Worst/Most Ridiculous Gaming Experience Within a Homebrew Campaign

[Bialaska]

When I look at some of the campaigns I GMed in the past, some of them were rather ridiculous and stupid. But I excuse it with me and the others being 13 to 15 back then, we have matured much since.

One campaign in particular was rather over the top. I can't remember all the party members (the group had 10 players or so, where half were only semi-active, while another 5 were always there).

Well, a few things that were definitely over the top:

The groups fighter pulling the Kraken up from the seas below by succeeding lots of strength checks.

The wild mage doing experimentation with some dragon components she had gained her hands on, ending with the creation of a new dragon species (which was Pink).

The group accidentially travelling to the past (horray for Wild Mages), where they ended up beating off some ogres and stuff from a primitive human village. When they returned to their own time, the Wild Mage realized she had dropped one of her spellbooks, and they found out that there was a new nation (a powerful magocracy), where the party was seen as gods or demi-gods.

The evil scrawny Drow elven wizard (not the wild mage, who was Chaotic Neutral) becomes jealous of the Centaur's manly prowess and sedates the poor centaur, who then finds himself being fixed upon awakening again...

The groups Flying Dinosaur Thief (can't remember their name, they were in the Complete book of Humanoids) and the Drow Elven wizard hates eachother, and do harm to eachother when possible. But they are subjected to a curse after slaying an innocent wizard apprentice (who had looked at the Drow Elf the wrong way and looked like he had money), which bound them together, so they added together their HP and then shared them, so if one of them got injured both got injured and they could not get more than 30 feet from eachother. Needless to say they were less than pleased.

There were several other over-the-top happenings in the campaign, but I still use the excuse that we were young and foolish.

 

[FungiMuncher]

One of my worst experiences was when we started up an acquaintance's 2ed campaign, about a year after 3E was out. That in itself was pretty difficult - felt like going back to calculus class. However, that wasn't the worst of it.

I was playing a lawful good ranger. I was basically playing him as a law-and-order frontier sheriff type. Around third level, our party meets up with the god of chaos (!). He whips out the Deck of Many Things (!) and instructs us that we must draw from the deck, and wants to know how many cards we're going to choose. My character's turn comes up, and I say 'Zero.' I'm told that is not an option. After about an hour a 'discussion,' I find out that my character can't run away, hide, cajole, attack, or even commit suicide; he MUST pick.

Oh, I was so angry. This was a total rail-roading moment. I chose, and continued with the character for a couple of sessions. I tried to figure out how to remove this taint of chaos, or even better, punish him, but just kept hitting brick-wall after brick-wall. That just made me angrier - the other low-level characters could challenge the gods, but not mine.

We didn't have the luxury of youth here, however. We were all in our mid-twenties to early thirties. There were a lot of other pretty goofy things going on in the campaign world. That probably should have tipped me off about how the game would go.

 

[Mallus]

The Chronicle of Burne, and Some Others of Lesser Importance


(almost 5 years and still going)

 

[Evilhalfling]

One awful pick-up con game involved a homebrewed world, the NPC Dragon M aster, his all-powerful girlfriend/assassin, and a wall that displayed their artifacts. I was playing a superstitious 3rd level elven thief, who worshiped trees. Someone else was playing a 3rd lvl Oriental adventures monk. A third was playing a 5/9/x? Drow, triple-class F/MU/Th (even 1e had powergamers)

At one point we were being chased by 5 of the death knights, I was wondering when the others would show up. We ducked into a cave, and found a treasure pile of untold riches. We backed out slowly. On a hunch I started apologizing to Tiamat for bothering her lair. The DM looked upset.

In general, no campaign where low level characters were picked as the chosen of the gods has ever gone well.
Exception - one I ran with the halfling "messiah" who went to his death, never knowing if he was the person in the proficiency - leaving his problematical crowd of believers behind.

 

[PeterWeller]

When I look at some of the campaigns I GMed in the past, some of them were rather ridiculous and stupid. But I excuse it with me and the others being 13 to 15 back then, we have matured much since.

One campaign in particular was rather over the top. I can't remember all the party members (the group had 10 players or so, where half were only semi-active, while another 5 were always there).

Well, a few things that were definitely over the top:

The groups fighter pulling the Kraken up from the seas below by succeeding lots of strength checks.

The wild mage doing experimentation with some dragon components she had gained her hands on, ending with the creation of a new dragon species (which was Pink).

The group accidentially travelling to the past (horray for Wild Mages), where they ended up beating off some ogres and stuff from a primitive human village. When they returned to their own time, the Wild Mage realized she had dropped one of her spellbooks, and they found out that there was a new nation (a powerful magocracy), where the party was seen as gods or demi-gods.

The evil scrawny Drow elven wizard (not the wild mage, who was Chaotic Neutral) becomes jealous of the Centaur's manly prowess and sedates the poor centaur, who then finds himself being fixed upon awakening again...

The groups Flying Dinosaur Thief (can't remember their name, they were in the Complete book of Humanoids) and the Drow Elven wizard hates eachother, and do harm to eachother when possible. But they are subjected to a curse after slaying an innocent wizard apprentice (who had looked at the Drow Elf the wrong way and looked like he had money), which bound them together, so they added together their HP and then shared them, so if one of them got injured both got injured and they could not get more than 30 feet from eachother. Needless to say they were less than pleased.

There were several other over-the-top happenings in the campaign, but I still use the excuse that we were young and foolish.

Wrong thread, dude. All this stuff is AWESOME!

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

I´m not sure this counts, but my first DM had a tendency to play "by the RAW" in incredibly annoying ways...

Like using the random encounter tables, and not fudging the rolls..


"But Gary, we are 1st level! We can´t fight 12 trolls yet!"
"Too bad, thats what the dice say you encounter!"

 

[JoeBlank]

Ah, the pre-teen gaming days. The worst was probably the strange maze where we were collecting little white balls that were evenly distrubuted every 10' or so, until we got chased by a big yellow orb with a huge mouth.

Yep, we were stuck in a Pac-Man game.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Ah, the pre-teen gaming days. The worst was probably the strange maze where we were collecting little white balls that were evenly distrubuted every 10' or so, until we got chased by a big yellow orb with a huge mouth.

Yep, we were stuck in a Pac-Man game.

That's the worst? That's hillarious. Did you also get chased by ghosts, or were you supposed to be the ghosts?

 

[Remathilis]

Same DM, one sucky, one humorous.

1.) My first PC was a retired rogue who "went straight" only to find his wife dead and child missing (cue adventuring excuse). Well, we find the murderer and beat his brains in, but my child is now with an evil death-necromancer cultist across "a barren expanse of ice and snow". Naturally, we all pack up, get a wagon, and go on the endless plains of glass, when the DM stops us and says "You can't go there. You're not high enough level. You will die, and I don't want my campaign to end." He blocked us so hard (we couldn't find wagons, no town would give us requisite amounts of supplies) that my PC said [Expletive] it, I'll WALK the dang field and left the party to go do so. (Cue new PC).

2.) Same DM. There were no half-elves on his world, not because he hated the race or it was biologically impossible, but "No elf would ever think to sleep with a human." (He was a big elf-fanboi). However, the easiest way to make sure something happens in game is to say it can't; me and another player (who was playing an elven sorcerer, me a human cleric) began dating, so magically our characters began dating. The DM was powerless to stop it, but it infuriated him to no end (something her and I loved).

 

[That One Guy]

2.) Same DM. There were no half-elves on his world, not because he hated the race or it was biologically impossible, but "No elf would ever think to sleep with a human." (He was a big elf-fanboi). However, the easiest way to make sure something happens in game is to say it can't; me and another player (who was playing an elven sorcerer, me a human cleric) began dating, so magically our characters began dating. The DM was powerless to stop it, but it infuriated him to no end (something her and I loved).

Awesome. That made me so happy.

I think the OP has us all beat. The worst game I've ever PCed had a lot of potential to be cool. Essentially, our DM had us spend a few weeks making PCs for an Eberron game. Then all the NPCs sounded the same and the world was pretty much falling apart. We then woke up in a lab in like... 1860s(?) NY. It could've been really fun, but at that point he was like, "I'm sorry guys. I actually have nothing prepared and can't run this game."

Worst game I've ever run (I've made 'really bad DM moves' back in the day, but I tell myself I don't do those so much anymore) was an intentionally satirical game. The villains were an order of bards known as the singers of sorrow. They would sing/scream songs that bemoaned life. Then people who heard these songs would bleed from the ears until they mindlessly followed the bards as undead. There was a hidden temple with a magical conch (that every PC pronounced as conCH) so then the PCs put a giant mask on the wall and called it Olmec. A PC also decided (after defeating the singers of sorrow) that he needed a zombie monkey... so that happened. The PCs also took over the town guard and started a guild of sorts whose secret base was the hidden temple. I think they also renamed one of the guildmembers Kirk Fogg. Basically, everything was a parody of something and if the PCs wanted to do anything, they just had to try... assuming the dice went in their favour - it happened.