D&D General Does the killer DM exist?

[Li Shenron]

We hear about the BBEDM all the time. The one that enjoys torturing players, killing their characters, abused DM fiat, with inconsistent rulings and other shenanigans. Does he even exist? To me he is a legend.

A lot of problematic aspects of the game are legends, born from the fantasies of gamers who play more in their mind than at a table...

But to some extent, some of those bad DM behaviours we probably had when we were kids trying to understand how to run a game. Aggregate a few bad mistakes we've seen with those (real or not) we've been told about by others, and you have your boogeyman.

 

[ClaytonCross]

I played under one. He kept players in his games because he did not treat all the players that way. He had a couple of his old crew best friends who were the heroes of his campaigns, then he would invite 2-4 more players to fill out the table. He always has a game because of his two good friends who are untouchable, but the other players are targeted for death and no matter their "choice" it will end in the same result of them failing or being made to look stupid "in the name of story". It took me a while to realize what was going on because the GM was not doing the to all of the players and was able to rationalize each individual moment. In a particularly bad session where the GM was going too far telling me how I had to play my character I realized... I was playing an NPC. My character was not there to be my player character with my player agency but to support his the story of his real friends and provide roleplay so the GM had less work. The reason he killed my characters was because I was not playing "his NPC" the way he wanted me to. It was that realization that suddenly put context to all the problems I had at that table and the large number of them I had that his old friends. Suddenly all those problems made since when I couldn't understand the issues before. Realizing that I quite and promised myself never to play under that GM again.

 

[Zardnaar]

Haven't seen that term used in TTRPGs before. Care to define it?

I mean, I've always used it in the drinking game context. "Who is up for the deathfunnel?"

Hug beer from keg into a funnel?

Variant of that here is the kegstand. You do a handstand on the keg, funnel, hose into mouth (upside down) bottoms up (down?).

 

[Marc_C]

I played under one. He kept players in his games because he did not treat all the players that way. He had a couple of his old crew best friends who were the heroes of his campaigns, then he would invite 2-4 more players to fill out the table. He always has a game because of his two good friends who are untouchable, but the other players are targeted for death and no matter their "choice" it will end in the same result of them failing or being made to look stupid "in the name of story". It took me a while to realize what was going on because the GM was not doing the to all of the players and was able to rationalize each individual moment. In a particularly bad session where the GM was going too far telling me how I had to play my character I realized... I was playing an NPC. My character was not there to be my player character with my player agency but to support his the story of his real friends and provide roleplay so the GM had less work. The reason he killed my characters was because I was not playing "his NPC" the way he wanted me to. It was that realization that suddenly put context to all the problems I had at that table and the large number of them I had that his old friends. Suddenly all those problems made since when I couldn't understand the issues before. Realizing that I quit and promised myself never to play under that GM again.

Thanks for sharing this. That is a prime example of a BBEDM.

 

[BlackSeed_Vash]

I once noped out of session zero when the DM told the group that any roll of a 1 (on any die) caused bad things to happen to you, up to and including death. Get naughty word rolls on a fireball or sneak attack could literly kill you character! The guy show something like 8 pages of charts to determine what the hell happens based on how many die, the die size (d4, d6, etc) and what you were trying to do.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Back in the day (and I'm talking the 70's) there were a fair number of more-or-less severe cases of this, because there was a certain ethos that said being unrelenting here was a virtue. I probably leaned into that a bit myself, though I don't think I was ever vicious about it. Part of it, of course, was simply that OD&D characters were pretty brittle at the bottom couple of levels, so even if you weren't actively trying to kill them, it could happen pretty easily, so you either made a bit of a joke about it or felt bad.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Have you actually played with (against) an unrepentant BBEDM?

I've played with one who absolutely claimed to be, and discussed all his previous BBEDM behaviour and so on, but in practice he was just an incompetent DM who had a lot of GMPCs who he wanted to focus on instead of the PCs, so I'm kind of wondering if his supposed PC-killing ways were more a matter of him trying to get them out of the way of his GMPCs or from a simple lack of competence (his encounters were incredibly terribly judged, but given how surprised he was by TPKs etc. it's hard to think this was purely intentional, though he sure tried to act that way. He was unrepentant for causing TPKs by basically siccing monsters that couldn't be escaped/killed on the party, but again this actually seemed to be about convincing us that we had to take the GMPCs along and do what the GMPCs said. Because if we did, they we didn't get TPK - even if it looked like we might, the GMPC would pull some previously unrevealed magic item out of their arse and save us.

I think the "killer DM" is a total distraction, note. That's not a BBEDM. The BBEDM goes out of his way to kill PCs, uses unfair situations, and so on. Most killer DMs try to be fair and just let the dice fall where they may and tend to play systems where doing that results in a lot of PC deaths (so, not really 4E or 5E so much, though it can happen). One of the DMs I play with is this. He's scrupulously fair but will totally kill your PCs. I have a hilariously false reputation as being a "killer DM" with the players in my main group. It's not even plausible. If they thought about it, my brother has killed like 10x as many "adventurers per session" than me (albeit partly by dint of being our CoC DM), and I fudged a lot in 2E (and 3.XE), but a few scary traps and a couple of dead PCs and a story about how TPK'd a group (which wasn't even them - it is true though and was confirmed by one of the people who they know) and they're quite sure I'm a "killer DM" lol. Not a BBEDM thankfully. I don't think they realize how much fudging it took to not kill them all over and over in 2E lol (back when I was a lot worse at DMing and 2E was a pretty, uh, fatal system - nowadays I just wouldn't play a system like that unless I wanted a lot of dying, and would select monsters much better).

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Absolutely this. As much as I love old-school gaming, I think a lot of the OSR gets tripped up in trying to elevate the mistakes kids made while learning the game into a playstyle.

But to some extent, some of those bad DM behaviours we probably had when we were kids trying to understand how to run a game. Aggregate a few bad mistakes we've seen with those (real or not) we've been told about by others, and you have your boogeyman.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Absolutely this. As much as I love old-school gaming, I think a lot of the OSR gets tripped up in trying to elevate the mistakes kids made while learning the game into a playstyle.

You see some very similar stuff in early MMO design, which follows pretty closely from trying to emulate several parts of the D&D experience.

Like, it's conceptually interesting to have a super-high-level zone accessible from the opening town, or a big bad nasty world boss hanging out in one of the starting zones, or quests that people randomly stumble into if they get lucky. But in practice, these things end up being much more annoying than entertaining in a CRPG environment. Likewise, a dungeon that has a clear end point, but lots of twisty side-paths that don't go anywhere, sounds like a great way to make an optionally deep and intricate dungeon....but in practice it often just feels tediously confusing. Having to go collect your body so you don't lose your equipment may sound naturalistic, but it's a real downer to have to deal with it. Etc.

Obviously the specific things that don't work as well are very different. But I've found that a significant portion of RPG design, whether programmed on hardware or played on a tabletop, retains bits and pieces of early-edition D&D that have either been completely divorced from the context that made them good/interesting/useful....or that were purely accidental/incidental/ad-hoc solutions that got ossified into Fundamental Traditions.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Back in middle school had some bad dms. But we were all of 13, of course we made stupid, immature decisions.

I have seen bad dm's on several occasions. I usually don't stay there very long, though, unless it's clearly an inexperience thing (and I can seem them learning).