Terrible games you've played in

[Grodd JoJoJo]

Okay, awful story...

This isn't mine, actually, but here goes... A friend was playing in a college campaign, and barely knew the DM; a few sessions in, the DM decides to bring in one of his friends as a new character. Apparently, the two of them had discussed his character's "role" in the campaign, and the DM just brought him in without an introduction.

As it turned out, New Player's character was actually an assassin assigned to kill one of the other PC's. Apparently, the "plan," such as it was, was to have New Player decide not to kill his target, and chaos ensues. However, my friend (one of a pair of halfling thieves) decided the whole thing was fishy, and told the DM: "Okay...this seems a little odd. I don't really trust him, so I'll pick his pocket." He was successful, and he read the contract that the assassin was carrying (why he had the thing in his pocket, I don't know). After the DM explained the contract to my friend, he said, "Okay, he's here to make trouble; I backstab him." The roll was a success, and the damage was enough to kill New Player's character. The DM allowed it, and New Player sprang up, yelled "It's not fair!" and fled the room crying. This was a grown man in his thirties.

Never, ever, let a player in the game intending for him (or her) to make trouble for the other players.

 

[DiFier]

I haven't had that many bad gaming experiences but I haven't had that many DMs. The problems that I've run into are players. Munchkins are not actually that bad but purposefully disruptive players are.

My first 3e game was my worst. I'm playing with friends from highschool after everyone has moved back home after college/working in other cities. and the DM's wife. The DM is my current DM and he is great.

I create a lawful good half-elf fighter and the DMs wife creates a chaotic good barbarian. The DM give us the option to make new charachters when the other two players make a chaotic evil Teifling rogue/sorcerer and a chaotic neutral 5 foot tall, 500 lb elven chef. (rogue) So now i'm playing a neutral bard. and she is playing a lawful evil cleric. we should have seen the pain coming.

the other players are a good friends. The teifling is my current roommate (but not my roomate at the time)

the basis of the game is that we all die in a roleplaying incident and wake up in some sort of afterlife. my charachter who was human but had a thing for elven women fell out of a tower window while trying to esacpe from an angry husband who had caught him with his wife. the cleric was killed after dececrating a good temple and causing all the clerics there to become chaotic evil. (but they were still mad at her) the teifling was stoned to death and the chef choked on a chicken bone.

we wake up and are attacked by bandits the teifling casts darkness engulfing everyone is well darkness. we win the fight but run around in circles while trying to figure out which way is up.

We see bad guys off in the distance the teifling cass darkness. again. we are investigating a tomb we see bad guys the teifling casts darkness. the teifling also had a nack for palming treasure and clues. both the teifling and the chef would randomlly wonder off on their own. the chef to make food the teifling so that he could be the center of attention.

we got through the first part and move on to the second here is the funniest combat I've ever been a part of. we are in a town investigating a water cult. we leave a store of some sort where they were less than helpful. suddenly the well, in the center of the town square we are satanding in, begins to bubble up. It is some sort of water elemental demon thing. I'm not shure exactly what it was cause immediatlly the teifling casts darkness. the cleric, teifling, chef and I are engulfed in darkness. everyone heads for the edges except the chef who wants to find the well. everyone except the chef gets lost and actually goes the wrong direction.

the chef ties him self to the well and then runs to the edge of the darkness he begins running around the premiter of the darkness yelling "I don't eat food that falls on the floor" wanting us to duck (remember 5 foot tall 500 lb elf). well we either don't get it or don't understand what he is saying. the cleric and I make our reflex saves and don't get knocked down by the rope the teifling gets clothslined. then the rope draging the teifling hits the water demon thingy. it cuts the rope with its claws. the chef goes careening through a building the teifling get torn up and then runs away the cleric and I run away. the darkness goes away and the demon is gone.

after this point the teiflings disruptions start going form minor and medium to major infractions. Purposefully scareing away NPC who are scared of the cult but might help us. stealling all the treasure before we find it. keeping clues that will let us find where the cult is and trying to be the party leader not by consensis but with a this is how we're gonna do it. We try to get into the underground temple but non of us can swim very well. we get there but there is no treasure or clues (actually there are but the teifling has them all and isn't sharing)

When we complaign the teifling say that he is just playing in charachter. but both the cleric and I say that if we were playing in charachter we would have killed him already or at least have walked away from him. The game pretty much disentrigated there we never got any farther.

I think that if either the teifling or the chef had been the only screw ball in the group we could have kept going but they were trying to outdo each other's screwballness.

I did DM a shadowrun game with the DM, the cleric and the teifling. things went much better tho the teifling tried very hard to be the center of attention.

 

[David Howery]

The only bad game I can recall is a one shot event at Gencon years ago. The DM had obviously put a lot of time into making up the pre-gen PCs... but just as obviously never playtested it. The 'unique' idea was to give each PC a trainload of psychological quirks that would come up when certain events triggered them. Thus, we had a fighter who was just contrary to everyone, a 'cheerleader' type cleric who tried to encourage everyone, etc. etc. IIRC, my PC was an insanely lawful dwarf who had a 20 word combo name and title that he was required to recite anytime someone asked him what his name was.. and of course, everyone did, over and over. You can guess how this 'game' turned out... 4 hours of everyone roleplaying conflicting personalities. We didn't get anywhere near the castle we were supposed to be looking into... I don't think we got 20' down the road. The only action in the whole game was when some flying thing came along and found us (I think the DM realized the huge whopping mistake he'd made and got bored)....

 

[MerricB]

Ah, the memories...

There was the time I joined an ongoing (1E) campaign. The DM and players encouraged me to roll up a paladin. One of the players had a seriously wounded anti-paladin. My character walks into the game, and tries to lay on hands the anti-paladin. The result was something like matter/anti-matter getting together. I think that's the shortest amount of time I've ever played in a game.

There was the time I was playing in an ongoing 1E campaign. The DM had introduced a new player who hadn't played D&D before. Not that the other two players were that experienced (my brother and me), but anyway... We were playing the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. We walked into a pitch-black cave. Then my brother's character and I dropped dead. Apparently, the DM wanted to give the new player something to do. We did eventually get back to life, and the campaign resolved on its normal path.

There was the time I ran my first adventure - Keep on the Borderlands - and I had no idea what to do with the actual keep. "Your horses are taken away to area 3." "We don't have any horses." "But it says they are here!" Things got better in the Caves, but there were some nasty moments there for my players.

There was the time I played a 1st level (AD&D) magic-user in a game with about 5 or 6 other people. My spell? Shocking grasp. (Not as bad as the 1E burning hands, but still rather useless). I had nothing to do in that game at all - the fighters killed anything we came up against and my DM decided that proficiency in dagger didn't allow me to throw the things. Picture a wizard with 3 hp and an AC of 10 in melee combat trying to get their one shocking grasp spell off. It wasn't good. Eventually, bored and frustrated with the entire affair I persuaded another party member to come with me and explore elsewhere. We ran into an ogre, and discovered how ineffective shocking grasp really was...

Nothing there is as bad as the really terrible things that have happened to other people, though I've left out most of the terrible things I've inflicted on my friends whilst DMing when I was still learning the trade. (I was having fun, I don't know if they were!)

Cheers!

 

[Henry]

I just got reminded of one Bad Game Experience that I AS THE DM was responsible for.

A friend of mine from out of town was gaming with us, and created a character (in a modern-day RPG) that was from out of town. I mean WAY out of town. In the interest of keeping the world consistent, he drove to meet the others, but while action was going on, it took us literally hours to bring him into the game. As a result, he got fed up and left. I apologized to him later about it, at the time not realizing that this player had driven for two hours to our game, in order to roleplay DRIVING for hours.

It was where I learned possibly my most important RPG lesson: consistency be damned, there's people playing these games - having fun is priority #1.

 

[SinisterMinister]

Last year I got back into role playing after a several yaer absence. The first group I joined was perhaps the most boring collection of people I ever played with.

The 'leader' of the party played some fighter variant with all sorts of special powers that he couldn't tell us about. Every time I question ed why he was able to do something, he would explain that his (self created) character concept comes with lots of limitations along with his powers. In three session I never saw any limitations, just a supernatural *ss-whoopin' machine.
There was a guy playing a bard who never spoke except to cite (from memory) any piece of infomration out of the core rule books. He could tell the DEX of any monster we came across, but couldn't be bothered to, I don't know, speak to any NPCs.

The other people in the party weren't much better. It was like they were court ordered to play D&D. There was no enthusisasm for the game at all.

The first session was a by the numbers crawl through a ruined keep. We found a secret entrance through a drain at the back and were able to march through with virtually zero resistance. (We were all 4th level, and were fighting orcs 2-3 at a time).

Then we were hired by this guy to retrieve some amulet. As we were leaving town we were attacked by a group of people that we quickly dispatched. On one of the corpses was a note from the guy who just hired us saying "You must get the amulet from them. Don't let them leave town." Why would this guy ask us to get something then order us killed BEFORE WE GOT IT?

The party was thouroughly confused after this, so the DM gave up trying to come with "complex" plots, and we were commissioned to another keep where the leaders of the original orcs we killed were based.

To get there we had to march through something called "The Forbidden Forest" (can't remember the exact name, but everyone in the world was scared to enter it). In our four days through the most horrible place on the continent, all we ran into were two owlbears.

So when we finally get to the second orc stronghold, it's on a mountain that looks eerily like the first one. And sure enough there's a drain in the back! Two strongholds, two identical back doors.

I had given the DM the benefit of the doubt, but after three sessions, each more mind numbingly dull than the previous, I bailed.