Worst role-playing experience?

[Kelek72]

I'm fairly certain it was a Ravenloft Adventure if that helps.

Yes. It was my first Ravenloft adventure at a convention and it was an unbeatable swordsman on horseback who cut off our heads.
We ended up in the lich-lords castle (he ruled a domain but I forget his name). At the end of the game, all the other players were dead and my dwarf stood alone facing the lich. I kept making save after save as the DM chose spell after spell from the PHB to throw at me. I doubt the lich even had a list of memorized spells. Finally the DM triumphantly declared "Forcecage! You're left to starve to death. No save."

Weird thing is, people were congratulating me like I had won. It was my first convention and I was a little freaked by the crowd that had gathered as my dwarf made his saves.

 

[Nifft]

No, I don't know how a Scottish werewolf learned to use the nunchaku.

Obviously part of the MacNinjae clan.

Cheers, -- N

 

[ejja_1]

My worst adventure ever was a game where a friend invited me to come over to another friends house for 3rd ed. We sat down and were handed some pregenrated characters that were both drow rogues, armed with standard weapons and equipment. So far no big deal, even though im not a big fan of drow.
We were introduced to the rest of the party wich were also all drow, again no biggie not my tastes but not a big deal.
Then we began the adventure....
Two of the drow stood out from the rest in the following manner.
The first played by someone we will refer to as Biff, was equipped with some strange magical items.
The first item was a cart of everything you can imagine...
The party needed flint and tinder to start a fire, bam the guy pulls it out of his cart...
One of the players needs a bed roll as he can't find one on his character sheet, bam he pulls a spare out of his cart....
My character and another start gathering leaves and branches to help make a screen to help keep our campfire from being seen from outside the camp, bam he presses a button and the cart extends it sides to surround the camp fire and our campsite...
WTF?
Ok whatever we can deal it's a one off and might still be fun yet right?

So we move on to our first encounter the next day.
We suprise a small group of ogres.

Biff and the other character who was played by...wait for it...wait for it....
The DM, charged the enemy as they both had rediculously high init.
They slaughtered the enemy before anyone else could act.
This happened twice more before I got up and left after making a comment about how Biff and the DM should get a house together and have kids.

 

[rgard]

Here's epic for you...

The DM lived with his girlfriend and she played as well. We played at their place. The DM's girlfriend's character always survived and always happened to find choice magic items.

During our last session, the BBEG ignored the girlfriend's character (who was closer to the BBEG and most definitely a greater threat to the BBEG) a Paladin and disintegrated the only other PC (a dwarf fighter) within site, who happened to be down at -4 hp. Of course the girlfriend's Paladin killed the BBEG and once again, got the best magic. Best magic in this case was lawful good aligned armor and horse barding.

The player of the dwarf was visibly annoyed, but kept quiet. He then said he had a bit of a headache and was leaving early, but took a detour to the bathroom.

Apparently, he did an upper-decker on the way out.

That was our last session in that campaign.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Generally, most of my bad experiences have been minor, mostly Plots on Rails or Killer GM type things- a huge, ancient Red Dragon in Room #1 of a dungeon being entered by a party of 1st level PCs? Really?

However, a few players stand out for me:

1) The guy who smelled like he was homeless. He wasn't. He was co-owner of the house that he and 2 of the other gamers in the group lived in.

2) The booger-flicker. He thought nothing of digging for gold and flipping the results at the wall. Thank goodness I wasn't the host. Why the host tolerated it, I have no idea.

3) A guy who invariably played royalty as if they were beyond the law- even the laws of other countries- in the style reminiscent of that "He can't talk to me like that" thread here. Many were the NPCs he killed on a whim in various campaigns. Looking back, I worry about that guy.

The most memorable campaign derail I can think of was when a player actually got his PC exiled for openly prosetlyzing a religion counter to the ruler's. The player and the DM didn't see eye to eye on why this happened, or even that it could or should happen, and after an hour or so of argument, the campaign ended.

Fortunately, not only were they good role-players, they were good buddies and we all still game together with no hard feelings. Just not in that campaign anymore.

***

Another city, another group, another game, another time- I was in a supers campaign, and the party was going out to confront a particularly dangerous group of villains, and we knew we'd be outnumbered. We managed to find 2 mercenary snipers to provide fire support, and went on the mission.

This apparently was cause for the GM to believe that they would make the scenario unchallenging to the PCs because...

In the hours before the confrontation, the 2 professional snipers were unable to find a single location in the chosen encounter area- full of tall trees and buildings- from which to take a shot. As a result, they never did.

It was a 20 minute (game time) melee, which the PCs just managed to survive. On the plus side, our hired snipers didn't get hurt (or even shot at), nor did they expend any of their expensive ammo, while pocketing their full checks!

We didn't play another game with that guy behind the GM's screen.

 

[heavensblade23]

Apparently, he did an upper-decker on the way out.

Never having been the victim of an upper-decker, I'm curious how you find out.

 

[billd91]

I've been involved in the total derailment of a DM's plans at least twice, neither of which caused the complete breakup of a gaming group or campaign. It was all done in a reasonably friendly manner. We just completely derailed the DM's plans.

In the first one, we had 3 dwarf PCs and one pirate. Rather than go on the planned adventure to liberate an orc-held fortress, we decided to strike out for the wilderness and go prospecting. Three years later, we returned to civilization with fabulous mineral wealth, never having done a thing about the orc-held fortress.

In the second one, we were playing a series of oddball chaotics like my elven priest of Erevan Ilesere and Dur, the dim-witted evoker. We were hired by a woman who had a treasure map that others were trying to kill her to get. We were supposed to protect her and get her to the destination. We didn't really focus on that very well, though. First, Dur got us into trouble when we rode into town on a stolen wagon (technically it wasn't so much stolen as we took it from the gypsy-werewolves who tried to kill us). The locals attacked us and he retaliated with a fireball... the started a major fire the swept part of the town. Then, in another town, my character used his magical and thief abilities to "haunt" the inn to bilk the innkeeper out of exorcism fees. It didn't completely work and my PC spent the next several months in a jail. I won't even bring up the PC that was a dwarven cannibal who set the local orphanage on fire. We wondered why the DM had taken to bringing a bottle of Tylenol to the game sessions...

Both were complete and utter derailments, but there were no hard feelings.

 

[billd91]

Never having been the victim of an upper-decker, I'm curious how you find out.

For those of you new to the term:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Upper+Decker

 

[Silver Moon]

I was in a Vampire game where....

On the subject of Vampire, back when my wife and I were on Convention Staff at a local gaming convention we had some major issues with folks running a midnight Vampire Live Action Role Play (LARP). Several players left the designated room during the game, moving it out into the hallway, while the plotline reached a rather sexual point. Guests in more than one room heard the moans and screams and called down to the front desk. Convention staff and security had to shut down the game and send the people on their way.

The next day when discussing this with organizers of another convention we found out that we had it easy compared to them. The prior year the same Vampire gamemaster had run a LARP at their convention that involved role playing out a human sacrifice. At that point in the module the college-aged woman being offered up as the sacrifice dropped her robe, wearing nothing underneath.

They then used a stage-prop knife with retractiable blade that dribbled blood that was played out so realistically that several gamers thought they actually just witnessed a murder and left the room to call 911 on their cellphones to report it. Receiving simultaneous 911 calls of a murder, the Police arrived very quickly. The game dispersed at that point. The convention organizers rather than the gamemaster were deemed to be the responsible parties and had to go down to the police station. They managed to avoid having to go to court but did have to pay legal fees to get the matter resolved, the cost of which took all of the profits that the convention would have earned.

 

[Cassander]

Oh, there was one thing scary about that game: the guy playing the dragon disciple. After he was kicked out of the group, I discovered that he was an 'otherkin' who genuinely believed that he was the soul of a dragon trapped in the body of a human.

What, exactly, is scary about that?