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<blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 1405110" data-attributes="member: 15470"><p>You know, I've never stayed in a bad campaign long enough to match some of the horror stories posted above... but I had a great "bad RPG experience" at a con one evening. </p><p></p><p>The game was the "Star Trek RPG", and the game had what sounded like a promise-filled premise: three groups of PC's with three GM's. One group played Federation characters, one group played Klingons, and one group played Romulans. The GM's would play their group until some amount of time had passed, and would then break, confer, and update each other as to anything which has changed in the "world state", then they would return to their group and play another interval of time.</p><p></p><p>Well... to make a long story short, one of the groups buggered the lift shaft (elevator equivalent) to disable it. My group wandered into that lift, and discovered that not only was it broken, we were trapped inside. "Right, we have the engineer try to break us out." Roll, roll, roll. "Sorry, he fails." "Can I try again?" "Yes, in ten minutes." "Is there any other way out?" "No..." We tried about eight really creative descriptions of how we might escape, but the GM ruled that none of them would work. "If you had cutting tools, or had somebody outside of the lift, you might be able to try something, but you're out of luck." "Okay, fine, we wait for ten minutes." </p><p></p><p>This was about eleven at night. During the "ten minutes of game time", the other two groups came in contact with each other, and got into a battle. In the reactor chamber. In which we discovered that the game's combat system took seemingly infinite amounts of time to resolve a minute of "game time". Our GM goes off to help adjudicate - part of the slow-ness problem is that the other two GM's aren't as knowledgable of this rule set.</p><p></p><p>Every half hour or so, we get told, "It'll just be a few minutes longer..." We ask if our ten minutes have passed, but are told that they haven't. By three a.m., everyone in our group is exhausted, beyond frustrated and way beyond bored, and more than ready to call it quits. I mean really, if we'd known, we could've fired up a board game or something!</p><p></p><p>Finally, after four hours of keeping us "on hold". Our GM walks back in. "Well, guys, they got in a gun battle in the reactor chamber. And one of the characters rolled a fumble... He hit the reactor core...</p><p></p><p>"And the entire station <strong>just blew up</strong>."</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p style="margin-left: 20px"><em>Where was that thread where the guy was complaining about arbitrary death-by-golem again?</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Amaroq, post: 1405110, member: 15470"] You know, I've never stayed in a bad campaign long enough to match some of the horror stories posted above... but I had a great "bad RPG experience" at a con one evening. The game was the "Star Trek RPG", and the game had what sounded like a promise-filled premise: three groups of PC's with three GM's. One group played Federation characters, one group played Klingons, and one group played Romulans. The GM's would play their group until some amount of time had passed, and would then break, confer, and update each other as to anything which has changed in the "world state", then they would return to their group and play another interval of time. Well... to make a long story short, one of the groups buggered the lift shaft (elevator equivalent) to disable it. My group wandered into that lift, and discovered that not only was it broken, we were trapped inside. "Right, we have the engineer try to break us out." Roll, roll, roll. "Sorry, he fails." "Can I try again?" "Yes, in ten minutes." "Is there any other way out?" "No..." We tried about eight really creative descriptions of how we might escape, but the GM ruled that none of them would work. "If you had cutting tools, or had somebody outside of the lift, you might be able to try something, but you're out of luck." "Okay, fine, we wait for ten minutes." This was about eleven at night. During the "ten minutes of game time", the other two groups came in contact with each other, and got into a battle. In the reactor chamber. In which we discovered that the game's combat system took seemingly infinite amounts of time to resolve a minute of "game time". Our GM goes off to help adjudicate - part of the slow-ness problem is that the other two GM's aren't as knowledgable of this rule set. Every half hour or so, we get told, "It'll just be a few minutes longer..." We ask if our ten minutes have passed, but are told that they haven't. By three a.m., everyone in our group is exhausted, beyond frustrated and way beyond bored, and more than ready to call it quits. I mean really, if we'd known, we could've fired up a board game or something! Finally, after four hours of keeping us "on hold". Our GM walks back in. "Well, guys, they got in a gun battle in the reactor chamber. And one of the characters rolled a fumble... He hit the reactor core... "And the entire station [B]just blew up[/B]." [INDENT][I]Where was that thread where the guy was complaining about arbitrary death-by-golem again?[/I][/INDENT] [/QUOTE]
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