Who was the worst DM you've ever had?

[Delta]

There are two that come to mind, both at conventions.

First one was running a The Dark Eye game, german fantasy RPG with an insanely detailed lore. The adventure begins in a tavern (of course) when the GM declares we hear something outside and all go out to investigate, so far, so railroady. The door for some reason leads to a portal to some weird parallel dimension thingy which has absolutely nothing to do with the game world where the rest of the adventure goes like this:

GM: "You're on a snowy plain, there's absolutely nothing here but a tower up there"
We: "Well we go towards the tower"
GM: "There's a wizard at the tower telling you to go to a nearby town and talk to the miller there"
We: "We go to the town"
GM: "The miller tells you the ring you're looking for is in a cave on that mountain over there" (no, we didn't know we were looking for a ring up to that point but of course we were...)
We: "We go toward the mountain..."

It basically went on like this for 2-3 hours, doing anything but exactly what he the last NPC had told us to do basically drew blank stares followed by a "nothing happens" until we went back on course. There were no rolls, no challenges, no nothing but "Do this!" "We do this".

At some point, out of nothing a ridiculously huge wolf appears, we roll initiative to then have the wolf jump on each of us, one after the other, with no defense, we can't attack it or do anything. We wake up back in the tavern and have the ring with us, a "mysterious" NPC appears and offers us gold for it, the end.

The GM wasn't mean or sadistic or anything, it was just that bad.

The second one was a real sleazeball of a GM who ran a Shadowrun game. It was pure railroading but of the sadistic kind, the adventure opened with our characters getting into an ambush right out of the gate, almost dying and getting captured and then being forced by powerful NPCs in absolute control to do exactly as they said, with bombs implanted in our heads that would go off the second we didn't follow the plan by the second.

That alone wouldn't even have been enough to take a top spot here (lots of bad railroading on cons, unfortunately) but he constantly kept "hitting" on every female around the table, going so far as to give bonus modifiers and stuff while explicitly saying things like "Oh, you can roll again because you're a girl!" and forcing a "romance" with one of the powerful NPCs on one of their characters and then showering her with ridiculously powerful gifts and money after the adventure was over. Yeah, it was awkward.

Talked to other players at the con afterwards and found out that was a pretty standard game for that GM...

[Kesnit]

I have two, who make the list for different reasons.

Spoiler: MORE POWER!!

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1) The DM I had been playing with took a break so he could plan his wedding. (Horrible reason to pause gaming, I know. :) ) One player decided to also take a break, so the other three of us decided to run some short campaigns while we waited to start back up. Z wanted to run a high-level campaign, so started the PCs at LVL 18. The other player rolled up a True Necromancer, focusing on minon-mancy. I put together a Hexblade with a Hellhound familiar.

The first few sessions were us defeating enemies, then having the Necro raise everything to build his army. (The enemies were rather weak, so he could build a lot of them within his HD limit.) Since this turned combat into long stretches of the Necro controlling his minions, it got boring. So the DM threw an epic undead (some kind of angel-like thing) with a few templates (including an aura of cold), as well as undead-angel’s minions. The aura of cold took out the Necro’s army in two rounds (the save was too high for any of them to make). The undead-angel-thing was too powerful to take on, so we had to focus on the minions. Did I mention I had a Hellhound familiar – which takes extra damage from cold, and could not make the save? The only way to keep my familiar from dying was cast Endure Elements on me/it. This meant I could only move at my familiar’s speed since the spell only worked if I was next to the familiar, which led to me spending 5 rounds crossing the aura of cold to get from one minion to the next (and my familiar still taking damage every time it attacked and hit).

Finally, the DM decided this encounter was too much for us and had the angel fly away. And to make up for it, he gave us two ECL 22 DMPCs to “help” with future encounters. This meant that all future encounters were the PCs sitting around while the DMPCs solved everything.

Spoiler: What?

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2) R has been running a D&D campaign for over 20 years. He has a well-developed world, and enough houserules to fill a large bookshelf. Every hour of travel, players had to roll for encounter, weather (ie rain, sunny), and wind speed and direction. Encounters were from his custom tables, which were not sorted by CR, so it would be possible for a party of LVL 2 PCs to run into a CR 20 encounter. (That doesn’t mean the party had to fight it. Only that the party encountered it.) Since it wasn’t always possible to tell how complicated an encounter was, it would not be uncommon for the party to take on something they could not fight. WBL only existed at character creation. Once a PC was in play, any wealth acquired was theirs. However, new PCs did not get the benefit of party wealth (unless the other PCs chose to share, or the player managed to recover gear from a previous PC). I was once in a game with a LVL 7 PC that had LVL 7 WBL. At the same time, a LVL 8 PC had a +7 weapon and +10 armor, and another LVL 7 PC had 2 +7 weapons. The DM uses a critical fumble deck that can completely destroy the playability of a PC. (One of the cards is “weapon breaks.” It can be multiple game sessions before the party reaches a town so the weapon can be repaired.)

[Milo v3]

I've been pretty lucky. Worst I've had was a GM for a Pokemon Tabletop Adventures game, where the GM was really inexperienced and kept giving me favourable stuff and favourable outcomes and stuff because he knew me in real life. I had to keep telling him to stop it because he was making my character a mary sue and it was unfair for the rest of the players. Thankfully that game ended pretty quickly.

[InvisibleBison]

Most of my gaming experience has been as a DM, so whenever I see threads like this one I'm always a bit worried that I'll recognize myself in them. Hasn't happened yet, fortunately.

As for bad DMs, I haven't really had any. The closest I can recall is my first DM giving an excessive amount of loot to his daughter's character. It wasn't really a problem, though, because he wasn't shortchanging any of the other players, and the extra stuff wasn't that overpowered - as I recall, he gave her 5th level barbarian a +2 frost greatsword (we were playing D&D 3.5), which was exactly twice as much wealth as she should have had but hardly problematic.

[Legato Endless]

One of my worst was a DM who felt absolutely no pressure to keep his players engaged. If the story demanded the session be a slog, a slog it would be.

The Party is hunting through a dense jungle. We find a sunny clearing. We are attacked by a staggered hoard of Drow. In the least overwhelming way possible. At first it looks like we're just dealing with a normal encounter. We enter the open area and the enemy materializes behind us, closing off our path. We roll for initiative, and 5 turns later as we dispatch the last of the vanguard another group pops into the battlefield. As they die, another. And another. By the third cycle, we thought, okay, maybe we're supposed to flee?

"You can't flee. The dense jungle blocks everything but the path from which you came."

The Druid decides, maybe we can negotiate? He tries talking but only manages to get an arrow in the face. Maybe this isn't supposed to winnable? The Warlock drops to her knees and attempts to surrender. A Drider executes her.

"They will not tolerate you disrespecting their fighting spirit."

Um, okay, we've got nowhere to go, we can't negotiate, so I guess we fight? The cycle continues. Slowly we burn through resources, and the loss of a PC drops our efficiently down. But the DM really doesn't know what's he doing, or at least he intentionally has the drow assault groups fight in fairly tactically inept way, allowing us to keep whittling them down. After about 3.5 hours, the last of us finally gets knocked unconscious. We wake up hours later in a dungeon. The whole fight was just a prelude to getting us captured. Why couldn't he just overwhelm the party in the first two minutes? I'm not sure.

A few disjointed sessions later, the group was tasked with slaying a few Hill Giants. We killed the first group, only to come to a Cave. The DM informed us if we didn't get in there the hostages would be killed by the end of the day. The Cave was very dark. I asked for Torches as the DM had banned the light spell for being too science fiction-y at the start of the game.

"There aren't any Torches sold in this country."

"Okay, can we make some?"

"There aren't any torches in this country. You don't have the right materials."

"We're standing in a forest."

"You're unable to find anything that burns."

So, the group decides to creep into the Cave anyways, even though my human Fighter doesn't have Dark vision and wasn't aware blind fighting would be a necessary feat this early in the game. For the next 3 hours I standby, as my allies move through the earthen network dragging me behind them. I try assisting in a fight but it's completely helpless, as the DM house rules the normal penalties for fighting someone without vision aren't severe enough. I spend most of a 4 hour session sitting on the sidelines.

Lest you think this only happened to me, the one time the group split up in a town to fetch supplies, two of us were ambushed by mummies in a marketplace, where we proceeded to fight off and then flee from while the rest of the group browsed reddit or did homework for the next 4 hours. On another occasion, we found ourselves lost in a time warp that reset the last hour of events 3 times without any explanation, which we then as randomly found ourselves leaving. The DM kindly repeated NPC conversations for us, but if it contained any clues I still haven't the foggiest. If it was a puzzle, it was very opaque one whose solution was never revealed. I still don't know if he just didn't prepare anything, or if he thought if he had a cool idea he couldn't execute properly.

He's not comparable to some of the horror stories in the thread, he can occasionally make a session thrum semi-competently. But you've absolutely no guarantee when you show up if you'll actually get to do anything for a session.

[GPS]

...On another occasion, we found ourselves lost in a time warp that reset the last hour of events 3 times without any explanation, which we then as randomly found ourselves leaving. The DM kindly repeated NPC conversations for us, but if it contained any clues I still haven't the foggiest. If it was a puzzle, it was very opaque one whose solution was never revealed. I still don't know if he just didn't prepare anything, or if he thought if he had a cool idea he couldn't execute properly.

How much are you guyd willing to bet the DM in question lifted the plot straight from The Adventure Zone?

[Friv]

How much are you guyd willing to bet the DM in question lifted the plot straight from The Adventure Zone?

Given that the Adventure Zone plot in question is pretty much a straight lift from Majora's Mask, which is turn an adventure-fantasy version of Groundhog Day, I think there are more likely options, TBH.

[kraftcheese]

I once played a game at a uni D&D group.

Everything seemed fine for the first game: the DM wasn't too railroady and seemed quite accomodating with character choices as long as they fitted in the Forgotten Realms setting we were playing in, everyone around the table was relatively nice (if a bit socially awkward, but that's d&d fans).

But in the second game, the DM has a friend "sitting in" on the game, and they both start making some pretty horrible jokes; no one around the table is laughing when DM compares an enemy being vaporized by Sacred Flame to "a Jew in the oven" (and a few other pretty offensive Jew jokes whenever money comes up), the other guy says "n***ers!" as an exclamation whenever someone does a bad roll (among other jokes that sound the ones a racist 12 year old in my rural hometown would make) and me and a couple of the other players are sharing uncomfortable looks through all of these "jokes".

Near the end of the dungeon we'd been slogging through, the barbarian player says his character wants to stay in the room we just defeated a couple of manticores in (a few of our PCs almost died/were revived after the fight) and guard the door we're headed into. So the DM splits us up, we play a 15 minute section in the next room and then are sent out for close to 2 HOURS so the player who stayed behind can roleplay...something.

When we come back in, we find out why DM's friend is sitting in; the DM has had the sit-in-ers level 6 character (played by the friend) and a few supporting DMPCs as backup fighting the barb, who we rush to the aid of. Our level 3 party is severely outmatched because not only are we all almost out of spell slots from our last fight, but sit-in-er's character and the other DMPCs have some kind of mind control circlets and "blood magic swords" which both make it so we can't negotiate and we they regain health with each attack they make, almost causing a TPK until the DM lets us knock the circlet and sword off one (after many, many tries).

Suffice to say, I didn't come back.

TL;DR- DM and annoying friend make racist jokes, then DM lets said friend play their level 6 character and friends wipe the floor with our level 3 party

[Vizzerdrix]

Ill post the quick version. This was a 3.5 dm
Flanking was cheating.
Buffing the fighter was cheating.
Buying a horse befor level 10 was cheating.
Any form of flight, at any level was cheating.
Knowledge checks? Cheating.
Having the right spell at the right time was also cheating.
And those are just the tip of the iceberg.

Heck. The last thing I played with that group was a plain human fighter, and he tried to say power attack was cheese. Nothing added to it. Just powerattacking with a longsword. Everything I did or played, in any game with that group felt like a sin. In the end it was so bad I gave away all my books and swore off gaming all together. Until I met the two best dms Ive ever played with, but hat is a tail for another day.

[Inevitability]

Ill post the quick version. This was a 3.5 dm
Flanking was cheating.
Buffing the fighter was cheating.
Buying a horse befor level 10 was cheating.
Any form of flight, at any level was cheating.
Knowledge checks? Cheating.
Having the right spell at the right time was also cheating.
And those are just the tip of the iceberg.

Heck. The last thing I played with that group was a plain human fighter, and he tried to say power attack was cheese. Nothing added to it. Just powerattacking with a longsword. Everything I did or played, in any game with that group felt like a sin. In the end it was so bad I gave away all my books and swore off gaming all together. Until I met the two best dms Ive ever played with, but hat is a tail for another day.

What did he expect you to do, sit around and hit things with sticks?

[Anonymouswizard]

What did he expect you to do, sit around and hit things with sticks?

Please, sticks are cheating.

Yeah, I've also had GM's like this. I've had 'magic is limited to PL-3, but air magic has no special limits'. I've had arrays in Mutants and Masterminds declared to be cheating (although I have matured since then, in my current game I ruined down the arrays because nobody else really used them). I've been denied the effect of a talent in Deathwatch because it would have given the party a meltagun with no reimbursement (that annoyed me, every other talent went into play immediately but I had to wait despite being back at base. That GM also banned scouting, apparently we were actually in the Adeptus Idiotus).

[GrayDeath]

Luckily, aside from a Con or two I have banished out of mind, I never hád truly awful or horrible DM`s.

But 1 of the best I had took strange turns for worse, and another one managed to be rather .... mechanical, so I`ll mention them in a bit more Detail.


The firs tone was my first GM, the Guy that actually got me into the Hobby in University (before that I only played Computer RPG`s, yes, I was one of THOSE ^^).

Now first you ened to know that he is a good to very good GM in general. His World Descriptions are detailed, there are (logical and lorewise fitting) consequences to any actions, he gives enough Info to make educated decisions (but never repeats them, or lets you go back, or gives you more than the required minimum of help of any kind, which in certain Games is amazingly satisfying if you achieve your goals nonetheless). he also never ever fudges rolls and only makes "****-moves" if the adventure truly requires it (we once ran a published Campaign for almost 6 years, and there were 2 instances that simply sucked...but he could not change them without changing what came after or ignoring the worlds fluff, so yeah...).

While all of this is positive, he is also a System Creator. A great one (I helped back then, with Iteration 1 and 2 and am still using dervates of them today) ... sadly also IN CAMPAIGN.

So we all had built and played our characters for quite some time...suddenly he decides Elves as they were are too OP (low Fantasy overall) and forces me to accept a nerf.
Then he changes how damage is calculated which makes armor (of which my character is the only one NOT using any) massively stronger.
Then he changes weapon stats making the Staff my character used (and incidentily the Rapier another Player favoured) much worse.

All of that without asking for a vote. Just for "feedback", and then commenting " you are still the most powerful character, so where is the problem?"
WHile that is true strictly mechanically speaking, the Worlds Setting limits my character quite strongly, while another plays a fully armored and armed full caster without penalties....sigh.

Still, overall that group contained 7 of the best years of RPG for me.


The second example is a GM that simply sucks at improvising. So he never does.

He runs selfmade adventures like adventure paths. Do A, go to B, find C, decide D, Do E, repeat.
Now I am not saying his adventures are always bad, one was even among my overall top 5, just that the WAY he runs them is very very LN. ^^

[Inevitability]

He runs selfmade adventures like adventure paths. Do A, go to B, find C, decide D, Do E, repeat.
Now I am not saying his adventures are always bad, one was even among my overall top 5, just that the WAY he runs them is very very LN. ^^

As a LN person, I'd like to point out that boringness has nothing to do with alignment.

[GrayDeath]

Nope.

But foreseeability has.
If you`ve played 2 Adventures with him, you can guess 90% of the WAY his other adventures will play/feel.


On a sidenote. I LIKE Rules. But only as the bones of a thing, not as the whole thing, if you catch my drift. ^^

[Stealth Marmot]

Please, sticks are cheating.

Also, hitting is cheating.

[Avianmosquito]

Also, hitting is cheating.

Missing is okay though.

[Hawkstar]

Does casting spells summon Orcus to throw a tanglefoot bag at you?

[Anonymouswizard]

Missing is okay though.

Only when it's not beneficial, otherwise it's cheating.

[SuperYakob]

Pathfinder. First DnD game I ever played, he took a premise starting mission. However this mission was for 4 people, a fighter, rogue, wizard and cleric if I remember correctly, and there were only 2 of us, myself the fighter and a friend playing the rogue. He made you be really specific, describing nothing unless you super specifically asked for it. So "what do I see in the room" wouldn't let you see a wooden chest, because you were looking in the middle of the room and it was in the corner. Then, since there were only 2 of us, the combat was way out of our league. He also kept trying to kill me in particular- some skeletons ignored the rogue, 20' away firing arrows at them to instead hack at my unconscious body for 3 rounds. Oh, and when we entered the final room the black dragon one hit us both literally before we did anything. We walked in and he told us we died. Never even made it to level 2 characters...

[Inevitability]

Does casting spells summon Orcus to throw a tanglefoot bag at you?

No, because tanglefoot bags are chea...

Nevermind, forgot the GM can never cheat. Of course it does.

[Spookykid]

Some post apocalyptic game, come across a tank in a huge field with a guy half out of the hatch looking around.
That would be nifty to own but if we snipe the guy the others will close the hatch and kill us. I'm a sniper and sneaky so let me try and stealth up to the tank. After many rolls and making it behind the tank and the guy doesn't see me, i roll to lob a grenade into the open hatch and nothing.

GM: you forgot to pull the pin

[Haveatya]

NPC: "Hey yea, stay away from this base, that I stole from your boss."
PC: "Yea nah, can't do that mate."
NPC: "Well alright." *fires sniper round*
PC: "Oi, fine then." *fires back, critical hit, instant kill with damage*

DM: Oh it bounces off his helmet...
Player: It what? How, that is a 14.5mm bullet?!
DM: Because you can't kill him...
Player: Oh, we are playing this type of game are we.

[Stealth Marmot]

Some post apocalyptic game, come across a tank in a huge field with a guy half out of the hatch looking around.
That would be nifty to own but if we snipe the guy the others will close the hatch and kill us. I'm a sniper and sneaky so let me try and stealth up to the tank. After many rolls and making it behind the tank and the guy doesn't see me, i roll to lob a grenade into the open hatch and nothing.

GM: you forgot to pull the pin

Me: *cracks knuckles* But you sure didn't...*Camera pans away for discretion shot*

[Knaight]

Some post apocalyptic game, come across a tank in a huge field with a guy half out of the hatch looking around.
That would be nifty to own but if we snipe the guy the others will close the hatch and kill us. I'm a sniper and sneaky so let me try and stealth up to the tank. After many rolls and making it behind the tank and the guy doesn't see me, i roll to lob a grenade into the open hatch and nothing.

GM: you forgot to pull the pin

Ah yes. This. While I personally have avoided it, I ended up indirectly introducing freeform roleplaying to my elementary school (I GMed "The Talky Game" for my younger brother starting when I was about 7, introduced some of his friends to it at 10, and one of them ended up popular enough to spread it to the school). While I made a point of avoiding this nonsense a lot of the other people who ended up GMing didn't, and this sort of thing fits in perfectly with the 10 year olds being difficult GMs on purpose. For instance:

"You're in a small room with a door"
"I walk north"
"You walk into a wall"
"I walk south"
"You walk into a wall"
"I walk east"
"You walk into a door"
"I open the door, then walk east"
"You walk through the door" (The GM would also note that it wasn't closed here, so if you come back there's likely to be a problem in the room because of that).

I never played in any of these, but I heard stories. It was ridiculous.

[Cluedrew]

DM: "What do you do?"
P1: "I successfully attack and destroy the tank."

[Arbane]

Ah yes. This. While I personally have avoided it, I ended up indirectly introducing freeform roleplaying to my elementary school (I GMed "The Talky Game" for my younger brother starting when I was about 7, introduced some of his friends to it at 10, and one of them ended up popular enough to spread it to the school). While I made a point of avoiding this nonsense a lot of the other people who ended up GMing didn't, and this sort of thing fits in perfectly with the 10 year olds being difficult GMs on purpose. For instance:

"You're in a small room with a door"
"I walk north"
"You walk into a wall"
"I walk south"
"You walk into a wall"
"I walk east"
"You walk into a door"
"I open the door, then walk east"
"You walk through the door" (The GM would also note that it wasn't closed here, so if you come back there's likely to be a problem in the room because of that).

I never played in any of these, but I heard stories. It was ridiculous.

I've played Infocom text adventures, on the Apple IIe, that weren't this deliberately blockheaded.

[Mutazoia]

Worst DM I ever had, would simply flip through the MM and pick a monster at random, roll a D10 to see how many were there, and that what was waiting for you when you walked through a door, or turned a corner, or whenever he felt like running some "combat".

Gamed with him once. Named my character Deden Fiveminutes.

[Misereor]

This is a simple one. Tell us about terrible DMs and why they deserve that title. No names, please.

D.
He was an example of how you can have a bad DM, but stil have a good game.

The guy was terrible, but fortunately also so unintentionally hillarious, that we enjoyed playing with him.
He had a thing for godlike NPCs. Pretty much everyone we met could annihilate us with a glance, but he didn't want them to. Rather he wanted us to be angry, defiant, afraid for our characters, and to appease his standins in one way or another. Instead pretty much every encounter would have us immediately throwing ourselves in the dust, begging for mercy and praising the greatness of the NPCs, whether it was innkeeps, street sweepers, or archmages, and he just didn't know how to deal with it. We ended up in one ludicrous situation after another, where the players would be laughing their asses off, while D would be sweating profusely, making up one lame reason after another for why his overpowered creations didn't just kill us out of hand. He would devise cunning conundrums in which players had to sell their souls to save the rest of the party, and be completely stumped when they not only did so without the least worry or complaint, but actually started arguing over who would get to sell their soul. He would have ancient dragons breathe fire on our level 1 characters, and then make up wild excuses for why they "missed" when we informed him that we were dead from the 100+ points of damage we just took. He would look uncomprehendingly at us and feverishly browse his notes when we ignored his completely obvious railroading stratagems. He would call friends in the middle of sessions to ask for authentic sounding names for NPCs we just met. He would have epic battles with millions of dead, followed by the handful of survivors having a celebratory tournament with combats to the death. He would design 1st level spells that could wipe out whole groups of giants.

He was a nice enough guy, but he was just so disorganized, unbalanced, and continually stumped by everything that we did.
Some players didn't like it and left, but a few of us enjoyed the sheer bizarreness of it all. It was a pity that just when he was starting to show improvement, he unfortunately had to stop playing.

[Stealth Marmot]

Ah yes. This. While I personally have avoided it, I ended up indirectly introducing freeform roleplaying to my elementary school (I GMed "The Talky Game" for my younger brother starting when I was about 7, introduced some of his friends to it at 10, and one of them ended up popular enough to spread it to the school). While I made a point of avoiding this nonsense a lot of the other people who ended up GMing didn't, and this sort of thing fits in perfectly with the 10 year olds being difficult GMs on purpose. For instance:

"You're in a small room with a door"
"I walk north"
"You walk into a wall"
"I walk south"
"You walk into a wall"
"I walk east"
"You walk into a door"
"I open the door, then walk east"
"You walk through the door" (The GM would also note that it wasn't closed here, so if you come back there's likely to be a problem in the room because of that).

I never played in any of these, but I heard stories. It was ridiculous.

>Get Ye Flask

[Anonymouswizard]

>Get Ye Flask

On your joinery to the flask a random encounter appears!

*Dice roll*

You have been eaten by a friend.