"Game Master! Why have you forsaken us?!"

[Tanuki Tales]

Alright, I checked back five pages on here and site searched google for five pages and didn't find this exact topic being discussed in the last six weeks. Awesome.


As you can most likely tell from the title of this thread, this is a horror story thread about DMs/GMs/STs/etc. If you've been gaming long enough (and I pity the new players who didn't get a chance to game long enough before this happened to them) you've most likely run afoul of a session, adventure, campaign (or worse, years of gaming) that was practically out of a nightmare because of the actions of the guy who's supposed to be making a fun experience for everyone.

So why not sit down and share your own while you can't tear your eyes away from reading everyone else's. They're like Pringles in that regard, except the flavor is either Empathy or Schadenfreude.


I'll start us off:


Many moons ago, back when I was a High School freshman, I wandered into the art room near the cafeteria when I had heard the school had a DnD club. Those were the golden days, back when the group was made up mostly of the then senior classmen, the juniors who had been with them this long, a few sophmores and us wide eyed newbies. Things were rad and fun and awesome; we fought giant chicken gods, had Enchantment Sorcerers deathly afraid of rabbits and best of all, Pikel the Punk Rocker Dwarf.

But then the year ended and we lost the old guard to graduation. The game was still fun, at times, but the group now lacked the more dedicated leaders who made sure that sessions didn't devolve into LARPing Solid Snake through the school library.

And then, when those juniors turned seniors were lost to us, things went straight into the realm of unspeakable horror. Only one person remained to take the DM's chair, a position he held through a combination of highest system mastery, ownership of the vast majority of the books and some browbeating and coercion and capitalization of folks who didn't realize that things were stopping being fun or who tried to ignore that as best they could (like me).

Mr. Sole DM had these relationship problems you see, with his girlfriend who was in the school's theater group. She had him completely whipped and more or less emasculated him on a constant basis, while also trying to sleep with this other guy we all knew. She had no interest in breaking things off with the DM (he was her "safe choice") and he was too attached and needy to ever break it himself.

So where does all his suppressed and latent rage and impotence get let out on?

Yup. Us.

He would run games where his power was completely absolute and he'd do things arbitrarily regardless if you incited his wrath or not.. The following are just some examples:

• We were in a bazaar of a normal city looking for some information for the quest we were on. The Cleric was inspecting a jewelery stand and picked up an interesting metal cube. It turned out that the cube sucked out the soul of the first person who touched it, was completely indestructible and gave the now empty body over to an Archdevil. No plot reason for any of this, he just thought it was funny.
• The barbarian tore through the combat encounter he had planned to be very dangerous and near fatal to the group with little harm done to the party. Next thing we know, there was an entire fortress being chucked at us from over the horizon. We managed to survive through this and that's when the Giant who threw it came moseying along.
• A new player to the group annoyed him in some innocuous manner. This got his character locked in a motel room randomly inside the dungeon we were exploring. With a Succubus and a Psuedo-Natural Donkey....
• He would play up the negative behavior of the players who we only tolerated at the table because they weren't "sitting on the couch and eating Cheetos". He thought this tended to be hilarious.
• If his girlfriend was playing at the table, which she did infrequently, she would always have the most leeway on her character concepts and he'd do everything he could to make the game run her way (though to be honest, all the DMs over the years had spoiled her. Didn't help they were all guys, that she was the only girl for most of the group's tenure and they all wanted to get with her ).

I've tried to run some games myself since graduating all those years ago, but nothing has really reached the levels of the unadulterated fun of the Pikel year.

[ReaderAt2046]

I offer the healing balm of Silverclawshift, member of the Platonic Ideal of D&D groups! Read and see your faith in the system restored!

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116836

[Kane0]

I don't have anything nearly that bad, but I'm the current DM for my group on a monday and I'm a first time DM.

Last session the dex fighter was positively certain i was out to get him because of a recurring rogue two levels higher than the party constantly jumping out of nowhere and trying to kill him before being chased off by everyone else.

He was right of course. That rogue was out to get him cause he is a petty assassin hired by a merchant that got screwed over by said fighter in a deal.

[Tanuki Tales]

I offer the healing balm of Silverclawshift, member of the Platonic Ideal of D&D groups! Read and see your faith in the system restored!

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116836

My faith was never shattered. And I don't really see how this post was on topic.

[Deepbluediver]

I'm a little confused as to the purpose of this thread. Obviously we all like a good story, but is this for DM's who have seen their players go entirely off the rails? Players who have had their DM's induce repeated TPKs out of spite or simple bad design? Or games that where just not fun all around?

Cause I haven't DM'd very much, but I've got at least one of each.

[Tanuki Tales]

I'm a little confused as to the purpose of this thread. Obviously we all like a good story, but is this for DM's who have seen their players go entirely off the rails? Players who have had their DM's induce repeated TPKs out of spite or simple bad design? Or games that where just not fun all around?

Cause I haven't DM'd very much, but I've got at least one of each.

*facepalm*

Sorry, I just realized how ambiguous my one sentence was.

This thread is meant to swap horror stories about DMs/GMs/etc., not as them. Let me go fix the first post.

[ReaderAt2046]

My faith was never shattered. And I don't really see how this post was on topic.

It's supposed to be an example of really good DMing to contrast to the really bad stuff that you've experienced (and we're talking about) and keep us from cynicism. Also, they're really good stories, so I thought you'd like them anyway.

[Venusaur]

So my DM story:

I'm in 8th grade. The DM says we are going to have the final "boss battle" with our characters. I'm a cleric/RSOP and the most experienced, my little bro is a paladin/cavalier charger, and we have a ranger and a barbarian. We are all somewhere between level 18 and 20. We are fighting some Half-Dragon lady, and she has a bunch of clones. So, I decide to get my blast on to eliminate the copies, and and I cast miracle to emulate firestorm. He says here Ioun stone of spell absorption blocks it. It didn't even work that way, but no one knew that. I did know it counted as a 9th level spell, but apparently she had a custom one that blocked those too.

So, the barbarian charged and slaughtered some of the copies. She then casts a poorly explained custom spell the DM made that would let you cast parts of a spell for partial affect. It didn't really make sense. However, she hits him with part of a flesh to stone, and the DM rolls to decide where it hits. It lands on the head, making it basically the same as a regular flesh to stone. Due to misunderstanding manyshot, the ranger is OP and can use all his archery feats simultaneously, and destroys all the copies and we win.

I heal the party and fix the barb, and we go to free the hostages, which are 2 female people we have had zany and fairly irrelevant run-ins in the past. The ranger and Paladin are setting them free. When they are untied, they immediately start kissing their rescuers. The ranger doesn't resist, but the paladin makes her role a grapple check. He rolls a 1. The DM says they release a poison from their throats (which makes no sense and was never justified) and says they are no save knocked out. We protest, and he says they get a fort save. Paladin has massive CON+CHA, and gets a 48, which still fails.

The DM then tells us that they are 2 epic levelled Mystic Theugres, and that this is the real boss battle. A smoke bomb gets thrown, and stuff gets insane. They turn invisible, and "have magic items" to counter all of our tactics. I cast AMF to try and counter them, and the DM calls me a cheater. The other players insist I really did have it prepared, so he allows it. It doesn't really do anything, so I cancel it and cast prismatic sphere. One of the MT is in there with me, and grapples me despite my 18 STR and higher BAB because of "magic items". He then tries to kamakazie by dragging me into the prismatic sphere. Despite the text saying I'm immune, he says I should suffer all the effects because I am touching the other guy. We start arguing, and he starts talking about my clothes and if they would be affected if I wasn't there and a bunch of weird tangents. I basically say, the text says I'm immune, and Pelor says so.

He gets so worked up he throws a pencil at my face and tries to tackle me. I weighed about 180 pounds at the time, and had a significant size advantage on him. I basically sat on him until his mom came down to the basement, and my dad came to pick me and my brother up.

So I didn't get stabbed like The Lanky Bugger, but it was an interesting story. The DM was crying when I left because he was so sorry for what he did, so I came back a few weeks later. The group fell apart a couple months later for different reasons.

[Con_Brio1993]

I don't really have an interesting story, but due to the broken nature of the Diplomacy rules in 3.5e my current DM basically makes rolling for Diplomacy irrelevant to your modifier. Instead you get results based on how he feels about you (personally) and the nature of your request.

[Deepbluediver]

Let me know impart to you the tale of...THE DEADLIEST GAME!!!1!


But because every super-hero tale needs an origin story, first a little background:

Were I went to school, there was a fairly substantial geek/nerd population, with various groups for anime, card games, D&D, videgames, etc. There where about 12-15 people who played D&D, but our schedules where so random and different that most of what we ran where short things that could be done in a single evening or at most a weekend, and so they tended to be heavy on the action and light on plot and character development. There where multiple "adventures" that could be accurately summed up as "We fight monsters in a cave. The End."

This is just so you know the sort of game most of us where used to playing.


Anywho, our story begins when a certain individual failed the ultimate fortitude save and passed beyond to the great gaming table in the sky. A handful of us decided to get together and run something in his honor.
The reason this story is appropriate is because of WHICH module the DM picked for us to run. It was a certain (in)famous dungeon crawl that has a reputation for being the "thinking man's game" of adventures, which was in direct contrast to our "kick in the door, then burn everything" style of play. A few of us had heard about the adventure in question, but none of us had run it, in any incarnation.


Five or six of us got together late at night with a bottle of potato juice to give the ol' dice a workout, and the DM, being not COMPLETELY oblivious, told us to each bring multiple character sheets of 10th-11th level. Everyone just kind of grabbed what they had lying around either unused or from other campaigns. The background fluff was that a rich patron was funding an expedition to the dungeon, and most of the party would camp outside for support and backup while a select group worked their way deeper in. Any deaths would be replaced with "reinforcements" from the surface. (fyi, this was about twice as much effort as normally went in to actually explaining things for our games)


We managed to blast our way into the dungeon in fine style, and everything pretty much nose-dived from there. My first character, a paladin (thats "paladin" with a lowercase "P", I was actually a Fighter/Holy Liberator) died within 10 ft. of the entrance. I smashed the wrong painting and woke up a four-armed gargoyle that chewed my face off in a round and a half.
The distraction of my tank-character getting pulped was the only thing that saved us from losing another PC to an ugly statue and an orb-O-death. Having managed to get past the threshold in slightly less than one piece, we blundered on.
From here, I'll merely relate a few of the more dire bits.

One of our heavy-hitters had sunk the majority of his wealth into a greatsword with several different enchantments. I forget the exact details, but in addition to it's normal damage it dealt something like 2d6 Fire, 1d8 each of Cold and Electric, and 1d6 Acid. On every hit. He rolled an entire handful of dice and used a small chart to keep track of everything. His plan was that no matter what we faced, he'd never be entirely useless. Facing off against on particularly nasty beast, he rolled, scored a crit, counted off everything and reported it to the DM, who responds "One."
"One?"
"Yes, one. That's how much damage you just dealt."
"Well...****."

Another character in heavy armor took repeated tumbles down a series of pit traps. We managed to hoist him up and patch him back together, only to have him fail a will save a minute later and run screaming back down the hall in a panic. We didn't bother trying to recover his corpse.

Because we wheren't paying much attention to what skill-sets we had in the dungeon, and tried to just soak-damage our way through everything, at one point we ended up with no skill monkeys, and the entire group rapidly got trapped in a solid-stone chamber with no way out. We had to be retrieved by a "backup party" sent from the surface.

We TPK'd at one point and the next attempt only succeeded because the monsters where half-dead and we managed to surprise them as they where disposing of the bodies of our formerly-alive brethren.

We had fewer than half our original character sheets left when the DM'd informed us we where only a third of the way through the dungeon.

Eventually we started running out of warm bodies to throw around and people resorted to controlling several NPCs and a horse we had brought along to carry supplies.

Sometime around dawn (real-world dawn) we DID manage to defeat the dreaded and feared demi-lich, and celebrated our pyrrhic victory. Then the DM asked what our characters did next. NOT ONE of them made it back out of the dungeon. Not alive anyway.


I like to think our ghosts hang around our fancy new tomb to either warn any subsequent groups who venture in, or try and hinder them into failure so we don't go down in history as the worst adventuring party of all time.


Edit: To make it more clear, the DM picked a dungeon that was virtually guaranteed to turn a night of fun and whimsy into a grueling slog.

[Slipperychicken]

I like to think our ghosts hang around our fancy new tomb to either warn any subsequent groups who venture in, or try and hinder them into failure so we don't go down in history as the worst adventuring party of all time.

Much more fitting for them to go insane and haunt the place, killing any more adventurers who dare enter. Also defending against smart-alecs who Ethereal/Burrow their way through the dungeon.


I'll throw in a story or two of my own once I have the time.

[Tanuki Tales]

-Snip-

Vodka and Tomb of Horrors...just...geez.

How did the DM make this a horror story though?

[Deepbluediver]

Vodka and Tomb of Horrors...just...geez.

How did the DM make this a horror story though?

By picking the dungeon in the first place.

Our groups tended to keep things light and entertaining, so nothing we did was ever truely terrible, but this game rapidly devolved from exciting to humurously bad, to tedious and depressing.
Right around 4:00 a.m was the time when we where getting really tired and not having fun any more, but by that point we had all hit the stubborn-drunk phase and wheren't thinking clearly enough to quit. And the GM wasn't doing us any favors because they were also stubborn-drunk, and was getting frustrated by our continued incompetence.

It was meant to be a "rousing good time" and instead ended up as the revelation of "wow, we really REALLY suck at this".
Maybe I should append that line to my original post.

[Krazzman]

My experiences were... let me say this beforehand, WHILE playing I always had fun, but... it was most of the time not really spot on to the rules of how DnD "should" work.

In the first DnD game I ever played it was fun, we started at level 6 and got to level 12. After this campaign "ended" or more or less broke down we switched to basically playing one-shots every weekend maybe playing it on for another weekend. Basically we were switching between 3 players and 6. With the first and another "campaign" ending too soon we only had one-weekend-games with minor plot hooks or twists and basically low-level every time. The good thing is I got to switch through many different classes. Sometimes the same character but not always. The sessions were most of the time for fun and giggles. Not that serious but serious enough.

The guys usually DMing were... sometimes special. Sometimes they did special rulings that made no sense whatsoever... like I was playing a 2nd level Cleric of Velsharoon and was attacked by an Paralysing touch of an undead. He rolled my Initiative and my Save, although I did the rolls and won both. Another times he tried to counter everything my Psion was doing, making him basically a worse wizard (tried to introduce psionics).
One habit of a DM was to basically let the players lose stuff. We started on a saturday evening to build 18th level characters. I build myself a Fencing Airgenasi Rogue with a weapon and other magic items for WBL and basically DM fiat loosed everything except for my armor in a night ambush between two regiments in which I didn't woke up. This basically was nearly always the way. You had a nice toy, you might lose it if you don't watch out... but basically it was always fun... although building the urge inside of me to nearly everytime make sure the DM can't steal my "precious"... which is a bit annoying, this made monks basically pretty good in our groups but the first time I tried to play one I was told that I get 1000G from advancing to level 3 (character was already level 2, had lost half his wealth due to the adventure he was on) but the other Monk could start with a glove that gave her cleave.

Looking back I know I enjoyed a few things and were annoyed by a few other but I now play with a different group so this has resolved. I might write some stories out later.

[Krazzman]

I might write some stories out later.

And here is one. The reason I dislike GURPS:

A few years ago one of our more "powergamey" friends wanted to try out the GURPS system. Together with me the two other guys usually DMing and another friend of us wanted to play.

It was said we do a Medievil Supernatural (yes the TV-show) Monsterhunt type of game. As the First season aired recently in Germany and we all were basically hooked for it we agreed.

It began with the Charactergeneration. One guy made an austrian or swiss tinkerer. He was short, more gnomy in stature but was an engineer and build quite some funny stuff (The galloppo 3000 was our vehicle he fixed out of 3 different carts/wagons we nearly destroyed in our first few hours together).
The second one was playing a Magician/Exorzist/Priest type of character, he tried to warn the "driver" of the cart in front of him because of something... with a fireball to the hat. The third one was an Greedy scottish(?) lord, that could use a gun (rifle) and was a Medium although not the brightest bulb in the lamp.
We were all under a Code of Honor... which I understood as Coat of Honor for which I was laughed at quite some many times... became a running gag and well it was fun.
Now to my Character. I being entirely new to a Point-Based system wanted to be a "Shield-Blader". This was basically a guy fighting with either 2 weapons or weapon and shield and enhance this magically. Basically being a Paladin without the healing stuff. Now my story was being raised by church and so on and well due to the nature of the system I failed miserably. The DM helped me but at we came to "magic stuff" I wanted to do I was told nope you don't have any points left and... I already took a disadvantage (monotone voice, dunno if I needed the points or just for fun) and could only play a guy fighting with 2 baselards. Since now the whole spiritual part of my character was missing... I couldn't use my backstory and since I suck at improv... the backstory was some point of comedy again (went for orphan raised by some swordmaster dude...).

The campaign itself was more or less Medium + Exorcist doing stuff, Engineer and me getting dragged along. The Engineer would build stuff and I basically just helped our wagon to not crash... I was already quite down because my character idea couldn't be done but that was it. We tried out gurps later once more with a few other guys but I don't recall really liking it.

[mistformsquirrl]

I'll keep it brief, but my very first DM killed my first 3 characters in some pretty ridiculous fashions, here's a list:

1) First character ever, I joined a campaign near the end, so I ended up as a level 12 half-celestial sorcerer/fighter/spellsword; DM didn't like the concept (did not tell me this), and then paid XP to the other characters under the table to kill my character. (I won't deny my build was... questionable at best, but dear sweet crap, that's not a good way to get people into gaming; I'm sort of shocked I stuck with it after that to be honest.)

2) Second character was a half-elf paladin in the campaign that followed the above. I get murdered by a party member, who turned out to be a Bodak. I blame the DM for one: encouraging the player in question, and for two, allowing him to play at level 1 a character of that CR. (Note that the level adjustment was NOT dropped for my half-celestial in the previous campaign; but for the Bodak? Sure. Why the frak not.)

3) Finally, my brother joins the third campaign I try with this guy* - I played a samurai, my brother played a ninja, we played as a pair figuring that the two of us together could handle anything the party threw at us.

We haven't even met the other party members yet, and we have our first encounter... the DM throws 3 Xill at us (CR 6 if I recall right) - note that we're level 1, neither of us knows what these things are, they're faster than us so we can't run, and they're immune to our damage.

We die.


----

Needless to say I didn't stick around after that.

*I don't know why I kept coming back, but I did...

[ReaderAt2046]

1) First character ever, I joined a campaign near the end, so I ended up as a level 12 half-celestial sorcerer/fighter/spellsword; DM didn't like the concept (did not tell me this), and then paid XP to the other characters under the table to kill my character. (I won't deny my build was... questionable at best, but dear sweet crap, that's not a good way to get people into gaming; I'm sort of shocked I stuck with it after that to be honest.)

That, in my book, is a justification to immediately leave the group, and arguably to tell every gamer of your acquaintance never to game with these guys. That is breaking the rules on so many levels (metagame motivation, breach of party loyalty contract, dedicated assassining, etc.).

[Tanuki Tales]

Maybe I should append that line to my original post.

Now it makes sense.

-Snip-

I'm sorry, but what did the DM/GM/etc. do to make this game a "nightmare"?

That, in my book, is a justification to immediately leave the group, and arguably to tell every gamer of your acquaintance never to game with these guys. That is breaking the rules on so many levels (metagame motivation, breach of party loyalty contract, dedicated assassining, etc.).

It doesn't even really make sense outside of just spiteful d-baggery. If the DM wanted the character dead he has unlimited power in which to do so just by himself.

[Mcdt2]

Once, I was filling in for a friend of mine in his DnD group(1e AD&D, with some 2e stuff added in. They loved THaC0 for some reason. To this day they refuse to use d20 systems. Even ones that aren't D&D). I knew everyone in the group but never played with them, so I figured it would be fun. Little did I know how much of a Killer DM I had on my hands (which everyone in the group enjoyed, but never warned me about.)

Spoilered for length

Spoiler

Show

So we are in this dungeon, level 1. We're being chased through the place by some wierd man/scorpion hybrid (don't know 1e monster manual that well, looked like a Drider but a scorpion.) This monster was ridiculous- had -10 AC, base THaC0 of 5, you name it. We triggered a cave in on it, it still came after us a few minutes later. it had caused almost-TPK's twice already, the party started with 8 or so, 2 of us made it out of the first fight with it. The first was our dwarven beserker, who kept surviving due to sheer luck, mostly. The Second was my character... and boy was he a tricky case.

You see, I was playing a halfing thief, and apparently my friend I was playing for had a habit of saying dumb things to strong NPC's. For one particular offense (I never did find out what) he was cursed to be completely unkillable. Anytime he died, it always truned out he somehow survived (was just unconcious, saved by timely giant eagles, whatever) no matter how dead he appeared beforehand. Doesn't sound too bad, but for a few problems- firstly, the party (in-character) hated the halfing, and tried to kill him frequently. Secondly, I became the go to guinea pig for anything we found. Things I died to included: Aformentioned Man-scorpion, crushed by cave in, eaten by spiders, fell into bottomless pit, eaten by even bigger spiders... Needless to say, I died even more than everyone else did, and the Revolving Door Afterlife was in full swing here.

Ended up getting some revenge though, when made to investigate a suspicious black cloth resting on a chair, I picked it up and found it to be a cloaker. Naturally, I immediately threw it at the beserker, then sat down and made sand castles while they struggled to get it off of him. He was so upset he accidentally left our unconcious paladin in the room when we left (impressive, because said Paladin glowed with the light of the sun. I called him The Holy Lightbulb.) Of course, I died again, to yet more spiders, and the party later found me kidnapped by Cultists, who sacrificed me to summon the Tarrasque. Keep in mind, still level 1 party. Finally lost the beserker, as he stayed back to hold off the Tarrasque, and we escaped the dungeon, after conveniently finding a Deck of Many Things (side note: This DM, and one of his friends who later DM'ed for me, never once failed to put a Deck somewhere in the campaign. for no real reason.) After pulling from the Deck, I caused all of the magic items I was carrying to disappear. Hey, guess which quasi-immortal halfing was carrying all the loot for the party?

Although that DM really put us through hell (speaking of, he later put that party through each Layer of Hell individually, culminating in a dight with Grazz't. They were level 3 by this point) it was still quite fun. They also had campaigns that were much less overkill, it's just a shame no body warned me about this madness beforehand.

[ReaderAt2046]

It doesn't even really make sense outside of just spiteful d-baggery. If the DM wanted the character dead he has unlimited power in which to do so just by himself.

There's honorable Killer GMs (will push you to the absolute limit, but you can always scrape through if you are cunning, brave, or lucky enough). Those are frustrating, but they aren't exactly evil. There's straight Killer GMs, which will pit you against impossible odds and set cunning booby-traps for you. Those are evil. Then there's this.

[mistformsquirrl]

Yeah, had I been older and wiser I don't think I'd have let the rest happen lol; but at the age I was, combined with the fact that this was a 'friend' <x_x>

On the upshot I'm glad I stuck with it though; I've had many, much better DMs since, and I've even DMed myself, which is a nice change of pace.

[Vorr]

DM Mark

Bad enough that we played at his house with his wife and baby interrupting the game every five minutes or so, but the game:

We were 1st level characters in winter in a city. Folks were being murdered in the streets, with absolutely no evidence. They were just stabbed at random. No one knew or saw anything, so we wasted hours doing nothing as there was no mystery to find. Finally we just walked the streets. And that is when the quickling attacked(small fey with permanent invisibility and haste). One by one the quickling hacks us apart, and we can't even come close to fighting back. We try to use the common sense of ''even though he is invisible we can still see his foot prints in the snow'', but the DM just said ''nope''. So we all died.

[Krazzman]

I'm sorry, but what did the DM/GM/etc. do to make this game a "nightmare"?

The "nightmare" wasn't a real nightmare. It sucked to have a in your opinion cool char concept and see it not come together because you don't know the system and the DM who said will help you drops you at this point because "get ready the others are waiting...". So I went with it but was laughed at because my backstory made no sense. The magical potential was a cornerpoint of my beforehand thought backstory and well basically I then had to scrap it and had to improv... which I sucked at (and probably still do). As I said it was most of the times really fun to play with them but such things were the points why I think I am now better off without them.

[Friv]

It doesn't even really make sense outside of just spiteful d-baggery. If the DM wanted the character dead he has unlimited power in which to do so just by himself.

It makes a certain amount of sense if you look at it through the lens of psycopathy. By bribing the other players to join him in his insane vendetta, the GM makes them complicit in his crimes, reducing the likelihood of anyone taking the victim's side and forcing a confrontation.

[Deepbluediver]

It makes a certain amount of sense if you look at it through the lens of psycopathy.

Well that's depressing.


D&D can be a great form of catharsis, but I hate all those stories where it seems like some one is using it to work out their power and/or control issues. And it's not just DM's, I've heard tales of players wrecking campaigns, too, just because they where bored or hadn't gotten enough individual screen-time lately.


IMO, there should be a big, neon-orange sticker on the first page of every book that says:

Spoiler

Show

D&D is not like other games, you are not playing AGAINST the players or DM. You "win" at D&D by cooperating to create a narative and a scenario that everyone enjoys. If you just want to kill and/or backstab people, go play Paranoia.

[mistformsquirrl]

Ya know, I have to admit that WOULD explain a lot about that guy lol; he had some... odd... ideas about life in general. Buuuuut meh, one bad DM over a decade+ of gaming? Not really too shabby. These stories can be depressing for sure, but at least for myself it's easy to remember all the good times had too.

Lol I still remember this one time with my old game group where we decided to order a pizza out of town* - me and a friend get dropped off at the pizza place because there's too much traffic to just stop and let us go inside to pick it up... we were under the impression the DM would be right back around the block for us... waited about 20 minutes and then we get a call that he's parked somewhere and wants us to come to him. OK, sure, fine... except neither me nor this friend know where this place is, and our cellphone cuts out about this time as well.

So to make a potentially enormous tangentially related story very short -
we ended up walking through a classic car convention in the middle of the night carrying pizza asking people if we could use their phones. The best part was when we checked the State Capital night security desk. You can imagine the look the guard gave us lol

I grant that's not an in-session anecdote but it still is one of my favorite D&D related memories just for the shear exercise in absurdity that entire night was. You'd have to have been there to really get the full effect of some of the bizarre random encounters we experienced in real life.

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Uhm... which is basically a way of saying "eh, one bad DM ain't so bad."


*The short version is our DM (a different guy) loved this one place's pizza above all others. He paid for it, he drove us to get it, we just had to be willing to go along - and frankly it was a fun road trip every time we went so it wasn't like that was a burden of any kind. Still it was a 45 minute drive each way to get pizza, which is a bit much thinking back. Meh, still worth it.

[Tanuki Tales]

It makes a certain amount of sense if you look at it through the lens of psycopathy. By bribing the other players to join him in his insane vendetta, the GM makes them complicit in his crimes, reducing the likelihood of anyone taking the victim's side and forcing a confrontation.

That's just sad.

More so that someone would be complicit with him than his own sociopathic behavior.

[Slipperychicken]

That's just sad.

More so that someone would be complicit with him than his own sociopathic behavior.

That's how we (humans) roll. Follow the leader, hate the out-group.

[Tanuki Tales]

The "nightmare" wasn't a real nightmare. It sucked to have a in your opinion cool char concept and see it not come together because you don't know the system and the DM who said will help you drops you at this point because "get ready the others are waiting...". So I went with it but was laughed at because my backstory made no sense. The magical potential was a cornerpoint of my beforehand thought backstory and well basically I then had to scrap it and had to improv... which I sucked at (and probably still do). As I said it was most of the times really fun to play with them but such things were the points why I think I am now better off without them.

Ah, that makes more sense once you've explained it out. It does suck when the DM/GM/etc. puts more attention and effort into some players over others.

[almightycoma]

in my first campaign with a group in college we we're all mid level (around 9-11). we were on a quest to stop BBEG from opening a permanent portal to the abyss or the nine hells (which ever one pit fiends come from).
Eventually we find his base and start mapping it out while he's not home. when we get to the deepest part where we're sure he's keeping the Mcguffin, what do we find? not only is it there, we were too late and the portal is open. from the portal steps a pit fiend 2 balor body guards and a small squad of lesser minions( who's species i don't recall).
Seeing that massive force I'm like **** that and burn rubber out of there. the rest of the party disagrees however and charges and gets wipe out hard. so im the sole survivor and whats my reward for not committing suicide? being told i can no longer take barbarian levels because "barbarians aren't cowards and don't run away. you aren't playing the class right"