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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dessert Nomad" data-source="post: 8330234" data-attributes="member: 6976536">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.</blockquote>

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