Worst Games You've Ever Played/Heard About

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Feb 04, 2011 6:18 am

Read da title. I had to make this thread because of some of the horror stories I've been sharing with friends. I've got a lot of REALLY bad MCs I know and have sat at the table with.

The freshest story in my mind is one of the trips people've taken into wacky world. I know a guy who tries to MC a lot but I also know that the guy is VERY VERY bad at running the game. In this particular story he's got a three person party on his hands. He has a Human Ranger geared in every way possible in both ability selection and back story towards fighting and killing dragons (which he was told he wouldn't run into), a human Druid built haphazardly as a joke with an interest in being a merchant who sells explosives (and drags a wagon of the volatile stuff around), and a cookie cutter Human Rogue, and the MC's gf who doesn't really matter.

This party started at 1st level and a lot of silly stuff occurred on the way but this particular story takes place when they are at level 3. At this point they were traveling and the Ranger jokingly asked whether or not he's caught the trail of a dragon or two (which aren't supposed to exist). SO he says sure, you see one flying over head. Of course he decides to track it because h can despite the MC not wanting him to. So the MC says it flew over a mountain, the party follows anyway. So they are looking around the mountain and find a cave that the Ranger's ridiculously high tracking skill and it leads them to a cave.

Of course they all venture into the cave. Now at this point they all are forced to make a Reflex save or take 20 fire damage (4d6). The Ranger immediately asks why and the MC informs them they've somehow accidentally walked into the dragon's mouth. Argument between the ranger and druid against the MC immediately insues for very obvious reasons. At the end of it everyone but the MC's gf and the Druid roll. The gf doesn't have to because she "just so happened" to be at the back of the group. The Druid sits back carefully and when asked why he doesn't roll he says "It doesn't matter we're all dead. Us and the Dragon". Everyone asks why. He casually mentions that is wagon of explosives was with him when they began to enter "the cave" and there's no way they can take the fire AND explosive damage.

The ranger throws his dice down and leaves the table. The Druid and the MC argue over the validity of the dragon dieing from the explosion in its mouth. The rogue just starts to laugh and the gf just sits there saying nothing. Needless to say the game ended there.

Molochio · Post by **Molochio** » Fri Feb 04, 2011 6:31 am

The world's largest dungeon was miserable.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Feb 04, 2011 1:12 pm

I've been in a couple of bad games for just one session before. I saw the potential for some serious suck and just didn't return after the session, so luckily they weren't bad games for me.

One of the worst that I actually played in for a while involved the MC letting some really weird stuff fly. I joined a group of 5th level PCs and the MC had me start at 1st level. That night, the party was fighting a great wyrm for reasons I can't explain and I was just dragged along. Someone happened to have several arrows of dragon slaying or somesuch and basically two-shotted the dragon. The MC admitted that he didn't plan on having the dragon die, but I don't know what he was actually planning (TPK, Deus Ex Mechana rescue, we become the dragon's bitches, etc), but he decided to "generate" the dragons hoard. I don't know what he did, but the four-way split was 238 million platinum. That's right: 2.38 billion gp.

On top of that MC had some oddly permissive rules about custom item creation, so we spent a lot of time creating all sorts of custom items to throw us off the top of the RNG. I'd spent all I could and I hadn't even spend 1% of my wealth. Other than that, the game sucked because the MC seemed to favor people playing slutty characters who slept with powerful NPCs and players who would smoke with him. Since my PC wasn't a slut and I didn't smoke, I often got left out on lots of stuff.

A later game under the same MC involved our 2nd level party drawing cards off of a Deck of Many Things for shiggles from some high level NPC sitting at the bar. Apparently, this was something he did for the lulz, but he'd use his powerful magic to negate some of the worse "black" cards. So, I ended up with some minor benefit and penalty, one of the players drew the XP card and shot up to level 5, and the other player got something else pretty cool.

Now, at this point, I was playing an orc fighter/barbarian with a fullblade and a 22 Str at a level when that's still pretty cool. The human cleric with an 18 Str thought he was pretty badass and seemed genuinely disappointed, and maybe offended that the orc fighter/barbarian had a higher Str. Never mind that he's a cleric and he should be [awesome] by virtue of that alone. Within the next session, the MC had basically handed him the Vampire template for free, along with the +8 Str bonus. So, I'm a 3rd level, 22 Str beatstick running around with a 5th level wizard and a 3rd level vampire cleric with a 26 unbuffed Str. I just didn't see the point in playing at that point, so I quit the game at the end of the session.

Maybe I should have started smoking pot or something.

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 7:04 am

The world's Largest Dungeon was the best hundred bucks I ever spent. It allowed me to realize that I could make more interesting adventures than that piece of shit book.

My wife says The Worlds Largest Dungeon is exactly what it claims to be: it is a huge dungeon, probable the "world's largest", and nothing more. It has virtually no plot , background, or NPC interaction; just a big dungeon full of monsters and traps.

Oh yeah, and it has a big FUCK YOU to all teleport, calling, and summoning spells. Don't buy this book, because it sucks.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 8:47 am

haha, we got the book once in Hastings because the so called 100$ had been marked down to 20$ as it wasn't selling at all. This was, when I checked on it later, a few months after the thing was published.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 12:56 pm

I ran a game in which I did the balant DM NPC favourtism thing. I like to try and forget about it (it was when I was in high school)

It was bad, and my DM NPC was one of the least worst parts of the game.

Molochio · Post by **Molochio** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 1:33 pm

The Worlds Largest Dungeon?
I believe that Kaelik described it fairly well.

"I don't know. It gives you all sorts of bullshit vendor trash that might theoretically add up to WBL, but who the fuck cares because there are no goddam vendors.

Also, it specifically tells you to not follow the normal XP rules. It basically says "We don't care how you do it, here are some examples, but no matter what you do, just make extra fucking sure they level much slower than normal" so it's possible, what with all the vendor trash, that they follow the WBL for a slowed X progression.

So anyway, fuck them.

It is exactly what sabs says, but oh well. I wouldn't mind playing it, if I could ever convince a DM that the actual test isn't "wear them down with 400 shitty fights in a row" and let me play a character that is always at full Hp and has at will abilities, because fuck that other shit.

If I could ever get to level 3, I could solo the whole thing with a DFA."

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Feb 05, 2011 9:13 pm

This one.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 3:45 pm

So after not playing D&D for a while I randomly discovered an amusing build. After working out the details on it, I decided that I would like to play it.

So I post on a PbP forum looking for a DM. I make it very clear, among other things I am looking for a skilled optimizer DM not scared of powerful characters, etc. The logic being those types can post saying they're interested, and the basketweavers can move along. Reasonable, right?

Well it would be if people could RTFM. Since they can't...

Now it wasn't bad at first. Too much freeform and too little D&D, but that didn't annoy me. What did annoy me is that I later found that the DM, who by the way said he was totally ok with this actually hated powerful characters and those who make them, and was determined to be a total douchebag at every turn. And when I noticed him doing this, and called him on it, he started going full on with the petty and spiteful, where nothing you do works, no matter how strong you are or how well you do it. And that's when he posted at all (another not reading the fucking manual) as his posts became increasingly slower, despite being active everywhere else, and despite part of it being that the game would be active.

After a while of this, I basically started fucking with him, essentially trolling him, subtly daring him to kill my character for some bullshit reason, while at the same time staging it so he looked increasingly more foolish. His response was to not take the bait, and then ignore the rules even more with all manner of random bullshit happening for no discernible reason.

And during this time, he decided to be a serial stalker troll all over the place, all because he failed, and therefore it's my fault.

I eventually got bored of his fail and just stopped posting until the game died.

TL;DR version: When someone says they are interested in a powerful game with powerful characters, they mean exactly this. They don't want a basketweaver DM. They don't want a freeformer when they clearly state they want to play D&D. And they don't want a petty jackass who wouldn't be entirely out of place on the Paizil boards. They want a DM who is actually competent. What a concept!

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 4:26 pm

I did the same thing once:

Hey guys, want to play with this character, very high power level. Blah Blah.

Several people joined, and I left the game in the first combat, because what happened was:

5 level 6 characters off to work:

1) one of them, the DMs favorite, was a vow of poverty monk who also was taking vow of peace.

This is red hand of doom. you go out and kill shit. That's not going to work.

So the first roleplay is us on our way to town. Vow of Poverty and Peace Monk doesn't want to ride my Force Steed (Phantom Steed basically) This is dumb, as the single move action of the steed exceeds his hustle, and the steed can forced march for infinity hours. So I purposefully keep my steed in front of him by ten feet, all the time, and then, combat.

In the very first combat, he shows that:

1) He will roll a will save that completely negates my character and just not tell me about it, even when it's for a spell that has visible effects (suppresses my Mage armor).

2) He doesn't actually know the rules for either Globe of Invulnerability, or the character I specifically asked to play in the campaign.

3) He doesn't like people not sucking, so he thinks it's perfectly okay to just drop a globe of invulnerability on a level 6 party so that we can fight a bunch of hobo warriors in it and make his stupid monk look good.

4) He gets upset when his stupid monk still doesn't look good, because the Cleric and Wizard and I still do better by attacking hobos outside the globe, and moving outside it ourselves.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sun Feb 13, 2011 1:50 pm

Lol. Monks for the loss. They always do that.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Mon Feb 14, 2011 3:26 pm

That's pretty bad. So many bad games come from different player/MC expectations. You'd think that it would be a good idea to say "I want to play X" and then get an MC that buys into that concept.

So, were these guys just idiots, or were they out to Prove You Wrong?

Niles · Post by **Niles** » Tue Feb 15, 2011 1:39 am

Every game mentioned in the articles that got turned into this book.

Count Arioch the 28th · Wed Feb 16, 2011 4:50 pm

Let's see here...

There was this one time a few years back I was playing at the FLGS. One guy volunteered to be the DM. I agreed, because I never get to play.

Here are some of the things that happened:

1. First off, he had an army of invincible dwarves following us around everywhere and saving our asses. Personally, I don't get irritated about character death as long as it makes a suitable story. I DO get irritated by having 20th level dwarves (or anyone else, I play a lot of dwarves and have nothing against them) saving my ass constantly.

2. He would ruin the effect of foreshadowing by explaining EVERYTHING in the plot. For example, we were in an abandoned drow city with a big gaping hole in the middle filled with acid that looked relatively new. Before I could comment on how odd that was, he started explaining about the drow's pet black dragon that we would fight once we found the drow.

3. He kept going on about how awful min-maxing was, then pretty much ignore the fact that my character was the most min-maxed character in the group (Half-Orc cleric of Kord with Strength and Luck domains. In a core-only group, that's really not too bad). I guess that's not too bad, he ignored how min-maxed I was because I drew a character portrait and tend to be the loud type of roleplayer. I think I caused cognitive dissonance because I didn't match his stereotypes of min-maxers.

4. He threatened me with a kukri. In real life. I'm not making that up. He seemed to be offended that I was using a greatsword in game so he had to show off that he had a kukri and how superior it was to my character's greatsword. (I considered bringing my two-handed sword from home, and leaving the leather scabbard on it to smack him in the ass a couple of times, but I didn't want to be arrested. Also, that somehow sounds gay now that I've put it into words).

5. Kept bragging about the fact that he's had sex with two asian women. Good for him, but I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 6:26 pm

Alright. here's mine. At the time, I had been playing with an MC who was one of those old Gygaxian grognards who has no fucking idea how the game works. He had a variety of bizarre bans, such as banning monks for being overpowered (but wizards are A-OK!), banning any character who used a racial stat adjustment to go over 18 in any stat at first level, not stacking combat expertise with AC buffs (cuz AC 45 at tenth level is overpowered...yeah)...and generally not knowing the damn rules. He's also has...anger issues and is kind of a bully.

So this guy decides that he's going to run a 10th level dungeon crawl based on "Dungeonland", a 2e module where you run around and meet crap from "Alice in Wonderland," while putting up with the usual "These spells don't work" bullshit while everything tries to kill you for a poorly defined reason. Just like his regular games.

The adventure begins with a "bandits have attacked the town, but some other guys killed them, so go find their loot" adventure. Party consists of 1 fighter/rogue gestalt, 1 changeling sorc1/shadowcaster3/noctumancer 6 (me),1 goliath fighter-thing(who got screwed over by the 18 rule mentioned above. Did I mention we rolled for stats?), and my friend playing a healbot/summoner cleric with leadership (for another cleric). So we spend some time looking for the bandits, only to fall down the shaft with miniaturized weapons. I try to use boots of levitation to slow the fall, only to get told that it doesn't work. I make a spellcraft check to determine whats going on, but am told nothing. We get to the bottom of the shaft and find some random bread and mead which cast enlarge and reduce person. Here, our first combat begins.

The combat was pretty weird. Apparently there was a pool of water with random swimming animals of doom. Our cleric attempts to lower the water, only to be told that lower water fails because of the magical bullshit field. Fighter enlarges, stomps animals, and we get out to out next adventure.

The next fight involves the Caterpillar, except it turns into a behir and wants to kill us. I use my killing shadows, which is a 60-ft cone which deals 9d8 points of typeless damage.

The MC goes bonkers, ranting about how this is overpowered and he never should have allowed this character, blah blah blah. (No, it didn't even 1-shot the behir). It grapples our ftr/rog, I hold monster it, grease the ftr/rog so he can escape, and then we coup-de-grace it.

The next adventure in this idiot land involves the mushrooms. The cheshire cat shows up and tells us to take these mushrooms. We all take the shrooms, and the MC calls for Fort saves. As it turns out, I have a good Fort save because of my shadowcaster and noctumancer levels. He starts going off on how this character is banned. Me: "for a good Fort save?" Him: "Yep." Then he turns to the Ftr/Rog and starts whining about the OPness of Tome of Magic. Which, as we all know, is fucking hilarious.

After a boring interlude in which we look for the bandit guy in the castle of the frog dudes, we run into the Mad Hatter, the white rabbit, and co. I, by this point, am pretty damn bored because nothing's happening, so I bait the NPCs, get smacked in the face by some DM bullshit tea attack, then we give them the Fort save mushrooms of death (which we thought were ok because we sense motived the cat and he wasn't lying) and they make soup. Ftr/Rog eats some, fails fort save, dies. Goliath dies for some other reason. Cleric dies, cohort's still up. I am the last PC left. I figure it can't get any worse.

Me(ic)"So what do you want me to say?"
Him:(ic):"Have some soup!"
Me:(ic):"Have some soup!"

So then Captain McFail decides that somehow this means I drank the soup, and now I need to roll a Fort save. I roll a 22, fail, and die. The cohort is the only one left...

..and the MC, realizing he needs to go to work, decides that the monk autohits and quivering palms the cohort with no save.

And people wonder why I hate DM fiat.

Roy · Post by **Roy** » Sat Feb 19, 2011 9:23 pm

RobbyPants wrote:That's pretty bad. So many bad games come from different player/MC expectations. You'd think that it would be a good idea to say "I want to play X" and then get an MC that buys into that concept.

So, were these guys just idiots, or were they out to Prove You Wrong?

The guy, singular, was an idiot. Everyone else was able to RTFM and determine that when I say that I want a high power game, that means I want a high power game, and they should prepare accordingly.

I could see the DM getting mad if I just did it without warning, but I didn't. My expectations and desires were extremely clear. He just decided to completely waste my time for no apparent reason.

And yes, DM fiat is an abomination, simply because it's abused all the time by bad DMs (the good ones make reasoned decisions, not fiat).

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 3:56 am

Probably not the Worst Game Ever, but a personal touchstone for bad handling:

I once (twice, actually) built a character optimized around bluff. With enough bluff, you get a suggestion effect (per the DnD Joke Book), and that's theoretically good times. In practice, it works out poorly.

Playing in some generic Metropolis, the (low level, 4th IIRC) party is tasked to clear some demons from some slums. That was really most of the backstory. I go over there as front man and bluff all over the place while the rest of the party arrows demons in their ugly faces. It works out better than it had any right to. What's the end result? Freakin' Asmodeus shows up to lecture a fourth level adventuring party, and compel us not to use those tactics again. And after our stern talking-to, he left!

That game didn't last long.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 4:20 am

I think that an arch devil accusing you of unfair tactics is a compliment.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 4:24 am

On the one hand, yes. And I suppose it was a bit creative, but that's pretty much defined DM fiat abuse for me ever since.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Nov 30, 2013 2:44 am

Hicks wrote:The world's Largest Dungeon was the best hundred bucks I ever spent. It allowed me to realize that I could make more interesting adventures than that piece of shit book.

My wife says The Worlds Largest Dungeon is exactly what it claims to be: it is a huge dungeon, probable the "world's largest", and nothing more. It has virtually no plot , background, or NPC interaction; just a big dungeon full of monsters and traps.

Oh yeah, and it has a big FUCK YOU to all teleport, calling, and summoning spells. Don't buy this book, because it sucks.

A friend wants me to run WLD, so I downloaded it and started reading. I started a tumblr for my griping about it, since my first gripe came at page 5.

I still plan on running it, but I'm going to modify things, like find a way for wizards and druids to be playable, and use the normal rules rather than Pinto's Rogue-hosing ones. I'm also going to allow for roleplay and explicitly super-liminally encourage non-combat solutions, because I think that players should be able to get the orcs in the first room on their side, and druids should totally be taming fiendish rats.

I've looked it up on here, and I think some people have bad experiences because they either only remember the empty rooms (they're not entirely infrequent) or their dms accidentally use the twenty empty rooms that are outlined before the dungeon actually starts and are meant to be sprinkled in.

It's definitely not a paragon of dungeon crawls, and could use some help, but I'd say it's about the gaming equivalent of popping open a can of tomato paste and doctoring with spices and water for a serviceable pizza sauce--that is, you can't just crack it open and run as is, it needs a bit of modification.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Nov 30, 2013 4:10 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:like find a way for wizards and druids to be playable,

You could flat out just run with the current rules and be fine. I mean, a Wizard with only four spells of each level is still better than everything except Clerics and Druids. And Druids are still the best class in the game if not more so. For example:

1) Wah, no entangle: Sure maybe, druids lose out on some spells that benefit from vegetation, like Tree Stride, but they still have plenty of spells that work, and entangle could even work since you could have stuff growing up in some places between the cracks. (not at the beginnning where there is explicitly no light for like 30 rooms, but later.)

2) Summons are the bad, because they get trapped there and then you have to fight them: Well, no, Druid get to Summon animals, and they have wild empathy, so the actual rules are tha Druids get a free army at no cost. Leve 1: Infinite Badger Army Go!

Krusk · Post by **Krusk** » Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:17 am

Prak your tumblr link seems bad. Id be interested in your read as people often ask me to run it. I did once before and we got to about level 5 before we got bored.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Dec 01, 2013 2:16 am

Fixed, and here it is again http://wlgripe.tumblr.com/

Either yahoo derped the url order when they took over, or I did, I'm not sure which.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sun Dec 01, 2013 2:24 am

I haven't been in completely fucking awful games. I can only really think of a few things that are "bad enough to be annoying".

1. Basically every Rifts game ever: okay, so I'm in a pbp Rifts game that started ten years ago, then halted, and restarted and stuff. Anyway, it's a long-lasting one, and here is a very important thing: we are all actually part of a military force (Lazlo, the "opposing the Coalition and embracing diversity but not actually consorting with demons" guys). That screens for trouble and trains people to get along. There was one problem where a guy decided to fight his own team (for "not showing him the innate respect that every dwarf needs") and was promptly curb-stomped.

That is the only example that hasn't gone badly. Every other game has been "you're a bunch of guys gathered together for some reason!" and very quickly devolves into everyone killing each other. Mostly it's because Rifts attracts violent teenagers like shit attracts flies. So next time you play Rifts, if it's not with a group of people you actually know and like, all on the same page... just understand that you're going to kill each other - don't prepare to shoot first, just don't get attached to the game.

2. D&D, where the MC and one player actually have their favourite game of "antagonising each other". Any game with both of them actually devolves into "they find ways to piss each other off". Then add a player who doesn't actually like D&D, he thinks White Wolf made the perfection of games, so he aspires to be useless and a drama queen. His girlfriend is playing, and fully understands that this game is one big trolling exercise. And then the younger brother of one of the players joins, and quite possibly has ADHD, or is just an ass. I join because I live in that house and have nothing better to do.

So basically, nearly every single person at the table can point to someone else that either they can't stand personally, or that they just want to troll. I think it lasted three or four sessions (including the stealthy de-bearding of the dwarf while he slept. This was before the recent Amish hate crime incident), before this group of level 4 characters, all at half HP and with most spells and stuff spent, got wiped out by a level 5 wizard who was Invisible and Spiderclimbing, with the MC ruling that an "attack" (for the purpose of breaking Invisibility) is literally "making an attack roll". So Phantasmal Killer and Lightning Bolt are totally fine.

3. White Wolf games with people who love White Wolf and think it's the best. I've played Vampire and Demon and Mage with groups who were just playing Vampire/Demon/Mage as something different, and that was fine. But actually playing WW games with groups who live and breathe WW games is awful. And they're all basically the same actual game, with the same characters all doing a cameo for the games...

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Sun Dec 01, 2013 1:55 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Let's see here...

There was this one time a few years back I was playing at the FLGS. One guy volunteered to be the DM. I agreed, because I never get to play.

Here are some of the things that happened:

1. First off, he had an army of invincible dwarves following us around everywhere and saving our asses. Personally, I don't get irritated about character death as long as it makes a suitable story. I DO get irritated by having 20th level dwarves (or anyone else, I play a lot of dwarves and have nothing against them) saving my ass constantly.

2. He would ruin the effect of foreshadowing by explaining EVERYTHING in the plot. For example, we were in an abandoned drow city with a big gaping hole in the middle filled with acid that looked relatively new. Before I could comment on how odd that was, he started explaining about the drow's pet black dragon that we would fight once we found the drow.

3. He kept going on about how awful min-maxing was, then pretty much ignore the fact that my character was the most min-maxed character in the group (Half-Orc cleric of Kord with Strength and Luck domains. In a core-only group, that's really not too bad). I guess that's not too bad, he ignored how min-maxed I was because I drew a character portrait and tend to be the loud type of roleplayer. I think I caused cognitive dissonance because I didn't match his stereotypes of min-maxers.

4. He threatened me with a kukri. In real life. I'm not making that up. He seemed to be offended that I was using a greatsword in game so he had to show off that he had a kukri and how superior it was to my character's greatsword. (I considered bringing my two-handed sword from home, and leaving the leather scabbard on it to smack him in the ass a couple of times, but I didn't want to be arrested. Also, that somehow sounds gay now that I've put it into words).

5. Kept bragging about the fact that he's had sex with two asian women. Good for him, but I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.

He was gay for you dude. He likes dwarf npcs, you played a beefy half orc cleric, your sword made him want to show you his sword, this guy is hard bara gay.