something like going to the store for a bottle of milk.

DeBasilisk
2014-08-14, 08:27 PM
-Copy and pasted from 3.5 sub forum per recommendation-

So, here's my personal worst dnd session. It took place last week after answering a Craigslist pickup group.

The game was typical 3.5. Characters would be starting at level five and we had an hour for character creation. The cast in question:

DM: Tall, Skinny pseudo-Hipster with a soul patch. This guy wasn't really a bad guy, and he wasn't exactly a bad DM. But he wasn't my kind of DM. He asked for more rolls and skill checks than anyone I have ever met. He had a very straight face and tended to keep his emotions pretty neutral, which was cool, but he clearly Favoured his regulars when it came to strategies and in character bonuses. Ok.

Toad: One of the regulars. Big guy with a buzz cut, convinced he's macho but really a tool. He actually referred to himself as a different amphibian, but for identity protection we'll stick with toad. This is one of those hyper aggressive guys that act like munchkins but have only a basic grasp of the rules and play straight fighters while investing in weapon focus and dodge. His character was a half orc just like him.

Alchoranger: The second group regular. A small stringy 20-something kid who acts like he wants to be Drizzt in real life. Incredibly uptight at the beginning of the session, he loosened up as the night went on due to his alcohol intake. He brought his own flask of vodka and mixed it with Yuengling, presumably 'cause he's a rebel like that. I'll give him this, he ended up blitzed, but it took a lot to get there. Frequently talked about how great communism is compared to Libertarianism - didn't understand that the issue wasn't related to gameplay. Played a something elf urban ranger after he was shot down for a vampire dread necromancer at level 5.

Trogbard: Short, tubby and with a loooonnngggg red beard. A friend of the DM, I gather he plays with the group pretty regular but misses a lot of sessions due to kids and work. I can relate. I actually almost kind of liked this guy, even though his character and play style were annoying as hell. He was big into roleplaying, which I dig, but he's the kind of guy who would play a kender if he could. In this case, he played a Troglodyte Bard (yes, Troglodyte Bard) and yes, every combat we all had to roll against his stink glands.

Munchkleric: New to the group. Knew Alchoranger somehow. One of those uber gamers who dress all in black and think they're better than Mother Theresa because they know how Pun Pun gets started. He knew his 3.5 pretty well but started out cautious with the cheese due to the new group. As the night went on he kept altering his character sheet to "fix things," like trying to squeeze DMM in. The DM shot down his dragonwrought kobold sorcerer (not because of the cheese, but because "kobolds aren't strong enough for this campaign"). He ended up with a neutral evil human cleric.

Me: I was trying to gauge the optimization level of the group and initially was planning on a relaxed beguiler, but when I heard Kleric pitching his dragonwrought kobold I decided to kick it up to conjurer, just to be on the safe side.

So the adventure begins. Our characters all know each other from way back but haven't seen each other in years. The DM gave each of us a quick sidebar with some info about what we've been up to recently, which presumably would tie in to the present story at some point. My guy was supposed to be hunting some shapeshifting fugitive. This would never come up in game. The group has some shared patron we are supposed to meet at some ancient ruins in the words. Cool.

We all get there independently and surprise, he's dead! Clues at the scene of the crime tell us we should investigate a town about a day or two's march from the ruins. It's night. We leave the ruins.

Roll survival to find your way out of the forest. Really? We got here, shouldn't we be able to leave? Nope, 'cause it's dark and no one has ranks in it.

Dismal rolls all around and guess what? We are now lost in the woods! First 10 minutes of gameplay. More survival skills. Bad rolls. DM rolls for weather. Now there's a blizzard on the way. More penalties for survival, no one is allowed to take ten on anything. We ended up lost in the woods for A WEEK. Fun fun fun, and DM made sure to let us know why we are all fatigued from starvation and hypothermia. Well, except the Munchkleric, who was summoning food for himself and only himself. Luckily there was a lot of snow to melt so we weren't dehydrated.

Toad and the Wino made it clear from the start that for whatever reason their characters didn't like my character. There was no justification in the game about it, but I know why it was. At the onset of the game they invited me to ante up 20 dollars - whoever got the most critical hits over the course of the game won the pot. Well, as a wizard I guarantee it won't be me! So I declined. They then told me I could bet on one of them and split the pot and I again declined, mostly because I just didn't want to. When I backed out Trogbard backed out and Cleric also declined to join, so I guess I ruined their dnd critical gambling game.

They found numerous ways to take it out on my guy in game. Petty stuff like messing with my gear when I was asleep. They openly planned to steal my spellbook but when I passed a note to the DM about my plans to booby trap it they meta'ed and decided not to. They did piss on my gear bag though and the DM ruled that there was no way I would possibly know they had done it in character so I had to walk around with the piss bag. Everyone thought it was hilarious. Trogbard started hitting on me because I apparently smelled hot to him. Har har.

We finally made it out of the woods, starving, after a week of bs random encounters (wolf, bear, bear, a marilith - Wait, wtf??? The cleric and I just ran. We're level 5!!! The rest of the group nearly tpked and blamed us for losing. The marilith used absurdly sub par tactcs and didn't even chase the rest of the group out of the field it was spotted in. I assumed she must be the BBEG but was told it was just a random roll. Why it was there no one will ever know. We a also ran across an unusual number of spiked pits.

At the bottom of one of the pits I fell into there was a corpse with a rapier on it. A quick identification reveals it to have been a +1 keen rapier. I levitate myself out of the pit with the rapier, and immediately Toad tells me to give it to him.

Now, I had been intending to give it to one of the other characters since I can't get much use out of it, but the attitude and tone he took completely put me off.

Me: "No dude, I found it and I'll decide what to do with it."
Toad: "Give it to me NOW." Trying to stare me down. He actually started flexing his muscles. Lol.
Me: "I'll consider it if you ask nice."
Toad: "You need to give it me because it improves crits and you were too chicken to ante up 20 bucks so you can't use it. Give it to me now or I will take it from you by force."

I said no and we had to roll initiative. He won and said he would charge me and start a grapple. I said no, and immediate action abrupt jaunted to the other side of the pit trap. My turn. I dropped it back in the trap, spit on it and walked off.

I suspected he might push combat, but instead he just flips me the bird and jumped in the pit trap. 30 foot deep, with spikes. DM rolls high damage from the fall and he cusses at me. He gets the rapier and his buddy Alchoranger pulls him out with a rope.

Swift action temper tantrum about how I wasn't being a team player. I told him that was pretty rich coming from the guy who pissed on my backpack for no in character reason at all and he said it was just a harmless prank. Whatever.

Eventually we made it out of the woods to the road. DM Deus Ex let's us find some horses. I hadn't memorized mount, so it's a regular horse for me. Roll riding check. I fail. I fall off the horse and get trampled by the one behind me, ridden by Toad, of course, who tells me it's "karma," for not giving him the rapier. Cleric won't heal me and no one has any potions left. DM informs me my legs are maimed and I have to use a stick as a crutch for a while. Back on the horse. Roll riding with penalties for the crutch. Fail. Fall off again. The DM rules I don't get trampled this time. Toad and Alchoranger decide to charge with their horses at me then stop short before crushing me. "To teach him a lesson." Toad wants to roll animal handling to get his horse to crap on me. The DM allows the roll and he fails. Trog doesn't join in the conflict, but doesn't help at all. Cleric doesn't pay attention because he's too busy scrolling through splatbooks to "adjust" his character sheet.

I can tell this is not going to be my kind of group.

On our way to the town we came across a group of five halfling women and had to roll will saves with a variety of penalties "because they're really hot and you're starving." Myself, Toad and the Wino all fail. The DM informs us they are "Gypsy Whores," and use charm spells to seduce their patrons. When Trogbard learns this he decides to jump right in even though he made his save, then bard charm the whores so he doesn't have to pay. DM unnecessarily describes a variety of sex acts (most of which rhyme with banal) they inflict on us before they take our gold and wander off. The rest of the group seems to be loving it so far, until....

... Ranger decides he needs to inform the group that the term "Gypsy" is offensive and also, somehow, capitalist. He demands that the scene be retconned. This argument goes on for over 15 minutes. DM finally agrees to change the name of the group to "Nomad Whores" but stresses that they are a big part of the game world and that there is no way to retcon them out without changing his whole campaign. Great.

After a bunch of behind the screen rolls, the DM informs us we all have contracted diseases from the Gyp - I mean, Nomad Whores. Random rolls give me devil chills off his "STD table."

Cleric won't memorize any cure disease spells for anyone else, so we arrive at the town fatigued, starving and riddled with extra planar sex plagues. This all took 2 hours, and we had agreed to a 6-midnight gaming frame. Counting character creation, we are now halfway through.

Now that we're in town we set about to find clues. The Trog is, in theory, The Face, but due to racial prejudice and the fact he smells like a dumpster no one will talk to him. So Toad takes the lead, by which I mean he proceeds to threaten every NPC we come across for information. After he loses his temper and kills a merchant the city watch comes to arrest him, so he kills them. The ranger helps him fight but I totally stay out of it and walk away from the scene. I would once again be accused of abandoning the group but hey, My LN wizard is not going to kill town guards to protect this ******* murderer. The fighter and the ranger are ultimately arrested and hauled off to jail. When they were being interrogated by the DM they would try to blame the event on me, saying I was mind controlling them and making them attack. They also made a big point of telling the city watch I was gay (I'm not in real life, and neither was my character) and they just wanted to let the guards know in case "you have any sodomy laws."

Alchoranger was pretty drunk, but he got into an argument with Toad about whether what they did was homophobic (or capitalist?). This discussion was easily 10 minutes long. They ended up deciding it was and they asked DM to retcon what they said to have them say I was a necromancer (who mind controlled them?) instead of gay, but he ruled that they already said gay and couldn't take it back. Luckily for me there were no sodomy laws, but for some dumbass reason every single city watchman now flirted with me.

Meanwhile Munchkleric has wandered off and wants to kill commoners for experience. After the DM informs him he won't get a chance to level up tonight he decides not to bother and instead wants to start organizing a cult to craft stuff for him to sell for money.

The DM informs us our "friends" will be in jail for a week or two before they get a hearing and unless we want to break them out we will have to occupy ourselves in that time. No way am I breaking them out. Munchkleric also declines to help them and the Trog has been banned from the town due to his odor. The player doesn't seem to mind, as he seems happy playing music outside the city gates for copper all day and night long. Trog also wants to describe to everyone about how he is taking a dump out in the open in front of people by the city gates because apparently that's what Trogs do. When the DM doesn't seem interested in having anyone from the city go investigate his feces he seems disappointed and said that "ruined his plan."

I ask if I can requisition a bunch of mundane and alchemical goods while we are waiting. The DM says sure and gives me a very generous loan from the local bank. Good. I set to work creating a variety of battlefield control items and shrink them. The DM is surprised at this idea.

Both myself and Munchkleric are required to make additional will saves daily to avoid gangs of prostitutes that wander the city, also using charm spells. We have to roll for each day for two weeks. The first DC is 14 and it increases by 1 every day. Toad makes a big point about making me make ally rolls in the open so I don't chest, and snatches my character sheet to look at my saves. This seriously pisses me off. Trog and the DM talk us down and I start Kleric and I start rolling. I fail 5 rolls and Kleric fails 4. The DM let's us know that these hookers use strap ons on their customers. Of course they do. Trog hears about this and sneaks into the city disguised as a horse (apparently all the gay city watchmen are fooled by a neighing troglodyte crawling with a burlap bag over his back) to meet up with the whores. DM is thrilled, because now he and Trog get to regale the rest of us with vivid descriptions of Troglodyte on Halfling sex. Great. Helpfully, Trogbard draws us some stick figure illustrations and his tail and tongue penetration combos.

Trog also AGAIN makes a point of telling us that he goes and craps in the street behind the brothel in full view of everyone. DM says no one saw him and he makes a big sigh like its the worst thing ever. I never found out what his brilliant poo-plan was.

Finally the time comes and they are brought to a trial. They claim they were attacked by the merchant and didn't mean to hurt anyone in the city watch. The cleric and I are called to testify. Cleric supports their story and I call BS.

Toad and Wino start to yell at me at this point, calling me a bad role player and an "antisocial gamer." I tell them I would love to work together with the group but they have done nothing but insult me, piss on my stuff, nearly run me over and otherwise try to make my life miserable since I met them. Plus they tried to throw me under the bus to the watch. They shout that I wouldn't know that in character, as if that would be reason why I should support them.

In the end, it's a "hung jury" and they are released. Sure, that makes sense. Some BS clue bat later and we are in some crap dungeon hunting some crap relic.

I'm done at this point, and I realistically already know I'm leaving. I just want to screw with them before I go, so I go along to the dungeon. I figure I will be the perfect team player, helping out and being nice and if nothing else happens I will finish off the night and just decline to come back if invited, but the second they try any BS on me it's done.

We go trough the dungeon and fight some garbage. I help out, even to the point that I buff Toad with a bulls strength once.

Rolls rolls rolls dungeoneering rolls survival rolls and we are lost in the dungeon. We come to a dead end that actually isnt a secret door after a day of searching for a way to our goal. I agree to throw up a rope trick at the end of the tunnel for a few hours rest in safety. Everyone else goes up the rope first, and right when I am about to they yank up the rope, throw down some taunts and close the window.

So, up in the rope trick, the assclowns settle down for their 8 hour (technically not 8 given my CL, but the DM waived it) resource recharge. Before sleeping they make a big show of how clever they were to trick me like that; Toad was dissapointed the window to the ropetrick was invisible from my side and I couldnt see his ass up against the view area. The DM started to talk about everyone waking up 8 hours later, but I cut him off. I told him I needed to sidebar and he agreed.

"After one hour I wake up and crawl out of my Fortifying bedroll. The bedroll gives me a full nights rest, including spells, and the only spell I cast within the last 8 hours was Rope trick, so other than that I have a full days worth of re-memorized spells." I show the DM the item description and he nods approval. I wasn't sure he would, as I've gotten in debates about the item before, but he agreed and gave me full recharge. After a short meditation and swapping around a few spells I set to work.

The first thing I did was stick a folded paper on the wall with the word "*******s" scrawled on the outside. Then I removed one of the shrunken items I had requisitioned back in town. It was a ten foot by ten foot wide stone and iron wall with a 6 inch by 6 inch prison style barred hole in the middle. I let it expand to its full size about 10 foot down the hall from the dead end, creating a nice 10 by 10 by 10 foot prison room, with the rope trick waiting to expire up at the ceiling, but not before forgetting to leave a nice santa-style goodie bag directly under the note.

I had two of the walls prepared in town, and i laid the second one on the floor of the hallway about another 20 foot down. I wanted to make certain if the first wall was somehow destroyed I would have another ready to spring up.

The DM was silent as I told him these arrangements. After I told him what was on the note and in the bag, he frowned and furrowed his brow. I knew he would be upset - PC vs. PC actions are always fraught with controversy, but what he said blew my mind.

"Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, these guys will tear your character apart."

I just smiled at his innocence. "Trust me, I will be ok."

So, we returned to the table. It had only been 5 to 10 minutes but Alchoranger seemed even more drunk. He and Toad were arguing over their tally of criticals while Trogbard was busy sketching a picture of what I presume to have been a nude succubus. Munchkleric eyed me susiciously.

DM: "Ok, you guys wake up fully rested and exit the rope trick. You find yourselves in what seems to be a 10 by 10 foot prison cell with only a small grate and no door. There is a large sack on the ground and a note stuck on the wall that says "*******s," on it.

Munchkleric: "Where's the f------ wizard?"

DM: "You don't see him anywhere."

Munch proceeds to almost yell about how a level 5 wizard doesn't have access to any abilities which would let him teleport a rope trick. True.

The DM shouts him down and makes it clear only the wall is new. Munch then begins to argue about how a level 5 wizard doesn't have wall of stone. True. Then he smiles knowingly. "Ah, it's bulls---. I roll will to see through the illusion." The DM informs him his will roll doesn't show it's an illusion.

"I charge it," says Toad. Which netted him a couple lost hit points.

Trogbard asked what the note paper on the wall said and DM clarified it was a folded piece of paper with "A-Holes" on the outside. "It's addressed to you," I said pointing to Toad, being a ****. Then they opened it up to read it.

I imagine it must be obvious what was on the paper, but this group somehow never saw it coming. The explosive runes simply said "Bang M-Fers." The DM let me roll the damage. I don't remember the number, but it was pretty high, not enough to kill them though. Plenty of explosive force to detonate the contents of the Santa Style Goody Bag though. Inside the bag I had placed about a couple dozen flasks each of alchemists fire, acid, lantern oil, choking dust and inhaled poisons.

Toad and Munch went ballistic. Alchoranger was pretty blitzed and didn't fully understand what was happening. "What kind of spell is explosive runes? Do Wizards get that?" He asked, five minutes after the spell went off. Yes. Yes they do. Trogbard, on the other hand, just busted out laughing.

The DM goes ahead and works out what saving throws everyone gets and how much damage everything does. He was pretty generous with the saving throws, which was fine. Again, he let's me roll all the damage. All told, Toad was dead, Alchoranger was below zero and on fire and Munch and Trogbard were standing but heavily injured. Munch had refused to memorize healing spells "Out of principle," and neither had invested ranks in healing. Trogbard also passed on choosing clw as a Bard spell, so Toad and the Wino promptly died. I had planned to use mage hand to bring the rapier from Toads corpse to me as a grand capstone, but Munch immediately demands to roll knowledge The Planes and hits a natural 20. "Pazuzu Pazuzu Pazu!" He shouts out. I was actually pretty impressed, and amused, but before we could figure out what he had planned Toad stands up at the table and, for some reason, crushes a fistful of potato chips from the group bowl and flings them across the room.

I don't remember his exact words, but he began cursing me out and whining to the DM to retcon everything since they left the Rope Trick. He whined that I used an "exploit," and that pvp shouldn't be allowed if one player couldn't fight back. The DM listened to his concerns like a good DM should, and to his credit he shot it down. The DM seemed surprised that the fighter died since "d10 characters pretty much never go down in my games." (?)

Alchoranger took it pretty much in stride. He was fighting to stay awake anyhow. Trogbard was loving it and wanted to keep going. Munch was beat red and kept asking if Pazuzu showed up. Toad wasn't having any of it.

"If someone doesn't rez me so I can kill you (pointing to me) I'm going home right now." I told him there was no worry, I was leaving anyhow. At that point Toad announces he would be playing my character and was going off to get himself "raped by a Minotaur." He actually told me to give him my character sheet too. I laughed in his face and gave him a sheet of paper with "*******" written on it. So on that note, I bid the group adieu (but not after receiving a few more second grade taunts from Toad.

Lesson learned - Craigslist pickups are a no-go.

Sartharina
2014-08-15, 12:53 AM
Well, it seems you made one of those guys' nights! Even if another hated it.

Trogbard would probably get along great with my younger brother. They share a sense of humor.

Mr Beer
2014-08-15, 01:14 AM
Trogbard sounds annoying but a decent sport. Holy crap what a cluster-mess though. At least the DM let you get your revenge, which is good but doesn't really make up for the bands of poxed-up rape hobbits.

Unseenmal
2014-08-15, 11:12 AM
I have to say I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, he was being a jerk by picking on you/your character. On the other, I consider stealing from other characters PvP, so in my mind you initiated. By creating a character whose motivation is at odds with another party member (being sent to confiscate his book), you're partially responsible. I'd ask further, did the other players/characters wrong you in some way that would justify killing their characters? Because if so, it's not mentioned in the story.

The better response would have been to tell him OOC character that he was being a jerk, and to stop it. And if that didn't work, to bring it up with the DM. I'm a fan of dealing with OOC problems OOC precisely to avoid incidents like this.

Sorry, I've been away for a while...First, the DM stated at the beginning that there was no PvP violence to be had. He didn't mind some minor shenanigans but attacking/combat between PCs was not allowed.

To address you're last point first, I did talk to him OOC. Numerous times. His response was always something along the lines of "My Wizard just saved the world. What did your PC do? Oh she was back home sucking farm d*ck" or something to that effect. Eloquence was not his strong suit. I was told that the DM spoke to him about it. His response: "My PC is CN. CHAOTIC. He does what he wants"

To address the stealing aspect, the book was supposed to be returned to the King's Temple. The Wizard decided he wanted to keep it and told us OOC "Wouldn't it be great for me to use this book to overthrow the King? Wouldn't it be cool if he sent someone after me? Plot hooks guys!!" Or something along those lines. I don't recall his exact words.

The DM told him that is exactly what was going to happen. Someone *WAS* coming for the book. The DM thought it would be a great idea if that someone was a Player instead of NPC. In retrospect, the DM did apologize to me in person for that one.

The other PC's were also in on the jerk stuff but not to the degree of said Wizard player. However, they also supported his decision to attack my PC, a decidedly evil act against someone that was a productive member of the group. He told them of the plan while I was out smoking. They claimed it was "justified". None of them even mentioned the fact that he was using OOC knowledge and breaking the DM's rule (even the DM missed that one). The issue with them wasn't so much what they did but what they didn't do.

Plus, my previous PC (the Rogue), went insane when he heard his fiance' was killed by someone that was supposed to be a friend and no one did anything to stop it. He saw them all as responsible.

Over the top? Sure. Could I have handled it better? Of course. Was it fun? You bet your sweet bippy.

bjoern
2014-08-15, 05:45 PM
The worst session I ever had actually had nothing to do with the game itself. It was about 10 years ago.

My younger brother and I shared all of our books. We would pick up whatever sounded good and were slowly expanding our library of 3.5. We also provided the books for the group as no one else had anything except for another PH.

On a snowy Saturday in January we had just finished a session at our friends house and were loading up the car to head out. It was cold so we fired up the car to warm up.

I was wanting to play around with a few builds during the two weeks until our next session so I packed up all of our books into a large dufflebag and tossed it in the car.

Back inside the house we BSed and laughed about some of the crazy stuff that had transpired that session. After about 20 minutes we had figured the car was warmed up enough.

Upon reaching the car, we noticed tracks leading from it down the street. It was late and the snow had just stopped so there were no other track besides our own.
We opened the back door and sure enough, the duffle bag was gone . We followed the tracks for a few blocks until the turned onto a cleaned off street and we lost them. That was a terrible experience. We had about 20 or 30 books I think. Over the next few months the whole group worked together on replacing the whole library we had.

Now the books stay at the friends place.

Hazrond
2014-08-15, 10:16 PM
Upon reaching the car, we noticed tracks leading from it down the street. It was late and the snow had just stopped so there were no other track besides our own. We opened the back door and sure enough, the duffle bag was gone . We followed the tracks for a few blocks until the turned onto a cleaned off street and we lost them. That was a terrible experience. We had about 20 or 30 books I think. Over the next few months the whole group worked together on replacing the whole library we had.

Wait, somebody actually stole a duffle bag of splatbooks but left the CAR there??? :smallconfused:

MesiDoomstalker
2014-08-15, 10:40 PM
Wait, somebody actually stole a duffle bag of splatbooks but left the CAR there??? :smallconfused:

I second this genuine surprise.

bjoern
2014-08-15, 11:59 PM
Wait, somebody actually stole a duffle bag of splatbooks but left the CAR there??? :smallconfused:
It stuck us as odd also, the conclusion we came to is it was just some kid (apparently pretty strong) or didn't want the hassle of trying to get rid of a stolen vehicle and was just looking for easy stuff to steal.


It was his car that we took that day. The books were literally worth more than the car.

Believe it or not, its happened to me a couple times (theft out of a vehicle) just last summer someone got into my work truck and stole my iPad and a bunch of documents . I was working two states away from where the dufflebag was stolen so it must happen a lot.

Sartharina
2014-08-16, 12:43 AM
Wait, somebody actually stole a duffle bag of splatbooks but left the CAR there??? :smallconfused:

A car is much more obvious to steal, easier to recover, and harder to hide than a bag of stuff.

Balain
2014-08-16, 03:38 AM
We were playing D&D 3.5. This group had been playing for years. DM is a little loose with rules and one player is a rules lawyers. Fights would often break out between the two. One night the two almost get in a fist fight. The rest of us hold them back. I let them all know it just isn't fun for me any more. I stopped laying with them for some time. Eventually I joined them the odd time. But only when there was one of the two and not both together.

jaydubs
2014-08-16, 04:44 PM
<snip>

Wow. Well, while I still can't encourage that sort of thing, I can't honestly say for sure that I wouldn't have done something similar in the same situation.

Makes me glad I've never had to play in a group like that.

LimSindull
2014-08-18, 10:43 AM
This is not as bad as what other people have written here, but I'd still like to share an annoying experience that happened two campaigns ago (about a year I think, maybe just half a year).

We all get emails from the DM (about four pages) of options and back story for the campaign. There were wizards, now not so many because the rulers lost a son to a crazy wizard and the royal army marched over there and burned them to the ground. (think wizard tower in a forest). It's been about fifty or so years since. This also means that magical weapons are almost completely gone, we didn't realize this at first but it was our faults. The DM straight up emailed us the info.

DM tells us that the North and West are pretty much okay with arcane casters and druids, but the central and East factions still don't like them. There is a lot of internal power struggles from going on, but at the start we are not exactly at odds with each other.

One of my buddies wants me to help him make a character (no problem) so that he won't be in game bullied by other optimizers. I'm okay with this, he is new. We also discuss working as a team (we fail at this horribly) and, because the DM plans to make this challenging not only level wise but plot wise as well, we try to get as many other people to agree to a no PvP conflict rule. It had gotten a little out of hand in previous solo shots.

I help him build his sword sage over the phone (apparently I did a terrible job explaining the limits of the class and why you can't use the other classes abilities in place of your own, but there is a noticeable gap in our play experience, about 20 years) and he gets his back story together.

I choose to be from the East, along with my brother (our characters are cousins and distant contenders for the throne, but neither would take it) so that I can be a paladin, which is my way of saying, "hey guys, I won't ever try to even snidely remark at you. Look at my awesome niceness and understanding for all. I even, through my back story, I negate my countries hate for elves (big war and lots of death. I Pity them as weak creatures that need guidance. Not perfect, I know, but better.) I'm pretty excited to see how the campaign goes.

So we have
Sword Sage- foreigner from another continent that is here for magical weapons.

Pally of Heronious- Me, Vow of Poverty paladin only alive to serve the will of humanity. Allowed to keep a sword and shield (because of family and DM discretion). Also, the East and center kept Clerics and Paladins, but only because they controlled them.

I will use us as the head of the teams.

First mission, My team of me and my brother travel North to investigate a possible assassination plot against the King. We don't ever try to hide or deny who or what we are. And we are walked right on in to join the rebellion. I am dressed in rags (don't get cold) and Samurai (brother) is dressed in his ceremonial family armor. We waltz on in, learn of the plot and help to arrange transportation for these people. All we learn is that these people are trying to disrupt a wedding between one of the King's daughters and my families heirs. Not exactly a super evil crime.

I try to lead us through the old wizard forest (now burned) to delay everyone and keep us from getting to the wedding on time, thus stopping the plot. The DM simply looks and says, I know it might look that way, but it would take longer. I later explain what I meant to do, and he apologized , but also said that it was the tension he wanted, so we would have just arrived on time anyways. (shucks) I did have ulterior motives, but those were shot down as well. (find relics in tower and destroy them)

So everyone gets to the wedding, my team tells our superiors what we learned, and the next day we all sit down at the feast. One noble from the North (player) says that his character (a kid) is bored and sneaks out to play with his wolf. We all kind of give him a sideways look, but whatever. The Sword Sage tells the DM that his character needs to use the bathroom. (Now, Samurai is waiting in princess A's room, she is 18 or 19 and about to be married. She is at the feast.)

Sword sage leaves, goes to daughter B's room, kills her and leaves.She was 12 I think. (Passed his hide and MS checks.) Then goes to daughter C's room and murders her, her friends, maids, and three guards. (failed a save) She was like five or seven.

He then returns to the wedding. All pissed off because he couldn't kill Princess A as well. Then the red wedding happens, East nobles murder West and North nobles with crossbows, declaring them traitors. (no one actually knows about the daughters) Then, someone with shadow jump, pops up to the king, drives a dagger in his back and pops away. We all have freaked out at this point and begin to flee. I run with the gnome and Half Orc from Westport and we start heading back to the ship, get warned about guards by the sword sage and just start getting out of the town headed west. This is how the teams are formed.

My mount brings the Samurai back to us. We then learn of the sword sage's secret bathroom break and flip out. We try to explain that this is not a good habit to get into, but he won't have any of it, (I did it for the greater good) So, samurai and I tell Gnome that we know about his involvement (the half orc was his slave?) in the assassination and he gets ready to have his head chopped off. We instead tell him that we want him to come with us and help unite the lands instead. He agrees. (see my team tried to keep the agreement from earlier)

Overall, everyone in group two died to the Sword Sages hands at least twice. He killed them for, not walking the way he wanted, they drew the betrayal card (even though the sword sage had no previous interaction with that character), performing badly (we had a trap maker. I kid not.) and having a magic item, even if he couldn't use it. From what i'm told by players of the other group, it was pretty horrendous. My group just traveled to most places and got people to back us while halting all progress of group two to get to the elves. In case they ever thought to do that, but it never crossed their minds to amass armies to win a war.

Not the worst for me, but I write this for the other players who were slaughtered continually.

Milodiah
2014-08-18, 11:05 AM
-snip-

Honestly I would have asked how you did it OOC, because I'd have wanted to know how that brilliance was pulled together. Assuming of course I hadn't kicked the dude's ass when he screwed you out of your own rope trick.

bjoern
2014-08-18, 06:27 PM
Honestly I would have asked how you did it OOC, because I'd have wanted to know how that brilliance was pulled together. Assuming of course I hadn't kicked the dude's ass when he screwed you out of your own rope trick.

I was wondering about this a little also. Did you know pretty early on that you were going to whip them? You had to have some idea when you bought the shrunk walls and bags of alchemical supplies. Also when picking explosive runes as a spell known, probably not the first spell I'd pick unless I had some plan for it.....

KuroiHanabi
2014-08-19, 04:29 PM
Well, my worst session was a weird one too, I was playing a game that was a mix of PbP and Live game over at Roll20, now we had already been playing for two or three months with this group when one of the players had to drop out because of work so we had a spot left and a new guy came in, since I was working a double shift I couldn't be there for when he introduced himself but my gf and the DM told me that he sounded like a nice guy and that it would be fun to have him.

So, he began to post and the first red flag jumped for me, his character was a level 2 human barbarian/fighter, unusual perhaps...but his description began with 'He was a beautiful man...' and a list of all the accomplishments the PC had, apparently he had been in a couple of wars he basically won by himself, he was the lost prince of a far away kingdom, he was born....yes, BORN with the ability to dual wield (so he had an extra feat than allowed....I don't know how he convinced the DM), oh...and he had a Harem...yes and he was only 18 btw.

Second red flag, his first RP post was basically an essay-length of how a big shark of a merchant had begged him to come and take care of the dungeon and it's goblins and the way his character kept playing hard ball and asking for gold despite not needing it....yes, because he was rich too and then a long winded narration of him entering the dungeon and killing hundreds of goblins left and right without sustaining a single injury and him heroically evading traps....nevermind that our group had already cleared more than half of the dungeon and there were no more enemies or traps.

Third and final red flag, when he finally arrived to where we were he ranted and ranted about how weak we were and how he could defeat us easily and that we had to beg him to help us in this dungeon because otherwise we'd be dead soon...so when our characters told him flatly 'No' and the Half Elf began to ask him to reconsider his attitude and that we could all get along...his next post was simply about his character turned around and left the dungeon...again fighting his way out, for some reason.

So the DM begins to try and play mediator but Barbarian guy wants to be the 'Star' of the game and once the DM begs him to stay, Barbarian guy began to try and take control of the story by posting 'And the Half-Elf surrendered to the great aura of charm that...' so the girl playing the Half Elf gets mad and tells him not to control her character....and he began to attack her OOC, now he was aggressive in game and outside of it, to the point that she quitted the game and Hobby altogether. And she was the DM's wife! So I could never understand why the DM begged this guy so much to stay....even throwing his wife under the bus

Not too long after that, the game fell, even when somewhat late the DM finally kicked this guy out but by that point none of us wanted to remain in the group which is a shame because I loved that group, we played a couple of times after that but the spirit wasn't there anymore (And the DM showing up drunk as hell didn't helped). Last I hear Barbarian guy was kicked out of Roll20.

NickChaisson
2014-08-19, 05:48 PM
I only have two horrible game stories, both involve the same guy we will call E.

The first story

So, this guy was an old friend of my wife so we invited him to play with us. This was also one of the few times I was able to convince my brother to play with me (we have different interests and I was hoping to bond a little through D&D)

This campaign was basically the continuation of a planescape campaign that only lasted one session (DMed by one of the players)

The campaign starts fine enough, they exit sigil and end up on some random town on the material plane. The town seems to be mind controlled and the party end up in the sewers fighting aboliths. They clear the aboliths out and bring a town guard down and start to explain to him about the aboliths. All the evidence of the aboliths is gone and the guard seems to think they are crazy. Then...my brother attacks and kills the guard to protect the group. I didnt really like this, but he was new to the game and was CN, I explained to him that killing the guard probably wasnt the best idea and he would have to face the consequences of his actions. A (cleric of st.cuthbert) speaks up and says his character is going to have to bring him to the local authorities, Me and my brother both agree and I mention that I'm not gonna kill his character or anything.

Then E jumps from his chair, red in the face and starts yelling that my brother was just RPing his alignment. He was incredibly worked up about this. A and E argue for a good while and I get dragged into it soon enough. I told E that everyone but him was fine with how things were going (my brother was fine with the jail thing) and he was the only one yelling about this. He refused to stand down so I just finished the session.

That was the last time my brother played D&D with me X_X

The second story, this one is a little longer.

So after the above campaign fell through E volunteered to DM something. I was so against this, but I hadnt played in the longest time. Everyone else seemed at ok with him DMing. We had been getting to know E a little better by this point. He spent most of the time A wasnt there just bitching about the guy. Saying how much he didnt like him and such. We made it clear that he was our friend and we didnt appreciate the talk. So he toned it down a bit but still complained. Anyways.
It was a pathfinder game. He went on and on about how open world it was. The story was that there was one city left in the world and the rest was some savage wasteland.

Party Line-up
Me - Witch (I had a goal about eating children)
J - half-orc paladin
K - blind oracle
A - bard
my wife - cleric
M - wizard

So the story starts off with us being contacted by mysterious people forcing us to participate in some plot to assassinate the king. It was obviously a trap, we couldn't see their faces and we only had their word that we would get payed a small sum. Oh and they threatened to throw us out of the city if we didn't agree to work with them. So to no ones surprise the plot fails and we get labeled as the conspirators and are thrown out of the city as punishment. I'm not to annoyed by this. I didn't like the small amount of railroading but w/e. I just wanted to get the actual game started.

So we decide to tough it out in the wilderness and work together and find another city. My character is loving being outside the city and I could practice my withery in the open now (it was illegal in the city) eventually after wandering around a bunch (and A having to make several saves, failing all of them and going through everything from nettles, to stepping in **** and then being covered in acid. Only A by this point btw) we find a witches hut. I'm happy. She teaches me how to make an immortality potion that utilized ingredients around her house (oh, and some children that she had locked away) and then vanishes and leaves her hut to me. Up until this point the campaign was ok, but it took a turn for the worst.

It was around this point that the DM decided that he wanted us to go back to the town. The town that he forced us to get kicked out of. No one except for J liked this idea and we all brought up that if he wanted us to play in the town, he shouldn't of forced us out. He ignored that and went on about how my character could've found an orphanage to get children for my immortality potion. I brought up that I already had children and all the ingredients for the potion in my newly acquired hut and I had no reason IC to return to the town. He dropped it and we slept IC for the night. Half-way through the night J (our LG paladin) gets possessed by some burning clown demon (E had a picture of him on his laptop) and burned down my hut and all the children and ingredients in it. All while laughing manically and trying to lock me in my room to kill me. The DM was telling him to do all this. My character barely managed to escape and was pissed (I was annoyed but not angry at this point) Then the DM informed us that we would be heading to town now cause we had no reason to stay out here. Then I got pissed. I flatly said "No, my character is gonna stay out here. You all go back to town if you want. I am NOT travelling with the guy that just burned down my house and tried to kill me" the DM laughed and informed the paladin to knock me unconscious and drag me to town. So he does. We end for the night and I silently vowed to end this campaign.

Next session and were at the city gate. only one guard, we try to sneak past nope, cant do that. We try to use fake entry passes we forged, nope instantly sees that they are fakes. We even tried to bribe him but he wouldn't have that. The DM suggests we kill him and J immediately runs him through and we get to the city. I'm playing nice at this point, made a truce with J and seem to want to go to the city. We get in and A want to go to a high-end tavern and try to score some coin by telling bard stories. Hes literally getting in the 40's for his rolls (he was rolling really well and optimized his performance) but the DM was not having that. He made three coppers and was insulted the entire time by NPCs. Either way, it was time to destroy.

I started telling everyone that we were part of the prestigious BlackWood family. We got the best meals and seats because of this. I started flirting with the richest, oldest man in the bar. Eventually we are married and I'm in his will. I quickly kill him and become the richest family in the town. I go about marrying other people and getting loads of gold. I think I ended up going through four of the richest families. Anyway, point was that I owned the town. I just started rewriting his game by founding other towns and building a naval fleet. I was part of the way through designing a way to make the city float and turn it into my personal battle fortress when he called a stop for the night. To ah...."prepare more". He canceled the campaign and we never played with him again.

Milodiah
2014-08-19, 07:38 PM
Personally I would have just starting metaphorically banging my head against the wall trying to get out of the city, giving the DM a hard glare every time he contrived a reason to make me stay there. And if all else fails, I would have had an IC change of heart and turned myself in to the authorities for the assassination.

Also...the first story, do you mean Mr. E genuinely thought Chaotic Neutral people don't have to go to jail for killing a watchman just because of their alignment?

NickChaisson
2014-08-19, 08:56 PM
Also...the first story, do you mean Mr. E genuinely thought Chaotic Neutral people don't have to go to jail for killing a watchman just because of their alignment?


Yeah, he argued for a good hour or so about how we were over reacting and my brother should have the freedom to act out his alignment in any way he chooses. It was ridiculous.

Milodiah
2014-08-19, 09:06 PM
"Sorry ma'am, he's fully within his bounds, law can't do anything to help you."
"But...but he killed my husband! And then started taking all of our money and jewelry!"
"He showed us his chaotic neutral badge, means we can't stop him."
"What!"

Mr Beer
2014-08-19, 10:24 PM
Yeah, he argued for a good hour or so about how we were over reacting and my brother should have the freedom to act out his alignment in any way he chooses. It was ridiculous.

Then isn't everyone else, including the city watch and other PCs, entitled to act out their alignment in any way they choose? I assume this point came up and he was too dogmatic to understand it.

Marlowe
2014-08-20, 03:28 AM
This is not as bad as what other people have written here, but I'd still like to share an annoying experience that happened two campaigns ago (about a year I think, maybe just half a year).

We all get emails from the DM (about four pages) of options and back story for the campaign. There were wizards, now not so many because the rulers lost a son to a crazy wizard and the royal army marched over there and burned them to the ground. (think wizard tower in a forest). It's been about fifty or so years since. This also means that magical weapons are almost completely gone, we didn't realize this at first but it was our faults. The DM straight up emailed us the info.

DM tells us that the North and West are pretty much okay with arcane casters and druids, but the central and East factions still don't like them. There is a lot of internal power struggles from going on, but at the start we are not exactly at odds with each other.

One of my buddies wants me to help him make a character (no problem) so that he won't be in game bullied by other optimizers. I'm okay with this, he is new. We also discuss working as a team (we fail at this horribly) and, because the DM plans to make this challenging not only level wise but plot wise as well, we try to get as many other people to agree to a no PvP conflict rule. It had gotten a little out of hand in previous solo shots.

I help him build his sword sage over the phone (apparently I did a terrible job explaining the limits of the class and why you can't use the other classes abilities in place of your own, but there is a noticeable gap in our play experience, about 20 years) and he gets his back story together.

I choose to be from the East, along with my brother (our characters are cousins and distant contenders for the throne, but neither would take it) so that I can be a paladin, which is my way of saying, "hey guys, I won't ever try to even snidely remark at you. Look at my awesome niceness and understanding for all. I even, through my back story, I negate my countries hate for elves (big war and lots of death. I Pity them as weak creatures that need guidance. Not perfect, I know, but better.) I'm pretty excited to see how the campaign goes.

So we have
Sword Sage- foreigner from another continent that is here for magical weapons.

Pally of Heronious- Me, Vow of Poverty paladin only alive to serve the will of humanity. Allowed to keep a sword and shield (because of family and DM discretion). Also, the East and center kept Clerics and Paladins, but only because they controlled them.

I will use us as the head of the teams.

First mission, My team of me and my brother travel North to investigate a possible assassination plot against the King. We don't ever try to hide or deny who or what we are. And we are walked right on in to join the rebellion. I am dressed in rags (don't get cold) and Samurai (brother) is dressed in his ceremonial family armor. We waltz on in, learn of the plot and help to arrange transportation for these people. All we learn is that these people are trying to disrupt a wedding between one of the King's daughters and my families heirs. Not exactly a super evil crime.

I try to lead us through the old wizard forest (now burned) to delay everyone and keep us from getting to the wedding on time, thus stopping the plot. The DM simply looks and says, I know it might look that way, but it would take longer. I later explain what I meant to do, and he apologized , but also said that it was the tension he wanted, so we would have just arrived on time anyways. (shucks) I did have ulterior motives, but those were shot down as well. (find relics in tower and destroy them)

So everyone gets to the wedding, my team tells our superiors what we learned, and the next day we all sit down at the feast. One noble from the North (player) says that his character (a kid) is bored and sneaks out to play with his wolf. We all kind of give him a sideways look, but whatever. The Sword Sage tells the DM that his character needs to use the bathroom. (Now, Samurai is waiting in princess A's room, she is 18 or 19 and about to be married. She is at the feast.)

Sword sage leaves, goes to daughter B's room, kills her and leaves.She was 12 I think. (Passed his hide and MS checks.) Then goes to daughter C's room and murders her, her friends, maids, and three guards. (failed a save) She was like five or seven.

He then returns to the wedding. All pissed off because he couldn't kill Princess A as well. Then the red wedding happens, East nobles murder West and North nobles with crossbows, declaring them traitors. (no one actually knows about the daughters) Then, someone with shadow jump, pops up to the king, drives a dagger in his back and pops away. We all have freaked out at this point and begin to flee. I run with the gnome and Half Orc from Westport and we start heading back to the ship, get warned about guards by the sword sage and just start getting out of the town headed west. This is how the teams are formed.

My mount brings the Samurai back to us. We then learn of the sword sage's secret bathroom break and flip out. We try to explain that this is not a good habit to get into, but he won't have any of it, (I did it for the greater good) So, samurai and I tell Gnome that we know about his involvement (the half orc was his slave?) in the assassination and he gets ready to have his head chopped off. We instead tell him that we want him to come with us and help unite the lands instead. He agrees. (see my team tried to keep the agreement from earlier)

Overall, everyone in group two died to the Sword Sages hands at least twice. He killed them for, not walking the way he wanted, they drew the betrayal card (even though the sword sage had no previous interaction with that character), performing badly (we had a trap maker. I kid not.) and having a magic item, even if he couldn't use it. From what i'm told by players of the other group, it was pretty horrendous. My group just traveled to most places and got people to back us while halting all progress of group two to get to the elves. In case they ever thought to do that, but it never crossed their minds to amass armies to win a war.

Not the worst for me, but I write this for the other players who were slaughtered continually.

While some of this sounds pretty chilling, I found it impossible to follow. What were the "Teams"? What were the "groups?". Who was everyone and what were they trying to accomplish? What was your in-character relationship with the swordsage? Why was he going around killing people? Why was the samurai in the princess's room? Who were the PCs and the NPCs in these situations and how did they all relate?

Mr Beer
2014-08-20, 04:32 AM
We had a session break up because of a fist fight once,

Details of fist fight?

LimSindull
2014-08-20, 11:20 AM
[/SPOILER]

While some of this sounds pretty chilling, I found it impossible to follow. What were the "Teams"? What were the "groups?". Who was everyone and what were they trying to accomplish? What was your in-character relationship with the swordsage? Why was he going around killing people? Why was the samurai in the princess's room? Who were the PCs and the NPCs in these situations and how did they all relate?

Sorry about the confusion,
The teams and groups are the people that we played with directly. The DM split us up into two groups after the first adventure so that we wouldn't know what the other group was doing. The group I was in went West and South and the group that the sword sage was in went mainly North. The idea was to help our factions gain enough power to keep control of the continent. The East and central groups wanted the humans to remain united, while the North and West wanted the humans to have freedom to practice magic, even if it meant separating.

My group consisted of Me, the human pally that took Vow of Poverty, the human samurai forsaker, the deep gnome (shadow gnome?) rouge, and (sometimes) a half orc slave rouge (think riddick).

The Sword sages group consisted of the sword sage dwarf (even though everyone forgot this a lot). A human druid ( Northern noble child with wolf companion. A trap maker or master (western noble) this team also had a druid at one point, and picked up a sorcerer later on.

In character, my character knew very little about the sword sage. We met only three (four) times, one time he helped me avoid guards that he thought would hurt me, another time he betrayed our arrangement and stole the head of a pirate king from us and left us to die in the ocean. The third time, we killed the man who murdered our king. And the final time he had a demon (not sure which) inside of him and I ascended to become Heronious after finally defeating him.

I still do not understand why the sword sage started killing everyone. He claimed that he was trying to stop a war, but he actually started one. I am not sure if this was his excuse or actual belief. I know that once he gained the OOC knowledge that my group was amassing armies that he decided he needed all the xp, items and power to kill us all by himself. Thus the murder of his party members and the acceptance of a demon inside of him.

The samurai was in the princesses room as a backup plan. If things started happening (which they did) that we didn't expect, he would be waiting to escort her out the window and onto my intelligent celestial mount. We figured she would be pretty safe flying away to our other city. This never happened, after the king died the guards to her to another area. Please note that the samurai was going to be her first cousin so she would have known him.

The plot was a four page email, so to just some up some things. The central city was the capitol. (IC) We knew of a wedding between the central kingdom's princess with the eastern city's prince. The king had no son's so the Eastern prince would become king. Players from the North and West cities (everyone not including the samurai and myself) were trying to stop this from happening, while the players from the east were trying to get the two love birds hitched. The samurai was the first cousin to the eastern prince. I was the third cousin to the prince. (from the same side I think) The child noble was an heir to the northern throne. He really wanted to play a wolf and would only settle on this. So, he wasn't much involved. The trap maker was a western nobleman who wanted to break from the kingdom for better business ventures (free trade with elves and other continents.) The sword sage was a foreigner trying to find magic items. The druid was from a cult of Northern magic users who were trying to remain a secret. If the north left the united kingdoms, then they would be free to practice their magic. The sorcerer was trying to get revenge on everyone who had labeled him an outcast.

The NPCs were all doing their own stuff without player knowledge. The king died pretty early on. The prince and his family blamed the north and west and started a war using the king's assassination as a rally for most of the country. The North and West nobles planned on stopping the wedding, killing the king and marrying their heirs into the throne. Then there were the people who actually killed the king and took over the kingdom from the inside. (big turning point and the reason we all joined back together)

I hope this clarifies some of your questions.

Sith_Happens
2014-08-20, 03:18 PM
"Sorry ma'am, he's fully within his bounds, law can't do anything to help you."
"But...but he killed my husband! And then started taking all of our money and jewelry!"
"He showed us his chaotic neutral badge, means we can't stop him."
"What!"

So that's how Link does it...

Fumble Jack
2014-08-21, 09:40 AM
This occurred a while ago. The DM ran a 4th ed game, yet he was more familiar with 3.5. His game was Skyrim. Not Kidding. It wasn't original but we gave it a shot. The thing that dragged it down was his gf at the time.

She played a pixie or something like that was a sorcerer. He made her character more in the style of a 3.5 nuker. She didn't roleplay when we had the chance to and would be disruptive when it wasn't her turn of combat. For example: When we had to talk to important npcs she would either distract the Dm's attention entirely or walk outside when that failed and he wanted to focus on the scene.

We played at a friends house but due to scheduling it was at night. We all kind of scratched our heads at the thought process she had for randomly going to walk the neighborhood at night because it wasn't her turn or combat.

However, when combat did come & it was her turn, she would screech out fireball and hoped she would kill whatever we were fighting. If she didn't she got upset and then would chose walk around outside again.

Cazero
2014-08-22, 01:55 AM
I only have two horrible game stories, both involve the same guy we will call E.

-snip snip-


So wait, this guy who believes CN characters shouldn't be held responsible for their actions, actually let a LG paladin involve himself in an assassination attempt for money, sacrificing children for the immortality of a witch, getting possessed by a demon, and the same witch murdering husband after husband for even more money without any problem?
WTF?

Necroticplague
2014-08-23, 06:23 PM
Sadly, I've now got something bad enough to add to this list (and similarly to some others here, it involves jack@$%es in a pickup game).

Saw a flyer for an in-person group at the gaming store while looking for some Essentials books. Since I figured I had nothing better to do on a saturday, I made a quick character for it. The paper came with an e-mail for the DM, so I was able to make sure the sources i used (some eberron, and a couple Dragon Mag) were O.K.. They were. Since he said (as well as the paper) that it would be a very high-powered game, so make sure to bring strong character. So I built an incredibly resilient templated (half-red and Black dragon) warforged, with both Troll-blooded and Pawn of the Great Game, throwing in a side of uber-charging by dipping different classes for feats before and during warforged juggernaut (level 10 gestalt). Basic fluff was a result of gradual improvement to basic warforged to make a better shock trooper.

So, I get the group, at introduce my character. And am immediately derided by the other 3 for bringing a "meager" fighter to a "real" game. They talk on all about how much more powerful their builds are because wizards and clerics are way more potent than mere martials. They then end their insulting with an "its o.k, I'm sure we can carry your weight". They were all identically built human wizards//clerics. Ignoring the condescenction. I stick around when the game stats. We go on a relatively simple dungeon crawl. During every single fight, the rest of thr group would lay down AoE damage, which always hit me. I could have ignored it, were it not for the condescending false apology that usually followed (e.x:'Oh, I'm sorry, does the stupid barbarian need a heal?'). Yeah, and despite their claim of caster superiority, the acted in a way that made them far less useful. All of them only memorized one spell of each level, and it was invariably a blasting spell. So with no trapfinding ability, I dealt with all the traps by walking into all of them, whole they insulted me for stumbling into things with no thought as to their spell slots on healing (despite never taking damage, and them never trying to healing). We eventually reach the end. I win initiative, and one-shot the end guy by stacking up standard ubercharger stacks (valorous weapon, leap attack, battle jump, shock trooper). And they start yelling at me almost instantly, accusing me of cheating. So I take the time to show exactly how everything worked on that offense. So they instead accuse me of retroactively cheating, that I should have been dead from all the traps and AoOs. Ignoring the irony of pretty much admitting they were trying to kill me, I then show them how all of my defenses worked. After a little bit more arguing, I left if only because I thought it would turn into a brawl. To the DMs credit, he was actually a fair bit nicer than his players, and seemed happy I was different from the rest.

Mr Beer
2014-08-23, 06:42 PM
It seems to me that a lot of these horrible sessions could be avoided by reacting to egregious hostility with the old double upraised finger, stating 'screw you guys; I'm going home' and walking away.

I guess it's easier with hindsight.

runeghost
2014-08-23, 08:36 PM
Steampunky GURPS game, I was one of 5 players. One of the other players decides he wants to play a Scottish Lord with a good 50 points of mental flaws. Despite being cautioned by other players how difficult that's going to be to actually play, and the GM telling him that the disads will be enforced on his character, he decides to do it anyway.

Of course, once play begins, he tries to ignore the 50+ points of obsessions, compulsions, derangements, etc. He declines an offer from the GM to rebuild the character on a saner basis. During the second or third session, Mr. Scottish Lord fails to resist one of his compulsions, and the GM informs him that no, his Scottish Lord will be spending that money, because he got 10 points for Compulsive Spender (which he hasn't been playing, at all) and failed his roll to resist the Disadvantage he decided to take.

At which point Scottish Lord's player loses it, and gets into an argument with the GM on how its not right that he's being forced to play his character in ways he doesn't want to, and that's not how roleplaying works. He appeals to the rest of us, who all back the GM - if you just want a minor foible that you can ignore when you want, that's a 1-pt Quirk. A 10+ point Disad is something that's beyond your character's ability to control, which is why its a flaw worth 10 points!

He completely blows off everyone, and asks the GM for a private discussion which quickly escalates into a shouting match and his departure, never to return to that game.

Arbane
2014-08-23, 10:10 PM
It seems to me that a lot of these horrible sessions could be avoided by reacting to egregious hostility with the old double upraised finger, stating 'screw you guys; I'm going home' and walking away.

I guess it's easier with hindsight.

In my experience, gamers (including me) tend to have an astounding tolerance for jerk behavior - and a bad case of the Sunk Cost fallacy.

runeghost
2014-08-23, 10:37 PM
In my experience, gamers (including me) tend to have an astounding tolerance for jerk behavior - and a bad case of the Sunk Cost fallacy.

It can also be a manifestation of Geek Social Fallacy (http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html) #1: Ostracizers Are Evil.

DM Nate
2014-08-23, 11:14 PM
Which is why I'm prejudiced against all prejudiced people.

Sartharina
2014-08-27, 09:25 PM
So, I get the group, at introduce my character. And am immediately derided by the other 3 for bringing a "meager" fighter to a "real" game. They talk on all about how much more powerful their builds are because wizards and clerics are way more potent than mere martials. They then end their insulting with an "its o.k, I'm sure we can carry your weight". They were all identically built human wizards//clerics. Ignoring the condescenction. I stick around when the game stats. We go on a relatively simple dungeon crawl. During every single fight, the rest of thr group would lay down AoE damage, which always hit me. I could have ignored it, were it not for the condescending false apology that usually followed (e.x:'Oh, I'm sorry, does the stupid barbarian need a heal?'). Yeah, and despite their claim of caster superiority, the acted in a way that made them far less useful. All of them only memorized one spell of each level, and it was invariably a blasting spell. So with no trapfinding ability, I dealt with all the traps by walking into all of them, whole they insulted me for stumbling into things with no thought as to their spell slots on healing (despite never taking damage, and them never trying to healing). We eventually reach the end. I win initiative, and one-shot the end guy by stacking up standard ubercharger stacks (valorous weapon, leap attack, battle jump, shock trooper). And they start yelling at me almost instantly, accusing me of cheating. So I take the time to show exactly how everything worked on that offense. So they instead accuse me of retroactively cheating, that I should have been dead from all the traps and AoOs. Ignoring the irony of pretty much admitting they were trying to kill me, I then show them how all of my defenses worked. After a little bit more arguing, I left if only because I thought it would turn into a brawl. To the DMs credit, he was actually a fair bit nicer than his players, and seemed happy I was different from the rest.A shame it ended that way. However - as much as I hate high-op games, I love seeing someone out-op people that think they're High-Op, are arrogant about it, but really aren't effective. I assume your character left the party because he didn't need those self-important pretenders, and they were just chipping away at his potential earnings.

Kesnit
2014-08-28, 09:41 AM
I wasn't the one who stalked out. In fact, it was my PC's actions that caused another player to stalk out. However, he left because he did not understand the mechanics of what I had done.

It was the first session of a Vampire: the Requiem game. I had built a high-social, somewhat snooty, character with a bloodline that got both Majesty and Dominate. Another player, J, rolled up a pure melee Gangrel. (There were a few other PCs, but none are important to this story.)

Play started, which was the first time the PCs had met. J's character came in, all gruff and antagonistic. He continued like this, even while the other PCs tried to interact with him. (The impression was that his PC did not want to work with anyone, which defeats the purpose of having the PC in a game that involves PCs at least working together.) In frustration (IC and OOC), I dropped the first level of Majesty, Awe, on J's PC. All this power does is raise other people's opinion of you (i.e. from "Hostile" to "Indifferent").

J failed his roll to resist, so I told him "your PC now likes mine." J stood up, bellowed "I can't play a gay character," and stormed out before anyone could explain what had actually happened.

The game had lasted 5 minutes.

Anxe
2014-08-28, 03:54 PM
I wasn't the one who stalked out. In fact, it was my PC's actions that caused another player to stalk out. However, he left because he did not understand the mechanics of what I had done.

It was the first session of a Vampire: the Requiem game. I had built a high-social, somewhat snooty, character with a bloodline that got both Majesty and Dominate. Another player, J, rolled up a pure melee Gangrel. (There were a few other PCs, but none are important to this story.)

Play started, which was the first time the PCs had met. J's character came in, all gruff and antagonistic. He continued like this, even while the other PCs tried to interact with him. (The impression was that his PC did not want to work with anyone, which defeats the purpose of having the PC in a game that involves PCs at least working together.) In frustration (IC and OOC), I dropped the first level of Majesty, Awe, on J's PC. All this power does is raise other people's opinion of you (i.e. from "Hostile" to "Indifferent").

J failed his roll to resist, so I told him "your PC now likes mine." J stood up, bellowed "I can't play a gay character," and stormed out before anyone could explain what had actually happened.

The game had lasted 5 minutes.

Seems like J might've taken the first excuse to leave because they weren't enjoying themselves.

Broken Twin
2014-08-29, 09:05 AM
Steampunky GURPS game, I was one of 5 players. One of the other players decides he wants to play a Scottish Lord with a good 50 points of mental flaws. Despite being cautioned by other players how difficult that's going to be to actually play, and the GM telling him that the disads will be enforced on his character, he decides to do it anyway.

Of course, once play begins, he tries to ignore the 50+ points of obsessions, compulsions, derangements, etc. He declines an offer from the GM to rebuild the character on a saner basis. During the second or third session, Mr. Scottish Lord fails to resist one of his compulsions, and the GM informs him that no, his Scottish Lord will be spending that money, because he got 10 points for Compulsive Spender (which he hasn't been playing, at all) and failed his roll to resist the Disadvantage he decided to take.

At which point Scottish Lord's player loses it, and gets into an argument with the GM on how its not right that he's being forced to play his character in ways he doesn't want to, and that's not how roleplaying works. He appeals to the rest of us, who all back the GM - if you just want a minor foible that you can ignore when you want, that's a 1-pt Quirk. A 10+ point Disad is something that's beyond your character's ability to control, which is why its a flaw worth 10 points!

He completely blows off everyone, and asks the GM for a private discussion which quickly escalates into a shouting match and his departure, never to return to that game.

"Hey, I'm gonna play a character with all these disadvantages, and yes I know what I'm doing!"

"Wait, you actually want me to let my disadvantages affect me? What kind of buggers are you?!?"

Kesnit
2014-08-29, 12:35 PM
Seems like J might've taken the first excuse to leave because they weren't enjoying themselves.

Not sure how that would happen. Character creation was done before coming to game, so the group had been at the table about 15 minutes. If J didn't want to play, he didn't have to show up...

Dasgovernator
2014-08-29, 05:27 PM
I've got 2 stories, one about a bad DM and one about a bad group.

#1: I once played a Paladin who lasted about 40 minutes before being executed by DM fiat. I was joining a game in progress, and I had always wanted to try playing a non lawful-prick Paladin, so I decided to make one that was fairly naive and sheltered. After joining up with the party and getting sent on my first fetch quest, we ran into a group of bandits who ambushed us. We managed to kill all but one of them, who we interrogated. During the course of the interrogation, our inquisitor figured out she was Chaotic Good. The DM then ruled that since I had taken part in the murder of good creatures (who again, were actively trying to murder us), my Paladin had fallen.

I was pretty annoyed by this, but I figured that the DM was just trying to give me a chance for some character development or role playing, so I stuck with the group, especially after they came up with the idea that we should head back to town and ask the head Paladin guy there to give me an atonement spell. We did, but the second we walked into his office and said "fallen Paladin" he cleaved my head off with his great sword. The DM then turned to me and said "You should pick a character less likely to disrupt the party".

At that point I just closed the program, left the Skype call, and purged them all from my contacts list.

#2: I once joined an evil campaign (A Pathfinder Way of the Wicked game, to be precise), because it sounded very interesting. Specifically it's geared like a Bond-Villain Henchmen game where the party is working as the agents of Hell to overthrow a LG country. However, my first game was cut short when I found out that the rest of the party had . . . other ideas as to what flavor of Evil they were interested in playing. Lets just say don't ever take a high-CHA Female character into an evil campaign with people you don't know.

JetThomasBoat
2014-08-29, 05:59 PM
I would have taken the time to argue that the head Paladin guy should have fallen because he did the exact same thing as you. Just because you were a fallen paladin, which was horse**** anyway, doesn't mean your character wasn't still good aligned, so dip****'s NPC paladin should have fallen even harder than you had. Stupid DM is stupid.

Mr Beer
2014-08-29, 06:15 PM
The DM then turned to me and said "You should pick a character less likely to disrupt the party".

"No, instead I shall pick a game run by someone competent. Good day sir."

The Random NPC
2014-08-29, 09:00 PM
I would have taken the time to argue that the head Paladin guy should have fallen because he did the exact same thing as you. Just because you were a fallen paladin, which was horse**** anyway, doesn't mean your character wasn't still good aligned, so dip****'s NPC paladin should have fallen even harder than you had. Stupid DM is stupid.

Not only that, since killing fallen paladins seems to be what paladins do, I would have argued for the obliteration of the entire order as the non-fallen paladins kill the fallen ones and then fall themselves.

Traab
2014-08-29, 09:11 PM
Not only that, since killing fallen paladins seems to be what paladins do, I would have argued for the obliteration of the entire order as the non-fallen paladins kill the fallen ones and then fall themselves.

And due to such a huge holocaust of death and dismemberment the towns guard got called in. By the time the dust settles half the town is in flames, and most of its people are dead due to collateral damage. But hey, at least my paladin isnt there to disrupt things anymore.

Ravian
2014-08-29, 10:20 PM
I've got 2 stories, one about a bad DM and one about a bad group.

#1: I once played a Paladin who lasted about 40 minutes before being executed by DM fiat. I was joining a game in progress, and I had always wanted to try playing a non lawful-prick Paladin, so I decided to make one that was fairly naive and sheltered. After joining up with the party and getting sent on my first fetch quest, we ran into a group of bandits who ambushed us. We managed to kill all but one of them, who we interrogated. During the course of the interrogation, our inquisitor figured out she was Chaotic Good. The DM then ruled that since I had taken part in the murder of good creatures (who again, were actively trying to murder us), my Paladin had fallen.

I was pretty annoyed by this, but I figured that the DM was just trying to give me a chance for some character development or role playing, so I stuck with the group, especially after they came up with the idea that we should head back to town and ask the head Paladin guy there to give me an atonement spell. We did, but the second we walked into his office and said "fallen Paladin" he cleaved my head off with his great sword. The DM then turned to me and said "You should pick a character less likely to disrupt the party".

At that point I just closed the program, left the Skype call, and purged them all from my contacts list.


My God why do so many of these stories seem to involve GM's that hate Paladins? I can sort of see the irrational logic of a player with a hatred for them from previous experiences with the lawful stupid types, but GM's abusing their power to pick on a player for using a class they dislike is just so petty.

Beige
2014-08-30, 09:05 AM
My God why do so many of these stories seem to involve GM's that hate Paladins? I can sort of see the irrational logic of a player with a hatred for them from previous experiences with the lawful stupid types, but GM's abusing their power to pick on a player for using a class they dislike is just so petty.

The same reason a lot of people dislike druids; they quickly skim read the description of the class, see they apparantly "only" show up when it's in their intrest*, and thus assume they'd need to rejig their entire campaign around the new guy or he'd get pissy. add in lawful good, which also has the bad reputation of "stick up his but self righteous asshat", and yeah

plus, paladins have this delicious rule about loosing their own powers. It's like dangling a candy bar in front of someone...

* which is BS, but if the player/GM isn't interested in them they likely only read the summary

Ashiel
2014-08-30, 09:42 AM
The title pretty much sums up the point of this thread: I give unto thee, oh Playgrounders, a repository for your tales of misery and woe concerning the worst gaming experiences of your lives. Be it that you were a player, a GM/DM/Storyteller/Narrator/etc or just an observer of the festivities, what was/were the most uncomfortable/terrible/head banging/soul killing campaigns that you found yourselves unfortunately party to, even for a brief length of time*?


I'd love to kick us off, but even when laboring under the yoke of the worst DM I dealt with (during high school and the guy took out his relationship impotency issues on the group), the game was salvageable because everyone else was pretty much awesome. So anything that could have turned my experience into one of the stories to follow was quashed under camaraderie amongst my fellow players.


* My pity and heart go to those who either couldn't escape or were so sucked into the terribleness of their game that, like the troopers they are, they had to see it to the bitter end.

I once played in a game where my wizard PC, while investigating for some clues in a small village was ambushed and sodomized by a vampire. The GM then rolled some dice behind his screen and said that she liked being dominated and sexually assaulted, and thus instead of seeking vengeance against the vampire when the vampire left her there, would really only have one reason to track him down...

:smallannoyed:

I did not make it to session 2.

bjoern
2014-08-30, 09:48 AM
I once played in a game where my wizard PC, while investigating for some clues in a small village was ambushed and sodomized by a vampire. The GM then rolled some dice behind his screen and said that she liked being dominated and sexually assaulted, and thus instead of seeking vengeance against the vampire when the vampire left her there, would really only have one reason to track him down...

:smallannoyed:

I did not make it to session 2.

That sounds to me like the DM was looking for an outlet to his own fetish.

Ashiel
2014-08-30, 10:22 AM
That sounds to me like the DM was looking for an outlet to his own fetish.It does, doesn't it? The strangest part was the air of flirtatiousness between him and another friend of mine, as she also seemed to be "amused" by the incident. Then again, I do know that she had a fetish that was in some way related if not the same (given some of the fiction she had written, which she gave me a general description of as being a "rape love story" though was too embarrassed to let anyone read), so... *shrugs*

I'm not dead set against such darkness in games, even towards my own characters. Being assaulted like that is pretty squicky, but rationally I consider that it would probably just be another atrocity that could/would happen to my PC in the dangerous situations. Murder and gruesome acts of evil are pretty common. From a practical and personal standpoint (as in, if I in reality were given the choice between any of the following), I'd probably rather be sexually assaulted than melted by acid while still alive (pretty common for things like gelatinous cubes, dragons, acid arrow spells, etc) or set on fire (alchemist fire, combust) or having my body die and waste away to sand (mummy rot) or having my life essence ripped from my being (I imagine enervation probably does not feel particularly nice), or being mentally raped (dominate person and similar mind control effects spring to mind). Just being killed would mean I wouldn't see my loved ones anymore (which for me would be terrible, and would likely be so for most of my PCs).

So from that perspective, yes I could put aside the squick in the right group and just consider it a terrible experience that could lead to character development (e.g. - how the character dealt with it, how it affected them personality-wise, how it affected them with other characters, etc). I've had characters with compunctions against killing (because killing is not something done lightly) and their coping with what happens when they've actually killed someone, or lost a friend in combat, etc.

However, this was not that group. It seemed played for the lulz, and the GM insisting on how the character not only should feel about the experience but did feel about the experience was a big red flag that the GM wasn't even pushing the borders of "grim-dark" but was just being stupid. In the right environment with the right people, yeah I would probably keep playing in a game where one of my PCs was sexually abused by someone or something if it was played strait. Not for the lulz. :smallannoyed:

I had better things to do, like run kid-friendly D&D games for my brother and his friends. :smallsmile:

bjoern
2014-08-30, 10:38 AM
It does, doesn't it? The strangest part was the air of flirtatiousness between him and another friend of mine, as she also seemed to be "amused" by the incident. Then again, I do know that she had a fetish that was in some way related if not the same (given some of the fiction she had written, which she gave me a general description of as being a "rape love story" though was too embarrassed to let anyone read), so... *shrugs*

I'm not dead set against such darkness in games, even towards my own characters. Being assaulted like that is pretty squicky, but rationally I consider that it would probably just be another atrocity that could/would happen to my PC in the dangerous situations. Murder and gruesome acts of evil are pretty common. From a practical and personal standpoint (as in, if I in reality were given the choice between any of the following), I'd probably rather be sexually assaulted than melted by acid while still alive (pretty common for things like gelatinous cubes, dragons, acid arrow spells, etc) or set on fire (alchemist fire, combust) or having my body die and waste away to sand (mummy rot) or having my life essence ripped from my being (I imagine enervation probably does not feel particularly nice), or being mentally raped (dominate person and similar mind control effects spring to mind). Just being killed would mean I wouldn't see my loved ones anymore (which for me would be terrible, and would likely be so for most of my PCs).

So from that perspective, yes I could put aside the squick in the right group and just consider it a terrible experience that could lead to character development (e.g. - how the character dealt with it, how it affected them personality-wise, how it affected them with other characters, etc). I've had characters with compunctions against killing (because killing is not something done lightly) and their coping with what happens when they've actually killed someone, or lost a friend in combat, etc.

However, this was not that group. It seemed played for the lulz, and the GM insisting on how the character not only should feel about the experience but did feel about the experience was a big red flag that the GM wasn't even pushing the borders of "grim-dark" but was just being stupid. In the right environment with the right people, yeah I would probably keep playing in a game where one of my PCs was sexually abused by someone or something if it was played strait. Not for the lulz. :smallannoyed:

I had better things to do, like run kid-friendly D&D games for my brother and his friends. :smallsmile:

I've never understood the games that have all the sexuality and perverted hentai-esque stuff happening. It just seems to me like a teenager trying to get his jollies.

The group I play with ranges in age from 50-25 and every aspect of our game I would be comfortable sharing with my son if he were 12 years old (he's 6 now)
There is violence, sometimes vague Gore.
The limit of sexuality is maybe we meet an NPC that is a prostitute but its just used as an adjective and never expanded on.

The only thing present that I wouldn't want him to be around is all the cursing. We all have potty mouths and that would have to change if he were there.

DM Nate
2014-08-30, 10:53 AM
That sounds to me like the DM was looking for an outlet to his own fetish.

I know it's been linked before but... (http://gunshowcomic.com/comics/20111118-pissworld.png)

bjoern
2014-08-30, 11:12 AM
I know it's been linked before but... (http://gunshowcomic.com/comics/20111118-pissworld.png)

Haha. That should be a legitamate response to a perverted DM/ player. Just punch em in the face. They deserve it.

Sartharina
2014-08-30, 11:48 AM
Haha. That should be a legitamate response to a perverted DM/ player. Just punch em in the face. They deserve it.Hey, physical assault is NOT the appropriate answer to this situation! Besides, perverts make the Contextless Quotes thread so amusing!

Ashiel
2014-08-30, 12:14 PM
I've never understood the games that have all the sexuality and perverted hentai-esque stuff happening. It just seems to me like a teenager trying to get his jollies.
Perhaps ironically, he was the oldest out of our group at the time, which is probably worse. :smallfrown:


The group I play with ranges in age from 50-25 and every aspect of our game I would be comfortable sharing with my son if he were 12 years old (he's 6 now)
There is violence, sometimes vague Gore.
The limit of sexuality is maybe we meet an NPC that is a prostitute but its just used as an adjective and never expanded on.
Same here. The current campaign I'm running online is probably the most "adult" in nature that I've ran in quite a while, as there's been a few fade to black moments, but it's not really all in your face about it. Probably the most "sexual" thing that has shown up in the campaign was the party went to a brothel while investigating illegal human(oid)-trafficking (the closest analog would probably be like the slavery subplot in Baldur's Gate II, though it's pretty different) and like you said, met lots of prostitutes and such (they ended up buying two of them, including an underaged one because they didn't want to leave them there, 'cause my players are pretty awesome and if they have to choose between "buy an underaged sex slave to get them their freedom" or "get another +1 to their favorite stat", they're going to have another tag-along NPC soonish).

It's also an online game, and side-sessions are ran from time to time when the party is split up, and I can usually set the themes based on age/comfort rating. All in all though, it's been pretty mild I think in terms of graphic depictions. Intimacy is a thing between some of the NPCs (and in some cases PCs/NPCs) but such things are merely for flavor and are "off-screen" kind of things kind of like this...

Romantic Character A: "I don't care, I couldn't just leave you,"
Romantic Character B: "I didn't want you too. I...still don't want you to,"
Que Next Morning Scene


The only thing present that I wouldn't want him to be around is all the cursing. We all have potty mouths and that would have to change if he were there.

Yeah, it's kind of odd. My younger brother is the youngest player in the group right now (he's recently 16) and he has the worst potty-mouth out of us. The rest of us don't really curse much. Still, one of my favorite things about being a GM is being able to run games for pretty much every age/comfort range. I've no problems with running grim-dark games, but I've also really enjoy running happy-childhood-funtime games for small children as well. It's nice. :smallsmile:

bjoern
2014-08-30, 12:19 PM
Hey, physical assault is NOT the appropriate answer to this situation! Besides, perverts make the Contextless Quotes thread so amusing!

Yeah. You're right. Were supposed to be tolerant . I forgot.
This guy should be praised for being so brave .

Reminds me of the Lemmiwinks episode where everyone had to be tolerant and supportive no matter how messed up the guy was.....

Sartharina
2014-08-30, 12:21 PM
Yeah. You're right. Were supposed to be tolerant . I forgot.
This guy should be praised for being so brave .

Reminds me of the Lemmiwinks episode where everyone had to be tolerant and supportive no matter how messed up the guy was....."Dude, not cool" is one thing. Physical assault is not.

bjoern
2014-08-30, 12:31 PM
"Dude, not cool" is one thing. Physical assault is not.

Honestly , IRL. I wouldn't hit the guy obviously. Even though he does deserve it.

What I would do is to have no further contact with that person and advise my friends that are with me at the time to do the same.
A person who rams his fetish down a friends throat after being asked to stop isnt good to be around.
Sure 1st amendment says they can . But just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you should.

First thing that comes to my mind are those folks who stage loud anti-war protests at cemeteries during soldiers funerals.
sure they can do it. But does that mean that they should?

Ashiel
2014-08-30, 12:38 PM
I know it's been linked before but... (http://gunshowcomic.com/comics/20111118-pissworld.png)
*falls over laughing*

DM Nate
2014-08-30, 12:38 PM
First thing that comes to my mind are those folks who stage loud anti-war protests at cemeteries during soldiers funerals.
sure they can do it. But does that mean that they should?

From XKCD:


I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express.

bjoern
2014-08-30, 12:44 PM
From XKCD:

Right. Every once in a while someone causes a media stir because they're marching up and down a street with a rifle.
They are licensed and legit. They're just doing it because they know that it bothers people and that there is nothing they can do about it.

Now, this isn't any kind of 2nd amendment thing, common sense and decency SHOULD trump any law. Unfortunately, they don't though......

Rater202
2014-08-30, 06:35 PM
Interesting thing abou the first amendment: It only says that the government can't trample your rights to free speech.

If somebody is spouting hate, trying to force their fetishes down your throat, or otherwise making you feel uncomfortable with what they're saying, you are entirely within your rights as a private citizen to make them STFU or GTFO.

I was gonna share a story my friend told me, but it's a bit to similar to the "You've been raped and like it" story shared above, and I'd rather not have people think I'm copying.

Sith_Happens
2014-08-31, 12:27 AM
However, this was not that group. It seemed played for the lulz, and the GM insisting on how the character not only should feel about the experience but did feel about the experience was a big red flag that the GM wasn't even pushing the borders of "grim-dark" but was just being stupid. In the right environment with the right people, yeah I would probably keep playing in a game where one of my PCs was sexually abused by someone or something if it was played strait. Not for the lulz. :smallannoyed:

Technically the "you liked it" part was probably the vampire's Dominating Gaze at work (hence the secret die roll), but that hardly makes it better.


I was gonna share a story my friend told me, but it's a bit to similar to the "You've been raped and like it" story shared above, and I'd rather not have people think I'm copying.

Don't worry, at least a third of the stories in this thread so far (or maybe I'm getting it confused with the "Worst DM you've had" thread) are like that, so no one can really single you out for being derivative.

...Alternatively, worry a lot on account of at least a third of the stories in this thread being like that, because, you know, it's a pretty worrisome thing.

cold1029
2014-08-31, 12:42 AM
Had a DM that wanted to run rise of the runelords for pathfinder, and it took us more than two months to get halfway through the first module (meeting every week). It was from level 1-4. He was absolutely awful at keeping everyone on subject.

In that same campaign, me and a friend got in a fight almost to the death over whether or not to kill this demon thing. After the painfully awkward fight in which we were clearly just taking out our frustrations with each other on each other's characters, we shook hands and pretended we were roleplaying.

Going way back, I had a friend hand me the DM mantle, and the transition was rocky to say the least. He hated giving up the power, so he threatened to kick us out of his house if I didn't give the okay to an extremely blatantly overpowered character (a level 2 paladin with divine ranks, the 3.5 epic option). Then he used the character to run roughshot over everyone, and completely derail my campaign. He literally tried to make the campaign revolve around him because he was sent to the mortal plane to "learn a lesson" about what it meant to be divine, but then insisted that he be allowed to do his own thing. Long story short, we found a new place to play.

Sartharina
2014-08-31, 01:22 AM
Honestly , IRL. I wouldn't hit the guy obviously. Even though he does deserve it.

What I would do is to have no further contact with that person and advise my friends that are with me at the time to do the same.
A person who rams his fetish down a friends throat after being asked to stop isnt good to be around.

My problem was with your blanket statement that perverts should be punched in the face. I have a vested interest in not having perverts punched in the face (I like my face very much un-punched, TYVM). I have no issue with action being taken to stop someone from continuing with an action they've already been told to stop once. (That said - I've lost track of the number of sites and groups I've been banned from for not dropping the desire to play a naked/nearly-naked catfolk of some sort, of either sex.)

The Random NPC
2014-08-31, 08:58 AM
...Alternatively, worry a lot on account of at least a third of the stories in this thread being like that, because, you know, it's a pretty worrisome thing.

I'm pretty sure that's just confirmation bias. Once the bar gets raised to that point, people tend to stop posting stories that are less worse than rape.

Silus
2014-08-31, 09:19 AM
I was gonna share a story my friend told me, but it's a bit to similar to the "You've been raped and like it" story shared above, and I'd rather not have people think I'm copying.

Sadly, I have a story/situation like that as well.

Granted it was a WoD vampire game and the offending party (another player) hit my girl with a pretty heavy dose of Majesty. Granted he was using the power for its intended purpose ("I'm hungry, and you think I'm super sexy and want me") and I will (grudgingly) say that it was in the bounds of his character, but it's still not right.

I spent the rest of the campaign trying to orchestrate a way to kill off his character (the DM didn't make it anywhere close to easy). Any future attempts at something similar in any games will result in a flat "No, it doesn't happen" with my best "I will literally dive across this table and feed you your own eyes if you insist on doing this" look.

comicshorse
2014-08-31, 09:31 AM
Sadly, I have a story/situation like that as well.

Granted it was a WoD vampire game and the offending party (another player) hit my girl with a pretty heavy dose of Majesty. Granted he was using the power for its intended purpose ("I'm hungry, and you think I'm super sexy and want me") and I will (grudgingly) say that it was in the bounds of his character, but it's still not right.

I spent the rest of the campaign trying to orchestrate a way to kill off his character (the DM didn't make it anywhere close to easy). Any future attempts at something similar in any games will result in a flat "No, it doesn't happen" with my best "I will literally dive across this table and feed you your own eyes if you insist on doing this" look.

He was using the power to feed ?
Cause if you're character was a Vampire then what about the Blood Bond ?

Cazero
2014-08-31, 09:40 AM
Sadly, I have a story/situation like that as well.

Granted it was a WoD vampire game and the offending party (another player) hit my girl with a pretty heavy dose of Majesty. Granted he was using the power for its intended purpose ("I'm hungry, and you think I'm super sexy and want me") and I will (grudgingly) say that it was in the bounds of his character, but it's still not right.

Well, that actually makes it even worse. As far as I know, WoD vampires don't have sex. It's just a blank, distasteful feeling for them, and it wastes precious ressources that have to be resplenished.
Yes, they do inspire lust to feed on mortal, but they don't actually have to do anything more that biting instead of kissing to put their partner/victim into a catatonic state of euphoria, wich they rationalize (as unaware mortals) as their best sex ever after the event, despite having no memory at all of what happened to support that theory.

edit :

He was using the power to feed ?
Cause if you're character was a Vampire then what about the Blood Bond ?
Hooo, that too. If you're a vampire and he drank a simple sip of your blood, he sees you at least as a close friend and is now unlikely to actively harm you.

Silus
2014-08-31, 09:49 AM
He was using the power to feed ?
Cause if you're character was a Vampire then what about the Blood Bond ?

No no, just sex. Granted it was with his...minion? Ghoul? Thrall? Whatever the term, it was the Toreador, his soccer-mom minion, and my Mekhet bookworm (Think a scary clever, but shy, mousy and kinda adorable Velma with peek-a-bangs that doesn't nom on people).


Well, that actually makes it even worse. As far as I know, WoD vampires don't have sex. It's just a blank, distasteful feeling for them, and it wastes precious ressources that have to be resplenished.
Yes, they do inspire lust to feed on mortal, but they don't actually have to do anything more that biting instead of kissing to put their partner/victim into a catatonic state of euphoria, wich they rationalize (as unaware mortals) as their best sex ever after the event, despite having no memory at all of what happened to support that theory.

Wanna know the worst part? Majesty more or less states that by the very nature of the power, the victim thinks it's their idea to hook up with the vampire. Thankfully I had the highest intelligence in the party, along with the highest Occult skill, so it didn't take my girl long to figure out what had happened.

Wait, that wasn't the worst. It was this general argument every time it was brought up:

"Dude, you raped my girl!"
"No, she wanted it."
"YOU MENTALLY DOMINATED HER TO **** YOUR VAMP! THAT. IS. RAPE."
"I dunno, she seemed to enjoy herself."

And round and round it went.

Cazero
2014-08-31, 10:10 AM
No no, just sex. Granted it was with his...minion? Ghoul? Thrall? Whatever the term, it was the Toreador, his soccer-mom minion, and my Mekhet bookworm (Think a scary clever, but shy, mousy and kinda adorable Velma with peek-a-bangs that doesn't nom on people).

I think Majesty is a personnal effect, wich imply you can't use it to force someone to have sex with somebody else. But I'm not sure and have to let it slip here, and it might make you gullible enough to accept it if he asked you.
But ghouls already know the pleasure of being embraced and the taste of vampiric blood (it's part of how you make them), wich is the main reason vampires don't like sex, because it feels infinitely lame by comparison.
Naturaly, if he ordered the ghoul to do it, the ghoul would obey. But then he can't force you to like it since it's bland sex with some kind of barely motivated drone (plus you're a vampire).




Wanna know the worst part? Majesty more or less states that by the very nature of the power, the victim thinks it's their idea to hook up with the vampire. Thankfully I had the highest intelligence in the party, along with the highest Occult skill, so it didn't take my girl long to figure out what had happened.


At that point you realise he forced you to do it and it wasn't actually your idea and can legitimately seek revenge, regardless of your previous opinion on the question. Blood bonds have a lasting effect that prevents you to take revenge even if you fully understand what's going on. As far as I know, Majesty doesn't.

Ashiel
2014-08-31, 10:16 AM
Technically the "you liked it" part was probably the vampire's Dominating Gaze at work (hence the secret die roll), but that hardly makes it better.
Well dominate isn't the same as charm. In the 3.x DMGs (we were playing 3.5 at the time) as well in the PHB, dominate overrides your will but you're still thinking the same way. IE - You could be dominated into killing your brother but you would be aware that you were being forced to kill your brother the whole time, and likely possess all the rage and sadness during and after the fact that you would expect.

Whereas charm I could see, since charm changes your attitude towards the charmer so that you take everything that they say or do in the best possible way, and if under the effects of a charm effect you are made to do something you wouldn't normally do (opposed Charisma check) then you do it thinking it is your own choice but you're only doing it because you're under the influence of the charm (and wouldn't do it otherwise). In this case, if you were charmed into killing your brother, you wouldn't realize you were being forced, though it may become apparent after the fact (at the time it would seem like what needed to be done).

Part of the reason why succubi and their charm monster plus super-high Charisma are really bad news. They're the sort of demon who might slink around and charm somebody, telepathically deliver the order to drown their child for some greater good, beat the commoner's Charisma check, and then laugh when a town is broken up because one of their most beloved community members drowned her children "Because God told me to".

It's probably worthwhile to also mention that he was the sort of GM who would roll stuff for no reason, and didn't pay much attention to the rules. For example, he once called for an ability check but required you to roll higher than your ability score for it to function (IE - if you have 18 Str, you need to roll a 19 to break down this door), and when asked about it, he said "Well that's how it works in 2E, but you're supposed to roll high in 3E, not low"; to which I had to explain to him not only was that not how things worked in 3E, but that it made it less likely that a character with a high ability would ever succeed at anything (outright impossible once you hit 20+).

Silus
2014-08-31, 10:19 AM
At that point you realise he forced you to do it and it wasn't actually your idea and can legitimately seek revenge, regardless of your previous opinion on the question. Blood bonds have a lasting effect that prevents you to take revenge even if you fully understand what's going on. As far as I know, Majesty doesn't.

Oh trust me, I tried offing his character short of directly shooting him in the head with a high powered rifle (because apparently vampires aren't allowed to directly murder their peers or some BS). I as a PC don't, and can't, scheme. I'm more in favor of the 'ol "I put my gun to the back of his head when he turns around and shoot him until the gun goes click" method.

Hence why in any future games, is this sort of BS happens, either they will get a flat "No, that doesn't happen because I won't let it happen", or they'll get things thrown at their head (Anything from large foam die to rulebooks).

comicshorse
2014-08-31, 10:20 AM
Blood bonds have a lasting effect that prevents you to take revenge even if you fully understand what's going on. As far as I know, Majesty doesn't.

It doesn't. It was always one of the limitations of Presence that it should be used carefully because when it wears off the people you used it on will be in their right mind again and may very well be righteously pissed at you

Sartharina
2014-08-31, 10:21 AM
Oh trust me, I tried offing his character short of directly shooting him in the head with a high powered rifle (because apparently vampires aren't allowed to directly murder their peers or some BS). I as a PC don't, and can't, scheme. I'm more in favor of the 'ol "I put my gun to the back of his head when he turns around and shoot him until the gun goes click" method.

Hence why in any future games, is this sort of BS happens, either they will get a flat "No, that doesn't happen because I won't let it happen", or they'll get things thrown at their head (Anything from large foam die to rulebooks).... Is this the same player that screws you over in every other game you're in?

Silus
2014-08-31, 10:30 AM
... Is this the same player that screws you over in every other game you're in?

This was the guy that 1) ran the Palladium game with the cursed sword (and keep bringing up the story despite my asking him not to out of anger and embarrassment on my part) and 2) was the bounty hunter that, under orders from another player, shot (and almost killed) my character in the current Star Wars game.

Cazero
2014-08-31, 10:48 AM
Oh trust me, I tried offing his character short of directly shooting him in the head with a high powered rifle (because apparently vampires aren't allowed to directly murder their peers or some BS).

Well, yes, technically, kindred are not allowed to kill each other. That would be so barbaric, so innapropritate. But it doesn't mean they can't. In what kind of World of Darkness would we live, if we couldn't kill ennemies in war? Or if elders couldn't properly punish arrogant newborns? Or...
As long as nobody finds out, you're free to go. And even then, if you're intimidating enough, you can get away with it. If he told you anything else, he BS'ed you.

Sidmen
2014-08-31, 02:47 PM
This was the guy that 1) ran the Palladium game with the cursed sword (and keep bringing up the story despite my asking him not to out of anger and embarrassment on my part) and 2) was the bounty hunter that, under orders from another player, shot (and almost killed) my character in the current Star Wars game. I recommend telling the whole group: "I am no longer involved with PVP. Any effect originating from a player that is harmful to my character will be ignored."

If they insist that, yes, you did get shot - simply say "Oh, how about that." and don't bother recording the damage on your character sheet. If a power was used on your character to mentally affect them - continue playing as if it hadn't been.

They'll either stop trying to mess with you (they're in it for your reaction), or they'll kick you from the game.

AMFV
2014-08-31, 02:59 PM
I recommend telling the whole group: "I am no longer involved with PVP. Any effect originating from a player that is harmful to my character will be ignored."

If they insist that, yes, you did get shot - simply say "Oh, how about that." and don't bother recording the damage on your character sheet. If a power was used on your character to mentally affect them - continue playing as if it hadn't been.

They'll either stop trying to mess with you (they're in it for your reaction), or they'll kick you from the game.

Hey, it's a win-win!

Traab
2014-08-31, 04:18 PM
My God why do so many of these stories seem to involve GM's that hate Paladins? I can sort of see the irrational logic of a player with a hatred for them from previous experiences with the lawful stupid types, but GM's abusing their power to pick on a player for using a class they dislike is just so petty.

Best guess is the same reason they hate the CN character, or the stealthy rogue. Too many times they have dealt with "LolRANDOM!" CN characters that ruin everything and pretend it means they are roleplaying instead of being asses, or rogues that steal everything from everyone in the group in such a way that there is nothing that can be done to stop it in game and it pisses everyone off, and of course, the lawful stick up his bum paladin that plays such a harsh interpretation of the rules that it keeps the rest of the group from being able to do anything moderately enjoyable. "OH, we cant just wipe out the bandit camp, there might be good people in there with robin hood complexes! lets do this the hard way, capture everyone, then turn them over to the guard." Or they just HEARD too many stories about it. Which is more likely imo.

Kitten Champion
2014-08-31, 05:09 PM
Best guess is the same reason they hate the CN character, or the stealthy rogue. Too many times they have dealt with "LolRANDOM!" CN characters that ruin everything and pretend it means they are roleplaying instead of being asses, or rogues that steal everything from everyone in the group in such a way that there is nothing that can be done to stop it in game and it pisses everyone off, and of course, the lawful stick up his bum paladin that plays such a harsh interpretation of the rules that it keeps the rest of the group from being able to do anything moderately enjoyable. "OH, we cant just wipe out the bandit camp, there might be good people in there with robin hood complexes! lets do this the hard way, capture everyone, then turn them over to the guard." Or they just HEARD too many stories about it. Which is more likely imo.

I ran into that the first time I decided to make a paladin. Their reasoning to me was that I'd simply be boxing myself into a predictable set of stereotypes. Most of our shared interest is in the story-telling and dramatic aspect of the game, and when we play Pathfinder we usually remain neutral-ish.

I'm the baby of the group gaming-wise. I'm dealing with people who have gone through the wringer of headache-inducing experiences while gaming and now seek to actively nip these problematic elements in the bud with the way they prep and arrange our games. They're well meaning and generally reasonable but I am still outside looking in regarding their more prejudicial views, so making a rather conventional paladin to see what I could do with it was a rather innocuous break from them.

Arbane
2014-08-31, 05:20 PM
This was the guy that 1) ran the Palladium game with the cursed sword (and keep bringing up the story despite my asking him not to out of anger and embarrassment on my part) and 2) was the bounty hunter that, under orders from another player, shot (and almost killed) my character in the current Star Wars game.

Why do you keep playing with this specimen?

As for the Vampire thing... well, thematically, vampires are all about rape. (And disease, and various other bad things.) And the game is all about backstabbing. Doesn't make him any less of a jerk, though.

The Random NPC
2014-08-31, 05:50 PM
Spoilered because of ramblings.

As I just found out I never wrote about my own worst campaign. We were starting a game of Shadowrun and since I was the only one with experience with the system, I recommended everyone stay away from subsystems so we could learn the rules and make it easier on the GM. So taking my advice under consideration, what does most of the group do? Dive right into the subsystems. First there was the Mage, guy was pretty decent at optimization, and a better roleplayer, so I figured we’d just keep the most insane applications of magic at a low level (plus the guy refuses to play anything other than a magic user). Second was the Adept. Okay, since we’re already using the magic subsystem, that shouldn’t be hard on the GM, and really the Adept isn’t much more than a magic street sam. Then I found out he’s a vampire. The GM said he’d be okay with it, so whatever. Third, there was the Street Sam. Finally someone took my advice. Now if the guy would do any roleplaying at all, we could have a glorious friendship. Can’t blame him though, I was pretty shy when I started as well. Finally, myself, I played an Unarmed Street Sam with a minor in Facing. Partially I wanted to let the others take the lead so they could learn the system, but mostly I just wanted to play Batman.

So, the game starts, and we’re being run through Food Fight as an introduction. I told the GM if he wants our characters to be somewhere, he should just start us there, but instead he decides to have a mini session with all of us to establish our characters in the universe. At least he mandated that we have a reason to go to the Stuffer Shack. I start with the munchies and see a pimp slapping one of his girls. I’m all set to go to her rescue, when she spits nerve toxin in his face and kills the guy. I’m stunned, (how does a working girl afford the nerve toxin, let alone the surgery for a spit sac) but I figure he’s just trying to establish how much of a craphole we live in. I go over to roll the body, and take his nuyen and knife, leaving aside his gold watch because of my allergies. My knowledge check tells me the knife belongs to a member of the Mob, and is his signature weapon. I’m thinking plot hook, and I can leave the knife at a future run to implicate the Mob. That ends my session. The Street Sam’s and Adept’s both are similarly uneventful, except for a massive rogue AI that passes overhead. As I later find out, the city is home to an AI that posts “mysterious” jobs for people to complete. No one is claiming responsibility for this AI, and it is powerful enough that no one wants to mess with it. As an aside, the jobs are mysterious because no one can figure out why an AI would want them done, being things like dropping a disposable comlink in a specific part of town. Since those jobs are invariably followed by go to that part of town and answer the ringing comlink… but the guy was new at intrigue so whatever. Finally comes the Mage’s session. He’s walking down the street when he sees some Zen heads lying on the hood of their car, staring at the stars, naked under a blanket. The Mage decides this is the perfect time to simultaneously establish his character and test out the magic system. So he casts Mob Control and has the guy choke out his girlfriend. This pisses of the GM. Apparently, mind controlling someone into murder “taints the atmosphere of the game” and he can’t continue now.

After calming him down, and figuring out a method of reducing the power of Mob Control (periodic saves to wear it down, immediate save when command to do something that goes against their nature), we continue with the game. We had some good sessions, but the GM now has it in for the Mage. We find out that mages leave an astral signature when casting magic, lasting 1 hour per force. A mage can disrupt it, getting rid of 1 hour per turn, and can summon up a magic fluff ball to do it for him. We as a group decide that since Mage would have known to do that, he did. Cue Mage’s face on the trido as a wanted criminal. Turns out the Zen heads had called the cops, “suspecting magical influence” and apparently every squad has a mage with them, most of them initiated so they can change how their astral signature looks to show everyone else.

Then comes the GMPC party. There was the morally and magically better Mage (mostly because of GM fait), the awesome Street Sam that can run so fast she can dodge bullets (once again GM fait), the troll Face that has connections everywhere we care about (oh, your character is a teacher at a university? He is a personal friend of the president), and a Rigger that I think only existed to have a fourth member. We run into them during a B&E, where they were going to blow up the building. We end up needing to use their exit plan when we find out the building is going to explode in a few seconds, I want nothing to do with this team after this, but suddenly all jobs disappear except through this team. I think there were a few jobs in between, but it was obvious he wanted to have us put in our place as we watch his awesome team. I forget exactly how, but we end up fighting in a forest against them. We quickly dispatch the rigger and the troll wasn’t there. Street Sam McDodgerton ends up running away, and she had enough cyberware to run at like 60 mph. The MMMage casts invisibility, so I say I’ll just use my ultrasonic vision to find and kill it. Seems the MMMage can sneak so well I don’t even get a chance to find it. We track him down and I was the only one to catch the transition from the woods to a parking lot. Our Mage casts Lighting Bolt to shut down a car speeding away from us, and instead of pointing out that there are cameras around, our exploits end up on the news. It seems that our GM now hates us all (except for our Street Sam, but he barely talked) and wants to start over.

Instead of talking to us out of game, he just kept dropping hints for us to go to sleep. Now, we had just upgraded our hideout with top of the line security, and, because at least 2 of us only needed 4 hours of sleep, we slept in shifts. He hadn’t counted on that, so I decided to throw him a bone and go to sleep. When we wake up, we don’t recognize anything, because we were in a Total Recall like machine. No rolls, no chance to fight off our kidnappers just us in a new universe. My character had a previously stated paranoia about virtual reality, and I stated that if he couldn’t tell reality from fiction, he would kill himself. I tried a few methods to figure out which one was which, but in the end I had to kill my character off. This caught him by surprise, but we were even more surprised when everyone but Mage thought this was a great idea and followed suit. I had been prepared to make a new character, but with 75% of the party dead, I figured he’d make something up. Nope we were just dead, and this was the real world. Until it wasn’t. After making new characters and playing a session or two, some hacker shows up to tell us this is a simulation and if we hold tight he would get us out. In game, he needed a week to break us out, out of game it seems like he needed a month. After half an hour of us being asked what we do, and us telling him we sit tight waiting to be broken out, we were bored and decided to do one of the jobs being offered. That was a mistake, as our new characters were very pink Mohawk. Seems the constant explosions were taxing the system, making it harder for the hacker to get us out (and simulating 4 different, recursive universes weren’t?). That was about the time we all go fed up and ended the game. As an aside, my character was hated because he had made a joke during a run about stealing a horse to sell for parts. The GM had made a super horse with over 2 billion nuyen worth of cyberware in it, and apparently didn’t understand that we were professional criminals with no qualms about killing a person if the money was right, let alone a horse.

MReav
2014-08-31, 08:06 PM
"Casual murder? Fine! But animal cruelty? That's beyond the pale!"

The Random NPC
2014-08-31, 08:52 PM
Also, "Mind control is super evil, unless I'm doing it." That car that was speeding away from us? The MMMage mind controlled the driver to do that when we caught up.

DM Nate
2014-09-01, 06:49 AM
Man, threads like this make me NEVER want to try Shadowrun.

Ashiel
2014-09-01, 09:52 AM
Man, threads like this make me NEVER want to try Shadowrun.
Unfortunately, such shenanigans aren't limited to a single system. You can get just as horrible with D&D. :smallfrown:

The Random NPC
2014-09-01, 12:06 PM
Man, threads like this make me NEVER want to try Shadowrun.

He was an okay GM, other than what I mentioned. If I remember correctly, the campaign ended up lasting for about 4 months before falling apart. He just had issues when his beliefs were challenged. Like one time, we were discussing how a Gunslinger could get a full attack if they had the right feats. Our GM said it was unrealistic and didn't allow it in his games. I retorted with something like, "I can play a Sorcerer, say some giberish, throw some poo around, and fire appears". Then he started crying, because apparently he has had this same argument many times in the past, and everyone uses magic as their argument.

DM Nate
2014-09-01, 12:20 PM
I recant my previous statement. If playing Shadowrun can make someone start crying after I mention flinging poo around, sign me up!

Fumble Jack
2014-09-01, 01:14 PM
There was a game I actually did walk away from, a star wars saga game a friend ran. Not as bad as some other stories posted. For the first few sessions it was good for a Rebellion era game.

Then it became like a star wars celebrity palooza as every canon jedi and sith involved with the Clone wars era , minus the two who ruled the empire, Dooku and Grievous, showed up on a single planet to boss us around against the empire. This was to be our mission hub.

Now I was playing an Ithorian going the Force wizard route and wanted to be support, so I wouldn't overshadow anyone. To add he was lazy, unambitous but self preservation was always a priority, which when he joined up with the original party, became preservation of all it's members.

My character was rather uncomfortable with the glowing neon sign to the empire of "Hey Force Users here!" that served as our mission hub. After that, a player had to drop due to scheduling conflicts. Unfortunately it was the player who was everyone else's ride at the time.

The Gm then brought in pc's of the week as different people whom were the drivers that brought the others there. They were largely uninterested in the game and were disruptive, if they couldn't kill/shoot/maim whatever encounter, combat or otherwise was there.

The game was falling apart and rather politely I had told the Gm that I would be withdrawing from the game as it became more tedious than fun and would prefer to leave at that time than to stay the course and withdraw on far more bitter note.

Beige
2014-09-01, 02:02 PM
He was an okay GM, other than what I mentioned. If I remember correctly, the campaign ended up lasting for about 4 months before falling apart. He just had issues when his beliefs were challenged. Like one time, we were discussing how a Gunslinger could get a full attack if they had the right feats. Our GM said it was unrealistic and didn't allow it in his games. I retorted with something like, "I can play a Sorcerer, say some giberish, throw some poo around, and fire appears". Then he started crying, because apparently he has had this same argument many times in the past, and everyone uses magic as their argument.

it's not even the right feats - its just one feat. rapid reload and alchemical cartridges...

get a video of a trick shooter and show him many people can infact do so with older firearms...

The Random NPC
2014-09-01, 02:05 PM
I recant my previous statement. If playing Shadowrun can make someone start crying after I mention flinging poo around, sign me up!

FYI, the Gunslinger is from Pathfinder, though there were similar conversations about Shadowrun that ended the same.

huttj509
2014-09-02, 02:25 AM
Spoilered because of ramblings.


Then comes the GMPC party. There was the morally and magically better Mage (mostly because of GM fait), the awesome Street Sam that can run so fast she can dodge bullets (once again GM fait), the troll Face that has connections everywhere we care about (oh, your character is a teacher at a university? He is a personal friend of the president), and a Rigger that I think only existed to have a fourth member. We run into them during a B&E, where they were going to blow up the building. We end up needing to use their exit plan when we find out the building is going to explode in a few seconds, I want nothing to do with this team after this, but suddenly all jobs disappear except through this team. I think there were a few jobs in between, but it was obvious he wanted to have us put in our place as we watch his awesome team. I forget exactly how, but we end up fighting in a forest against them. We quickly dispatch the rigger and the troll wasn’t there. Street Sam McDodgerton ends up running away, and she had enough cyberware to run at like 60 mph. The MMMage casts invisibility, so I say I’ll just use my ultrasonic vision to find and kill it. Seems the MMMage can sneak so well I don’t even get a chance to find it. We track him down and I was the only one to catch the transition from the woods to a parking lot. Our Mage casts Lighting Bolt to shut down a car speeding away from us, and instead of pointing out that there are cameras around, our exploits end up on the news. It seems that our GM now hates us all (except for our Street Sam, but he barely talked) and wants to start over.


Honestly? I could probably make a fun antagonist out of that Face. Make him a Belloq "one-up" type. Always undermining your schemes. Suddenly, making connections for runs turns into instead figuring out how to break HIS connections, and undermine his information network. Personal friend of the university president? What happens if the board finds about about this guy's secret underground dogfighting drug ring to raise money for a rival university? Suddenly the President needs to decide between his position, or severing ties. Oh, there was no such ring? My mistake. ;-)

Could break other ties using runs involving things like blackmail, planting evidence, stealing evidence he's using for his own blackmail, etc. Character assassination doesn't need to meet courtroom standards.

Of course, the trick is setting the guy up as "one step ahead" without making him invincible. And having sufficient communication with the group that "NPC blocks your direct maneuver" comes across as an intended challenge, rather than a GM doorslam lockdown.

Sith_Happens
2014-09-02, 08:39 AM
Oh trust me, I tried offing his character short of directly shooting him in the head with a high powered rifle (because apparently vampires aren't allowed to directly murder their peers or some BS). I as a PC don't, and can't, scheme. I'm more in favor of the 'ol "I put my gun to the back of his head when he turns around and shoot him until the gun goes click" method.

What about all the fun ideas we fed you over in the WoD thread?:smallfrown:

Silus
2014-09-02, 10:11 AM
What about all the fun ideas we fed you over in the WoD thread?:smallfrown:

Tried'em, didn't work. :smallfrown:

The Random NPC
2014-09-02, 10:53 AM
Honestly? I could probably make a fun antagonist out of that Face. Make him a Belloq "one-up" type. Always undermining your schemes. Suddenly, making connections for runs turns into instead figuring out how to break HIS connections, and undermine his information network. Personal friend of the university president? What happens if the board finds about about this guy's secret underground dogfighting drug ring to raise money for a rival university? Suddenly the President needs to decide between his position, or severing ties. Oh, there was no such ring? My mistake. ;-)

Could break other ties using runs involving things like blackmail, planting evidence, stealing evidence he's using for his own blackmail, etc. Character assassination doesn't need to meet courtroom standards.

Of course, the trick is setting the guy up as "one step ahead" without making him invincible. And having sufficient communication with the group that "NPC blocks your direct maneuver" comes across as an intended challenge, rather than a GM doorslam lockdown.

Mostly he was annoying because he kept showing up. If he had been presented on his own as a new fixer contact, he probably wouldn't have annoyed me, but since he was on the GM's Mary Sue runner team...

Segev
2014-09-02, 01:17 PM
Honestly, V:tM is about the kind of dark nonsense complained about on the last couple of pages. If the ST isn't in agreement with you that this behavior is not the kind of game he wants to run, you should just leave the game. It's not for you. Being bitter about it OOC and having a vendetta - to the point of metagaming to justify it - is not justified. Demanding that you be exempt from PvP in a game where it's de rigor is asking for an unfair advantage. It's like playing Monopoly and saying you feel violated when you have to pay rent for landing on somebody else's space.

If you don't enjoy it, don't play the game, but I don't think they were being jerks for playing the game set out before them. There's nothing wrong with saying, when it comes up (if you didn't know it would), "Hey, this isn't cool. I don't like this. Let's avoid it, okay?" But if their response is, "No, it's part of the game," then your only justified and proper responses are, "Okay, I guess I'll put up with it," (presumably because you find the rest of it tolerable) or, "Okay, this game isn't for me. Sorry, guys, but I'm dropping out."

"How dare they play the game they want to play and not let me play my own that invalidates aspects of theirs!? I will take it out on them until they decide to kick me out or acquiesce to my demands!" is not a good response.

The Glyphstone
2014-09-02, 01:46 PM
Honestly, V:tM is about the kind of dark nonsense complained about on the last couple of pages. If the ST isn't in agreement with you that this behavior is not the kind of game he wants to run, you should just leave the game. It's not for you. Being bitter about it OOC and having a vendetta - to the point of metagaming to justify it - is not justified. Demanding that you be exempt from PvP in a game where it's de rigor is asking for an unfair advantage. It's like playing Monopoly and saying you feel violated when you have to pay rent for landing on somebody else's space.

If you don't enjoy it, don't play the game, but I don't think they were being jerks for playing the game set out before them. There's nothing wrong with saying, when it comes up (if you didn't know it would), "Hey, this isn't cool. I don't like this. Let's avoid it, okay?" But if their response is, "No, it's part of the game," then your only justified and proper responses are, "Okay, I guess I'll put up with it," (presumably because you find the rest of it tolerable) or, "Okay, this game isn't for me. Sorry, guys, but I'm dropping out."

"How dare they play the game they want to play and not let me play my own that invalidates aspects of theirs!? I will take it out on them until they decide to kick me out or acquiesce to my demands!" is not a good response.

On the other hand, the thread is about 'worst gaming experiences of your life', so if the V:TM story in question meets that qualifier, it's appropriate regardless of whether the story fits setting material. All that means is that V:TM isn't a good game for the person in question.

Segev
2014-09-02, 02:03 PM
On the other hand, the thread is about 'worst gaming experiences of your life', so if the V:TM story in question meets that qualifier, it's appropriate regardless of whether the story fits setting material. All that means is that V:TM isn't a good game for the person in question.

Indeed. I would not have spoken up if it weren't for the advice - seemingly somewhat serious, to me (though I could be wrong) - that suggested she would be justified in taking her misery out on the others, rather than accepting that it's not for her and bowing out of the game.

Sith_Happens
2014-09-02, 04:23 PM
Indeed. I would not have spoken up if it weren't for the advice - seemingly somewhat serious, to me (though I could be wrong) - that suggested she would be justified in taking her misery out on the others, rather than accepting that it's not for her and bowing out of the game.

I just backtracked through the thread and only saw advice about taking her misery out on the others in-character. Which, given your own position on V:TM, is a far more than fair thing to do.

icefractal
2014-09-02, 04:25 PM
Honestly, V:tM is about the kind of dark nonsense complained about on the last couple of pages. If the ST isn't in agreement with you that this behavior is not the kind of game he wants to run, you should just leave the game. It's not for you. Being bitter about it OOC and having a vendetta - to the point of metagaming to justify it - is not justified. Demanding that you be exempt from PvP in a game where it's de rigor is asking for an unfair advantage. It's like playing Monopoly and saying you feel violated when you have to pay rent for landing on somebody else's space.This is where I disagree with you. In this story (and at least one of the others that Silus has mentioned), the problem is that the offending player was apparently exempt from PvP. Specifically, that things like mind-****ing were allowed, but stabbing another PC in the face was forbidden.

Which is a standpoint I see from time to time - and it is utter garbage. If you're messing with another PCs mind, stealing their stuff, messing up their goals, and generally ****ing with them - then you are engaging in PvP. Demanding that you not be subject to PvP violence in return is the height of hypocrisy. And so is a GM allowing the former type of behavior but getting upset when the latter happens.

Talakeal
2014-09-03, 01:19 AM
I have walked out of a game twice.

One time in Mage I was playing a mortal whose only supernatural ability was immunity to mind control and a high willpower. The very first NPC we encountered dominated me with a custom spell that ignored immunities and allowed no willpower roll to resist.

Second time I was playing a mage in D&D and I got hit with an artifact that sapped all magic from me for the rest of the adventure. I mean all magic, I could not cast or memorize spells, and all of my magic items and even racial SLAs ceased working. It was like my own personal anti magic field that followed me wherever I went but didn't affect anyone else trying to cast spells on me. (In the same session the parties fighter got hit by a "custom epic level spell" that reduced his MAXIMUM hit points to 1 for the rest of the adventure. Not fun times.

Raine_Sage
2014-09-03, 02:35 AM
Unfortunately I've used up my two really "bad" stories on other Threads before this one. But for the purposes of contributing for people who might not have seen the older threads I'll put them up here.

Alright so the system is 4ed. One of our friends wants to run a one shot campaign to test out an idea he had. Asks us all to roll up characters who could fill certain rolls and since one of those rolls is "person with good streetwise who knows the local customs" I decide to make a bard. DM shows up so tired he can barely sit up, tells us he's scrapped the original idea and we're playing a different story now. Oh and now he's also playing a DMPC 2 levels higher than the rest of the party. When we asked him why the DMPC outleveled the party he said "Because you'll need it." When we asked why he didn't just set character creation at a higher level he said "because you don't need that much."

Anyway I'm not going to go into too much detail about the campaign itself other than it was a mess. We went off into a forest where my bard's pumped up streetwise skill was literally useless, and I didn't even get to contribute anything in combat because the DMs character pretty much oneshot everything, and the other two characters cleaned up whatever he didn't manage to get in one hit. So I'm basically just trailing along being dead weight.

Now we're in the forest to try and catch a criminal who's known for targeting young women. I'm a pretty little bard with armor that can morph into normal clothing and a songbow that makes me invisible to whoever I shoot with it. My perception is also pretty great. So when we get close to where the criminal is hiding we decide that I'll go out into a field, and sit amongst the wildflowers looking like an ordinary peasant girl playing her harp for the woodland critters. The idea is that the guy tries to take advantage of a supposedly easy mark, and then I pop him with my bow, vanish, and then the rest of the party jumps out of the bushes for a surprise round. It was a good plan. I'm still proud of that plan. But at the time I was just thrilled that I /finally/ got to do something useful. I was contributing!

Now here's where the DM being dead tired comes into play. While my bard is strumming away at her instrument and keeping an eye out for gnoll bandits, the DM asks me to roll perception so I do it. He tells me my character fails to notice a snake slithering through the grass towards her. Since A. My character is already on high alert and B. DMs aren't supposed to make you check for obvious things, I figured it was a normal sized snake, probably poisonous, and that I was going to have to roll endurance to try and not die.

My character manages to spot the snake as, in the GMs words, "it rears up to attempt to swallow you." Which is the point I go "Wait hold up. How big is this thing?" Turns out my character somehow misses the basilisk from harry freaking potter sneaking up on her. As do her party members. There is no grass in the world tall enough to hide something like that. So of course the ranger oneshots the stupid thing anyway so it doesn't matter. Only the stupid snake blew our cover and we don't get to surprise the criminal and I don't get to contribute. Again.


This one is short and sweet. My brother has a lot of tabletop nerd friends (and was the one responsible for turning me into a tabletop nerd as well) so every so often one of them wants to do something experimental. Sometimes this turns out cool, sometimes not so cool. This was a not so cool time. One of the guys had decided to try and re-engineer 4ed so that it ran on what he called "the ticks system" where basically every power had a number assigned to it and that number was the amount of time you had to wait before you could use the power.

Now the way a tick system is /supposed/ to work from what I've been told, is that they work like a cooldown. So I move, I use the power, I have to wait 7 ticks before I can use the power in combat again. Only for some reason he was using the idea backwards. So I'd move, declare which power I was using, wait 7 ticks, and /then/ the power would go off. The only problem was moving one square only took up one tick and players couldn't move while waiting for their attack to resolve. So while the PC is presumably standing there with sword raised, the goblin they're aiming for can get on the other side of the room if they want to.

It too THREE HOURS to kill ONE ENEMY and we didn't even manage to get through the combat encounter before everyone was just like "This is taking too long we're out." Everyone told the DM point blank that the idea was awful, and he couldn't seem to get why everyone had such a problem with it. So the game didn't continue after that point. We still go "Well at least it's not the tick system" when confronted with DM shenanigans.


This isn't a full fledged story but it's more recent. I had a DM for a 5ed game who was by all accounts a really really good GM. Like he really went all out and I appreciate that. But he was one of those guys who would only let us roll for social encounters if we pestered him about it, and if we had to roll for it then chances of success were slim unless someone nat 20'd. Like I appreciate wanting players to actually roleplay their characters. Generally that is a thing I like to do. But I am also not a 19 charisma bard in real life, sometimes I need help from the dice because I get tongue tied easily. A problem my character should not share.

Sith_Happens
2014-09-03, 03:11 AM
Now we're in the forest to try and catch a criminal who's known for targeting young women. I'm a pretty little bard

"Uh oh, I know where this is going..."

*it doesn't go there*

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/534/783/b9d.jpg

JetThomasBoat
2014-09-03, 07:01 AM
it's not even the right feats - its just one feat. rapid reload and alchemical cartridges...

get a video of a trick shooter and show him many people can infact do so with older firearms...

I've never actually played a gunslinger so I don't really remember from reading it over how easy it is to get more than one firearm but from what I was taught in school, pirates and such who used flintlock pistols and such would often carry several, so another possible thing to do is just get four or more guns and have the quickdraw feat.

Also, can't you use the one in the book that has like six loaded barrels that you rotate?

Beige
2014-09-03, 07:16 AM
I've never actually played a gunslinger so I don't really remember from reading it over how easy it is to get more than one firearm but from what I was taught in school, pirates and such who used flintlock pistols and such would often carry several, so another possible thing to do is just get four or more guns and have the quickdraw feat.

Also, can't you use the one in the book that has like six loaded barrels that you rotate?

several firearms works in theory, but not by RaW because it takes an action to drop/holster a weapon - it could work in theory if your DM lets you use quick draw to stash as well as draw, and is a cool idea, but needs outside help

revolvers are in the pathfinder system, indeed - they cost more than a +2 weapon, deal the same damage as a pistol, but do get 6 shots before needing a reload. but they cost more than a +2 weapon, and the gunslinger can get rapid reload as one of her bonus feats - which is still useful as heck for the revolver, because you still have to take a break from firing without it

so it's a case of paying more for little gain

JetThomasBoat
2014-09-03, 07:51 AM
several firearms works in theory, but not by RaW because it takes an action to drop/holster a weapon - it could work in theory if your DM lets you use quick draw to stash as well as draw, and is a cool idea, but needs outside help

revolvers are in the pathfinder system, indeed - they cost more than a +2 weapon, deal the same damage as a pistol, but do get 6 shots before needing a reload. but they cost more than a +2 weapon, and the gunslinger can get rapid reload as one of her bonus feats - which is still useful as heck for the revolver, because you still have to take a break from firing without it

so it's a case of paying more for little gain

I suppose that makes sense. Then again, I'm a person who has lost more than a few masterwork composite longbows because I just dropped them instead of wasting an action to put it away when I went to go hit something with a sword, so I would probably just drop my guns all over the place. Probably a good thing I don't play gunslingers, then.

I think I would let quickdraw work for that, since there's the whole thing where you can draw a weapon as part of a move action making quickdraw about half as useful as I thought when I first started playing the game, but a lot of DMs might not be that willing.

Raphite1
2014-09-03, 09:49 AM
"Uh oh, I know where this is going..."

*it doesn't go there*

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/534/783/b9d.jpg

Exactly what I was thinking, lol. This may be the first time that's ever happened, and it's a welcome relief.

Raine_Sage
2014-09-03, 11:07 AM
Haha, wow I didn't realize how bad that sounded until I read it again. Nope none of that in any game I've played so far thank god. The criminal in question was more like jack the ripper if he was a gnoll and didn't limit himself to just prostitutes. I know that sounds awesome but in practice it was just incredibly boring. Friends don't let friends DM when they're tired.

Segev
2014-09-03, 11:16 AM
This is where I disagree with you. In this story (and at least one of the others that Silus has mentioned), the problem is that the offending player was apparently exempt from PvP. Specifically, that things like mind-****ing were allowed, but stabbing another PC in the face was forbidden.

Which is a standpoint I see from time to time - and it is utter garbage. If you're messing with another PCs mind, stealing their stuff, messing up their goals, and generally ****ing with them - then you are engaging in PvP. Demanding that you not be subject to PvP violence in return is the height of hypocrisy. And so is a GM allowing the former type of behavior but getting upset when the latter happens.

I agree whole-heartedly that, if one PC is allowed to use mechanics on another without the target's player's consent, all other PCs should be allowed to use mechanics on each other with similar levels of consent.

The major objection that made me post was in response to a post that ended with something along the lines of, "Yeah, nosell everything they do and ignore the rules of the game until they're so annoyed they let you do whatever you want or kick you out of the game."

If it's come to that point, you should just leave. Playing the guy who refuses to acknowledge that the rules say X has happened and refusing to imagine the same scene as everybody else (by virtue of imagining your character is doing one thing while the others imagine something else) is disruptive OOC behavior.

But yes, if there's PvP, you should be allowed to respond in kind.

Quarotas
2014-09-03, 03:09 PM
several firearms works in theory, but not by RaW because it takes an action to drop/holster a weapon - it could work in theory if your DM lets you use quick draw to stash as well as draw, and is a cool idea, but needs outside help




Not quite, with some investment you get this



Prerequisite(s): Amateur Gunslinger feat or grit class feature, Dazzling Display, Weapon Focus.

Benefit(s): You can spend 1 grit point to make a feint attempt using a one-handed firearm for which you have Weapon Focus (instead of a melee weapon). The target of this feint must be within 30 feet of you and be able to see you.

If you have the Quick Draw feat, you can holster a one-handed firearm as a free action as long as you have at least 1 grit point.

The last paragraph lets you juggle guns just for fun, using single shot pistols you could empty your guns one at a time, then switch back through them all to reload. The DM can limit free actions, but that limits other stuff too and is less "DM is not helping" than "DM is trying to stop something outright" and it seems to be the intent of the feat anyways, to allow you to switch to a lot of guns really fast in a manner that baffles everyone's perception of what's actually happening.

Beige
2014-09-03, 03:30 PM
The last paragraph lets you juggle guns just for fun, using single shot pistols you could empty your guns one at a time, then switch back through them all to reload. The DM can limit free actions, but that limits other stuff too and is less "DM is not helping" than "DM is trying to stop something outright" and it seems to be the intent of the feat anyways, to allow you to switch to a lot of guns really fast in a manner that baffles everyone's perception of what's actually happening.

hmmmm, that feat totally slipped my mind XD

hmmmmm, two single shot pistols, rapid reload and gun twirling along with the dual wiel feats - I can make a full attack with two pistols and look as rediculous as possible doing so :smallbiggrin:

Sartharina
2014-09-03, 03:52 PM
The DM can limit free actions, but that limits other stuff too and is less "DM is not helping" than "DM is trying to stop something outright" and it seems to be the intent of the feat anyways, to allow you to switch to a lot of guns really fast in a manner that baffles everyone's perception of what's actually happening.Yes, DMs can limit free actions - and probably should. 'Free actions' take up a subjective amount of time, and are designed to be used independent of Swift, Immediate, Standard, and move actions.There isn't a hard-and-fast rule for how many Free actions someone can take because there can't be without breaking something - but so does not limiting free actions.

Sith_Happens
2014-09-03, 05:20 PM
hmmmm, that feat totally slipped my mind XD

hmmmmm, two single shot pistols, rapid reload and gun twirling along with the dual wiel feats - I can make a full attack with two pistols and look as rediculous as possible doing so :smallbiggrin:

Just don't tell Paizo or they'll nerf it.:smalltongue:

The Glyphstone
2014-09-03, 05:59 PM
Just don't tell Paizo or they'll nerf it.:smalltongue:

Gunslingers are Paizo's baby, I think it is safe.

If it was a Monk feat, on the other hand, it would be on the first class express train to Nerftown.

Sith_Happens
2014-09-03, 06:12 PM
Gunslingers are Paizo's baby, I think it is safe.

If the Gunslinger is Paizo's baby, then the Paizo household apparently has a strict no-dual-wielding-guns policy.

Beige
2014-09-03, 06:22 PM
If the Gunslinger is Paizo's baby, then the Paizo household apparently has a strict no-dual-wielding-guns policy.

well of course - thats just common sense :smalltongue:

this thread seems to be building up to an entry from the poor DM this is used upon XD

JediSoth
2014-09-04, 10:11 AM
My worst experience was during one of the Dungeon Crawl Classics tournaments at Gen Con, shortly after D&D 4E came out (so the tourney was being run with 4E). The first encounter was with a gorgon. Within two rounds, all of the combat-centric characters had been petrified (including my paladin). The rest of the combat took over 3 HOURS as the two remaining support nickel-and-dimed the gorgon to death. The ritual to turn us back to flesh took 10 minutes of game time, so couldn't be done during combat.

This was a paid event, mind you, so I got to sit there for 3/4 of the event, on my butt, doing nothing, watching other people play. By the time we all got back in the action, we had time to try to open the door to the actual dungeon area... then time ran out. We got past the initial flavor text, one combat with one opponent, and the description of the door.

I paid money for that. It put me off 4E for years. I still don't really like it, even though I tried it in my home games twice. It was also the LAST time I ever played in an organized tournament at Gen Con. I think it was extremely poor GMing, as well as a poorly written adventure to allow over half the players at the table to do ABSOLUTELY nothing for the majority of the event.

I should've walked away and went to the Dealer Hall. I could've actually done that and come back in time for my character's next action. It sucked.

Sidmen
2014-09-04, 07:15 PM
I agree whole-heartedly that, if one PC is allowed to use mechanics on another without the target's player's consent, all other PCs should be allowed to use mechanics on each other with similar levels of consent.

The major objection that made me post was in response to a post that ended with something along the lines of, "Yeah, nosell everything they do and ignore the rules of the game until they're so annoyed they let you do whatever you want or kick you out of the game."

If it's come to that point, you should just leave. Playing the guy who refuses to acknowledge that the rules say X has happened and refusing to imagine the same scene as everybody else (by virtue of imagining your character is doing one thing while the others imagine something else) is disruptive OOC behavior.

But yes, if there's PvP, you should be allowed to respond in kind.
It's something that you only do when a group continually engages in unwanted PVP, and ideally should be said at the start of a campaign. I've had to do it myself for very similar reasons to those that made me suggest it. One of the players continually tried to be a D-bag to my, and only my, characters - regardless of what game was being played.

The rest of the games (DM, other players, story, etc.) were fun, but he was actively un-fun. For whatever reason, we couldn't kick him from the game (he was only picking on me, so nobody else really cared). So, I made the statement that I was going to be unresponsive to any PVP whatsoever when we started playing Star Wars Saga.

And what do you know, the player decided that he would "accidentally" include me in an autofire burst (when he actually didn't include other enemies so that it would hit me). After rolling to hit and then damage he said the total to me in a proud voice, to which I responded "kay" and didn't write anything down. See, I'm immune to PVP.

Best thing I've ever done. Once he learned that I was serious (after ignoring Mind Trick, explosions, theft, etc.) and started thinking about how to engage in the game - rather than how to **** me over - things became more fun.

Meridian
2014-09-04, 09:59 PM
I have not had bad RP experiences ever, but a friend told me one of his.

Long story shorty:

Guy plays Middle-Earth roleplaying game for two years with the same character without dying, survives trolls, orcs, evil humans and all manner of monsters.

Gets instantly killed by a goblin knife to the head in an ambush.

GM says: "I rolled your Spot check. You failed."

Stormageddon
2014-09-05, 09:14 AM
I have not had bad RP experiences ever, but a friend told me one of his.

Long story shorty:

Guy plays Middle-Earth roleplaying game for two years with the same character without dying, survives trolls, orcs, evil humans and all manner of monsters.

Gets instantly killed by a goblin knife to the head in an ambush.

GM says: "I rolled your Spot check. You failed."

That's the nature of MERP. You're never safe.

Segev
2014-09-05, 10:01 AM
I made the statement that I was going to be unresponsive to any PVP whatsoever when we started playing Star Wars Saga.

And what do you know, the player decided that he would "accidentally" include me in an autofire burst (when he actually didn't include other enemies so that it would hit me). After rolling to hit and then damage he said the total to me in a proud voice, to which I responded "kay" and didn't write anything down. See, I'm immune to PVP.

As long as the other players/DM were okay with this, that's not a problem. That's the same thing as getting the DM to agree that PvP isn't allowed.

I only objected because it was phrased as a refusal, in the Vampire example, to acknowledge any other characters' actions you don't like (at least, if they affected you...and if you don't like them, don't they affect you?) until specifically it annoyed the others so much they kicked you out. "You" being generic, here, not directed at Sidmen or anybody else specifically.

Traab
2014-09-05, 12:20 PM
I have not had bad RP experiences ever, but a friend told me one of his.

Long story shorty:

Guy plays Middle-Earth roleplaying game for two years with the same character without dying, survives trolls, orcs, evil humans and all manner of monsters.

Gets instantly killed by a goblin knife to the head in an ambush.

GM says: "I rolled your Spot check. You failed."

Thats the kind of thing that wouldnt make me stop playing, but it would make me stop giving a damn about my characters. My eye was twitching just at the thought of that. From that point on, I wouldnt allow myself to give a damn about background, rp or anything else that might get me invested in that particular character, because I know that at any given moment the gm will just destroy it all and shrug at me. It would be one thing if I made a mistake and died from it, but that amounts to "rocks fall, everyone dies."

Stormageddon
2014-09-05, 01:04 PM
Thats the kind of thing that wouldnt make me stop playing, but it would make me stop giving a damn about my characters. My eye was twitching just at the thought of that. From that point on, I wouldnt allow myself to give a damn about background, rp or anything else that might get me invested in that particular character, because I know that at any given moment the gm will just destroy it all and shrug at me. It would be one thing if I made a mistake and died from it, but that amounts to "rocks fall, everyone dies."

I don't know about all that. I played the system for about 5 years when I was a kid had about 5 or 6 character deaths. I just got really good at coping with character and excited for the next character.

Ambushes are nasty in the game because they give bonuses to the critical roll which pretty much results in "Arrow throw the ear. instant brain death, cleans out your ear wax."

Sartharina
2014-09-05, 01:06 PM
I have not had bad RP experiences ever, but a friend told me one of his.

Long story shorty:

Guy plays Middle-Earth roleplaying game for two years with the same character without dying, survives trolls, orcs, evil humans and all manner of monsters.

Gets instantly killed by a goblin knife to the head in an ambush.

GM says: "I rolled your Spot check. You failed."

And this is why Red Shirts are important!

Flashy
2014-09-05, 01:17 PM
I have not had bad RP experiences ever, but a friend told me one of his.

Long story shorty:

Guy plays Middle-Earth roleplaying game for two years with the same character without dying, survives trolls, orcs, evil humans and all manner of monsters.

Gets instantly killed by a goblin knife to the head in an ambush.

GM says: "I rolled your Spot check. You failed."

It took me a minute to be sure this wasn't a joke about Isildur.

TheRedWidow
2014-09-07, 10:27 AM
While I must admit I do not have quite as large a pool of experience to draw upon as others, I recently had a rather...interesting...session.
So, I'm playing AD&D with a few of my buddies. These sessions had been quite fun in the past, so I had no reason to believe that anything would go wrong this time. At any rate, we're returning from our latest adventure to go back to base, when we come across a couple of troll setting up camp in the middle of the road. Now, I automatically go into the mindset of this being a random encounter/free exp (which it was), but my fellow party members, who are pretty much new to D&D, are not yet trained in this process. I immediately decided that I was going to attack the trolls, seeing as these trolls were also cooking a human body (this will become important later). However, a couple other party members decided that they wanted none of this, because the trolls looked dangerous. There was some discussion, and we eventually went with the druid and myself engaging, and the magic user and rogue hanging back. One entangle and a charge later, I'm stuck in with the trolls, and despite my AC, getting the crap beaten out of me. It isn't long before I drop. The druid uses flame blade and comes in to help. However, all this time, the magic user and rogue have been watching, with only a few spells thrown in our general direction. Despite warnings of decreased exp, they remain unmoved. Anyway, entangle is busted, so one of the trolls straight couldn't fight, thus we do win before too long. This is where things get good.
After some loot division silliness, we find a sack and a small crate, both are opened quickly. The sack contains a bunch of humanoid bones, the crate a pile of meat (of the you-don't-want-to-know variety). We are of course immediately repulsed. Well, most of us, at any rate. As I start to dig a mass grave, the magic user promptly picks up a toddler's skull and shoves it into her bag. And then asks if she can feed some of the (human) meat to her cat. I then point out that this is basically akin to joyriding down the alignment chart, and everyone else, including the DM, agrees. However, the magic user feels the need to argue this. "This" being basic morality, in the middle of the game. She argues that it's okay because they're already dead, and she didn't kill them, and can't see why anyone would have a problem with this. She goes on to further justify it by implying she would find it perfectly acceptable in real life. As a reminder, this would be carrying around the bones of innocent murder victims, and feeding their flesh to your pets. Everyone else is disgusted and just a little bit terrified. So, while we're futilely trying to explain how there is no wiggle room for this being evil, and this is rapidly turning into a shouting match, one of the trolls starts to wake up, because we're dumb.
I say "crap, forgot about this," and go to put the troll back down so that we can burn the bodies in peace. It is at this point that the rogue and magic user decide that this is a good time to just flee, leaving the druid, but especially me, to the trolls. When I protest, I get angrily shouted at. Actually shouted at. See, it turns out that it was wrong of me to endanger the rest of the party, because they couldn't fight (danger to myself seemed not to matter). Oh, they also hadn't been attacked even once when both trolls were up and at full hp. Probably has something to do with how they didn't participate. But that can't be important, right? Anyway, due to some poor luck, I get dropped to zero. The druid is soon forced to just pick me up and book it. Meanwhile, the magic user has been taking her horse (with the rogue on it), and dashing full speed away, starting from the moment the troll began to get up. When the rogue decides that maybe they shouldn't have been so hasty and wants to go back, the magic user refused to let her, and they almost come to blows over the reins.
With the party fighting, me getting yelled at for putting the party in danger they weren't in, I get the DM to call the session then and there.

Jornophelanthas
2014-09-07, 10:57 AM
@Vknight:
I honestly cannot follow what you are writing due to poor spelling and formatting. Still, I get the impression you are venting more than you are actually making an effort to explain the situation.

@TheRedWidow:
From what you say, the mage player (yes, the player) appears to be a troubled person, and I would minimize contact with him. Your account gives off a vibe that this person could be having sociopathic tendencies.

Sartharina
2014-09-07, 11:48 AM
I actually disagree, and am on the player who wanted to feed the meat to the cat's side. Human bodies aren't sacred - if they're dead, they're dead. The only moral quandry with feeding a murder victim to a pet is the destruction of evidence at a crime scene, and likely disrespect of the wishes of the deceased's loved ones in civilized societies. Out in the wilderness, meat is meat (But it's still not a good idea to eat meat of the same species as yourself, due to risk of disease or turning into a wendigo), and... how the heck would the toddler's skull be intact, anyway? The cranial plates aren't fused yet. That said, I'd probably take one to study if it's in good condition.

However - the not assisting in combat out of cowardice is inexcusable.

TheRedWidow
2014-09-07, 12:33 PM
This wasn't the wilderness, it was a well traveled path very close to population centers.

Sartharina
2014-09-07, 12:50 PM
It was wilderness enough for trolls to be there.

TheRedWidow
2014-09-07, 12:55 PM
Fair enough. My point was, though, that we were in no way hurting for supplies, and that there was no reason for them to feed the cat with that meat over anything we currently had with us (which was plenty).

Spindrift
2014-09-07, 01:03 PM
I ran into a similar issue when the group paladin wanted to feed dead bandits to a baby owlbear. The group was pretty disgusted by the paladin's idea and had to argue for some time to get him to give up on it.

If someone came along and fed parts of my body to their pets instead of giving me a proper burial I think I'd return as a ghost to wreak revenge. Probably I'd possess their pet and make it eat them or something.

It's a pretty strong taboo in most cultures and would show a massive amount of disrespect for the dead. It may not be objectively evil, dead meat is dead meat, it'll depend on how your DM rules on that, but the group was perfectly justified in considering it evil in character.

Anxe
2014-09-07, 01:05 PM
Seems like more of a cultural taboo than an actual evil act. There are some cultures in the Pacific where the funeral consists of eating portions of your dead relatives. That doesn't make the discussion illegitimate. Maybe D&D morality does view eating meat from sapient creatures as evil. Your character certainly viewed it that way.

As for the shouting match... Sorry. That stinks. You guys make up and talk it out?

TheRedWidow
2014-09-07, 01:07 PM
Yeah, we're all good, thankfully.

Fumble Jack
2014-09-07, 04:11 PM
Yeah, we're all good, thankfully.

At least things worked out in the end

Mr Beer
2014-09-07, 05:30 PM
@Vknight:
I honestly cannot follow what you are writing due to poor spelling and formatting. Still, I get the impression you are venting more than you are actually making an effort to explain the situation.

Agree, I stopped reading halfway through.


@TheRedWidow:
From what you say, the mage player (yes, the player) appears to be a troubled person, and I would minimize contact with him. Your account gives off a vibe that this person could be having sociopathic tendencies.

Disagree, or at least not enough info to decide. As others have said, indifference to taboos =/= being a sociopath. Though I agree it's a downwards trip through the alignment chart, brutal pragmatism isn't D&D Good.

Broken Twin
2014-09-08, 06:57 AM
@Vknight: That sounds incredibly aggravating. If your group is large enough to survive it, I'd honestly boot the guy. Not worth dealing with if he's deliberately disrupting your games.

Vknight
2014-09-08, 09:05 AM
@Vknight: That sounds incredibly aggravating. If your group is large enough to survive it, I'd honestly boot the guy. Not worth dealing with if he's deliberately disrupting your games.

Yeah he is and I just do not understand how certain members like or stand him.
I'm just going too walk away from any games involving him. And if he ever does that stuff again during a session we will be having words.
In the mean time I'm letting those that want him too be in the group that opportunity too see what will happen when you let a bad element back in... that being all the other players getting tired and leaving

ComaVision
2014-09-08, 12:43 PM
I also agree that desecration of a corpse being evil is entirely a social construct. That being said, I wouldn't argue with the DM once he has made a judgement.

Traab
2014-09-08, 07:05 PM
I also agree that desecration of a corpse being evil is entirely a social construct. That being said, I wouldn't argue with the DM once he has made a judgement.

Unless there is an in game reason to claim that keeping the bones of a murder victim and feeding their flesh to your pet isnt evil I would just go with general societal norms. Yeah there may be a few rare groups somewhere out in the world that wouldnt find that evil, but ask the nearest 100 people what they think and unless you explain carefully you will get pepper sprayed, the cops called on you, and thoroughly investigated. Because thats freaking messed up.

Anxe
2014-09-08, 10:44 PM
Unless there is an in game reason to claim that keeping the bones of a murder victim and feeding their flesh to your pet isnt evil I would just go with general societal norms. Yeah there may be a few rare groups somewhere out in the world that wouldnt find that evil, but ask the nearest 100 people what they think and unless you explain carefully you will get pepper sprayed, the cops called on you, and thoroughly investigated. Because thats freaking messed up.

"Would you like to participate in a survey? Yes? Good. Okay, first question. Would you feed a dead body you found in the woods to your cat? NO WAIT! I need this for my statistics course!"

Mr Beer
2014-09-08, 11:36 PM
"Would you like to participate in a survey? Yes? Good. Okay, first question. Would you feed a dead body you found in the woods to your cat? NO WAIT! I need this for my statistics course!"

This dialogue fits well with your avatar.

Anxe
2014-09-09, 12:29 AM
This dialogue fits well with your avatar.

Excellent...
http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Mr-Burns-Saying-Excellent.gif

DM Nate
2014-09-09, 06:27 AM
If someone came along and fed parts of my body to their pets instead of giving me a proper burial I think I'd return as a ghost to wreak revenge. Probably I'd possess their pet and make it eat them or something.

I'd personally feel honored that my proteins had become a part of an alpha predator instead of...I dunno...a tree or something.

JetThomasBoat
2014-09-09, 08:02 AM
Personally, I think I would be annoyed about the feeding the dead to a cat as a fellow party member. I mean nine times out of ten I play a character that's semi-serious and follows normal social mores. And I haven't been in a lot of situations where there were mutilated victims of monsters in my campaigns, so I feel like I would think that would be something of an atmosphere thing the DM is trying to accomplish, you know? So then I'd feel like it was ruined a little by someone being like "Lets feed these dead bodies to Professor Mittens".

And I'd be a bit paranoid walking around with someone who kept a baby skull on their person. If we got captured by town guards or something, it's not going to look good.

ComaVision
2014-09-09, 12:25 PM
Unless there is an in game reason to claim that keeping the bones of a murder victim and feeding their flesh to your pet isnt evil I would just go with general societal norms. Yeah there may be a few rare groups somewhere out in the world that wouldnt find that evil, but ask the nearest 100 people what they think and unless you explain carefully you will get pepper sprayed, the cops called on you, and thoroughly investigated. Because thats freaking messed up.

In my games, the religions of the real world are not present so I don't see any reason why the societal norms derivative from those religions would be present. Some beliefs are understandably universal (theft and murder are evil because they directly infringe on someone else) but messing with dead bodies does not conform with that.

EDIT: I'm willing to concede it's a difference in philosophy though. I like gameworlds where things are neutral except for setting specific alterations. As stated, you like things to reflect the real world except for setting specific changes.

satcharna
2014-09-09, 02:07 PM
An argument could be made that in a world where the undead are seemingly abundant, "respecting the dead" would be impractical at best. A religion in such a world would likely emphasize cremation, and feeding a dead body to animals would be an equally practical method of disposing of it. The character was certainly acting oddly when he insisted on feeding the bodies to his pet, but in the absence of a method of establishing a pyre, his actions would be the most practical way to prevent necromancy. Not that a house cat would be able to devour any significant quantity of meat in the time the party apparently spent at the site.

The Glyphstone
2014-09-09, 02:08 PM
Thought societal norms from different religions could end up looking the same thing. A region where the True Neutral goddess of Death is widely worshiped might consider desecration or disrespect of corpses to be incredibly taboo. This possibly results in a problem for the barbarian worshiper of the Chaotic Good nature god who believes that returning to the cycle via consumption by a predator is the highest honor, and both would get into arguments with the Neutral Evil priest of the god of the undead, who wants intact bodies to make zombies out of.

More than 'it's like RL', or 'it's nothing like RL', I think the most verisimilitude-breaking thing is widespread monolithic cultures in the absence of cheap, rapid and effective communication/transportation. Variations in custom/belief should be the norm.

Angel Bob
2014-09-09, 02:16 PM
I once wanted to take a break from DMing, kick back, and enjoy playing a PC. We decided to play a joke campaign with utterly ridiculous characters. For some reason, we allowed the most impulsive, most spontaneous, and, when we're talking rules, most clueless member of our group to be the DM. This was off to a bad start already. It only got worse.

A few hours before the meeting, she finally broke up with a neglectful girlfriend, and was absolutely heartbroken. She arrived forty minutes late, ****faced drunk, and proceeded to lay out the most nonsensical encounter I've ever seen. It had something to do with a Stargate transporting us to the lair of a vampire king, which was stocked with both a hot tub and a pile of dead bodies.

Needless to say, we got absolutely nothing accomplished that night, and we promptly ended my brief attempt at relaxation. Next time we met, we returned to my campaign and proceeded to put that horrible incident out of our heads entirely. I only remembered it because it came up in conversation earlier today.

Next to that, all the distractions and dirty jokes and general foolishness of my players are quite tolerable indeed.