What is the absolute worse Dm you have ever had give some examples of some of the stuff you have gone through...
A DM who decided to 'test' our newest member, a hexblade, by making two fell beasts that were "magic immune".
A DM who decided an Anti-Paladin Half-Orc and an evil Cleric + orc buddies were a good fight for several new players.
That's just the quickest two.
A DM who felt the that it was his role a the DM to "beat" the players, as if there was a winner and a loser... Worse. DM. Ever. Needless to say, the game did not last very long.
TjD
My personal favorite: When this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbzUfV3_JIA) wasn't even a joke.
Not D&D, it was a White Wolf game, Scion. My wife, Izzy, and I were playing. The DM decided to let her have the power to summon valkyries at will. I...got to have a gun that was a bit more accurate and powerful than usual.
Needless to say, combat encounters basically went like so:
Izzy: I summon valkyries
Me: I run
DM: Why are you running?
Me: Well, either the valkyries can solve the problem, and I don't need to be here. Or they can't, in which case I don't want to be here.
DM: Oh...
I made the game work for me (avoided combat as best I could, used lots of stealth and sneakiness), but...Izzy could summon celestal beings and I could fire a gun.
Every NPC tougher and smarter than you, is lying to you, is out to get you, and always wins initiative. Arbitrary failure of PC abilities and powers without explanation. Arbitrary level reduction without level reduction. Consistent punishing of one player, for what reason no one ever determined. NPCs have many suck-no-save powers, which created permanent disabilities. Most actions, including the casting of spells, governed by houserules the DM refused to explain.
Villain monologues that would take 5 or 10 minutes, during which you could take no actions. And then the villain automatically got to act before the PCs (notwithstainding that the PCs had 10 minutes to get ready).
Railroading to a degree I have never heard anyone else describe. For example, entire party is captured in a fight they could not avoid and had no chance of winning, then spending one or two full sessions hearing descriptions of the torture the PCs endured, with all escape attempts failing unless multiple natural 20s rolled in a row – by each escapee (this capture-torture scenario happened several times).
Examples: “You see a goblin in a field” “I walk toward him” “He throws a spoon at you and it gouges out both your eyes, you are permanently blind” The goblin ends up blinding the entire party before anyone connects a swing.
“A 10’ pit opens up below [your 8th level character]. You fall and break every bone in your body, what do you do?” “I look around, what do I see?” “You fell face down in the mud, and your neck is broken so you can’t turn your head. Also it is dark. You can’t see anything. What do you do?” “Can I reach a healing potion?” “No, all of your bones are broken, you can’t move anything, what do you do?” “I pray to my god for divine intervention.” “you are in so much pain you can’t think well enough to pray, what do you do?” “Well, I guess I lie there and bleed, then.” “Don’t be like that!” (This is an abridged version of a very long scene). EDIT: pit depth and character corrected after I talked to the guy this happened to.
“Your arms and legs turn to spaghetti, and you fall on the ground, what do you do?” “I try to crawl along the ground as best I can” “You can’t. I mean, they are not like spaghetti, they have literally turned into spaghetti, you have no movement in them at all.” I can’t actually remember how that one was resolved.
It’s not like the leadup to any of these was telegraphed in any way, or remotely avoidable, either.
It was pretty tough finding DMs, but we stopped playing with him after high school, by which time a couple of us were ready to take over DM duty. I tried again, almost 30 years later, but after two or three sessions he started to do the same thing. Needless to say, I walked away pretty quickly.
I will also state, since I am aware of the OP’s other threads, that he was the only DM I ever had who was remotely this way.
Beoric wrote:
There were quite a few transformation you-suck-no-save pieces, but that is the one I remember most clearly.
The spoon one was actually the kicker for me. I mean, so the goblins throws a magic spoon and it scoops out one eye (no attack roll or save), fine. But then, as part of the same action it withdraws, crosses the bridge of the nose, and scoops out the other one?
Another frequent one was when you suffer some crippling effect. Player: "Don't I even get a save?" DM: "Ok, you can save if you roll a natural 20." [Player proceeds to roll natural 20, cheering ensues] DM: "ok, that was good for this round but you are still affected and will have to save again next round..." This happened often enough that I actually remember three or four times when natural 20s were actually rolled, and I think there was one time where a 20 was rolled two or three rounds in a row before the character finally succumbed.
Or if you did not expressly say that you took the artifact, or your weapon, or your limb which had just been chopped off, or whateverelse when you went somewhere, you were assumed to have left it behind. Or some 30th level street urchin stole it from you.
Or, my character died when the rest of the party was 14th level, with a lot of powerful magic items. DM wanted me to start at lower level than the rest fo the party (I'm not sure why). He finally approved me to start a 6th level character. When we start playing, the first thing he tells me is that I have lost four levels, and my character has no idea why, and the DM won't tell me what the events were immediately preceding the level loss. He gives me a powerful sentient sword that refuses to give me any bonuses in combat, and which will not allow me to throw it away and take another weapon. I think it also may have possessed me and made me do stupid and dangerous things, but there were so many items like that I can't remember if this was one of them (it got to the point where I started refusing to take any magic items). I couldn't hit a thing. Finally the rest of the party held down a monster so I could try to hit it, and I still missed, with really good rolls. I'm not sure I ever hit a monster throughout the entire short life of that character.
We laugh about it a lot now, but not with him - the friendship ended when I told him I wouldn't play at his table anymore.
THEMNGMNT wrote:
So, I played with this group for over a year simply because I had no other groups to play with at the time. The DM started off as fun, but then...
1. He had a DMPC. I don't have too big of a problem with that, so long as its done right. This was not done right. His character was perfect in every way and it drove everyone crazy. Group was in a bind? He'd save the day. Group was about to fight a big monster? He'd slay it single-handedly. Go into town? All the women loved him and he could drink all he wanted but he'd never get drunk. Oh, did I mention his character was plot-pivitol and basically the son of that dimension's God? Yeah. We were playing with Jesus, basically. And it was no fun. Everyone got tired of him and his masturbatory game style.
2. I was the only girl to play with the group. There were a few others who came in, but they never leasted. As far as I was concerned, I was 'one of the guys'. But he decided to make sure that he took advantage of the fact that I had two X chromosomes.
A. Every female NPC (and there were a LOT) had to be voiced by me. As an amateur voice-actress, I was flattered. ...Until every female was basically inserted to be fap material. I kept telling myself they were rolling dice under the table...
B. My character was a halfling fighter named Hilda, and one of my favorites to date. She was crass, loud, loved to drink, loved to fight and incredibly competent in combat! I loved playing her because I got to do so much weird and awesome stuff! ....So...The DM made her marry his DMPC. Again, I wouldn't mind that at all if the characters actually had an OUNCE of chemistry. But they didn't. She thought he was a self-righteous bore who needed to shut up and get out of her way. But no, she HAD to marry him, I wasn't given an option.
And th part that really killed me was that she went back to save her hometown from destruction, and diid. His character got a statue and a holiday. Oh, don't worry, she was remembered too. As his wife and nothing else. Sorry to rant about that, but I really feel insulted by all of that!
3. He would come in to my house, bitch the whole time, look up porn using my Wi-Fi and made me play waitress. I didn't get a bite of food.
Chandraraj wrote:
thespaceinvader wrote:
If someone manages to "top" that, I think it will make me sad. But I think that sort of story needs to be told, and I'm glad you told it.
Beoric wrote:
Real PC forced to marry Marty Stu DMPC is definitely worse than eye-gouging no-save spoon goblin. Although I am fairly certain, for reasons that I won't go into, that had there been a female player in the group, my bad DM would have behaved somewhat like your bad DM. But perhaps not that bad, yikes!
Yeah, I don't think anyone is going to be able to 'top' using D&D to sexually harass a player.
I think the worst DMing I've experienced as a player is just generally terrible descriptions so that we didn't really have a good idea what was going on. I guess I've been lucky. The worst DMing I personally know of is probably stuff I did back when I was thirteen years old and just learning this whole DMing thing. Making up stupid over-complicated subsystems on the fly to handle all the odd stuff my players wanted to try; punishing the weird kid's character (and hence disrupting the game for everyone else) for the obnoxious stuff the kid (not his character) did/said rather than talking to him outside the game / booting him from the group; an over-reliance on Discworld tropes/ripoffs in making NPCs...
Duskweaver wrote:
related
http://gunshowcomic.com/471
A DM who decided to scream at his players when ever rules were brought into question even when it was to the DM benifit.. Like when they asked a player to confirm a crit and another player spoke up, believing that Elementals didn't actually take crit dmg..
Or a DM who puts players into fights then yanks the enemies away before you can kill them..for every single fight.. Same DM who put players into situations, and while the players were discussiing what to do would make comments of "Oh, that won't work!" or "Can't do that!" and when left with the only choice left, would laught up her sleeve and say "I can't believe you did that!"
Man, I don't feel that bad about mine now some of these are pretty harsh. Though I do remember another few instances along the campaign involving the Half-Orc anti-paladin. A dire ogre spider, immune to most of our elemental attacks, huge creature, two attacks per turn, reach 4, squeezable...Took our party down in roughly three rounds. A fight involving us: An earth elemental fighter, a lizardfolk/celestial cleric (someone had to heal), a baby red, baby, green, and baby copper dragon (pathfinder custom campaign), against 3 enemies. First combat round: baby green is knocked out instantly, no save no to hit, just out cold. It took all of three rounds or so to capture us all (story/plot driven but still). Our baby red took 16 or something hits in one go from the monk!
Worst of all: He took the cleric's holy symbol (we were captured, it was to be expected), but then threw undead at us. The cleric couldn't hit ANYTHING! Even rolling 20s he couldn't hit. He got his symbol back out of pity (and we were all nearly dead after 3 fights) and spent his entire day's worth of healing just to heal up everyone only to nearly die against a pair of multi-spawning Bone Devils.
Gemcat wrote:
Gemcat wrote:
Chandraraj wrote:
Beoric wrote:
As you would expect.
Beoric wrote:
After reading those 2 exceptionally bad stories, I can only say I've yet to meet a bad DM - yet alone someone who could become best friends with those two prime examples of 'bad' DM... does bad even define them? I doubt it.
Still got 20-50 years in me yet... maybe I'll get unlucky down the road and experience something like that. I hope you guys have found a more suitable DM/GM/ST - this games meant to be fun! For everyone!
When I was a teenager I went to a renaissance fair and sat in on an open game of D&D. I was playing a thief, and the DM told me I had to steal something from a party member. Being young and impressionable, I agreed. He then cautioned me that I'd better take off from the group. I was a bit perplexed. How was I going to play if I wasn't in the group anymore? So I agreed again, and he told me I was out of the adventure. Being kind of slow on the uptake, I nodded and hung around to watch the game. The DMs adult friends went through great pains to track my character, now an npc, down and I'll never forget that guys gleeful grin at me when his flying wizard lightning bolted my level 1 thief.
Great game guys
I normally don't like to say negative things, but I'd like to bring something positive out of a thread like this.
My worst experience in gaming was playing with friends where two particular ones just just did not mix well together. Individually they are great people, but at they table it just didn't go well. We tried to push through it as a group and did play together for a very long time. We were never able to really 'diagnose' our own group problem till a smart friend came in, played with us a bit, and told me his observations. I completely agreed with him.
Moral of the story: if you're not having fun in your gaming group, figure out why. There is no point in continuing to play if you're not having fun doing it.
None of my examples can ever top the horrible stories I just read above, but here is one that is mildly amusing. Ok, so not everyone is the same kind of DM. Some are more roleplaying focused, and some more combat focused. This DM was clearly in the category of the latter. He had us seek out a dragon (insert random color here) to rid the region of their terror. So we killed the dragon, all is good. Then we seek out the next dragon (insert next random color here). By now we were already starting to sense a pattern. So we kill that dragon, emerge from its lair, and lo and behold, what do our eyes spy in the distance?
At this point we asked the DM whether this campaign was just going to be a long row of fighting every dragon in the Monster Manual. And he admited so, which was really honest, but we decided against it as a group.
In all fairness, he didn't have a whole lot of experience as a DM, and really enjoyed combat encounters (which is not a crime). But half our group wanted roleplaying as well.
The worst DM I've ever played with wanted to run an Iron Kingdoms campaign. Which for those of you who don't know is basically just d&d - steampunk edition. It's got some neat things about it but is overall not balanced very well, but we were excited about it and totally game. We played for 5 levels.
Crappy DMninship #1) Epic railroad. This guys was OBSESSED with telling us all the details about the world he'd created and tried to force us to act the way he wanted us to. When we didn't he attempted to punish us. For example, our (wanted by the law 2nd level) party was at a cottage getting information from some shopkeep. The fuzz shows up - appx. 8 level 20 battle mages and start beating the guy up. The DM insists we hide and watch. I say **** that, they're after us, I'm not letting the only guy in town who helped us get beat to death while I watch. I'm taking a shot at them. He argues with me for a bit and evenutally rolls is eyes and says "okkaaay." The group of us manages to be very resourceful, throw some smokescreens, scatters, and actually is able to get away. Angry that we outjuked our imminent slaughter, he determines that the character of the player who wasn't even there that week got captured, then tortured and lost several of his limbs.
Crappy DMninship #2) Scale. At third level my character had personally talked to 3 kings and 2 gods. Also, there were level 20 npcs running around EVERYWHERE. I never understood why my poor 3rd level scout was so important to these kings and gods when he had the power of an infant compared to the staff.
#3) He actually forced the party to split up and was running 3 seperate paralell storylines. Which consisted of hours of sitting there watching other people play.
#4) At 5th level he took away everything our characters had been working for for no reason and then gave us consolation prizes. Getting into the spirit of the steampunk theme, my character was working towards a prestige class called the Pistoler. Which is basically a duelist who focuses on pistols. All of my money, skills, and feats had been spent on guns and gun related things. Inexplicably and with no regard to any of my characters decisions, my character was seperated from the group and ALL of my stuff was taken away. In return I got a pair of +2 returning frost throwing axes that I was not allowed to sell.
That was all one guy. That was the end of that campaign for us. I've also played with some very capable DM's who just did some really crappy things. Some examples:
One DM I had made no regard to the actual characters playing. It almost seemed intentional. I played an entire campaign as a spellthief without fighting a single spellcaster. In the next campaign we went with a drow family. So I played a dread necromancer. I was not high enough level to make undead so I inquired whereabouts one could go to find undead I might be able to controll by rebuking. I was told the ONLY place was the obscurely known valley of shadows 2 weeks away, and that my character MUST go to the surface in the opposite direction for his test of Lolth and to do otehrwise was to become a drider and give up the character. He died up there. I rolled a new character up for this campaign. A rogue assassin (how often do you get to play evil prestige classes, right?) Our next quest? We have to go face ghouls in Necropolis Square. The graveyard in the center of town that's full of ghouls that everybody knows about. Where our family had it's own crypt. He literally said "Everyone knows about Necropolis Square" I was like what the hell? LAST session I asked for undead and you said there wasn't any anywhere to which he responded "Well I meant other than of course". Infuriating.
I had one DM who pimped all the bad guys out with superexpensive top of the line gear that we could never access let alone afford, and then always came up with reasons why we couldn't loot their corpses. This was actually a star wars campaign. He was a bit of a railroader too, anytime we wanted to do something that wasn't on the to-do list turrets popped up out of the walls and threatened to gun us down.
One DM loved sowing seeds of discord amongst the party. He'd have secret meetings with players and incentivise them to go against the party. Then the party would have zero trust and would of course end up killing itself when facing serious threats. Then he'd get confused as to why we kept TPKing.
I played a Marvel Superheros game with a guy who had the villains kidnap and eventually murder my super hero. At an impromptu last minute session that I wasn't able to make it to so I wasn't even there.
Wow I think I have too many of these stories.
I just remembered another funny story. We had just started a new campaign with a DM who didn't have much experience as a DM, but he did as a player. Anyway, we started playing his campaign, and met with a general. So of course we asked the general for his name. His name was John. Okay, generic name, no problem. Not much later in the campaign we meet another npc, his name is John too. And another John, and another. The DM was clearly frustrated that we kept asking npc's for their names.
Here's a tip to any DM: Be prepared, have a list of names for your npc's. You don't need their entire life story, but if the DM does not take an interest in his characters, then why should we?
Mr.Durriken wrote:
I had one DM who was horrible, but to be fair so was the rest of the group. Everything was Deux ex Machine, basically prescripted and was goning to play out no matter what we did. I was a Paladin and another player turned out to be Chaotic Evil, and of course turned (with the DM's support) on the rest of the group, of course even players murdering each other couldn't stop the DM's plot, and the whole group were, putting it politely, a bunch of jackasses.
-Fighting a group of Orcs, evil player decides instead to attack the Paladin, party gets nearlily killed as a result, but saved by a passing Druid. Paladin is not actually killed (he was pretty dead) but wakes up healed by the druid, but can't remember being murdered by the Evil Player,
-not to mention enemies that have endless hit points until the party is forced to flee, results that are determined before the dice are even rolled. "the Orc attacks you knocking you down with a critical hit and you take xx damage, -rolls dice-" ...... Wait, how did you know it was a critical hit if you hadn't rolled yet, and if it was going to hit anyways, then why are you even rolling???
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I had a DM literally fall asleep at the table while running a game for us at Origins. Myself, playing a LG Cleric, got into a debate with the other members of the party about why we shouldnt flood the dungeon to kill all the bad guys because they had captives. The DM was snoring loudly and didn't wake up until we went to HQ and found someone to come and tap him on the shoulder.
Matyr wrote:
CCS wrote:
Zathris wrote:
Matyr wrote:
It was my first time playing DnD. It was 3.5 and an online campaign done through AIM chat rooms. The DM had us pick a race and then roll for each stat. My highest roll (an 18) was Cha and I was a Half-Orc. So, I went Paladin (Fell in love with the combination and I've been playing a Half-Orc Paladin ever since). Anyways. We were around 5th level when we were captured and forced to fight in a gladiator arena. After killing another group of gladiators, the DM tells me that I have lost my Paladin powers because I killed an innocent, despite the fact that the 'innocent' was part of the arena's champion team, was armed to the teeth, screamed and smelled of evil and was trying to kill me. I tried to talk to the DM but he wouldn't listen to me. To punish me for 'talking back' to him, friends of the guy I killed broke into my cell while I was sleeping and the DM went on to describe, in very high detail, how my character was gang raped by 6 other men. I told him I had a problem with that and he replied that maybe next time I shouldn't question him.
I defriended him on myspace, put him on my block list on AIM and AOL Mail and I haven't spoken to him since.
Wow, that DM has some serious issues.
I have to wonder if he was in the closet about his obvious attraction to men. I mean the guy decided to punish you by having your character gang raped by 6 burly men. He even went into detail about it. Seems to indicate that it might have been a fantasy of his? Anyway, must have been super uncomfortable and I find it surprising that no one else in the group said something.
Noctaem wrote:
Timmy88 wrote:
After a while, you're the "@!#/ ashole" for submitting yourself to that.
I've never understood why DM's would be upset if players use their equipment to overcome obstacles in the campaign. Isn't that the whole point of having equipment? And forming a strategic battle plan? That is what I would want in my campaign. Last sunday we had a session, where the players spent hours working out a complex battle plan. All I had to do as a DM, was occasionally play the role of an npc, to chime in to remind the players of other factors that might be important. I wanted to make sure that my players considered all the options, and were well informed. Everything else was just them roleplaying, and coming up with a plan. Those are the easiest nights for a DM. Just sit back and listen to them discussing a strategy. It took hours before we actually started with the battle, but it's all fine by me. I get a lot of satisfaction when the players get so into it. They were really desperately trying to cover all the angles, and they were really worried about any surprises that I might throw at them.
In the end it all worked out really well, despite the surprises that I of course threw in. The strategy worked.
baldhermit wrote:
It could also be a case of a DM being burned out on running his own campaign.
Not as bad as other stories here but I also had my share of a bad DM. He was railroading everything and in a very obvious manner. The main quests were almost forced upon us by super powerful NPCs, always displaying overwhelming power shows, who were always acting superior to the party. There was never an actual reason for us to be engaged in the story or to try to succeed in any of our goals (I pretty much stopped caring somewhere after the third or forth session). We ended up hacking and slashing our way from one point ot the next, with combat being the highlight of every session, having the least possible interaction with the game world. The good thing is that this led to the plot being completed fairly soon and another DM taking his place. No one felt unhappy about that. In fact during the last two sessions it was fairly obvious (and confirmed it in a discussion with another player) that most of us wanted to get this over with and move on.
Last time I ran into a bad DM. We had a group that was going for a while, but at one point we ended up in a position we were shorthanded, running with 3 instead of the normal 5-6. First encounter we ran against that day the group was outnumbered something like 8-3 and none of the enemies were minions (Clearly trying to TPK us). That was the last game the DM had with that group.
Also, 800th post ^_^
Chandraraj wrote:
The worst GM I ever had was legendary amongst the several groups he started running his world for. Most all other groups only made it two or three games, but we probably made it six or seven -- because I was in college, doing work for him and desparately needed the money.
This game was utterly and entirely different than any I had run in before or since.
The GM had this thing about not wanting player characters to get too powerful too quickly. Obviously he had in mind a very, very, very long hero arc -- starting with the bunch of PCs being peasants in their mid/late teens in a tiny village.
I had a skill. I could work leather. I could also use a bow, if poorly. I think I even might have owned one but I doubt it (this was decades ago, I don't remember it as well as I used to). One of the other characters lived in the stable and would clean the church during the day for a copper or two. He litterally spent whole game days with the GM asking him what he did that day, "I sweep," he would say. That would be it. Another character was a decon. I think he could bandage wounds if it came to it. He would spend a lot of time cleaning the church as well.
A werewolf attacked someone outside the village, and they came in dripping with blood and all the villagers were terrified. As good roleplayers, our characters were too. Seeing that we had two eating knives and a dagger between us, nobody was really excited to go out into the night and take on a werewolf. First challenge safely avoided by PCs who had been successfully convinced they are 'just ordinary folks.'
Second challenge was a murder, and it was implied that we should go to the big town and tell the reeve. Of course none of us had ever left the village before so it took some days of goading to get us to head off the twenty miles away from home.
On the trail, we had a pan and a tinder box. Someone managed some string and a stick to fish. That didn't really work and we ended up grabbing a 8" fish out of a stream for three people. The decon accepted the head of the fish as his supper. I found some leeks to go with it.
THIS WAS SIX GAMES IN!
We amused ourselves because the players were honestly so dumbfounded how a game could be so unbelievably slow -- and the lunacy of that became an inside joke for many years after. The quote "What do you do?" "I sweep," has become shorthand for baffling GMing ever after.
JayceBarras wrote:
JayceBarras wrote:
I'm wondering why anyone would put up with half of this stuff? This entire thing is based on a mutual desire to play and have fun with other people. If you're not having fun, why not leave or speak to the DM? Why waste your time with some douche when you could be doing literally anything else? Just leave! If you just have some time to waste, read a book instead! Learn something! You're never forced to deal with someone's BS. There's always something else to do, even if you really-super-want to play D&D, you need to be able to stand up and say what you think without fear of reprisal. And if you do really fear that your character or you personally would get attacked (hopefully only verbally or in game), just drop the game and tell the DM he sucks as a DM.
And that especially goes for sexual harassment. That is never ok and if you experience it you should never just "let it go." If you are uncomfortable, leave. It is not worth your time or energy.
CrazyMcNinja wrote:
RedSiegfried wrote:
I may have been a "Bad DM" this week.
Two of my players came in late, due to conflicting work schedules. We were in the middle of a fight. I did not notice their arrival, and did not bring their characters in on the action.
Two more long-time players showed up just as I was saying "I didn't prepare anything else for tonight so I think we are done."
So four people (of about 11) did not receive their entertainment allotment for the week.
With 11 players I'm surprised you notice the player who are there.
BRJN wrote:
Right. Working for your employer instead of gaming? That's just inconsiderate and irresponsible.
Beoric wrote:
As someone who was often late because that's just the sort of person I was, it's really not that big a deal for me to wait and join in when it's opportune.
fwiw, table of 11 sounds like 2 tables of 5 where I come from.
Zathris wrote: