I made the GM cry....

[Maelstrom]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

Oh' date=' do not get me wrong. I could have done all the things mentioned above but I had not thought about it beforehand. If the npc's adapt to the new situation that is one thing, but to adapt the adventure (and the relics) to compensate for my lack of foresightedness after the fact.... Well that would have been wrong. Sometimes you got to shrug, let it go and keep your mind on the big picture. The big picture is that your players were going to slap themselves on the back, laugh really hard about what happened and look forward to the next session. And since this was just an adventure in the campaign, it was not that big of a deal.[/quote']

 

You're a lot more understanding than my first CoC GM. He came into a group where we had all played Espionage and the unpublished Soldier of Fortune rules, and ran a haunted house. There were zombies in every room, and he expected us to split up and search the house separately. Lightly armed. Y'know, CoC style.

 

So we went in in a diamond. We had three shotguns and a tommy, and I was on point with one of the shotguns, loaded with 00. The look on his face was priceless as we went through the whole mansion in record time. The first time a zombie showed up he was at 1:00, and our rear-guard didn't fire. The GM turned to him and asked him why, and he said, "It was out of my arc."

 

Poor GM.

[The Gekko]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

 

I asked one of his players, also one of my players, "Why do you put up with this sh*#?" He just shrugged.

 

PS - My wife just reminded me what this twit's name was (I didn't go to the effort of remembering for myself): Rex. Go fig.

 

I'm the player he asked and some of this GM's games were relly good. And some were OKay. And some were frustrating. But the good was more than usal.

[Magmarock]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

Knew a GM in Tucson like this. One of his fetishes was NPCs he'd gone to the "trouble" of naming, especially the bad guys. Heaven help his group if they actively tried to kill one. First, it was virtually impossible; they'd damage the guy to the point where they'd start asking "How much damage have we DONE?", and start doing the math... and realize that he was grossly fudging the situation to keep "HIS" bad guy alive. Then, when "the game was up", he'd "let" the guy die... and inevitably take his frustration and annoyance out on the entire group later. In spades. Repeatedly. Guy was a Petty, Tyrannical Sadist of the First Order.

 

And hell had no fury like this guy if you succesfully deviated from his pet storyline... not that THAT was easy, either.

 

And no, it's not like his players deliberately went out of their way to disrupt "his" game, at least not until they realized where they stood in "his" game. He was just a prick (pardon the language, but I really don't have any other applicable term for him).

 

I asked one of his players, also one of my players, "Why do you put up with this sh*#?" He just shrugged.

 

I don't get it; I'd've jettisoned the dead weight a LOOOONG time ago.

 

But, as David Lo-Pan once said, "You were not put upon this Earth to 'Get It', Mister Burton."

 

 

Next time you see this GM, take your favorite die and thwack him between the eyes with it. Then say, "It's all in the reflexes..."

 

I wouldn't stick with any GM who ran a game like that, by the way.

 

Mags

[Magmarock]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

I remember once playing in a really great game of Cyberpunk. The game was fun, and we had a group of characters that really meshed well.

 

One session, right at the very beginning, our PCs all entered a building and it just blew up. Boom. No warning, no way to avoid it. Killed everyone on the block. One of the PCs was a brand new character, with the record for fastest kill in any game we played in ever (IIRC, about 30 seconds).

 

Then the GM announced he didn't want to run the game anymore. Just like that. Because he was bored! I would have preferred that he let us know so someone could have offered to run the game instead.

 

Mags

 

PS: That was the GM making the Players cry!

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

I remember once playing in a really great game of Cyberpunk. The game was fun, and we had a group of characters that really meshed well.

 

One session, right at the very beginning, our PCs all entered a building and it just blew up. Boom. No warning, no way to avoid it. Killed everyone on the block. One of the PCs was a brand new character, with the record for fastest kill in any game we played in ever (IIRC, about 30 seconds).

 

Then the GM announced he didn't want to run the game anymore. Just like that. Because he was bored! I would have preferred that he let us know so someone could have offered to run the game instead.

 

NEW GM: And you awaken with a start. You probably shouldn't have eaten that pizza right before bed. You're too wired to go back to sleep. What do you do?

 

[i'm all for a GM having control over his campaign, but there are limits...]

[Magmarock]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

NEW GM: And you awaken with a start. You probably shouldn't have eaten that pizza right before bed. You're too wired to go back to sleep. What do you do?

 

[i'm all for a GM having control over his campaign, but there are limits...]

 

 

Yeah. It wouldn't have been quite so bad if he did it at the end of the gaming session, but at the beginning? IIRC, we switched to Champions for that night.

 

Mags

[KawangaKid]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

I've told this story before, but…

 

I once played in a Call of Cthulhu adventure in which we were racing the cultists to acquire the piece of a large gold disk. We had two of them, and researches indicated that the disk was required to perform a ceremony the would raise R'lyeh, waken Cthulhu, and end the world. So I melted down the two pieces we had, mixed the melt with a larger quantity of other gold, divided the mixture up into a great many small ingots, and sent them to different gold exchanges around the world to be sold anonymously.

 

Then it turned out that the cultists could make another disk, and that we would have needed a disk of our own to reverse their ritual and keep R'lyeh sunken. And so my precipitate action guaranteed out failure and the destruction of the world. The GM never could explain why the cultists had been struggling so hard to acquire the pieces of the original disk and to preserve those they had: it was their conspicuous actions that drew our attention to the disk in the first place, and all they needed to do to guarantee their victory was to melt down one piece.

 

Gosh that sounds disturbingly similar to a Cthulhu game I played at a Pacificon convention...

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

You know, you guys are the sorts of people who go "Why didn't Frodo just get the eagles to fly him to Mount Doom and drop the ring in directly?"

[Agemegos]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

You know' date=' you guys are the sorts of people who go "Why didn't Frodo just get the eagles to fly him to Mount Doom and drop the ring in directly?"[/quote']

 

So?

 

He didn't because Tolkien didn't want him to. But when you are playing Frodo, how are you supposed to know what Tolkien wants?

 

You don't, so you stick to your core motivation and act at appropriate maximum capacity, and hope everything turns out for the best. If the GM doesn't want you to take a direct flight with Deus ex Machina Airlines he or she has to provide a reason to make that a bad option. How else can the players know not to do it?

[Chimpira]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

You know' date=' you guys are the sorts of people who go "Why didn't Frodo just get the eagles to fly him to Mount Doom and drop the ring in directly?"[/quote']

And the GM would reply," Oh. You can TRY to do that." That would generally be enough incentive to go the long way around. Sometimes you do things because the GM wants you to do it but most of the time you do not if you can think of a better way to go about it or if it does not make sense to your character. I made a GM extremely angry one time. We were playing first level characters and I was made leader of the group. A huge orc army was coming to devastate this large city and the leader of the city asked us to stop the army (which was being led by a Cloud Giant). The going rate for this type of suicide mission was 100 gp for the whole party. I laughed in his face and we went elsewhere. The adventure ended right there. None of the other players seemed to mind my decision.

[Southern Cross]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

Actually,the idea of Frodo dropping the One Ring into Mount Doom has several obvious pitfalls-

(1) The whole idea was to get the Ring destroyed WITHOUT Sauron finding out.

Giant eagles flying over Mordor would be too detectable by the Eye.

(2) How could they stop one of the Nine from grabbing the Ring in midair?

(3) It's not easy to drop something precisely on target from a great height.Frodo would probably miss.

[Korvar]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

It also assumes that Frodo simply could get the eagles involved...

[John T]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

I made a GM extremely angry one time. We were playing first level characters and I was made leader of the group. A huge orc army was coming to devastate this large city and the leader of the city asked us to stop the army (which was being led by a Cloud Giant). The going rate for this type of suicide mission was 100 gp for the whole party. I laughed in his face and we went elsewhere. The adventure ended right there. None of the other players seemed to mind my decision.

Ah, yes; the OTHER "lame GM hobby" I deplore: the (very) old "Let's see if I can kill the PCs" game. Some GMs (like some Players) seem to get into the mindset that "Winning" is the goal of playing an RPG. Tiresome, at best.

 

John T

[Lightray]

"Why didn't Frodo just get the eagles to fly him to Mount Doom and drop the ring in directly?"

Probably because of the radar installation in the tower of Barad-dur. Sauron would've scrambled his nazgul interceptors at the first blip of an eagle on the screen, and then where would Frodo have been?

[Storm Shadow]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

I remembered more bad things about my GM. When I didn't know the game and I was creating a character he helped me. But now I see the character sheet and I know how to get the same powers cheaper! What it means? He knew the system well and made me buy some powers twice just only to be not so powerful. Every detail I remember is starting to get me mad

He is the unique GM of champions I know

[Chuckg]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

Probably because of the radar installation in the tower of Barad-dur. Sauron would've scrambled his nazgul interceptors at the first blip of an eagle on the screen' date=' and then where would Frodo have been?[/quote']

 

Let's not forget that as sentient beings who were very proud and aggressive, one of the Eagles might very well have tried to kill Frodo for the Ring, just like Boromir did.

 

Only the encounter is a lot less survivable for Frodo than the Boromir encounter was, when it involves two tons of sentient carnivore with raptor reflexes that's also the only thing between him and a 5000-foot free fall...

[Karma]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

Sheesh. Bad GMs!

 

Rule #1 of all plots involving multiple pieces of a relic that will allow the distruction/salvation of the world: The pieces of the relic are INDESTRUCTABLE unless all of the pieces are present and the ritual to summon/dispel the reallybigbad is in progress.

 

Doc

 

Rule #2 If you absolutely must make the pieces destructable, then the ritual only needs those pieces that survive. Badguys get all remaining pieces or Goodguys destroy all pieces = same result (freedom of & inevitable showdown with the Big-Bad). The best they can hope for is that their destruction of the pieces has weakened the Big Bad enough to allow it's defeat.

[KA.]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

You're a lot more understanding than my first CoC GM. He came into a group where we had all played Espionage and the unpublished Soldier of Fortune rules, and ran a haunted house. There were zombies in every room, and he expected us to split up and search the house separately. Lightly armed. Y'know, CoC style.

 

So we went in in a diamond. We had three shotguns and a tommy, and I was on point with one of the shotguns, loaded with 00. The look on his face was priceless as we went through the whole mansion in record time. The first time a zombie showed up he was at 1:00, and our rear-guard didn't fire. The GM turned to him and asked him why, and he said, "It was out of my arc."

 

Poor GM.

 

Maelstrom,

While I applaud your use of intelligent tactics, I have to say that, based on the CoC genre, if I were GM'ing, things would have quickly gone wrong.

 

First, let me say that I am not a "Killer GM".

But I do believe that one of the keys to everyone having fun in an RPG is "beating the odds". If victory is too easy, no one has any real fun.

And since a large part of the fun in the horror genre is being scared, easy victory really brings things to a halt.

 

Which means that unless you were going to great lengths to burn or otherwise completely destroy the zombies, after you made it a good ways into the house, the ones that you had previously "killed" would start rising again, brought back to unlife by the major evil force that had animated them in the first place, and which was still waiting for your group in the cellar.

 

While your group was in the hallway, preparing to go through your standard entry routine on a door, the "lookout" would see a zombie coming down the hall. A zombie that was obviously riddled with bullets! And behind it would be a veritable army of your previous "kills".

 

Now you would be trying to figure out how to secure a room long enough to figure out what it would take to "kill" these zombies once and for all.

 

If the room you chose to barricade just happened to have a couple of well-hidden secret entrances, that would just make things more interesting.

 

Again, I never do things like this to "screw" the players. And I wouldn't have a zombie army just sweep over the group when they opened the wrong door, but I also wouldn't have a group turn something that was supposed to be scary into a shooting gallery. Especially in CoC. The beauty of that genre is that you are never "safe", you are never "in control", and no weapon is enough to really "protect" you.

 

I don't see my role as GM as the player's opponent.

I see it more as the director of a movie, where they get to play the main characters, write their own dialog, and "ad lib" their part of the plot.

But, I feel totally justified in doing what is necessary to set the tone, expecially if that tone has been agreed upon in advance by choosing a genre.

Which means that if the genre is horror, things are going to get scary.

One way or another.

Otherwise, I am not doing my job.

 

Now if the genre is supposed to be "action" or "modern" or "espionage", and I just want to throw in a twist, then putting in zombies could be perfectly appropriate, although there would need to be some explanation as to why there were zombies in that setting. (A new drug that makes people seem like zombies? Some type of brainwashing? Killer robots that are made to look like zombies to explain their jerky movements?)

In the action genre, blowing away the zombies using military tactics should, and would, work.

Of course in that case there would be the bigger problem of figuring out who was behind the whole thing, possibly saving some innocents that were going to be "zombified", etc.

 

Just a few thoughts, not trying to bash the behavior of your group or anything, I am just saying that a more experienced GM might have been able to respond better to the situation.

(Or might have let you do what you did to build up a false sense of confidence, therby making things more chilling when you found out the truth.)

 

KA.

[Half Baked]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

Something similiar happened to me once. I had planned this long adventure around the players trying to stop this banished dragon from returning to the land. There were four parts of a seal that was needed to bring the dragon back and a cult was after all four. After the first part of the adventure they had a piece of the seal. My player Terry looks up at me and says' date='"This is the first part of the seal, right?" I say yeah. He continues "And they need all four to bring the dragon back, right?" It dawned on me where this was going and what was the big flaw in my adventure. Yes, I groaned. He smiled and said "Well if they can't get this, then, they can't bring back the dragon. No need for us to risk our lives anymore." I could have made up something to make them continue but instead, I shrugged, gave him extra xp and thought a lot more carefully about my plotlines from then on.[/quote']

 

There is an easy fix for this type of plot. Give the seals another small power. Somehow, they can help find the other seals. Either through a ritual or some other means, but it means you cannot just hide one seal. Furthermore, the more seals you have the greater the powers of detection.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

Maelstrom,

While I applaud your use of intelligent tactics, I have to say that, based on the CoC genre, if I were GM'ing, things would have quickly gone wrong.

.

 

Sorry, KA, but as I read Maeltrom's post, they were playing an action/adventure, heavily armed group of characters, and the GM expected them to suddenly turn into CoC characters (leave their weapons and tactical sense behind) because this was a haunted house.

 

Sort of the "Oh my - zombies! I'll just leave my AK-47 and body armor here and go downstairs without a flashlight. Oh wait - I need to take off my top first." school of horror movies.

 

If the game actually was a CoC genre, I would have expected 4 characters with military training and equipment to have been vetoed out of the box.

[Daryl]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

Years ago, in the first game I GM'd for my wife, she made me cry. And I'm a better GM for it.

 

So there we were, young geek introducing wife to this strange hobby he had in high school and college. I helped her write up a woman, "Telly," who owns her own trucking business, who suddenly develops telekinetic powers. So, I start off with a simple, timeworn scenario -- she's at the bank when a robbery takes place. You know, just something to get her feet wet.

 

So... The supervillain comes in, tells everyone to get on the floor. Telly the telekinetic gets on the floor. The supervillain takes all the money, and leaves. Telly up and goes home, thankful nobody got hurt.

 

I'm flabbergasted. "How could you not attack? You can do, like, 12 dice of damage!" She just shakes her head. She'd never played an RPG, never read comics, and was completely immune to all the superhero cliches that I knew and loved. "Why would Telly do that?" she said. I'd been playing with hardcore powergamers for so long, I'd forgotten what real roleplaying was about.

 

Gradually I figured out that I had to provide real motivation for her character, not just present her with set pieces and have her follow the dictates of the genre.

 

--d

[KA.]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

Sorry, KA, but as I read Maeltrom's post, they were playing an action/adventure, heavily armed group of characters, and the GM expected them to suddenly turn into CoC characters (leave their weapons and tactical sense behind) because this was a haunted house.

 

Sort of the "Oh my - zombies! I'll just leave my AK-47 and body armor here and go downstairs without a flashlight. Oh wait - I need to take off my top first." school of horror movies.

 

If the game actually was a CoC genre, I would have expected 4 characters with military training and equipment to have been vetoed out of the box.

 

Wow, I don't usually disagree and agree with the same post.

I'm gonna get whiplash!

 

Maybe I misread, but it sounds like the players had been playing more tactical games, and then either they, or the GM, decided that they were going to start playing Call of Cthulhu with new characters.

 

I agree that it looks like the GM allowed them to be a little "over-armed", but whenever I have played CoC, which I admit is pretty limited, the philosophy has basically been:

"Buy whatever gun you want, it isn't going to do you much good. (except maybe against a cultist or something)"

 

But the point I got out of it was that they were "thinking tactically" as players, more than as their characters.

 

Now if the GM (caller?) let them write up a Delta Force Team instead of investigators, then that was partly his fault.

 

But, as Aliens points out so well, when a "highly trained military force" finds out that they are in a horror movie, rather than an action movie, they get their butts handed to them.

 

Like I said, I can see this as a great way to introduce players to the horror genre.

By letting them start out with a bunch of guys that can take on any number of normal foes without a sweat, and then letting them see that their normal tactics are useless, you can create a lot more tension than you would having a team composed of Don Knotts, Wally Cox, and Lou Costello, creeping knock-kneed through the haunted crypts.

 

I just think the GM missed a great opportunity.

 

Not to "put the players in their place", but to give them a genuinely fun and creepy experience.

 

KA.

[Remjin]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

Hehe, that story with Telly is great... and probably a real good illustration of how we, as gamers, take so many things for granted on "how it should be done."

 

This is why there are so many articles out there about playing outside of knowing the game mechanics, and why a fresh perspective is always fun!

 

It reminds me of a guy who ran a D&D campaign for a rather attention deficit crew of I was with for a while (I swear, there was a new game every month, at least, and no one game ever seemed to last).

 

He told us nothing much about the setting (Iron Kingdoms, when it was just a character primer book), gave no character restrictions, and told us he was running a module. Great. I bought the book, loved the idea of playing an Ogrun (basically a half-ogre) worshipping The Devourer Worm (a force of chaos) that had broken from his clan in search of his own path to being a warlord. I wrote a brief history and characterization, put together a character sheet, and handed it to the GM who looked it over and approved it. I even made him recheck it because of who I worshipped, my alignment, and my motivations. "Its fine," he says.

 

So as the plot rolls along, we're asked, along with my Trollkin buddy (pseudo-troll) of mercenary intent, a gobber (goblin) rogue of dubious morality and love of nudity, and various other more standard characters... to assist a holy priest of Morrow (directly opposing my god) to solve a mystery involving grave robbery with no compensation except for a place to stay during the festival.

 

I'm gonna interrupt here by apologizing for this story being off-genre, and long for a first post. So I blame no one for being annoyed by this, but this story does have a point related to this conversation. Also, I need to point out that me and my buddy (playing the Trollkin) are amongst the minority in believing that the character is more important than the typical video game rpg mentality.. the other guy (which made three of us, amongst about 18-25 total people in this little 'club') wasn't playing because he didn't like this GM (we had never met him). (sorry about the excessive parenthetical asides =)

 

So, most of the party, including a neutral evil warrior type, agrees to this mission. I find it odd, and really against what my character would do, but in the spirit of trying to get along, I demand to get paid if we get anywhere with it. A promise is all that's necessary. Can't get it, in fact, the GM starts getting angry that we're not going along and can't understand why we're being such @#%&s. I calmly explain why it doesn't make any sense for a mercenary and a questing warlord-wannabe to just up and do good deeds, especially with non-good alignments and a clearly stated purpose "please refer to my character write-up. Did you even read it?"

 

I end up going along with it anyway... just because. Me and the merc make up a reason that'll fit into the story somehow... but its lame. L8er, in a dungeon, we come across rat jerky. (yes, its actually in the module... ) Me and the Troll (both from decidedly unrefined cultures) eat it. He's furious. He's disgusted. So am I, but not about the jerky. L8er that week I get a call telling me we've both been kicked out of the game... and that we're supposed to be kicked out of the group because he doesn't like us.

 

Sounds like I'm in the majority in having played with dip$@#%s like this.

 

Mind you, in Champions, I've never had a bad experience... but then again, I've only played with guys I already knew were fun to play with...

 

Wish I had a group like that now...

[Magmarock]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

 

Sounds like I'm in the majority in having played with dip$@#%s like this.

 

Mind you, in Champions, I've never had a bad experience... but then again, I've only played with guys I already knew were fun to play with...

 

Wish I had a group like that now...

 

 

Welcome to the boards, Remjin.

 

Sounds like that guy did you a favor in kicking you out of his game. Saved you the trouble of walking out. I don't think he looked at your character and background at all. Some DMs (and GMs) are like that unfortunately.

 

Rat Jerkey. Yummmmm. LOL!

 

Mags

[Maelstrom]

Re: I made the GM cry....

 

Just a few thoughts, not trying to bash the behavior of your group or anything, I am just saying that a more experienced GM might have been able to respond better to the situation.

(Or might have let you do what you did to build up a false sense of confidence, therby making things more chilling when you found out the truth.)

 

KA.

 

 

Definitely. The guy was new to the group, and a recent convert to CoC. He had tons of enthusiasm, but was running a module straight.