Worst campaign setting concepts you've ever played

[Chimera]

About twenty years ago I wandered into the local gaming shop on a saturday night. About twenty (no fooling) people were playing a single D&D campaign at a few shoved together tables. No hope of joining them.

One lone kid sitting on the side. He begged me to play with him. I said I would if he could get one other player. It took him a half-hour (pleading with me to play anyways the entire time) to find a second player.

We draw up two characters real quick and start off on "the road". It leads either to the City, or the Dungeon. We are attacked by things we can't survive (running away from them) and mercilessly mocked by passers-by, who, very curiously, do not have the same problems with hostile monsters. Literally every NPC we run across taunts us and is a stark raving a-hole.

We can't survive even getting near the Dungeon, so we head into the city. Our reputation as stupid cowards has somehow spread through the city like wildfire and we get the same (really annoying) treatment from everyone. We can't even get a room at the Inn without being cheated by the Inn Keeper and robbed by the other patrons.

We decide we've had enough of this place and walk out of town.

Ah, now here's where the eternal pit of endless suckiness rears it's head and takes us down for the count.

There *was* no where else.

There was ONE City, ONE Dungeon, ONE road connecting the two. That's it. NOWHERE ELSE.

We both got up and started to walk away. Suddenly his whole attitude changed and he started begging us to stay and play. Suspiciously, we sit down. The very first NPC we run into taunts us and tries to rob us. We both swore at him and left. He followed us around the store (forcing us both to leave) whining about how we had *promised* to play. He simply could not grasp the concept that we didn't want to play if he was going to be that way towards our characters. It was beyond him. We'd say it, he'd get this 'Deer in the Headlights' look for 2-3 seconds, blink, and go off about how we promised to play.

About a month later I showed up again, hoping to find a different game. Here's this kid trying to cajole people into playing with him. No takers. "Don't even THINK about asking me..."

 

[Number47]

I played in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game where the best way to power up your character was to lose a limb. Boy, did that GM ever love cybernetics.

I had another GM in high school who ran Marvel superheroes after school. Little did I know when I joined that he thought that any alien (PC or NPC) should have at least one stat or power of Unearthly rank because they weren't from Earth. Me and my lowly Altered Human. Grr.

 

[Remathilis]

Near my house, there is a FLGS that allows gaming. One night, a couple of friends (actually, people I don't see that much anymore) were bored and looking for a game. Mistake 1.

Though we were all college age, a group of 12-15 year olds (being generous on the older side) had a game. They wanted to know if we wanted in. Ok we said. Mistake 2.

They said we needed 10th level characters. Luckily, we had a group of 12th levels already rolled, so he let us in with them. We plopped down in Waterdeep, and immediately met his other friends PCs, a Vampire Assassin (as in, the PrC, no base class), a Minotaur fighter (no ECL), A half-fiend sorcerer (no ECL), a half-dragon Fighter/Blackguard (same), and the NPC, a V.Old Red Dragon. All CE. Mistake 3.

We, being all good aligned, must now duel to the death. Well, we took out a number of the PCs before the dragon finally fried us. Afterwards, we got up, left, and went to go see a movie. First smart thing we did all evening.

 

[Desdichado]

Hey, Remathalis -- where near Detroit are you? I live in Canton. I don't run games like that.

 

[jdavis]

A Marvel Super Heroes game where the storyline was the United Nations Hero Force. It was meant to be tongue in cheek but it got down right silly real quick. We picked a country and made up a super hero with random (and generally unrelated) powers, I was the Finnish Marauder, I had super speed, hyper tracking and my own pocket dimension. We also had the Ninja Assassin, Master of Disguise, Hitman for Hire, Senator from Hong Kong (with no super powers) and Vlad the super hero representing Transylvania (yes he was a vampire, of course he had random super powers), I think the Supreme Salmon was also there among others. It got real goofy real quick.

We tried the Star Trek game years(decades) ago, we were all Klingons, our first mission, we wrecked the ship in the dry dock, mutinied against the captain (who was a PC the GM had personal issues with) and ran into Captain Kirk and the Enterprise (who we promptly ran away from), there was never a second mission.

Recently we tried D20 modern but instead of coming up with a campaign idea we just made up some average guys and started winging it. We were all killed in a shootout in the second adventure, it's hard to call it a shootout because we were just average guys with no real weapons training. (A race car driver, a High School gym coach, a guy who owned a appliance repair shop, a guy who taught karate to kids, and a homeless crackhead). People were following us so some of the group decided to steal their van (not sure why) nevermind that the machine gun wielding special agents were in the van at the time. I think that was the worst campaign setting I've ever been in, no campaign setting at all. We had no reason for being there or even knowing each other, there was no actual plot at all, and we were just wondering around most of the time, till we got gunned down in the street.

 

[Gnarlo]

I've had 3 different Traveller campaigns that I've ran with 3 different groups, and each and every one of them eventually evolved into the players ignoring the Imperium shattering events going on around them in order to set up merchant companies and play the stock market. Man, I don't know what it is about that game

/gnarlo

 

[DonAdam]

Once, one of my friends, who never had a total grasp of the game, decided to make a world called "Aquarius." What was so special about Aquarius? Well, as we all still like to say, "It's always raining in Aquarius!"

That's right, a world where it always rains. So, of course, you know what an eventual plot hook is going to be, probably the result of some grand adventure when our characters were high level.

But no. We encountered an area that wasn't rained on in the first session.

Most of the bad campaigns I've been in have involved my DMing though. I am 100% guilty of the Realms campaign primarily starring NPC's and way too liberal with the treasure.

My Star Wars games always consisted of breaking into a place and stealing something off the computers. We never played more than one session of a campaign, but that's how they always started.

 

[Orius]

I have to admit that I never went through truly awful games like this. Maybe it's becuase I got into D&D around the time I was finishing high school, and so avoided some of the really immature games.

The worst examples of gaming I ever saw was the first games I played, and they were really mild compared to some of these stories. This was 10 years ago, I was working a summer job as a counselor at the local scout camp. Some of the guys played D&D, the DM was an older guy who'd been playing since at least 1e (he had the original PHB and DMG). He was a killer DM, I remember him telling me about a trap he set up in a dungeon that randomly summoned Demogorgon if it was triggered. I also think he made a lot of stuff up as he went along, but his games were actually pretty good.

Anyway, there was a group of about 11 players. I asked if I could sit in on the group, and join in on a later session if I liked it, the DM agreed. One player, who everyone called Toasty, didn't like the idea, but I sat in anyway, observed the game, and glanced over the rulebooks (from the red or blue box or whatever it was). Not a bad session, the half-orc bartender gave everyone some sealed messages to deliver to a realm beyond the kingom of the bugbears or something. One player tried to open the message, but stopped after the DM said "You really DON'T want to do that..."

Later after they retired to their rooms, the DM introduced one of his favorite monsters to them, a rust monster (though it was smaller than standard rusties). The guy playing a female cleric decided to pick it up and pet it while wearing plate mail. Other than that, it wasn't a big problem.

The next day, I asked if I could play a one-shot session to get some playing experience before joined the main group. The DM agreed, and so me and another guy, plus Toasty, played a quick one-shot session. Anyway we explored these caves, and eventually were kidnapped by some evil female elves who tried to enslave us. I'm not sure if they were supposed to be drow. I had been reading some Conan books, and so played my character to be utterly unwilling to live as a slave. So I grabbed a spear off one of the guards, slashed her with it and then attacked the queen. She knocked me out, then later killed me as an object lesson to one of my companions, who also resisted. The other character, played by Toasty, instead eagerly volunteered the whole time to be the queen's personal slave, if you know what I mean.

So after that I joined the main campaign. A couple of players left, so there were six of us. I got stuck with the female cleric who now had no armor. I didn't want to play a female character, but the other guys tried to convince me, saying, "Dude, you can ride unicorns!". Yeah, that worked. I hate unicorns. Then Toasty wasted half the session by looking for a +2 axe to buy. Finally we all dragged him out of town and on to the adventure. We bumped into a village of pixies who sold us bogus magic items. I got a helm that let me levitate, but when the pixies made the items dissappear (after the village was far behind us), I was floating through the air, and fell on my ass.

After that, a lot of people had left, quit the job, and we just decided to start a new game, this time using 2e rules. Well, not exactly 2e rules. The other players were convinced the DM was going to throw medusas at us, so they cheated. We rolled for ability scores, rerolling any dice that came up less than four. I wanted to be a mage, so they convinced me to play a gnome fighter/mage, since gnomes have an Int bonus. Then the players had my character start with 4 first level and 3 second level spells at first level. And everyone took blind-fighting as a proficiency so we could fight the medusas with our eyes closed...

No medusas, but we ran into a skeletal knight who was interested in talking, but he insted that he was going to kill us when we were done talking. Finally we ran out of things to say, and kicked his undead ass. Later we set up camp. My chatacter had watch, and the DM tells me the wind picks up. So I use my Weather Sense prof to check out what going on. Then an invisible stalker for no reason hits me for 16 points of damage. Scratch my second character. Like I said, he was a killer DM.

Yeah, they weren't much as campaigns, but they were actually fun. And I've been playing ever since. I find these "worst campaign" stories to be amusing, though I really do wonder if some games have truly been that bad.

 

[demiurge1138]

All these are well and bad, but they don't compare to the horror that was Matt's campaign! What's left of that gaming group still refers to it like that, usually with a comically augmented shudder. But believe me, it wasn't funny at the time...

Matt was a player in one of my first campaigns, and I'm surprised that he didn't send me screaming from RPGs for the rest of my life. Matt was a great guy away from the table, but at it he was a cheating little munchkin. And he was a good friend of the DM.

One day, the DM's sick (or maybe it was football practice or something; anyway, he's not there). So he decides, in his infinite wisdom, to let Matt sub for him, just for one session. Boy, was that a bad idea.

We were all 7th level, the eight or so of us. We were exploring an abandoned castle looking for an innocuous heirloom left there by a deposed regent, you know the story. At least, until Matt took over. He had us find a portal in the wine cellar. Realizing (in a prime metagame logical way) that this was where we were supposed to go, the party entered the portal, which sealed behind us. We found ourselves in a white sterile room, converted into an armory by a god-like warlord who was very obviously an avatar of Matt. The sorcerer casts detect magic. His head explodes.

Basically, the warlord tells the party that he has sent through time and space for them to aid him in a fight against great evil. Except that he kills another party member or two before we leave, just because he didn't like them. He then equips us with some of the "less valuable" items from his hoard. I got a +7 throwing returning keen vorpal mercurial scythe. I was playing an abjurer.

He then drags us into his prismatic sphere carraige and takes us to the camp of the first army. 13,000 myconids (note: this was before there were actually myconid stats for 3e. I guess he improvised). We each got one round. Each character killed several myconids in one hit. Then it was Warlord Matt's turn. The next thing we knew, every myconid was hacked to pieces. It turns out that Warlord Matt's pride and joy was a belt of infinite time stop. Matt tallies up experince, and declares that we have all gained 57,000 xp. We all become 13th level. After one encounter.

I could go on. Suffice it to say, by the end of Matt's brief reign of terror, the party was ruininously ubered, he had sexually harrassed my pretty-soon-to-be-girlfriend in game and completely ruined the actual DM's campaign, all the while preventing us from doing anything effective. You can see why it still gives me the shakes.

Demiurge is finally out, and apologizes for the length.

 

[gunter uxbridge]

Imagine this....a first time DM with very little gaming experience wants to run a session with two experienced players in his Dragonlance game. We were about 20 at the time with little else to do, so what the heck, we decided to give Marcus his shot. I played a human Psionicist (2nd edition) and the other player was a human fighter.

The greenhorn DM threw a blue dragon against us in the first encounter...AND WE WERE ONLY FIRST LEVEL!

The even worse part was...

WE BEAT IT!

After seriously twisting the rules and doing some stuff we had no right doing, the dragon took to the air in retreat. I, still having plenty of PSPs left, morph into a griffon, the fighter jumps on my back and we follow hoping it will take us to his horde. I can remember the chase.....

**Fighter waiving his sword** "Come back here you yellow b*****d!"

**Me, in griffon form* "Dude, he's blue."

**Fighter** "You blue b*****d!"

We killed the dragon, took its treasure, jumped about ten levels in a game and never let Marcus DM again.

Stupid, stupid game.

Then again, there was the d6 Star Wars game that I ran where the players got fed up with me and committed suicide by kicking on their ships hyperdrive while docked inside a rebel cruiser. Well....I was having fun anyway.

Or the Marvel Superheroes game where we were playing X-Men. Now....I haven't read so much as a single comic in my life...no interest. So I have NO idea what these characters are like, what their powers are or what their relationships to each other were like, and nobody bothered to explain. Add to that the fact the the GM stunk. Sooooo.....they hand be Colossus and said "Play." Fine....so there we are, getting our collective butts handed to us by cops....regular, human, typically equipped cops. I found a couple of M60 .50 cal machine guns sitting around, put on some shades and proceeded to mow down everything in sight Rambo style. The game folded pretty quickly afterwards.