Harassing the GM, your stories!

[Edsel]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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]

A small moment of harrassment.

 

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. Nothing I had read really fit his concept, but I tried to think of something that seemed to fit it.

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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!

 

 

 

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

 

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

 

 

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]

Similar

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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 for one

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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]

Re: I for one

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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

[Cygnia]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

Everyone in my gaming group has run something at one time or another' date=' 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?[/quote']

"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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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' date=' right there.[/quote']

 

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' date=' there is [u']no power [/u]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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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]

Re: Harassing the GM, your stories!

 

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?"