Worst role-playing experience?

[cr0m]

My very, very good friend ran his first D&D game for our group. He was all on about how epic it was going to be, how he'd planned it out until 20th level, etc. We were pretty pumped. The first session we found out our 1st characters had all been named as beneficiaries of a murdered wizard who owned a magic shop. As none of them knew the dead mage, this was supposed to spur us to investigate his death.

We looted the crap out of that magic shop. Then we held a fire sale and with the ample proceeds we raised the dead wizard, in order to ask him who killed him.

This sorta wasn't in the plan. When the wizard came back to life, the DM had him threaten to kill us and flee from us. We were sorta nervous about what would happen if he recognized most of his best magic items on us, but we followed him back to the shop.

The shop promptly exploded in a ball of fire, leaving "not even a scrap of him to resurrect". That's when we decided to quit for the ever. He's a great guy though, and it was a rookie DM mistake.

I once let the players in my AD&D game make a magical axe imbued with psionic powers of teleport, time shift and healing. To say the party barbarian was unstoppable was an understatement. So how do you deal with a Conan-type who can stop time, teleport behind you and hit you over the head with a battle axe, and his psionic ally who can dominate and/or psionic blast anyone who isn't also a psionic? Naturally the BBEG had a team of teleporting skeletons sheathed in adamantium that could shoot... lasers out of their eyesockets.

Fricken lasers. It was an arms race, what can I say?

Same campaign, I had the players find a small white snake while rafting. I decided that if they attacked it, it was an animal beloved of a certain god who was sure to wreak havoc on them. If they befriended it, it was a deadly poisonous agent of the BBEG. They befriended it and it killed the barbarian.

Don't worry, he got raised. But the player was pissed, because it so obvious a catch-22, and the barbarian was notorious for beating impossible odds and had never died in 9 levels. Plus the Con loss.

 

[Tewligan]

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?

Because it's such a ridiculous thing to believe that I would be a bit doubtful of the person's grasp on reality and how they deal with it. Because dragons aren't real, it turns out.

 

[Cassander]

Because it's such a ridiculous thing to believe that I would be a bit doubtful of the person's grasp on reality and how they deal with it. Because dragons aren't real, it turns out.

Is believing one's soul is somehow draconic any more unreal than believing that a sky god throws down lightning bolts or that water can be magically turned into wine or that the placement of the stars at someone's birth somehow controls their destiny? Are you afraid of people who believe these things? Do you also question their grasp on reality?

 

[Nifft]

Is believing one's soul is somehow draconic any more unreal than believing that a sky god throws down lightning bolts or that water can be magically turned into wine or that the placement of the stars at someone's birth somehow controls their destiny? Are you afraid of people who believe these things? Do you also question their grasp on reality?

Only when they vote. (Hey look, now it's religion AND politics!)

Can we get back to role-playing horror now?

Thanks, -- N

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Rolemaster.

We had been playing for a while, and was up against the BBEG of the first big adventure/story arc. The GM had set things up well, and it was going to be a tough battle.

Now Rolemaster (for those that don't know it) uses crit tables. A lucky roll can kill someone in one shot. It also is open ended, that a really good dice roll can be added to by another (and how well you hit really influences how much damage you do).

So my monk has highest initiative, and I open end on my first attack. twice. With that roll I get a really good crit table. I roll perfectly on my crit. Dead BBEG. Part of the problem of Rolemaster - those kind of things can happen.

All the players cheered. The DM looked rather annoyed.

The next session he declared he was going to roll all of the players combat rolls himself, behind the screen.
I handed him my sheet and said "Well you might as well have the character as you are going to play him" or something like that and left.

 

[Chimera]

Bad experiences? More than my fair share, so those of you who don't have any? Slackers! I'm taking yours for you! Thank me!

1> Game groups where otherwise previously intelligent people suddenly become "this game has to be run on the easiest possible setting and we don't do more than hack things down - no thinking, no possible challenge allowed" players. I've had my last two games than I've run suddenly veer into this territory.

Me (GM) blatantly says "You need to do X".
Players say "No, that's not important. We need to do (insert wild hair here).
Me (GM, remember?) says "Um, NO. You need to do X in order to compete this adventure".
Players say "No, I don't think so. That can't be right. We need to do (improbable act)."
Me (?!?!??!?!?!!) Thinks/outright says "How can 'GM says' = Can't Be Right?"

2> The game where I was clearly invited, but when I showed up, the GM just kept repeating "I didn't think you'd come". Next he showed me his closet full of every rule book ever printed and his 5 linear feet of printed off PDFs and warned me that he was a stickler for the rules and would hold me to X, Y and Z. Because I'm playing a Wizard, he tells me that I'd better account for every single spell component and how many of them I have, and that they'd better be available in this (cold region) area or... (tells me story of player he screwed by never allowing him to cast a spell again because the component wouldn't be locally available for gathering.) When I took Eschew Materials he initially tried to rule it out because it wasn't in the PHB (*IT IS*), despite him earlier pointing out how many rule books he owned and used. Got mad because I took it.
Then we have encounters well above our level, where enemy spells seem to last indefinitely, not the duration given in the books. Our four first level PCs end up fighting a Goblin Shaman with a +2 Cold weapon. WHAT??? Oh, and that was AFTER the one armed Owlbear skeleton. We're all killed except the Rogue with the Diehard feat, who is at -9. He and the goblin stand toe-to-toe for something like 10 rounds without either managing to be killed (the GM having gone from open rolling to rolling behind a screen) when suddenly, two other goblins run in, kill the first goblin, take his weapon and run out the door.

The GM accuses me of having read the adventure because I figure out something amazingly easy. Gets a mite too hostile about it for my tastes.

Then the kicker, the idiot tells me by e-mail that I'm no longer welcome because....

"You're a rules lawyer and we like to play fast and loose with the rules."

(See Chimera laughing and waving good-riddance! "Goodbye Liar! Goodbye Hypocrite!")


3> Late 80's, Game Store. Large game with too many players, won't allow more. Kid sitting by himself who wants to play. Gets me and other guy, he runs a game. His world has One City, One Road, One Dungeon. The World of (Rectums). Seriously, every single person we meet, even the guards and barmaids, are obnoxiously rude and try to intimidate us out of our money. EVERYONE. One encounter in the dungeon, doesn't go real well, but we get a very small (too small) amount of money. We go back to town. Rinse and Repeat general jacka'ery. Other player decides he has better things to do and wanders off. I try the intellectual approach and try to talk to the kid about this bad game, asking how I'm supposed to be "having fun". He just smiles and cackles. I decide that *I* have better things to do and quit, which leads to much whining about "WHY???" But it's too late and I'm not up for more shenanigans. I explained why and you laughed. This tells me that you're beyond hope.

Next week, I return. I get a spot at the larger game. Kid still sitting by himself, trying to sucker others into playing. Only this time, when it looked like he got someone, I stood up and advised them to the contrary. Kid was really upset that I was ruining his fun.

He wasn't there the next week.

 

[Chimera]

Public Service Hijack

Because it's such a ridiculous thing to believe that I would be a bit doubtful of the person's grasp on reality and how they deal with it. Because dragons aren't real, it turns out.

Otherkin don't bother me much. I've met more than a few. It's the few rare ones however, usually the 'dragon' ones, who get lost along the way.

I've known two Dragonkin who got too into it, divorcing themselves from their Humanity (and thus, their sanity). One died of a heart attack in his mid-30's (having gone completely off the deep end and believing that the strokes and other physical trauma he was experiencing were signs of 'transformation' and not signs of DYING). That one became dangerously angry with me, and viewed it as the biggest offense he'd ever recieved, when I told him that he was human.

The other one is about half-way down that same trail, having lost himself in the same paranormal conspiracy theories (in which he believe he has an active part).

So my advice for dealing with Otherkin is: Take a close look at how their view their Humanity. If they're divorcing themselves from Humanity, they're divorcing themselves from Sanity, and you'd best keep that in mind in dealing with them.

 

[Kheti sa-Menik]

Public Service Hijack




Otherkin don't bother me much. I've met more than a few. It's the few rare ones however, usually the 'dragon' ones, who get lost along the way.

I've known two Dragonkin who got too into it, divorcing themselves from their Humanity (and thus, their sanity). One died of a heart attack in his mid-30's (having gone completely off the deep end and believing that the strokes and other physical trauma he was experiencing were signs of 'transformation' and not signs of DYING). That one became dangerously angry with me, and viewed it as the biggest offense he'd ever recieved, when I told him that he was human.

The other one is about half-way down that same trail, having lost himself in the same paranormal conspiracy theories (in which he believe he has an active part).

So my advice for dealing with Otherkin is: Take a close look at how their view their Humanity. If they're divorcing themselves from Humanity, they're divorcing themselves from Sanity, and you'd best keep that in mind in dealing with them.

Holy......whew....I just read a little bit on these people. Talk about being seriously divorced from reality. I thought these websites I found on "otherkin" were gaming websites...but they're not. These people think it's *real*. Wow...just wow. These folks are free and roaming the streets. That is scary.

 

[nerfherder]

What, exactly, is scary about that?

I'd be scared if someone I'd booted from my group could transform into something that could BURN MY HOUSE DOWN!!! :-O

 

[Sparafucile]

I went to a game at a gaming store, where my character received a Staff of the Magi, a +8 Bracers of Armor, and a Wand of Lightning Bolts (10th level). The character I rolled up with 6th level. everyone else in the party was decked out in similarly powerful gear.

The second and third encouters lasted 1 round each, and then there was some inner party conflict between 2-3 of my fellow players, which lasted about two hours and ended in 2 PC deaths and someone throwing a die at the wall.

I didn't go back.