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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kaomera" data-source="post: 5201846" data-attributes="member: 38357">So, the thread on rat-bastard DMs has led me to thinking about some things, including some of my DMing experiences that did not work out as well as I had hoped...So I was thinking that I would recount one (perhaps more, later) of these experiences in the hopes that some of the other DMs here (and RBDMs in particular) might comment and perhaps offer me some advice... (And if anyone else wants to add their own experiences to this thread for similar consideration, that sounds like fun, too!)I ran a game a few years ago wherein the PCs ended up chasing after a cursed treasure. By good roleplay they had learned from a crazy sea-witch of a cursed pirate's compass, that would lead it's bearers to fabulous treasures, but only at the cost of the life of one of the crew (or party-members, in the PCs' case). One player, in particular, was very vehement (in the face of a couple of other players who where rather prone to acting in haste) that the PCs would not be using the compass - they would acquire it, kill off the other pirates who where after it, and then sell it (to someone less cunning then themselves) for quite a fabulous price, and that would be it. The players seemed to think that this was a foolproof plan (and I did not feel compelled to tell them if I perhaps felt that it was not quite so).In the course of defeating the pirates (very handily -  they massacred the named NPCs before they even had a chance to act and the rest scattered) the PCs became rather spectacularly separated. One of them, specifically the character of the player who had argued against using the compass, found himself treading water in a large half-flooded chamber without a light source. Suddenly, he noticed a twinkling light down on the floor of the cavern, and diving down he found the compass lying atop a battered chest. He retrieved the compass and retreated to a dry ledge he had noticed by it's blinking light.One of the other PCs had gotten herself trapped in an airbubble at the end of a flooded corridor, and by way of a slight miscalculation had endangered her precarious refuge therein. Attempting to flee back the way she had come, she panicked, ended up swimming in circles through silt-darkened waters, and eventually drowned. She may or not have made it out otherwise, but the penalties imposed on her rolls by the curse (which I had penned very specific mechanics for) certainly didn't help. And with her death, of course, the curse was fulfilled and the penalties lifted (at least until the next time the compass led them to treasure).Well, the players' didn't think this was cool, they didn't think it was at all fair, and they didn't think it was clever. Which bothered me quite a bit because usually they where cool, even when things didn't go their way. Unfortunately things got a bit heated and I decided it would be best to deal with the situation at the next session, which unfortunately never happened. Scheduling conflicts spoiled our next two attempts to get together, and after that several of the core members where no longer available and the group just kind of fell apart for good... I don't think this was a direct and specific response to the last session we played, but I have to kind of wonder if it didn't play some part...So: should this have been a good RBDM moment, or was I just being jerky? I don't enjoy killing off PCs and usually go a ways to avoid it (in favor of something “worse” happening), but in this case it seemed the only really appropriate thing to do: the curse was specifically designed so that someone had to die before the effects would end. And the PCs could have located the body and gotten a Raise, it was just going to be a major pain (plus unless they tossed the compass first the curse would have just come back...).</blockquote>

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