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I more concerned about what Telemicus said at the END of the post. This shitlord actually thinks he has magic in real life? And attempted to "use" it on your wife? Petulant man-child in a table top game I can forgive, or ignore cause I don't have to game with them, that however, is hosed up.
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Sep 27, 2013 16:52
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I agree that's probably what he'd been told, but I read the result less as 'planning' and more 'malicious fudging' until the party was running on fumes. Planning takes effort, sorting out how much damage the party can give and take, that sort of thing. Declaring 'your move fails' doesn't. Edit: Yeah, no poo poo. I've known a few people who were involved in real-life 'magic' of one sort or another over the years, and the one thing all of them had in common (other than the interesting grasp of reality) was the stricture that you don't loving cast spells at other people. Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 16:59
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masam posted:I more concerned about what Telemicus said at the END of the post. This shitlord actually thinks he has magic in real life? And attempted to "use" it on your wife? Petulant man-child in a table top game I can forgive, or ignore cause I don't have to game with them, that however, is hosed up. Oh, it was.... Shocking. I'll have to write more when I have a moment, but I didn't want to clutter up the thread with a non-gaming tale.
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Sep 27, 2013 17:00
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Telemicus posted:I still spoke to him until he tried to cast a spell on my wife, like for real, in real life, but that’s another tale.
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Sep 27, 2013 17:07
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I think a dude who casts spells on other people fits just fine in this thread, especially since he was your lovely DM too.
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Sep 27, 2013 17:31
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Bieeardo posted:I agree that's probably what he'd been told, but I read the result less as 'planning' and more 'malicious fudging' until the party was running on fumes. Planning takes effort, sorting out how much damage the party can give and take, that sort of thing. Declaring 'your move fails' doesn't. I found that he actually went through my monster manuals and wrote in them (thankfully in pencil) upping their stats and lowering their CRs. That way he could beat the PCs senseless and (in his own twisted mind) justify giving us precious little exp or loot. The magic thing is freaky, and requires a long lead-in. I'm going to try to write the whole tale as soon as I post this, but I may be called away from my desk in the mean time.
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Sep 27, 2013 18:34
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Yawgmoth posted:I need to hear this story. Your experience here is basically every single time I've played FR, right up to the smuglord DM just making GBS threads on everyone until he deems it time for the encounter to end. That sucks. FR can be a great setting if you're not wading through rivers of concentrated shitlord bile, but such can be said of many games and worlds.
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Sep 27, 2013 18:41
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I admit that I was this DM once upon a time, thinking that pounding on players was the way to make a game challenging or more dramatic. My group at the time were (and still are) good friends and were playing the original AD&D and the party in question was a paladin, a ranger and a thief. Despite the paladin being built like a tank, since he had the most hit points he got hit the most because it was "safe" to damage him without killing him. My philosophy was that players had to take damage to make the combat interesting, but I didn't want to actually kill any of them. So the paladin got clobbered every time, my rolls being behind my DM screen of course. The paladin's player started getting pissed because I quite obviously was singling him out and he didn't get it because he should have been so tough. That campaign was my first attempt at DM-ing and didn't go very far. Oh yeah: we were in the fifth grade when this all happened. How old was The Wizard? Thankfully we all talked about it and I came clean with what I was doing and since I just let the dice fall where they may. Unless a player needs to Succeed in a task or a bad guy needs to Fail in a task to advance the plot, at which point I use my hard-to-read dice with the faded pips or don't make a roll at all. 
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Sep 27, 2013 19:03
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Lallander posted:I can't blame you there. That sounds terrible. I watched some Pathfinder Society types playing and it was almost that bad. I can't say I see the draw to the idea at all. Stricter rules for what kinds of characters you can make, what games you can play. All so that you can go play with total strangers the next time. The group I watched the last time had apparently played the module before and were just doing it again for the experience or something. Admittedly, some of the hilariously stupid stuff in gaming has occurred during organized play. Never in my life have I seen a greater reaction to a DM frenetically realize that his first potential player kill almost involved beating someone to death with a broom with a critical hit. Then there was the my friends and I decided to turn a bunch of Kobold's futile attempts into trying to spring their own trap into a game of baseball. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 20:01
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My terrible DM took a level in Wizard. Too bad he has a 9 INT. This story ends with a lovely DM trying to use his sorcerous bullshit on my wife, but it begins many years prior. Mind you my perspective on things is... Different now, and had I see him through these eyes, I'd never have gone near him. I met The Wizard, as we shall call him, perhaps a decade before this. He had always been fairly charming at least, but was prone to that high school age "Look how EDGY, and sharp I am!" mentality that many of us (myself included) get. His never subsided. He was a serial philanderer, who frequently bragged to his friends about how he cheated on various girls he had dated. I'm fairly certain that he's never been faithful to anyone he's been in a relationship with. I even found out, much later, that he'd been cheating on his girlfriend with my girlfriend. Truly, we are dealing with a classy gentleman here. Sowing discord was a favorite game of his, often by gossiping about people, and trying to turn groups against individuals, while blaming other people for poo poo-talking those very people. He was good at this, and did his best to upset everyone, beit around a gaming table, or when going to the movies. He got away with a lot of stuff by playing off the standard response: Well, that's just The Wizard. Whaddayawant? The Wizard had-for as long as I'd known him-been interested in the occult. Crowley, Mathers, Dee, all prominent in his library. I had a phase in high school, but never beyond. He had "energized crystals" that he would put his dice around in circles when we gamed. Everyone chuckled, no one cared. He would get drunk, or high, and talk about mysticism. It's just The Wizard. Eventually, he met and married a woman whom he fought with. A lot. They had blowout, "I'm staying with my folks this weekend, that he/she is crazy" fights at every major milestone in their relationship. Every time I asked him if he really thought they should stay together, considering how bad things got. He always answered in the affirmative. Towards the end of my time with him, The Wizard got involved in something called Chaos Magic. When he told me, the first thing I asked was when he wanted to catch a Warhammer game. No, he said, this is the Real Deal. I inquired further, and details spilled forth. He explained that this magic system is based on implanting ideas into the caster's subconscious mind. This is done via bouts of intense concentration while completing a series of steps. First, the caster visualizes what they want. Maybe a promotion, getting a certain person's attention romantically, the usual stuff. He claimed to be able to even imbue items with whatever properties he desired. Then they create a sigil to symbolize that desire. This has to be something they can ritually destroy later, so it's generally paper, but he claimed it could be anything. Finally, the caster meditates or exhausts themselves into a mind-blanked state. I guess you could call it a euphoria, but those were his words. He encouraged me to read various PDFs on the subject. He asked me to "practice" with him. All I could picture was him furiously masturbating over construction paper cutouts of arcanum. Needless to say, I declined each invitation, as tempting as that might sound. There was a day I considered the breaking point, when I knew he'd gone off the deep end. Just before this, The Wizard had been in a bad car accident. Thankfully, he was relatively uninjured, just muscle issues, from what he told me. Then he explained why and how the accident happened. Oh, this wasn't just a matter of getting rear-ended, no, no! He had just recently done a "working" to get a new car, and now, his insurance was replacing his car! Clearly, magic was afoot! I really tried to talk him down. My wife sat through the whole thing, even though they never really got along, and tried to sympathize with him. I threw every logical, rational argument I had at him. Nothing worked. He left, and I sat, staring at the wall in disbelief. He and I met up sometime later, and he regaled me with the sordid details of an affair he was involved in. As always, I told him to drop it an move on, and as always, he refused. I was told in conspiratorial whispers of how he'd "made" this happen, and that I could do the same. I just had to "practice" with him. I made some excuses and got him to drop the subject before I left. A few months later he came to our place, freaking out that his wife wanted a divorce. He told me how he'd conjured a servitor spirit to "chase the other woman around." He suspected her of being unfaithful to him. He claimed that he'd chastised the spirit, and in retaliation, it left his "workings" with the other woman's name out for his wife to find. His misery went on for weeks. he was coming by fairly frequently, and as I was recovering from a minor, but painful, surgery, I was usually home anyway. One night was different though. He came over while my wife was out, and she had left an old purse on her desk. While I was in the bathroom, he tore open the lining and hid a crystal inside it. She found it the next day at work when it fell out. I know it was him because the purse had been a gift, was well cared for, and the lining was intact before she found that crystal the very next day, and she found the crystal when she got to her desk, so no one else could have planted it. It didn't hurt that it was the same crystal he kept his dice around. I'm no great occultist, but you don't hide good things on people to protect them. near as I can figure, he intended to do something really bad. Does it matter that I don't believe? No. His intent matters. If he raised a gun, aimed, and pulled the trigger, only to find out that it was empty, the intent is the same. He left me a bunch of guilty-sounding emails and voicemails afterwards. The "I think I've been caught, but I'm not sure" type. I cut him off entirely. I didn't, and still don't need his lies and nonsense. Besides, motherfucker can't even cantrip right.
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Sep 27, 2013 20:16
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Telemicus, your story has reminded me of one of my own. My friend Burns and I used to game a lot with our friends in high school, but one of us was always being asked to GM. It was rare then, that we'd get to play together as players and it didn't happen until college. He came down to visit for the weekend and we decided to play in a 2.5 ed game (3rd was out, but none of us had the books yet) with my roommate and this kid we knew serving as GM, we'll call him Turkeyneck. Turkeyneck was a computer science major and one of the worst kinds of GM: the kind that thinks it's him vs. the player. Burns came down 6 weekends and we did 6 sessions of this campaign, where we got to deal with railroading, ridiculous coincidences, pet NCPs, and all manner of other nonsense. I was playing a fighter, and Burns was playing a cleric. Our third party member was playing a mage. At the start, it was a standard tavern-and-missions style campaign, with us taking missions as heroes-for-hire. It actually wasn't that bad until we went on our second mission and we ran into a troll that happened to be carrying a bag full of potions of Fire Resistance, just in case we wanted to attack him with the one thing he was weak against. That was the kind of campaign it was. This was also when our GM started making rolls and asking us how many HP we had left before telling us how much damage we took, so he could continually reduce us to low health without killing us. Eventually we just started lying about our HP until we'd get knocked unconscious. Late in the second session, we ended up in some small town situated around a mine. They were being raided by orcs and we opted to stay there and protect the town. We spent a few sessions using the town as a base and helping fight off orcs, until we got word that an entire army of orcs was in-bound. Over and over, we'd attempt to solve problems with clever solutions only to be thwarted. When defending the town from orcs and goblins, we enlisted the townspeople to build and fortify a stone wall around the town. The whole town spent days working on this instead of other defenses as we figured it was the best way to funnel a large number of monsters into a small space and deal with them. Things went well until an orc wizard showed up and cast Transmute Rock to Mud and destroyed the entire wall. We were level 3 at the time, so I think the orc wizard, who fled immediately after casting the spell, was probably a much higher level than us. We ended up having to flee the town as it burned to the ground. His pet NPCs were a pair of wizard's assistants that rode a large cart around everywhere that was filled with beer and mushrooms and fantasy narcotics. In a move he found hilarious, they were always high or drunk to the point of being worthless, but we were unable to just leave them behind for reasons. To give you an idea of how funny these NPCs were, imagine the jokes that someone who has never tried any drugs or had a sip of alcohol would make and just repeat those over and over in your mind. He was also really invested in some church conspiracy/conflict story that had no setup and that we weren't particularly interested in. We'd walk into a village of maybe 50 people and it would have 12 churches, each devoted to a different god. We had just fled the town we were protecting and wanted to get help from this town fighting off orcs and saving who we could back in the last town but apparently we were supposed to forget that and go into one of these churches. When we didn't go in any of the churches, he tried forcing the issue, which led to this exchange: Burns: Look, we're going to head to the constable or town guard, if there is one. If not, then the mayor. We're trying to get some help. Swordsmen, supplies, anything. Turkeyneck: The mayor's home is on the other end of town. As you walk that way, you pass the church of [some deity]. A man in a robe calls to you... Burns: I ignore him. We're on a mission here. Turkeyneck: As you walk past the man, you see... Burns: I turn my head immediately, so as not to see whatever it is that I was about to see. Turkeyneck: As you turn your head, you see... Burns: I close my eyes. Turkeyneck: As you close your eyes, you see... Burns: I close them faster. Turkeyneck: Ok, Chirurgeon, you see... Me: I have no time for this either, we move on. The priest can wait. I also turn away, and close my eyes, if need be. At this point he informs me that I have been stabbed in the back with a poison-coated dagger by what turned out to be an agent of a church of an evil deity. The poison, I was told by a priest of another, good-aligned church, would kill me in one week unless we could get the blah blah from the who cares. The town we had been working to protect for 3 sessions prior meanwhile, was completely razed and looted, I guess. We stopped playing after that.
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Sep 27, 2013 21:57
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TheChirurgeon posted:Burns: I close them faster. This phrase is the best phrase. One of the problems with being a DM is you get to sit and dwell on your material for so long between sessions sometimes, that by the time you get to introduce it to your characters you forget that they haven't seen it ever and are totally unfamiliar with it. I've found that this disconnect can be the reason that some sessions feel so railroad-y: "I have all this great stuff. Let's hurry up and get to it!" Of course there are also DMs who are so bad that they make you want to close your eye faster... Agrikk fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 22:23
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Ugh... That's wretched  I made it a point to learn from bad games, whether I ran, or played in them, so I could become a better DM, and make sure we all had fun. I don't think I'll ever understand people that ignore the reactions of their fellows at the table.
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Sep 27, 2013 22:26
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Chaos magic: when EST posts on Craigslist, looking for guys to come over and JO in its model train room.
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Sep 27, 2013 22:27
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Bieeardo posted:Chaos magic: when EST posts on Craigslist, looking for guys to come over and JO in its model train room. I also have a poster of Alan Moore and a freezer full of imitation crab meat, but you have to fight a barbarian werewolf to get them.
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Sep 27, 2013 22:42
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Agrikk posted:This phrase is the best phrase. Yeah. Or they get so caught up in some plan they have (or they overplan) and can't or won't adapt it to the player actions. For Turkeyneck, the town we were protecting wasn't as important as all the church intrigue he had come up with, so he destroyed the town and then tried to force us to do something else, rather than just figuring out how to adapt his plans to the situation. It wasn't like we weren't willing to take his hooks, but they frequently made no sense in the context of where we were and were never compelling. And when we didn't respond the way he wanted to them, our hands would be forced.
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Sep 27, 2013 22:46
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Telemicus posted:He got away with a lot of stuff by playing off the standard response: Well, that's just The Wizard. Whaddayawant? It's amazing how many assholes get away with it because of that. I ran into a couple of those in forum and PbE forms.
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Sep 27, 2013 22:57
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My local second hand bookshop has a book about Crowley written by an associate of his in the early 50's. I've seriously considered buying it several times for novelty value, but the £80-ish price tag has always driven me off. I think it's numbered as printing 200-ish out of 500.
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Sep 28, 2013 00:15
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Telemicus posted:My terrible DM took a level in Wizard. Too bad he has a 9 INT. Oh god this reminds me almost exactly of a dude I met several years ago. Ian moved here from Wisconsin, was waaaaay into the occult, was a terrible player and gm, and pretty much never shut up about who he was boinking/cheating with. Dude was 30 loving years old when I met him. Dude was a trainwreck.
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Sep 28, 2013 01:16
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Is it wrong that I hope it's the same dude?
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Sep 28, 2013 02:04
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VanSandman posted:Is it wrong that I hope it's the same dude? No, if you are right there are less of these people out there in the world then if you were wrong.
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Sep 28, 2013 02:06
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I guess sex magic is just beyond you, mundanes.
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Sep 28, 2013 02:06
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VanSandman posted:Is it wrong that I hope it's the same dude? You're not, and they're not. Which is sad, since that means there are two of these douchenozzles. 
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Sep 28, 2013 02:06
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Telemicus posted:You're not, and they're not. Which is sad, since that means there are two of these douchenozzles. Can I at least hope that Ian is the guy The Wizard got internet DM tips from?
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Sep 28, 2013 02:23
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I once ran a pf campaign that involved destroying a Codex of the Infinite Planes. The only way to destroy such a book is to rip a page out and leave it in each plane of existence. In this particular case, the book was stolen and someone would seek out the pages if they did not hide each one on the plane. The first problem with a player we will call Jobless came up at chargen time: when asked for alignment, I said "don't be evil". So we all sit down to play and I explain the quest (I asked them to make lvl 12 characters, heroes in their own right, that were invited to a wizard's home), and the player stopped and said, "But my character would just take and use it!" "What!? Why?" "He is neutral evil!" "What the actual gently caress? I said don't be evil" "Oh, I thought you meant actually evil." He was a decent DM, but a terrible player, and we ended up completely ditching the campaign (and him) due to time constraints.
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Sep 28, 2013 02:44
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Agrikk posted:
I totally agree with that. My players play slow so sometimes I have to sit on my hands and let them have their fun because that's what it's about, and just take a few deep breaths because I know we're going to get to my next super awesome thing soon, I just have to be patient.
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Sep 28, 2013 03:47
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God, this story of the Wizard reminds me of the campaign I'm DMing. Due to stuff I won't go into, after their first major mission my group is briefly playing a group of side characters who are linked to the main characters because of plot and fate and the stars and who knows what else, and they were given a small job that quickly led into Something Horrible. The latest session picked up with them after waking up after making camp and I decide for this session we'll start with a combat encounter. My overall point is, I'm rather glad I am nothing like the Wizard. I may have overtuned the encounter a touch (six monsters against a five player party, all being Level 2) and for a bit the party wasn't doing super well. The Wizard would have been happy: before things did their final turnaround I was actually going to myself 'MISS!' whenever certain monsters rolled, because they were all mindless mutated horrors and it did not make sense for them to break off and attack other party members when some of the party had done things that would hold their attention, like tank stuff or hitting them with cleaves, so they were all ganging up on people (and getting lucky with damage rolls). The party survived, though the Warden went down once before being Warlord-Worded back up. And to be fair, none of them used dailies or managed to figure out half the monsters were weak to fire (which I tried to suggest by saying one of the characters went and got more wood for the fire so it would be burning brightly). Still, I wonder how many DMs actually root against themselves.
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Sep 28, 2013 04:33
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Cornwind Evil posted:Still, I wonder how many DMs actually root against themselves. It's fairly common, at least among my groups. One character death happened because he was getting pretty low on HP and still had a minotaur on him. DM decided it didn't make sense for the minotaur to switch targets or flee, so went for full Power Attack to lower its attack bonus, hoping for a miss. We all just kinda stared at the natural 20 that resulted. I also tend to worry that I've overpowered the party whenever I throw much of anything at them. I suppose it's a mark of decent DMing. Anyway, are we talking about neckbeards casting spells? Because I have a story of a neckbeard casting a spell. I've mentioned Matt before. Matt was the one who always played the brooding, trenchcoated Richter Sterling. Matt was the one who tried to bring the SDF-1 into every game (Yes, every game, no matter the system or genre. Watching him do verbal gymnastics on the topic was always mildly entertaining). Matt was the one who, before I even got the second sentence of setting description out (coincidentally the one describing the watchful guards), interrupted with "I start pickpocketing!" Matt was also the one "responsible" for "resetting" a friend's mind and letting a "new personality" take over. This is that story. A disclaimer: I was raised by psychic hippies, steeped in mysticism all my life. So if someone says they can cast spells, I'm skeptical, but not going to call bullshit immediately. Strip away the mysticism, and every "spell" is just positive thinking and creative interpretation of events. Someone may need the framework of the spell in order to think positively and creatively enough to be the change they want. It's more like religion than anyone involved in the comparison cares to admit. So keep in mind that I at least half bought into this nonsense at the time. At any rate, I was over at Matt's house with our mutual friend Randy. I think it was Matt's birthday, and either everyone else had left or we were the only ones who showed up (We only qualified as Matt's friends because he had latched, lamprey-like, onto us and would not leave us alone). We had played a little RIFTS earlier in the day (Matt, Randy, and I were really the only group in my school that played tabletop games), but mostly the day had seen us passing the controllers around playing fighting games on the Playstation. Due to this, I missed the setup or why Matt was casting a spell, but when I looked up he'd set up a ring of candles with Randy in the center. Matt started going on about how he'd cast spells with runes before, but the spell needed five runes and he only had four left. So not only did Matt think he had a working knowledge of spellcasting, he also thought he was a Vancian caster. At the time I only took issue with the second part, although not vocally. I only informed him of the existence of the null or blank rune, which he agreed would be perfect for his spell. He continued his setup, which I don't recall accurately, and when he finished casting, Randy That sounds silly, and I'm still having trouble believing I bought into it even partially. But Randy, to get a little geekier for a moment, was like a videogame NPC with no AI loaded. He was in neutral.  He still breathed, blinked, maintained balance, but he stayed silent and didn't respond much otherwise. We ran through some impromptu tests, verifying that Randy had reflexes and instinct and his martial arts training.  I may have freaked out a little at this point, but that stopped when Matt grabbed a sword and threatened to commit suicide to get Randy's mind back. I talked Matt down and, it being very late and not knowing anything else to do, I hitchhiked home with Randy, still silent and mostly unresponsive. Since nothing happens in a vacuum, this is also the story of how Randy got us to take him seriously when he changed his name to Sephiroth.
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Sep 28, 2013 17:50
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I'm personally sorry to hear about the bad experiences in FR. Everyone complains about how generic it is, but I've always felt that it's the type of world where any type of adventure makes sense and players can put their stamp on it. With few exceptions my DM's were always very good and we had the pleasure of changing the world in meaningful ways. By and large, our campaigns tended to be relatively combat-light and about survival, reaching goals, and political intrigue, but we did do one that was kind of a Monty Haul. Our party got pulled into Myth Drannor, and the DM played it exactly like it says to do so in the boxed set (which I once read): Basically, no mercy to the players, constant harassment by devils and other meanies and the continual draining of our resources with no rest. Even a guy with 80 HP taking 4 damage was a big deal as we couldn't find any peace to rest. We found a ton of loot, especially consumables, but each one became incredibly precious. We actually started to get penalties due to fatigue as we couldn't find a place to sleep. If I remember correctly in Myth Drannor, you are supposed to roll an encounter die every hour as opposed to every 4 or 6 normally. We finally had found a sheltered spot and settled down. Nobody was dead, but everyone was badly wounded. One or two people had regen rings or some such, but those don't really heal that fast. We had the non-casters stand guard while the casters slept, desperate to get our spells back, and we passed the encounter roll 7 times... and failed the 8th. The collective groan amongst the players shook the room. I think that one of our arcane casters got his abilities back after that, but none of our healers. Still, it was a tense, masterfully executed scenario and I remember it fondly. The tension for each dice roll, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, was palpable.
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Sep 28, 2013 18:02
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Cornwind Evil posted:Still, I wonder how many DMs actually root against themselves. It's my biggest problem with DMing most systems. What I want as DM is for entertainment and a good story. This only happens from more than occasional PC death either if you're playing Tomb of Horrors or Fantasy loving Vietnam, or you're playing Paranoia. Telemicus posted:Towards the end of my time with him, The Wizard got involved in something called Chaos Magic. When he told me, the first thing I asked was when he wanted to catch a Warhammer game. No, he said, this is the Real Deal. I inquired further, and details spilled forth. He explained that this magic system is based on implanting ideas into the caster's subconscious mind. This is done via bouts of intense concentration while completing a series of steps. Oh dear. Chaos Magic. Where at least one of the schools has the Mage the Ascension like tenet that the magic comes from the will after you believe in it. Which means that if you doubt the magic it stops working. quote:I'm no great occultist, but you don't hide good things on people to protect them. near as I can figure, he intended to do something really bad. Does it matter that I don't believe? No. His intent matters. This isn't entirely true. Studies on the efficacy of prayer have been known to show that letting patients know they are being prayed for is harmful. And there are reasons to protect someone without their knowledge, especially if belief matters. But yeah. No. That isn't good - and especially not from him.
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Sep 28, 2013 21:53
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neonchameleon posted:It's my biggest problem with DMing most systems. What I want as DM is for entertainment and a good story. This only happens from more than occasional PC death either if you're playing Tomb of Horrors or Fantasy loving Vietnam, or you're playing Paranoia. This is why I instituted a rule when I ST. Just because you died, doesn't mean you die there. Essentially, I don't mess around. If you reach where you would be 'dead'. You are going to die. But that doesn't mean you die that fight, or the next one, or anything like that. It means that, at some point in the future, when it is dramatically appropriate, you're going to die. I think it makes it a little bit better. I feel there has to be some danger and fear of death, a risk to go for, because, at least how I see it, part of being a hero is standing up against danger and stuff, but I don't do it to make the players mad or angry. If a character dies it should advance a goal, unless you're playing one of those games. I would say I root against myself, though. I don't want to win, I want my players to beat the bad guys. I just don't want to make it too easy, because one of my absolute worst gaming experiences was with an ST who did that. I might share the story when I get some time, but one of what shaped my ideas of how to ST was a ST who just gave everyone everything without ever any sense of conflict or tension, and it was a boring, terrible game, to me.
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Sep 28, 2013 22:34
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I generally cheer for my players when I DM too, but by no means do I make it easy for them. Since they're very high level (good lord one of them gets 9th level powers next level  ) I have a lot of latitude as to what they can handle, so I generally just go "that looks horrible, I wonder if they can handle two of them? We'll find out!" The last encounter my PCs faced was a hullathoin; they can exude swarms of necrotic locusts which create vampire spawn that it automatically controls. I decided to give everything involved the paragon template (minus the ridiculous SR) and max out big H's HD. The PCs still destroyed it, but it was an actual fight that they had to think about their options because even the vampires could potentially hit them and do substantial damage, and also not get vaporized just by a glance.My next encounter for them is probably going to generate a notable experience since it is what you might call a "boss fight". And I let one of my very powergamey friends design half of it. My real worry is that it'll take too long and we'll have to split it over two sessions.
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Sep 29, 2013 01:59
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One of my players freaked out over five level 11 party members fighting one Pit Fiend. My monster died in like, five rounds, no near causalities. At the end of the day, some people are just pussies, some people enjoy a challenge. Don't cater to the former, but don't be a dick about it.
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Sep 29, 2013 10:19
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neonchameleon posted:
He didn't mean "intent matters because the spell was causing her real harm due to his intent", he meant "intent matters because he thought it would do real harm and he did it anyway".
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Sep 29, 2013 22:46
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I think the point neonchameleon was making was just that someone keeping something a secret doesn't necessarily mean they are trying to hurt anybody. *** There was a guy I played D&D with briefly when I first started out who I will never forget. He would come up with amazing names for his characters like Merlin "Shadowblade" Walker and would do pretty much anything for some extra gold. One time the rogue found a secret passage in a dungeon and before he was able to open it Merlin shoved him aside so that he could get to the treasure first. The door triggered a pit trap, which he fell into, plate armor and all. The rogue would've easily dodged out of the way. There was another time when he rolled a d8 for his weapon damage and just stared at it for a moment before looking up at the DM: Merlin: Is that a 6 or a 9? DM: That's a d8. It only goes to 8. Merlin: I know, but is that a 6 or a 9? He got kicked out of the group partly because people got sick of his shenanigans and partly for other non-game-related reasons that were much more justified. Honestly I enjoy the shenanigans and out of that group he's actually the person I would most like to play with now. Heavy Zed fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Sep 30, 2013 |
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Sep 30, 2013 03:29
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Heavy Zed posted:There was another time when he rolled a d8 for his weapon damage and just stared at it for a moment before looking up at the DM: Did he do the no common sense thing often or was that just the most hilarious attempt ever to fudge a roll?
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Sep 30, 2013 15:26
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Definitely the lack of common sense. Another time he appraised some furniture and was told "It's good quality for Orcish furniture, so still not worth much" and became convinced that meant it was incredibly valuable. He spent the rest of the session carrying two chairs out of the dungeon and ultimately sold them for a whopping 10cp to someone looking for firewood.
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Sep 30, 2013 15:55
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I don't play World of Darkness Games. This is why. I couldn't have been more than sixteen. I was staying over at a friends house, as I did most Friday nights. It was the five of us, our regular gaming group. So we watched some anime, and sometime around eleven the gaming books came out. I'm going to call the GM Dead Boy. He was a goth extrodinare and he was the kind of guy who gets girls to ice down before making love. I knew what kind of stuff he was into. We all did. But for some reason, we expected him to keep his dick off the table while running Vampire. Big Mistake. Oh sure, the little dead-head was out of site, but I can only imagine what he got up to later. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. The first warning sign, I suppose was that despite the fact that none of us had ever touched the system before, the two MENSA members(myself and the local drug dealer) weren't allowed to even look at the book for fear that we'd somehow minmax. We wrote up normal humans, all guys and just went with it when we got abruptly embraced and all that jazz. Everything went well enough until we got our asses dragged in front of The Prince of Des Moines. See, he had a problem and a pack of newbies were just the thing to solve it. There was a Sabbat Brothel. And we were going to go in and find all it's secrets, find the bank accounts, and so on. And we were going to do it as whores. This is the point were I should have just gone down stairs, walked out that door, and just... walked home and slept on my porch. I should have. Instead, I waited as someone else spoke up in game about how dumb the plan was. Even the Prince's pet Deadboy got a strange look on his face and ran downstairs. About ten minutes later he came back with some ziplock baggies, a large metal bowl, and a lighter. And he proceeded to impale the character sheet, light it on fire, and hand the ashes to him in a ziplock baggy. This happened every time someone died. And yes, we sat through this. We sat around as it was described how the Price just ripped him apart. And then sat mutely as he was handed the Prince's Pet Tzimisce Cat Girl. It was a long night. And it just seemed to get longer, after we sat through the description of being flesh shaped into Barbie dolls. And later the graphic sex scenes that inevitable resulted in someone dying, most memorably to a foot and a half long spiny mass getting repeately rammed into and rapidly removed from an orifice. I left after the first death to this sort of thing. IF by leaving you mean, went into the other room to play P.N.03 on the gamecube. Every time one of them died, they'd come in to half heartedly get me back in the game by telling me I was disgracing myself, that I was being a coward. You know, teenage macho bullshit. No one was comfortable with it. One of them told me "It says personal horror on the book". My response was that I wouldn't know, they never let me see it. Anyway, eventually I got tired of the nagging(and the constant whine of the printer), went back. Where the thirty first character sheet was handed to me, and we went off again. Into the wild pink nethers. He never faded to black, but it was basically just a dungeon crawl, except we were looking for bank numbers instead of loot, and we were going after a pimp not a lich. I just got tired and found the storage room, got some gas cans, and gave the place and everyone in it a viking funeral. Only the catgirl survived. The worst part was Deadboy was surprised we didn't have fun. And no, it was neither Byron Hall or Chris Fields. Now, for a funny bad one... I once ended up getting pulled into a Werewolf game(that cemented the No WoD for Me, thanks) that involved Were-Rabbit Hitler who wanted all normal humans exterminated(and believed that humanity needed to die back in real life), a Were-Butterfly with a chainsaw, an elephant, a transvestite hyena who did all the social stuff, and a bear. That was just... not well put together.
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Sep 30, 2013 18:07
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FourmyleCircus posted:and a bear. I hope it was just straight a bear running around mauling people.
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Sep 30, 2013 18:42
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| # ? May 14, 2024 19:58 |
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FourmyleCircus posted:I once ended up getting pulled into a Werewolf game(that cemented the No WoD for Me, thanks) that involved Were-Rabbit Hitler who wanted all normal humans exterminated(and believed that humanity needed to die back in real life), a Were-Butterfly with a chainsaw, an elephant, a transvestite hyena who did all the social stuff, and a bear. That was just... not well put together. Was this new or old world of darkness. If it was old, were-butterflies and rabbits didn't exist and the storyteller was just messing with the players, or bad, or both. If it was new, well, Changing Breeds is really bad. The Werewolf developers wanted no part of it, hence it's branding as a "World of Darkness" book.
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Sep 30, 2013 19:05
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