D&D General Does the killer DM exist?

[Oofta]

Yes. Had a DM that had us write up 2 PCs each. Then put us through his version of the Saw movies. One PC after another fell to his traps or impossible-to-overcome obstacles. One PC was killed when they rolled a dice, looked at the list of PCs and told the player that their PC was killed when a giant hand came out and smashed him flat.

I had the last PC standing and could have made it to the exit but just gave up and effectively committed suicide because it was so bad. All the other players had walked away already at that point. Needless to say we never let them DM again.

 

[Dessert Nomad]

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

There were a pair of really bad GMs that I remember who were a guy with a steady factory job and a mostly-unemployed guy that lived with him. They didn't outright kill that many characters, but would hit people with weird attacks and situations ranging from 'questionable' to 'violent rape'. They kept some players coming around because they wouldn't do this to quite everyone (so they'd have a couple of occasional players who talked about fun games), they had a few players with significant issues who stayed around, sometimes they'd let someone live at their place, and they would attract high schoolers because some dudes with their own place and multiple TTRPG and video game options seems really amazing at that age. (As an adult I've run games for kids, but there's a vast difference between spending a few hours running a game in a game store and having high school kids as the center of your social life).

These two were definitely awful GMs but were also just awful people in a general sense. And I'm sure these kind of situations turn up today - while it's possible for people to get a better idea of 'there are more games out there and they're being run better', reading r/rpghorrorstories on reddit or other places where people talk about bad experiences shows that the internet also makes it easier to 'change your alias and start hosting another game' and to reach out to recruit people.

I also think a lot of people like to call games that are anything but highly carebear games a horror show run by killer DMs. There's a set of players (especially on forums) who think that a character should never even die (which is mostly a temporary condition in D&D), much less be permanently killed unless the player decides to do so for story reasons. That's a legitimate playstyle for people to choose, but it's not the only playstyle, and there are a lot of people who enjoy a game where PCs can die (and can fail with or without dying) who are also choosing a legitimate playstyle.

 

[Stormonu]

Yep, played in one's game back in the 80's (1st level characters facing black dragons and 8th level antipaladins, went about as well as you'd expect...), and have had correspondence with a couple DMs who were unabashed killer DMs who were completely adversarial with their players - ended up adopting one of the DMs play groups, who never went back to the old DM.

In the last instance, the players came to my table completely paranoid and on the defensive, ready to kill each and every NPC before the inevitable betrayal and who swore by 10' poles and sending henchmen in first at swordpoint to spring the inevitable killer traps. By the end of the first session, after no betrayals and a straightforward dungeon with some easily (at their level of paranoia) avoidable traps, they started to "calm down" and open up to actual RPing. By the third session, they were really getting into it - which was when the old DM showed up to see what was going on, tried to give me some "pointers", and the group told him to bugger off.

 

[tetrasodium]

I've seen some really bad GMs, but the killer gm stereotype ime is generally describing either a gm (who could be perfectly fine) that is running a dcc funnel type game or just a bad/possibly inexperienced gm lacking in experience to do better. Often it comes from frustration of feeling overwhelmed.

 

[Deset Gled]

Yes. Had a DM that had us write up 2 PCs each. Then put us through his version of the Saw movies. One PC after another fell to his traps or impossible-to-overcome obstacles. One PC was killed when they rolled a dice, looked at the list of PCs and told the player that their PC was killed when a giant hand came out and smashed him flat

While I understand your frustration, this DM at least told you up front what type of game you were playing in. The real BBEDM would have you spend an entire session creating your character and backstory before pulling this unexpectedly.

On the original topic, in the past year I've had the opportunity to watch a handful of different 10-14 year olds try and start TTRPG campaigns. I am sure the kids playing these campaigns could spin "Tales of the BBEDM" from a number of these sessions. I am also sure that most of these DMs are learning, and will improve over time.

 

[Oofta]

While I understand your frustration, this DM at least told you up front what type of game you were playing in. The real BBEDM would have you spend an entire session creating your character and backstory before pulling this unexpectedly.

He didn't give us any warning at all, just told us to bring two PCs each.

 

[Deset Gled]

He didn't give us any warning at all, just told us to bring two PCs each.

I see. Well, that's a little less nice, then

 

[kenada]

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’ve killed my fair share of characters, but I pride myself on being fair about it. That tends to mean I don’t pull punches. If you want to make bad decisions, then there will be consequences to that. Hubris is unhealthy.

As for BBEDMs, I’ve had a few. The first arguably doesn’t deserve to be classified as one, but he had a tendency to make rulings and then forget them by the next session. He’d let some characters get away with generous or completely incorrect interpretations of things (like letting a duelist charge and do her full round attack) while being really stringent with others. I played a 3e monk in one of his games, and he did not like that I could tumble to avoid attacks of opportunity. That character wasn’t particularly dangerous or very good, and he died a few times, which lead to my getting a reputation for playing “stupid” characters (much to my annoyance).

The other one was a jerk and a bully. He’s the guy I discussed in my response regarding th emost problematic player I’ve had. As a GM, he was antagonistic towards the players. He would harangue us about stuff like tactics, but if we used better tactics, we’d get patronizing encouragement. If you got too clever about them, he’d abuse fiat to punish you for it. Most of his games fizzled because people would stop showing up. I’m not really sure why we would play in his next game except that he was the only one who stepped up to run something.

 

[DammitVictor]

I've run into just about every other kind of abusive DM I've ever heard of, but I don't have any personal experience with the "killer" type.

I've killed a few player characters in the past thirty years, but less than my fair share for someone who cut his teeth on AD&D. I pride myself on my brutality as a DM, but that's much more about using the PCs' ideals and relationships to twist them up; if I let the PC die, I'm giving up the ability to keep hurting them.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I have not personally played with one, but over the years, I have seen several people post on this forum about how it is not a good game if PCs are not dying or that brag about their games being intentionally deadly. Those are the types of DMs I try to avoid.