Ever had a player in your group throw a tantrum or worse? Most uncomfortable moment?

[Siegfried Niemand]

One of the fellows I game with (and have since the early '90s) got it into his head one time that since he had a 2nd level character, nothing that I'd throw at him would be above CR 2.

Well, he found his way into the background of the adventure by ignoring major points and picking at the small stuff. So he ran up against a 9th level wizard. The evil wizard, realizing that she was discovered, filled her house with a clodkill spell (disposing of the many kidnapped children she had there) and teleported to safety.

Now, despite gratuitous amounts of description of the sickly yellow-green mists, the last of the children coughing up their lungs against the window, and a number of dead, fireballed paladins in the front yard, my friend had is character bull past the priestess who was trying to figure out what was going on, shoved past his fellow PC who advised caution, and rushed up the stairs into the vile cloud.

He threw his clipboard and character sheet completely across the room, nearly breaking the glass sliding door 20 feet away when I told him his character was dead.

 

[Doctor DM]

Well, I haven't had really any role playing, some minor disgruntelment, but we're all pretty good sports.

However, I have seen a TON in minitaure gaming. Top 3:

Playing heroclix, I was owning this guy so hard, my team was pretty cheesy, and there was really nothing he could do to stop the ownage. He got so mad he quit heroclix on the spot, and sold his entire huge collection with a buttload of uniques to another guy for a hundred bucks right there, then left. It was worth WAY more than that, the guy he sold it too later sold them for 500 dollars.

Then playing Warhammer, this guy was so mad at how poorly his elf spearmen did, he just smashed them all with the palm of his hand. He didn't really think it through, because 1) those models are EXPENSIVE, and 2) those spears are POINTY! His hand was bloody mess, he had to pull a bunch of mini spears out of his hand. We all laugh about it now, it was great.

The last one was great. The nicest guy, really, he was incredibly cool, and never got upset and was just super cool to everyone. Well, he'd been on a horrible streak of dice rolling, and he just got so mad he hurled his little case of about 36 dice or whatever across the room, and it shattered, and dice went everywhere, and he was just yelling and swearing about it, we were all shocked because we'd never seen him upset, and in the middle of it he just paused and was like "Don't worry, I'll clean all this up", then just kept going. It was priceless.

 

[Oryan77]

Most people I've gamed with have been the type to throw dice or get huffy-n-puffy when things don't go their way. I thought it was human nature to do that

It actually doesn't bother me to see a player get upset. It makes me feel good because he's actually passionate about the game and his character. I've never seen anyone rip up a character sheet though or cause damage to something.

I have a bad temper, but it usually only comes out when I'm being confronted or challenged. If a player starts arguing with me, I lose my patience quickly and argue back. I realize I do that, so I try to be more passive when a player annoys me.

A funny example was when my fiance got riled up about something in the game before I even finished explaining the situation. I don't remember what it was about, I just remember her complaining and getting upset while I just listened & smiled. When she was done talking, I said, "Ok, now that she's done, I'll finish explaining everyones current situation....". They learned that what they thought was "about to screw them" was nothing to be worried about in the first place. Everyone laughed at her and she got pretty embarassed

 

[Silver Moon]

Another one from our group's early years:

A player and his girlfriend had to miss two games, so they temporarily pull their characters out of the regular game. During that two weeks the adventuring group travels a considerable distance from where they left their allies. When I tell this to my friend he suggests that I run an extra game for the two of them to get their characters back with the others. He also enlists two other friends of his to join him for this pick-up game.

So, we get together at my house that night, him, his girlfriend and two other friends. The game goes well for about an hour, and then she announces that they have to go. It turns out there is a television program on that she wants to see instead (this was back in pre-VCR days). I offer to let her watch on the extra TV at my house, but that does not satisfy her. My friend just sits there, saying nothing. Both of his other friends and myself are upset, as we had all given up other plans for that night at his request for the game. A few heated words are exchanged with her and they storm out. We don't see him again at the weekly game for almost two years (until after he had broken up with her.)

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Way back in high school I was running a BECMI game. There was one player who had a pretty cool magic-user character. In the course of one evening's play, the poor PC got level-drained and sex-changed into a woman, which completely destroyed his "maybe a little-bit-evil menacing loner wizard" thing and led to jokes and ribbing from the other players. He got so pissed off that he burned his character sheet (causing a small bit of excitement at the table), went home, and never played D&D with us again (although we all still remained friends).

Later he told me that he thought I'd done that to his PC on purpose (i.e. had it in for him), and that everyone else piled on because they didn't like his wizard. While it's true that no one liked this wizard, much (the character was one of those dark/brooding loners that acts like an ass -- as DM, I liked him better than the other players, I think), the unfortunate events that befell him were the result of combat with wights and the PC in question messing with a magical archway, so I don't know why he blamed me. Oh well...

 

[Piratecat]

At Dexcon in NJ, I once annoyed a teenager playing a paladin into punching my unarmed PC in the face. The kid had just had about 25 pixie sticks and was zooming on sugar, and was incredibly annoying to everyone else at the table. Instead of getting really frustrated, I decided to just have my fighter act more like a paladin than he was, and made sure to point it out in character when it occurred.

I'm a little embarrassed by this nowadays, being one of those guys, but his buttons were so big and candy-colored that I couldn't help pushing them. In retrospect I feel a little bit like Belkar trying to tempt Miko out of her paladinhood. But darn, watching him throw a hissy-fit was fun at the time.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

No real tantrums, but I lost a player due to 3.x's Attacks of Opportunity. He got so angry during a game one night after his character had been hacked up badly while trying to run through a large group of enemy fighters that he yelled, "What the f*&)'s the problem with characters just having one attack per round? Now they add this s&(& to the rules? I've had it." And he's not played since.

 

[GeorgeFields]

I've had a few dice throwers in my days. None were in real anger. THey were just miffed at bad rolls. I remember telling Mike that he would only miss on a "1". He rolled a 1. TWICE in the same session. I found his d20 a week later and added it to my collection. I offered it back, but he didn't want it.

Another time, back in 2e. My brother-in-law, Thad, and I have been gaming together since 1980. OVer 90% of the time, one of us was the DM. I had just gone though my wife leaving and my kids moving 8 hours away. I decided to take a break from gaming for a while, but he started a new campaign.

I was over visiting on game day one weekend. "Johnny" was playing a thief / wizard (level 8-9?) and had drawn the deck of many things card to advance a level if he overcame the next foe singe-handedly. He goes off by himself to find his foe and advance his "free" level.

Thad rolled a random encounter and came up with half a dozen or so stirges: easy fireball meat. "Johnny" grins happily as Thad rolls his eyes and asks him to roll for surprise. By sheer chance, he's surprised, and the stirges get a free round on him.

I don't know what kind of steroids Thad had given his dice, but every one of them attached and started sucking the blood from the character. A lost initiative roll later, and the wizard was dead, drained completely of blood.

"Johnny" immediately starts complaining how the entire thing was unfair and is quitting as he's packing his books in his bag. After 20 minutes, he's made it five feet from the table, bookbag in hand, still arguing with Thad about the whole thing.

Eventually, so not to lose a player, Thad suggests to go back and redo the same encounter.

I really couldn't believe the whole situation.

A few years later, "Johnny" dropped out of our computer blood bowl league because I killed his two toughest characters in back-to-back rounds.

 

[Rl'Halsinor]

College, 1E days, and it is my very first game as a player. I joined a group of my friends and acquaintences who had played the previous night. To make a long story short one of the players had the Gauntletts of Ogre Power. This player also was on the track of creating uber characters before "uber" was coined.

We have a serious encounter with a pack of humanoids and the PC with the gauntletts dies. One of our more aggressive players takes said gaunletts and gold and we leave the body to rot.

10 minutes after the game the PC whose character got killed came looking for his gold and gauntletts -- outside the game mind you. He was so furious he came close to swinging away on the player who took his items in-game. The gold wasn't real, the gauntletts weren't real but he couldn't separate fact from fiction. This should have told us right then and there this guy was going to betrouble and he was.

 

[The Levitator]

I never thought I'd get a chance to share this story here! This was absolutely insane! It was in 1985, my sophomore year in high school.

I had a group of around 10 players, and I was the DM. A couple of the players didn't come for the gaming, but rather the "refreshments" that one of our players always had available. The rest of the players were very into it. One players was borderline obsessed with the game, a fact we didn't find out until this night.

So, we were having our typical Saturday marathon, starting around noon and playing until Sunday morning. We were doing a typical dungeon crawl, the party was trying to rescue an NPC from a red dragon. They found the cave structure that housed the dragon, but it was a huge network of caves. It took them 4 hours of real time to work their way through the caves and find the dragon. Now Mark, one of the "recreational" party types, had not said a word in the entire 4 hours, other than to say "yeah, I attack" or whatever. At this point Mark was nearly asleep. The group was super excited because they caught the dragon sleeping. They made all of their stealth rolls and got within striking distance of the dragon. I gave them a 10% chance of finding a missing scale in a vital part of the dragon. They made that roll. They were very lucky and frothing at the mouth at this chance to bring a dragon down (it was their first dragon encounter). As they tiptoed into position, Mark finally opens his eyes, looks around, and says, "BOO!". I asked him, "What did you say?" to which Mark replied, "I said boo!". The players were freaking at this point. Mark basically wanted to fight the dragon head on and not kill it in its sleep. So, the dragon woke up and toasted 2 of the players, killing one of them. The player whose character died, Dwayne, lost it. He jumped across the table, lunged at Mark, and drilled him in the nose, breaking it. Mark was in his typical "relaxed" state and was laughing the whole time. 3 of the players jumped on Dwayne and held him down to calm him down. He eventually did and apologized to Mark, but it's a moment I'll never forget as long as I live.

Ah......the memories of high school! Nothing has come close to topping that in the last 22 years!