Worst gaming experience

[Dominique]

Thinking back on my many years of gaming, there have been a few low points. What's your worst experience during a game?:(

[Captain Xenon]

the worst? well...

back in college, there was a group who played AD&D. these guys made the knights of the dinner table (and the black hand) look good by comparison. One of them always played a drow assasin. another, had a CN mage who always wandered off alone, the rest of the party unconsious bleeding and polymorphed, to fight what just kicked our collective butts.

one game of rolemaster, it went really bad. first, the drow (CG alignment) kills my character with a level 50 poison. his only explanation? i wasnt 'doing enough'. so then we go on with the quest, and meet a dragon- who will let us take all the treasure, minus a couple items. one guy has his character (some kind of dancer), attack the dragon. big fight- the drow sits there and defends, my char gets thretened at swordpoint by another party member, and the fight goes poorly.
then the dragon gives us a chance to surrender. the wolverine-lemming, of course, refuses, so we get hit with a powerfulll spell and all die except the drow- and my new character who had enough healing magic to survive. we lose all our gear, and the campaign ends mid-qeust. and the guy who started it? left mid fight and didnt come back.

same group, the drow would often have his character commit suicide around 1 or 2am, when he got bored. the gm- well, he was just as bad. i had a lightning bolt BOUNCE off of a t-rex in AD&D. i eventualy failed my saving throw- he made me roll about 20 of them, one for each time it bounced between me and the dinosaur.

the last game i played with that group, and the reason i quit playing D&D for several years- a group of 10 players, 1 evil, i was good, and the rest were chaotic neutral. went downhill from there.

whats more- the drow player? out of character, he made death threats to me, that he would one day be a hit man, and kill me first. yes, really. not a nice guy.

[lemming]

Well there was the one Con game that the GM was wearing spandex and a cape for. 20 years later, I still wake in the night screaming.

[Rook]

The worst I can remember was the first convention I attended. I had signed up for a day-long game - a mistake - and the GM did not have pregenerated characters. When it was time to break for lunch, some people were still working on their characters. Needless to say, I decided not to return for the afternoon session.

Another low point was an Ars Magica game I played in. It would probably have been best if I had had the sense to not play, because the GM and I were not a good fit. I'm the kind of player who likes to make things up hoping that the GM will run with it, but the GM liked everything scripted to the letter and relentlessly railroaded us to the point that I felt that I couldn't affect the outcome of events in any meaningful way. It all came to a head when the GM felt that my character needed to be gotten rid of for the good of his campaign. Our characters were granted an audience with the king (I can't remember why) and in his presence when the following exchange occurred (I remember most of it word for word):

Me: A thought balloon appears above my head, "The king is a goblin-sympathizer!"

GM: You say that?!?

Me: No. I said "a thought balloon appears." I was thinking it.

GM: Well if you thought it, you probably said it.

Me: No. I thought it.

GM: Well, you probably muttered it under your breath.

Me: Who's playing my character here, you or me? I said I thought it.

GM: Okay... You notice an amulet around his neck. He's read your mind!

End of character. And end of my involvement in the campaign. It still makes me laugh, though.

[SirViss]

Two campaigns come to mind:

There was a supers game where we were still learning the mehanics (we including the GM) and the campaign wasn<t going well. Finally, our heroes at one point got trounced by some beat cops who were mind controlled! That is when the GM said that the next day the team met with their sponsor and he told the team:

Sponsor: "Well team, to save the world we must got to another dimension. Your going to Hell..."

Considering that we had gotten beaten by normals, the players thought the GM was nuts, and the campaign ended that night.

The worst though was the Shadowrun game where the PCs just stood around as the GM showed off how bright and powerful his NPCs were.

[Lord Mhoram]

Don't have time to share mine, must go to work, but here is one I ran across the same day I saw this thread. This is from RPG net....

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12210

[Korvar]

My worst gaming experience was a game of Star Wars. The game up to this point had been fairly unpleasant, as the GM insisted on rolling every. single. thing., and following the published modules precisely. What this meant is that we never, ever, succeeded a Climbing/Jumping roll, and thus generally ended up held together by Medpaks.

Anyhoo.

So we started the game about noon one weekend (ah, student life, when there was so much spare time...). Blah blah blah game game and so forth, until we get to the point where we learn that we have to help defend a planet from invading Imperials. With our starfighters.

Pity #1: only two of us have starfighter piloting skills

Pity #2: the GM decides to take the module's suggestion that you use the Star Warriors game to run the space combats. So instead of the D6 Star Wars quick'n'fun spaceship combat, we use the Star Warriors tedious wargame instead.

So the majority of the group sat around for uncounted hours while the other two actually fight their space battles. The fact that one of the battles had a "even if you win, you lose this bit" kicker in it was merely icing on the cake.

In the end, we all decided to man gun turrets for the final battle, even though one of us was playing a Kid (I'd put a child in charge of a a gun turret, really I would), and I was playing an [ahem] Ewok Jedi (look, if a little green dude with pointy ears can do it...) who was all peace-loving and stuff. But dammit, we wanted something to do!

The game finally ended at 8am. So 20 hours of gaming, about 15 hours of which was utter tedium.

[Blue]

My worst gaming experience is one where I got petty, mostly because like most people I tend to delude myself that I'm above such childish behavior.

I had a friend who was a *great* call of cthulhu GM. After discussing what game we'd play next several players challenged him to run a D&D game. So he did! First one we'd played in years.

The idea is that because he hates low level characters he'd morph us up to a medium-low level (like 3rd? 4th?) before putting us into the "real world". We went through a sort of training camp for adventurers.

So we are put in a no-win situation as part of the training. In it, we are 1st level characters facing a dragon turtle. It was supposed to teach us that some things can't be beat. We were supposed to avoid it for several rounds then be freed; of course we don't know that's supposed to be the result. But my character, a cleric, was too heroic for that. She worshiped a god of valor and felt that it was her sworn duty to her god to draw the turtle's attention. So she manages a miraculous save the first round then on the second round she's fried to a crisp.

I didn't take it well. It was only a 1st level character, and easily replaced (except that 1st ed D&D often took hours to make a character if you didn't do it every day). So they suggested I roll another character and I said, "why bother" and left. I guess the GM felt really bad about it and realized maybe it was a bad idea to put 1st levels in a lethal no-win scenario, which was kinda true. But I feel bad about it, not because the character died--after all, she died doing what she was designed to do and she died roleplaying. I felt bad because I acted like a brat afterward.

[Polaris]

Wow...

After reading some of the experiences here.. I guess I haven't really had any (I just need to stop complaining when the minor problems come up).

Captain Xenon.. I have to ask why you stayed with the group as long as you did?

Polaris

[Brandi]

Oh... you people have no idea...

Go over to RPG.net and read this, (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12210) this, (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13446) and this.... (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45837)

[rayoman]

With the exception of beating the dog, this was the funniest rpg moment that I have ever read. Poor dog.


Originally posted by Lord Mhoram
Don't have time to share mine, must go to work, but here is one I ran across the same day I saw this thread. This is from RPG net....

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12210

[ChuckB]

One relatively bad experience is actually kind of funny
now.

This game took place almost 20 years ago.

The GM was running a Champs game in the then-current Marvel Universe. Our first adventure involved Count Dracula and a bunch of vampires raiding blood supplies.

There was an issue of X-Men where Drac blocks a punch by Colossus. The GM somehow figured that Colossus had a 100 STR and that because Drac was able to block his punch that meant that Dracula had a 125 STR (the other vampires were all around 100 str).

We eventually defeated the "Kryptonian Vampires" (as I nicknamed them) , but it was not easy.

[winterhawk]

I have bored the learned panel with so many "bad gaming stories" over the years, I will not repeat them (and the crowd goes wild *YEAH*). The one thing that all of them have in common is the "cattle call". That's one of those cards posted on the FLGS/Comic Store "Looking for Players" corkboards. If you post one, good for you, but be prepared. There is a reason whoever shows up doesn't have a regular game, ranging from social retardation to rules lawyering to body odor so bad, you'd jump into a pile of manure just to forget it.

If you show up for a "cattle call" game, good for you, but be prepared. There is a reason this GM needs players. It could be that he needs more fodder for his "agent-level" NPCs, who are refugees from from Krypton. Or it could be that he likes to have someone "who's not a friend", so he can pile on you while his "friends" wander off to find the Swords of Slaying and the +2 Plate Armor.

I'm sure someone out there has had a good experience from answering a "cattle call". If you have, good for you. For the rest of us...Be prepared.

[LadyChaos]

Oh, wow. Worst gaming experience ... would have to be when I first started gaming (long before there was dirt). I was new and didn't know what to expect. Had signed up as interested in a D&D-type game at the FLGS. The DM was a kid about 5 years younger than me. The players were all guys from about that age to around 20.

I didn't realize how rare women in gaming were (especially back in the olden days). I rolled up a half-elven spellcaster of some sort. The 20 something guy kept reciting the exploits of his Anti-Paladin to me the entire time. "Anti-what?" I had no idea what he was talking about.

I soon found out. We all "met" at the local tavern. The anti-paladin breaks into my PCs room that night and rapes her. My PC was given no opportunity to resist or fight back in any manner.

No one had a problem with this behavior. The player bragged how his PC could get away with this because he was a "paladin" and no one would believe my PC. (Does this sound like a bad LIfetime movie or what?)

Did I kill his PC? No. I had a first level nobody and his character ranked up there in the teens. I took him to court where everyone believed his PC. Until I pointed out that my own PC had "detect lie" and found three other clerics in town who also had it. His PC sang a different tune on the rack and subsequent execution.

I never played with this group again, but that's not the end of the story.

The player followed me home, swore his undying love. I told him to get lost. He then stalked me (parked outside my house nearly every night for hours, etc.) for several weeks. I finally had a "friend" talk to him. The stalking stopped, but then he went to the FLGS and wrote five pages of obscenties about me in the gamers' interest notebook. After that, the store never allowed that sort of sign-up again, which was too bad.

It's a wonder I kept gaming. This guy was a poster child who proved just about everything the anti-gaming wackos howl about. Luckily, I met other people who showed me just how much of an anomoly this jerk was. :)

[Chris Goodwin]

Worst gaming experience for me was a GURPS Horror game, in one of the prepublished modules. The party was split, and my half was exploring a cave. GM rolls some dice, says to me "You go unconscious, I'll get back to you later," and switches to the other half. He never got back to us. The session ran another two hours after that.

(Btw, this should probably be moved to General Roleplaying.)

[Rook]

Originally posted by Blue
I had a friend who was a *great* call of cthulhu GM. After discussing what game we'd play next several players challenged him to run a D&D game. So he did! First one we'd played in years.

The idea is that because he hates low level characters he'd morph us up to a medium-low level (like 3rd? 4th?) before putting us into the "real world". We went through a sort of training camp for adventurers.

So we are put in a no-win situation as part of the training...

I used to do the same thing when running a Cthulhu-influenced D&D game years ago. The campaign started out as a regular D&D game but during one session the players faced an unnamed horror they had no chance of defeating. At first, they mistook the thing for a mountain. They put up a fight and later tried to run, but all were eventually slaughtered.

As the players were packing up and leaving, the group's cleric woke up screaming. :)

I had several dream sequences that they played through from time to time during the course of the campaign. Each one revealed a little more about what they would eventually face "for real." Each dream ended with every PC dead. The situations were unwinnable, but with no real lasting effect on their characters, the players accepted them. (Except while playing through the first, naturally.)

[ShelleyCM]

Most of my awful gaming experiences centered around a "gaming spouse" who really didn't want to be roleplaying -- she just didn't want hubby to be doing something without her. There were the tantrums...the pouting...she wasn't content until the evening was ruined for all of us.

Case in point: we were playing a GURPS Black Ops game that her hubby was running. He asked me to make a role or two for the situation the character was in - and his wife interjected with, "I want to make a roll, too." He tried to ignore this, but she inisted. Finally he said, "But your character isn't even there." She said, "Fine. If I can't make a roll, then I'm leaving." (The game was in her house.)

Sad, but even though he was a good friend, when she finally succeeded in severing their relationship from us altogether ...well...I wasn't overwhelmingly heartbroken. Gaming was much saner afterwards.

-Shelley

[TechnoViking]

I remember once back in college we were playing Champions in the campus student union. I was running my regular group of 5 players, and had two new people show up that heard about the group. One of the new people seemed twitchy.

About a hour into the game, we were in combat and the twitchty guy was stunned for a phase by an attack. The guy started yelling saying there was no way he could be stunned. I showed I had a rolled 4 to hit and near max damage.

The guy did not say anything, so I assumed he was not going to agrue any more. I started running the combat again, when one of friends yelled "Look Out!!!". A swiss army (big one) flew past my head (missed by a foot), blade out, and stuck in the wall behind me. The twitchy guy and his friend were close to the door and bolted as fast as they could.

We did not call the police, since we only had their first names, and figured the only thing that would happen would that the RPG club would get banned from campus.

I never did see that guy again, but I did keep the knife.

Mike

[Rage]

well its not my lowest but the most infuriating at the moment is listed on my site under the Sub heading Rhys

http://www.thenakednic.tk what are you waiting for? use my shamless plug to read my story... Or umm bump my hits.

[Lord Mhoram]

Well, back from work, so I can drop some of mine.

Rolemaster game. The GM was also our champs GM, and he was taking a break from supers. This was a college game, and the GM played favorites. In champs he had no upper DC limit, and mixed 250 pt characters with 500+, and didn't work to get us involved....So characters I ended up playing, unless I really Minmaxed were effectively useless (the favorite was a good player, and retired his powerful character so we could have more fun). That is background.
So in rolemaster, everyone is on even footing, and I'm playing a sorceror and he does well for months. Never hurt badly, contributed to the group, and we got attack, he was hit with a 00 E crit, and died. Just like that. Extremely frustrating, but that is part of rolemaster the chance to get a nasty crit, but getting to roll such things on the bad guys.

My other really bad moment was also a rolemaster game. The GM was trying some new rules, ones that due to my background with Champs I saw could be abused mightily. And I wasn't over being a powergamer- so I did. However I really roleplayed the characters and while they had the capacity to be totally obscene, they never were. So a situation developed where one of my characters wanted to do something (he was a fightermage and potentially a better fighter than the primary fighter) and he was 5th or 6th level. Due to my abuse of his changed rules, and some mighty fine tactics, I beat a 15th level fighter one on one. At which point the GM asked for my character sheets, and I gave them to him. He said "You could take over the whole party with these two" to which my responce was "Yeah... why would I want to" and he was totally flabbergasted. So I should have seen the next thing coming....
We were at a climactic fight, and one of the players get really lucky and scores an open end crit on the main bad guy and drop him in the second round. GM is visibly annoyed. Next session he said _he_ was going to roll all rolls, including all character rolls, behind the screen from then on. I said "Well if you are going to roll my characters stuff, you might as well play them too" handed my characters to him and left.

[CrosshairCollie]

Hmm ... oh, where oh where to start ... hmm, absolute worst.

Well, on a personal level, there was a fairly recent D'n'D game, where one of the players said, and I quote 'call me when the fight starts' and left the room to go dink on the host's computer. Then he complains about why he has fewer XP than everybody else ... (side note, there was no fight that game)

More annoyingly is his 'UberNPC' habit, wherein the party is accompanied by a high-level NPC with ridiculous amounts of ph4t l3wt (forgive the leet), as an excuse for him to throw a ridiculous fight in front of us. For example, in a World of Darkness game, our fledgling group of 3 werecritters and 1 mage encountered about 24 Black Spiral Dancers. But never fear, our GM is playing King Albrecht (the lord of the werewolf nation), so he takes on 23 of them by himself 'off-panel'. Playing D'n'D and a PC gets ready to do something remotely dangerous? Here comes NPC-boy! He's done this so many times that they've all blended into a combined Worst Gaming Experience.

[Koshka]

Originally posted by CrosshairCollie
More annoyingly is his 'UberNPC' habit, wherein the party is accompanied by a high-level NPC with ridiculous amounts of ph4t l3wt (forgive the leet), as an excuse for him to throw a ridiculous fight in front of us. For example, in a World of Darkness game, our fledgling group of 3 werecritters and 1 mage encountered about 24 Black Spiral Dancers. But never fear, our GM is playing King Albrecht (the lord of the werewolf nation), so he takes on 23 of them by himself 'off-panel'. Playing D'n'D and a PC gets ready to do something remotely dangerous? Here comes NPC-boy! He's done this so many times that they've all blended into a combined Worst Gaming Experience.

I know the type, believe me. A few years ago, I was in an online Dark Champions game. The original GM came down with burnout, so one of the other players offered to run for a few months. That was when all of us learned that while we were built on 75 points plus disads, his GM-PC was 150 plus disads plus more XP than anyone else had gotten. The substitute GM trimmed the character down to campaign guidelines, but when the original guy was ready to run again it was with super-character.

Of course, in that game you only got XPs if you were still online at 1 or 2 AM (my time zone) and the GM decided to wrap up. Since I had to be up at 5:30 AM for work the day after his games, you can guess how much XPs my character ever got.

[AnotherSkip]

Ugh okies here is one that is just about as bad as a Gm supercharacter.

I build well rounded very character concept oriented characters. these are the kind of characters that are more likely to go wide rather than specialise. On the other hand there are two munchkin players who rather go deep than wide. To give you an idea one character (who for no particular reason on Gods Green Earth is the same"classs" as i am ) has 15 dice to pierce the umbra (we are using special rules of Gnosis+Primal Urge, Powergamer #2 is our WereWolf GM.), MAx willpower and Max Gnosis, and to top it all off is a White Howler with 5 in Past Lives. To be fair to both the GM and Player, the White Howler is a character we rescued nearly six months ago from a Black Spiral Cairn following one of my dream quests. However the Player proceeded to take MY flipping phase of the moon rather than one of the Two open phases we had so now there is a great deal of competiton. And the guy can be a real arse though it is I think unintentional. Especially after I get done teaching him 7 Rites he then turns around next session and declares that i am _Not_ his mentor.

This is the same guy that in ED Was a Nethermancer and Versatilitied Elemental Weaving in order to more or less out spellcast my Elvish Elementalist. In other words he has a habit of building characters that crawl up my backside. When I would rather not be going straight for Power power power I have to, to keep this guys mouth from running like a river how much better he is than me.

Needless to say the next time he tries to get his rite of accomplishment for Wisdom it will be challenged.

The Gm is just as bad, not only does he regularly kill of 20 Werewolves per story (the technocracy attacked a moot, the Catholic Church has apparently developed a Werewolf Specific SARS like attack) And i have a sneaking suspicion the Gm uses GM only info interchangeably with NPC only info. He also is a long time Shadowrunner with apparently zero desire to socialise in game. All social interaction attempts with our cairn outside of "the Gms plotted adventure"get more or less brushed aside. Even for an old shadowrunner he ignores my Contacts, my Mentor and just about everthing else aside from combat.

im not even sure he reads the books and he throws incorrect Vampires (my own OOC speciality) and incorrect mages (another players OOC speciality) while claiming that they are not the gift critters in the books.

ill take part of that back. he has read the Main second edition book (the edition we are playing) he not only states he does not have time but point blank refuses to read the other books or listen to our advice on the WW world.

[Killer Shrike]

Originally posted by Captain Xenon
the worst? well...
SNIP

Your kidding right? If not, why did you ever go back?

[ShelleyCM]

Originally posted by LadyChaos
The player followed me home, swore his undying love. I told him to get lost. He then stalked me (parked outside my house nearly every night for hours, etc.) for several weeks. I finally had a "friend" talk to him. The stalking stopped, but then he went to the FLGS and wrote five pages of obscenties about me in the gamers' interest notebook. After that, the store never allowed that sort of sign-up again, which was too bad.


The gaming story was bad enough, but this....this is ridiculous! I've been hit on, but nothing so bad (thank heaven). <shudder>

-Shelley

[Killer Shrike]

And all the above is why I SCREEN ALL PLAYERS FIRST.

I have on occassion played with other groups, but I can usually get a feel b4 the game even starts if its going to work out, and simply abort if its looking bad. Ive been fooled a few times and gotten into a session b4 I realized how bad the group/certain players are. In those cases, I would just suicide or do something to get myself killed and leave.....

Subsequently I dont have any horror stories to relate; they all pale in comparison to some of the above...

[Brandi]

My bad story is over at RPG.net. Search for "ruptured Halfling."

[dei1c3]

I will admit up front that my worst gaming experience is not nearly as bad as many listed here. I guess I've been pretty lucky because not only was it not that bad...it was pretty much my only bad experience gaming.

I was playing a D&D campaign with some people from work plus my wife (who used to work at the same company). It was a pretty casual campaign with more emphasis on having fun together and hearing the GMs story than "phat lewtz" or "mad exp". At least it was at first.

After two sessions, the GM asked if anyone minded if he invited 2 more people into the campaign. One was another co-worker and the other was his girlfriend. I didn't really want them to join (they weren't my favorite people), but no one else seemed to mind, so I kept quiet (lesson learned on that front!).

So, they joined...and proceeded to annoy the crap out of me for the next few weeks.

He was all about "working the rules"...you know the type. The guy who has the exact right combination of skills, stats and gear to maximize their combat ability. (Is this what people mean when they say "minmaxxing"?) Further...as I said, this was a pretty casual game and we hadn't been playing with all the rules and when he found out that we weren't using a rule he had planned to "work", he would start a debate about it. At one point (I forget the specific rule), he sent out a 5 page email detailing why the rule in question was a) vital and b) not that hard to use anyway (complete with a "dumbed down" description of the rule).

He was also the kind of guy who had to make sure we were doing everything in the best possible way everytime, which basically meant the group went from friendly discourse about the big stuff to "serious debate" about every decsion, big or small. It once took us 30 minutes to determine shifts for guard duty when we stopped to camp for the night!! It got to the point where you'd be faced with the choice of arguing with him over everything, or just letting him decide what he thought was best...neither was very satisfying.

She on the other hand, could care less about the rules (she barely understood them as far as I could tell)...as long as she got to be involved in EVERYTHING. She would do things like insist on being up with the Rangers whenever they went to scout something, despite the fact that she had no tracking or silent move ability. Or insist she get to try to open the chest before the rogue...again despite lacking the required skills.

The latter example was clearly motivated by her other charming trait: Loot hog! She would do things like write down the loot as the GM read it off and then claim that since she was the one who had written it down, she had it on her person. She'd then dole out the loot, keeping an extra money or odd pieces that didn't divide up evenly. At one point, we found a royal armory that had a small number of very special weapons (well balanced, ornate, etc...). Much to her chagrin, she couldn't use any of them (wrong skills). She tried to argue that she should get one even though every weapon could be put to use by someone who could use it and would consider it an upgrade. She didn't get away with that.

The "best" part of all this was their interaction with each other. She basically spent the entire time trying to undermine his character in-game because "her character didn't like [his character class]" (complete with the "What? I'm roleplaying" look of innocence). It was a constant "I keep an eye on him...cause I don't trust him." and "Are you all going to let him get away with that? I say we tie him up and leave him behind!" He in turn would spend the entire time berating her about rules. He would constantly point out every mistake or misuse of rules she made...before even the GM could say anything. If I had a nickel for everytime he told her "...which you would know if you had bothered to read the rules.", I'd be a wealthy man.

Eventually (after 2 or 3 game sessions), I bowed out of the group claiming that I was too busy (which everyone knew was a lie since we all worked together). It wasn't my intent, but that spelled the end of the campaign as several other people quit right after I did. Ironically, we all came to find out that none of us wanted them in in the first place, but none of us wanted to "rock the boat", and that we were all sick of playing with them. Once again, lesson learned.

The good news is that the demise of that campaign lead to discussions of Champions and next month I will be GMing the group through their first Champions campaign.

Oddly enough, I seem to have forgotten to invite the Rule Worker and the Loot Hog. ;)

Chris

[Doug McCrae]

What are "phat lewtz"? Treasure, magic items, or is it something to do with bards?

[Doug McCrae]

Originally posted by Brandi
Oh... you people have no idea...

Go over to RPG.net and read this, (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12210) this, (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13446) and this.... (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45837) The middle one was totally brilliant (and disgusting, too) probably the best roleplaying story I've ever read.

[dei1c3]

Originally posted by Doug McCrae
What are "phat lewtz"? Treasure, magic items, or is it something to do with bards? Sorry...phat lewtz is what some types of players call treasure in general and good treasure in particular.

Really...I can't stand that kind of thing and should probably not propogate it by using it, even in jest.

Chris

[Old Man]

Originally posted by Brandi
Oh... you people have no idea...

Go over to RPG.net and read this, (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12210) this, (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13446) and this.... (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45837)

You need to warn people they can't read the middle one at work. I'm sitting here tearing up, trying not to laugh.

[Blue]

I also enjoyed the middle one, though it's good to read the first one to get a feel for the "characters". And boy are they characters.

[altamaros]

Originally posted by Old Man
You need to warn people they can't read the middle one at work. I'm sitting here tearing up, trying not to laugh.

too late, my colleagues, ( although non-gamers) are passing the links.

[bwdemon]

Running a pre-release demo of Hunter for several people, some of which were of the "unwashed gamer" type, one of which was wearing a rancid leather vest (no shirt underneath), on a hot August day...

I've been to a lot of conventions, mostly large, and I've been hit by some pretty evil stenches in my time at those, but this was absolutely vile. Needless to say, it was one of the fastest demos I ever ran.

[misterdeath]

Originally posted by Killer Shrike
And all the above is why I SCREEN ALL PLAYERS FIRST.


Yep. Meet them on neutral ground, a restaurant you want to try out is good, because if they mess it up, you don't ever have to go back.

Sometimes you get bad ones though.

I'll dig out some stories, and be right back.

D

[zornwil]

Originally posted by winterhawk
I have bored the learned panel with so many "bad gaming stories" over the years, I will not repeat them (and the crowd goes wild *YEAH*). The one thing that all of them have in common is the "cattle call". That's one of those cards posted on the FLGS/Comic Store "Looking for Players" corkboards. If you post one, good for you, but be prepared. There is a reason whoever shows up doesn't have a regular game, ranging from social retardation to rules lawyering to body odor so bad, you'd jump into a pile of manure just to forget it.

If you show up for a "cattle call" game, good for you, but be prepared. There is a reason this GM needs players. It could be that he needs more fodder for his "agent-level" NPCs, who are refugees from from Krypton. Or it could be that he likes to have someone "who's not a friend", so he can pile on you while his "friends" wander off to find the Swords of Slaying and the +2 Plate Armor.

I'm sure someone out there has had a good experience from answering a "cattle call". If you have, good for you. For the rest of us...Be prepared.

I know this is OT to this thread, but as you mentioned it, actually I met the group I'm in now essentially due to a newsgroup "cattle call". It worked out great, though I was somewhat nervous about it. It was the first and only time I've responded to such. So just mentioning good things can happen. Also, I think if you're new in an area at least you can make connections that way, even if the group on a whole doesn't work out or some of the people in it don't.

[Tech]

I was going to post mine, but it's rather odd that everything except Champions was posted.

[lemming]

Originally posted by Tech
I was going to post mine, but it's rather odd that everything except Champions was posted.
Mine was champions, though I guess I didn't actually say the system it was implied.

[winterhawk]

Originally posted by bwdemon
I've been to a lot of conventions, mostly large, and I've been hit by some pretty evil stenches in my time at those, but this was absolutely vile. Needless to say, it was one of the fastest demos I ever ran.

I read this and had to relate this Convention Stink one, even though its slightly OT:

I was attending on of my first Chicago Comic Conventions with a buddy of mine known for his brutal (if not cruel) honesty.

We were at a vendor who speciallized in movie posters and stills, which the supplier kept in one of those really thick photo albums with its own stand. My buddy was at one end of the album, and a rather large guy steps up and browses the other end, placing him between my buddy and I. The stink that he brought with him literally brought tears to my eyes. My buddy turned to him, totally straight faced and said, "Dude, do us all a favor...put the comics down for 10 minutes a day and bathe! The large guy ran from the booth crying. I hope he started showering.


Originally posted by zornwil
I know this is OT to this thread, but as you mentioned it, actually I met the group I'm in now essentially due to a newsgroup "cattle call". It worked out great, though I was somewhat nervous about it. It was the first and only time I've responded to such. So just mentioning good things can happen. Also, I think if you're new in an area at least you can make connections that way, even if the group on a whole doesn't work out or some of the people in it don't.

Your right, and I should have prefaced my statement by saying I met one of my best friends from a "cattle call". He is my gaming guru and I was honored to stand up in his wedding.


Originally posted by Brandi
Oh... you people have no idea...

Go over to RPG.net and read this, (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12210) this, (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13446) and this.... (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45837)

OK, I think these links should be required reading for anyone who wants to post to this thread. Everything I have complained about is miniscule compared to some of this stuff.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by winterhawk

(stuff snipped)

My buddy turned to him, totally straight faced and said, "Dude, do us all a favor...put the comics down for 10 minutes a day and bathe! The large guy ran from the booth crying. I hope he started showering.

(stuff snipped)


I know a gamer who bathed every day but had an odor problem. The only reason I know he bathed was that in college one of the guys on his floor regularly witnessed that he did (communal bath area, individual stalls - so I suppose technically he could have been avoiding the water while standing in the stall, but that seems pretty unlikely). Unfortunately a few people just...smell. I would think there'd be some easy sort of masking treatment, like perfume, but I get the impression that it tends to make things as bad or worse. Although your friend was cruel (I mean it's not like he knows the guy or his circumstances or anything), on the other hand so many people never say anything that I'm sure some people with odor problems might go a long time not realizing the magnitude.

[lemming]

Originally posted by zornwil I know a gamer who bathed every day but had an odor problem.
It could be a diet problem. My mother-in-law would reek of curry for days after she ate it.
Some people have the same happen with other foods. It all has to do with what enzymes your body produces to deal with intake.

[LadyChaos]

Originally posted by ShelleyCM
The gaming story was bad enough, but this....this is ridiculous! I've been hit on, but nothing so bad (thank heaven). <shudder>

-Shelley

After so many years I can laugh about it. I use it as my example for "how not to attract females to your game" for guys.

[Stephen Mann]

Well, having read the previous stories, I can safely say that I've led a charmed gaming life.

My worst con game had a table staffed with what seemed to be wonderful gamers, and a teen GM who hadn't really read through the adventure before the game started. Then he admitted he hadn't GMed before. The experienced con GMs at the table assured him that GMing a con game wasn't that different from GMing a home game.

"No," he said, innocently, "I've never GMed before at all! A friend on the con council asked me to do this. I've played a lot, though!"

What was truly sad, though, was the table across the hall that was running the same adventure. We could hear very clearly how much fun they were having!

At the end of the session, we hadn't even gotten off page 1 of the 20-page adventure. Sigh.

[austenandrews]

I've met gamers who did bathe daily, but whose laundry regimen left something to be desired.

My "worst gaming experiences" pale compared to fistfights and knife-throwing, so I'll refrain. :)

-AA

[MarkusDark]

Originally posted by austenandrews
I've met gamers who did bathe daily, but whose laundry regimen left something to be desired.

My "worst gaming experiences" pale compared to fistfights and knife-throwing, so I'll refrain. :)

-AA

How about toe-nail clipping at the gaming table? I think that is somewhere between fistfights and knife throwing so I'll mention it. :)

[Killer Shrike]

OK, Ill come clean.

Er...I hate to admit this out of context, but I did punch the GM of one game in the face once. Sent him head over tail, GM Screen and dice flying, with a busted nose and a split lip.

However, in my defense a) I had a lot of anger management problems as a kid b) we had a lot of bad history between us outside of the game (ranging from a wide variety of things, including but not limited to me "having relations" with a girl he had a thing for (but had zero chance with), and also a general distaste for one another from the day we met) and were only playing together due to the insistence of mutual friends/gamers, c) he was using the "GM Position of Authority" to make personal attacks against me d) I warned him that he was going too far and to stop it twice

The group were split; half thought he deserved it, 1 thought it was uncalled for but he couldnt stop laughing, and 1 (the guys best friend) was really angry and ready to throw down, but he chickened out when he realized everyone else was ok with it. We just stopped the game and I started running something else the next weekend. I even invited the kid I punched, and after a few weeks of sitting out he joined the game.

The whole thing really wasnt game related, it was just teenage fisticuffs between a group of kids that "hung out together"; this particular instance just happened to occur during a game.

In retrospect, I cant really say Im sorry I punched the guy. He was a disgusting slob and just an all around slimeball who liked to talk smack and verbally abuse people but didnt have anything to back it up. Backstabbing coward type. Im just sorry it had to happen during a game session :(

[umbra]

My worst gaming was when we were doing a Gurps game... We were on a new planet (stranded) and had to reach a certain area before our supplies ran out. The GM had us doing driving rolls and keeping track of our gas for two four hour game sessions (and that's all we did, driving rolls and record keeping).

The funniest one was when I was in college. We had a GM who was very attached to his NPC's and Villains (i.e. the NPC's always came and saved us). We had found out the secret base of the villain and had tried to defeat him. The GM had the villain escape and since he was the Governor of the state, make a mutant registration law the next day. I protested, saying Governors just can't pass laws like that, you have to have the state government pass it. After everyone else agreed with me he said "how would I know, I'm an Engineering major" I replied that I was a high school graduate and I knew it.

[Watchman-BN]

Haven't posted much, so will y'all forgive the posting of several bad (but funny in retrospect) experiences?

-I seem to attract people that like to try bad accents. We had one player who had a black, female, Jamaican character named Nexus, whose only noticeable Jamaican characteristic was ending every phrase with the word, "mon." "Hey mon. <whitebread accent> Lets kick their asses!....mon." Since this speech affectation was her only personality trait at all
we started calling her "Cardboard." instead of her real name.

-Then I tried a game, with a group I'd met on line. It was me (the newb), the Wacked Out Vet, the Vampire Wannabe Guy, and the Aggressive Gay GM who really wanted me to stay around. The GM developed a "realistic" early Renaissance game where I could have a cleric, but not a mace or any cleric-type spells. The only characters that weren't "realistic-ized" out of usefulness were rogues. The Vet and the Vamp, of course, both created min-maxed rogues. Worse, their only idea of roleplaying was to talk in Cockney accents the whole evening, while their min-maxed characters slaughtered every foe (with guns, no less), rolling their eyes at the uselessness of the Cleric-who-wasn't-a-Cleric. I lasted one night, although I got several emails and calls from the GM wanting me back.

-In another group, during a heated game dispute we had a Big Gulp thrown, and $100 in gaming books ruined, by the player whose character was a minotaur fighter with....*sigh*...retractable claws that made a *snikt* sound as they popped out. In his defense, the player, not the character, had recently been fitted for Vampire teeth, so maybe biting his own gums had made him irritable.

-Early on, in what turned out to be a wildly successful campaign, a fairly major villian died and collapsed on a shopping mall escalator. For some reason, I (as the GM) mentioned that his head was slowly bouncing as the escalator moved. Maybe I was trying to be a bit too descriptive, because one player, who hadn't been the object of attention recently and apparently couldn't handle it, announced, "My character pulls down his pants and kneels down by the the guy's head..." I'll mercifully end the story there, although he didn't.

-Finally, we had a player who, while bored working his 3rd shift security guard job, would draw comic books about the characters in...unflatering stories. I have to admit, they were amusing as hell, but he turned all the characters he didn't like, into effeminate (or butch) mental cases.

To give you an idea of the level of humor, one of the most creative characters was an energy projector type (Electron) who had inhabited the body of a dead enemy agent. He functioned in every way as a normal human, except that people recognized his face as that of an enemy agent (interesting roleplaying opportunities there). Of course, in the comic version, this character was drawn as a decaying body, complete with maggots crawling out of his orifices. Of course the maggots would die when Cardboard Nexus blew over in a stiff breeze, exclaiming, "Mon!"

Each week in the comic, new body parts fell off poor "Electron" and the comic became so ingrained in our minds, Electron's player eventually created a new character just to stop all the jokes at his expense.

Oh, and my character got off easy: In the comic he wore a Popeye hat and had a few extra zipper scars. The comic book writer wasn't dumb enough to really insult the GM. :p

[lemming]

I just was reminded of a bad experience at a con game.

Myself and a friend were both in this game. I was playing Ice Pirate (martial artist with skills up the wazoo) and my friend was playing a Speedster, Jet Stream. I actually don't know how I kept getting IP into games. She was 700+ points, but built with breadth as opposed to depth. So in some ways, she was good for torturing other players. Especially one of the other ones in the game. So in some ways, I wasn't helping a couple others to enjoy the game at the time. But I digress.
The GM set it up as saying a city had been nuked and we were being sent to investigate. Err? Well, it didn't seem too bad yet. We went through some initial encounters, etc... and then got to the final battle. Mechanon was responsible and there was at least one other villian who we knew was evil because he was homosexual. Several of the players kind of gave that blank look toward the GM probably thinking as I did "He didn't just say that did he?"
At that point my friend and I started having our female characters make comments making it look like we were a couple.
The only other thing I remember from the game was that we beat up the villians and then the final word from the GM was that at the trial of Mechanon he was released because there were no witnesses that he had set off the nuke.
Gah. At least we were able to make fun of the game.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by Watchman-BN
-Then I tried a game, with a group I'd met on line. It was me (the newb), the Wacked Out Vet, the Vampire Wannabe Guy, and the Aggressive Gay GM who really wanted me to stay around. The GM developed a "realistic" early Renaissance game where I could have a cleric, but not a mace or any cleric-type spells. The only characters that weren't "realistic-ized" out of usefulness were rogues. The Vet and the Vamp, of course, both created min-maxed rogues. Worse, their only idea of roleplaying was to talk in Cockney accents the whole evening, while their min-maxed characters slaughtered every foe (with guns, no less), rolling their eyes at the uselessness of the Cleric-who-wasn't-a-Cleric. I lasted one night, although I got several emails and calls from the GM wanting me back.


Great stories, I just snipped the one above to put my question into context - so how in the world did the GM buy off on those characters using guns when he was supposed to run a semi-/mostly-realistic Renaissance game?

[Watchman-BN]

so how in the world did the GM buy off on those characters using guns when he was supposed to run a semi-/mostly-realistic Renaissance game?
I think they were flintlocks. And, of course, they each had two of them, primed and loaded, and could fight with both hands. And they had enough skill that they were deadly with their only two shots, so few enemies got close enough for HTH.

Oh, and I didn't paint the rest of the scene: The Vet wore fatigues and sat the whole night on the back of the couch, leaning against the wall. When he wasn't rolling dice, he was fondling a large combat knife. The Vamp sat on the floor in the corner, and would only look at you over his arm, or over a book, never directly.

Then to see them break into "roleplay mode" calling everyone "Guvnuh" and excaliming "Crickey!"... I think that's when I developed this nervous tick....

[zornwil]

Originally posted by Watchman-BN
I think they were flintlocks. And, of course, they each had two of them, primed and loaded, and could fight with both hands. And they had enough skill that they were deadly with their only two shots, so few enemies got close enough for HTH.

Oh, and I didn't paint the rest of the scene: The Vet wore fatigues and sat the whole night on the back of the couch, leaning against the wall. When he wasn't rolling dice, he was fondling a large combat knife. The Vamp sat on the floor in the corner, and would only look at you over his arm, or over a book, never directly.

Then to see them break into "roleplay mode" calling everyone "Guvnuh" and excaliming "Crickey!"... I think that's when I developed this nervous tick....

Wow, all the groups I've been in have been so boring in comparison...thankfully so! Have you heard Arcady's horror stories of groups? Now there's some real bizarre stuff, including a crack user who showed up to a game and did a "show and tell" with the crack pipe - among even more severe craziness. It's somewhere over on the M&M boards.

[ChocolateMousje]

Well, not worst for me, but still an interesting episode.

High level D&D, GM is running an 'Escape from the 9 Hells' scenario.

New guy to the group is playing a Ranger. For some reason he's away from the group, and runs into Tiamat, the Dragon goddess and lord of the 1st plane of Hell. She tells him she needs an agent to retrieve some gems and deliver them farther down, and someone in the party will be Geased to do it, or she'll just kill us all.
He declines, and instead points out the party Sorcerer (currently wearing an artifact treasure that makes him Chaotic Evil). Tiamat repeats the offer, telepathically, and the sorcerer accepts.

We eventually manage to get the gems... and the Ranger suddenly tries to take them away from the sorcerer. The geased, CE, and rather annoyed sorcerer promptly attacks the Ranger, who is quickly defeated.

The Ranger's player complained that he was attacked for no reason, and wonders why no one else helped him keep the gems... despite the fact that his character KNEW the sorcerer was geased (the rest of us knew too, but our characters only knew the mission, not the geas) and all the rest of us had agreed ahead of time that doing the mission would be the smart thing to do. No one else agreed with his reasoning, and I don't think he came back again after that...

[gewing]

Was the ref a guy named Kelly, and did he run a dungeon complex called Hell Mountain? one level a flooded city?

when Our 1st level party defeated the ETTIN that wandered into our camp one night, he said "I meant for that to kill someone. Lets see who it falls on."

Great dungeon, but...


Originally posted by Captain Xenon
the worst? well...

back in college, there was a group who played AD&D. these guys made the knights of the dinner table (and the black hand) look good by comparison. One of them always played a drow assasin. another, had a CN mage who always wandered off alone, the rest of the party unconsious bleeding and polymorphed, to fight what just kicked our collective butts.

one game of rolemaster, it went really bad. first, the drow (CG alignment) kills my character with a level 50 poison. his only explanation? i wasnt 'doing enough'. so then we go on with the quest, and meet a dragon- who will let us take all the treasure, minus a couple items. one guy has his character (some kind of dancer), attack the dragon. big fight- the drow sits there and defends, my char gets thretened at swordpoint by another party member, and the fight goes poorly.
then the dragon gives us a chance to surrender. the wolverine-lemming, of course, refuses, so we get hit with a powerfulll spell and all die except the drow- and my new character who had enough healing magic to survive. we lose all our gear, and the campaign ends mid-qeust. and the guy who started it? left mid fight and didnt come back.

same group, the drow would often have his character commit suicide around 1 or 2am, when he got bored. the gm- well, he was just as bad. i had a lightning bolt BOUNCE off of a t-rex in AD&D. i eventualy failed my saving throw- he made me roll about 20 of them, one for each time it bounced between me and the dinosaur.

the last game i played with that group, and the reason i quit playing D&D for several years- a group of 10 players, 1 evil, i was good, and the rest were chaotic neutral. went downhill from there.

whats more- the drow player? out of character, he made death threats to me, that he would one day be a hit man, and kill me first. yes, really. not a nice guy.