Lonely Tylenol
First Post
fusangite said:
This is my favourite part. What. The. Hell.
You were gaming with Margaret Thatcher?
Share you worst campaign meltdown
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
This is my favourite part. What. The. Hell.
You were gaming with Margaret Thatcher?
Mista Collins
First Post
Goddess FallenAngel said:
I don't see that happening one bit
. Back on the topic, I have yet to experience a complete campaign meltdown (besides me as a DM moving away to take a job in a different state).
Mystery Man
First Post
Goddess FallenAngel said:
Wife. Readhead. I believe. Oh, I believe.
HeapThaumaturgist
First Post
Hrm. My wife's a dusky auburn herself. This, perhaps, explains why she takes my damn head off every morning when she gets up for work.
Not a morning person.
She gets this narrow look ... she's just waiting to go off about something. The red-head bed-head look.
--fje
Not a morning person.
She gets this narrow look ... she's just waiting to go off about something. The red-head bed-head look.
--fje
enworldatemylogin
First Post
Our worst blow out was a mid to high level 3E game a few years ago. Reflecting on the last session with the other players I came to two conclusions.
1. All the players had ran their own 3E games, thus we had come to expect "this many encounters per session, challenge rating works like this, etc". We figured the DM understood this "system" like we did.
2. He did not understand the system. I dare say he'd never even read the section on how to calculate Encounter Levels or anything regarding challenge rating.
His campaign started fine, the first battle was tough, but it was a flashback and it was his first running session. Unfortunately every battle after that was a deadly encounter. Finally we entered an underground cavern locked against conjuration, infested with rival factions of demons, devils and undead. His background for the area did show it was dangerous, but we were working under conclusion number 1 above.
It was here things turned sour. Foolishly one party member blabbed our location to the only "non-pointy spiky undead" being we found. He promptly turned on the party. We tried to rescue the NPC he captured and that was when he asked "What are some good epic level feats for an elemental?" We were 12th or 13th level at the time. After capture, party separation, torture we finally got all back together after making deals with the devils, literally.
The group was now down to 3 people who bothered to show up.
We assaulted the demon compound. The battle went bad as we expected; we scried the demoness leader, teleported in to try to assassinate her. The shaman rolled a 34 to hit and the DM said "you miss". This was the final straw, that player threw his dice on the table and say, "Why bother?"
The game ended that night after several emails back and forth.
I've been in another 3E game I'd say was crappy, but only 2 of us shared that opinion and we never really went into details with the rest of the group.
1. All the players had ran their own 3E games, thus we had come to expect "this many encounters per session, challenge rating works like this, etc". We figured the DM understood this "system" like we did.
2. He did not understand the system. I dare say he'd never even read the section on how to calculate Encounter Levels or anything regarding challenge rating.
His campaign started fine, the first battle was tough, but it was a flashback and it was his first running session. Unfortunately every battle after that was a deadly encounter. Finally we entered an underground cavern locked against conjuration, infested with rival factions of demons, devils and undead. His background for the area did show it was dangerous, but we were working under conclusion number 1 above.
It was here things turned sour. Foolishly one party member blabbed our location to the only "non-pointy spiky undead" being we found. He promptly turned on the party. We tried to rescue the NPC he captured and that was when he asked "What are some good epic level feats for an elemental?" We were 12th or 13th level at the time. After capture, party separation, torture we finally got all back together after making deals with the devils, literally.
The group was now down to 3 people who bothered to show up.
We assaulted the demon compound. The battle went bad as we expected; we scried the demoness leader, teleported in to try to assassinate her. The shaman rolled a 34 to hit and the DM said "you miss". This was the final straw, that player threw his dice on the table and say, "Why bother?"
The game ended that night after several emails back and forth.
I've been in another 3E game I'd say was crappy, but only 2 of us shared that opinion and we never really went into details with the rest of the group.
Arc
First Post
Yeap. I pretty much bollocksed that one completely. I was picking up DMing for (pretty much) the first time, and I hadn't quite the coldheartedness to kick out group members on principle. If the campaign had lasted a bit longer before the meltdown, they would have been gotten rid of, but I didn't want to kick them out at the beginning. Oh well. I'm not cut out to DM, it's just not my thing.demiurge1138 said:
Now that my shortcomings have been discussed, I suppose I should describe the death of Demiurge's Epic campaign.
The party consisted of low-20's characters in a party that had advanced from 1-20 fairly smoothly, and then Demi decided to throw in a little bit of Cthulhu mythos. We all liked Lovecraft, and enjoyed the occasional references, but Demi wanted to play DnD Call of Cthulhu. Sanity rules, eldritch beings, Elder Gods coming in from other planes, the works. The general plot outline was that the Gods of the Mythos were attempting to come into the Prime (setting was FR), and that party was the last line of defense against it. Problem is... the plot wasn't terribly interesting.
F'Tang, the previously mentioned player, was playing a barbarian, and decided to sell his services in the Blood War to make some spare cash. The rest of the party joined in. A full scale invasion of a layer of Hell and the assasination of a Duke of Hell resulted. Demi basically winged the whole thing, the combats were truly deserving of the term Epic, and we all had fun. Once we finished that and inadvertedly kicking one of our weirder players by putting her character through some in-game stress, which she took very personally, we got back to the Mythos plot. And got bored again. The party, no longer driven for cash and glory in the Blood War, started infighting, and got whipped in a minor fight. At that point, most of us decided our characters just plane-shifted and kicked back with their ill-gotten gains. The campaign just stopped, simply because nobody cared a damn about the plot.
Inconsequenti-AL
Breaks Games
I was involved in a very nasty one a couple of years ago.
Was going to write the long version of this, but it's not that interesting unless you were there.
Had a GM had a real gift for description and dialogue. Ran some really fun games, but over time the players got more and more hacked off with the bad stuff. It's a full list:
Heavy railroading.
NPC favouring house rules. Introduced mid combat.
Every campaign had 1 or more players with an anti party backstory. - 9/10 it was his wife.
Stratospheric body counts for the other 'less important' characters.
Cthulu mythos in every single game.
All started as minor things and grew worse over the years.
Further compounded with differences in what the players and GM wanted. Players wanted heroic tales. GM wanted lethal survival horror. Differences grew more marked over time.
We tried talking to him about it at the correct times. i.e. when we wern't playing. It was all dismissed as 'whining' and nothing changed. Couple of players even ran short campaigns showcasing what they were talking about - he enjoyed them, but never changed anything.
Came to a head at the finale of a particularly bad adventure. An adapted module that was really badly written. Ton of backstory, but the players never get to find any of it out. Reads like a lot of fun, sucks to play. Ended in a TPK, bought about by a backstabbing PC.
Ended up with a pitched shouting match between players and DM. Everyone parted on bad terms and the players went off and started our own group. He's been back in touch lately wanting to run a new game... I can remember the good bits of his games and they were really good... Part of me wants to say - 'not before hell freezes over' and another part is curious to see if he's changed.
Right. That did go on a bit. Apologies.
Was going to write the long version of this, but it's not that interesting unless you were there.
Had a GM had a real gift for description and dialogue. Ran some really fun games, but over time the players got more and more hacked off with the bad stuff. It's a full list:
Heavy railroading.
NPC favouring house rules. Introduced mid combat.
Every campaign had 1 or more players with an anti party backstory. - 9/10 it was his wife.
Stratospheric body counts for the other 'less important' characters.
Cthulu mythos in every single game.
All started as minor things and grew worse over the years.
Further compounded with differences in what the players and GM wanted. Players wanted heroic tales. GM wanted lethal survival horror. Differences grew more marked over time.
We tried talking to him about it at the correct times. i.e. when we wern't playing. It was all dismissed as 'whining' and nothing changed. Couple of players even ran short campaigns showcasing what they were talking about - he enjoyed them, but never changed anything.
Came to a head at the finale of a particularly bad adventure. An adapted module that was really badly written. Ton of backstory, but the players never get to find any of it out. Reads like a lot of fun, sucks to play. Ended in a TPK, bought about by a backstabbing PC.
Ended up with a pitched shouting match between players and DM. Everyone parted on bad terms and the players went off and started our own group. He's been back in touch lately wanting to run a new game... I can remember the good bits of his games and they were really good... Part of me wants to say - 'not before hell freezes over' and another part is curious to see if he's changed.
Right. That did go on a bit. Apologies.
worst was probably my fault as a GM for not being prepared and not thinking fast enough on my feet. I had a pretty long and involved storyline played out that involved the players seeing the bad guys doing something with a maguffin, but not being able to get the magufffin for another couple sessions. Well, they were determined to get it, and I was determined to not let them have it. They got frustrated because they felt the whole thing was contrived. I got frustrated because they were frustrated that I was rolling 20's onmy NPC saves v their spells and 'nothing was working'. One of the players started yelling at me. I called the game. Later that week, two of the players contacted me and started railing on me, saying the exact same things. Obviously they had been conspiring together as they were saying exactly the same thing in exactly the same order.
All in all, it could have been totally avoided if I would have let them have the maguffin, let them do what they wanted with it, which would have involved inadvertently killing 1000 elves and raising a 5000 year old evil demigod. But no...I needed to stick to my plan....
I had had problems with one of the players before and he had caused me to stop gaming for 2 years before.
He didn't stop me this time. He just stopped me from playing with HIM again.
I'm currently playing in a game that I really enjoy and am considering running for a mixed group of my old players and some of the players from my current game.
All in all, it could have been totally avoided if I would have let them have the maguffin, let them do what they wanted with it, which would have involved inadvertently killing 1000 elves and raising a 5000 year old evil demigod. But no...I needed to stick to my plan....
I had had problems with one of the players before and he had caused me to stop gaming for 2 years before.
He didn't stop me this time. He just stopped me from playing with HIM again.
I'm currently playing in a game that I really enjoy and am considering running for a mixed group of my old players and some of the players from my current game.
wedgeski
Adventurer
Wow. I was gonna post my little tales of woe but they pale in comparison to this lot. A couple of things I just don't get though:
1. 'I had a problem with player X and discontinued the campaign'. I don't get why one problem player (who in one case, left the table for good) should lead to the collapse of the whole campaign.
2. 'I had a problem with player x that ultimately stopped me roleplaying for y months/years/editions'. I can't fathom any annoyance strong enough that would cause me to give up the game like that.
:\
1. 'I had a problem with player X and discontinued the campaign'. I don't get why one problem player (who in one case, left the table for good) should lead to the collapse of the whole campaign.
2. 'I had a problem with player x that ultimately stopped me roleplaying for y months/years/editions'. I can't fathom any annoyance strong enough that would cause me to give up the game like that.
:\
Emirikol
Adventurer
Law Enforcement Breaks Up Games!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111
I've had two really interesting campaign meltdowns.
Both invovled law enforcement..one at the federal level.
Situation one: We were gaming at my friend's trailor house during college (because that's how you live if you go to an authentic college and work your way through). So, the 'dude' as we called him got a knock at his door regularly when we would game and he would talk to his friends and then send them away. People would get a little annoyed. Big deal. So, of course one night, it was FIVE COPS and they arrested him on the spot for selling drugs out of the house. Of course, he resisted and started spouting some choice words at them..Needless, his roomies weren't too pleased and kicked everybody out. Game over.
Situation two: we're gaming in my other friend's trailer house. She didn't game and was watching TV around April 20, 1995... We were right in the middle of a fight with some of Iuz's minions (or something, I don't recall) when she turned pale and got on the phone. I was DMing, so I thought maybe she'd smoked too many cheap cigarettes, but a few minutes later, an unmarked blue vehicle pulled up and some dudes from the FBI came to the door. She had recognized Timothy McVey from the TV sketches about the Oklahoma City Bombing. So, she and I (because I was her friend) got to take a trip 'downtown' to be questioned. She had evidently met the evil one while living in KS and recognized him on the spot..thankfully helping to put that bastard to be put to death. Kind of shook our campaign up..a lot.
jh
..
I've had two really interesting campaign meltdowns.
Both invovled law enforcement..one at the federal level.
Situation one: We were gaming at my friend's trailor house during college (because that's how you live if you go to an authentic college and work your way through). So, the 'dude' as we called him got a knock at his door regularly when we would game and he would talk to his friends and then send them away. People would get a little annoyed. Big deal. So, of course one night, it was FIVE COPS and they arrested him on the spot for selling drugs out of the house. Of course, he resisted and started spouting some choice words at them..Needless, his roomies weren't too pleased and kicked everybody out. Game over.
Situation two: we're gaming in my other friend's trailer house. She didn't game and was watching TV around April 20, 1995... We were right in the middle of a fight with some of Iuz's minions (or something, I don't recall) when she turned pale and got on the phone. I was DMing, so I thought maybe she'd smoked too many cheap cigarettes, but a few minutes later, an unmarked blue vehicle pulled up and some dudes from the FBI came to the door. She had recognized Timothy McVey from the TV sketches about the Oklahoma City Bombing. So, she and I (because I was her friend) got to take a trip 'downtown' to be questioned. She had evidently met the evil one while living in KS and recognized him on the spot..thankfully helping to put that bastard to be put to death. Kind of shook our campaign up..a lot.
jh
..
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