Worst role-playing experience?

[Dlsharrock]

I prefer the term Tolkein-nazi.

This isn't restricted to DMs. I've DMd in Middle-Earth before (and right now on Enworld actually) and have come across my fair share of 'purists' who corrected me on every little detail:

DM: it's a full moon, so you can see the approaching band of orcs quite well, though they can't see you as they're too preoccupied with squabbling.
Player1: reign my horse toward the overhang so they can't see me.
Player2: yeah, I'll do the same
Purist-Git: um, actually, you did say that this evening was September 10th, and actually it wouldn't be a full moon. Look, if you check this chronological calendar marked with the moon cycles which I downloaded from www.pastytolkienfanswithnofriends.com you can clearly see the moon is in the first quarter. Anyway, you wouldn't get orcs in this region of Beleriand because Melkor never used the south gate of Angband, he always sent his legions through the north which was unchallenged by the Elves and... (so on)

On the other hand, I do my best to keep things as close to the known setting as I can, and not just in order to pre-empt the purists, so maybe that makes me a Tolkien-Nazi.. yikes! I certainly try not to waffle on about it though, and the DM you talk about sounds like he had a serious rod up his backside.

 

[Teflon Billy]

I've posted this before, but it never really gets old...

One of my players (well-thought-of RPG industry freelancer, the late Nigel Findley) asked if he could bring a friend from work to our weekly game. My near-instant response: "Certainly!" (more players cut from Nigel's cloth would add to the group immeasurably).

Due to circumstances beyond his control, Nigel was unable to attend or get ahold of his work-friend to tell him. So the guy shows up anyway. No problem so far.

We invite him in, get him a coffee, and let him play the character of a guy who had just recently left the group (A Were-tiger). The system was GURPS. This is where we join the story....

Dramatis Personae

• Fraser: Playing a Human mercenary
• Ian: Playing a Human wizard
• Mike: playing an elf bard.
• Myself: Playing the frustrated GM
• El Creepo: Playing the Were-Tiger.

Teflon Billy: Ok, so you guys are in the tavern where we ended last session, as you are sitting at the table...

El Creepo: Is there a serving wench around?

Teflon billy: Um, sure. "what would you like stranger?"

El Creepo: I'd like your company for the evening. I am a very wealthy man.

Fraser: Does that gnome who was here last week still want to sell us a potion?

Teflon Billy: You don't see him aroun...

El Creepo: What is her answer?

Teflon Billy: Huh? Oh, she laughs and mentions that her husband, the hostler, would likely have a thing or two to say about that.

El Creepo: Hrrmmm

Mike: Ok, so what are we going to do about the head in the box we found? It claims it's the rightful ruler of Cros Mogmun right? Do we believe it?

Ian: Well, I don't. But I think we should try and...

El Creepo: Where did the serving wench go after we spoke?

Teflon Billy: Upstairs, said she was calling it a night and thanked you for your patronage.

Mike: I give her an extra gold piece and tell her "the pleasure was all mine" and give her a sly bardic wink.

Fraser: Anyway, we should definitely get that gnome to...

El Creepo: I'm heading upstairs.

Teflon Billy: For what?

El Creepo: How long does it take me to get up there?

Teflon Billy: Not long, less than a minute, it's only a three story building.

El Creepo: Can I use my tracking to find out where the wench went?

Teflon Billy: (pause) okaaaaaay......(rolls some dice) she's in the third room on the third floor.

El Creepo: I'm going there.

Ian (puzzled) What's up?

El Creepo: I'll knock on her door.

Teflon Billy: She answers and asks "what do you want?"

El Creepo: I push my way into her room and explain to her again that I want her for the night.

Teflon Billy: (getting pretty fed with this guy already and we aren't 2 minutes into the game) Yeah, well...she explains again that she is a married woman, and while she is very flattered, she is simply not interested. Get me?

El Creepo: Well, what she's interested in means very little to me. (gestures to his character sheet) Am I this strong without switching to my tiger-form? How do I make a roll to grab her?

Teflon Billy: What?

El CreepoI'm going to try and pin her down. Can I do that with one hand so that I have the other one free?

*Disbelief all around the table*

Fraser: I'm rolling danger sense...

Ian: I'm preparing a fireball starting now...

Mike: I load a silver bolt into my hand crossbow...

Teflon Billy: (rolls dice) Danger upstairs! Third Floor! Third Room!

My Guys: a ton of babble translating as "we charge upstairs"

El Creepo: Can they react like that? They don't know what's happening up here.

Teflon Billy: You grapple the serving girl easily enough...she draws a knife from her bodice and makes a called shot stab to the vitals (rolls dice) well, she hit.

El Creepo: Only silver can hurt me...

Teflon Billy: No, silver damage doesn't regenerate, but you still take the wounds. In this case, 3 for her roll, tripled for impaling to the vitals is 9.

El Creepo: Well, I'm still up. I guess I'll have to kill her...she should've just cooperated.

Teflon Billy: *shakes head and grumbles* Make your roll.

*She is badly injured, but still up*

Teflon Billy: Gentlemen, you arrive...

El Creepo: That seemed awfully quick

Fraser: Tough !

Ian: I unleash my fireball at him (El Creepo's character is burned for a lot of damage…added to the knife wound he is pretty banged up).

Mike: I'll send a silver bolt into his torso (The damage is not huge, but is non-healable)

El Creepo: What are you guys doing!!!????

*Silence + glares*

Teflon Billy: You're up

El Creepo: I jump out the window!

Teflon Billy: Ok, make a jump roll (he fails) damage to both his legs breaks one, sprains the other and puts him unconscious.

*Silence*

Teflon Billy: Well...that was fcuked up!

* A confused babble erupts where El Creepo claims that he was told we were mature and could handle mature themes*

Unbelievable to me to this day!

• We had never met this guy before
• His first action upon meeting us was to try and roleplay out a rape scene
• He started this basically as I said "you all meet in a tavern"
• he was going to do this in the presence of someone he worked with!

It's one of the few times in my gaming life when I actually "hit the reset button", announcing that none of that had happened and calling the game for that week.

 

[cr0m]

At the risk of offending the very nice guy who ran a one-shot of Ars Magica at a local hobby shop, here's one of my worst. He was a really nice guy who I could tell genuinely liked the system, but didn't have a lot of experience running one-shots.

If the flyer for your Ars Magica one-shot advertises "best magic system in any roleplaying game", make more than two of the seven pregens mages.

If not, make sure that of the other five mundane characters, one does not start the game cursed.

Avoid making two of the PCs animals.

Except if one is a magical horse with the gift of speech.

Unless he'll be burned at the stake if he speaks in front of NPCs.

You should also mention this before the party reaches the village.

Under no circumstances should the dog PC be unable to speak to 5 of the other 6 characters.

Or any NPCs that are not animals.

This is especially ill-advised for an investigation type scenario.

In addition, an hour-long description of the setting is probably too long for a four hour game.

Lastly when the party, after an hour of attempting to scale a cliff to get to the stolen maguffin, finally gains entrance to the magical cave and discovers the shapeshifting bad guy--don't make him transformed into a mute, non-magical, utterly harmless fox.

p.s. The fact that the cave was too small for the horse PC was just mean.

 

[billd91]

I've posted this before, but it never really gets old...

It may be old, but it still brings a smile to my face whenever I read it.

 

[Silver Moon]

I've posted this before, but it never really gets old.....It's one of the few times in my gaming life when I actually "hit the reset button", announcing that none of that had happened and calling the game for that week.

That's amazing! The most inappropriate thing that ever happened with our group was a novice DM having an NPC bard sing a song about V.D. (to the tune of the Willie Nelson song "To all the girls I've loved before"). His girlfriend was very embarassed.

 

[Chimera]

El Creepo: Well, what she's interested in means very little to me.

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..."

 

[hong]

Unfortunately, that reminds me of another game that broke since it was set in LotR as well. Not as good as yours, Tracer, but relevant.

(BTW, Tracer, I do sympathize there. But then, I like pointing out to Tolkein nazis that JRR had absolutely no concept of pacing or relevance with examples and seeing them squirm )

So, a buddy of mine convinced us all to play Middle Earth RP, the Rolemaster variation. I played an Elf wizard, another guy played a dwarf fighter-type and finally we had the equivalent of a human rogue. Things went normally for a while: we walked around a bit, had some RP and then finally settled in an Inn for the night.

While sleeping, we were attacked by a couple of Orc bandits and what I can only describe as the mother of all frustrating battles ensued. The other two grabbed their melee weapons and set to, we had one Orc each. I grabbed my crossbow, figuring that I was dead if I got into melee with the Orc but none of us could hit and do significant damage for ages.

My Orc closed with me and I started taking penalties with the bow, so I flung the crossbow aside and took the heavily armed and armoured Orc bandit on with my bare hands. My puny, low strength, elf wizard snapped the Orc's neck with one blow. I then went about beating the other two Orcs unconscious... only I was SO good that I killed them both by accident.

The other two PCs balked at that, I thought the whole thing was rather silly and we never played Rolemaster ever again.

The only reason to play Rolemaster (or MERP) is for the chance to roll on those sweet, sweet critical tables. Stumbling over an imaginary, unseen turtle FTW!

 

[Dlsharrock]

Is this thread turning into 'creepiest person I ever roleplayed with?'
Cool:

El creepiest guy was at college and we will refer to him as Lord of War. He refereed a Paranoia game and about five of us played. Two were RPG novices, so god only knows what they made of gaming after that.

To set the scene: we'd planned to play in our usual spot around the living room or dining room table, in comfort, with crisps and Coke, usual game sort of setup. But this game was at LoW's house and his mum was unexpectedly home from work. She was one of those austere, fussy kinds of mums whose house always sort of sparkles and smells of vacuum cleaners. She banished us and we wound up in LoW's spider infested shed, squatting on upturned milk crates and trying not to breath in too much dust. LoW was a big person and sat on the highest box in the shed, so he sort of loomed over us in a fleshy kind of way. To say it was cramped would be an understatement.

IC, We were a bunch of back-stabbing mercenaries sent offworld to rid a colony of some troublesome aliens. We were given a cool jeep covered in scary weapons and I remember, to give him credit, LoW went to a lot of trouble to repaint an Action Man jeep and cover it in Airfix bits and bobs so it looked the business with our miniatures in it - in true Paranoia style we didn't use official minis, we used Star Wars figures, one guy had an Obelix action figure kitted out in GI Joe clothes, another had one of those brown plastic soldiers that come in a set of about 200, and one cross dressing Action Man in a Barbie outfit (under deep suspicion for subversive behaviour) towering over everyone else. In Character he was the same height as the rest of our PCs of course, but it added to the fun and naturally he was designated driver .

So I had high hopes for a generally enjoyable experience. Then it all went a bit strange.

The game was basically a rip-off tongue in cheek version of the Aliens movie, with the Aliens holding the colonists in an underground lair and our motley crew coming to rescue them. All good fun. But when the combat started, Lord of War surprised us all...

You know when nine yr olds play at war and pretend to shoot one another and they sort of stick their tongue between their teeth and make that 'rrrrrrrrrr' sound to simulate a machine gun? Well, he was doing that. For every combat action we and the NPCs/enemies took. It might have added to the general silliness, but he was really getting into it, with these intense eyes and his cheeks all puffed out, spittle flying everywhere (remember, cramped shed). And when a grenade went off, he'd do the explosion noise... Brkssssshhhh! and use his hands to mimick things blowing up!

He even did the ricochets, 'pteeow peeown!'.

All the humour drained from the game along with the colour from our faces and when LoW called up asking me if I was going to attend the next meet I made an excuse. Everyone else did too. He really had no idea why his game suddenly came to a shuddering halt.

 

[rgard]

When I was in college a guy who was friends w/some of the folks I played Star Wars d6 and Call of Cthulhu with was looking for one more person to round out his D&D game. I said sure. Turns out Dino was a film major who fancied himself quite the storyteller. He had designed the role of my character to be the son of a king blah blah blah. So second session we ever play (possibly even first it's been 13 or 14 years now) I get to the game and warn everyone that I'm super tired, up late studying and had an early test. We're playing for about an hour or so and the game is dull as can be and I'm operating on 3 hrs of sleep and his couch was awful cozy...wake up a lil bit later to find we were attacked by a cave bear while investigating a cave and heh ad just eaten my throat. Of course, i was the cleric in the group. They manage to stabilize me and get me back to town where they are able to heal me..mostly. My voicebox is shot and the healer gives me a bottle of about 20 pills. If I take a pill I'll be able to speak for 2 minutes. These are the only pills he's EVER going to be able to make me. I tell the DM this is a)unfair, and b)highly stupid if he wants me to ever cast any spells. He then says something about how I shouldn't have fallen asleep. Needless to say, I never gamed w/that guy again.

The DM sounds like a loser. It's silly to do that to the player.

 

[jdrakeh]

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!