Walking away from a game...

[Achan hiArusa]

Mine aren't that bad. I had a game where the DM had already scripted everyone's life including the personality development subplots we were supposed to go through just like a Final Fantasy Game (I have no problem playing those games) and no matter what we did we could not change our path except for her favorite player who she was willing to bend her careful plots for. I left after about 6 months in frustration.

The second group was a group that decided that since I wasn't willing to drive in a foot of snow that they would have one of them run the game and invited me to come back as a player. This was after they decided they didn't like the game I originally wanted to run (A GURPS Traveller/Transhuman Space remix) after the first session because it was too much roleplaying. What they wanted to do is kill things in a Star Wars Saga game. This was due to two players out of five who just complained all the time. So bye.

 

[shadzar]

Pre-3rd (pre-USB printers/scanners and still needing to Xerox things for copies) was running a game for a store that wanted to let anyone play. I had to pay for all materials like handouts for all the players and every one needed them, but I wasn't allowed to put a cap on the number of players. While many were trading CCGs and talking about other stuff rather than paying attention, when it hit 20+ player after about the 3rd session, I just didn't return to run the 4th or later sessions.

Playing at someone else's game at it wasn't going quite right, and I said I wanted my character to do something that was simple, would give me time to excuse myself for a few minutes for a bathroom break then a smoke, then could come back and handle the single that that would tkae about a minute to do. Was told flat out "no", and then ignored, so packed up and went home where I could smoke and find a bathroom.

Playing in a store game that had a bit high humor factor, too high for me at times, but was dealing with it and had some things to do that would make me miss a few sessions in a row so made it where my character would be able to not really be there and not be missed. The DM told me to hand him my character sheet folder...not a sheet, but the whole book as I don't just tear them out when I was writing them in the folder itself; because the game was his and so were all the characters in it. Even had he asked for a copy of the character, as some do, the comment about the characters and game belonging to him ended that one. Mind you I have played in many a game where the DM kept a copy of the character sheets to make sure things didn't get changed on "accident" and where they would make sure items weren't missed as treasure, and to write down XP bonuses and such from their notes to make sure the players got what was owed to their characters. That just wasn't the case here. They were HIS characters.

Invited to a game, and like a previous poster, there really was not a game as described, but unlike them there was really no game. It was just D&D books nearby while everyone got drunk and/or high on drugs. Left in the middle of that nonsense on more than one occasion with different groups. Not that they would have even had the faculties to notice someone had left.

The "kids party", invited to a game where half the players had kids, half didn't. It ended up the ones without kids and were wanting to play a game got tired of playing pause every 3 minutes cause a child needs something, so those without kids left those with kids to have their kids party. Those without kids didn't come to entertain and help babysit 3 families worth of kids.

Of course the games where its mostly couples only and they are more interested in their SO rather than the game...didn't return.

Monty Haul/Python and "prostitution" laden games, didn't return. Jokes are ok, but not that often, and a game where you take a break form the brothels to go to a dungeon, are not my cup of tea.

One of those D&D in store events, Game Day I think, left in the middle because the DM didn't know what they were doing and didn't care, just claimed they could DM to get the free minis from the adventure.

A game where the DM had a story to tell and everyone was riding the train down the tracks, but when it left the tracks and the players decided to have a spirited in character "aggressive negotiation" about what to do, the DM blew up the world and threw a temper tantrum cause it ruined his story he was trying to tell. He came back to not just one, but several fewer players when he decided to have the world ret-coned to not being blown up.

 

[Mort]

I walked away from a Dark*Matter game due to a real dick move on the part of the GM. Long story short, I'm a recovering addict, the GM knew this and, for some reason, decided to make my character a drunk by fiat. By which I mean that he decided my character was a raging alcoholic, without my knowledge (I did not purchase the Flaw for this). I did not find out about this decision of his until after play began...

The very first session started in a bar where, despite my not having said that my character was drinking alcohol, the GM made me roll to see if my character was sober. Then, despite my making that roll, he had me roll again - this time with massive penalties - to see if my character could drive after leaving the bar. My character failed the roll, totaled his car and, immediately thereafter, was arrested.

The GM then gloated triumphantly that he had "beat" my character. When I told him where he could shove his game, he accused me of not being a "good sport" and launched into a soliloquy about how I didn't understand his genius and that he was "taking RPGs to a new level" by using the players' own foibles against them (without their permission, of course, and in complete violation of the actual rules).

I never gamed with that guy again.

DMs on a powertrip are bad! And this is about as bad as I've seen. I'm not sure I would have even lasted the session under these circumstances.

 

[Jared Rascher]

I needed to take a break from running the game that I had been running for a while, and one of the people in the game had already volunteered his house for our games for a while. He volunteered to take over the DM spot, and said that he had been running this campaign for years for different friends.

The overall explanation was that he was taking a bunch of old BECMI and 1st Edition Adventures and stringing them into a campaign arc, converting them to 3.5 (and he had said he originally had done this under 3.0).

When we got the the night where we were making up characters, he said that the campaign had "roles." There had to be a "prince," a "royal spy," a "bodyguard," etc. Okay, that's not too bad. Then he said that the prince had to be an arcane caster. Okay.

When I asked if the bodyguard could be a ranger, he said no. I asked if he could be a swashbuckler, so I could be more of an "in the know" court intrigue guy, he said no. Finally he said that I pretty much had to be a fighter or a paladin if I was going to be the bodyguard.

Well, I wasn't too thrilled with this limitation, but I ran with it, and made a fighter.

Then he started talking about how the campaign was going to be just like a novel. I should have been worried at this point, but I didn't have time to DM, and I wanted to at least play, so I rolled with it.

After a few sessions, it started getting more and more frustrating. Although we made 3.5 characters, he often announced, in the middle of a combat, that we were using old rules to cover a situation. For example, in one fist fight I got into, I had to use the old hand to hand combat chart from 1st edition.

We got up to about 7th level (after starting at 3rd), and I had a nice suit of armor and a nice greatsword, even though I was built for a longsword and shield (after all, this was "old school," and I couldn't buy or sell magic items, so I had to use the greatsword). Then we had the run in with the people using "rust monster dust" to destroy my armor.

Then we had a mysterious encounter where all of us, out of combat, got captured and dumped in a dungeon without any equipment. On top of that, because it was an old 1st edition adventure where some of the storyline had to do with finding improvised weapons, he wouldn't let me pick up rocks or bones to use in combat because it wasn't the right kind of bones or rocks (meaning the adventure didn't call for us to be able to make them into weapons).

So for a few sessions my entire purpose was to just take damage while the spellcasters killed things. That was fun.

Then the "prince" mysteriously disappeared and my friend had to make up a new character, his half-dragon half brother, for the next leg of the story arc. My friend has no choice in this, he just has to switch characters because that's what happens in the story (the most amusing part of this being that my friend made the half-dragon a half-dragon/half-elf, and the prince had been human . . . our DM never caught the disconnect).

Did I mention that in the middle of combat he ruled that fireball automatically destroys all magical treasure, so we lost a +1 longsword? Or that he ruled that fireballs filled the whole volume of an area like in older editions? Or that Iron Golems were only hurt by +3 weapons instead of magic and adamantine weapons?

Finally, my fighter, after scraping together a magic weapon and some armor again, got to contribute in a fight. We killed a vampire, and I lost a few levels. Now, there was no "role" in the campaign for a cleric, because the DM thought they were boring. We had a magic item that could cast restoration . . . but it was with the prince when he ran away.

When we figured out where we had to go next in the campaign, I figured out how much time I had to removed the negative levels before they became permanent. When I asked how long it was going to take to get to the next town on our quest where there might be someone to cast restoration on me, he told me it was one day longer than it would take for my negative levels to become permanent.

He didn't have a scale on his maps, and he literally figured out that it would take a day longer than I had to remove the levels based on how long he "felt" like it should take.

That was the last time I showed up for the game.

 

[Piratecat]

I left one game due to an out of control player -- someone I liked in person, but hated to game with. This is the same guy I booted from my own campaign for cheating. No drama, though; I just slid out until the DM dealt with him.

More excitingly, my first DM out of college was an guy in his 30s who lived alone in a house in Cambridge. He had a weird horse fixation; there were plastic horse models (the same ones pre-teen girls have) displayed on shelves all through his house, and he insisted that all mounts have their own personalities and character sheets and special abilities. This got creepier and creepier, with major focus on the horses, which might have been okay if he was a good DM - which he wasn't.

 

[Greg K]

The first time involved me going to a high level AD&D 1e game run by a coworker. The characters were modeled after Wolverine, Green Lantern and Dr. Strange. I don't like high level D&D games and, if I want superheroes, I had a lot of games including Marvel, DC, and Champions.

The second time was a group that I had started and had to leave, temporarily, due to school and work. I returned to find the player we brought in had convinced everyone to play Rolemaster. Not a problem I liked Rolemaster.
The first problem was his best friend whom he brought in. The guy was a powergaming butt kicking douche (no offense to the power gamers and butt-kickers). I brought in my rogue and the guy tries telling me that I don't know how to make a character, because I didn't max out my ranks in my main weapon or body development. Even after telling him that I had been playing the game for ten years and my character would start putting more emphasis after he has been adventuring, the dude wouldn't stop harping.
In addition, to the jerk, the game was one big combat fest with nothing else. Just one fight after another. Boring and not the style of gaming the group had been playing.
After the game, I asked the GM if all of his sessions were like this and he said, "Yes". So, I told him that I would not return.
He then asked what was wrong and I told him that I don't enjoy hack and slash games. I want to explore the setting. I want to interact with NPCs. I wanted the style that we had been playing before I left and everyone seemed to enjoy.
To my surprise, he breathed a sigh of relief. He hated the game he was running. He focused the game on combat, because his friend would whine and throw tantrums if there was anything except combat. Since nobody else spoke up he just assumed everyone was having fun.
Several days later, he called me up to ask me back. He talked to the other players and they were tolerating the game. They wanted more interaction with the setting and NPCs. So that was what he was going to give the group. His friend could either accept it or leave.
So, I went back.

 

[kitsune9]

These are flipping horror stories. How will I get to sleep tonight?

Two-fifths of vodka with Prince Valium should do it.

 

[Dykstrav]

Wow... Where do I start?

I've walked out on several games, many during a session in progress. I suspect that I'm somewhat unique in this situation, most people don't seem to burn through groups like I do. The vast majority of the time, I leave a group because the DM/GM has control issues, differing in severity and expression, but always a dominant part of their personality. Sometimes it's an extremely obnoxious player.

I'm going to just share a brief rundown on groups that I've left on various editions, it just seems a natural way to do it.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: The last 1E game I walked out of was in April of 1997, and it was over an obnoxious player and a DM that basically told me to deal with it. We had a guy that was playing a halfling thief. The player was committed to the idea that his thief must steal things, and that his choice of race, class, and alignment meant that he had carte blanche to do as he pleased. I was playing a paladin at the time, his background was that he had become a paladin after his fiancee was killed by undead and he'd sworn to avenge her. As a grim, focused sort, he was the butt of constant jokes and harassment from the thief. At first, it was all in character and a bit amusing. Of course, my paladin did most of the talking on behalf of the party because he had a Charisma score of 17--by far, the highest in the group. The thief would grumble about me not getting the best rewards for our missions, but it was all in good fun.

In a dungeon expedition, the party was slogging through a bunch of skeletons on the first level and decided to camp out for the night. We set up a camp near the dungeon entrance, secured the doors to our chamber, and took turns on watch. The next morning, several people had items missing. Later on that day, the halfling thief casually whipped out our items in preparations for a battle (our holy water, flaming oil, and the like). Naturally, the group got pissed and confronted him about it, to which the player immediately jumped out-of-character and called on the DM to save him. "I don't allow inter-party conflict in my games. You can't fight each other." The players looked at him, each other, and basically stayed pissed about it while the halfling thief used our pilfered goods willy-nilly. The second night on watch, we didn't allow the halfling to take a watch. The party was awoken in the middle of the night by a bunch of skeletons bursting into the room. Our weapons (and that thief) were gone. We had to beat feet to escape, only to find our weapons hanging from our ropes from trees outside the dungeon.

We immediately pulled aside the DM and asked him what was going on. Apparently, the thief had snuck out of the room with two people specifically watching him, took everyone's weapons, and then baited a bunch of skeletons to follow him back to our camp while he tied our weapons up in the tree outside. The DM explained that he found this behavior perfectly acceptable because the halfling thief was doing it "in character" and because he hadn't directly attacked us--the skeletons had.

Four people, including myself, walked out of that game right then and there.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition: 2E saw a glut of DMs that, for whatever reason, viewed the game as "theirs." It was sort of like dealing with frustrated novelists that wanted to dictate to you the actions, dress, background, and possibly even the dialogue of your character.

Suffice to say, I walked out of several 2E games where a DM told me that I was required to play a pre-gen that he designed (and read an accompanying 20+ page document to play the character "right") or flat-out told that my character "would never do that." I really hate playing a guessing game where I'm trying to figure out what the DM wants me to do in a situation.

Dungeons & Dragons (3E/3.5): The last game I walked out in in the 3.5 era was in June of 2008. The group had a DM that was a total basement-dwelling troglodyte who was disturbing and depressing on several different levels. We had a lesbian couple playing with us, and he was constantly frustrated because he was so damned dense he was trying to pick them up. He'd come on to one or the other and constantly shower her with in-game perks like cool magic items or allowing them to accomplish things without rolling, and when that woman turned him down, he'd lash out by having bad things happen to that character while putting the moves on her girlfriend. A few of the people there explained their preferences to him... To which he would reply, "No, they're not like that, they just don't have boyfriends." It was sort of like trying to talk to a desperate, sexually frustrated brick wall. he just didn't get it.

As far a game-related issues, he would make up house rules on the fly, arbitrarily add monsters to an encounter that he felt was too easy, and otherwise engage in acts of ass-hattery designed to demonstrate dominance over the players. We had a two-weapon ranger, and the DM would constantly tell him to rebuild to an archery ranger. That wasn't the type of character the guy wanted to play, so he never did--but it was brought up at least once every session about how his ranger was "underpowered" because he wasn't an archery ranger. One day, he had an entire tribe of orcs dog-pile on our ranger and take him into negative hit points literally minutes after beating that dead horse again. The player walked outside and the DM followed right on his heels. I was hosting at my house that day, so I followed to give the DM a piece of my mind as well. It basically boiled down to the DM telling the ranger's player to "take the game seriously" and play his character "right" or leave the game. I told the DM to pack up his stuff, get the hell out of my house, and find a new group.

Dungeons & Dragons (4E): I've only left two 4E groups so far. It's actually been a bit difficult for me to get into 4E groups, most of the groups in my area seem to balk at the idea that I'd play 4E without using the character builder or a Dungeons & Dragons Insider account. I've been told that it's too complex of a game for me to understand and that I NEED a computer to perform basic arithmetic for me. Meh... Not the sort of people that I want to game with anyway. If I stick with 4E instead of Pathfinder, I'm sure that I'll have more horror stories.

 

[kitsune9]

Wow.

I once walked out on an AD&D game mid-session. Every player at the table did actually. When the DM stands up and proclaims " This is my campaign and you will do exactly as I say!" what else is there to do at that point?

There was one DM we had where we as players gave him the boot after he ran his session. I told this story before in other posts, but he was the most dice-aversive DM I ever played D&D with. He just absolutely hated to roll dice and his encounters wouldn't make sense because of his aversion of it. For example, we would be 1st level characters and we would chase off a troll because we wanted to fight, but the DM didn't want to run the combat so the troll runs away.

However, your DM's comment was similar to this guy's attitude as well. He would tell us what our characters would do and we'd have to argue with him that we're not doing that--consistently.

 

[Wik]

I remember in the eighth grade, playing with a couple of kids that were very much "nerds" (as opposed to me in 8th grade, a kid who was kind of nerdy but that got along well with pretty much everyone). But I had to play with these guys - it was a chance to play D&D with new people, after all!

One session. I made a wizard.

First, they didn't play "by the rules". Which is fine, neither did I. But their "not by the rules" was almost entirely by DM fiat or just random "no, that shouldn't work". Which annoyed me.

But what really got me was how they spoke. In character. Almost all of the time. And it wasn't pretty:

"Come, fellow adventurers, let us search this dungeon!"
"Hark! A goblin!"
"Careful, brave fighter, there could be something in those sacks."

And the GM: "Do you brave souls feel ready for the caverns of despair?"

And so on. And so forth. And absolutely no humour that was actually, y'know, funny. They didn't get any references I made to pop culture.

I'm not describing it well. But at one point, I may have actually charmed a teammate and then convinced him to attack the rest of the party, and turned the entire group of lawful good fools against one another, before I was nervously booted by the GM.

Yeah, I sound like the dick in this story, I know. And, well, I probably was. But holy crap, they were nerds!