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Worst role-playing experience?
- Thread starter heavensblade23
- Start date
rexartur
Explorer
I only run published modules, but I really try to get into monster-think when I DM. At one point the PC's were mopping up a goblin lair. Word got back to the goblin matron that "monsters" had come and were killing all the warriors. Unfortunately I slipped in too deep and didn't realize until I looked up at the horrified expressions of the faces of the players how far I had gone.
The matron, having heard stories of these "monsters" that took no adult prioners but did only-Maglubiyet-knows-what with little ones, drowned her charges and bashed her own head against the wall of the cavern, rather than become a plaything for the beasts.
I described the room and the aftermath of her actions in detail, and only the lack of reaction caused me to look up over my screen.
Yup, a little too far.
The matron, having heard stories of these "monsters" that took no adult prioners but did only-Maglubiyet-knows-what with little ones, drowned her charges and bashed her own head against the wall of the cavern, rather than become a plaything for the beasts.
I described the room and the aftermath of her actions in detail, and only the lack of reaction caused me to look up over my screen.
Yup, a little too far.
Evilhalfling
Adventurer
Okay I played a whitewolf game that mixed vampires, werewolves and a mage
the vampire tried to swindle the werewolf, badly. The werewolves raged and killed the vampires, the mage after trying reason with the others, fled.
The second time I played this combo - with different players, exactly the same thing happened, except that it took 4 sessions instead of half of one.
the vampire tried to swindle the werewolf, badly. The werewolves raged and killed the vampires, the mage after trying reason with the others, fled.
The second time I played this combo - with different players, exactly the same thing happened, except that it took 4 sessions instead of half of one.
Storminator
First Post
I was at a local convention, painting minis. In the background a Call of Cthulu game is going on. Something about the haunted lighthouse and Maine and a ship.
So one PC goes into the library to Google haunted lighthouses...
For 20 minutes. It might have gone longer, but I couldn't stand listening to it and had to leave.
PC: I type in haunted lighthouse.
GM: You get 1.2 million hits (a short summary of the 1st page of hits follows)
PC: I type in quote haunted lighthouse endquote.
GM: You get 327,000 hits (a short summary of the 1st page follows)
PC: I type in quote haunted lighthouse endquote plus Maine.
I couldn't believe how long it went on.
Oh, and his google-fu was weak!
PS
So one PC goes into the library to Google haunted lighthouses...
For 20 minutes. It might have gone longer, but I couldn't stand listening to it and had to leave.
PC: I type in haunted lighthouse.
GM: You get 1.2 million hits (a short summary of the 1st page of hits follows)
PC: I type in quote haunted lighthouse endquote.
GM: You get 327,000 hits (a short summary of the 1st page follows)
PC: I type in quote haunted lighthouse endquote plus Maine.
I couldn't believe how long it went on.
Oh, and his google-fu was weak!
PS
Dragonbait
Explorer
2 situations, same GM:
We had a GM who liked to run GM vs. PCs style of adventures. However, she would change the rules to let her win, without telling us. She would then get very angry if we came out on top! Lose-lose
The same GM made an Oriental Adventures kind of game. We introduce our characters and and so on. The game becomes a murder-mystery. We spend 9 hours playing, and the GM appears to be randomly rolling to see if we find clues or not. We start quizzing everyone in town. The locals will stop to answer our questions even at the risk of harming the workings of the town and after we tell them to keep working (a long story in itself where the GM wanted us to get in trouble with the local lord) The mysery ends after 9 hours. Well it turns out that we should have asked a specific question to a specific fisherman who was out on the lake while we were investigating to actually find the 1 stable clue. Any physical evidence was located in the woods but the gm was rolling randomly (1:6 chance) that we would find it and so we never did. AND we should have known that the murder was an elf because the GM mentioned an elf at the beginning of the town description while we were still making our characters.
What..
The...
Frell?
We had a GM who liked to run GM vs. PCs style of adventures. However, she would change the rules to let her win, without telling us. She would then get very angry if we came out on top! Lose-lose
The same GM made an Oriental Adventures kind of game. We introduce our characters and and so on. The game becomes a murder-mystery. We spend 9 hours playing, and the GM appears to be randomly rolling to see if we find clues or not. We start quizzing everyone in town. The locals will stop to answer our questions even at the risk of harming the workings of the town and after we tell them to keep working (a long story in itself where the GM wanted us to get in trouble with the local lord) The mysery ends after 9 hours. Well it turns out that we should have asked a specific question to a specific fisherman who was out on the lake while we were investigating to actually find the 1 stable clue. Any physical evidence was located in the woods but the gm was rolling randomly (1:6 chance) that we would find it and so we never did. AND we should have known that the murder was an elf because the GM mentioned an elf at the beginning of the town description while we were still making our characters.
What..
The...
Frell?
Oryan77
Adventurer
Geez, I thought it was bad when I had a player that would nit-pick the details.Ipissimus said:
I once had to spend 30 minutes arguing with a player that kept trying to hook up with a random NPC woman but insisted that she be "the hottest girl in the tavern". No matter how many times I kept telling him, "I'm not telling you her Charisma score but you definitely think she's hot", he kept saying, "You don't have to tell me her score but I want to know how much better looking she is compared to me" (he had like a 14 Cha). If I'd say, she's a bombshell & you assume she's out of your league, he would reply back with, "but bombshell could mean she has a 16 Cha for all I know". Then I'd say it again, "I'm not going to tell you their Cha score" and I'd describe another woman he saw that was good looking. He's still saying that I don't have to tell him the Cha score but he'd ask me again, "How good looking is this woman compared to my character?"
I had no idea what he wanted me to say other than tell him, "She has an 18 or higher Cha". I kept trying to end the conversation and move on with the game but he kept it going for 30 minutes. Finally I got frustrated and loudly told him that he finds a girl with a 30 Charisma, they go to his room and have sex, and he wakes up in the morning. By that time he knew I was pissed off and I think we ended the session there.
I was still pretty new to DMing at that time and I didn't learn the art of ignoring an annoying player & keeping the game going rather than stopping to argue with him. I actually recently talked to him about that bad habit of his and he games with us again.
Sparafucile
First Post
Ipissimus said:
I sympathize with Chimera. That same thing happened when we played Shadowrun. Only we spend the entire session with the Decker trying to hack a phone booth. That was a bad gaming session. I believe that was second edition though . . . I've heard they fixed that problem/class.
I've been meaning to pick up the latest stuff and check it out, but no one I know is motivated to play anything but DD right now.
Numion
First Post
I don't have many horrible RPG experiences since I play with close friends. Once me and one of my friends decided to check out a game at a local gaming club. We were about 13 at the time (yeah it shouldn't matter, but it did, sadly).
The first session was just to make characters, which is usually a good idea. Especially in this case since we chose to never attend an actual game session with the gaming club. We didn't even make it thru the character generation session.
But that's getting ahead of things. We go there, get to making the characters. The game is Rolemaster, and the other players who were hanging around (two highschoolers + one player in his 30s + the DM a guy in his 20s) had already made their characters. The system was familiar to us, so we just started throwing dice and making the characters. The other players and the DM seemed to be pretty nice guys.
Then the character generation session started to go horribly wrong with my innocent question "So what characters did you guys roll up?" I just wanted to know so that we'll get a well rounded group. First the dude in his 30s pipes up:
Dude in his 30s: "I'm playing a half-ogre lesbian."
Us: ". . . " just unbelieving stare from us
Dih30s: "Yeah the DM allows half-ogres from this supplement .. I rolled that Ogre was the father, but we ruled that out as impossible.", taking the wrong cue and thinking we were unsure about the validity of his chosen race.
Us: ". . ."
DM, probably thinking that the look on our faces is again because of the H-O race: "Yeah, consider what would happen if an ogre had sex with a human female. The woman would burst! Heh, heh."
Us: ". . . lesbian?"
Highschooler: "Yup, and I'm playing a bi-sexual halfling!"
DM, getting in this know-it-all lecturing mode: "You see, nobody in his right mind would go on dangerous adventures. All the adventurers in my campaign have to be a bit mental; all the player characters are sexually deviant - it's very good for roleplaying. I've got these custom tables for your characters too, you can roll for your own sexual deviancy."
At the time I didn't even realize how wrong it was to label sexual preferences as mental illnesses, or how wrong it was to go into that kind of stuff with 13 year olds. I just changed knowing looks with my friend, and we started to come up with excuses for leaving "Um .. we'll finish these home .."
I've kept the memories suppressed, but that experiment killed RPGing with anybody but my friends for me. I've not played at cons, game shops, clubs, etc.. since the incident.
The first session was just to make characters, which is usually a good idea. Especially in this case since we chose to never attend an actual game session with the gaming club. We didn't even make it thru the character generation session.
But that's getting ahead of things. We go there, get to making the characters. The game is Rolemaster, and the other players who were hanging around (two highschoolers + one player in his 30s + the DM a guy in his 20s) had already made their characters. The system was familiar to us, so we just started throwing dice and making the characters. The other players and the DM seemed to be pretty nice guys.
Then the character generation session started to go horribly wrong with my innocent question "So what characters did you guys roll up?" I just wanted to know so that we'll get a well rounded group. First the dude in his 30s pipes up:
Dude in his 30s: "I'm playing a half-ogre lesbian."
Us: ". . . " just unbelieving stare from us
Dih30s: "Yeah the DM allows half-ogres from this supplement .. I rolled that Ogre was the father, but we ruled that out as impossible.", taking the wrong cue and thinking we were unsure about the validity of his chosen race.
Us: ". . ."
DM, probably thinking that the look on our faces is again because of the H-O race: "Yeah, consider what would happen if an ogre had sex with a human female. The woman would burst! Heh, heh."
Us: ". . . lesbian?"
Highschooler: "Yup, and I'm playing a bi-sexual halfling!"
DM, getting in this know-it-all lecturing mode: "You see, nobody in his right mind would go on dangerous adventures. All the adventurers in my campaign have to be a bit mental; all the player characters are sexually deviant - it's very good for roleplaying. I've got these custom tables for your characters too, you can roll for your own sexual deviancy."
At the time I didn't even realize how wrong it was to label sexual preferences as mental illnesses, or how wrong it was to go into that kind of stuff with 13 year olds. I just changed knowing looks with my friend, and we started to come up with excuses for leaving "Um .. we'll finish these home .."
I've kept the memories suppressed, but that experiment killed RPGing with anybody but my friends for me. I've not played at cons, game shops, clubs, etc.. since the incident.
Played a Werewolf game.
The DM had a story that he was going to tell (a sadly incredibly boring story). His NPC led us through a mission where we had no say in what to do or choices to make (the NPC made all of them).
The final 'part' of the story was a large battle with evil Faeries. It lasted several hours and our honest to gosh only decision we could make was to choose to either bite or claw, hours of only choosing biting or clawing, it was like playing Pitfall but without all the wonderful variation (some younguns might not recognize this game). We actually had no other choices.
Talk about a GM being able to single handedly destroy the desire to ever play a game.
He was forbidden to ever DM again.
The DM had a story that he was going to tell (a sadly incredibly boring story). His NPC led us through a mission where we had no say in what to do or choices to make (the NPC made all of them).
The final 'part' of the story was a large battle with evil Faeries. It lasted several hours and our honest to gosh only decision we could make was to choose to either bite or claw, hours of only choosing biting or clawing, it was like playing Pitfall but without all the wonderful variation (some younguns might not recognize this game). We actually had no other choices.
Talk about a GM being able to single handedly destroy the desire to ever play a game.
He was forbidden to ever DM again.
