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Doc Hawkins posted:For those unfamiliar the language of Glorious Rokugan. a 'shugenja' is a wizard, 'Matsu' and 'Kakita' are family names, 'Seppun' are servants and guards of the Emperor, and a 'Hare' is a kind of large-eared rat famed for its agility and cleverness. Actually, having played L5R, the only part of his post I had trouble with was the Hare part. My brain wanted to read it as Hah-ray for whatever reason.
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Mar 15, 2013 07:54
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Minutia posted:Yet Another Really Bad DM Minutia, you have a drat 'Attract Dissatisfied Manchild' Aura.
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Mar 16, 2013 04:09
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With all of Minutia's bad experiences, I'm surprised she has a desire to play at all. Also, a little surprised that she has the ability to post and is not, you know, tied up in some weird DM's basement. Background for Hedge Walk or..."skip this if you only want the story" When I was new to 4e, my wife and I joined a group that had been playing previous editions together for years. Our first characters were not very optimized and we joined a group where a few of the members would do things like "I push the other player's wizard into the pit to see what happens." This didn't happen to my wife and I at all, but we didn't add a whole lot to the party. The other players seemed to get a kick out of not being heroic, so it fell to my wife and I to Do The Right Thing (TM). The DM was happy to have people who weren't intentionally trying to derail the story at every turn, but the bitterness he had for that aspect of their playstyle was so ingrained that he spent a lot of time trying to kill the party. As a DM, I find that silly. I have the power to say "You die of a tumor that you never knew about" so what need is there to put people in situations that kill them? Seems like I could just do the tumor thing and still have a few hours left to catch a movie, if I wanted to be a jerk. At any rate, he made it so that every encounter we faced was a dire, no escape fight that we would barely survive through and sometimes couldn't rest after. He also made up a lot of things or "read the power wrong" usually to the benefit of the monsters and detriment of the players. I asked him about it once and he honestly believed that if every encounter wasn't a struggle to survive then the game would not be fun. This had three benefits: 1.) I learned the value of monster knowledge checks so that I would know what the monsters could do before the rules could change. 2.) I learned the rules to the point of being near-able to recite them rote. 3.) I learned how to optimize my characters. Hedge Walk At one point, the DM was running a published module where we were in a hedge maze with ghouls that had a climb speed. At the time, I was playing a warden/fighter hybrid with polearm shenanigans because when you're playing with a DM that tries to kill you every encounter, you learn how to optimize for things that make that harder. We were going through the hedge maze where the walls were too thick for us to cut through, but too loose for us to climb when ghouls started coming out of the hedges. We had two casters who were able to fly/teleport and go up on the hedges to try to get a better view, but the DM ruled that they sank into the hedges and were stuck. My wife was a really optimized striker (and the ghouls somehow knew this) so the DM had the ghouls attack us while they were in the hedges and we couldn't see them. Standard guerilla tactics where they would hit us and then not be there when we attacked that part of the hedge. I couldn't figure out how they were doing this, even after a knowledge check to know their powers (and the GM saying they were thin enough to get through the hedges) because they could catch up to us very quickly even on a double move. Long story short, there was no real way for us to fight them so we ran. While we were running, the paladin and I couldn't mark things (couldn't see them) so the wizard and the sorcerer went down. The DM ruled that we couldn't see the wizard on top of the hedge to heal him and we couldn't climb the hedge because our armor was too heavy. Before my wife's character went down, she had flown up to get a look at the maze and told us about a clearing. Our last party member was a cleric and ran into the opening yelling for the ghouls to come and get him before casting an attack spell on himself that removed him from play. =P He was sure we were all going to die and didn't want his character to die. I'm still not sure what his plan was for when the effect wore off and he came back to a dead party surrounded by ghouls, but whatever. We get to the clearing and by now it's just the paladin and I and the wizard and sorcerer are making death saves. The ghouls beat us there, so I finally ask "How the @#!?" and the DM tells me "They have a climb speed." Which, to his mind meant that they not only got their normal speed of 8, but got an additional move with 4 speed when walking through the hedges. My wife and I, when we tell this story, refer to this speed bonus and the ability to phase through hedges as "Hedge walk." Semi Happy Endings So the paladin and fighter are standing back to back in this clearing where we can finally see the creatures and we're (at level 11 or 12) fighting the 8 remaining level 13 elite ghouls. There's a stone area that we back into so that the ghouls can only attack us 2 at a time. This is where my polearm shens buld really starts to shine. Because they can only come at us in 2s there's no way for the GM to have them all come at us at once to negate polearm mastery. Because I'm a fighter, I add my nice wisdom modifier to opportunity attacks. Because I'm a warden, the area around me is now difficult terrain. The paladin marks the mobs on my side and I mark the mobs on his side so that when they get to us they're ALWAYS triggering a mark or taking an opportunity attack to get to the one that's marking them. The DM tries all kinds of things to get to my character, but he just can't and the ghouls end up prone several squares away. Every time they charge, I get my polearm attack and the only ones I missed were still ghouls the paladin had marked so that when they hit me they were hit with radiant damage (vulnerable) and I pushed them away on my next turn. We go at this for several rounds before the DM declares my build over powered and says I have to change it before the next session. The funniest part about this is that the paladin and I were bloodied going into the clearing, he's used all of his healing, and we're back to bloodied again and there are still 3 ghouls left because more ghouls showed up. The wizard has failed three death saving throws and is dead. The sorcerer, my wife, has failed 1 and is still rolling. The cleric is not coming back. That we're still standing at all means my build is over powered (truthfully it WAS over powered, but only for that scenario). After several more rounds, the paladin and I win the fight. The sorcerer has failed 2 death saves (very lucky in rolling because she's had like 20 rounds at this point) and the DM says it will take us two rounds to get to her so she must roll one more save before we can stabilize her. She fails, dies. Moral We don't play with that guy (even as a player) and took the people who were fun from his group to make a new group. He's so pissed about us taking the group he had gamed with for years that when I see him in public, he avoids me to the point of turning and walking the other direction. I do not mind and have been nothing but cordial. My wife and I still laugh about Hedge Walk from time to time. Vhex fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Mar 16, 2013 |
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Mar 16, 2013 16:50
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Weird. Sounds to me like you successfully turned his stupid mistake into exactly the kind of "barely scraping through" victory he was a fan of.
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Mar 16, 2013 17:05
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Yeah, I don't know what the deal was that made that fight the one in which we were all supposed to die. Our group has a lot of fun and we cater to different playstyles, but we also have a no drama rule. I've become good friends with people I met in that game and I still don't know how they played with that DM or the pvp players for so long. I can only assume that they thought that kind of play was better than no play at all, but we have a LOT of nice, adult, mature players in our area. We have immature players too, but I avoid them. Suppositories Minutia's fetish fixation story reminded me that I once played in a game with a DM that had us inserting magical suppositories into the anal cavities of diseased villagers to stop a plague that was causing them to vomit fecal matter. We actually had to roll for effect and one player crit which resulted in the DM graphically describing the scenario of a crit anal suppository. I stopped him, we stopped the game, and that was the last session he was ever allowed to DM. I still laugh when thinking about how absurdly bizarre it was to take the game to that kind of place. Oddly, he's actually a really good (and normal) roleplayer. Some people just shouldn't DM, I think.
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Mar 16, 2013 17:16
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The DM of the first group I played with was constantly bothered by the fact that my lesbian friend was playing a lesbian character. He would constantly have 18 Cha/Max Comeliness (this was a homebrewed mashup of 1st and 2nd edition D&D) hit on her. Every paladin, dashing rogue, etc. etc. homed in on her. He had once told me, in private, that he had kicked around the idea of having her get gang-raped by orcs and forced to carry the baby to term.  Thankfully, he never tried it.
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Mar 16, 2013 19:28
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the_steve posted:He had once told me, in private, that he had kicked around the idea of having her get gang-raped by The theme of this thread seems to be "don't let your daughters date GMs"
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Mar 16, 2013 20:18
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Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be GMs.
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Mar 16, 2013 21:11
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the_steve posted:The DM of the first group I played with was constantly bothered by the fact that my lesbian friend was playing a lesbian character. Well, holy poo poo. Did you tell this woman that she was gaming with someone who was having corrective orc rape fantasies about her character? Because that is personally the sort of thing I'd want to know about a dude I'm gaming with. So that I can stop gaming with him. ._.
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Mar 16, 2013 21:50
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Captain Walker posted:Pretty sure I've got my next Dungeon World character, you excellent bastard. Muy bien. He's a Dwarven
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Mar 16, 2013 22:18
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the_steve posted:The DM of the first group I played with was constantly bothered by the fact that my lesbian friend was playing a lesbian character. What is wrong with people.
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Mar 16, 2013 22:22
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Holy poo poo, Vhex, the Hedge Walk and poo poo-puking sounds exactly like something my limb-mangler DM would try. Maybe we could introduce those DMs to each other. If we can assemble a full gaming group of these guys, then maybe they won't play with other people ever again!
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Mar 16, 2013 22:22
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the_steve posted:He had once told me, in private, that he had kicked around the idea of having her get gang-raped by orcs and forced to carry the baby to term.
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Mar 16, 2013 22:25
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I would probably literally kick them. Jesus. 
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Mar 16, 2013 22:33
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Acebuckeye13 posted:
Pretty much these two lists, again and again. Specifically the 'Never ostracize', 'Weirder=Better' and 'Drama is the worst thing ever, avoid like the plague.' parts, mixed in with the overall fact that the main figures in these stories likely have little to nil social interaction and hence have no idea how to behave properly in social situations, ESPECIALLY ones where they have power over others.
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Mar 16, 2013 23:10
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It was our first group and we were in the "we have nowhere else to go" mindset. I did tell her about it, and she decided that as long as he didn't try it, we may as well stay, because otherwise, things were fine. The instant he did, we were prepared to bail though. Not that it mattered, because eventually, we were kicked out after she and the DM's daughter had some big falling out, so she never had to worry about surprise orc-sex.
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Mar 17, 2013 00:15
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Explosions, Weather, Hamstrings One of the benefit of a recurring gaming group is being able to give certain characters the spotlight. Last session the ranger was a bit out of her element in the dwarven mines, so I made sure this adventure had plenty of overland travel. We introduced a new adventurer, the Storm Mage Andromeda. In brief: The party ventured into the human city of Rosebluff and investigated a supernatural winter. They also found out that someone was sabotaging the Adventurer's Guild. Specifically, by blowing up its guild house. Things that Arodef the ranger did this session: *Kept watch over an investigation site, where she caught a pair of town-guard impersonators in a lie. (The real town watch had seen them them their earlier, and told them the storms had destroyed the buildings. I slipped up OOC by saying "blown up buildings", and improvised that they were a lead!) *Tracked down two footpads through a new city's twisty streets *Navigated a group of "indoor folk" through blistering winter storms, twice. *Communed with an elven supremicist, Sunflower, and convinced her to surrender her control of the Weatherstone, to stop warping local weather, and to disperse her elvish colony. (This was a particularly tearful moment, as Arodef made Sunflower realize that all of her efforts to exclude made her a failure...and no better than humans.) *Shot an ogre in the hamstring from 103 yards away, crippling it, and saving the party's escape boat. Moral: Make your players feel awesome! Give them challenges they can solve, and then test the very limits of their character.
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Mar 17, 2013 05:29
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Well, it's been a while, but I thought I'd fire up the ol' neurons and talk about one of the more recent RL campaigns that was run. Names have been changed to protect the rules-abuser... The Assasin Droid Who Could Starved for a gaming group, I eventually found one, in, of all places, Yahoo Groups. To make it even better, they lived in my local area (a nigh impossibility outside of Cardiff, Swansea, or Aberystwyth)! So, off I toddled, and met the group. They wanted Star Wars, I had Saga edition, was willing to run, and even had my mind fixed on a campaign setting: The Old Republic. So anyways, much of it was the usual guff you'd find in Star Wars, except that this group were playing minor villains, looking to make it to the big leagues. One, in particular, is the focus of this story. HK-Tumty-Tum. Wasn't his actual character name, but he was an early HK model... whose owner had decided that it would be hilarious to place said HK's head on a weakass diplo-model. Suffice to say, he wasn't pleased. The first inkling of his eventual destiny was after a fight in a loading bay. See, somebody was making war droids, and these rogues didn't like that, leapt in with both feet, and almost got their asses handed to them. But they triumphed, and were looking around for more clues when HK-Tumty-Tum piped up. See, HK's player, a guy named Jim, had read his rules most assiduously, and, having established an in-character relationship with the engineer of the party, promptly grabbed his attention to the largely undamaged body of a nearby Loader Droid. For those who don't know, Loader Droids are big bastards... and droids, with proper assistance... can swap heads. Of course, the engineer doesn't make the roll quite well enough, and bang goes a couple of intelligence points from the character's sheet. Not a single gently caress was given by either Jim or HK-Tumty-Tum, who then proceeded to throw himself with gusto into his changed persona. Where once he was sarcastic, sly, and quick, he was now sarcastic, brutish, and hella strong. And if it had ended there, I wouldn't have written this tale here. You see, HK now had a plan. He'd always hated the squishies for laughing at his malformed body, and now... now, he could make them pay. And make them pay he did, for several sessions, until the loader body was nigh destroyed by a Sith Marauder... ...But the head was still intact, and the rest of the group dutifully carried it... to an even bigger robot, part of the military buildup the Sith were building in secret. Sadly, the campaign ended before we could really establish what happened (he did lose another point of intelligence), but I can still picture HK-Tumty-Tum's tiny head on a walking tank-bot, and the grandiose dreams he had. I wish the group had held together long enough to fulfill them... ...you see, he wanted to graft himself to the biggest, baddest mech he could find... and there were plenty of those in the setting! The Quintessential Paranoia Now, I don't know if I've told this story in one form or another, but, a lot more recently than the Star Wars game, I ran a one-off of Paranoia, based on the plot in an old Valkyrie magazine, for six people who'd never played Paranoia before.  It was loving magical The basic idea was that there was a second complex being established by Seal Clubbers (They love the mythical Outdoors), and the Troubleshooters were to ride MAXIE, the friendly WarBot, to the enclave, scout around, perhaps spike their plans if they could, and report back. The Communist threw herself into her character, and, amusingly, nobody called her up on it. This was to bite them in the rear end at the debriefing. The mission was, in Paranoia terms, an unqualified success: The Seal Clubbers base suffered a catastrophic overload, blew up, and all the characters had at least one clone left. Kei, our friendly Communist, had just one life remaining. And, because she had pegged it at the first opportunity after trying to sabotage the rest of the team (which, ironically, led to the successful outcome), she was in deep trouble. I was laying it on thick, and asked her to explain herself. "Friend Computer," she began "As much as it is true that I did attempt to escape the domain of the traitors to your Grand Will, I did so in faith that my team-mates would succeed, and I could merely claim to have brought you intelligence on these evil *coff*comrades*coff* Communists. Such was our primary objective, and I am sad to say that it was my own comrades who prevented me from completing it. In the first instance, there was -" And then, without taking a single breath that I could note, she went on in this vein for five minutes. I was gobsmacked, but, it being Paranoia, rolled her Chutzpah - Boot Licking (for she was vigorously applying her nose to Friend Computer's brown I/O socket the entire time). She rolled a stupidly good success. What could I do, but award her the highest accolades, and shoot the rest of the team (demoting the survivors of said shooting) for traitorous activities? JamieTheD fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Mar 17, 2013 |
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Mar 17, 2013 06:00
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Holy poo poo. I thought the campaign was over. I was tired of it, and planned on ending it tonight. But goddammit, now I never want it to end. After one fight. One epic fight. It just ended. 2 of the 5 party members were dead. One of the party members was tied up stories above, wearing the wedding dress of Tatyana Von Zarovich, a sister-in-law whom Count Strahd is obsessed with. (To explain the creepiness of this, it's okay, it made sense in the story, and the player is my wife... So I'll pretend to tie her up and feed on her all I drat well want.) All of their pets and familiars were dead. All that was left in the catacombs of Ravenloft was Sully the dwarven exterminator, who had one hit point, and Toddy the barbarian who was polymorphed by Strahd into a rat. With this, they killed Strahd Von Zarovich, who was at full 61 health, in a fair fight, letting the dice fall where they may. The Dwarf, at one hit point, heard the sound of Strahd casting the polymorph spell and ran from the catacombs into Strahd's crypt. He then rolled initiative instigating a new combat as the polymorph of the barbarian resolved the other one. He rolled a 29. He yelled "Hail Mary Full of Grace!" and rolled a 20 on a called heavy crossbow shot to Strahd's head, dazing Strahd. Then he pulls out the sunsword and proceeds to thwack him down to 8 hit points before the animated corpse of his monk friend bit him and left him bleeding out. It just happened, by the rules, that that same round was the round in which the Barbarian returned to form. And naked as the day he was born he quick-draws the Sun Sword from his dying best friend and swings a killing blow on Strahd who was trying to enter his coffin to regenerate. He stabilizes two of his friends and one naked barbarian stoods victorious over all of Ravenloft. The dark powers were very entertained by their performance, so as they were transported back to the prime world, given the information they would need to save it, and they were all raised. For this I am giving the Dwarf a homebrew feat he's been asking me for, Balls of Steel. God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Mar 17, 2013 |
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Mar 17, 2013 10:00
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Awesome story, God of Paradise. Minutia, I'm afraid if you put them together that's a postal office incident waiting to happen. I will avenge you! ...or Avandra Exists! I think our characters were around level three at the time in a D&D 4e game where I was playing a Deva Retribution Avenger around the time they were first released. There were only 4 players and we sprang a trap that got all kinds of undead unleashed. We all rolled crappy on our initiative and the warlord died in the first round because he was the first to enter the room and everything focused on him. This left a defender and two strikers. The defender and other striker go down by the third round and we've barely hurt most of the undead. The DM was rolling very well and had rolled several crits and the monsters were a bit above our level, but it was mostly (bad) luck o' the dice. So there I stood, surrounded by undead as this lone holy avenger from the heavens. I had crafted his back story very elaborately and I knew exactly what he would do in this scenario. My party, lying broken on the floor, was screaming for me to grab their bodies and run. That was not in this character's personality. My wife was infuriated that I was going to die with them when I had a fairly good chance of escaping with their bodies. But I was an avenger, a holy zealot, and bent on retribution at that. I shouted, "I will avenge you!" and proceeded to carry on with my attacks amid the groans of the other players. I took enough damage to bloody me in that round and cried out to my deity, "Avandra, lend me your luck or bid me to hell, but I will avenge my fallen!" The mechanics for a retribution avenger are basically -- the more often you get hit, the more damage you do. Being attacked by a room full of monsters had spiked my damage through the roof for 2 rounds. Then on 4 attacks, I crit 3 times. That was almost enough to make me believe in Avandra as a player! My character proceeded to cut a swath through the undead with "one hit, one kill" due to the massive damage I had racked up. Next the DM's dice soured and he started missing me (with open rolls, so everyone at the table could see). Due to the attack I had used, this ALSO damaged the creatures attacking me. I dropped all but one of the undead by the third round since my party had fallen. So there was just my character and one undead creature left, but I was beaten pretty bad and my damage bonuses had worn off while he was close to full health. I whispered another prayer to Avandra, thanking her for her blessing and I charged. I crit and while I didn't kill it outright, I did some massive damage. We went back and forth with the DM's dice still cold and my dice still hot. I finished the fight with 3 hitpoints left, stabilized the party and got everyone back on their feet. I turned and looked my wife in the eye and said quite seriously, "I told you that I would avenge you."
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Mar 17, 2013 12:26
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Golden Bee posted:Things that Arodef the ranger did When I DM, characters with names like "Fedora" spelled backwards live a trying and often short life of hardship. I do have the decency to mention this during chargen though.
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Mar 17, 2013 15:51
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A note to those few brave souls who might stumble into this thread unawares, a lesson that (it sounds like [hopefully]) most people posting stories have already learned: if you go to a social gathering, and someone presents a credible threat of violence, physical or sexual, you do not expose yourself to that person. If you went out in public, and someone you didn't know started playing with a knife while discussing raping you, you would consider that poo poo Right Out. The situation isn't made better by being trapped in their basement with them. If your friends or, God forbid, family members try to convince you otherwise, they are being lovely, and need to knock that poo poo off as well.
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Mar 17, 2013 17:42
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Patchwork Shaman posted:When I DM, characters with names like "Fedora" spelled backwards live a trying and often short life of hardship. I do have the decency to mention this during chargen though. ...but that's my player's name backwords?  It reminds me of the old WCW bit. "RELLIK IS KILLER BACKWARDS!"
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Mar 17, 2013 19:08
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Minutia posted:Those Aren't Rats Aw a lonely DM, a DM who is a dad.
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Mar 17, 2013 23:13
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Not mine, but relate to me by a friend. So this account has been paraphrased. Having just finished up a Call of Cthulhu game, My friend and his players were looking for something a bit more adventurous, and decided to start a D&D4e campaign. My fiend is the DM, and he told his players to make up whatever characters they wanted and he'd have an adventure ready for them. The next week they sat down around the table and GM asked the first player who his character was. "I am Lognar the Barbarian!" he replied. Gm nods and move onto the next player, who is smiling. "I shall be playing Boris the Basher, Barbarian!" he declares. Player three is laughing at this point. "I'm a barbarian as well" by this point all the fourth player can do is nod and push forward HIS barbarian character sheet. Gm looks at his planned adventure, which involves courtly intrigue and a plot to bring war to the world and asks his players. "well, what shall we do about this?" Their reply, in unison was "FOR KROM!" The session then ends up as Barbarians at the diplomatic party, the planned assassination attempt becomes a mass duel between the players and the ten or so noblemen that they offended, and things are going downhill in a rapid and manly fashion. he's having a great time.
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Mar 18, 2013 13:56
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When I Saw the Nerd'd Gamestore This thread has brought back memories. Bad memories. I can't say where I live- if I did people might be able to infer what or where I'm talking about. Believe me: no one needs know the level of hell to which I've descended. It starts with my gaming group. We're all pretty young, early to mid twenties, so of course we're now starting to have lives and obligations that take up nearly all of our time. Gone are the years of being able to stay up for two days straight playing D&D; now it's hard enough to get us all together for a just few hours of play a week. This left me and a friend in a rut. We needed to play a pen and paper, any pen and paper. As luck would have it we were driving around looking for a place to eat and came across something interesting. Something new. A new gaming store, to be precise, scarcely a few months old. With much anticipation we parked the car and rushed through the door. It was a simple shop, built of actual brick and actual mortar, as you might expect from the part of town in which we found it. The owner, whom I'll just call “Tony,” was cool enough. Big guy, but he didn't really seem to be your typical nerdy sperglord, which is a major plus. The store really didn't run anything we were interested in, mostly card games, and of those mostly MTG and Yu-Gi-Oh. But that made sense. After all, the store was about five minutes from the local high school. That made me feel pretty good, actually. Finally an FLGS that might not fold after a year for lack of business. That said they really only had one thing of interest to us: lots and lots of potential players. With Tony's permission my friend and I posted some fliers in hopes of recruiting players to games we'd like to run. In so doing we learned that there was already a group running a Pathfinder game out of the store, which was looking for new players. Perfect! We had no particular desire to play Pathfinder but we thought we could at least join the game, find the players that we thought were worth recruiting and bring them into our own game. Not like we were in direct competition with the GM or anything like that- we didn't want to be that guy. More along the lines of “hey, you like to play pen and paper games? Come check this one out.” We had no idea that what was about to happen would keep us from ever going back to that store. About a week after this time we joined the Pathfinder game. I rolled up a dwarf barbarian and my friend a human fighter. Basic, yes, but we weren't in it for the long haul; we just wanted to feel the group out. We arrived a bit early, wanting to leave enough time to get acquainted with the GM and see what he had going on. This is when poo poo started to go real bad, real fast. We learned that our GM, a high school senior, had been playing RPGs for about a year's time. Normally this wouldn't have been an issue, but he also indicated that this made him the oldest and by far the most experienced of this group of high school players. Clouds started gathering. The sword of Damocles already hung above our heads. He explained that the campaign took place in an alternate historical timeline in which the Third Reich had won WWII and conquered the entire world. The group members were prisoners who for one reason or another had been incarcerated in a penal colony by the Nazi world government. In spite of the the very obvious and very ham-fisted Superjail references that our DM was making we decided to let it play out. We listened patiently to the GM's asinine musings and he began to field us some questions, the first of which was how our prisoners ended up in jail to begin with. My friend, a German history buff, said he'd been jailed for using a printing press to counterfeit Reichsmarks. To this the GM replied with a bemused expression that practically screamed “I have no loving idea what that means.” I answered that I'd used the same press to print nihilist literature which the government condemned as subversive. At this point the DM blurted out that we would have to “dumb it down” for the sake of himself and the players. Here we go. Nevertheless we explained what we were talking about and got his OK for our backstory ideas. Next he asked us what were playing and we showed him our character sheets, to which he replied “well, I can let you be a dwarf, but I can't let you [my friend] be a human. There are no humans in my world, only half-breeds.” We, uh, thought that to be a bit odd, but it didn't seem to bother my friend so we went along with it. He somehow ended up playing a half-gnoll half-human hybrid without any stat bonuses. Different strokes for different folks, I supposed, even if I felt like I was going to have a stroke. Even before we started playing we'd already put up with a lot of bafoonary and suspended a lot of disbelief even for a D&D game, but we were letting it slide. These guys were young and green; we were the grognards of the group by comparison. I mean, didn't we all play poo poo games like this when we were in high school? Didn't we all start somewhere? Anyway... Now it was our turn to ask them a few questions. We started by asking about the other members of our adventuring party. Christ... God no... The memories are coming back... The party was full of half-breeds as the GM had indicated, two or three of which were apparently hybrids of human and pony. Like literal My Little Pony ponies. Though my friend and I did our best to keep our composure- I like to think we did- internally we were stunned, frozen solid in our seats. We knew right then where this campaign was heading. As if on cue one of the other group members stopped by to talk to us. He slowly leaned across the table, way closer than he had any right to do. Close enough to see every knot in his stringy, matted hair. Close enough to hear the asthmatic rasp of his breath belabored with every movement. Close enough to smell the bouquet of Cheetos that hung around him like a cloud. Then he asked the inevitable- the unthinkable. “Are you guys... bronies?” My friend instantly said “no” and threw me under the bus, as all good friends would. “He is!” he stammered, pointing a condemning finger at me. The horrid manchild creature turned his gaze towards me and wheezed “what's your favorite pony?” To be fair: I do watch MLP, but there are lines of decency I do not dare to transgress. This is one of those lines. I believe that it is possible to like X Thing without becoming obsessed with X Thing and making it an (awful) aspect of your character. One can like Nintendo without being a fanboy, just as one can like rap without being a “gangsta.” You get my meaning. I stuttered, fumbling to answer a question for which I had no response. I'm not sure what happened next. My mind seems to have erased the next five or ten minutes after that, thankfully. Ultimately we found ourselves sitting at the table as play began. Already my friend and I were shooting frantic texts back and forth. We needed to get the gently caress out, right now, but we needed a reason. It would have been insufferably rude, to say nothing of awkward, to just stand up and walk out. These kids were having fun, albeit in the most clinically retarded way possible, and in spite of ourselves we didn't want to interrupt that. Ignorance is bliss. The game opened with our characters being escorted to prison. Black bags, Superjail, Norway, you get the idea. We were being led to a furnished house with doors that magically transported to different rooms whenever they were opened. The depths of Reddit itself could not have crafted a more lolrandom bullshit guide for us: a “velociraptor with a top hat and monocle,” as the GM described him, all the while miming his tiny vestigial arms to the great amusement of the group. We awkwardly worked our way through the ham-fisted opening and let the GM move on to another player. The texts were still flying back and forth. We needed an out but we were incapacitated by fear of the vile den of sperglords into which we had wandered. We had heard about people like this before but somehow we'd refused to believe they had any sort of physical existence separate from the Internet. We'd refused to acknowledge that they could be real, flesh and blood people right in front of us. It was, to say the least, a rude awakening. At this point the GM was working with the player to my right, apparently doing some kind of one-on-one role-playing. The masochistic streak in me couldn't help but listen in- I wish it hadn't. The player he was talking to was one of the half-pony people. They were clearly doing some character development role-playing, but there was something off about it. Something intangibly wrong with it. Before long I figured out. The DM was RPing as Fluttershy and the PC was trying to gently caress her. Now I must digress for a second. What you do with your personal life is of no concern to me. If you and a few friends want to get together and play some ERP, I don't care. You are on private property, out of view, doing what makes you happy. Whatever floats your boat, man. This was loving different. The player was attempting to engage in this foul act right in the middle of a presumably family-friendly gaming store and the DM was encouraging it, playing the object of his player's depraved fantasies just as obnoxiously as he had played the raptor guide. We couldn't suffer the experience any longer. This was the last straw. We had to leave right. The. gently caress. Now. My brain raced for a solution and thankfully happened upon one at the eleventh hour. “I need a cigarette,” I declared, standing up and searching my pockets for a pack. In case you were wondering: no, I don't smoke. Never have. Thankfully my friend caught on without a moment's hesitation. “We need cigarettes,” he said, drawing the GM's attention. “Where can we get smokes?” we asked him, knowing full well where the convenience store around the corner was. We didn't care. We promised to be right back and got permission to take smoke break, leaving our dice and character sheets on the table. We would not be returning for them- a small sacrifice to get the gently caress out of dodge. As we were leaving we had to walk past Tony. My friend paused for a moment to tear down the game fliers we no longer needed (rather noisily, too- it couldn't be helped). I turned to look back at Tony as we left and was sad to find that he had an expression of abject disappointment on his face. He knew what we had just gone through, and as soon as he saw us getting rid of the fliers he knew he'd never see us again. We left the store and ran to my car, driving away from that awful place. Away from them. We can never go back. We didn't ask for that.
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Mar 18, 2013 17:03
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Lemon Tree posted:Sword of Damocles Some days I'm ashamed to be associated with this hobby. Can't people just run like, normal things? Something where you argue with the DM about prying doors off of hinges, stealing anything thats not nailed down, and trying to figure out how much you can sell monster bits for? Also it sucks you lost your dice; I'm rather attached to my dice. Edit: I know that last sentence is weird but my girlfriend bought me mine and they're metal. Satisfying rolling noises, even if they can scratch up a table. I couldn't bear leaving them behind, especially in that company. TalonDemonKing fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 17:40
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Lemon Tree posted:We can never go back. We didn't ask for that. I sort of feel bad for Tony in this scenario. I mean, it's really not his fault what happened. I can't blame you for not wanting to confront that poo poo again, but at the same time I sort of feel like... what you did is totally reasonable. If the DM or one of the players got all sperg-angry at you, I think it's fair to say, "Look, when I saw 'Pathfinder game', I wasn't imagining this." I'm pretty sure you're allowed to walk out of a 'Pathfinder' game including brony ERP and talking raptors and poo poo. That's not on the tin.
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Mar 18, 2013 17:46
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Soooo you ran into some high-school aged bronies and were so terrified you had to flee the scene, leaving your possessions behind. How old are you again?Lemon Tree posted:We're all pretty young, early to mid twenties Are you sure? Because an adult probably would've reacted differently. quote:This is when poo poo started to go real bad, real fast. We learned that our GM, a high school senior, had been playing RPGs for about a year's time. Normally this wouldn't have been an issue, but he also indicated that this made him the oldest and by far the most experienced of this group of high school players... Here's the part of the story where you say "Sorry guys, this game might not be a good fit for us. See you later!" quote:We listened patiently to the GM's asinine musings and he began to field us some questions, the first of which was how our prisoners ended up in jail to begin with. My friend, a German history buff, said he'd been jailed for using a printing press to counterfeit Reichsmarks. To this the GM replied with a bemused expression that practically screamed “I have no loving idea what that means.” I answered that I'd used the same press to print nihilist literature which the government condemned as subversive. At this point the DM blurted out that we would have to “dumb it down” for the sake of himself and the players. Or you can stick around and show those dumb high school kids just how smart you are compared to them. Good show. I'd keep going but your writing style is giving me a headache. Long story short, next time you don't want to play a game with dumb, creepy children, try just saying "I don't want to play the game." Pretty sure they weren't about to throw down because you aren't hot for Fluttershy.
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Mar 18, 2013 18:42
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Lemon Tree posted:We needed to get the gently caress out, right now, but we needed a reason. It would have been insufferably rude, to say nothing of awkward, to just stand up and walk out.
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Mar 18, 2013 18:48
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First Impressions To begin with this bad-good experience, I came to a game of Eclipse Phase being done by someone on Skype from an online friend of mine. There was already three people along with the GM playing. For me, I wanted to join the game due to being done with college for the summer and wanting to always try out a tabletop game but never having the time (I did try to play DnD 3.5 years ago but the GM just got angry and rage quit over me wanting my deity to be Kim Il-Sung). So, I decided to try it out after reading the rulebook and finding it a fun atmosphere to play. I rolled up a Jovian (Space Fascists ala United Citizen Federation from Starship Troopers) Combat Medic/Rifleman and was ready. Character creation was a lot easier than making a character in 3.5. My friend, who we will call Harper, also made a character who was intentionally bad and a parody of Daniel Jackson from the Stargate franchise as a revisionist historian in the vein of Howard Zinn. He appeared he would be a detriment to the party, but would save the day. Before we even began the session, one of the players gave a soap box speech, who we'll call Richie Rich, about how party dynamics needs to be maintained and if you and Stephen Harper came to troll this group and ruin this important party dynamic, hell is going to open or whatever. It lasted for thirty minutes this speech. I rolled my eyes and sent messages over Skype to Harper with the theme of  . It was mutual.Set the mood for the whole session, oh boy! The one other player, who we'll call Wayne Gretzky, in the group rage quit and acted like a literal manchild because he did something really stupid. You see, we had to get to a secret corporate space station due to plot reasons but Gretzky couldn't join because they did not allow robots. This could have been easily fixed if he was like one of the party member's servant robot, but nope, he wanted full narrative control of his character and no one is allowed to do anything to him. So, he came up with the idea to smuggle himself into the station in a box labeled cake. No hacking registries or anything just a box of cake. He got caught and threw a hissy fit. His anger turned toward the third player, who we'll call Rosa Luxemburg, who refused to compromise his cover and let him out of the jail. Just as this was going on, space pirates attacked this station. Rosa joined me and was practically cool for the whole session. Well, as the pirates began to force us into a stalemate, Gretzky yelled at everyone and left the game due to the focus not being on him. We practically paused just to realize what just happened; meanwhile, my friend and I just message each other with "party dynamic."  He returned to the Skype call later on due to the fact he had nothing better to do. The pirate forces we were fighting were all psychic copies of this one person because in Eclipse Phase you can clone and copy yourself multiple times. So they were all linked to the big bad guy. Meanwhile, Stephen Harper with the intentionally bad character kept failing forward into worse and worse situations. He got thrown into the brig due to throwing an object he found at the manager of the space station. He had good reasons due to the space station manager being a prick toward a very noted and famous professor from the Titan Commonwealth (Nation of space scientists). In the brig during the invasion, he got mind controlled by the pirate forces because Harper was also a psychic. These pirates didn't know what to do with him so they just brought him to their leader for assimilation into the collective. He used his revisionist history to break through the mind control. Once free, he began to talk about the People's People's History of the Titanian Commonwealth to break this person. If I remember correctly, he rolled a natural 100 which was the best critical possible in that game. Therefore, he got the evil pirate leader to start crying like a baby. Elsewhere, me and Rosa were making a brave push to the ship pushing the pirate forces out as we are trying our best. It all changed when all the enemy troops started crying in unison and then just dying from the shocking truth of the actual history of the Titanian Commonwealth. The session wrapped up with Rosa denying Gretzky the chance to take very very very very bad tech with him that was found on the station. It was TITAN tech. You see, with TITAN tech, it is like reading the Necronomicon on Call of Cthulu on purpose. So a very bad idea. Sadly, the GM got burnt out due to the two trouble makers in the group, which wasn't Harper and I. We never had another session. Apparently it was just escalation of Gretzky and Richie Rich being disruptive and creepy for example, in an earlier session, Richie Rich rolled a persuasion check to seduce an npc and demanded that the GM describe the whole "thing" in detail.  Gretzky really, really does not like it when the story isn't about him and when he loses narrative control. Apparently this wasn't the first time he threw a big fit over this, so yeah. Sad to say, this was the last game the GM ever did as these two people made him swear off running games forever.  For me, whenever I GM a game, I always will have to get to know the person before I invite them to my games since I do not want a Richie Rich or Wayne Gretzky.
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Mar 18, 2013 19:08
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Grey Hunter posted:Not mine, but relate to me by a friend. So this account has been paraphrased. This sounds almost exactly like something for /tg/ your friend might be just be repeating a 4chan post. One sec I'll go find it. e:http://i.imgur.com/wWrSi.png e2: While reading through it again, the two stories have nothing in common, and I am an idiot. Turtlicious fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 20:19
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Ramba Ral posted:For me, whenever I GM a game, I always will have to get to know the person before I invite them to my games since I do not want a Richie Rich or Wayne Gretzky.
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Mar 18, 2013 20:50
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So, I was playing in an Adeptus Evangelion (Basically, Evangelion run with Dark Heresy) game, recruited to join a campaign already in progress as their Ops Director, basically the local adult who herds the crazy little bastards and their giant robots at the enemy. This is a story about the dangers of joining a group without knowing what's happened during a long-running anime-based campaign. This is especially a story about the dangers of an unchecked That Guy. One of the PCs, the party's murderously crazy stab-girl Berserker (Close combat specialist) has it in her background that he's got this terrifying father figure that suddenly vanished from her life, and the guy was a Mossad agent and former IDF officer. I figure, this looks like a good guy to base my Ops Director on, so I can slot into the story, and so I talk with that player about his PC's dad a bit and work out with him which parts of his character's view of her father were correct and not, and roll up my guy. I make a hardass professional neck-breaker and military man, guilty over his mistreatment of his estranged daughter and trying to protect her in his new position in order to redeem the whole child-abandonment thing. So far, so good. There's some nice drama hooks here, I'm pretty excited to play. Then I meet That Guy. Some military-wank guy who somehow got the DM to let him play an adult Pilot (in a game where much of the point is the pilots are kids and thus unreliable and crazy) and who tries to make everything about his crazy gunwank fantasies and such. I figure, not so big a deal. A little silly, but no problem. His PC and mine don't get along too well, but I'm fine with that. The first session happens, That Guy pulls a gun on my PC for very little reason and whines about it when I respond by having base security escort him to the brig to cool off, etc, but still nothing too bad. I was unprepared for the horror that was to come. Shortly after, my PC gets a surveillance report from all the intel skills and such I'd bought to keep an eye on the team, and particularly on his daughter, for their protection. I discover That Guy's PC is loving my PC's daughter. That Guy's character is 28. My PC's daughter is *14*. The whole group had known about this OOC, too. I'd been invited in and made a PC who was a professional murderer who discovered another character was having a pedophilic relationship with his estranged daughter. The campaign broke up after that session, and I'd have left if it hadn't anyhow, but holy gently caress. What do you do when you find out something like that? Night10194 fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Mar 18, 2013 |
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Mar 18, 2013 21:55
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Night10194 posted:What do you do when you find out something like that? Stand up, walk out of the room, and never speak to those people again.
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Mar 18, 2013 22:04
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Night10194 posted:I make a hardass professional neck-breaker and military man, guilty over his mistreatment of his estranged daughter and trying to protect her... It's written right there. Snap his neck. Then stand up, leave, and never talk to the people again. Do it in game too. One time I made a gimmick dungeon and it was an evil sorcerer who was mailing letters with explosive rune on them to blow up nobles. The kingdom repeatedly sent heroes out to try to kill this sorcerer, but the dungeon's gimmick was that it was a well lit labrynth with directions written all over the place, and everything in the place had an OCD style label etched onto it (most with explosive runes). The fun part of the gimmick is that until they said, "Okay, we're not going to be reading anything" I would go and say, "Okay, you see a sign at the front of the entrance. It says in big writing, 'Beware, you intruders who plan to EXPLOSIVE RUNE' roll reflexes." and then they'd all explode and take some damage. After the players started averting their eyes they were even afraid to start inspecting doors in case of accidentally triggering the runes, except for the illiterate barbarian who was gleefully rampaging through the dungeon. The fight ended with him dropping a curtain that was behind him to reveal a wall covered with explosive runes, and the rest of the party opted to go blind instead of blowing up. The sorcerer started a monologue and then the barbarian ran up and strangled him to death while the rest of the party blindly fought off his minions. I gave them the normal loot for the encounter nontrapped and then a huge pile of extra loot that was just a death trap. The players wizened up to this trapped loot after the wizard blew himself up trying to copy the sorcerer's 'spell book.' They had the barbarian sort through all the loot looking for the runes on all the worthless items with explosive rune on them that looked like fancy magical scrolls and stuff. They eventually started using forest animals to deliver these things to people prior to fighting, so they'd take a message from a monkey, begin reading it, and then blow up fantastically before starting the fight.
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Mar 18, 2013 22:30
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I remember something like that. We were in this castle and someone had put a cursed word in it, so strongly cursed that each individual letter had its own detrimental effect and of course they were all hidden separately in the weirdest places. And in this castle, we had to find hidden objects. It was the epitome of gotcha traps but in context, it worked and was a lot of fun, in a slapstick sort of way. "You enter a dusty room. Looks like no one's been here for years. You can't see much beyond that, there are heavy curtains drawn closed." "Well, I walk over to the window and draw the curtains open." "Good thinking, we need the light... actually waitshitit'sgonnabeonthewindow AH poo poo CURSED AGAIN, you idiot." (In hindsight it's very likely the DM just had us stumble around super careful not to look at anything and whenever we started to relax he'd put a letter in the next location anyone'd search. It's what I would have done.)
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Mar 18, 2013 22:41
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Litany Unheard posted:Stand up, walk out of the room, and never speak to those people again. Am I wrong in thinking from the stories of the past several pages that a lesson of bad and cat-piss stories is that, if the circumstances are favorable (as in, you're not feeling legitimately threatened or menaced), you should do this after telling the people they are behaving inappropriately and hence you're leaving? Yes, nothing will make them listen and not just dismiss you as a killjoy or worse, but never being told that their behavior is not acceptable seems like it would be worse in the long run. Please note I am not criticizing anyone for NOT doing that in the past: the past is the past and we can't change it.
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Mar 18, 2013 22:48
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Yeah, it really wasn't too dangerous of a dungeon so much as if they read everything they would be dead. All the encounters were either matching CR or pretty far below, and the gimmick of the dungeon was that this sorcerer was completely incompetent against anyone who either wouldn't read, was too stupid to read, or was never taught to read. Against all the nobles in the kingdom? He was the most horrible threat ever and the party had to hunt him down to bring him to justice.
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Mar 18, 2013 23:33
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Commoners posted:Magical Ted Kaczynski OK, that's a pretty neat gimmick... quote:They eventually started using forest animals to deliver these things to people prior to fighting, so they'd take a message from a monkey, begin reading it, and then blow up fantastically before starting the fight. ... and that made me laugh out loud. It sounds like an adventure that had the potential to be some sort of horrible grognardy "save vs arbitrary death" experience that turned out to be pretty awesome and fun. Commoners posted:It's written right there. Snap his neck. Then stand up, leave, and never talk to the people again. Do it in game too. That's actually a decent way to do it, although they'll probably just retcon that poo poo and the guy can continue having his little creepy fantasy.
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Mar 19, 2013 00:39
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