Terrible games you've played in

[Zappo]

I've played lots of so-so games, but no real dogs. Fortunately, I largely game with people I know, and I don't associate with the kind of psychos who can create games like those described.

The most disappointing game was my first OD&D tournament. Set in some sort of fantasy Ancient Roman Empire, the first encounter was with a superior number of higher level foes. Two PCs died, the rest (except me) were captured. Trying to find a way to free them, I traveled to the castle where they were imprisoned and threatened the head guy to summon a dragon to destroy his lands unless he released my friends. He didn't fall for it, fair enough. I used a spell to create the illusion of a huge dragon tearing open the ceiling, roaring as he turns to look at the inside. The DM didn't roll anything, and said "ok". And then proceeded as if the spell didn't exist. The NPCs didn't even flinch, they attacked me without hesitation and I don't know how I escaped again.
Later, having got out somehow, we were in a big city in the middle of a riot; I was invisible but I needed to talk urgently to an officer. But guess what... invisibility can only terminate if you attack someone, or when it expires. And no, attacking a wall doesn't count. I sigh and state that I punch a random guy - we're in a friggin' riot, the worst that can happen is that I'll get a couple of punches in response. Instead, before I can move or do anything else, I get eight sword attacks (the DM doesn't even tell me from where) and die.

There have also been several bad campaigns of several different games, GMed by friends who never GMed before (so I forgive them ). Railroading, pet NPCs, consistancy violations just to screw the players, piling external elements on the setting until it collapsed just because they seemed cool, we had all of that but never in the amount some posters described here.

 

[Wycen]

Let's see, I can't think of any really bad games beyond the first I described above, but there have been games I stopped enjoying for various reasons.

Like a Fantasy Hero game with a character who had armor and damage reduction equal to a low power superhero game.

Or a high magic 3E game were every combat was several challenge rations higher than us.

A Mage/Vampire/Werewolf/Streetfighter! game that got ridiculous.

 

[Teflon Billy]

I've posted this one before, but I will do so again as it was without question my worst gaming experience ever...

One of my players (a well-thought-of RPG industry freelancer) asked if he could bring a friend from work to our weekly game. My near-instant response: "Certainly!" (more players cut from our friend's cloth would add to the group immeasurably).

Due to circumstances beyond his control, our player was unable to attend or get ahold of his work-friend to tell him. So the guy shows up anyway. No problem.

We invite him in, get him a coffee, and let him play the Character of a guy who had just recently left the group (A Were-tiger). The system was GURPS. This is where we join the story....

Dramatis Personae

• Fraser: Playing a Human mercenary
• Ian: Playing a Human wizard
• Mike: playing an elf bard.
• Myself: Playing the frustrated GM
• El Creepo: Playing the Were-Tiger.

Teflon Billy: Ok, so you guys are in the tavern where we ended last session, as you are sitting at the table...

El Creepo: Is there a serving wench around?

Teflon billy: Um, sure. "what would you like stranger?"

El Creepo: I'd like your company for the evening. I am a very wealthy man.

Fraser: Does that gnome who was here last week still want to sell us a potion?

Teflon Billy: You don't see him aroun...

El Creepo: What is her answer?

Teflon Billy: Huh? Oh, she laughs and mentions that her husband, the hostler, would likely have a thing or two to say about that.

El Creepo: Hrrmmm

Mike: Ok, so what are we going to do about the head in the box we found? It claims it's the rightful ruler of Cros Mogmun right? Do we believe it?

Ian: Well, I don't. But I think we should try and...

El Creepo: Where did the serving wench go after we spoke?

Teflon Billy: Upstairs, said she was calling it a night and thanked you for your patronage.

Mike: I give her an extra gold piece and tell her "the pleasure was all mine" and give her a sly bardic wink.

Fraser: Anyway, we should definitely get that gnome to...

El Creepo: I'm heading upstairs.

Teflon Billy: For what?

El Creepo: How long does it take me to get up there?

Teflon Billy: Not long, less than a minute, it's only a three story building.

El Creepo: Can I use my tracking to find out where the wench went?

Teflon Billy: (pause) okaaaaaay......(rolls some dice) she's in the third room on the third floor.

El Creepo: I'm going there.

Ian (puzzled) What's up?

El Creepo: I'll knock on her door.

Teflon Billy: She answers and asks "what do you want?"

El Creepo: I push my way into her room and explain to her again that I want her for the night.

Teflon Billy: (getting pretty fed with this guy already and we aren't 2 mins into the game) Yeah, well...she explains again that she is a married woman, and while she is very flattered, she is simply not interested. Get me?

El Creepo: Well, what she's interested in means very little to me. (gestures to his character sheet) Am I this strong without switching to my tiger-form? How do I make a roll to grab her?

Teflon Billy: What?

El CreepoI'm going to try and pin her down. Can I do that with one hand so that I have the other one free?

*Disbelief all around the table*

Fraser: I'm rolling danger sense...

Ian: I'm preparing a fireball starting now...

Mike: I load a silver bolt into my hand crossbow...

Teflon Billy: (rolls dice) Danger upstairs! Third Floor! Third Room!

My Guys: a ton of babble translating as "we charge upstairs"

El Creepo: Can they react like that? They don't know what's happening up here.

Teflon Billy: You grapple the serving girl easily enough...she draws a knife from her bodice and makes a called shot stab to the vitals (rolls dice) well, she hit.

El Creepo: Only silver can hurt me...

Teflon Billy: No, silver damage doesn't regenerate, but you still take the wounds. In this case, 3 for her roll, tripled for impaling to the vitals is 9.

El Creepo: Well, I'm still up. I guess I'll have to kill her...she should've just cooperated.

Teflon Billy: *shakes head and grumbles* Make your roll.

*She is badly injured, but still up*

Teflon Billy: Gentlemen, you arrive...

El Creepo: That seemed awfully quick

Fraser: Tough !

Ian: I unleash my fireball at him (El Creepo's character is burned for a lot of damage…added to the knife wound he is pretty banged up).

Mike: I'll send a silver bolt into his torso (The damage is not huge, but is non-healable)

El Creepo: What are you guys doing????

*Silence + glares*

Teflon Billy: You're up

El Creepo: I jump out the window!

Teflon Billy: Ok, make a jump roll (he fails) damage to both his legs breaks one, sprains the other and puts him unconscious.

*Silence*

Teflon Billy: Well...that was fcuked up!

* A confused babble erupts where El Creepo claims that he was told we were mature and could handle mature themes*

Unbelievable to me to this day!

• We had never met this guy before
• His first action upon meeting us was to try and roleplay out a rape scene
• He started this basically as I said "you all meet in a tavern"
• he was going to do this in the presence of someone he worked with!

It's one of the few times in my gaming life when I actually "hit the reset button", announcing that none of that had happened and calling the game for that week.

 

[Hammerhead]

Well, I have nothing to compare to most of these stories, since I generally only play with a few groups of people. Here, however, are a few pretty bad ones:

The Standing Stone Aside from being a horrible adventure all around, this session was very bad. Since we only had two people to game that day, the DM made a DM "PC" he could play. This NPC kept making comments about how he could kill us, he was so good, and dominated the fights. It turns out that this NPC was several levels higher than us, something the DM claimed would make the game more fun. I still don't know why.

Imperium RomanumThis game had an interesting premise: magic was a real force in the Roman Empire, and we were characters trying to make our way in the world. I (inadvertently) may have ruined the game, but it was still pretty bad. The DM asked us to agree on a common background, and we came up with Roman slaves. I made a Jewish Zealot who hated the Empire. The other PCs were a Roman officer, who commanded a squad of legionaires, and a Galic slave who wanted to be a gladiator. The officer pretty much had his squad of guys boss me around the entire time, and the DM prevented me from killing everyone in their sleep. Another highlight was an Egyptian priest named Imhotep. If I had known that everyone else was playing Romans or their lackeys, I might have made a different character. We agreed not to play another session.

The Tunnel Game I name this game thus since the said DM made up his own campaign world, and the only remotely original thing was that a series of underground tunnels connected several small continents, and people fought over these tunnels. We began play at 13th level, where we were immediately captured by giants, despite high ACs and access to teleportation magic. After waking up in a cage, the cleric turned ethereal and tried to escape, until some guy walked in, used some no-save magic to paralyze us, and made us fight in gladiator games. We eventually cooked up another cool plan to escape, and the DM honestly seemed surprised by our insistence to free ourselves from slavery. Funny, that. We later fought a team of super-powerful adventurers who, for some reason, were able to survive being pushed through prismatic walls. Didn't go back to that one.

I was also in a really bad Star Wars game where we mostly just wandered around and no action of ours could affect anything. At one point, the Scoundrel convinced a group of Imperial assassins to go after a bad guy, when suddenly, from nowhere, an asteroid hits their ship and they die. This game was later taken over by more competent hands.

 

[maggot]

My bad experiences were all with 2E D&D for some reason.

- Playing a first level dwarf fighter in a group that included a gold dragon and a kender. A kender you say, no not those kenders, in this world kenders always made their saves, had an extra 8d8 hit points (cause of luck) and had that THACO of fighters. The DM didn't have any books so he made up stuff. I read a scroll of summon monster (yes, I was a fighter) and it conjured some 4-armed demon that destroyed an entire dungeon of monsters and returned with my treasure: two +3 axes (yes, I fought two handed, doesn't everyone) and a potion that raised every stat to 25. And I was still first level. Luckily, the DM gave me another poition that gave me a permanent +100 hit points. Actually, luckily I never went back after that first game.

- Playing a first-level dwarf cleric (I seem to get in trouble if I play a dwarf) where the DM assigned all my stats for me: 18s across the board, maybe one 17 in charisma or something. And then we fought mummies. Like five of them. No magic weapons, just torches. Somehow, we won, and I slowly died of mummy rot.

- Not a dwarf this time, but a first level ranger. A 2E ranger again with stats assigned by the DM, but this time woefully average. The other characters in the party included an archer with an 18 dex and a elf-wizard that used a spell point system that effectively meant he never ran out of magic missiles. And the foes were all flying. Our first encounter was a freaking ice dragon, that the elf-magic-missile guy killed single handedly while the rest of us hid. The elf got all the XP, and gained two levels and now (because of the house rule spell point system) could cast an endless barage of 2nd level spells as well as first level spell.s

- Finally, I played a 10th level bard. Or at least that is what I thought I would play, and I rolled him up. Then the DM said a 10th level bard (2E bard) was too much, and he lowered me to 7th level. Then I joined the party of 12-16th level munchkins and watched them fight each other instead of the foes. Never returned.

From these four lessons, I learned something: Never, ever, under any circustances give people your real name or phone number if you play in a game advertised on a game store flyer. After the first session, you can bail or stay, but if you give them your real name, you may not be able to run.

 

[Saeviomagy]

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

Given that first aid treatment for a bleed is rest, ice, compression and elevation, it wasn't that dumb...

Unless it was a full blown ice-storm they aimed at him or something...

 

[Zappo]

Given that first aid treatment for a bleed is rest, ice, compression and elevation, it wasn't that dumb...

Unless it was a full blown ice-storm they aimed at him or something...

After using a wand of ice to stop bleeding, he could as well have used a flamethrower to light his cigarettes.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I have a couple, mostly stories of games with very poor first impressions.

1. Arrived at a game with a character I had premade and sent to the GM ahead of time. I had never gamed with the group before, it was my introduction into a game in progress. 8 real time hours later the GM FINALLY introduced my character, I had spent an entire day of my life sitting around watching other people play DnD. I realize you can't just have people zap in for no reason, but 8 hours is rediculous.

2. Arrived at a game of Battletech. I had never played before. I was given some "standard" mechs to run, while everyone else had their tricked out rigs. We rolled randomly for starting positions and I started in the middle of the board, the other 4 players in each corner. A few turns later (10 minutes realtime) I was dead and spent the rest of the day watching from the sidelines.

3. The ongoing DnD campaign based loosely off a combination of 2ed and the Wheel of Time books. No matter how powerful you were, everyone else in the game was 10 times better. We were 25th level PC's getting our butts handed to us by goblins and such. It wasn't so much a game as the GM playing out a novel that we happened to name a character in.

DS

 

[Saeviomagy]

2. Arrived at a game of Battletech. I had never played before. I was given some "standard" mechs to run, while everyone else had their tricked out rigs. We rolled randomly for starting positions and I started in the middle of the board, the other 4 players in each corner. A few turns later (10 minutes realtime) I was dead and spent the rest of the day watching from the sidelines.

This is about normal for battletech - if this was your first game, chances are the tricked out mechs had almost nothing to do with it (unless they were from a radically different play base). Battletech has some realy heavy tactics going along with it.

Come to think of it, most wargames are like this - if you actually play your first game (as opposed to letting a veteran 'advise' you), you'll probably get trashed.

With a bit of luck, you'll know WHY you got trashed, so you don't do it again.

 

[Liolel]

Given that first aid treatment for a bleed is rest, ice, compression and elevation, it wasn't that dumb...

Unless it was a full blown ice-storm they aimed at him or something...

This was back in second edition but yes it was roughly equivilant to a full blown ice-storm. It was basicly a blast that could be used to fight monsters, used on a npc at negitive hitpoints. I don't remember how the dm ruled it (the dm was pretty bad to) but using the wands by standerd rules whould have certainly killed the npc.