Worst role-playing experience?

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Since it seems that many people here are operating under the impression MERP is identical to Rolemaster with regard to system, it seems worth mentioning that it isn't. Not at all. Though derived from Rolemaster, the original MERP game is less than 130 pages long in its entirety and excludes some of the more infamous aspects of Rolemaster (including invisible turtles). Of course, this is the interweb -- don't let facts get in the way of exagerration for effect!

Maybe people are just mixing them up. I've been in that boat. (I once debated how bad Palladium was with someone, but we couldn't get our facts to agree. It turned out we were discussing different editions, and I'd gone through the much worse one.)

Also, what is an invisible turtle?

Speaking of Palladium...

I've already posted in this thread, so this isn't the worst campaign I was in, but it was pretty bad. I'll try to avoid mentioning rules, as I'm not sure I can blame the DM for that.

The DM could be easily bribed. This was not a good sign. One character (a dwarven longbowman - yes, you read that right) bribed him to use a backgammon die as his damage. (Due to a special magic weapon.) He did have to suffer from a random curse that he wouldn't find out immediately.

My character was a thri-kren. Yeah, that wasn't bright move. However, it actually wasn't overpowered except for the psionics, and a human (or other sane race) psychic would have been equally overpowered.

Because my character was a thri-kreen, he got a horror factor. It was a low one, so not game breaking. Needless to say, this made it difficult to maneuver in cities, which is as it should be. Unfortunately, the DM went overboard. I found myself followed by guards (no big surprise there), who were gently trying to escort me outside of town (again, no surprise). I was still in town for the adventuring stuff, though. Then I ran into a homeless guy, who was so surprised (he basically stumbled out of a dark alley and bumped into me) that he made a horror save, and critically missed the save. Instead of running in terror, he had a heart attack on the spot and died.

The guards, thinking I could kill people just by looking at them, became more insistent about shoving me out of town. (Ironically, with my broken psionic powers, I could kill people just by looking at them, but I certainly wouldn't abuse it by killing random innocent people!)

Out of town, I tried to go hunting. It never worked out. The first time, I tried jumping at a deer. Lo and behold, the critical misses struck again. I rolled high on attack, the deer critically missed its save. Splat! Way to much splat! The meat was spread so far and wide I couldn't even find a scrap of it. (The next hunting expedition failed through usual, non PC-screwing means.)

Later, we ran into a forest deity, or something like that. She "blessed" me by making animals walk in front of me and drop dead, for several weeks. Needless to say, a member of a species obssessed with hunting didn't find this appealing.

Finally, the encounters were too easy. The harpies, for instance, never used ranged weapons. (We were fighting them on a ship. They could have toasted us easily.) Eventually the DM was pulling out angels to threaten the party effectively.

 

[Teflon Billy]

This is the point where I would have turned to his co-worker (who unfortunately, didn't show up in your example) and say;

"What are the people in your office going to say about dillweed here when they find out that in the first couple of minutes of gaming with people he'd never met before, he tried to have his character rape the married barmaid?"

Him not having shown up, I would have cut dillweed off at this point and sent him out the door.

"Oh, wrong answer. But thanks for playing. Unfortunately we don't have any lovely parting gifts at this time, so please make your way quickly out the door before the end of the commercial break..."

Hey, what can I tell you? We were younger then and unused to odd crap the world would throw at us.

Our reflexes regarding such behaviour are more finely tuned these 12 years later

 

[Chimera]

Hey, what can I tell you? We were younger then and unused to odd crap the world would throw at us.

True enough. I did some pretty crappy things when I was young, and have put up with some really unpleasant things in groups because I didn't want to start a fight.

So take my response as a "If I was thinking and had my spine wound up properly...".

 

[Treebore]

I wish I could share my worst gaming experiences with you, no I don't. I'm glad I have successfully edited them out of my memories.

Now the ones I have allowed myself to remember don't measure up to what you have shared here, so I won't bother with those either.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Hey, what can I tell you? We were younger then and unused to odd crap the world would throw at us.

Our reflexes regarding such behaviour are more finely tuned these 12 years later

Well, that certainly beats out my crazy woman who was obsessed with sanitary napkins in a post apocalyptic setting.

I am reminded of another bad game I got sucked into. A guy I know through various assorted family and his friends (highschoolers at the time) were having gaming night, and me being the special gaming celebrity, I got invited to play. The guy I knew was running the game, and I don't think he quite understood that people had some amount of freedom of choice in the game with the non-combat stuff rather than it being essentially a choose your own adventure.

It got bad when the group found a barn for the night.

Dude I know - You guys are about ready for bed.

Player 1 - I there a loft?

Dude I know - Yes.

Player 1 - I want to go sleep there.

Dude I know - you head up to the loft where there is a lovely white sheep....

Without Player 1 getting a chance to change his mind, back off, or anything, he was obtaining unlawful carnal knowledge of this sheep, and the description was a little too graphic for me to believe that the dude had no firsthand experience with it. I should also point out that he did in fact raise sheep.

 

[scourger]

My worst gaming experience was showing up one weeknight at a friend's house with all my dice, books, minis & maps to run a game and only he was there. The other five "friends" who were also scheduled to play skipped, including the one who lived at the same house (plus I worked with the guy and he didn't even bother to tell me all day that he wouldn't be there). I offered to run the game just for the host, but he wisely chose to spend the evening with his girlfriend. I went home, watched TV & didn't DM for that group again for a year; and only then because my weekend group broke up. In retrospect, I guess they were trying to tell me that they weren't enjoying that game. Ironically, I really liked it and even had my best short story ever come out of it.

The worst thing I ever saw was a friend's book getting urinated upon by the toddler son of a DM I found for us. In hindsight, I think the kid just wanted his dad's attention. That whole place was a mess. My buddy never went back but I gave a couple more tries before quitting.

 

[Dlsharrock]

Now the ones I have allowed myself to remember don't measure up to what you have shared here, so I won't bother with those either.

And we haven't even had the Brazilian death squad guy post yet. Although essentially that wasn't a game ending experience as far as I know. In fact, if memory serves, the psychotic goons, corrupt cop and seedy prostitutes thoroughly enjoyed themselves and the DM went on to enjoy many more games (not with them, admittedly, possibly due to the fact that all the players had an average mortality rate of one game session- OUT OF CHARACTER!) Wow. I'll never forget that story as long as I live.

 

[Silver Moon]

....you head up to the loft where there is a lovely white sheep..... I should also point out that he did in fact raise sheep.

It's people like that who give those of us who do raise sheep a bad name. I will point out that the hay goes up into the loft, not the sheep. Sheep can't climb ladders and if they were up there they would continue to eat all of the hay until they got sick (and you'd run out of hay pretty fast).

 

[Treebore]

Sheep can't climb ladders? M goats can. At least the 3 month old ones can. The adults stayed off of my roof. When I took the ladder down, so did the 3 month olds.

 

[jdrakeh]

Also, what is an invisible turtle?

It's a reference to a 'joke' entry on the Rolemaster/MERP critical fumbles table (it does, in fact, appear to be present in MERP despite my earlier assertion)*. The result in MERP reads "Stumble over an unseen, imaginary, deceased turtle. You are very confused. Stunned 3 rounds." It's basically an inside designer joke attached to an otherwise ordinary fumble result of 'confusion'. Representing it as anything other than a deliberate joke (which detractors of the system often do) is more than a bit disingenuous

*It's tucked away in a less obvious manner on the MERP table, thus my overlooking it initially (I've never once rolled the result in more than five years of playing MERP, though I have fallen victim to it in Rolemaster more than a few times).