What was your worst DM ever?

[Angel Bob]

My group's had three DMs so far, the third of them being myself; I can't speak to my own level of skill, but I like to think I did a better job than the two friends of mine who tried before me.

The first was the guy who had the initiative to bring the group together. He was a pretty haphazard DM: he had good concepts and memorable-if-silly characters, which we still make references to, but his plots made very little sense. I won't say he railroaded, because we mostly didn't object to wandering off and doing whatever. He also let a mutual friend (soon to be the second DM) homebrew a completely broken firebender class, and gave him a 1/encounter ability to fly, which could be sustained on each turn -- meaning that he had unlimited flight -- and on top of that, he got to play a second character as well. Even at the time, when we were all completely inexperienced players, this really cheesed off me and the others. The other thing that bothered me was his dispensing of treasure: this was a 4E game, but he handled magic items as if it were an earlier edition, meaning that my character went for several levels without a magic weapon and therefore couldn't hit anything. But when he did give out treasure, he gave it out all at once, often with very little explanation; the low point of the campaign was when we ransacked a hallway in an eladrin mansion and inexplicably found a half dozen magic items hidden within suits of armor, behind bricks, and under the rugs. Of course, everything's funnier in hindsight.

The second DM was a little bit better at plot, but he wasn't very good at descriptions: although we spent a good three or four levels in one town, we were never once given an image of the place, and it was roughly equivalent to the in-between stages in a video game, where buying and selling items is the only thing to do. He also gave in to the temptations of creating a DMPC, although thankfully, he never intentionally bent the rules to accommodate his awesomeness, nor did he appear very often. His first campaign died after we all got a little bored of it, and his second was an Evil campaign with me and the first DM as the players. In this campaign, he did alright: the standard "you all wake up in prison", an arena battle to win our freedom, then a strange plot where a golden-haired elf (whom we really should have suspected to be an agent of Pelor, thinking about it) sent us to defeat a mind flayer ruling over a town, only for the town to turn out to be an illusory prison for fiends, with a few random monsters guarding the gems that kept them under the spell. That was all good fun (we really enjoyed our characters!), but the next adventure was kicked off by a nearby necromancer establishing an anti-magic field that covered the entire region. Now, it's worth mentioning that three-fourths of the group was of arcane classes. We struggled through most of an encounter with some undead, forced to use desperate strategies such as sending the sorcerer to stab things in melee and having the bard and wizard drop a tree on an enemy, before we gave in to the predominant feelings of boredom and hopelessness.

It's worth noting that, as players in my campaign, these two DMs are the most competent, rules-savvy, and reasonable members of the party, and they're a joy to DM for.

[Threadnaught]

Alright, I'll bite, where can this story be found, or can we get a summary of it?

Here please enjoy and if you skip to the very first post, you'll find ThatLankyBugger's first story.


I also like the story of Mike, the guy who owned a gaming store and was a ridiculous ******* outside of D&D.

[Artemicion]

I must admit I never really had absolutely horrible experiences, just pretty clumsy one, my worst was maybe this one:

I had been DMing a DnD 3.5 campaign for quite a while with player that was new to our group. He was new to Dnd but had quite a lot of experience playing the Warhammer Fantasy Storytelling Game. The campaign had quite a lot of political intrigue and the plot was, I must admit, quite complicated.

So this guy really wanted his characters to be cool. He played an elven diviner, and he wanted so much to play a vampire that I home brewed a vampire template that would fit the campaign and not make him too powerful. Of course when outed himself to the party when he attacked a good cleric they were travelling with because he had turned some skeletons (his rational was that he felt threatened), the party Paladin took quick care of him.

His second character was also very cool, an assassin with ties to an ancient and secret organization. Anyways.

At the end of each session, he would rant at how better the Warhammer rules were. And how much he longed to be a DM again, how if he did he would create for us adventures that would be really extraordinary and magical (kind of hinting at the same time that my campaign was not that extraordinary or magical).

After some time he even offered to give me a break and DM the group for a few sessions. I had not played as a PC for sometime and kind of welcomed the break. I was also eager to see his DM skills he so ranted about.

So the next session I took one of the NPCs as my character and we let the other player take over as a DM. 3 minutes later we all had been magically teleported to the Warhammer game world 2500 years in the future. The only way to go back was to have priests of several deities scribe rules on a spooky staff.

The staff was spooky,sometimes it made us see things, and it even had its own thematic song. It hinted that there was something very wrong with it.

Our travels led us to a labyrinth that the DM had designed. First floor was a huge map with basically corridors put like a grid, with the exit on the other side. Not a maze, just a boring square thing. he felt very clever about it. He would randomly have a small group of creatures attack us, an easy fight, which he would redo again and again. Did I mention they were undead and immune to my cleric's turn undead ability?

Second level was a real maze, complicated, with no encounters (no traps, no monsters). There were keys hidden in random places, so we would have to walk ten feet and roll search to try to find the key behind a non descript stone or similar nondescript object. That was pretty tedious. When finally we got to the end of the maze, we of course met a big monster. The DM knew that in mythology there was a half man / half beast creature that lurked in labyrinths, so he made us fight... a centaur.

After the maze we got to go to a bunch of other spooky places, where we saw dead versions of ourselves telling us we would be betrayed, saw stuff that messed our characters up, etc. A lot of omens and foreshadowing.

Along the way we also fought a kraken and a hydra.

Finally, we managed to get all the runes on the staff (after having to fight our greatest fears). When the final ritual was made... we realised we had been dreaming all along. That's it. There was no other climax, the foreshadowing was never explained. And the three last sessions felt like we had been tricked or something.

I was very glad to return to the DM seat. The player returned as a PC, taking control of the NPC I had played (because he foudn it cool), then he grew bored with it a decided to play a cool psionic telepath from a dark, evil race who would try to control the other PCs all the time. Meh.

[Artemicion]

Oh! All these talks about orgies reminded me of two pretty terrible sessions I had to go through when I was a teen.

1. My bard gets kidnapped. For some reason, he is imprisoned in a temple of Sharess. I am told the only way to be free of the temple is for my character t give the acolyte an orgasm. So basically I had to describe what I did to the acolyte and he would decide if I gave her what she wanted or not.

2. My ranger gets kidnapped. He winds up in a hut, tied to his bed. It is a camp of Amazons, and it is uh "mating season". Of course, they have chosen my character to be the father of the whole next generation of Amazons. Then comes the description by the DM of what they do to my character.

Yes, this was from the same gamemaster. Terrible.

[SiuiS]

[A] mind flayer ruling over a town, only for the town to turn out to be an illusory prison for fiends, with a few random monsters guarding the gems that kept them under the spell.

That's actually pretty cool and you can tell your friend some random person on the Internet who is probably not a face-stealing doppleganger is going to rip that off wholesale. =)

[Tengu_temp]

2. My ranger gets kidnapped. He winds up in a hut, tied to his bed. It is a camp of Amazons, and it is uh "mating season". Of course, they have chosen my character to be the father of the whole next generation of Amazons. Then comes the description by the DM of what they do to my character.

All I can think of is this:

Spoiler

Show

[Isamu Dyson]

2. My ranger gets kidnapped. He winds up in a hut, tied to his bed. It is a camp of Amazons, and it is uh "mating season". Of course, they have chosen my character to be the father of the whole next generation of Amazons. Then comes the description by the DM of what they do to my character.

If the GM was playing this up as a horrible event, I could understand that. If it was supposed to be "cool", though...

Eh. Maybe i'm being too harsh. Minus the "tied to his bed" part, this sounds like a mildly humorous episode of a TV show.

[The Glyphstone]

Oh! All these talks about orgies reminded me of two pretty terrible sessions I had to go through when I was a teen.

2. My ranger gets kidnapped. He winds up in a hut, tied to his bed. It is a camp of Amazons, and it is uh "mating season". Of course, they have chosen my character to be the father of the whole next generation of Amazons. Then comes the description by the DM of what they do to my character.

Yes, this was from the same gamemaster. Terrible.

Death By Snu Snu was already linked, sadly.

[Vedhin]

My "worst DM" story is a slightly confusing one. Our group had three people+DM, and it was the DM's first time DMing. Somewhat predictably, he made pretty much every classic DM mistake.

After that fiasco, he planned to run an new one. We players, having become irritated by his style, decided to get our revenge. Pretty much the only thing we had going for us was that the DM would stick to his rules no matter what (though NPCs ran on different rules).

Anyway, I made a wizard, and my fellow players made a paladin and a rogue. Our 1st level characters went into the game, ready to make him cry for mercy.

Of course, the first thing we do is irritate an epic wizard (by existing or something), and we get banished to Athas.
Of course, there were houserules in place.
On Athas, everybody had Improved Uncanny Dodge, "because it's so dangerous, they had to pay attention".
A defiling mechanic was implemented, and if I did not use it my spells would be pathetically weak. If I used it, I took massive, semi-permanent penalties, and my spell was up to normal power. NPCs were masters of defiling, so they got power boosts and meaningless penalties.
Also, Athas was even less hospitable to paladins than normal. I can't count how many times our paladin had to defuse "you fall or you fall" situations. Not to mention that our paladin had to go through all sorts of rigamarole to get their abilities, since "Athas is cut off from the gods".

Anyway, the story progressed like you might expect. Railroading, DMPC demigods, houserules springing into existence, and so forth.
The campaign actually took off towards the end (when we hit epic). The plots we had been weaving throughout it were starting to come together, so we gave a thread a final yank to close the net.
We proceeded to assassinate all of the Sorcerer-kings, unite Athas under the paladin's (somewhat reluctant) rule, and I cast out a custom epic spell: terraform.


Afterwards, we found out that partway through the second campaign, the DM had clued in to his mistakes, but noticed we were having fun with the revenge plan. Thus, he kept going along the same way he had, but with a bit more secret willingness to let us pull things off. He actually became a great DM in future campaigns, after learning from his mistakes.

Basically, the first campaign was a complete fiasco, and the second was a struggle in which only our hate kept us alive, until we managed to pull off our plan. The third and subsequent campaigns were great. Nowadays, the first campaign is a source of endless comic relief, and the second has one of the most memorable endings of any campaign I've been in.

[Meth In a Mine]

This is a bad experience for you?

Not really, just unbalanced the game a bit because we each got a totally random piece of gear, and the barbarian found a holy avenger (which was promptly gifted to the paladin) and the wizard found a helm of brilliance. and this was at 8th level.

[madtinker]

There are some pretty awful stories on here, and maybe I haven't played with as many kinds of people, but I have to say my worst DM ever was me.

When I DM'ed for my brothers and me (years and years ago) I made a homebrew ninja with great HD, tons of bonus feats, and more skill points than a rogue, and proceeded to "accidentally" find all the best treasure in the dungeon and keep it for myself.

I've gotten better since then. At least, I like to think so anyway.

[Scow2]

So, Sius and Vedhin... I'm curious:

Is the pain of suffering through a terrible campaign worth the ability to go Full Henderson, or not?

[MonochromeTiger]

So, Sius and Vedhin... I'm curious:

Is the pain of suffering through a terrible campaign worth the ability to go Full Henderson, or not?

there's actually a distinct flaw in the stories behind that joke, if the DM in question was really so bad that they would kill off a character that didn't superglue and duct tape themselves to the rails and play nice with the self insert NPCs how did they not simply instant kill the character who magically had a backstory immunity to everything thrown at them? and that's ASIDE from the clear exaggeration of details behind making the character.

seriously though if the DM is terrible and doing things to your characters without allowing any chance of getting out of it then escalating will do nothing because they'll just keep making more situations your character isn't given a chance of getting out of or simply kick you from the game.

on topic, I've never had a real terrible DM story aside from a dark heresy game getting through the first session before the DM decided they were bored, crashed roks into the spire our characters were on then ending the game.

[Sal Trebov]

Falling into the same trend a lot of you may have noticed, Our Host decided to run an "Anything Goes" campaign that was so cool you guys! He meant it, too. 3.5, including Eberron, Iron Kingdoms... any feat, spell, item, deity if it was D20, it was in. Given the idiots I run with this alone was a bad idea, but whatever. We started at level 1, and were given no equipment. "Eventually the town you start in will have a bunch of stuff you can buy!" Said he.

So my friend, playing a fighter of some kind, realizes he needs a weapon. "I'll get a club" "The town you're starting in doesn't have any clubs for sale." "Why not?" "The economy of the town is shot to hell, they don't have anything for sale." "Well, then I go into the woods and get a stick to use as a club." "Well, ok, but it'll have a -1 to damage because it's a chunk of wood."

Granted, RAW, a stick should be an improvised weapon, but clubs have no price to reflect that you basically found a chunk of wood and gave it a nice handle so you could beat people with the other end.

So, we numbered about 10 players, all level 1, each representing basically a filthy bum with rags. The bartender in town casually mentions the pumphouse outside of town as a good place to go exploring, only he was using some craptacular accent that nobody could decipher to understand what the DM was directing us towards. The hell is a 'pompouse'? I thought. Eventually, we are introduced to the DMPC, a level 10 cleric in full plate, who leads us into the pumphouse. I'll pass over the part where he single-handedly defeats a cr 10 creature, but I will bring up the part where he intentionally splits the party. Not into two groups, I mean individually. He splits us up to have a one on one vision where some old man sitting at a table with what we want the most on it. (My clubless friend's brain exploded while he tried to find a way to say "Me at 20th level") It too WAY to long, and we axed the campaign for next week in favor of a D20 Sliders style dimension hopping campaign ran by a far more experienced DM, which was way more fun.

[Vedhin]

So, Sius and Vedhin... I'm curious:

Is the pain of suffering through a terrible campaign worth the ability to go Full Henderson, or not?

Yes, if only because it descended into So Bad It's Good levels at times. And there's nothing like making a setting fall into tyranny and desolation ascend into justice and livability.

Spoiler: TvTropes link, spoilered for YOUR health

Show

So Bad It's Good

[Kris Strife]

The Prophecy.
Set up as a 'save the world' story, the luckless PCs after some railroading got their hands on the big tome of prophecy that told them how to defeat the BBEG. It didn't just tell them how to do it, it detailed everything. Where to go, who to talk to, what to fight and kill. No matter how stupid, how pointless, it was detailed. The real kicker was this: they couldn't avoid it. Any time the players tried to do something different or think outside the box or not follow the instrucitons to the letter, the book would start vibrating ominously. If they persisted in trying to jump the rails, it would explode, killing everyone. Then they would be spontaneously resurrected, along with the book, at the spot they were supposed to be and given another shot. They couldn't get rid of the book, they couldn't run away or ignore it.

In all fairness, if the people who made these prophecies would do that sort of thing more often, it would make things so much easier on the poor saps who have to fulfill them.

[SiuiS]

If the GM was playing this up as a horrible event, I could understand that. If it was supposed to be "cool", though...

Eh. Maybe i'm being too harsh. Minus the "tied to his bed" part, this sounds like a mildly humorous episode of a TV show.

No, you're being appropriately harsh. Perhaps not enough, even. Any time playing an RPG is "you're going to sit there while I describe sex at you", something's gone wrong. You want that, there's real role playing, with slaves and Masters and everything. This is dice clatter night, where we clatter dice. Ball gags are not involved in dice clatter night.

So, Sius and Vedhin... I'm curious:

Is the pain of suffering through a terrible campaign worth the ability to go Full Henderson, or not?

No. It poisoned the well, changed how i view the reality of gaming, didn't teach him a darn thing*, split the group, gave me a reputation**, and it sounds so whacky and out there it's not even a valid story to tell people, they all think you're bull shooting. And it doesn't do anything constructive, I can't like, walk into the 'debunking tippyverse' thread or 'D&D 5th edition' thread and make use of my experiences and thoughts, because I'm just a statistical anomaly. I'm that gal who happened to get every 1 on the die possible, or whatever.

It's like the love craftsman Peeling Back the Veil. I've seen things – I still see things – gamers can't handle. It changes you. And not for the better. I chi inter, and gawp, and take comfort from the faces in the darkness, because they are at least human faces.

And I do love me some human faces.

In all fairness, if the people who made these prophecies would do that sort of thing more often, it would make things so much easier on the poor saps who have to fulfill them.

I like to invert that. Prophecies aren't predictions in the sense of "this will happen", they are predictions in the sense of "this is how somethin can be achieved". If the world ends when seven golden calves Are slaughtered at the cardinal temples at the end of a great cycle, that means anyone can cause the world to end. The prophecy lists the appropriate triggers to make the end result happen.

I feel like I bungled that explanation.


footnotes!
* we (much) later had a long, drawn out and passionate talk amongst the group (that was this guy and three players at that point) about why things were falling apart. I ended up handing him a knife and saying 'if you really think that this is all bull, and that I can't be trusted to try and help you or make a game good whatever? If I am so untrustworthy a friend, kill me now', and it made things better for one session.
** to the point that I was getting flak for games I didn't even know about, let alone didn't play. "I'm punishing you for that airship full of undead you cheesed, and those free wishes from the candle of invocation!" What?
Guy in the back raises his hand. "No, that was my warlock remember? And the other dude's ur-priest used the candle."

[Sith_Happens]

This is dice clatter night, where we clatter dice. Ball gags are not involved in dice clatter night.

But what if we all lose our dice and have to improvise by writing numbers on our ball gags with a marker?

[The Glyphstone]

That's just beautiful.
*sniff*

I need a moment.

OK, here's one I only have third hand:
The Prophecy.
Set up as a 'save the world' story, the luckless PCs after some railroading got their hands on the big tome of prophecy that told them how to defeat the BBEG. It didn't just tell them how to do it, it detailed everything. Where to go, who to talk to, what to fight and kill. No matter how stupid, how pointless, it was detailed. The real kicker was this: they couldn't avoid it. Any time the players tried to do something different or think outside the box or not follow the instrucitons to the letter, the book would start vibrating ominously. If they persisted in trying to jump the rails, it would explode, killing everyone. Then they would be spontaneously resurrected, along with the book, at the spot they were supposed to be and given another shot. They couldn't get rid of the book, they couldn't run away or ignore it.

.

\

But did the book include when and where they opened the book to find out what to do? And if if didn't, what happened when they read the book to find out when they should read the book?

[SiuiS]

But what if we all lose our dice and have to improvise by writing numbers on our ball gags with a marker?

You can roll the gimp, so long as ze clatters. u_u

[zephyrkinetic]

This wasn't in a D&D game, but the only table I have gotten up and walked away from was for a Shadowrun campaign. I was playing a Rigger (think Master Artificer with primarily modern vehicles and robots), had built a mech which had lawnmower blades at a lot of the joints, for good ol'-fashioned slicing and dicing.

In an encounter, I had an enemy next to my hand.
My hand with lawnmower blades on it.
Which were spinning.

Twitching to the left would have decimated this enemy in any kind of logical scenario. He played it by the rules (and this was just a chunk minion, not an important baddie), and insisted I missed this dude.

Anyway, I mewled and left. Guy was a d-bag anyway.

[Delta]

No, you're being appropriately harsh. Perhaps not enough, even. Any time playing an RPG is "you're going to sit there while I describe sex at you", something's gone wrong. You want that, there's real role playing, with slaves and Masters and everything. This is dice clatter night, where we clatter dice. Ball gags are not involved in dice clatter night.

Eh, if everyone around the table was fine with it, I wouldn't see any problem with that. I've witnessed some sessions that went pretty far in that direction, and it was a ton of fun for everyone involved.

The thing is that in this case, everyone around the table was not fine with it so yes it's very appropriate to be very harsh here, because that's obviously a topic you can't throw at complete strangers just like that.

And completely regardless of the topic involved, if your players ever sigh in frustration and ask you when whatever you're playing right now will finally be over, usually that's a sure sign something's definitely not going right.

[BrokenChord]

I had a DM who decided we should try freeform for a session and tried to use an in-character romance with an NPC to actually come onto me. I don't think that actually technically counts as bad GMing, though.

[Airk]

The campaign actually took off towards the end (when we hit epic).

It always blows my mind when I read things like this. "Let me tell you about my terrible DM experience! It was awful! It was beyond bad! There was railroading! nothing worked the way it was supposed to! There was surprise sex (not the good kind, especially if you've seen my GM!)! Dice rolls were meaningless! etc. etc. Then, when we hit epic tier, 4 years later..."

I mean, WTF, people? why do you STAY in games like this? What is the MATTER with you? It's NOT WORTH IT! You have so much to live for!

[Evo_Kaer]

...I mean, WTF, people? why do you STAY in games like this? What is the MATTER with you? It's NOT WORTH IT! You have so much to live for!

Sorry, I had too :D

My best guess would be: Can't/Doesn't want to find another group and noone else of it would DM. (It's kinda what drove me to DMing)

When I read all of this I can honestly say, that I've been blessed with awesome DMs. Well, in comparison that is. Some still sucked a lot, but are far from anything I've read here.

I only had one DM who I suppose didn't like me, because he ruled everything so I would have the short end of the stick. (I had "Hold the Line" which is AoO against charging opponents and an opponent charged at me with a halberd. So he just ruled I can't use the feat, because a halberd has reach, which it hasn't. It was my second character that died that day)

The other one is currentl DMing parallel with me and he just can't DM if his life depended on it. He's really creative with his settings, dungeons and quests. But sometimes he railroads so hard, I wonder how the rails can take it. Fun fact: He also railroads when he's a player. Forcing other players to follow along his path and sometimes even trying to outvoice the DM (me atm)

[SiuiS]

Eh, if everyone around the table was fine with it, I wouldn't see any problem with that.

That's what I was leaning towards with the whole "play that way" thing. There's a difference between playing D&D with adult elements and sitting through someone else's sex fantasy 'on company dime'. I've got nothing against playing adult themed D&D.

Wasting game time on self gratification, though...

[Necroticplague]

It always blows my mind when I read things like this. "Let me tell you about my terrible DM experience! It was awful! It was beyond bad! There was railroading! nothing worked the way it was supposed to! There was surprise sex (not the good kind, especially if you've seen my GM!)! Dice rolls were meaningless! etc. etc. Then, when we hit epic tier, 4 years later..."

I mean, WTF, people? why do you STAY in games like this? What is the MATTER with you? It's NOT WORTH IT! You have so much to live for!

Actual games are hard to find in person. So frequently, the choice is to either put up with it while dreaming of leaving the plot a burning wreckage in retribution, or don't play at all. Plus you kinda feel obligated to finish what you start, especially if others are still enjoying it.

[Vedhin]

I mean, WTF, people? why do you STAY in games like this? What is the MATTER with you? It's NOT WORTH IT! You have so much to live for!

Well, it was pretty much the only group available, nobody else wanted to DM, and our schedules managed to align in such a way we could meet on a regular basis. Also, we were all friends and enjoyed hanging out.
Additionally, he had a couple of redeeming features. For one thing, he would stick to his rules, even if it was to his detriment. For another, he was incompetent, not malicious. His actions were intended to get us to return to the plot, not slay us for deviating.

[Airk]

Actual games are hard to find in person. So frequently, the choice is to either put up with it while dreaming of leaving the plot a burning wreckage in retribution, or don't play at all. Plus you kinda feel obligated to finish what you start, especially if others are still enjoying it.

I find it difficult to believe that "others are still enjoying it" in most of these scenarios. Maybe there's just a communication issue here? Also, no one is advocating "dissolve the group and never play games again!" - clearly, in each of these examples, you've got 3-6 people interested in playing RPGs. They just shouldn't be playing THAT GAME with THAT DM.

[BootStrapTommy]

If this is your "worst DM ever," consider yourself extremely blessed; more than half of the things on your list don't even read as 'bad' from where I sit.

This. This basically describes 90% of DMs. The fact that you went so far as to complain about tokens and the battlemap implies you might have an unrealistically high expectation of DMs in general.