Small Acts of DM Cruelty

AviLazar said:
In the defense of Shil's group, Shil tend's to make uber insane NPCs and manages to do it utilizing only core (or at least 95% core) and lower level then the PCs. How he does it I don't know.

'Cause I'm a munchkin DM :]?

Shil is D&D U83R 1337

Ooh - that's 4.653 extra XP for you!
 

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adwyn said:
During my pulp/CoC game this summer the players developed a powerful animosity towards an NPC protagonist who would always turn up when least expected -to the point one of the players would go red at the mention of the NPC's name.

That player is one of the newscasters on the local news, and lately he's had to do the morning show. So last week I called in one of those birthday wishes for someone tunring 100 using the NPC's name. Sure enough when his co-host read off the name and gave her sweet speel about the person turning 100 Dean's head jerked up and he flushed a couple of different colors for a few seconds before regaining composure.


OMG!!!! ROFLMAO!!!
 

adwyn said:
That player is one of the newscasters on the local news, and lately he's had to do the morning show. So last week I called in one of those birthday wishes for someone tunring 100 using the NPC's name. Sure enough when his co-host read off the name and gave her sweet speel about the person turning 100 Dean's head jerked up and he flushed a couple of different colors for a few seconds before regaining composure.
I don't know. If he had somehow gotten fired over this would you still call it a small act of DM cruelty? :)
 

I had my players running through a vampire-infested mansion once, and they were forced not only to retreat for their lives, but to leave behind the body of their NPC cohort, a half-elf druid named Viridian, who had been killed by the vampires' hellcat. They only survived by hiding in a nearby stream, where the vampires couldn't get to them (the whole "running water" thing). As they sat shivering in the cold stream waiting for daylight, they planned how they were going to return to the mansion to retrieve the druid's body so she could be raised.

Come morning, they return to the mansion and there, at the top of the winding stairs that go up to the third floor, they find the naked, headless body of a half-elf woman crucified with chains to the bannister. Only the necklace around the woman's bloody stump of a neck provides any identification - it's definitely the necklace worn by Viridian, their companion. They undo the chains and pull her body up from the stairwell, cursing the vampires all the while - without her head, they'll have to go the more expensive route to bring her back to life.

Unfortunately for my nasty little plan, they decided to do some more vampire-hunting in the mansion before dragging the half-elf's body back to town to get resurrected, and in so doing, they discovered what the vampires had really done with Viridian's body - they had stashed her in the crawlspace, leaving behind a decapitated half-elf woman they had taken from the village (of the same general size and shape of Viridian) for the PCs to find. Apparently the vampires liked the idea of the PCs spending their resources resurrecting a total stranger.

Oh well, even though the plan failed, I still got the desired result - my players hated me. :)

Johnathan
 

DungeonmasterCal said:
I was once asked to DM for a couple of guys who, through a mutual friend, claimed they could not be outsmarted by any DM anywhere. In the first 10 minutes of the game (a by the numbers dungeon crawl) the wizard had an arm nearly severed trying to retrieve a jewel hilted dagger at the bottom of a sewer grate. After getting some healing laid on him, he tries again... with the same results.

The other guy, playing a thief, never even bothered to check for or disarm the trap. A few minutes later, I describe a block of stone at the base of the wall that looks subtly different than the others. The thief removes the stone, revealing a opening just barely large enough to allow a man to enter, as long as he lay flat on his stomach or back and inch forward at a very slow pace. The light of his torch showed him dozens of red and glittering gems inside the passage.

So, LEAVING his torch outside the opening, he crawls inside. 7 feet inside the passage, he triggers a pressure plate that lowers a metal grate behind him. Unable to retreat, move forward, or fight, he was eaten alive by rats.

Less than one hour into the game, these two guys storm out of the house without a word.

Oh I love it. Thats great. Guess they just got delt a whole handful of stupid cards.
 

DungeonmasterCal said:
This very weekend, I ran an SWd20 game for my son and two of his friends. This was the very first table top RPG experience for one of them, and he kept insisting that "if this were Halo and Halo 2, my character should be able to blah blah blah". He insisted on carrying around frag grenades, and in a fight with Clone troopers aboard their very small starship, he detonated one.

TPK.


Hmm....seems like I started playng video games because they reminded me of tabletop not vise versa. Why does this make me feel old?
 

Does giving players nightmares count? One of my players last year attributed two nightmares (one about a thorny plant-man, one about an illithid) to my game.

Demiurge out.
 

In a long-running investigative game, two of the PCs had a kid. She was a very nature-y kid (her mother was a druidess, and she had quite a bit of that sort of power naturally). The father was a half-vampire, who was being pursused by a full vampire demonologist who wanted him as a companion and mate.

When it became clear to her that Broderick wasn't going to go to her willingly, and the vampire found out about the girl, she took what I thought was the next logical step. She kidnapped their five-year-old daughter, an NPC all the players had grown to love, and... turned her into a vampire. And left her in their home base, to discover later. After the young girl's blood thirst made her kill most of their NPC allies.

I still haven't entirely been forgiven for that one.
 

This is the most recent one, but i dont think it was that cruel, since it is Ravenloft...

PCs had just been engulfed by the mists and taken to Ravenloft, although they are unaware they are somewhere else, since they were in a forest before, and were still at a forest then, although the forest looked a bit different. Anyway, they found a mad elf who was runnign from imaginary treants and after lots of roleplaying, decided to have the elf guiding them ot the nearest town... except one of the PCs wasnt trusting the NPC and decided to use his Speak with Animals to get a more trustworthy information from a forest animal. They had lsitened ot the howling of a wolf before, so this PC decided to contact that wolf. He casted Speak with Animals and howled a greeting.

A pack of 6 dire wolves showed up. The wolves spoke in single words to him. Wordes like: blood, meat, hungry, kill, etc. Realising the wolves were very unfriendly, he had to make a Wild Empathy check to try to change their attitudes (he is a spirit shaman). He had to roll 24 or higher so the wolves wouldn't attack them. He had a +8 modifier. He rolled 25. Lucky bastard. The wolves became indifferent and moved away, without either helping or attacking.

So, not really THAT cruel. He just lost his arm recently, with a failed Power Check, though. But that is not being cruel either. That's just a consequence of being in ravenloft...
 

I started a new campaign last weekend.

One of the players wanted to play an oracle-type cleric.
She then created a background which involved her having a prophecy that would bring the party together.

I offered to create that prophecy for her.

I wrote about a dozen single lines of verse. Each line I ended with a verb, all in the same tense - creating sentences such as "when a dove cries". After I had written all the verses I separated the verbs from the end of the sentences. I then printed out a sheet, and cut up each verse, into a first part ("when a dove") and the verb ("cries").

She was then given all the pieces of paper, not knowing which verb applied to each noun.

Over the course of the first session of the game she recognised (both correctly and incorrectly) a number of nouns, and tried to put some with their verbs.

Eventually she may be able to re-create the prophecy, but only after witnessing most of the events fortold.

:-)

Duncan
 

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