D&D General Does the killer DM exist?

[Marc_C]

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. Never met him. Never played with him. I only played with inexperienced DMs that got better with time. Or those who stopped DMing because they weren't any good at it.

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

 

[hopeless]

An unrepentant DM?
No I've played with some who make a fine example, but to call them unrepentant would be far too harsh.
No one is perfect at this, so these people make mistakes but on this subject?
Exactly how far is too far?

 

[Morrus]

Yep. One guy, years ago. Thing is people stop going to their games, which makes it hard to do that for long.

 

[Neonchameleon]

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. Never met him. Never played with him. I only played with inexperienced DMs that got better with time. Or those who stopped DMing because they weren't any good at it.

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

I think there are a lot fewer truly terrible DMs than there were in the 90s because there are more people who can ask questions, find out what good practice is, then tell those DMs what they can do with their game. I've had one ... for all of three sessions before I did back in the mid 00s. (They inflicted one DMPC on us for each member of the party and our job was to watch how cool they were).

I would however point out that there's been some really bad advice back in the day that's more or less gone in the modern era. For highlights (or lowlights) I'd point out from memory:

1. Just about the whole of John Wick's Play Dirty
2. Whichever Cyberpunk 2020 book it was (Maximum Chrome) that suggested claymore traps under the seats of the PC's loos and then not giving them a chance to spot it whenever they didn't specifically say they were checking for traps
3. The Paladin Falling rules from 3.5 and earlier D&D
4. Tomb of Horrors being used as something other than either (a) a tournament module or (b) for Gygax' home group because they were finding it too easy (which is why it was written).
5. Paranoia - but that does it deliberately and for laughs

 

[Bolares]

Not a unrepentant one, but an unintentional, unexperienced BBED sure.

 

[Mort]

I used to see it back in college (back in the 90s), but I never stuck with that kind of DM for long.

I don't think it's nearly as common anymore, with the rise of YouTube and other ways that gaming is a much less isolated activity.

 

[aco175]

Maybe childish, power-hungry DMs, but not killer to be just so DMs. Mostly when we were first starting off and one of the friends was the DM and others may not play his way or other fooling around and the DM would threaten the god-like BLUE BOLT to strike from the sky like some sort of stick and not as a carrot. The PC would take damage equal to all the blue dice on the table. It was replaced with the RAINBOW BOLT at some point where you used all the dice.

I do not remember it being used that much or people complaining, "Not fair", if it was. After middle school, not sure it was even a thing.

 

[amethal]

I used to see it back in college (back in the 90s), but I never stuck with that kind of DM for long.

I don't think it's nearly as common anymore, with the rise of YouTube and other ways that gaming is a much less isolated activity.

University was the first chance I had to see an "outside" DM - all the other DMs I'd had were my friends, and we'd all had to learn the game together without an experienced player to show us how it was done.

At that point I learned that I wasn't a very good DM, but that I was by no means the worst. And I got better - learning from the bad ones as well as the good ones.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Considering how many threads we've had crying about how hard it is to kill 5e characters and 'solving problems' by increasing lethality...

 

[el-remmen]

I have run games where double digit PCs were killed but that was a mix of style of D&D games back then and my resistance to D&D as a "story." (except the story that emerges from play - sometimes that story is: everyone died).

As for a straight up bad DM like that described in the OP, aside from terrible teen year games - I am probably the closest I know to that currently.