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Worst/Most Ridiculous Gaming Experience Within a Homebrew Campaign
- Thread starter Wyrmshadows
- Start date
vagabundo
Adventurer
My worst was a game two of my brothers co-DMed. It had jackel-headed creatures that hung around in forests and an aimless set random encounters. It was quite surreal and only lasted a session or two.
Eventually my dwarf came across a gold nugget the size of a house and began to mine it. It is a shame that I cannot remember any more details as it was a bizzare world.
Eventually my dwarf came across a gold nugget the size of a house and began to mine it. It is a shame that I cannot remember any more details as it was a bizzare world.
The Ghost
Explorer
I am not sure I can top the OP but here goes...
I was invited to play in a short campaign designed to allow one of the PCs to become a deity. Cool.
The players were all experienced gamers. Four PCs and a DM. 3.5 Epic level - 50th if I remember right. The DM asked me to play a martial type character to balance the party. And to come up with a cool backstory. Ok.
So I write up a Dwarf Fighter/Cleric/Prestige Paladin/Something Else and a three page backstory explaining his life etc. Finally we meet up to play. The DM starts out by telling me that I am dead. Alright.
The DM tells me that my soul is thrust back into my body thousands of years after I had died - I do not remember anything of my past life. Why did I have to write the backstory then?
I wake to see three "people" standing above me - a drow druid, a githyanki wizard, and a robot cleric named Bob. BOB! Seriously? Whatever.
We then learn that we were all summoned here by the gods to help Bob become a diety. Yes, Bob. In order to do so we must go out on four great quests. Alright, enough of Bob - onto gaming.
Quest #1 - We travel through time and find ourselves in an open field a village a half mile away is burning from a rampage by the Tarrasque. We go off to fight it. We enter combat only to find out that we cannot do anything to stop the Tarrasque. No spell we had would hurt it. No attacks we made could overcome its AC. The DM just described us failing at everything we tried. And not because of bad die rolling either. We just could not do anything to it. After a few rounds we are summoned back to the court of gods and there we learn that we were not meant to win. They wanted to see how the all powerful Bob would take loosing. Ok. I guess. I learn later that this encounter had happened before only last time Bob single-handedly destroyed the Tarrasque. Fair enough.
Quest #2 - We travel through time - again. And find ourselves in facing off against an ancient lich. A lich pixie with class levels. Roll Initiative! Pixie goes first and disappears. We spend the next hour wandering around this forest while the DM describes the scenery. We never find the lich. We are then summoned back to court where Bob learns something. At this point I am fast loosing interest in the game. I have done nothing relevant for four hours now!
Quest #3 - We again travel through time. This time we end up in the home of a great vampire lord. We roll initiative. Vampire goes first, attacks me, and kills me in one shot. The DM never rolled any dice! This was my characters true death. Not the backstory he had me write. That was just a dream. Anyway, Bob attempts to save me but fails as per DM. We are the again brought back to the court. I am now suddenly alive. Bob learns about loosing a party friend.
We have now been gaming for 6 hours and decide to call it for the night. 6 hours of listening to the DM describe the world and how nothing we do can affect anything in his world or this plot-line. Needless to say I decided to drop from the group due to "time commitments."
I was invited to play in a short campaign designed to allow one of the PCs to become a deity. Cool.
The players were all experienced gamers. Four PCs and a DM. 3.5 Epic level - 50th if I remember right. The DM asked me to play a martial type character to balance the party. And to come up with a cool backstory. Ok.
So I write up a Dwarf Fighter/Cleric/Prestige Paladin/Something Else and a three page backstory explaining his life etc. Finally we meet up to play. The DM starts out by telling me that I am dead. Alright.
The DM tells me that my soul is thrust back into my body thousands of years after I had died - I do not remember anything of my past life. Why did I have to write the backstory then?
I wake to see three "people" standing above me - a drow druid, a githyanki wizard, and a robot cleric named Bob. BOB! Seriously? Whatever.
We then learn that we were all summoned here by the gods to help Bob become a diety. Yes, Bob. In order to do so we must go out on four great quests. Alright, enough of Bob - onto gaming.
Quest #1 - We travel through time and find ourselves in an open field a village a half mile away is burning from a rampage by the Tarrasque. We go off to fight it. We enter combat only to find out that we cannot do anything to stop the Tarrasque. No spell we had would hurt it. No attacks we made could overcome its AC. The DM just described us failing at everything we tried. And not because of bad die rolling either. We just could not do anything to it. After a few rounds we are summoned back to the court of gods and there we learn that we were not meant to win. They wanted to see how the all powerful Bob would take loosing. Ok. I guess. I learn later that this encounter had happened before only last time Bob single-handedly destroyed the Tarrasque. Fair enough.
Quest #2 - We travel through time - again. And find ourselves in facing off against an ancient lich. A lich pixie with class levels. Roll Initiative! Pixie goes first and disappears. We spend the next hour wandering around this forest while the DM describes the scenery. We never find the lich. We are then summoned back to court where Bob learns something. At this point I am fast loosing interest in the game. I have done nothing relevant for four hours now!
Quest #3 - We again travel through time. This time we end up in the home of a great vampire lord. We roll initiative. Vampire goes first, attacks me, and kills me in one shot. The DM never rolled any dice! This was my characters true death. Not the backstory he had me write. That was just a dream. Anyway, Bob attempts to save me but fails as per DM. We are the again brought back to the court. I am now suddenly alive. Bob learns about loosing a party friend.
We have now been gaming for 6 hours and decide to call it for the night. 6 hours of listening to the DM describe the world and how nothing we do can affect anything in his world or this plot-line. Needless to say I decided to drop from the group due to "time commitments."
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
I would think the wand's physical description would have tipped you off ...
renau1g
First Post
Ok, there's some really great stories on here (again great is a relative statement and I laughed mightily at the robot BOB), but I've got a somewhat decent story. So I and another guy have been DM'ing since 2e for a pretty stable group of players. There's one person who's the Whiney one, upset when his attacks miss, whines when the monster Coup-de-Grace's him when he's in the negative a second time, previously being saved by the Cleric's ranged healing spell. He's whines that the mechanics of the game don't allow him the freedom he wants. I and the other DM say there needs to be mechanics in the game to ensure that rulings happen fairly, i.e. when you try to jump from the balcony and swing from the chandoleer and careen into the enemy, there's a jump check involved, a Dex check to grab the chandoleer, and an attack roll with a bonus +1d6 damage and +2 to hit based on a charge.
Anyways, this person said, I'm going to make my own game up, loosely based on d20. So he spent a long time coming up with it, a game loosely based on Caribbean colonization days and a no-magic game. He was very specific about this point because we couldn't play any character who used magic. When I asked him how we'd heal after injury, he said don't worry about it, I'd see... that should have warned me.
For character generation, we used 5d6, drop the lowest 2, which led to high-powered PC's, which isn't a bad thing. But then he revealed that all the PHB races were out, and we had to pick either a human, or a mutant (think Kevin Costner - Waterworld, who could breath underwater, etc.). On top of that there were huge stat bonuses for each class, a +6 to each important stat.
So I and my wife make Barbarian PC's from the north looking for a cure to a mysterious disease that's wiping out our people and that our holy men can't cure. (I suggested it be Smallpox or something like that). So after character generation I had a 24 Str and a 22 CON, while my wife had the reverse.
We started the game off in a town, divided into 2 parts, Richville and Poorville (yes those were the names). We docked in Poorville and were asking around where we could find a medical person. We found someone who was willing to help us, but they wanted 1000 gold to come, so our next focus was on getting wealth. A one-eyed man was standing on a podium calling out that he'd pay 100 gp to anyone willing to allow him to shoot an apple off their head. My PC agreed thinking he could take a simple arrow shot with his 48 hp (yup, at first lvl). The guy shot and hit my PC in the eye, rendering it useless. I was speechless, the DM hadn't rolled or anything. My PC raged and charged forward intent on crushing this person with his greataxe, but all the peasants decided to get in my way, blocking me from the target and he got away. A man approached me and said he could help. I followed and was informed that this person was the mayor of the town and because everyone had voting rights, Poorville's citizens kept him in power because of stunts like today. I vowed that no matter what heppened my PC was going to kill him, even if it cost him his life.
But the DM told me not to worry, his solution? An eye patch... I was ready to scream, but then he explained that this eye-patch gave me a +2 to Spot checks... I asked how could me losing an eye and covering the whole with this piece of fabric actually help? No real answer, but just told me that it was a scripted event and he'd informed one of the other PC's (his brother) about it pre-game so he wisely stayed out of it...
Ok... I can get over it, I just left the eye-patch there and we continued on our way. We met up with the other two PC's and found common cause. As we were walking to our tavern we heard someone call out to us "Pssstt". After investigating we came upon a stable and entered inside... we encountered Mr.Ed...or at least his in game counterpart... WTF? I asked what is a talking horse doing here. The horse explained that he had been a rich socialite, and found a MAGIC LAMP and summoned a genie, misspoke due to his drunkeness and was turned into the horse. I metagamed and despite my PC believing it to be an evil spirit, I swallowed my tongue and continued on. He told us we needed to get the lamp back, which was in the stablemaster's home... So we decided to rob it at night, and the barbarians were actually the stealthiest ones (as there was no armor allowed) so we snuck in and found the lamp. We decided to knockout the sleeping husband/wife in bed to ensure we could get out of here without being seen.
So we stood next to them and did subdual damage, both of us maxing out damage by the luck of the dice, causing 20 subdual damage...but neither of them were knocked out and so instead of rolling initiative he said they go and start screaming. We tried again and finally subdued them. The DM told us "Now you've done it, the guards are going to be after you because of this" I said fine, I'll cut out their tongues (oh yeah, no alignment in the game either) that way they can't rat us out. He said they'll draw your pictures and that'll lead the authorities to you, so I said I'll cut off their hands then....(note I'm getting more and more frustrated at this time) and he says ... they'll use their stumps to make general arm motions and because we were larger than average that'll lead the guards to us... I sighed and killed them both, which pissed the DM off. I asked how the hell did these commoners survive that, and he said "well not all commoners are first level, this was the StableMASTER after all..."
So we go back to the horse-man (who I forgot to mention has the magic ring embedded in his hoof) , but decide as a group that we'll kill the horse and summon the genie ourselves, as we all wanted the wealth and power. After we succeed on this (and the horse taking about 100 hp to fell) we try the ring and the genie comes out of the lamp. He is angry and says that because the horse-man hadn't completed his 3 wishes the genie couldn't grant more wishes.
We decided to rob the horse-man's house as he had told us about his fabulous wealth. We snuck into Richville and found the house, broke in and found the hidden vault in his room. Now our party rogue-type (a new player, late to the game) tells us he has the lock, and tries to unlock it (after checking for traps and rolling a twenty). The PC takes 20 on the check, but can't open the lock...so we decide to go get some gunpowder and blow it open.
We pour the gunpowder in the keyhole and around the hinges, intent to either blow the door off, or blow out the lock. Now the DM is really angry now and quite snippy with us, so I imagine some sort of bad event happening. We use the person's dining room table as cover and led a trail of gunpowder down the hall and to the top of the stairs, where we were. Once the fuse was lit, we watched (and my wife and the mutant left the building, still not trusting the DM). The equivalent of a 20th level trap went off and each of us had to make a reflex save (which my PC did, but the other guy failed) and then we took 20d6 damage...
I asked WTF could have caused that and was told that because this man had sooooo.... much money he had a MAGIC trap installed, despite being told numerous times magic didn't exist...I survived, but later all the PC's were captured by the guards and executed for the murder of the stablemaster (he had a child hiding in his closet that saw us)
So yeah that's it... no wait there was a magical pommel gem that would give us a +1 to hit and damage...
Yeah that campaign super-sucked.
Anyways, this person said, I'm going to make my own game up, loosely based on d20. So he spent a long time coming up with it, a game loosely based on Caribbean colonization days and a no-magic game. He was very specific about this point because we couldn't play any character who used magic. When I asked him how we'd heal after injury, he said don't worry about it, I'd see... that should have warned me.
For character generation, we used 5d6, drop the lowest 2, which led to high-powered PC's, which isn't a bad thing. But then he revealed that all the PHB races were out, and we had to pick either a human, or a mutant (think Kevin Costner - Waterworld, who could breath underwater, etc.). On top of that there were huge stat bonuses for each class, a +6 to each important stat.
So I and my wife make Barbarian PC's from the north looking for a cure to a mysterious disease that's wiping out our people and that our holy men can't cure. (I suggested it be Smallpox or something like that). So after character generation I had a 24 Str and a 22 CON, while my wife had the reverse.
We started the game off in a town, divided into 2 parts, Richville and Poorville (yes those were the names). We docked in Poorville and were asking around where we could find a medical person. We found someone who was willing to help us, but they wanted 1000 gold to come, so our next focus was on getting wealth. A one-eyed man was standing on a podium calling out that he'd pay 100 gp to anyone willing to allow him to shoot an apple off their head. My PC agreed thinking he could take a simple arrow shot with his 48 hp (yup, at first lvl). The guy shot and hit my PC in the eye, rendering it useless. I was speechless, the DM hadn't rolled or anything. My PC raged and charged forward intent on crushing this person with his greataxe, but all the peasants decided to get in my way, blocking me from the target and he got away. A man approached me and said he could help. I followed and was informed that this person was the mayor of the town and because everyone had voting rights, Poorville's citizens kept him in power because of stunts like today. I vowed that no matter what heppened my PC was going to kill him, even if it cost him his life.
But the DM told me not to worry, his solution? An eye patch... I was ready to scream, but then he explained that this eye-patch gave me a +2 to Spot checks... I asked how could me losing an eye and covering the whole with this piece of fabric actually help? No real answer, but just told me that it was a scripted event and he'd informed one of the other PC's (his brother) about it pre-game so he wisely stayed out of it...
Ok... I can get over it, I just left the eye-patch there and we continued on our way. We met up with the other two PC's and found common cause. As we were walking to our tavern we heard someone call out to us "Pssstt". After investigating we came upon a stable and entered inside... we encountered Mr.Ed...or at least his in game counterpart... WTF? I asked what is a talking horse doing here. The horse explained that he had been a rich socialite, and found a MAGIC LAMP and summoned a genie, misspoke due to his drunkeness and was turned into the horse. I metagamed and despite my PC believing it to be an evil spirit, I swallowed my tongue and continued on. He told us we needed to get the lamp back, which was in the stablemaster's home... So we decided to rob it at night, and the barbarians were actually the stealthiest ones (as there was no armor allowed) so we snuck in and found the lamp. We decided to knockout the sleeping husband/wife in bed to ensure we could get out of here without being seen.
So we stood next to them and did subdual damage, both of us maxing out damage by the luck of the dice, causing 20 subdual damage...but neither of them were knocked out and so instead of rolling initiative he said they go and start screaming. We tried again and finally subdued them. The DM told us "Now you've done it, the guards are going to be after you because of this" I said fine, I'll cut out their tongues (oh yeah, no alignment in the game either) that way they can't rat us out. He said they'll draw your pictures and that'll lead the authorities to you, so I said I'll cut off their hands then....(note I'm getting more and more frustrated at this time) and he says ... they'll use their stumps to make general arm motions and because we were larger than average that'll lead the guards to us... I sighed and killed them both, which pissed the DM off. I asked how the hell did these commoners survive that, and he said "well not all commoners are first level, this was the StableMASTER after all..."
So we go back to the horse-man (who I forgot to mention has the magic ring embedded in his hoof) , but decide as a group that we'll kill the horse and summon the genie ourselves, as we all wanted the wealth and power. After we succeed on this (and the horse taking about 100 hp to fell) we try the ring and the genie comes out of the lamp. He is angry and says that because the horse-man hadn't completed his 3 wishes the genie couldn't grant more wishes.
We decided to rob the horse-man's house as he had told us about his fabulous wealth. We snuck into Richville and found the house, broke in and found the hidden vault in his room. Now our party rogue-type (a new player, late to the game) tells us he has the lock, and tries to unlock it (after checking for traps and rolling a twenty). The PC takes 20 on the check, but can't open the lock...so we decide to go get some gunpowder and blow it open.
We pour the gunpowder in the keyhole and around the hinges, intent to either blow the door off, or blow out the lock. Now the DM is really angry now and quite snippy with us, so I imagine some sort of bad event happening. We use the person's dining room table as cover and led a trail of gunpowder down the hall and to the top of the stairs, where we were. Once the fuse was lit, we watched (and my wife and the mutant left the building, still not trusting the DM). The equivalent of a 20th level trap went off and each of us had to make a reflex save (which my PC did, but the other guy failed) and then we took 20d6 damage...
I asked WTF could have caused that and was told that because this man had sooooo.... much money he had a MAGIC trap installed, despite being told numerous times magic didn't exist...I survived, but later all the PC's were captured by the guards and executed for the murder of the stablemaster (he had a child hiding in his closet that saw us)
So yeah that's it... no wait there was a magical pommel gem that would give us a +1 to hit and damage...
Yeah that campaign super-sucked.
renau1g
First Post
Oh yeah, I was in a PbP on another site that we ran into a poop dragon, who crapped on us from 1,000 feet up instead of a breath weapon, and we had to carry an annoying dimunitive statue around to shut down a portal and this entity insulted us the whole time and laughed at us as the poop fell. We got angry at our inability to hit the dragon (note there was no cover or anything) and so proceeded to bash the construct into dust, where it exploded (a magical trap we were explained)
Dragonbait
Explorer
*snipping out all the stuff not related to homebrew worlds*
We had a GM create an OA-style setting. She was playing around with ideas for the setting, including no dwarves or elves. No problem, but she never finalized her decision.
The campaign starts and she described the town. In her description she mentions an elf. Clearly she changed her mind from the week earlier when we made characters. No big deal at all, no one bats an eye.
2 hours in we get the mission: a murder investigation.
The investigation runs for 7 hours. We get no where. We know that there is a clue in the woods, but the GM rolled randomly to see if we find it. There is only 1 roll allowed, and we dont.
We eventually give up, and she gets an s-eating grin because she won, again. It turns out that the three clues we could find were:
1 - the described at the beginning of the game. Apparently she finalized her decision that there were no native elves and never told us.
2 - One person said that the murderer was agile and walked a little femenin. the was supposed to OBVIOUSLY remind us of the elf that made a two word mention 5 hours prior to us knowing we were going to investigate a mystery. The other two people who saw the murderer said he went back into town but didn't notice anything unusual about the person.
3 - The assassin's clothes were burid in the woods, but the GM rolled on a d20. 50/50 chance of never finding the clothes.
Second example
same GM wants to make a campaign where we build a town. We need to go into detail on what methods we use to do this. If you work on a Sunday equivalent, a Yougoloth will appear and kill you. After 4 hours we get bord. Several plays decide to try to get horses, who apparently live in the woods in this world. They venture out and are attacked and killed by a griffon. The GM didn't want anyone to leave the town.
That GM was the worst I have ever experienced. She liked to win, and set the world up to work against us. If we won, she'd throw a fit.
We had a GM create an OA-style setting. She was playing around with ideas for the setting, including no dwarves or elves. No problem, but she never finalized her decision.
The campaign starts and she described the town. In her description she mentions an elf. Clearly she changed her mind from the week earlier when we made characters. No big deal at all, no one bats an eye.
2 hours in we get the mission: a murder investigation.
The investigation runs for 7 hours. We get no where. We know that there is a clue in the woods, but the GM rolled randomly to see if we find it. There is only 1 roll allowed, and we dont.
We eventually give up, and she gets an s-eating grin because she won, again. It turns out that the three clues we could find were:
1 - the described at the beginning of the game. Apparently she finalized her decision that there were no native elves and never told us.
2 - One person said that the murderer was agile and walked a little femenin. the was supposed to OBVIOUSLY remind us of the elf that made a two word mention 5 hours prior to us knowing we were going to investigate a mystery. The other two people who saw the murderer said he went back into town but didn't notice anything unusual about the person.
3 - The assassin's clothes were burid in the woods, but the GM rolled on a d20. 50/50 chance of never finding the clothes.
Second example
same GM wants to make a campaign where we build a town. We need to go into detail on what methods we use to do this. If you work on a Sunday equivalent, a Yougoloth will appear and kill you. After 4 hours we get bord. Several plays decide to try to get horses, who apparently live in the woods in this world. They venture out and are attacked and killed by a griffon. The GM didn't want anyone to leave the town.
That GM was the worst I have ever experienced. She liked to win, and set the world up to work against us. If we won, she'd throw a fit.
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OchreJelly
First Post
Not so much a bad DM, but more of a “we were 14 and silly” situation. One of my regular players decided to guest DM one time. It was his first time and the adventure he wrote was really bizarre. At one point I had my character listen at a door and the DM said, “uh… you hear floating”. We all instantly assumed there was a beholder in the next room and we were right. Actually it turned out to be a gas spore.
The only detail beyond that I recall is that we were all trapped inside the villain's body, and our only escape was to *ahem* be evacuated. As we were evacuated the DM tells us in classic soap opera fashion that “everything was all just a dream. Your characters wake up with no additional experience”. In all we had fun, and sometimes I wonder if I’ve truly outgrown toilet humor.
The only detail beyond that I recall is that we were all trapped inside the villain's body, and our only escape was to *ahem* be evacuated. As we were evacuated the DM tells us in classic soap opera fashion that “everything was all just a dream. Your characters wake up with no additional experience”. In all we had fun, and sometimes I wonder if I’ve truly outgrown toilet humor.
jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
Sounds like you had a GM who was intent on railroading all of you and who didn't like it when you exercised free will. Such games always suck.
I played in a homebrew made by a guy who I knew through a mutual friend. I didn't know what kind of player he was or what game we were going to play but I was asked to play in his game. It turned out that not only was this game going to take place in a homebrew campaign, but we would be playing a set of rules that he made himself.
So I finally went to his house with my friend and learned that there was going to be 9 players in total, + the GM and that they have already played two sessions in the past. The rules were explained to me (a very brief explanation) and I made a character. He was sort of a ranger/druid type character.
Anyway, the GM made the people in his homebrew very magic-phobic. He made it clear that magic was universally feared, hated and outlawed. So what was everyone playing??? Well half were fighters who upheld this hatred for magic and the other half were..well..magic users.
The one and only session was basically half of the party was fighting the other half for using magic....imagine. I politely excused myself out of the game and went home.
Not sure what the GM was thinking making a world where just about everyone hated magic and then allowing so many magic users didn't make sense. Of course everyone was going to fight.
So I finally went to his house with my friend and learned that there was going to be 9 players in total, + the GM and that they have already played two sessions in the past. The rules were explained to me (a very brief explanation) and I made a character. He was sort of a ranger/druid type character.
Anyway, the GM made the people in his homebrew very magic-phobic. He made it clear that magic was universally feared, hated and outlawed. So what was everyone playing??? Well half were fighters who upheld this hatred for magic and the other half were..well..magic users.
The one and only session was basically half of the party was fighting the other half for using magic....imagine. I politely excused myself out of the game and went home.
Not sure what the GM was thinking making a world where just about everyone hated magic and then allowing so many magic users didn't make sense. Of course everyone was going to fight.
