Stupidest Things DMs Have Done

[Tewligan]

A while ago, we were in this lyzard men dungeon. The doors were old and stuck, and we had to roll 1-2 on a d6 just to open the doors.

But later we saw this child lyzardman flee from us and pass doors without any problem, while pursuing him, we had to roll 1-2 on a d6 to open the same doors he just did close before us.

We said to the DM it's kinda weird that a child can pass those stuck doors without problem, while we heroes couldn't pass one door in three.

He said, "but it's not written that the lyzardmen should check when they pass doors".

Our jaws fell with this amazing sense of judgment.

Joël

Was this 1st edition, perchance? In the 1e DMG (I believe), it does specifically mention that, although PC's have to check to open all those stuck doors, the monster residents of the place have no trouble using them. That always struck me as funny...

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Kristivas,

I can't believe you murdered Gimli! Shame on you.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Our group (3 12th-levels at the time) had to find pieces of a powerful magic item to save the world (more or less), and one piece was reputedly in Skullport - that underground town of ill repute where mind flayers and the like dwell together with what passes for humans there. We were asking around for the thing (or, rather, the burial place of the last owner), and found out that only the mind flayers had the info we needed.

Of course, they wouldn't just give us the info. They wouldn't even sell it. We had to do them some "favours" (kill some people). The only reason my LG cleric agreed was that it would have been worse if the item wouldn't have been found, and the guys we had to inhume were quite evil themselves.

So we had just defeated this mass-murdering maniac of a halfling (who happened to hate illithids a bit more then everything else), losing our big damage dealer in the process, when a drow cleric (we knew to be around level 20 - way out of our leage) walked in and started to take the little bastard away - apparently it was a good pal of his and he wanted to res him.

When we said that we couldn't allow that, he started about "doing favours", too.

It was too much for my LG dwarf cleric, and he proceeded to attack, telling the other party member (dwarf wizard, also good) that he was under no obligation to help, but that the dwarf priest himself had to (standing before Moradin today being better than standing before Asmodeus tomorrow and all that). Luckily the wizard stayed behind.

The fight wasn't going well: We hardly ever got over his SR or AC, and then his saves were too high to fail with anything but natural one.

Seeing that we were doomed, anyway, the wizard made a final, desperate attempt: One of the item pieces we already had could cast Imprisonment 1/week, and even though we were sure he'd save, anyway, we tried it.

The cleric fumbled his save!

End of the story was that we took our dead comrade and the dead halfling, returned to the mind flayers and got our information (and, in the end, the piece we were looking for). We also had two level-ups at once (although you can't do it normally, stopping at 1 xp short of the second lv-up, the DM gave us that one xp so we wouldn't do 1 level-up now and the second after we stepped on a bug or something) and had to extrapolate the XP table because you're not supposed to defeat critters with a CR 8 or more above your own.


The moral of the story is: If you put characters with alignments like LG into diffiult positions where they have to choose between death or dishonour, expect that they choose death. Also expect that they get lucky and win after all.

 

[Keeper of Secrets]

Wow. Some of these plots - like doing deals for Mind Flayers and doing deals for Drow elves - have the kind of complexities that would make Rube Goldberg constipated.

One of the worst games I have ever played in was at GenCon. It was a Call of Cthulhu game with like 20 people. I had no idea what I was getting into. It was bad, made no sense and was run by one of the most obnoxious pair of GMs that ever crawled into Indy.

First, the group was split into 2 groups of ten to make it more manageable (?). Then we both converged in this warehouse where some sinister MC made us sit through an hour (and hour of game time) of historical scenes of kings and queens of far off lands. Now, let me reiterate. An hour of game time. For a four horu game. You could not interact with the scene. You could not ask questions. You could not really deal with the visions other than sit and watch the GM describe it to you. To 20 people. In a room filled with other games.

To make matters worse, the two GMs (who may have been dating) had a female friend who pretended to be a cat, roam around the room giving what could only be described as erotic clues. Of course, the only mystery at this point involved why I had signed up for this trainwreck.

Eventually we were told we had to go to Greece and stop Cthulhu or something. I had kind of stopped paying attention and struck up conversations with other disenchanted gamers, coming up with new nicknames for the creepy GMs, new insults and trying to find things that would be worse than this game. Some players at this point were just finding any excuse for their characters to commit suicide just to get out of the game. The only reason I stayed was to see if there was anything - ANYTHING - interesting that would happen.

Nothing did. Even being in a game where great Cthulhu showed up was somehow made lame and uninspiring.

 

[Planeswalker Maloran]

I was playing a chaotic neutral drow sorceress under a DM who loved railroading players and hated letting anyone get away with thinking outside the box. One of my friends, who had never played D&D before, was a blue-skinned elven ranger who followed me around and did basically whatever I suggested, because she had very little idea what she was doing. She'll be important later.

At one point, we were passing through a mining town, and the townsfolk hired us to get rid of some "creatures" that had showed up in the mines. So we went down, and the DM described 4 or 5 "long, worm-like creatures, with beaks and dark red scales" that were pretty much ignoring us. There were broken egg shells nearby. We attacked one of the worms, and found we could barely scratch it. It breathed fire on us. At this point, we were all assuming it was some demonic beast from Fiend Folio, and gave the fight our all. Eventually we killed it. Then there was a massive roar, and an enraged Ancient Red Wyrm showed up. We were level 3 at the time. It turned out those things had been her babies. The DM had assumed that, because a baby dragon is called a "wyrmling", it has no arms or legs and looks kinda like a larva of some sort. He also assumed that we should have recognized it, and not been stupid enough to fight the thing he'd railroaded us into fighting. We escaped (this DM loved throwing us at impossible fights, and then saving us through DM fiat), but he had us roll DC 25 or 30 Will saves (still 3rd level here) to not crap our pants from fear. Seriously, the point of the game is to have fun. How can it possibly be fun to "save vs. s#!t yourself"?

Later on, we were on a ship for a month-long voyage. My drow had recently become a were-rat, shifted alignment to chaotic evil, and taken to using illusion magic to look human. She was rather ADD and loved mischief before she became a rat, and now she was totally bored being cooped up on a ship for a month. The guards on the ship had newly-invented muskets, and I wanted one. So I spent most of the voyage working on an elaborate scheme to get one (though I should have known by then that the DM would foil it without even rolling anything). I bribed various people for the ingredients of a fast-acting sleeping poison, and spent two or three weeks getting friendly with the crewmen who stood outside the captain's door at night. (I could have gone after someone else's gun, but the captain's was double-barreled.)

So eventually we were approaching port (I wanted to be within swimming distance of shore, in case things went wrong). I had the elf who followed me around stand guard just out of view, and brought the two guards each glasses of mild wine, which had sleeping poison in it. I rolled high on my Diplomacy (or possibly Bluff) check to convince them to drink it even though they were on duty, to celebrate that we were almost on shore. One of them failed his save and fell unconscious, the other did not. So I ripped his throat out with my teeth (being illusioned to look human, I kept my were-rat form almost all the time). I searched both the bodies for a key to the captain's door. Neither had it. I was trying to figure out how to get the lock picked before someone found the bodies, and the DM hinted so strongly that he might as well have told me outright that the door wasn't actually locked. I opened the door and looked in, and was told I saw the captain asleep in his bed. So I went in, to kill him in his sleep and search for the gun. A guard who had conveniently been pressed flat against the wall inside the door blackjacked me and knocked me out. I pointed out that I hadn't been allowed a Spot check to notice him, he hadn't made an attack roll or rolled damage, and I hadn't been allowed a save, and he relented by allowing me a ridiculously high DC Reflex save to dodge. I rolled a 19 on the die, and dodged. For half damage. Because apparently a blackjack is an area effect, now. The guard (and 3 others, who had also been lurking perfectly hidden inside the sleeping captain's bedroom) all somehow step into the doorway and start shooting at me. The shots drew the attention of my elf, who rushed to join the battle just as I dropped below 0 hit points and fell unconscious and dying. She tried to grab my body and run, but I'd somehow fallen behind the 4 guards in the doorway. She tried to fight past them, but in a couple of rounds more guards showed up and she was subdued also.

The guards had noticed the man's throat having been torn out, and we were taken before an Inquisitor (who just happened to be aboard this perfectly ordinary passenger ship). He had True Seeing, or some equivalent power that let him see that we were were-rats (and I was a drow, besides). My character was publicly (and humiliatingly) executed, and my elf was sold into slavery.

When I asked the DM why he'd forced events to go so badly for us, and foiled me at every turn by changing the rules at whim, he said, "Because you're playing a sorcerer like a rogue. If you want to play like that, you have to make a rogue."

And he thought that was perfect justification for killing a character without allowing any sort of escape.

I got my revenge, though. My next character was a human warlock, designed for two things: 1 - to be a better rogue than any rogue could ever be, and 2 - to survive anything the DM tried to do to kill him. His 'henchman' was a blackguard with a very nasty sword, played by the player of the (former) elf who was also rather pissed at the DM. He had invocations for Darkness and for seeing in magical darkness, an invocation that gave him +6 to his already ridiculous Bluff skill, and many invocations for escaping unharmed from anything (including Flee the Scene - short range Dimension Door at will, leaves behind a Major Image of you for 1 round). Three times he was reduced to negative hit points in melee when no one should have been in range, but he had the Diehard feat, so he remained conscious long enough to dimension door away and drink a healing potion (which he carried a lot of).

He was once kidnapped by a nymph (the DM loved using nymphs as villains, in places there was no reason for a nymph to be) who tried every trick she could think of to get me to eat some of her food. He knew better, very politely declined, pissed her off by doing so, and somehow managed to escape with her treasure. When he came back to the party's ship, it turned out that 2 hours had passed (when for him it had been a few minutes) because for some reason the room the nymph had been in counted as a faerie realm so time passed differently there. When he realized this, he played along, and told them that the nymph had taken him because she was attracted to him, and he'd been so good in bed that she'd given him all this treasure as a reward. Then he generously offered to share the treasure with everyone, because he'd just been laid and was in a good mood. The DM gave everyone an out-of-nowhere +5 or so bonus to Sense Motive, but his Bluff rolled somewhere in the mid 40s. The DM was seriously pissed off, but couldn't think of anything to do about it without driving me and my friend out of his game.

For the record: I'm not above munchkining to defeat a bastard DM. ^_^

 

[Fenes]

Hmmm, stupid DMs. Most of ours are pretty good, thank diety. One guy tended to follow the sometimes written modules too closely.

One time in Shadowrun we were on a low-profile job, facilitating a corporate "resignation" (person wanted to leave the company but was under house arrest). We're in semi-stealthy mode, trying to blend in as best we could. The pickup is at a park in Seattle at winter. I'm the backup, a troll wearing hockey gear (customized security armor in a vague team color scheme) with my weapons in a gear bag.

Suddenly, a banshee armored vehicle appears behind us. For reference, a banshee is light hover tank, propelled by jet engines. It should cause ear damage at anything less than 50 yards and would be audible for miles and long seconds before it arrived since it isn't supersonic. We, heavily augmented individuals with "bionic" ears, had zero warning. And yes, it was airborne, not on landing wheels to roll up on us.

Fortunately, the dice mocked the DM mercilessly that session. He only managed to lightly maim the rest of the party before I could get in range. Everyone thought I was crazy for bringing an antivehicular weapon to the job but it was worth it (a custom heavy AV rifle grenade, propelled by my shotgun). I nearly crippled the Banshee when I shot it on the run (yahtzee of sixes). It turned and dropped a full burst on me but luck and the team karma pool were with me as I not only stayed on my feet but managed to drop another round on the banshee while scooping up the mage.

At this point it turned into a case of "overkill plot point" when an unknown van screamed up to help us escape. We took the chance and dove in and once we closed the door the sleepy gas was released and we were supposed to gently pass out.

Except I was in my security armor, equipped with chemseal, an independent air supply, filters, and a toxin detector so I was still conscious and active. Of course, the GM reasoned, what was I supposed to do? Fire the grenade inside the van? No, I pulled out the dikoted hockey stick/poleaxe from the gear bag and proceeded to cut through the floor of the van, taking out the transmission.

Which is when the Force 22 spirit manifested and put me to sleep. With pain. Lots of pain.

I remember that adventure - Harlequin. With us, basically the same happened, only worse. We had one guy hide in the park as backup for the meeting 6 hours earlier - he was told right when the ambush started that he had been taken out hours ago, and we simply had not thought to check.

Two other characters were posing as street cleaners, weapons and gear hidden in the cleaning equipment 1 mile away from the park. "Next to you a garage door opens, and you're staring at a MBT with it's gun levelled at you. Do you surrender?" A MBT, from the elven country, in Seattle, hidden in a garage. Right.

Two more were at a yet different location, waiting in a car - taken out by DM fiat.

Of course the single character we sent to the meeting actually got taken down as well.

None of that stuff was in the actual module, of course.

We got him back though, when we used every rule trick in the book to blow through the final fight - "creatively" enhanced by the DM by adding like six dragons (Me: "Ok... I used a focus and 6 karma on this... if they have 8 successes on the resist test each..." DM: "yes, all 6 dragons in human form have exactly 8 successes!" Me: "...then they are all dead since they'd need 10 to survive.") - and our troll k.o.ing the immortal elf (the one character actually written in the module as impossible to beat by PCs, so not being given any stats) in one round, and then carried away to our employer.

 

[Kelek72]

When I first DM'ed, I thought HD was the same as HP so... skeletons went down with a single touch and an exciting battle with a minotaur (6HD) went a little too quickly! OOPS!

I once played in a game where the DM was a player excited to DM for the first time. He was a creative guy so we were looking foward to whatever adventure he cooked up. As soon as the game started though, we entered a village that had just suffered an attack by multiple dragons, and the wyrms had been tearing the clothes off people! We lost it for about twenty minutes with the horny dragon comments flying...The DM gave up- his mood ruined- and we never found out what was going on! Something about the dragons searching for an individual with a birthmark or something...

 

[phindar]

Hmmm, stupid DMs. Most of ours are pretty good, thank diety. One guy tended to follow the sometimes written modules too closely.

One time in Shadowrun we were on a low-profile job, facilitating a corporate "resignation" (person wanted to leave the company but was under house arrest)...

I know that module. Harlequin. That was the adventure that destroyed my first Shadowrun group. Our group did basically the same thing, sidled up all smooth-like, and security just started pouring out of the woodwork. Except whatever the GM threw at us, we dispatched immediately. A platoon of sec guards comes out of the woods, and the mage Hellblasts them (setting off a 20 minute argument on why their explosive ammo didn'[t have to roll against the elemental effects). Two Yellowjacket helicopters come up, and we have our water elementals manifest in the cockpit and start drowning the pilots and wrecking the circuitry. The van pulls up to "save" us (at this point we'd barely broken a sweat), and the troll heavy gunner puts a Panther Cannon round through the van's driver and then yells, "Hey, I got us a ride!"

So we spent about two hours with the GM getting madder and madder until play broke. A few of us formed our own SR group, a couple of the guys quit gaming altogether, and we never played with that GM again.

Shadowrun is my favorite game system and setting, I am a huge fan. I love it. But, Shadowrun has had some of the worst modules ever written. Railroading, incoherent design, scenarios that could not work using the SR rules. (My favorite example is a set-up in Dragon Hunt in which a 4+1d6 Initiative npc is supposed to threaten the pc's and "slip away" before they can do anything, despite the fact that every pc-archetype in the book is faster than that guy. He's going to get two syllables into his threat before someone shoves a grenade down his pants and throws him out a window.)

 

[Fenes]

Shadowrun is my favorite game system and setting, I am a huge fan. I love it. But, Shadowrun has had some of the worst modules ever written. Railroading, incoherent design, scenarios that could not work using the SR rules. (My favorite example is a set-up in Dragon Hunt in which a 4+1d6 Initiative npc is supposed to threaten the pc's and "slip away" before they can do anything, despite the fact that every pc-archetype in the book is faster than that guy. He's going to get two syllables into his threat before someone shoves a grenade down his pants and throws him out a window.)

Oh, yes. Not to mention that many modules are made for very specific "good" and "poor" groups. I actually got more fun out of the bare bones hooks they inserted in some products than full modules.

Another stupid GM moment: Johnson hires group, acting as a middleman. Then the real employer appears, and orders the group to kill the johnson. Group refuses (they'd do anything but wetwork, known stance in the group, even though anything in the way dies), so Johnson tries to kill himself, harakiri style. Group intervenes, when suddenly a police SWAT team appears, all carrying light machine guns, and orders the group to take the run or die - in the "Eye of the Needle".

 

[Darklone]

Um, why? This is a sensible tactic that any half-decent soldiers would have trained for; and IMC hobgoblins are more than half-decent soldiers. Four characters at three-quarters hit points is a darn sight more dangerous than three characters at full hit points and one dead character, and your enemies know it. This sort of tactic is usually initiated with the command "take down the one not wearing armour, now!". This, IMHO, isn't bad DM'ing, it's DM'ing the combatants appropriately. Now orcs, on the other hand...

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

Certainly. Yet, my mooks are usually level 2-4... and level 4 hobgoblin fighters (LA 0 in Kalamar) with WS, composite longbows, good to hit bonuses all shooting at one PC ... means dead PC. Once we had a wizard with Protection from Arrows facing 10 hobogobo archers with one seargant... he showed them the **** and shouted insults at them... 160ft away... fired his fireball.

The returning salvo of 20 arrows (Rapid Shot) killed him at once. One crit and rest was average damage (1d8+6 with point buy 25 attributes for the hobogobos means str, dex, con 16 and +1 due to the seargants bard level).

And these hobgoblins didn't even use the exotic hobgoblin grandbow...