Harassing the GM, your stories!

[Mayday]

Everyone in my gaming group has run something at one time or another, and as most GMs know, the players never do what you expect them to do. What have they done to you? Or you done to your GM?

When I left for college I wrapped up the superhero storyline I'd been running against these two heroes and return on break to find that theyd re-started it, bringing back Evil Evil Blayne (the clone of Evil Blayne, a Texas redneck thug). Evil Evil Blayne was a Sherrif and the complete opposite of his clone brother Evil Blayne.

One of my lesser NPCs was a housewife, Evil Blayne's wife who hung out with the villains and had the superpower to make her index finger glow. (just glow, really. Blue) It transpired that while in the bathtub listening to country radio the radio fell in and electrocuted him. Sherrif Blayne suspected the wife had done him in and tried to arrest her, starting a plotline that lasted till I got home again next summer, of Sherrif Blayne and a camera crew (Channel 5 LIVE!) chasing her to the Mexican border from New York City. Several of my other NPCs were eaten by sewer monsters. One took over El Salvador (El SALVOdor) and another Costa Rica (CYBERica) declaring war on each other...

The other one is more of an accident and a learning experience.

My very first time running a game, with the same two players who had never played before was in the Dr Who system. I had this big story ready about collecting pieces of an artifact and defeating the Master etc etc. They landed on an ice world, a Time Lord and his Companion. The Time Lord rolled practical joker for a personality trait so he darts outside first. The Companion follows a minute later, a burly guy who liked to carry guns at all times, and zero sense of humor.

Time Lord hides around the corner of the police box and trips the Companion as he comes out then uses his last Action Point to laugh at his Companion. The Companion gets up (2 APs), pulls a gun (1 AP) and shoots the Time Lord in each kneecap, and then walks away on his remaining APs to do the adventure solo. Time Lord electrocutes himself to escape the pain while the Companion slips climbing a glacier and kills himself. Game over in ten minutes.

Luckily we got better.

[Blue]

If I don't harass the GM then it just isn't an official game.

Everybody has a GM that they refer to as "The Evil GM". He's the one that revels in your pain. He's fun to taunt. But the GM that we harass more is the one that's more easy-going. We have a long tradition of going around his adventures. It's not on purpose (usually). He sets up an encounter and we somehow find a way to circumvent it.

"Running anytime soon?"
"Why should I? You'll just go around my game anyway!"

[Hermit]

"Harrass the GM? No, if we does, it burns us, it hurts us, it slings us with nasty NNDs my precious..."

Mmmm actually, I do the GMing in my group. I don't mind when they go off track, so I don't really see it as harrasment. I gave up on completely linear stories early on.

[Syberdwarf2]

I never really had to worry about harassment as the GM. When I first started gaming, there was a tool my friends and I used; the good old "blue-lightening-bolt-of-death-from-the-sky" which as immature fledgling players playing DnD for the first time, came in handy to keep players from becoming jerks.

Of course, back then we didn't undersatand the advantages of not corraling your players' actions......

I still use it to this day, but mainly as a running gag that only the veteran gamers seem to get. Seems it was one of those anachronistic phrases that's right up there with "You're in a bar...."

[Tom McCarthy]

One of my players decided to guest GM. By his own account, he was an experienced D&D GM who had also run Champions 3rd edition adventures. His adventure turned into a multi-part mystery/rescue mission full of cryptic clues and red herrings that none of us could ever figure out. In the end, we think the bad guys were foiled and driven off, but we don't know what they'd been doing.

Whenever a player in one of my adventures tries to tie a clue back to that adventure, I know my mystery's going badly.

'Where they Swedes with Russian accents spending American dollars ?'
'Does the drunken recluse have his one room cabin boobytrapped with claymores pointing inward ?'
'Have you seen an aged Oriental martial arts master with a trained bear go by ?'
'Is it the type of weather radar that interferes with Mind Links ?'

[TheTemplar]

In the second session of the first story arc of the most recent campaign that I was involved in, the GM introduced the Supervillains team that would be the recurring thorn in our side - The Sinister Syndicate. In the very first encounter with them (which began at about 11 pm and didn't end until about 2 am) they had a mystic/mentalist character named Soul Ripper, who was a man dressed in a long Duster-type trenchcoat and wore a wide brimmed hat pulled down low over his eyes.

After that first encounter w/ them, the GM decided that it would be cool to tie in one of the PC's backstory's to one of the Syndicate members. Now, one PC had a twin sister, who she hadn't seen in a very very long time...so, since she was the closest thing we had to a mentalist (TK powers) he decided to make Soul Ripper her long lost sister..thinking that if he bluffed his way through it enough, he could convince us that Soul Ripper was a woman in our first fight, and that we just weren't remembering clearly because it was so late when we fought him/her.

Well..needless to say, he blew his Persuasion roll the first dozen or so times. SR was referred to as all sorts of colorful terms for a very long time. "The Horrible He-She", "The Androgenous Antagonist," and "The Sex-Change Artist." Finally..we started to buy it simply because the GM was so adamant that SR had been a female the entire time. Well, about three or four sessions after we unilaterally agreed that SR was and always had been devoid of Y chromosomes, the GM stops us as we're folding the Hex map and putting away the mini's and says,
"Uh..y'all (He's from 'Bama...totally seperate thread worth of material based on that alone. :) ) y'all remember Soul Ripper, right? Well..uh..in that first fight way back in November, she was a dude."
The uproar of laughter continued for a good 5 or 10 minutes.

-T

[Tech]

I have to say, Yes, I have bothered the GM a couple times when I played... don't know why, I just felt like it. Fortunately, the GM rolled with the blow. Nice GM.

One of my conversations went something like this:
GM: Where is your character at the moment?
Me: Mmm, I don't know.
GM: Are you with the group?
Me: No.
GM: Then where are you?
Me: You decide.
GM: Ok, you're with the group.
Me: Nah, I decided my character's walking down the street a few blocks away looking cool.
GM: Whatever!

:D

[Fionan]

In a recent game I played, I could tell from the beginning of the adventure that it would wrap up in a warehouse full of vampires. I guess I was the nominal leader, so instead of following the usual trail, I almost immediately set half the group to go get a gasoline tanker truck (All they could find was propane). When they got back, we drove the tanker truck, followed by another car behind it (in case the truck didn't light), into the warehouse where it to managed to destroy all of the hench-vampires and a couple of weeks of planning on the part of the GM. Two key Vamps got out, but it was a lot better than it could've been. The GM couldn't get too upset because what we did made perfect sense.

Fionan.

[Catacomb]

My group loooovvveeess to jack with me so one night about a year and a half ago the actually wrote the word 'gullible' on the ceiling above my head and said it was there all night and I tried my damnedest not to look, but the problem was that it was actuallly there...punks.

[MarkusDark]

Most of the real harassment I get is during character creation or anytime a new power is wanted. I suppose it is half my fault for not being more stern but as they try to up themselves in many ways, to squeeze every last bit from their powers, and I see it as unbalancing - I just get frustrated. Especially when I hear "But X character in CKC has it!"

I am amazed that no matter how much I look over one of my player's character sheet, I can't find anything that he has cheesed and yet whenever he grabs, he almost always hits, whatever he squeezes goes nitey night and it took a Viper base, including a 350 pt villian (my PC's are at 270) to focus on him, with weapons specially desiged to fight him, to finally drop him to -2 stun.

[CrosshairCollie]

Originally posted by MarkusDark
I am amazed that no matter how much I look over one of my player's character sheet, I can't find anything that he has cheesed and yet whenever he grabs, he almost always hits, whatever he squeezes goes nitey night and it took a Viper base, including a 350 pt villian (my PC's are at 270) to focus on him, with weapons specially desiged to fight him, to finally drop him to -2 stun.

Check his dice. ;)

[BoloOfEarth]

I played in a private eye game eons ago, in Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes. The character I rolled up was mind-numbingly average and underskilled. However, when it came time to roll for money and extra stuff, I ended up independently wealthy and (oddly enough) a member of lower nobility (a British lord).

The GM didn't like my partner (a freelance journalist), so he decided to set us on an adventure for the British secret service. We completed the mission and left on a British ship for home. That's when the ship's captain took my character aside and told me that none of this could be reported, implying that I had to kill my partner!

The two player characters went out on deck so I could try and talk him into not reporting what happened. He was agreeing, but the GM didn't like that, so one of the sailors shot my partner. Blam, dead. Then pointed his gun at me.

I was pissed (as was the other player), so I put my own gun to my own head and said (a la Blazing Saddles) "Don't move or the Lord gets it!"

The GM was flabbergasted, and I said that should be the reaction of the sailor. However, he had the guy say, "You're right. One move and he gets it." So I looked the GM in the eye and said "Okay, I pull the trigger." The look on his face was priceless -- almost as priceless as mine when I rolled snake eyes for damage. Yep, the character srurvived a .38 lobotomy.

I decided that, from that point on, the character would refer to any new partner by the name of his first partner, just to drive the GM nuts. Unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately) we stopped playing MSPE at that point, and I never gamed with that GM again. Too bad, it would have been a great running gag.

[Klytus]

GM's like Bolo's deserve to be harassed.

[DocMan]

The GM's responsibility is to challenge the players.

The Player's responsibility is to hit the GM with something unexpected.

Good players take their responsibilities seriously. :)

Doc

[Starhawk]

This sorta qualifies as a Harrass the GM story...
I was running a horror game ( Now if any of you have been in a horror game, you know that mood and atmosphere are key to a good game..Keep this in mind) that involved several ghosts, one of them with the ability to possess people. The game was coming to a climatic part of the story where a ghost had possesed a maid who then tried to kill some of the PC's. During the fight, one of the players managed to decapitated a poor possesed maid with a lucky shot with an axe. The dialog at the table went something like this..

GM: The maid's lifeless body crumples to the floor. Blood is everywhere.
PC 1 : I whack the body with the axe again just to make sure.
GM: Ok.... While you raise your axe to deliver another blow, the head of the maid begins to speak...You find it odd that she now is speaking perfect french! (Pause for dramatic effect)
PC 1: I find it odd that a decapitated head is speaking at all...

The whole table, including myself erupted in laughter. It was impossible to recreate any sort of atmosphere after that...
Just goes to show you that even when the GM thinks he/she is in total control...

[Klytus]

Starhawk, our group knows all about atmosphere. Or maybe I should say, we know how to ruin it (a lot of my stories seem to be from our Vampire games here lately....)

Anyway, the Storyteller (my wife) had set up this beautiful dark, creepy mood. There was this old wooden desk with a false drawer. Pulling the drawer out revealed a tangible cloud of corruption. There was something in that blackness we needed to get, but touching filed my character with cold chils, that were somehow warm and soothing to the darkness within his own soul. It was a struggle against the Beast and my own darkness to not succumb to the evil. The whole scene was dark, creepy and very well done...

which was instantly shattered when someone in our group called it "The Desk Drawer of Horrible Black Ickyness"

This all happened about 7 years ago, and my wife has still not forgiven the foul miscreant (her cousin) for shattering the mood! His characters have suffered in her games ever since.

Beware antagonizing the GM...

[DocMan]

I take it we're not going to mention the "Lazy Susan of Ineffable Evil"?

Doc

[Karma]

Our GM is pretty harrasment proof. Why? Because he simply sets out the goal, the known obsticales and lets us run with it. He of course has a few surprises, but their never so fiendish that he's spent loads of thiome on them and starts ripping out his hair if we miss them. He even fill us in OOC on what they were if we miss them so that we can all thank God we did. "I had this nifty trap that would have picked up the fifth person to enter the room and slammed him against the wall with enough force to kill him, but only 3 of you went on the mission so it never went off"
The guys so cool that he doesn't even flinch if we completely blow off a quest (and we sometimes do). How? by never creating any stats for the opposition until we take the mission (our planning sessions are always long enough that he can stat the opposition while we do it. One of the PC sayings is 'the longer we plan the harder it gets')
The only time, I think, that he felt harrassed is when he said "We should really find out who won the"'Final Battle of Good Vs Evil Vs War Vs Chaos Vs Humanity's ability to choose their own Destiny (TM)" which happens periodically in every fantasy world and which is happening to the north at this very moment (our characters had decided to stay out of it being rabidly non-aligned) so each pick a side, pick up a dice and whoever gets the highest roll thier side won"

And We said "Sod that, lets make new characters and Roleplay the thing out"

(He can handle us springing 'personal CD missions' on him, entire campaigns are a little different.)

Funnly enough he did not have an annurism and we actually played that mini capmaign (Chaos Won, thanks to my characters obsession with throwing the 'Holy' weapons of Good, Evil, and War into a volcano (it was Dragon Quest where Halflings can do this kind of thing and no-one thinks any worse of them.)

[lemming]

Hmm. How about the characters conspiring to exchange the brain of a border collie with one of the NPCs in the game?

Wilson goes with the flow pretty well I have to say. :)

[Klytus]

Karma,

What you outlined is pretty much my style of running games as well - I hate linear adventures. Trouble is, creative and/or players STILL find ways to throw a wrench in the works. Little things like ... going on a long trip in the middle of an ongoing game just as things are about to get interessting, making it so that you either have to NPC the absent players character or simply not play, as there is no way in-game to write this very important character out of the action without screwing over the rest of the party.

Then again, there is the whole problem of having to put everything on hold anyway because OTHER PLAYERS unexpectedly decline to show up at the last minute. This is not just GM harrassment, but it harrasses all the other players as well.

[lemming]

Something positive (http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp05032002.html) is a bit on topic. If you check any of the archives, be warned that it could be termed offensive to some.

[DocMan]

Originally posted by Klytus
Trouble is, creative and/or players STILL find ways to throw a wrench in the works. Little things like ... going on a long trip in the middle of an ongoing game just as things are about to get interessting, making it so that you either have to NPC the absent players character or simply not play, as there is no way in-game to write this very important character out of the action without screwing over the rest of the party.

Hey! I let you know weeks in advance, and the week before I was perfectly willing to keep on playing but everyone else wanted to stop. As for this weekend, I didn't schedule the Family Reunion.


Then again, there is the whole problem of having to put everything on hold anyway because OTHER PLAYERS unexpectedly decline to show up at the last minute. This is not just GM harrassment, but it harrasses all the other players as well.

Does this mean y'all didn't play last week?

Doc

[Fry Daddy]

Originally posted by TheTemplar
Well..needless to say, he blew his Persuasion roll the first dozen or so times. SR was referred to as all sorts of colorful terms for a very long time. "The Horrible He-She", "The Androgenous Antagonist," and "The Sex-Change Artist." Finally..we started to buy it simply because the GM was so adamant that SR had been a female the entire time. Well, about three or four sessions after we unilaterally agreed that SR was and always had been devoid of Y chromosomes, the GM stops us as we're folding the Hex map and putting away the mini's and says,
"Uh..y'all (He's from 'Bama...totally seperate thread worth of material based on that alone. :) ) y'all remember Soul Ripper, right? Well..uh..in that first fight way back in November, she was a dude."
The uproar of laughter continued for a good 5 or 10 minutes.

-T [/B]

Now it's my turn. The Templar and Mole were co-running a story arc that I played in (I needed a break from running) where they worked SO LONG on desigining characters. One character they used, the Templar was very proud of, was another member of the Sinister Syndicate called Bloodsport, transaformed into a character named Leo. On paper, Leo was a monster, with high DEX and SPD, and varous ways of killing you. Templar couldn't wait to throw him at us.

Whe he did, another character, Tempus, the swashbuckling time manipulator, made a critical hit on Leo and knocked him into GM's discretion with his first hit!

The look on Templar's face was priceless.....

[Killer Shrike]

I usually am the GM, and Ive had almost 2 decades of harassment from a long and semi-illustrious list of players in a plethora of games.

While it does piss me off on occasion, I dont mind harassment overly much. What pisses me off for real is sabotage.

Saboteur players are the ones that deliberately set out to ruin the game, or who dont know when 'enough is more than enough' and push a gag to the point that it destroys the game.


I brought my own Champions Universe campaign to a halt this weekend in fact after about 7 sessions. The group of players I currently have absolutely refused at every turn to actually take part in any sort of story arc. They just sat around, refused to talk to each other or any NPC, and retreated to thier little hidey holes at every opportunity. In a 4-colorish supers campaign.

I talked with the group several times about the conventions of the genre, the focus of the campaign, and that to move forward they would need to work together as a team. They would agree, and then the next session resist every opportunity to buddy up with any of the other characters, refuse to followup for any clues at all, and sit around with a thumb up thier rear. Their characters would show up for a supervillain fight, and then immediately leave afterwards. Even when one of the characters found something out or had relevant information THEY WOULD REFUSE TO SHARE IT WITH ONE ANOTHER. Not one of them ever bothered to investigate a crime scene, talk to an NPC, or try to predict where the villains might strike next. They were 100% reactionary.

I was forced to manufacture 4 different opportunities to get the group to come together and gel as a team because none of them would give any of the others any contact information, with each one resulting in a failure. They are all paranoid of thier Secret IDs being discovered, even the character that doesnt have the Secret ID disadvantage. :rolleyes:

Finally in this past session, exasperated, I actually recycled the SAME EXACT scenario as the first session, with just a different location. I mean, IT WAS IDENTICAL with only a switch out of one of the villains for another. You know what happened? The EXACT same thing that happened the first time I ran it, despite the fact that the players all had agreed amongst themselves that they had really botched it the first go 'round. The players were so thick they didnt even recognize that it was the same scenario for starters until I pointed it out to them 4 hours later when I had finally had enough of this bs.


I think Im going to have to recycle this group and try for a different mix of players. This group really needs at least one player that is capable of taking action and leading. I've got 4 completely reactionary players with severe cases of either decisionitis or irresponsibility, or both.

In the past Ive had groups of all Type-A Leader personalities, and that could get really hairy, but it was infinitely better than the confused mass I have now.
:mad:

Sorry to vent. Im just really aggravated by recent events.

[JohnTaber]

Hi Doc: Can I make this my tag line?


The GM's responsibility is to challenge the players.

The Player's responsibility is to hit the GM with something unexpected.

Good players take their responsibilities seriously.

- Doc


I love it.

My players are fantastic...BUT...they do like to harass me. One time in a D&D campaign they got a magical urn full of a strange powder. They did not know what it did but at least 1 and hour for the next TEN sessions one of them would ask, "So...um John...what does the urn do again?" They were hoping I would slip up and tell them. The story had a great ending when the team ended up using the urn to kill SEVERAL demons in 1 shot! It was funny...

[Nucleon]

By the Stars, Shrike. Are you sure these people are even alive?

Nucleon is torn between the tragedy, and the sheer comedy of your post.

The first thing that you ask is this; Did they had any input in the setting of this game? They seems more like Shadowrun players.

Have they ever played as a team?

Does anybody in this group you would define as a potential leader/roleplayer? If so, I would humbly suggest you prepare an intrigue around him/her, with his/her consent and help.

In the starting phases of the campaign, reward roleplay and whatever you like as a player reaction with ½pts. They will catch the drift and will going to do it for fun's sake later.

Well, if nothing works, I see no reason for that particular campaign to continue. As a GM, you must be able to get at least some inspiration, or else it's a chore, really.

Geez. :eek:

(And I hope those "aggravating recent events" are well under control, Killer Shrike. Good Luck anyway.)

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Nucleon:

Yes, they had input, yes I explained the conventions of the genre, yes they have all collected comix at one point or another, yes they can all ROLEPLAY thier characters well (and generally do). What they cant do is take charge and move forward collectively. The group is missing any person with even rudimentary goal-accomplishment and leadership skills. So they get nothing done.

Gah.

The amazing thing is they all claim to be having fun. Im sitting there like, "having fun doing what? you didnt accomplish even the most basic shreds of anything worthwhile".

Ther group has had some membership shifts and has not gelled together under its recent incarnation. Its time to recycle players. :(

[Enforcer84]

Too bad. Actually the first game I was in since college was like that, we had a core group of good fellows and three guys who needed to go.

[Mutant for Hire]

We never really harrassed our GM in the Werewolf game I was in once except on a contradiction of goals. He had gone to all this effort to create an epic storyline where we battled to help save the world from the powers of darkness, and we were all playing werewolf soap opera between ourselves. We were having a blast except we had to be reminded to save the world now and then...

[Stargazer]

we harrased Nucleon ALOT!!! in our old Shadowrun games:D
boy those were great:)
in champions we try a bit to go with the GM (still Nucleon)...even tho sometimes its fun to see him sweat and see is high blood pressure go :)
but he knows us well!! (weve known each other for about 15 years) and sometimes he will make us think we've harassed him when in fact he made us do exactly what he wanted:) sneaky little cosmic god he is :P

[fauxgemini]

Shrike,

Oh how to well do I know your problem. This is more of a General RPing issue. But I have many of the "But my character does something else" players in my games.

Thankfully enough there usually tends to be at least 1 or 2 motivated PCs that gel the group.

It's funny:

Imagine running a dark supers game once at a con. Called it "Syndicate Inc." And here is this one player who went out of his way to contact me before the con to design a character. Get all his detials worked out. Etc.

Game starts. PC's get attacked by a rival faction of they're employer. (Some drug ring gone bad.) and a combat happens. While the pcs are dealing with the 12 zombies that showed up...he..he crosses the street, goes up the fire escape and proceeds to look around for anything 'interesting'. All in combat rounds, all while the PC are getting in a real beauty of a fight. And he gets pissy faced when the group tells him off about what he's doing.

I asked him what would be interesting and he said. "You know, like some new guns or stuff..." *blink* *blink*

His character has the BEST DAMN WEAPONS/Skills in the game world! He was friggen Jet Li with uzis. Sheeze.

[Smeazel]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike
I've got 4 completely reactionary players with severe cases of either decisionitis or irresponsibility, or both.

Yeah, I've had players like that - although fortunately not an entire group of them at once. I think the most extreme example was a D&D campaign I ran my freshman year in college. There were other players off and on at various points, but two main players who were in the entire campaign. One of the two constant players not only barely participated, but actually frequently fell asleep during the game. He claimed to be having fun - and I guess if he was really that bored he would have just stopped showing up - but he did so little that he couldn't even keep himself awake. Fortunately, the other player was motivated and proactive enough for the both of them, but... sheez.

[White Heat]

Originally posted by Smeazel
Snip... One of the two constant players not only barely participated, but actually frequently fell asleep during the game. He claimed to be having fun - and I guess if he was really that bored he would have just stopped showing up - but he did so little that he couldn't even keep himself awake. Fortunately, the other player was motivated and proactive enough for the both of them, but... sheez.

Yeah. I've had players like that. Still have one, in fact. By the way, I'm the one who's married to Klytus.

My cousin, the one who dubbed my false desk drawer the Drawer Of Horrible Black Ickyness at least took active roles in whatever game he was currently in.

The one who springs to mind from Smeazel's post has been an irritation for years. She's the one who can't be trusted with any clue the significance of which she does not immediately grasp, because if she sees no point to it, she'll just forget that you gave it to her. She derailed an entire Vampire campaign for weeks once because she failed to report that someone they were looking for was thoroughly Jewish -- they never thought to check the Synagogue without that knowledge.

While she doesn't sleep during the games, I learned long ago to hide the newspaper and the magazines before she gets there, because otherwise she'll just collect one and start reading -- in the middle of a game! AAUUGGHH! And yet, she claims she's having fun. I dunno, guys, what do you think? :rolleyes:

She thinks I'm harrassing her, however, because every now and then I'll attempt to give her a G.O.D clue, and dang it if she doesn't every time tell me there's some reason why her character would not choose to do whatever it was I suggested to her.

Yeah. Pardon the rant. I'm better now. :)

[DocMan]

Um... never depend on your players to do something expected?

Of course, some players do take GM overrides in better graces than others. I guess it depends on your point of view. I know that some players feel that the GM is taking over playing their character. At least the player in question does. I tend to look at it this way: If G.O.D. wants my player to do something other that what I had in mind, I've just stumbled into a MAJOR IMPORTANT PLOT POINT. To not go with G.O.D.'s flow is to suck up failure like a sponge.

Of course, once I understand what G.O.D. wants me to do, I reserve the right to spin my characters reactions as I believe most appropriate.

Doc

[jeep_the_great]

As the only GM it seems in a 25 mile radius, I have had the misfourtune to have many a games screwed up by players. The worst by far was a game of Space 1889. I had a master criminal who was running from the police at the start of the game. He sent his lacky ahead to try to find a escape route. The lacky returned with the tickets, and personal effects of an elderly man. It turned out to be the and old friend of one of the other player characters. As the master criminal boarded the either flyer to Mars, the plan was to allow the players to have about 10 minutes to meet the other characters and fome a relationship (since they would be adventuring together). When the criminal said his name (using the doctors ID), the other player spoke up as saying she knew the doctor but he did not look like him. Instead of saying they have the same name and that this thing happens often, the master criminal decided to make the female character think that she did not remember him as well as she thought and tried to convince the others that she was an imposeture. A short 10 minute get together turned into a 3 hour adventure putting the "doctor" against the other characters. He even treathen to blow up the ship so the captain turned it around in mid flight and returned to Earth. He set the bomb but because of the rush he was in it did not go off. He was arrested as so as the ship landed and they never went to Mars again (because i have not ran that systme since, even though many of my player like it and want me to.)

[Stargazer]

this one is actualy the gm doing it to us:)...

in a shadowrun game a few years back...
our team gets a message that a Mr.Johson wants to meet us in the usual restaurant/cafe type place...
we go of course and when he gives us the run..we refuse..thinking its way more then we want to handle..so the Jonson gracefully send sus on our way while calling for team 2 (NPC's) as we walk to the elevator, we see team 2...our most fierce competitors...(one of them did a mean job on my character once, thnx doc wagon i was still alive)

so being the proud idiots that we are we decide to tail them just to put some sticks in theire wheels...

well we ended up doing the run , 1: for the other team..who was very happy that we took most of the damage and trouble for them, and 2: for free!!!!!! that damm Nucleon manage to con us into doing it!!! the sly little devil...

only after the session did we all realize that he manipulated us...but i think we got our revenge a few times and many different games after :D

[TheTemplar]

Originally posted by Fry Daddy
Now it's my turn. The Templar and Mole were co-running a story arc that I played in (I needed a break from running) where they worked SO LONG on desigining characters. One character they used, the Templar was very proud of, was another member of the Sinister Syndicate called Bloodsport, transaformed into a character named Leo. On paper, Leo was a monster, with high DEX and SPD, and varous ways of killing you. Templar couldn't wait to throw him at us.

Whe he did, another character, Tempus, the swashbuckling time manipulator, made a critical hit on Leo and knocked him into GM's discretion with his first hit!

The look on Templar's face was priceless.....

ROFL! Ah, a BIG thanks to you for bringning that one up, FD. Actually, from that very same campaign that I ran while FD was a player, an even funnier incident (at least I think it was) occured.
The Villain group, based on the 12 signs of the zodiac, were led by a powerful mentalist named Ophiuchus, the Serpentine 13th symbol of the Zodiac. He was roughly 1200 pts of Ubermenschy evilness. However, he only had a 20 STR. During one of the big climactic fights between the Zodiacs and the PC's, Ophiuchus rose from the throne on his dais over the colosseum-like arena where the PC's had been fighting for his entertainment. He pointed out over the battlefield and ordered the other zodiacs to attack. However, at that exact moment, the aforementioned time manipulating Tempus hit Ophiuchus with his Entangle. It's actually a localized Time Stop around the target character, and therefore takes no damage from attacks and was, as I recall, a 6d6 or 7d6 entangle. He got about 8 or 9 Body on it, with a 7 defense. ROLLING MAXIMUM DAMAGE on 4d6, I would have been able to take off 1 Body per phase. Needless to say, the sight of this very pompous supervillain frozen, pointing off into the distance was enough to put everyone (even me) in stitches. But does the harassment stop there?? NOOOOOOO.......
The heroes didn't win that fight, and were unceremoniously thrown back into their cells. Later, after he had finally managed to break out of the Time Stop, Ophiuchus went down to the detention area (this is all happening on a super large space vessel..the arena was more or less a holodeck.) to taunt them for losing. However, no sooner had he entered the room when one of the players (I can't remember if it was Mole or Tempus) stood and said, "Ophiuchus! Salute!" and all the players stood in their cell and pointed off into the distance and froze.
Yeah..they thought it was pretty funny until Ophiuchus's enraged went off and they all started bleeding out the nose from repeated bombardments of 10d6 EGO attacks.

Hehehe....the GM always laughs last. :D

-T

[Mayday]

We had a girl who claimed to enjoy herself but would always pick up a book or fall asleep the second she put her dice down. She didnt even wait to see if she'd hit or not, and Murphy's Law, she never missed so we'd have to wake her up again to roll damage.

I think that she was one of those Social category people, as opposed to an Achiever, Killer or Explorer (Bartle's Quotient) but it was very annoying at the time.

At one time the group I was in, a pickup game of random players, we turned out to have no obvious leader. I'd considered my character too young and inexperienced for a leadership position but made the change to her confidence levels and she turned into a very good team leader I'm told.

Maybe the team of 4 reactionaries, it isnt the players but that they are locked into a character mindset and just need to reboot their character concept slightly. Batman started out the Loner, but he also led the Justice League.

[Tim]

In a Forgoten Realms Campaign I was in when the reboot from 1st to 2nd ed. happened. The GM decided to run us thru the Shadowdale trilogy of modules based on the books.

During the Battle of Shadowdale, One character scores multiple criticals against Banes avatar. The GM ignores this, to let the senario run its course.
Elminster fights him and disappears as is supposed to. The Mage PCs (including one with Spellfire) are arrested for killing him.
Here is were it went completely off track. The group's Paladin (me) will not help break the others out of Jail. The group's thief is tired of losing Horses (we had lost about 5 sets so far in the campaign) so also does not go in. We both say we will meet them downstream (they are to take a boat) with the horses.
Needless to say, the breakout attempt fails. The mage PCs are not released (they are supposed to be). The next morning the mage PCs are put on trial, and one gets the bright idea to cast a low level fireball to disrupt the trial and escape. The GM rolls on the wild magic table and gets MAX Effect. The mage then goes on and is the ONLY one that fails his save and dies. The spellfire weilder heals Shadowdales mayor (who was in neg hp, dying but not dead) then holds him hostage.
The game paused at this point as there was no way the PCs could escape from the entire town. The GM took 3 hours of brainwracking to figure out how to get us out of this mess.

TimS.

[oberon]

I have fallen asleep in several sessions over the years. Not because I was bored, but because I was extremely tired :)

My groups have never really had a problem with that. Unfortunately, I have developed a reputation for characters suddenly becoming temporarily insane when I'm playing tired. Most memorable was 1st ed. AD&D, playing a gnomish thief/illusionist. We'd vanquished the Big Bad, and our reward was identical items, one good and one bad, we had to figure out which was which.
My character had a box with two identical looking potions. Everyone else had gone before me, and finally figured out which items to take (after about 45 minutes) and I was very tired and a little bored at this point. My character doesn't bother trying to figure which is which, but mixes them both and downs the concoction (one was poison, the other spider climbing).
The GM decides to teach me a lesson, and rolls on the potion miscibility table and, lo and behold, my thief ended up with permanent spider climb :D
I was ROFL, while everyone else was looking at the dice in disbelief.


oberon

[Enforcer84]

I tried that trick once, got a blue skinned ranger with a 23 strength. It was cool. I was a watered down version of the incredible hulk. The look on the GM's face when I made the roll was priceles...

[lemming]

Sam Bell had a bunch of random magic pools that could reward you greatly, but worse and worse side effects could happen.

I think my pixie wound up being an invisible, 8' giant with heat vision. (And a bunch of other wierdness)

Better than the 1/2 giant that dissolved into a pool of goo

[DocMan]

Better than the 1/2 giant that dissolved into a pool of goo

Animate goo or just... goo.

Doc

[Chaosliege]

I was running a D&D game for some friends of mine a couple of years ago and as an inexperienced GM, I was trying to get the players to go to a specific location. I had an encounter set up at a farmhouse and made several attempts to get the players to go to it of thier own free will. No matter what I did, the players just didn't seem interested in the farmhouse. I finaly became so frustrated that I just said "If you dont go to the 'F'ing farmhouse, the game is over". Since then it has become a running gag that sometimes you just have to say "Go to the 'F'ing farmhouse". :coach:

[Chuckg]

OK, here's a story I told before in another post, reprinted...

These are Bad Players.

Well, there was the time I was DM'ing a Shadowrun game:

OK, the party numbered about four people -- rigger, street sam, physical adept, and mage (voudoun style). Their mission was fairly simple... hijack an incoming load of drugs. They'd managed to find out exactly when and where it was coming in, and chose to try and lift the crate out of the bonded area of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (Sea-Tac).

So, they go get a van, slap the logos of one of the many service & supply companies that are going in and out of the back gates of Sea-Tac all the time, and put on some blue overalls w/ nametags. Just another bunch of janitors or cargo handlers or what have you in on their way to work.

However, they don't get any work orders or ID's forged.

So, the gate guard stops them and asks them for some ID, and they have nothing. Now, I was RP'ing the gate guard as fairly lax and a bit sleazy... all they'd have had to do was offer to slip him 50 nuyen or so, or just make a good fast-talk roll, and no problem.

But the rigger's player gets way impatient, and there hasn't been any action that entire session -- so as soon as he sees the guard is suspicious, he crashes the van through the gate.

And then one of the two gunsels tries to cap the guard by firing out the van's back door, before he can call in a security breach. Well, the guard was wounded, but not dead.

And thus, a simple gate guard encounter has become major security breach in progress, shots fired, officer down -- at a major international airport in Earth-Shadowrun, in 2062.

So, a couple blocks into the airport complex, they meet the fast response squads. Road's blocked several ways, cops kneeling down behind the hoods of their squad cars w/ long guns from the trunk, the usual. *And* the tires on their van get shot out.

The rigger's bright idea at this point?

To come out of the van holding up a piece of equipment (it was actually his remote-control rigger deck) and yell "BACK OFF! I'VE GOT A BOMB!"

So, in addition to 'site security breach in progress', 'shots fired', and 'officer down', we add 'bomb threat' and 'terrorist attack in progress'.

I did mention we were at an airport, right?

Anyway, the next thing they see after this, as they're busy running down the street w/ the airport cops following them nervously, is the Knight Errant Firewatch team that Sea-Tac keeps handy as their "big gun" anti-terrorist incident team. For those who don't play Shadowrun, Knight Errant is a subsidiary of the megacorp Ares Macrotech, and the leading private security provider in the world. And by 'leading', I mean 'they're a private corporate army able to compare in size, firepower, and sophistication to some leading First World military forces'. Screwing with the KE Firewatch boys is about as productive as picking a fight with SEAL Team 6, and for about the same reason.

Now, granted, it might be argued that I was a 'bad DM'. I've wondered that myself about this incident at times. But really... what the heck can I do? They're basically kamikaze-charging an entire damned major airport, in a cyberpunk setting, in a timeline where they've already had at least a *dozen* major terrorist incidents, each one worse than 9/11.

IOW, site security for "essential locations" comes in only two varieties -- nonexistent and massively paranoid.

And by pretty much abusing the privilege and fudging die rolls, I manage to capture every single member of the party alive -- as opposed to Knight Errant's usual policy of "Fire a warning magazine, reload, burn the entire clip again, reload again, shoot the corpses a few more times just for the hell of it, and then wait for somebody to invent the 'Speak With Dead' spell."

With the entire party in the hoosegow facing 20+ years, I figured that the best I could salvage right now is to change the campaign from 'free-lance shadowrunners' to 'Suicide Squad 2062'.

The players all quit on me. I was a 'killer DM', you see.

*sigh*

They. Tried. To. Kamikaze. An. Entire. Airport.

*sigh*

[Chuckg]

Now these are Good Players.

Last week, in my Chicago Champions game, I put Gargantua up against a team of 4 350-pointers.

A teleporting girl with shadow powers, a sort of iron fist-like martial artist/brick, a beginning powersuit guy, and a stretching guy.

I thought I'd have an epic clash of titans here, a multi-turn battle that they just baaareyl survive with teamwork. (It is Gargantua, after all)

They kicked his ass by Segment 10, Turn 1.

You see...

... ok, between blinding him with the darkness field, being lucky enough to have him lose his balance, an entangle to just use up a half-phase action, the stretchy guy *crawling inside his ear to bang on his eardrum*, and everything else, he was taking STUN from places he didn't even know he had places.

But the piece de resistance was the Fastball Special done with our martial artist/brick, by the powersuit guy.

You see, he tells me he's doing a called shot.

I ask where, expecting something like 'Vitals' or maybe 'Head'. (After all, Gargantua has a -10 DCV size modifier)

Instead, I am told...

... well, let's just say that Gargantua had to say goodbye to his two best friends, and I don't mean the ones in the Winnebago.

A Pushed Flying Haymaker, called shot, to the dangly bits.

By a STR 50 martial artist.

*wince*

Gargantua took 106 STUN (x2 STUN for location, remember) and was knocked so far into -STUN that his next Recovery was at the "GM's Discretion" line of the chart.

(The part where everybody else had found a way to take a big piece out of him first definitely didn't help him any either.)

It was... well, I expected clash of titans, I got comedy issue. It was totally unexpected. This game has never yet had a session go anywhere remotely near where I expected.

Fun, though. :)

[lemming]

Animate goo or just... goo.
Just goo. That's when I wrote up the pixie.

[Houston GM]

What moral quandry?

One of my GMs liked to fabricate complex moral quandries for our group. He wanted to see us feel a lot of angst as we debated hideously complex ethical issues.

However, he failed to realize that a situation that was a moral quandry for him (as a person) might not be one for our characters.

The GM (roleplaying one of his angst-ridden NPCs) was explaining one of these "morally gray" situations to us:

A demon had reborn itself into the world in the form of a newborn child. Until it matured, it had none of its demon powers. It had none of its demon intellect. It remembered nothing of its demonic life.

He was describing this situation to my character, a paladin of Horus.

GM (as a priest of Thoth): "I don't know what we should do with this child!"

Me: "That's easy. It detects as evil. I'll kill it."

GM: "But it's an innocent child."

Me: "No. It's an immensely powerful demon masquerading as an innocent child."

GM: "You're going to kill a child that has done nothing wrong?"

Me: "You'd prefer to release a demon that was destined to do great evil into the world?"

[DocMan]

Just goo. That's when I wrote up the pixie.

I can see that. Animated goo would be a roleplaying challenge. Inanimate goo, somewhat less so.

Doc

[bubba smith]

intieging stories here

[Edsel]

In our current Champions campaign one of the things that the seven players have always been whining about is how tough our opponents are. We have had run-ins with the IHA who use genetically enhanced clones as agents and they are tough, I mean a 12d6 EB is likely to merely stun one. We have fought villians who seem almost unbeatable.

The other day at the table a discussion started about Dr. Destroyer. The GM mentioned that he does not use the high-powered version since he is waaay to powerful. He asked "who can stand up to a 30d6 EB?" Without a pause I said "most of the NPCs of the GM." Most everyone at the table broke-up laughing, even the GM though I could tell he was a bit miffed by the snappy reply.

[Psybolt]

In D & D, we used to always "Go North". It got to the point that we even had to tackle the GM to stop him from leaving because of the silliness of always goingnorth.

[Desert]

I unfortunately have had one very less than pleasant moment when I was trying to learn how to run a game.

Relatively Unnecessary Information:

I first learned about roleplaying when I went to college. As in that was when I first saw others play, and started to play myself. Pretty much all of it at the time was D&D, with one or two home made systems that were just heavily modified thrown in. Later on, I actually started to play away from the college with friends, and learned about some of the other systems.

The additional player below had found a class/prestige class in a third party companion for D&D called a song mage. From what I understand, the characters basically sing out their spells or such. The guy liked the class so much, it seems that not only did he ALWAYS play it in EVERY D&D campaign he was a part of, but he wanted to ALWAYS find a way to play something similar in ANY campaign he was a part of.

End

Some years ago, I was still very new at roleplaying as a whole and had learned about D20 Modern. I read some of the books and decided to try my hand at running it. I let the group know and they were okay with it. The day of, about two other players showed up to play as well. One of them asked about playing a specific type of character. :confused: Nothing I had read really fit his concept, but I tried to think of something that seemed to fit it.:help:

Characters were finsihed, and the game was started. I was new, and am the type to give open reign so the characters decide what to do first, and I work from there to try and have something happen while giving them what they want as best I can. Admittedly it was going slow and I was still trying to figure out what I was doing.

Around some point in the game, the player mentioned above ended up on his cell phone (I think someone called him). During the conversation, I hear:

"This guy has no idea what he's doing.":(

Very crushing. Not something you want to hear as a novice trying to run your first game. I still try to run some, and it's mixed results, but I think I have improved some over all. I saw that guy in one other campaign when he got to play his oh so special class, which from where I sat was not that impressive. I haven't seen him since, which I don't mind, and eventually stopped playing with that group for various reasons.

[Mr. R]

I have to say, Yes, I have bothered the GM a couple times when I played... don't know why, I just felt like it. Fortunately, the GM rolled with the blow. Nice GM.

One of my conversations went something like this:
GM: Where is your character at the moment?
Me: Mmm, I don't know.
GM: Are you with the group?
Me: No.
GM: Then where are you?
Me: You decide.
GM: Ok, you're with the group.
Me: Nah, I decided my character's walking down the street a few blocks away looking cool.
GM: Whatever!

:D



I had a player like that in one campaign. Pulled the same lines. So I let him wander the street all day looking cool while GMing the rest of that party through the session. About halfway through he questioned when I would try to hook him to the scenario. I said next session (ie next week). Wow he was pissed.

[Mr. R]

They are all paranoid of thier Secret IDs being discovered, even the character that doesnt have the Secret ID disadvantage. :rolleyes:



To be fair I have been in games with the Sadistic GM. NPC will betray you, contacts will feed you false info, clues are actually part of a puzzle that will lead you to commit a horrible crime that will brand your PC's as the vilest of villains. In fact it was my last Champions game as a player. We had just such a GM. And he kept complaining why we wouldn't trust each other?

[Desert]

I have had similar problem occur. Running Call of Cthulhu. About three constant players and one that can't make it often. This is an example of some of what happens with a specific player.

Me: What do you do?
Player: I work at my job.

Me: What do you do?
Player: I eat (lunch/dinner)

Me: What do you do?
Player: I go upstair to my room (which is right above where the character works) and read.

After three or four sessions of this, I had him get attacked by an undead with a knife. Got stabbed but survived.

Later, another player talking about the above player:

He's mad that his character doesn't get to do anything. He's bored because there's no action.

[Shadow Hawk]

I played in a group, and we rotated the GM spot. One of them would set up wonderful worlds in great detail, with great backrounds and incredible plotlines... that we would be priviledged to have frontrow seats for as the NPCs did everything. (Ever read 'DM of the Rings' online? That was our DM.)

So, after watching every one of his campaigns last two sessions (because we wouldn't put up with it for long), we started planning to derail his campaigns from the start. For a Star Wars campaign (Set during episode V, using the old space opera system, this was pre D20/Pre GDW Star Wars) we had plans in place during the first session to...
1. Murder Luke Skywalker
2. Capture and turn in Han Solo for the bounty.
3. Sell Princess Liea into slavery.
4. Skin Chewbacca for the pelt.
5. Reprogram C-3PO
6. Break up R2-D2 for scrap
7. Betray the Rebellion to the Empire
8. Attempt to Murder Darth Vader

Not in that order, and I may have missed some. The plan was something like "If the movie characters show up and start doing everything while we watch, we wreck the joint. If we get to be the stars of the campaign, then we behave."

The campaign lasted about an hour.

[Desert]

I played in a group, and we rotated the GM spot. One of them would set up wonderful worlds in great detail, with great backrounds and incredible plotlines... that we would be priviledged to have frontrow seats for as the NPCs did everything. (Ever read 'DM of the Rings' online? That was our DM.)

So, after watching every one of his campaigns last two sessions (because we wouldn't put up with it for long), we started planning to derail his campaigns from the start. For a Star Wars campaign (Set during episode V, using the old space opera system, this was pre D20/Pre GDW Star Wars) we had plans in place during the first session to...
1. Murder Luke Skywalker
2. Capture and turn in Han Solo for the bounty.
3. Sell Princess Liea into slavery.
4. Skin Chewbacca for the pelt.
5. Reprogram C-3PO
6. Break up R2-D2 for scrap
7. Betray the Rebellion to the Empire
8. Attempt to Murder Darth Vader

Not in that order, and I may have missed some. The plan was something like "If the movie characters show up and start doing everything while we watch, we wreck the joint. If we get to be the stars of the campaign, then we behave."

The campaign lasted about an hour.


I for one am curious as to what the DM did to set off the destruction and what the players did:eg:

[CrosshairCollie]

One of my favorite stories.

A former DM (yes, D&D. Hush) of mine was a ludicrous Drizzt fanboy, and was also well-renowned for the 'DMPC who hogs the spotlight and is 5 levels higher than you', relegating the PCs to the roles of sidekicks.

When he got a Drizzt mini, with stat card, though, revenge was set.

He tried to force Drizzt onto us, as he had a number of Spotlight Stealing DMPCs, and we refused, politely, then vigorously. The whole 'everybody hates drow' was the key ... when he drew his swords to try to force his way into the group, I sprang. I got him to bring out Drizzt's stat card, and roll all the dice in a frisbee in the middle of the table. It was an arena-style one-on-one fight, everything out in the open. It was as far as it could get.

Drizzt's 3rd Edition build was HORRID, by the way. Mine, while not a hard-core optimized build, was more than sufficient to smear him across the battlefield in two rounds via spells that ignored Spell Resistance.

It felt SO GOOD to incinerate that stupid Mary Sue.

[Evil102]

One of our GMs got annoyed with the players passing notes between each other. Part of it was that we were using them to pass humourous comments and he wanted us 100% serious (we liked to joke around, and this seemed less disruptive than actually joking out loud), part of it was that he felt any character-to-character communication should be heard by everyone.

So he insisted that any notes had to be passed to him first, for him to read. :(

So we decided to roll with this, and write any old gibberish on our notes. ;)

"Cry havoc, and loose the chickens of unpleasantness!" led to him scratching his head and trying to decode what our characters were really saying, and I think he'd given up by the time we started planning how to use the "poodle cannon"...

[Shadow Hawk]

I for one am curious as to what the DM did to set off the destruction and what the players did:eg:

Going from memory, and this was 25 odd years ago...

It was set after Star Wars V. We were playing 3 astronauts (Pilots), two armsmen (Marines), one scientists (mentalist). He placed us on a small rebel base on a airless asteroid, manning a flight of Y-Wings (each astronaut as pilot, and the others as gunners). No movie characters in sight. A Star Destroyer came in system, and we were to hold off a horde of TIE fighters until the evacuation was complete. We had gotten lucky, managing to destroy about a half dozen without serious damage, when who should show up but Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles, with a single squadron of X-Wings who promptly blow up the Star Destroyer (impossible under Space Opera rules, given the armor on a Star Destroyer and the firepower of a X-Wing squadron). So, the leader of the players (one of the Armsmen) holds up the sideways peace sign, and we started...

We let Luke and Wedge land first, since they needed to consult with our commander, then I (playing a Astronaut) flew my fighter into the hanger, targeted Luke with my blasters, and let him have it. My gunner sprayed wedge with the turret mount, while the other two fighters unloaded missiles from space. Then the fun began...

"Luke uses his lightsaber to parry the blaster bolts!"
No, sorry, ship mounted blasters will destroy his lightsaber if he tries, see page 57.
"Luke has a improved lightsaber, and sends the bolts back at you"
That's fine, he can't penetrate my shields.
"Oh, but he can because..."
How is he at breathing vacuum? Two missile hits on the hanger...
"The Xenon damping field prevents them from detonating"
Too bad the Star Destroyer didn't use thiers. That's ok, the damping field doesn't prevent detonation, it just reduces it. So instead of a 157 kiloton blast, it's a 15.7 kiloton blast. Twice.
"But the shields block it"
That's fine, I'm in the hanger, I'll put a missile into the shield generator and the Xenon damper. And I'm inside the shield.
"But..."
Once we see that the shields are down, we'll put two more missiles into the hanger. Each.
"You'll kill Shadow and Hawk too!"
Shadow: A far, far better thing...
Hawk: Don't miss! And by the way, I rolled a 89, I hit Wedge with the turret mount.
Now, two 15 kiloton blasts in the hanger, plus 4 more 150 kiloton blasts should destroy the base, kill everyone in it, and possibly split the asteroid in pieces.

We then speculated on whether we should sell Liea into slavery, or drug her and use her as a sex slave, on whether we should hunt down Chewbacca and Lando to kill them before they can rescue Han Solo or after, and other speculations to obscene to repeat (teenage boys).

The GM left in tears. It would be a month before he offered to run again, and three before we let him.

GMs, remember! If you want to tell a story about your favorite characters, write a fan fic. If you want to run a RPG, let the players be the center of the campaign.

[hfergus]

I have both Gm'd and played under various GMs. Never realy harassed a GM; I had good ones. Did what the players do the unexpected and ruin their plot? Oh yes! They did not mind; what we did made sense.

Have I ever been harassed as GM? Not really. Have I had the players ruin my carefully crafted plot? Oh boy, have I. I do not think I have ever had an adventure go the way I thought it would. I allow things when they made sense.

As to NPCs hogging the spotlight, believe it or not, my current players seem to go to one of my NPCs and ask him to solve the problem for them (or at least make it a lot easier) a lot. I have to come up with ways so that they do not sit around waiting for him. They like the character. He does have limits, so it is not too much of a problem. Normally his response is "Yeah, I can do that. It will take weeks to months, possibly years." Since they can't wait that long they have to do it themselves. They roleplay well, but do not think "out of the box" as well as my last group. Once that group was put into a trapped room (DnD) with no set way out. They came up with one that made sense.

[DocMan]

Our Friday night GM sometimes complains that we want her NPCs to do all the work. But when we try to do it ourselves, she makes it too hard for us to succeed so we HAVE to go to the NPCs. And when we finally get to the endgame, she goes to a cutscene and blocks us out of the final action. I wish she'd make up her mind.

Doc

[Vulcan]

There is always the option of 'walk out and find another GM'...

[Cygnia]

There is always the option of 'walk out and find another GM'...

I second this option. Life is too short to waste it on crappy games.

[Peregrine]

I second this option. Life is too short to waste it on crappy games.

Agreed. Which is why I just dropped out of the last game I was in, a PbEM game that ran into the endemic problem of the type - it moved too damn slow.

[Houston GM]

Everyone in my gaming group has run something at one time or another, and as most GMs know, the players never do what you expect them to do. What have they done to you? Or you done to your GM?
"If you don't like the rules, change the game."

From our current campaign:
Our three cybernetically enhanced U.S. Marshalls are trying to capture a group of 8-10 heavily armed, trigger-happy drug smugglers. We're in the middle of a large swamp, and any back-up will be slow in arriving.

The drug smugglers are holed up inside an abandoned complex of buildings. Even without rolling on my Tactics skill, I can tell that the tactical situation sucks. We can't control the perimeter; we can't prevent them from flanking us; they know the terrain better than we do.

After thinking it about it I said to the rest of the the team, "This tactical situation sucks. Let's wait for them to leave and ambush them on the road."

After the successful ambush, the GM told us, "I had expected you to attack them in the complex. I had drawn up maps of the interior and everything .... But I couldn't fault your reasoning."

[CrosshairCollie]

Our Friday night GM sometimes complains that we want her NPCs to do all the work. But when we try to do it ourselves, she makes it too hard for us to succeed so we HAVE to go to the NPCs. And when we finally get to the endgame, she goes to a cutscene and blocks us out of the final action. I wish she'd make up her mind.

Doc

I've had a GM like that, but he rather relished having his NPCs do all the work. It got to the point where we all literally stopped doing anything.

"What do you do?"
"Let (NPC) handle it, he always does ..."

[AnotherSkip]

Heh, First session Playing Champions ever.
Highly experienced GM & other heavily experienced players

GM: there is no power in the game or books that will force me to let you win.

My response: uh no.

GM: I'm serious, there is no power in the game or books that will force me to let you win.

Me: 10D6 Luck.:king:

[steamteck]

As to NPCs hogging the spotlight, believe it or not, my current players seem to go to one of my NPCs and ask him to solve the problem for them (or at least make it a lot easier) a lot..


I thought I was the only one that had that happen. To be fair my players certainly don't want to sit around. They want to be in the thick of it. However if they can get the campaign equivalent of Superman, Wonder Woman etc to come help. They'll go for it.

They just plain like interacting with them too. Lets go over the the protector's citadel for dinner guys." I wonder if the Sorceress Supreme wants to go boating today with us" ( I kid you not on this one. They also managed to get my Batman homage to go also!( and he normally hates socializing) A significant part of the night was spent in small talk while deep sea fishing !!? Of course they made him come to make him uncomfortable.

Then there's my wife's spy type character who locates the problem by infiltration or spying and sometimes tells one or more of her superhuman boyfriends " go get 'em ". I'll be backup" Then Crunch, smash, see pain and screaming bad guys because she brought the right the right men for the job.and she says "That was great guys!" and time for a night on the town.

[Zeropoint]

GM: there is no power in the game or books that will force me to let you win.


That would be my cue to pack up and leave, right there.

[Desert]

GM: there is no power in the game or books that will force me to let you win.


That would be my cue to pack up and leave, right there.

It is a bit off putting, but I would just be like "...okay?" since I'm not sure why he was saying


GM: I'm serious, there is no power in the game or books that will force me to let you win.

This second would get me more and make me more inclined to leave though. I mean it seems like the GM is under the impression it is some sort of competition. If there was a problem where a player seemed to think in that terms and the GM was reacting due to that, I could understand. If he was just such a person... Doesn't sound like it would be much fun.

[Lezentauw]

I use to play with this one player that I believe trumps all in harrassing the GM...

This player/GM was notorious for harrassing people until he got his way. He made up rules to protect his interest at all times. If a new GM was taking their turn, he would remind that person that they have to present something for the 'majority' of the group. Somehow his interests were always a part of the majority. When he ran things, he reminded players that he needed to run things that he would be happy running, even though he never gave anyone else the same freedom.

Well, one night one of the players decided to run his World of Darkness campaign. The GM had alterations to how things worked in the world as they were presented in the books. I assumed that it was a mystery, and that we were suppose to figure it out and fix the situation. The abussive player though decided to argue with the GM about how everything that has been presented was in violation to the books for over an hour, and that he needed to know why the GM was being a jerk and not following the books or explain to him what was going on, before he would allow the game to continue...

Needless to say, I was one of four players that never played with that group ever again after that night...

[BoloOfEarth]

In my first Champions group, one of the other players (Ted) wanted to try his hand at GM-ing, so our regular GM graciously allowed him to run one with our existing heroes. Ted put together an adventure where the first encounter involved the villains, and they needed to be able to escape for the rest of the plot to advance. And as players are wont to do, we didn't want to let them get away. So Ted was getting a little heavy-handed with stopping us from stopping them.

One of the heroes, a stretching character named Slash (played by Richard), was running after an escaping villain -- and Slash had the running speed to catch him. So Ted arbitrarily said that Slash tripped over a fence and did a face-plant into the ground, at full speed. He ruled that Slash did a Move-Through on the ground and, since he couldn't do Knockback to the Earth, took full damage himself (which would put Slash into GM-Discretion-Land). Of course, Richard started arguing with Ted, who began going into explanations involving real-world physics.

My favorite part of that argument was Richard saying, "Ted, your character generates wind blasts out of a wooden staff. Could you please explain the physics behind that?"