Meanest DMing Moment

[demiurge1138]

It's confession time, my fellow DMs. What is the meanest, most horrible, awful thing you've done to your characters? Players, feel free to also chime in with the times your DM's been an utter rat bastard.

My personal favorite of my own terrible exploits happened last summer, when I was running a quasi-Greyhawk-meets-quasi-Mythos game. The party was hired by the curator of the Museum of Magical Artifacts to protect one of the actually real artifacts in their collection: The Robe of the Yellow King. This ceremonial robe was used in obscure kuo-toa religious rites, and the curator had received threats that it would be stolen.

Now, of course, the Robe was cursed. All good evil artifacts are. The curse would turn anyone wearing the Robe who was not Kuo-Toa or otherwise blessed by the Other Gods into a moonbeast, a vile, gibbering servitor. There was no save for this transformation; a cruel little move on my behalf.

One of the players said that the best way to protect the Robe was to have someone wear it, and that someone should obviously be him. The curator agreed that this might work, as long as no harm came to the Robe. That guy's ranger puts the robe on. Feeling indulgent, as well as to give a warning to the rest of the group, I tell him to make a Fort save. He "fails" and is turned into a moonbeast. The rest of the party kills him, then puts the robe back into its case and vows never to speak of this incident again.

The night of the robbery, the PCs are obviously in over their heads. The leader of the kuo-toa, a monk named Mangh-Mitcho, comes into the building riding a rukanyr (Far Realm scorpion-tank) and annihilates the characters on that level, knocking a paladin cohort unconcious and nearly killing the favored soul he was a cohort to. Mangh-Mitcho gives the favored soul a choice. He can hand over the robe and the monk and his goons will leave peacefully. Otherwise, the favored soul would be in for "a world of torment the likes of which you cannot begin to imagine". The player of the favored soul, knowing he has a high Fort save, grabs the Robe of the Yellow King and wraps it around himself as a last defiant gesture.

And is promptly turned into a moonbeast, who obidiently follows Mangh-Mitcho back to his lair. I do not call for a save. I give no explanation. Jaws drop around the room.

I did eventually explain that there was no save, and I was just faking out the first player. But still, it was dirty pool.

Demiurge out.

 

[twofalls]

Ashes to Ashes

Please Keep in mind, I was a very young GM when this happened and knew very little about such things as play balance.

The party was hiking across some stony badlands, I think the group was 4th or 5th level. I rolled wandering monster encounter out of the 1e DMG and came up with an Old Red Dragon... I decided it was flying overhead. The party fled, taking refuge in a shallow cave with a narrow entrance too small for the beast to crawl into.

The Dragon landed and Dragonfear immediatly set in, and they all cowered at the back of the cavern. With little ado, the beast (using first edition rules) breathed flame into the cave, incernating the entire party and ending the campaign.

Such trauma was inflicted upon the group that night, that one of the players, more than 20 years later still wont game with me.

 

[Arkham]

Mean GM thing #1: I run Undermountain.

Mean GM thing #2: I roll in the open.

Mean GM thing #3 ( And the more involved one ):
The party is on their way out of the dungeon, after a couple rather non-stressful fights versus some goblins and a mimic, and the dice come up with a random encounter. The table comes up with Wererats. And I don't feel like throwing together some classed creatures, so I roll again and get Trolls. The mind ticks over, and the party finds themselves confronted by (roll 1d12) 8 Wererat Trolls. The party today ( whoever shows up plays ) consists of IIRC a new 1/2 Gold Dragon Wiz 2, a new Half-Ogre Pal2, Ftr2, a human Rgr4/Rog5 Archer, a Sun Elf Wiz8, and a Vanaran(OA) Wiz3, Clr3 Mystic Theurge 1. The only one with a silver weapon is the Sun Elf Wizard who plundered a 6+ MILLION gold stash ( split it with all 9 of the then active PCs, even if they weren't at that session. )

The fight ended with the two new characters dead, the Vanaran at -3 and stable, the Sun Elf Wizard at -8 and dying, and the Archer going from 0 to -1 while dealing enough non-fire to knock out the last Troll. Then the wizard's familiar climbed out of its pocket and poured a Cure Moderate potion down the wizard's throat healing her enough so she could drop more fire on the 5 still regenerating trolls and get the cleric and archer back on their feet so they could shove their comrades in a bag of holding and evacuate.

 

[the Jester]

Most rat-bastard moment:

Back in the early 2e period, one of the pcs had a character who was a 'starmage'- he'd fallen amnesiac from the sky, pursued by deadly foes, and he was like a mage with a different, very planar-oriented spell list. They just called him 'the starmage' for a really long time, until they eventually finally restored his memory and learned his real name (which I honestly don't even recall).

Well, the guys coming after the starmage were opposed by another force of extremely powerful, extremely crafty time traveling wizards. They ambushed the starmage when he was alone one night and slew him, then replaced him with one of their own, who stayed with the party in the guise of the starmage for months (real time and game time) before revealing he was an imposter.

The player didn't even know it until then, but months earlier I had killed his character.

How it worked:

One day while we were gaming, after earlier ascertaining that the starmage would be off on his own for a night, I had the starmage's player roll a series of dice without telling him what they were for. The first one indicated that he was surprised by the group of four magi that had come for him, the next that he made a save, the next that he failed a save, the next that he made another save and the next that he failed another save.

Now, the two saves he failed would have left him stunned for a couple rounds, which gave the four ambushers time to finish him. Their ability to impersonate him allowed one of them to suck up his memories from his corpse, and they could easily mirror his appearance and spells. There was at least one chance for the party to find out before the climactic game in which the imposter revealed himself. So I told the player to remember that sequence of dice rolls, and never mentioned it again until the imposter revealed himself at last.

The players loved it, especially the starmage's player. As far as I'm concerned, that means it worked.

 

[Silver Moon]

Meanest DM moment - at the end of the module where the players had been given a magical rope that would teleport them home they said "We use the magic rope and go home." I says, "How do you use it?" None of them could remember exactly what they were supposed to do with it to make it work other than the command word "There's No Place Like Home". So another player says "We try all different things with the rope until it works." I said "Fine, show me," handing them a jumprope belonging to the five-year-old child of the hosts.

There's nothing like watching five grown adults standing around a living room wrapping themselves in a child's toy and saying and doing silly things. I especially loved them deciding that they have to simultaneoulsy tap their shoes together three times (which wasn't part of it at all) due to the Wizard of Oz reference. The best part was when the five-year-old walked into the room and demanded to know why her parents were playing with her rope.



(BTW - this thread won't be complete until Piratecat retells the story about making the 8-year-old girl cry).

 

[Ambrus]

Here's my story:

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=108700

 

[Mystery Man]

Middle of the ocean, a tiny rowboat and naked. They had it coming.

 

[Moe Ronalds]

I had an NPC betray them to try and blow up New York and turn it into a gargantuan haven for the undead and the unholy.

That's not the evil part.

The evil part was when I managed to convince them to let him do it.

 

[Michael Morris]

I did eventually explain that there was no save, and I was just faking out the first player. But still, it was dirty pool.

Hmm.. From an in character perspective it serves him right for metagaming. But I tolerate some metagaming by the players - it gives them something to compensate for being unable to actually be immersed in the world (and therefore unable to pick up on things I don't tell them).

I wouldn't have called for a save the first time.

 

[MarauderX]

Reviving living statues from Basic, including the metallic ones that suck in weapons that heal them. Players lost a longsword +1/detect magic, Rapier +1, 2-handed sword +1, and an axe +1 in the most recent fight.

Using silence on a druid summoning a critter. Using weird dwarf guys with sonic attacks to try to deafen the party members to prevent them from casting. Silence on the bard has yet to come...

Having the cleric-less party stop in a keep filled with diseased people. Using undead against the same cleric-less party...

Mysterious potions... is it reduce or enlarge? Antidote or poison?

Casting Mass Reduce Person on the party. WotC needs to make mini-minis for reduced halflings.

Rakshasa can change their appearance. And can detect thoughts. And cast spells galore. And are hard to kill.

NPCs with lycanthropcy needed to jump into a magical pool of water and get flushed. Upon reviving most had burst from the fountain and attacked the party. PC monk also had lycanthropcy and made each of his saves unbeknownst to the player or the others. When he surfaced, the party killed him because they thought he had missed them and had transformed into another nasty critter. Druid player decided they at leasted owed it to him to do a 1000 GP reincarnation.