Worst role-playing experience?

[heavensblade23]

Anyone got any good stories about players, or even just a campaign, that went off the rails in a particularly memorable way?

 

[rossik]

i dont have a very good, but we were playing something modern, and the player shoot at a car and it exploded!

than, he shoot ate a motocycle...and it exploded!

the game master wasnt very reallistic (like we spent 18 hours to get to the top of the statue of liberty)

 

[Kelek72]

I heard from a guy one time about his game where he "saved" another player's character from a 300' fall by hitting him with a warhammer for a critical just before impact.

In another game, the characters went to modern day New York... where a "drow" group assaulted them. Glad I missed that game!

I once played in a game where our characters heads were cut off but we awoke as just heads resting on a shelf and an imp pee'ed on my brothers head...fun.

 

[heavensblade23]

I once played in a game where our characters heads were cut off but we awoke as just heads resting on a shelf and an imp pee'ed on my brothers head...fun.

That's from a published adventure. When you do get your body back, if you don't specify you put your head back on your shoulders 'carefully' you lose -1 CHA.

These stories, while amusing, aren't really what I was looking for. I want EPIC failure, like the DM that charmed a player's paladin and had him rape a commoner, in detail, creeping out the entire table and I think leading to the dissolution of the group because of repeated creepy incidents like that.

 

[Jerrand Redband]

the rifts experiment

when i was running a Rifts campagin my players went really crazy with the whole from anywhere theme in are group we had Spider-man, a Robotech fighter piolt and his broken veritech, a tech mechanic (fixing the plane that was in pieces on a flatbed), Daffy Duck,
and a dragon who was polymorphed as an elf that did have his memories it was to crazy to run because everyone had a different goal and want to go off in differtent directions had a split group for a couple sessions

 

[Rechan]

I left a group where one of the players played a Dwarf with 6 charisma. She was real convincing, because I just wanted to strangle the player. Interrupting other people, yelling at us, and otherwise just being belligerent.

In another game, a guy (who was asked to leave) literally took five minutes describing his character walking in.

 

[Aeric]

I once played in a Ravenloft game which was dungeon crawl after dungeon crawl...nothing scary about it. The DM used those 3-D dungeon tiles for each level of the towers we were exploring, and it took longer to set up a level than it did to explore it.

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.

 

[Melhaic]

I usually DM, but I took a break for a week and allowed one of the players to run the game. His girlfriend was playing a female swashbuckler type character, and she was followed by a couple of guys in the opening scene and they attacked her and forced her into an alley (they surprised her, and won a grapple) where the proceeded to attempt to rape her. She managed to kind of take one guy out, but the other kept going and actually managed to get her pants off and his "sword" out...Needless to say it was getting weird and Sara was getting pissed. Finally, I just declared that my character was there, and got past the scene.

He wasn't done yet, not at all. We (the PCs and an NPC companion) were to meet with a noble that was setting up an expedition to find a lost doohickey. We get to a dining hall, and an NPC kender is also a guest. While we are figuring out what our mission is/do som planning, the kender proceeds to steal things from the characters without a roll . The kender, of course, was nigh impossible to hit (a 17 from my 4th level fighter missed) and somehow (DM fiat) escaped

All of this aside, he is a really good player , and a good friend, we just don't allow him behind the sceen anymore...

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Anyone got any good stories about players, or even just a campaign, that went off the rails in a particularly memorable way?

I was in a sci-fi campaign. The game system was a new one designed by the DM, and we were the alpha testers. Joy. The setting was a "prison planet". I joined partway in the campaign; we were in a regular part of the city; the north had been taken over by "the warlord" and we were facing off against him. We had a lot of fun creating alliances to fight him (since we couldn't take on an army by ourselves). We had less fun exploring the high tech rules and finding an NPC, Onyx, who was a ridiculously powerful cyborg (with most of his human brain missing).

My character was a gunslinger and doctor. However, we got into combat so rarely he literally only got to shoot a pistol thrice in the campaign. (And once at another PC! Although he had a good reason. A very good reason.) In the first session he was taking on a whole army, so ended up borrowing another character's area-of-effect weapon. (Which meant I gave up an opportunity to learn how my character fought in the rules.)

At the start, through a very contrived scenario (involving absurd luck, and the DM taking over your character if you horribly failed a mental skill roll such as Tactics) one character, a midget named "Bleyes" (for her blue eyes) got control of a mecha. There was a lot of wrangling over that, as she was missing some of the skills necessary to control one (eg weapons skills). She insisted on using the machine guns, ending up nearly killing our own allies twice in a row before she consented to use the much-easier-to-use flame thrower. Giving Bleyes a mecha was a mistake. She had a temper that would go off anytime someone would call her short... and it wasn't in a funny way, but a campaign screwing way. (This was literally what wrecked the campaign.)

We found out that the critical failure rules when my character started healing wounded PCs. One character was mortally wounded in the chest and guts. I fixed those. He was heavily wounded in the arm (not as badly). He lost said arm. Oops! With the literal exception of my own character, every character was wounded throughout the entire campaign. (One character, a "Captain", generally avoided combat, but since he was also a driver he still got injured a lot. Critical miss rules, remember.)

And here the campaign would begin to break down. After the relatively fun battle, we entered a doldrum. I don't recall exactly why we never faced the warlord's forces for a long time, but we didn't. We spent a lot of time getting new tech and some of us abused it. (Getting armored skin, super-strong limbs, etc.) I avoided all that. The DM seemed to be deaf any time I asked about the neural interface for the mecha, but honestly I didn't care that much. I wanted to adventure, not playtest rules we'd hardly ever use.

Here's an example of one bad session/day, from my PoV:

One player was a cybernetician (he made cybernetic limbs, which considering the brutal combat rules put him and I in high demand). He figured he would make a deal with the Blood Halos, a gang that controlled the part of the city to our west. The Blood Haloes existed solely to kill things; they were basically all crazy. He figured he could talk them into aiming their guns at the warlord (who was some distance to the north). He didn't tell anyone where he was going, didn't bring backup or even big guns. He tried using his social skills on the obviously psychopathic gangsters and they took turns shooting him. The bleeding rules were brutal. He eventually managed to contact me through the radio. Naturally I told other PCs what was going on. I got the best driver to get us there quick, and took Onyx, on the grounds that he was so ridiculously powerful that even the Blood Haloes might refrain from shooting. I also brought a bribe - a large number of guns - because diplomacy takes more than sweet talking people. You have to give them something they want. It worked. A little common sense goes a long way, right? My character had to spend hours patching up the cybernetician.

An otherwise good player had a warrior/sniper character. On the same day as the above incident, he received a secret communication from a source north of the wall (where the warlord held sway). He didn't bother to radio any other PC, since this was "secret". He went on his own (oops!), met the contact, and was ambushed by two of the warlord's operatives. An exciting battle erupted. The contact died (d'oh!), the two operatives died, the PC was very nearly dead. Just washing up from patching the idiot from the previous incident up, I got a call from him. Why the heck didn't he take backup? Didn't he realize some of us carry (and are expert in the use of) small concealable weapons like, I don't know, pistols? I guess not! So I had to fetch the (otherwise well-played) PC out of there, and patch him up too. I ended up spending so much time healing other PCs I was literally taking penalties for not sleeping. (It was reasonable; patching those two guys up took 16 hours.)

In a session I missed, Bleyes got into a bar brawl (someone called her short when she danced on a table) which resulted in her goring the Captain with her spiked helmet. In the next session, I showed up and my character had to heal the Captain's "masculine" injury. (Yuck.)

And the incident that wrecked the campaign. There were only three of us that day; myself, Bleyes and "the Captain" (a military officer and driver).

Finally we got a large alliance together. We met in a kind of parliament building, while most of the soldiers gathered in a tavern. One filled with alcohol. Keep that in mind.

Our PCs had discovered a supercomputer that could keep track of soldiers on both sides of the conflict. We were running scenarios, and each one showed our grand alliance would be defeated by the warlord. However, the warlord was really close to finding a secret weapon; if we didn't attack now, it would be too late!

At the political meeting, Bleyes was randomly called short by one of the politicos. She couldn't even tell which side the shout had come from. She got angry and swore revenge. Fortunately, the security guard picked her up and dropped her on the other side of the building from her mecha. Bleyes had a slow speed (due to being short). Crisis averted, or so we thought.

She later went to the bar while my character and the Captain were talking to the AI. By purest chance the Captain's player was out of the room when this happened. Bleyes wanted to find out who had called her short as some of the politicos had gone to the bar, but no one owned up, and eventually the bartender insulted her (by calling her short). She got her giant pink mecha and used the flame thrower on the bar. So there went most of our allied soldiers... as our AI suddenly informed us. (Over 400 casualties. Oh, and a big fire.) The Captain's player was very surprised when he came back. Seems we had to babysit the psycho PC, or something. *Rolls Eyes.*

So, to wit. Big fire, that our characters had to put out to save the civilians. Dead soldiers. No alliance, so no hope of beating the warlord. (I mean, we were already likely to lose, and now this...) Great move there. Oh, and people were so stupid they didn't even notice the giant pink mecha attacking our own guys! They thought it was an invisible mecha. (The DM was rather heavy handed in trying to keep Bleyes in the campaign. And by rather I really mean extremely.)

Naturally I took the psycho into custody before things got worse. Unfortunately things just conspired against me. Bleyes was an electrical genius and all-round mad scientist, and so I knew that for her to escape from a prison was easy. I had to use some kind of hooked together cubicle to keep her prisoner (a cardboard prison). It wasn't much taller than her. Many players were gone that day and they (and all the NPCs) were run like morons, so no help there. One NPC got drunk and tied up our entire radio system. Even if I could have contacted Onyx, I couldn't have used him as a guard because he'd follow Bleyes' orders as well as mine (literally). I wasn't going to let a psycho tell Onyx to go on a killing spree. The Captain (the player was a good friend of Bleyes' player) threatened to shoot me for treason. So my tired character had to literally guard Bleyes by himself. And was very tired due to all the surgeries he had to perform (people had gotten limbs burned off, etc).

Bleyes complained (reasonably) that there wasn't a bucket to take a leak in. Naturally I couldn't count on an NPC to get a bucket for me, I had to leave the makeshift prison and get one myself. The whole time I knew Bleyes would try to escape as no one was watching her. Good thing she failed her skill checks ... barely. I literally could not find a bucket. Apparently my own character didn't keep a bucket at his home. Or something stupid like that. I had to use a helmet I found, as no other bucket-like object was available within reasonable walking istance. I tossed that over, and Bleyes was angry at being given a helmet to use... it was too small, or something. But just big enough to give Bleyes the boost needed to jump out of the prison. That's when I had to use my tranq-pistol on a PC. Since I hadn't fired a shot in many sessions, Bleyes' player couldn't believe I could actually hit her character. (She was small, gives a good bonus vs attacks.) When she found out my shooting skill was better than my healing skill the player said I was playing the worst doctor ever. Then something else heavy-handed occurred (the AI went evil, Onyx went slightly nuts, etc) and we all had to evacuate the building. We didn't have handcuffs. I had to drug Bleyes (and since she was smart, had to try it twice; psycho isn't necessarily stupid).

That was the last session I attended. I don't know what happened since and frankly don't care.

 

[Rechan]

I had a druid villain who was insane. The players found out after the fact that she was insane due to a miscarriage.

This really upset the female player in the group. She hadn't had one herself, but she accused me of immaturity because I was being light on the matter.