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<blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 2605729" data-attributes="member: 5948"><p>Well, compared to a lot of these stories this one is pretty minor, but it will be told anyway...</p><p></p><p>I'm not sure if this was more a 'bad GM' story, or a 'merely mediocre GM trying to run an appalling prewritten adventure' story.</p><p></p><p>It was at a con a few years back, and we were trying out a Living Death module. We'd told the GM that it was our first time gaming in the campaign (or the RPGA for that matter), but we still have to solve an obscure wordplay puzzle requiring the players be campaign afficionadoes to even get the mission briefing.</p><p></p><p>After that, well, it all fell apart a bit. The GM thought that the 'take 20' rule allowed you to roll your skill check as normal <em>and then add 20 to the result</em>, but when I gently suggested he might want to check the rulebook on that he threatened to expel me from the game for 'troublemaking'. So I shrugged, and needless to say the PCs took 20 a LOT for the rest of the ill-starred game.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, we asked all the really obvious questions about the mysterious murder, and then decided (there were a considerable number of other clues written into the module, but you needed spells and skill modifiers about 4 levels higher than ours to find them) on that something fishy was going on in the cemetary. How right we were. Our four 1st-level characters run into six revolver-armed cultists (I think they were 3rd-level commoners, or something similar), an imp, and a 9th-level cleric/voodoo priestess with her buff spells already cast. The imp has DR, and the cleric has a protection from arrows/bullets going, so there's pretty much no way we can hurt them (no dispel magic, no magic weapon, no see invisibility...) We mostly die (I know my poor British sailor-boy did), though one PC managed to run away. While packing up our dice and shaking our heads in disgusted bemusement, we ask the GM what we did wrong. He said that we should of used a number of spells (that were unavailable to us) in the investigation, but there was pretty much no way to finish the module successfully without winning that (vastly lopsided) combat. This didn't seem to bother him a hell of a lot, or in fact at all. </p><p></p><p>Blech. I had a couple of passably enjoyable Living Greyhawk games later on in the con, but that one pretty much soured me on the RPGA for good...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="humble minion, post: 2605729, member: 5948"] Well, compared to a lot of these stories this one is pretty minor, but it will be told anyway... I'm not sure if this was more a 'bad GM' story, or a 'merely mediocre GM trying to run an appalling prewritten adventure' story. It was at a con a few years back, and we were trying out a Living Death module. We'd told the GM that it was our first time gaming in the campaign (or the RPGA for that matter), but we still have to solve an obscure wordplay puzzle requiring the players be campaign afficionadoes to even get the mission briefing. After that, well, it all fell apart a bit. The GM thought that the 'take 20' rule allowed you to roll your skill check as normal [i]and then add 20 to the result[/i], but when I gently suggested he might want to check the rulebook on that he threatened to expel me from the game for 'troublemaking'. So I shrugged, and needless to say the PCs took 20 a LOT for the rest of the ill-starred game. Anyway, we asked all the really obvious questions about the mysterious murder, and then decided (there were a considerable number of other clues written into the module, but you needed spells and skill modifiers about 4 levels higher than ours to find them) on that something fishy was going on in the cemetary. How right we were. Our four 1st-level characters run into six revolver-armed cultists (I think they were 3rd-level commoners, or something similar), an imp, and a 9th-level cleric/voodoo priestess with her buff spells already cast. The imp has DR, and the cleric has a protection from arrows/bullets going, so there's pretty much no way we can hurt them (no dispel magic, no magic weapon, no see invisibility...) We mostly die (I know my poor British sailor-boy did), though one PC managed to run away. While packing up our dice and shaking our heads in disgusted bemusement, we ask the GM what we did wrong. He said that we should of used a number of spells (that were unavailable to us) in the investigation, but there was pretty much no way to finish the module successfully without winning that (vastly lopsided) combat. This didn't seem to bother him a hell of a lot, or in fact at all. Blech. I had a couple of passably enjoyable Living Greyhawk games later on in the con, but that one pretty much soured me on the RPGA for good... [/QUOTE]
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