RPG confessions

[Vitruviansquid]

Through the ages, we've had a couple of threads about the worst GMs you've ever played for or the worst players you've ever GM'ed for, and while it was fun to laugh at others' misfortunes and sneer at their tales of incompetence from on high, I think now it's time to have a thread about our own habits.

What do you do in RPG's that the rest of us can feel schadenfreude about?

As a GM, I love to pull the plotline where the party has a theoretically simple task to do, but are constantly bedeviled by complications caused by unexpectedly unhelpful NPC's or bad luck. I use this plotline so much, my longtime players have started wondering what's going to go wrong every time I give them a relatively simple sounding task.

As a player, I'm totally okay with being railroaded. In fact, I usually prefer campaigns with a pre-determined direction over "sandbox" style campaigns.

And finally, the most scummy thing of all... I've run a campaign for 3 games now on a new system, and I haven't actually read the entire rulebook yet. Players routinely correct me on simple rulings, and we routinely take breaks for minutes at a time to look up the more obscure rules. I procrastinate on all aspects of "GM homework" shamelessly.

[ComaVision]

I have (to date) always played extremely selfish and evil (or "neutral") characters. I'd like to think I would change my ways with my next character but I'm currently stuck in the DM's chair.

I expect PCs to rise to the challenge in games I DM, which occasionally results in me killing large portions of the group when they're not adequately prepared. We still have fun though so I guess it's not that bad?

[braveheart]

When I GM I prefer to do a single battle that nearly kills the party over dungeons and skill challenges, and I too put off my GM homework until the last minute far too often.


as a player, every character I have ever played is characteristically a male dwarf, even the female undine Monk turned out to be a greedy male dwarf in disguise

[gom jabbarwocky]

Forgive me, forum-goers, for I have sinned. I has been 6 years since my last confession.

As a GM, I have railroaded, deliberately turned PCs against each other, split the party, created invincible villains designed only to taunt the players, and destroyed an entire fictional plane of existence just so that the PCs would stop messing it up. I have also engineered insanely complex plots and conspiracies so involved and germane that no player could - or should - possibly care enough to investigate them. I have rage-quit (as a result of players being unable to overcome their most implacable foe - a wire-link fence) and devoted entire sessions to long, boring fight scenes that go nowhere and move the plot forward not a whit. I have actually uttered the excuse, "I didn't make him [an NPC] unhittable - I just made him undamageable!"

As a player, I have been a perpetrator in, and even the engineer of, several counts of wanton player rebellion. I have deliberately created PCs so inept that they were nothing but a burden on the party, I have had characters literally attempt to eat the moon (they failed), and I have obstinately refused to contribute in combats. I have split the party. I have engineered the complete and utter destruction of a year-long campaign through the mere utterance of the phrase, "I let go of the duck."

[braveheart]

I have engineered the complete and utter destruction of a year-long campaign through the mere utterance of the phrase, "I let go of the duck."

I think that warrants a story be told to explain how that happened

[Vitruviansquid]

I imagine it went something like this (replace bunny with duck):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dDBAiq4RFE

[TheCountAlucard]

The story for pretty much every game of mine starts with me blatantly ripping something off, then twisting parts, subverting bits, or blending in other elements altogether; the only truly creative part in the process occur once the players start chucking their spanners in the works.

[gom jabbarwocky]

I think that warrants a story be told to explain how that happened

Okay, but be warned, the tale that follows is long, bizarre, and incredibly stupid.

Spoiler: The Duck Story

Show

We were playing regular D&D, ole' three-point-zed. I'm sure they make them greener, but our DM was, shall we say, not terribly experienced. I, for my part, had created a charismatic swash-buckling diplomancer character, having not been informed that this was primarily a dungeon-diving campaign. Not helping things was our rogue, the most unpleasant min-maxer I've ever had the displeasure to play with. The guy was just toxic, making the game unfun for everyone else and having the DM wrapped around his finger tighter than a Chinese finger trap. The plot of the game revolved around a sorcerer who had been possessed by an arch-demon who wanted to destroy the world or something. As a result, the party had to haul butt all over the realm collecting MacGuffins to cast out the demon.

Almost a year into this game, things began to deteriorate rapidly. This was primarily my fault - I was determined to have fun, and had begun doing random crazy stuff just to keep myself entertained and keep the focus off of the invincible, invisible psychopath rogue who was constantly stealing the spotlight, stealing all our best loot, and generally being an unbearable a-hole. By the mid-point of the game, the rogue was running an extortion racket on the rest of the party - this is not a joke, that actually happened. As my PC was basically incompetent, instead of being a threat, he just ended up being and most insufferable bozo of all time - eventually he ended up trying to pass himself off as a wizard by getting a fake beard and stealing a pole with a bird feeder on top as a staff. Everyone else was either bored or as frustrated as I was.

You know how sometimes, when a game goes off the rails, weird things begin happening? Like, you have town guards who are level 20 and barmaids with 100% Dodge? What ended up happening was sort of like that. See, I started hassling one of the generic bartenders at the utterly generic inn that we were staying at. The DM was a good sport, putting up with all my bizarre requests, and eventually all the other players started getting in on it, too. Someone, at one point, asked the bartender for a duck - and he produced a wooden duck. In fact, we got him to produce a lot of ducks of varying sizes, craftsmanship, and colors. Not only that, but we found they had magical properties. If you had at least three of these ducks, they would always form a row. You could pull one away, but as soon as you let go, it would shoot back to being in a row. This discovery was, by far, the most interesting thing that had happened in the entire nearly year-long campaign by this point(and this was a game had even earlier featured the deck of many things). Eventually, we got bored and we took as many ducks as we could carry, because they were fun and weird and had seemingly no useful purpose whatsoever. And yet, I had already begun to hatch a plan...

What was to follow was a part of the game where the BBEG was going to be at this big fancy shindig and the party was supposed to carry out some kind of undercover mission. My character just went to the party dressed as the imbecile wizard, Orephix (pronounced "Or-e-fix"), and hung out with the BBEG, sucking up to him like it was going out of style. The rogue, however, was carrying one of the ducks that he had painted with sovereign glue, while the cleric had the two others of its row in a bag of holding. At the end of the party, the party managed to fail whatever their mission was (I didn't care), and I escorted the BBEG and his lady-friend to their carriage, acting like the most obsequious loser in all the realm. Finally, as he's about to leave, I ask him if he would be so kind as to bless my duck. This didn't make any sense, as, obviously, he was a sorcerer and not a divine caster, so he couldn't bless crap, but I got the GM to say that the BBEG clamps his big dumb hands on our stupid duck, while the invisible rogue was sandwiched between us.

Then the rogue says, "I let go of the duck."

The rogue had been secretly holding the duck the entire time, so, as a result, the duck, with the BBEG still attached to it, zips off into the bag of holding held by our cleric. The cleric then picks up a handy dagger and punctures the bag of holding - which, according to the RAW, means that the contents of a bag of holding, when punctured, end up "lost forever" in the void. Boom - BBEG defeated. Game over.

Needless to say, our DM was not a happy camper. Now, years later, he's gotten over it, and in our gaming group, "I let go of the duck" is still shorthand for when a campaign spirals out of control into destruction.

[braveheart]

I must say sir you deserve a cookie, for that was pure genius

[azoetia]

I procrastinate, only doing the necessary DM work at the last minute, and even then under protest. I have a bad tendency to forget about enemy monsters' and NPCs' special abilities and not use them, resorting to just "attack." Not always, but too often nonetheless.

I'm also a bit of a pushover. Since I don't want to be the hated DM people complain about on forums, pretty much all it takes is them rolling their eyes and going, "Oh, so you're going to be that kind of DM now, huh?" for me to abandon what I was going to do. But they're smart enough to know if they did that all the time just to get their way I'd ruin them, so it's not an every-session occurrence. And they can't use that to get me to allow them to do things I wouldn't otherwise permit. I'm pretty easy-going; you have to be attempting something totally ridiculous that no DM would ever allow before I say "no, you can't do that."

My group has never used DM screens, ever. Everything is out in the open: no fudged dice, no hidden documents. I once bought one because it was pretty and had some useful go-to information on it, just to sit beside me as a cheat sheet and otherwise look nice in my collection. My players went "When did you get that DM screen? You're that kind of DM now, aren't you? Jesus. Gonna fudge some rolls, right?" I never brought it to another game.

[Sith_Happens]

Okay, but be warned, the tale that follows is long, bizarre, and incredibly stupid.

Spoiler: The Duck Story

Show

We were playing regular D&D, ole' three-point-zed. I'm sure they make them greener, but our DM was, shall we say, not terribly experienced. I, for my part, had created a charismatic swash-buckling diplomancer character, having not been informed that this was primarily a dungeon-diving campaign. Not helping things was our rogue, the most unpleasant min-maxer I've ever had the displeasure to play with. The guy was just toxic, making the game unfun for everyone else and having the DM wrapped around his finger tighter than a Chinese finger trap. The plot of the game revolved around a sorcerer who had been possessed by an arch-demon who wanted to destroy the world or something. As a result, the party had to haul butt all over the realm collecting MacGuffins to cast out the demon.

Almost a year into this game, things began to deteriorate rapidly. This was primarily my fault - I was determined to have fun, and had begun doing random crazy stuff just to keep myself entertained and keep the focus off of the invincible, invisible psychopath rogue who was constantly stealing the spotlight, stealing all our best loot, and generally being an unbearable a-hole. By the mid-point of the game, the rogue was running an extortion racket on the rest of the party - this is not a joke, that actually happened. As my PC was basically incompetent, instead of being a threat, he just ended up being and most insufferable bozo of all time - eventually he ended up trying to pass himself off as a wizard by getting a fake beard and stealing a pole with a bird feeder on top as a staff. Everyone else was either bored or as frustrated as I was.

You know how sometimes, when a game goes off the rails, weird things begin happening? Like, you have town guards who are level 20 and barmaids with 100% Dodge? What ended up happening was sort of like that. See, I started hassling one of the generic bartenders at the utterly generic inn that we were staying at. The DM was a good sport, putting up with all my bizarre requests, and eventually all the other players started getting in on it, too. Someone, at one point, asked the bartender for a duck - and he produced a wooden duck. In fact, we got him to produce a lot of ducks of varying sizes, craftsmanship, and colors. Not only that, but we found they had magical properties. If you had at least three of these ducks, they would always form a row. You could pull one away, but as soon as you let go, it would shoot back to being in a row. This discovery was, by far, the most interesting thing that had happened in the entire nearly year-long campaign by this point(and this was a game had even earlier featured the deck of many things). Eventually, we got bored and we took as many ducks as we could carry, because they were fun and weird and had seemingly no useful purpose whatsoever. And yet, I had already begun to hatch a plan...

What was to follow was a part of the game where the BBEG was going to be at this big fancy shindig and the party was supposed to carry out some kind of undercover mission. My character just went to the party dressed as the imbecile wizard, Orephix (pronounced "Or-e-fix"), and hung out with the BBEG, sucking up to him like it was going out of style. The rogue, however, was carrying one of the ducks that he had painted with sovereign glue, while the cleric had the two others of its row in a bag of holding. At the end of the party, the party managed to fail whatever their mission was (I didn't care), and I escorted the BBEG and his lady-friend to their carriage, acting like the most obsequious loser in all the realm. Finally, as he's about to leave, I ask him if he would be so kind as to bless my duck. This didn't make any sense, as, obviously, he was a sorcerer and not a divine caster, so he couldn't bless crap, but I got the GM to say that the BBEG clamps his big dumb hands on our stupid duck, while the invisible rogue was sandwiched between us.

Then the rogue says, "I let go of the duck."

The rogue had been secretly holding the duck the entire time, so, as a result, the duck, with the BBEG still attached to it, zips off into the bag of holding held by our cleric. The cleric then picks up a handy dagger and punctures the bag of holding - which, according to the RAW, means that the contents of a bag of holding, when punctured, end up "lost forever" in the void. Boom - BBEG defeated. Game over.

Needless to say, our DM was not a happy camper. Now, years later, he's gotten over it, and in our gaming group, "I let go of the duck" is still shorthand for when a campaign spirals out of control into destruction.

[Susano-wo]

wow. that is freakin awesome.
As for a confession of my own, I once put a party member who had risen to a minor civil position in a sack and tried to sell him back to his family for ransom. We had no rules against pvp. but still is generally considered dirty pool.
Oh, I conspired with my gm, in that same campaign, to steal the same characters cloak of invisibility. We made the rolls for it, but still, it was pretty dirty.

[Frenth Alunril]

In the constant terror that is my game I have committed TPK more than 75% of the time. I have twisted players words against themselves, booted players who are overly foolish/optimistic, held back XP when goals were not achieved, lined up incredible combat, lost my cool when a shopping trip to the city of brass turned into "oh, we didn't want anything anyway." Run good and evil campaigns, and I currently hold the highest PC kill rate of any of the active groups I know of. But my players love me, at least, those I haven't booted.

As a player I must confess that I am horrible playing with people who don't follow rules and are too "creative" in the sense that their idea of creativity is flimsy and whimsical and has no logic even in fantasy. I have rejected systems of play for this very reason, and I believe in playing my character with all of their flaws. I've had an apprentice wizard who was jealous of girls that were more beautiful than her, a swashbuckler that was horrible on stats but lead the party like a dread pirate, a crusader tank that charged in on combat like he was invincible, even played a pacifist cleric who creatively used the spell "weighty chest" to capture and break the hands of 4 attackers who were after my holy symbol. That upset the dm.

I've handed out cursed and intelligent weapons, I've rolled dice just to make the players think I'm looking at stats, I've cheated on HP to make fights more interesting, I've contrived solutions top deal with math savants who blurt out statistics. Most importantly, I let pvp go full blast to the point of players throwing pizza and storm out in rage quit.

[ComaVision]

*snip*

That sounds like my DM style taken to an extreme. I like.

[goto124]

a pacifist cleric who creatively used the spell "weighty chest" to capture and break the hands of 4 attackers who were after my holy symbol.

I shall imagine that the 'chest' refers to an woman's hefty bosom.

[Frenth Alunril]

That sounds like my DM style taken to an extreme. I like.

Thanks! I'll keep it up!

I shall imagine that the 'chest' refers to an woman's hefty bosom.

He he he! Weighty Chest is to be cast upon objects like chests to prevent them from being stolen. The caster may move the object as normal, but anyone else finds the object to weigh 1d4 times their weight. I rolled a 3 while 4 attackers were holding onto it, we all fell to the ground, sure, but what a ride!

[Greymane]

Forgive me, playground, for I have sinned. It has been so many years since my last confession I cannot recall it.

I do previous character cameos when I DM. More often other people's old characters, but I toss my own in as well. I do it whenever I can find even a half-baked excuse to do it. The last time I did it the other players didn't realize it, fortunately. However, I'm planning one of the boss fights in the future will be against the previous characters the players used in the last campaign.

I have a thing for bad girls. Morally grey to dark, attractive women feature prominently in my games as antagonists and fair-weather friends. I also find excuses to use Succubi and female Erinyes far more than I should.

Only one of my players ever creates a character backstory for me to use. Inevitably, this means the plot starts to sort of revolve around them in some fashion. That, or the side quests become a very bloody version of Days of Our Lives.

As a player, I refuse to play less powerful classes (we primarily play 3.5 D&D). Not because I'm inherently a power gamer (okay, maybe a little), but because the lower tiered the class, the less options it has, and the more boring it is. I also like to have as much control over my fate as possible, and what better way to ensure that than to play a Wizard? This level of power has caused me to butt heads with my DMs in the past.

[Jay R]

My actual first experience was pretty much just rolling dice to see how it worked.

My second time, which I consider my first real game, I was playing a first level paladin in OD&D with only the first supplement Greyhawk.

Spoiler: My paladin

Show

The party ranged from 1st to 5th level, was entirely Lawful (which meant Good).

My paladin couldn't afford a sword, and was wielding a mace.

After several encounters, a couple levels down in the dungeon, we were all down to 3 or fewer hit points. (Remember, in this game, 0 hit points is dead.) My paladin had a single hit point left.

The treasure we had just found included a sword, which the paladin asked for. He received the right to pick it up. Unfortunately, it was a high-ego chaotic sword, and the first thing that should happen when my paladin touched it is that he should have received 2d6 points of damage, which would have killed the character. The DM made a few rolls behind the screen, and then wrote and handed me a note.

"This Chaotic sword has changed your alignment. You are now chaotic, and holding a chaotic Flaming Sword."

I thought for a moment, and asked to speak to him privately. When we got into the other room, I told him, "I don't have any questions for you. I just want them to believe you gave me more information than the note had." I told him my plan, we waited a couple more minutes, and then we walked back in.

My (ex-)paladin told the group, "This is a Holy Sword with a quest I have to take on alone. I need you to go back the way you came. It's important that you do as I ask. Go back single file, and no matter what you hear, DON'T LOOK BACK."

Of course the five characters trusted my paladin, and did as he asked. My chaotic ex-paladin came up and stabbed each one in the back. Several times the DM said, "You hear a stab behind you, and a body slumping." "We don't look back." After five times, he told them that they were all dead.

So in my first game of D&D, my paladin murdered an entire lawful party.

[Gnome Alone]

(hilarious murder story)

This is just the best.

[Pex]

I once ran a 2E D&D game at a convention purposely designed and successfully implemented not to have any combat even though all the pre-made characters had their stats laid out for it. I cringe about it now and thankfully have completely forgotten what the plot was.

In a 3.0 session I ran I once let my personal bias against the rogue class interfere with player agency and refused to let his character get away with breaking and entering a temple of a justice deity. The encounter was not something I planned. The player decided to do it for legitimate in game reasons. I did everything I could to thwart him and finally got him when he failed a saving throw and went to sleep. Of course, he was an elf and supposed to be immune to sleep but in my mind, at the time, I really thought it wasn't a sleep effect. It was a Command spell where in 3.0 you can use any one word order. That one round had the character captured. I've felt guilty the next day and ever since.

As a player I regret nothing.

[BWR]

I've been a bit whiny as a player.
I have been careless and killed fellow PCs (4 of them in one game)
As a DM I've done a bunch of minor things like made cool annoying encounters or traps that were basically just a '**** you' to the PCs or ruled against something because it wasn't exactly what I had in mind, even if on reflection I should have allowed it.
I'd say my greatest sins have been
- a TPK because they didn't explicitly say they did something very important, when I kind of rushed the players through a situation
- radically changed the sort of game I was running because I thought it sounded fun. The players were not impressed. It was an honest mistake but one I still get grief for years after the fact.
- running a disjointed and bland Mandalorian Wars campaign because I didn't properly plan it, or think about how to get the PCs involved in the big picture rather than just running them from one encounter to another, with almost no continuity of story or purpose.

[Kane0]

Forgive me playground, for I have sinned.

I have openly encouraged pvp and party conflict
I have been self centered as a player
I have turned down other game for no other reason than they are not D&D
I have fudged
I have utilised homebrew that no other group member had access to
I have metagamed to the extreme
I have used my position as group note-taker to further my own agenda
I have rendered party members obsolete and taken their spotlight
I have outright broken rules over my knee for no good reason
I have stopped running a successful game for no good reason
I have introduced intentionally dofficult characters
I have turned a sandbox game into an evil campaign
I have used loaded dice
I have shown favouritism to group/party members
I have usurped the DM on multiple occasions
I have had my characters act inconsistently for no good reason, or consistently when they shouldnt
I have forced the DM into comjng up with ways to challenge me or my character specifically
I have led my party into nigh-TPKs on multiple occasions
I have derailed sessions off of single meaningless tangents
I have played characters that make group members question my sanity
But worst of all, I think im a pretty good player.

[goto124]

I have used loaded dice

.......how? Not that it's a good idea...

[Knaight]

.......how? Not that it's a good idea...

I'm pretty sure the procedure is that you take some loaded dice and roll them.

[Silus]

I don't have enough experience as a DM to rack up any notable sins, but I've got my fair share of player ones.

1) I fudge the dice. A lot. If I've gotta roll somethings, and I know I have to roll it (not like the DM saying "Okay roll me X skill") I'll sometimes roll it while the DM is occupied with something else (like if something gets his attention during my turn or something). If it's a good roll, I'll keep it, if not I tend to look up when the DM's attention is back on me and go like "Okay so can I roll/Is it my turn?" and essentially take a free reroll. I suppose it's a holdover from my first couple bad DMs.

2) I've stacked a Deck of Many Things. Ended up with ~3 castles and ~21 wishes. Again, was one of those DMs that you'd pull an Old Man Henderson on.

3) I intentionally tempt fate, especially in the current Rolemaster game.
"Okay so I suppose we should check out the creepy castle up ahead?"
"Sure, what's the worst that could happen?"
*Communal groan from the party*

Honestly I think I do it to kinda taunt the DM, as I've hit that moment in gaming where I've just sorta stopped caring about my character. Old school RPGs like Rolemaster, Palladium and Rifts just ain't my bag.

4) I hold grudges in such a way that even a Dwarf would go "Dude, just let it go". I intend to exact my revenge against my current group for the "Magic Sword Incident" that happened ~3-4 games ago (probably sometime in the summer/late spring), and it will be equal parts annoying for the players and hilarious for me.

I would like to stress that as a player, I regret none of this and, if caught doing any of this I'll at least have the decency to admit to it. Except the dice-fudging. That I'll deny up and down until my face is blue.

[Marlowe]

1, I enjoy making up NPC dialog and have my NPCs talk a blue streak at each other, including lots of cheap shots about each others sex lives!

2, I try to work important exposition into this chatter; but the players tend to miss it because it's buried in amongst aforesaid cheap shots!

3, I insist that every NPC has to have a first and a last name! Some players find this confusing!

[Kane0]

.......how? Not that it's a good idea...

I have my regular set of dice and my 'srs' set, which were given to me by a ridiculously lucky mate and i'm 99% certain that those dice spent some time in a microwave.

[Feddlefew]

I could not keep a strait face listening to my DM and a player gushing about how amazing monks are.

[Vitruviansquid]

1, I enjoy making up NPC dialog and have my NPCs talk a blue streak at each other, including lots of cheap shots about each others sex lives!

2, I try to work important exposition into this chatter; but the players tend to miss it because it's buried in amongst aforesaid cheap shots!

3, I insist that every NPC has to have a first and a last name! Some players find this confusing!

What if the NPC's are from a social stratum in a culture where they don't get last names? =X

[gom jabbarwocky]

I have my regular set of dice and my 'srs' set, which were given to me by a ridiculously lucky mate and i'm 99% certain that those dice spent some time in a microwave.

Is it possible that microwaving a die will even work?

I'm asking for a friend....