Terrible games you've played in

[buzzard]

Honestly I really doubt anyone will bring up anything which could compete with the original post <shudder>.

My worst was a game where they use Skills and Powers back in 2nd Ed. One of the players had a minotaur fighter/evoker who, as one would expect, dominated in everything. The cute arrangement was that the group gamed two days. One day the minotaur DMed, another a different guy DMed. Thus they played favorites with each other. I didn't make it past one session. I'd sooner not game that put up with pain.

That of course makes be wonder why the orginal poster was willing to put up with that game. Are you a masochist?

buzzard

 

[Desdichado]

Wow, Gothmog and JesterPoet -- I think even my incredibly stupid junior high games were tons better than those. :\ I've never had a really bad game, only pretty good vs. really good.

 

[Intrope]

Well, I think I can almost match JesterPoet's worse: this was also a 10 years ago 2nd edition game. Highlights of the horror:

-One player was playing a custom 2nd edition monk. Well, actually he was playing a human machine gun: through various rules abuses, he was able to let fly 80 shuriken per round. With Storm giant strength (from a girdle) for loads of damage.

-Said GM absolutely loathed this ridiculous farce, but would never challenge even the most abusive rules interpretation. Instead, he'd just have all the monsters attack the monk preferentially.

-An example of this: Party enters a room in a dungeon. (Monk is walking on the ceiling, invisible, directly over the party due to his magic items). 20 Bar-lungra demons ignore the entirely visible Paladin (weilding a holy avenger) and retinue on the floor to leap 30' into the air to attack the monk. All 20 of them. In sequence. And they got their full attacks, to boot. (Visions of dancing Bar-lunga demons...). And they could do this while still being 60' from the party underneath them!

-Other warpings of time and space occurred: in one module (Bloodstone mines) the main corridors are 8' high, 5' wide. The encounter in the module is with Stone Giants. We protest, since Stone Giants obviously can't fit throught the corridor! But no, the giants get to attack us. Two Abreast. To top that off, we were forced to remain in single file!

-The GM relentlessly followed the exact text of his (first edition) modules. Including treasure. So, a 14th level party with exactly 1 sword weilding character had: 1 Holy Avenger, 2 Frost Brands, 4 Flame tongue swords, half a dozen dragon and giant killer swords, and enough +1 & +2 swords to outfit an entire company of soldiers. The 3 mages had to suffice with a single Wand of Fear. With 5 charges. Wa-hoo.

-Later in the game (when it became clear that no logic nor balance applied to this game) I used my Wild Mage to really mess things up. Basically, I claimed as treasure: a Deck of Many Things, a luckstone. These, plus the Alternate Reality spell allowed for numerous amusing effects, like the ability to grant wishes pretty much at will to other party members (because Wild Mages could control the deck 50% of the time, and Alternate Reality could fix problems)

-This is in addition to things like the Cloud Castle, turning a High Priestess of Lolth to our side with a Helm of Opposite Alignment, Laser Wand Archers, and other rancid, smelly pieces of cheese we built up as the game went on.

Anyway, this game was incredibly silly. I'd never have played, except that I could find no other game to join.

 

[Ferret]

There was one game that involved the deck of many cards (I hear you gasping), and a god, and we were 1st level. I think the DM was just overwhemed with what was in the DMG.

P.S two of us got the ace of spades; imprison!

 

[Liolel]

This thread reminded me of an old gem from a terriable campaign. I don't remember the campaign that well but this stuck with me.

The party was trying to save a dying npc. He was bleeding from several wounds, and one of the players has the idea to stanch the bleeding by numbing it with a blast from a wand of frost. Needless to say that player was the biggest idiot I've ever seen in any gaming group. That player was playing a mage

Another short story about this was that when we had to choose between this mage, and the 6 wisdom fighter for party leader, we rightfully at least choose the 6 wisdom fighter.

 

[Creamsteak]

Probably my worst experience was with the Living Greyhawk game at Gencon. The game was sorta fun still, but the two cheaters at the table pissed me off to no end. Wasn't the GMs fault, just cheaters. Tiny "unreadable except by the player rolling them" dice that had been scratched so 9 looked like 19, 1 looked like 11, 2 looked like 12... etc. And they were glittery little dice to boot, so they were pretty hard to read the results off anyway. Plus the guy rolled behind a wooden box in a dm-screen kinda way. Even with all of that, the GM still didn't want to confront him...

And this guy was at least 30.

 

[Numion]

I haven't had any truly horrible games. One of the upsides to being the groups designated DM

Actually there's been one horribly unbalanced rolemaster campaign (one PC was overcasting 30th level spells no problemo when we were 10th level. Plasma spells at that.)

And a very old 2300AD campaign where the GM didn't know any rules, and they kept changing all the time. Plus he had his own PC.

 

[Gnimish88]

Suppose I will chip in some of the flashbacks I am now experiencing due to reading some of these stories:

- one Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying game where the GM basically gave everyone magic items except for my character. When I pointed this out, I got a magic skipping stone, 50 skips when used, plus a map to find it again. This was in a party with magic weapons, rings of blasting, and so forth.

- a Harn Master Game where the GM actually encouraged and plotted with the other player to kill my character.

Both of these examples were with the same GM.

My Worst Experience Ever, in game, was in a 2nd edition game where the GM had characters of different levels together, with most around 5th level and a approximately 8th level bladedancer. Basically an 8th level wizard, 8th level fighter, this character actually teleported to a cave at the top of a cliff, webbed the passage close behind him, kill the dragonne in a chamber farther down the cave, and claimed all the treasure for himself when the rest of the party arrived, since it was a solo kill. Then then almost lightning bolted someone when they tried to take a potion. When we pointed out that he was playing a good character, had 'run' ahead of the party then blocked off the cave so that we couldn't catch up with him and was now threatening another character's life over a rather minor item, he justified it by saying that he was protecting our characters by delaying us, it was for the greatest good that he have the magic items, and as the most powerful, he knew what was best. The game almost ended right there, with myself and another player stating we would leave the game if this was how things were gonig to be. As it was, we managed to keep things together with some muttered apologies and distributing the treasure, but I ended up leaving several sessions later anyway, as the player continued to be a total @$$, just a little more controlled.

 

[SpiderMonkey]

Just remember, it could always be worse:

http://albruno3.holmesonics.com/ab3frameset-1.htm

 

[Henry]

No bad games, just bad concepts for games.

Sometimes we will start a game that sounds cool on paper, but in practice we wind up losing interest quickly, or the game has a critical rules flaw that we don't have an easy answer for, and we just give up on it.

But our players and GM's are good for more traditional games, and we have very few conflicts between players.