Guy who ran a hyper-realistic game, to the point of just breathing gave you debilitating diseases.

>>7251092
FFFUUUUCK

A DM who was so wrapped up in his created world that he and his one backseat DM spent 4 hours of every session talking about WICKED DEEP STORY BRO shit while anyone else who hadn't been in the campaign for 2 years sat around doing nothing.

He also made the newbs (me and my friend) roll up Level 1 characters, even though his DMPC and the other players were all doing Level 11-13 quests. Needless to say I only lasted three sessions, which was two sessions too long.

>>7251206
>He also made the newbs (me and my friend) roll up >Level 1 characters, even though his DMPC and the >other players were all doing Level 11-13 quests

this makes me rage

Robbie R., AKA RAILROADING ROBBIE
half-elf warrior, i wake up in a dungeon and get found by the party on their way out. we go to the nearby town only to find out I was part of the town guard (didnt write up a backstory, this was a quick game) and I was wanted for deserting my post (how i ended up waking up in the dungeon, he never said). I go before my 'boss' the lieutennant, and i get sentenced to a few days in jail for desertion. he has me roll to resist falling asleep, and I fail, then wake up with a troll standing over me demanding i work in his mine and that I dont have a choice, despite the fact none of this shit has made sense so far. there's a furnace nearby, so i risk some temporary damage to hurt the troll (i know they're weak to fire), so i grab some of the coal fuel in the furnace and try to shove it down the troll's throat, and even though I rolled 20's and should have at least HURT him, railroader said he was barely fazed and about 3 other trolls came in to give me a curb stomping for my insolence. at this point, i said 'fuck this', kicked the coffee table over and walked out of the house. never played with the fucktard again.

TL;DR - woke up in dungeon, arrested for desertion of duty i didnt even know i had, kidnapped by trolls after being put to sleep, trolls apparently immune to fire.

Don't have a GMPC, if you must make said character weaker than the party or useless for some reason. The story is about the PCs.

Don't ever have a situation where the story is stuck/stops if the PCs make the wrong decision/don't guess what you're thinking.

Accept that the PCs are going to completely dick up your plan and focus on making this as awesome as possible.

You'll be fine, it is good that you want to do a good job.

We had a girl named Anne be our DM. Our party had to negotiate a peace treaty between Weretigers and Werehampsters on a distant island, hundreds of miles from the nearest shore.

Worst DM I ever had put us in a Dark Heresy campaign. It was the first campaign I ever played. About halfway into it, I realize he ripped the storyline from that movie Total Recall.

It's okay, I overloaded a pilot servitor and crashed an Imperial starship into the planet in a blaze of glory.

THIS ONE IS FOR YOU, PATCHES.

>>7251322
chicks never make good DMs

lesson one

>>7251356
but... that sounds great

>>7251356

She also had a "magical goat" following us around. It licked my arm, leaving a permanent blue tattoo on it in the shape of its fongue. According to her, if I "bleated into it", then I could get some sort of random effect, because my "understanding of the goat language" was incomplete, and so I didn't know what I was asking for.

>>7251389
lol so random! xD

That would be one David T. Dufour. Where to start....

Problem: Predictability. Every one of his games ran on a schedule.
--week 1: Create characters. DM collects characters at end of session.
--Week 2: DM hands out character sheets which resemble original characters, but have been altered significantly. Usually with needless stat boosts and random homemade magic items tacked on, vastly different skill ratings and spell lists, and completely altered equipment layouts. Play first session in which all character meet naked in a dungeon with no memory of how we got there, gradually escaping not through skill but because every dungeon was nearly identical to the starting dungeon of Baldur's Gate 2.
--Week 3: Party gets back to town, refreshes itself, and sets out to find out what the hell is going on. Session ends with random apocalypse that destroys all life in the plane, we get sent to Ravenloft even though it we didn't do anything.
--Week4: Attacked by count Strahd von Zarovich for no reason, elegant vampire noble with centuries of experience fights like a level 6 fighter with infinite HP. We kill him anyway by being smarter than the DM.
--Week 5: Whole party is dead with no explanation, roll new characters.

Hence the phrase 'Dave Game', to describe the shittiest of shitty DMs that nobody will play with after very long. Between that and constantly indulging the putz who always wanted to play the same female drow fighter/wizard with dual moonblade katanas, the group just got fed up and walked out on the chump.

>>7251370
it would if any hot ones played.

>>7251313
this

I had a DM who suggested we play 4rry edition. I immediately stopped playing with that faggot.

>>7251472
I had a faggot who suggested we respond seriously to a troll post. I sagely saged saging with sage sage.

>>7251490
this isn't a troll post actually

fail

>>7251313
Does batshit crazy/drug-addicted count as useless?

>>7251528
Sorry, that is, in fact, a troll post.

I can tell due to the words, and having seen a few trolls in my time.

I have a DM tip for you, OP.

When you're done with the session for the night, ask the players for feedback on what they liked and did not like. That way you are more informed about how to make the next session more enjoyable for them.

My Dark Heresy Gm sucked because he had 3 DMPCS including his character, his characters sister who couldn't die, and his body guard.

Every character/monster/human acted and fought just like he did.

End Result of this play style

My Arbitrator

>>"Interrogated" His sister
>>Arrested his Bodyguard
>>Crippled his character
>>Got rewarded by the Inquisitor for my undeniable proof that they were all heretics

I would like to say, first off, that I am not a furry. Now, I have a handful of furry friends. Most of them are the quiet majority. However, my DM is the loud obnoxious aspie furry minority that we all hate.

We've caught him yiffing on AIM on the HD projector we were using as a digital battlemat. He was trying to be sneaky, but we all saw it in glorious HD, completely covering my wall.

He's watched Youtube videos of foxes cuddling while constantly saying "Oh cuuuuuuute" in the middle of his games.

He thinks that video games have the best plots, and wouldn't dare touch a book. He's been caught blatantly ripping off Deus Ex 2 and Borderlands in our Shadowrun games, ripping off Thief and Baldur's Gate in our D&D games, and can't seem to run a game without some sort of campaign and encounter guide. He doesn't have a single original bone in his body.

His perception of good vs. evil is very black and white. There is no middle ground, and can't grasp the idea of somebody committing an evil act for good reasons, or somebody committing an evil act solely for survival. Bad is bad, and good is better.

He outright refuses to run or play in a Dark Heresy campaign because "The Imperium is evil, and I refuse to run or play in any evil games."

I've got more come next post.

I had a friend who was just plain AWFUL. Motherfucker gave the party a GOD DAMN CASTLE by... week 2? He also gave one player a list of ingredients to become a lich... which were incredibly easy to find, and all of which he got by the end of THE FIRST SESSION WE PLAYED.

Not only that, but he had some sort of personal vendetta against me. All of the monsters would just sort of ignore the other people and run straight for the innocuous little ranger in the back. I was lucky to survive for so long, really. Also, at one point he said that a "giant vampire bat" came down and suddenly grabbed me, without any saves or anything like that. Thankfully the rest of the party thought that was BS too, or he would have went through with... whatever the fuck he had planned for my character.

>>7251566

You managed to fuck over all 3 GMPCs and the GM didn't slap you down because he couldn't?

Are you sure there weren't actually secret villains that you were meant to take down? Unkillable sister sounds an awful lot like the beneficiary of a Dark Pact to me.

>>7251577
Why do you let a faggot like that be the DM?

>>7251607
>>"giant vampire bat"
>>whatever the fuck he had planned for my character.

Delicious vampire bat rape, of course.

>>7251622

You know, I really wouldn't put it past him...

He despises being part of a Vampire: the Masquerade campaign because he thinks that all vampires are backstabbing evil fuckwits, who exist purely for evil, despite there being two Caregiver natured characters in the game.

Regardless of what the stats say, he is always hyper-competant, borderline metagame with every one of his characters. Simply not being knowledgeable in any category is not an option for him.

He's always playing clerics and paladins in D&D. He has to be seeking Golconda every Vampire game. He's been caught bringing his fursona into a majority of the games he's run, who is always a bigoted anti-human asshole who can never, ever lose.

His games consist of carefully planned plots, that must never be tampered with, and the PCs, no matter what, can never, ever deviate from said path, lest the powers that be wag their fingers, and make them go the specified route. He's even gone so far as to have rocks fall in a cavern, to block a player from splitting from the party.

He outright refuses to houserule anything, and use any non-official books for any games. So, regarding edition wars, if your argument is "Hey if it sucks, houserule it", it need not apply in our games. Book of Weaboo Fighting Magic is banned not due to stats, but because it's not a Wizard's book.

If there is no rule, skill, or roll for it, it cannot be performed.

All games must end by 10 pm, so he may go to bed. No, he doesn't work the next morning.

He's worn his ears and tail in public places. It's embarrassing.

I am constantly corrected in our D&D 4e games when I call myself the leader, when my role says "striker". I am even told that I cannot be in charge because I do not play a leader class.

I'm sure there's more, but I've lost track of what I said.

>>7251577
>>7251640

I... I am so sorry for you. You poor, poor bastard.

>>7251640
Why do you play with this person?

>>7251577
>>7251640

Why the hell do you still play with this guy?

>>7251082
A couple tips from a dm who's like, two sessions of dming away from being in your position and can sort of relate:

- actually wanting to give your players a first time to the point of worrying about being retarded puts you ahead of a lot of dms.
- dear god nothing works how you think it will ever, you'll probably prepare too much/too little/the wrong kind of material the first few times if you're like me, but you'll get the hang of things.

>>7251577
>aspie
>wouldn't touch a book

I have my doubts as to whether or not he's actually an aspie.

Prepare lots of material. Not just one session's worth, but two or three, or even more. The players will find a way to overcome a night's worth of material in sixty seconds. Also, don't plan your stuff in a linear fashion. Plan for the players splitting off of what you have in mind, plan for them to do something you haven't thought of.

Here's a big one: if you have people in your party that like to "be a loner", make sure you can handle them doing so. If not, then basically work with them to stay with the party, for your sanity's sake.

I mean, if you thought preparing for ONE party was hard...

Garett...something or other. I don't know his last name, I guess.

Entire adventure was "Hey, look at my villain. He's so much better than you could ever be. He's ahead of you at every turn, and, if you ever do anything to change that, I just cheat so that it wouldn't work.You're never allowed to succeed even at all".

We only played for one night, but the first four hours were literally us listening to NPCs talk about how great this Illegon guy is and how no one can ever do anything to him because he's so great.

Eventually we got bored and just said "Fuck it, we're heading to that island that you said is guarded by a kraken." We narrowly killed the kraken thanks to the guy who used some ridiculously broken psionic build. We then handily defeated Illegon, only to discover that he was a fake, and the guy who sent us on the quest was the real Illegon, and if we tried to do anything about it his 1,000,000 invisible crossbowmen of superdeath would flat out kill us where we stood.

>>7251577
>>7251640
I give you heartfelt condolences. You should never, ever have to suffer the company of this type of person. Ever.

>>7251657
>>7251662

When he's not being a complete and total fuckwit, he's actually a really good guy. I'm overwhelmed by bills this year, and can't get anybody anything for Christmas. He turns around and says "What the shit? I'll still get you something. It's cool". Despite all of the things I've said, he's still a good enough of a friend. He's just really inept. Also, I've been gaming with this guy for, what? Jesus, eight or nine years.

Bottom line: Don't DM like this guy. I'm telling you, man, bad idea.

A friend invited me to a game with some coworkers.

The guy who was the DM, in his 40s and built like an overweight gumby, was living out of a hotel room and figured it was cool to sit around wearing nothing but spandex pants (no underwear, painfully obviously so).

I don't have much hope. I roll a drow wizard because I figured, what the fuck.

Went into a dungeon. Didn't fight anything at all--he said he had only just been making it up. I was literally the only party member who got to do anything, which was use magic to read some scrolls we found.

Next session; another guy playing a wizard joins. Immediately gets pissed at my drow for being a drow (fine) challenges him to a mage-duel over possession of the stuff we found last session (okay) DM declares all spells during a mage-duel can be cast an unlimited amout of times (wat) other mage guy wins by spamming "summon monster" spells (/facepalm). DM awards the other guy tons of XP for "cleverness".

So that night, I do the drow thing and cut the other mage's throat while he's asleep, take the goods, and vanish.

DM livid. Says I ruined the buildup of a deep storyline. The rest of this time the other PCs have been maybe just watching, if that. I look at the guy who invited me to the game, his reaction basically "I have no idea." I leave. Learn later that that DM-guy was thrown out of the hotel, spent the rest of next session being pissed at me (not that he remembered my name, so I was just "that drow guy").

I guess in retrospect it was sort of funny, but it was unbelievably irritating then.

ITT pushovers who play with faggots.

>>7251696

>>7251607 here

The bad DM I was with did the same bullshit. He made some stupid ass Drow-demon-vampire thing in golden armor with a super powerful sword. This guy, at one point, one-shot a demon that was going to fuck us up (without a roll, of course).

We fought him a little later on, and literally, our Dex-based LOTSATTACKS guy killed him in one combat phase. The look on his face was priceless.

>>7251640
>>He outright refuses to houserule anything, and use any non-official books for any games. So, regarding edition wars, if your argument is "Hey if it sucks, houserule it", it need not apply in our games. Book of Weaboo Fighting Magic is banned not due to stats, but because it's not a Wizard's book.

What?

Yes it is.

(sorry, that's the only thing I could coherently respond to. Everything else you're saying is making me too busy slamming my face repeatedly into my desk.)

>>7251313
>>7251659
OP

...so i should probably make a very open ended game but still have things happen that put the players into situations that make them think, instead of FORCING them to get through SPECIFIC scenarios just because I need them to finish some stupid story that I want them to play out?

not being sarcastic, just typing out loud.

thanks for the help

...Uh.

I don't think I've ever had a 'bad' GM, I'm kind of a lucky bastard. I think... the worst one was one of my friends back a bit.

He put an AMAZING amount of work into his games, and they were all beautifully detailed... but I never found myself developing any interest in them. They simply weren't catching. He also didn't run anything continually.

So it usually devolved into us messing around both in and out of game for the lulz.

>>7251763
yep.

a nice way to accomplish this while still having a somewhat coherent story is having shit going down around your players, but avoid thinking about how your players will respond to said shit going down. it's more fun to watch them come up with crazy ideas to fix problems than see them fix problems in a way you spoonfed them, anyway.

I had one guy a couple times; he seemed to have this massive grudge against high fantasy heroics, yet insisted on running D&D 3e. Our characters were not permitted to advance beyond one half of level 1.

That's right. Oh, races all good; we had our gnome hedgewizard and elf princess and smelly druid guy and a half-orc barbarian.

The entire adventure consisted of us rolling skill checks to salvage bones from a burnt-down house and later, walk through a cave. No conflict or semblance of a story was ever evident.

One good thing came out of that game, though, and that was the half-orc barbarian, who just one day picked up a rock and started talking to it, and from that point declared he was a wizard, as taught by the rock, and took to wearing robes and wizard hats while casting spells like "blind" (kicking dirt), "telekinesis" (throwing his sword) and "fireball" (throwing his sword harder).

I've DMed 3 RT sessions so far, with nothing more than the most skeletal plotline, and it's been a blast. I think my players are really enjoying the story so far.

My advice:

- Don't be afraid to come up with things on the fly. In fact, prepare to do so, because your players will inevitably surprise you.
- Always reward creativity. Even if a players way-out-there idea fails, have it fail SPECTACULARLY.
- Ditch any rules that get in the way of the fun. The rules are there to facilitate your enjoyment, not to hinder it.
- Make sure that as many people as possible are having a good time, yourself included, but never put one player's enjoyment ahead of the rest of the group's - again, yourself included.
- FOOD. Arrange for food and drinks of some sort to be made available. Gamers fucking love food.
- When it comes to risque subjects like sex or torture, make sure beforehand that your group is capable and willing to deal with that sort of material. If a single person is uncomfortable, don't do it.
- Don't be afraid to use cliches, provided you use them well/failing that, turn them on their head. Dragon-kidnapped-princess trope? Turn it upside-down by having had the princess rune off with the dragon.

I'm sure there's more, but it's late where I am.

>>7251763
Depends on what your players want, really.

Some players want to run around and crazy shit all the time, with no "story". They want a referee DM.

Some players want an epic story.

In neither case should you dictate their actions. Even if you do cheat and FORCE a specific outcome (usually necessary at some point for any campaign with any kind of story) make sure to maintain the ILLUSION that they are having an effect on the story. If you can't reasonably make it look like anything besides DM fiat, don't do it.

One of the biggest keys to success is always being willing to say "Yes". If your player wants to do something balls-on-the-wall crazy, don't say no outright. Think about it, and assign an appropriate roll or check (or, if it's something simplistic, let them succeed). It may not work exactly how they want to, they may not even be able to succeed, but never say "No, you just can't do that, that's not how the game works".

>>7251820

That last part has just inspired my next character.

>>7251763
Sounds like you've got it right.

Also, read this short article: http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/49/situations-not-plots/

He's got a lot of good advice, but take it a little at a time (else you'll forget it all in the heat of the moment).

The hardest party about DMing any system is knowing when to say "Yes" and when to say "No."
- It's really easy to say "No" but it often leads to railroading and boring games.
- It's really hard to say "Yes" but it is hard for most people to make up (interesting) things on the fly.

>>7251817
This.

If you want to have a major story going on, the trick is to just lay down a timeline of what is generally going to happen with all monsters, NPCs, villains, etc. Then drop the PCs down at the beginning of that timeline and let them just *act*. You WILL have to do some fast improvisation, particularly if what you planned out was fairly elaborate, but don't attempt to prevent the PCs from doing whatever it is they want (just, you know, challenge them if they're doing something that's logically going to be challenging).

The *greatest* thing about being a DM is how enjoyable it is to roll with whatever shit your players come up with, letting them hog the spotlight while still being able to keep events moving around them as they go. They're the heroes of the story, and if you do it right, it can still be successfully called a "story" in the first place.

>>7251834

Don't ever say "no." Say "yes, but..."

And then watch your games improve.

>>7251763

I will tell you this: if you build a detailed and consistent area that the PCs have to infiltrate, they will enjoy it. Don't plan on how they'll get in, just set up a fort or encampment or whatever. They'll provide some shit-crazy plan, and give them the benefit of the doubt even if it's crazy and stupid (okay, then we light the wagon on fire, and send the horse running into the camp, and everyone panics, thus allowing us to sneak in the other side to steal the McGuffin!). Introduce complications, sure, but don't shit on their creativity unless they're clearly not trying and not into it.

-sigh-
I am.
I am the worst DM I've ever had.

No experience, had to look up everything, railroading, too easy on players.

Maybe I should have made a thread asking what was the BEST DM you've had and why?

thanks again everyone. wow.. 4chan.. helpful... wow

>>7251832

I want to say I'm super happy to find someone recommending Ars Ludi on here. Between that and Treasure Tables, I don't need GMing advice anywhere else (I have yet to find one useful article on Gnome Stew, for instance. Ugh).

ah, High school dnd memories coming back to me


First god awful dm:

DM: ok guys make a character!
players: alright (take some time to fine-tune their characters) so what's the campaign about?
DM: oh you work for some organization, don't worry about it!


Session 1:

DM:"Ok you're in headquarters and the boss gives you a mission to kill a evil thief in the city!"
Players: how's the boss, how does the headqua-
DM: "Ok, you track down the thief to his lair and spot him! Roll initiative!"
Players: "err...wow hold on now, what about the details beforehand, how did we get here?"
Dm: *Blank look* *rolls dice* letsee thief rolls a 15...
Impatient player: Fine *rolls* 21 initiative, I attack, 5 dmg.
DM: THIEF DIES! You open the safe to find the documents you retrieve! You get back to base and the boss is pleased. Good work guys! Great job, have 400xp and gold.

Players: Maybe someone else should DM next...

>>7251890
And you want to know why you're worse than everyone else here? Your story isn't even memorable.

Bam.

>>7251891

/tg/ is pretty good in non-troll threads, but man, we fall for every troll ever. Also, we're horrible at Magic.

>>7251890

By being able to admit that, you're already better than two DMs I've had.

You've got a little experience now. You know what you did wrong. You can fix that, and improve your DMing.

I used to be a pretty terrible DM the first time or two I ran. Now I can unashamedly say that I am a great DM. And that's constantly supported by the comments of my players. But I still am constantly looking for ways to improve my DMing.

You'll get there. Just don't give up.

be like this guy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giC33AQCfWo

Worst (only) DM i ever had.
I missed one session and the next time i went it was
"oh you weren't here so we played your guy. he got killed. a stalactite fell on his head."

/ragequit

I remember this one DM who was a pushover. If the players didn't get to do something they would still do it anyway and ignore the DM. The DM would pretty much complain to another player about how the group was acting the next day. Later on he quit running the campaign out of the blue.

My advice, don't be a pushover.

>>7251829
I really want to try RT some time...

>>7251739

Weaboo Fighting Magic is an official Wizards book? Well, what the fuck, then? I'm going to have to get in his face the next 3.5 game we play. Thanks for that. That helps a lot.

I think we're all guilty of making perhaps one or two "bad calls" we kick ourselves about later.

When I first started DMing, I had a poor grasp of what players would do, I suppose. The first adventure took the group into a campsite populated by thieves. The quickly spot the ringleader and the rogue successfully sneaks up on him and prepares his coup de grace.

Knowing that the ringleader was supposed to be a recurring villain, I made a mistake I will still never live down. After the damage was rolled, and before the save made, I just declared out of nowhere, "He, uh, dodged." Then I made up some BS about him anticipating the thief's movements.

Yeah, at the time I had a very angry group staring at me. Major faux pas. Now, after nearly 10 years with the same group, we laugh at how stupid that was. Yeah, every now and then when a villain escapes someone will wryly comment, "Guess he was anticipating that coup de grace."

Don't stress the first game, you'll make mistakes, but just roll with the punches and make sure everyone has fun.

Party of Elves, Drow, and Warforged enter town. General town shenanigans ensue. Rogue gets arrested for stealing from bargoers, Cleric tries to negotiate our way from the authorities. Dice rolls are made, and promptly ignored. The other two party members go to the Ranger's Guild to ask for work. Flatly refused due to racist Rangers.

So, I, the Rogue, and the Cleric are arrested, and for some reason, the other two members of are group are too, for no reason other than not wanting to split the party.

Now, at this point we all realize that the DM is not going to let us do anything we want to do. We're sentenced to three year's imprisonment, or, as an alternative, the Arena.

"Why does this bum-fuck middle of nowhere town have an Arena, but no whores?" Someone asks.

So, we're all long-lived beings. I convince the party that we'll all serve our sentences. At the very least, I'm a Rogue with an insane thievery and stealth checks, and the elf and warforged were strong enough to take down the men that arrested us before. Breaking out wouldn't be a problem. No, that wasn't an option. We all, for some reason, enter the arena.

One could argue that his plot may've been going somewhere, and that the arena was a key plot point. But it wasn't. We spent the next two hours fighting monsters that were either ten levels stronger than us, or set up so that we were grossly disadvantaged. Needlefang Drake Swarms and Dire Behemoths.

It was not a shining example of playing 4e.

>>7251979
>I'm going to be a douchebag because my DM won't let me use a shitty splatbook.

>>7251996
>We spent the next two hours fighting monsters
>combat session
>not a shining example of 4e
Sure about that?

>>7252013
Butthurt wizard spotted.

>>7252032
HIV-positive rape-baby detected.

>>7252029

I'm pro-4e. Its not good for my arguments, obviously. But the DM that game was a guy who plays 4e as though it were 3.5, so he always plays Druid and Cleric as though they're still game breaking.

>>7251963

Be warned: Once your PCs realize that they can do -anything-, with an entire SHIP to back them up, you're going to need to start generating entire worlds on the fly.

I managed to avoid this by having the ship's Rogue Trade be an NPC. By the end of the campaign, she should be dead/retired, and the players will finally have the full complement of options available to them.

>>7252044
>>7252032
>>7252013

And, the thread is now officially dead.

>>7252053
Or perhaps he likes them thematically.

>>7252069
No...

No.

I wish it were that. But he literally says, "I wanna be a Druid so I can be broken as shit, yo." He plays DND to 'win'.

>>7252091

Introduce this fucktard to Call of Cthulhu.

See how long it takes him to realize that the only way to "win" is not to play.

Record his expression when he realizes this for posterity.

>>7251082

Just a few pointers for you.

After evry session evry player talks 1 or 2 minutes about what he did like wand what he didnt like.
Sounds gay but works.

If the PCs do something extremly unexpected (and yes that will happen), take a timeout and think a few minutes how you continue.
Nothing wrong with taking a break once in a while.

No DMPC.
DMPCs are a good addition if you have a definitive Idea what to do with him but making a good enad enjoable DMPC is advanced stuff.
Dont do it in your first game.

The worst DM I ever had..

it was 3.5

1) Introduced us to FIVE DMPCs in the first 20 minutes. All of them told us exactly what to do and were like level 24. We were level 2.

2) Could muster only one player, a girl who wasn't super interested in the game but wanted to get away from her screaming kids. So the DM let her play 3 characters. He asked me if I wanted to make 3 characters, and I said no, one is fine. So, I get to have conversations with the SAME PLAYER running three different personalities. The best part was watching her talk to her self.

3) Decided that all classes should get extra skill points equal to 2 times their intelligence score (not the modifier, the SCORE) at first level, and extra skill points at every other level equal to half your Wisdom score. I argued that this basically invalidates rogues, and he looks at me and asks "how?"

4. After the 5 DMPCs led us to the badass dragon king, the dragon threatens us if we don't go take down some dudes that are an appropriate challenge for us. At least the guy got that part right, the DMPCs weren't going to come with us on our first adventure. But why the fuck, if these DMPCs are just lounging around all day showing off how tough they are, don't they go spend the ten seconds it would take to meganuke the kobolds?

5) Half of the time "roleplaying" was the DM telling us how sexy the twin loli elf mages are. Of course said lolimages are actually thousands of years old and totally badass. DM tells me that my character pops a boner for the twins, mistakes my recoiling in horror for embarrassment.

The worst part? This guy is 30 years old. Holy. Fucking. Shit.

>>7251082
Most recent, "worst DM" event was playing in a homebrew 3.5 DnD game. In which the douche DMing didn't allow any caster classes, made it so no class started with better than light armor prof, no playable demi-human races (they existed we just couldn't play as them). All of that I could have overlooked but the characters also had power akin to birthright, which is fine, but when a player rolled something he deemed inappropriate, even though he made the chart, he forced a re-roll.

TL;DR: Don't make rules and then not follow them through. Be consistent with your rules and rulings, especially with homebrew content.

I've had some okay Dm's, most annoying thing that happened was when I spent nearly 15 minutes roleplaying a perfectly in my paladin character, rules following diplomacy check to get a few asssassins to back down by asking politley and how there are too many innocent people around just to get to our party.

Then rolled a 19 and with high charisma, skills in diplomacy (that I took for background purposes) even with penalties for a rushed attempt (full action) I scored mid-30's, enough to atleast make them back down.

I understand the encounter was Semi-important but rather than go with the Diplomacy he merely said "Aha! We will not listen to you for we are highly trained assasins too clever to be perswaded! Now take THIS -attack of oppertunity because I didn't draw my weapon-"

>No DMPC
Agreed. There is only one use for a DMPC: Solving a riddle the PC's can't. Not combat, not skill challenges. Just riddles and puzzles.And only if the players IRL have spent 45+ minutes scratching their heads and saying 'fuck if I know'. When asked for the solution. This is a sign that you don't know your players very well, and that maybe your riddles are too tough.

If the players get into a combat they can't handle, then either they bit off more than they can chew (let them die) or you need to relearn the rules and rescale encounters, depending on who started the fight. DMPCs should be the first to die in these situations. It scares the players when they one person they thought had plotanium armor dies.

>>7252185
It's pretty dumb to appeal to TRAINED ASSASSINS' sense of humanity and decency, but your DM should have said as much rather than being a faggot.

>>7252185

As a DM who got tired of players who think they're clever trying to use Diplomacy to LOLCONVERT ALL MONSTERS, I must say I sympathize with you.

Of course diplomacy rolls should never be blank checks to getting what you want from NPCs, and if the assassins were evil they might specifically have PLANNED for innocent bystanders to be in the way.

Still, OP, when players try social solutions to what look like combat problems, I think it's a good idea to reward good roleplaying and/or good rolls with at least SOME measure of positive impact.

>>7252185

The bad DM part is that he didn't tell you that Diplomacy works differently than it is in the book in his campaign (understandable) and that he let you go on for a quarter of an hour.

I had a DM put us in an supposedly unwinnable boss fight. After we promptly beat him to the ground,he had the villain get back up with full hp. We did this 5-6 times until he told us that our characters "Were too exhausted to fight and pass out."

The worst DM I've ever had would be the guy who had us run a hilariously generic "save the world" campaign, fighting a BBEG that was a former hero turned evil and secretly serving these evil space squid Cthulhu ripoffs that wanted to destroy the world. The fighter got arbitrarily named party "Captain" and got all sorts of free shit throughout the campaign (probably going down on the DM, the cunt), got into random lesbianism with this immortal elf-but-not-an-elf psion and occasional threesomes with the DMPC fighter (a member of some sort of stupid homebrewed race of orc-lizard-thingies with "four testicles", like we needed to fucking know that), and finally the party LEFT ME AT THE BBEG'S FORTRESS to get blown the fuck up by some sort of bomb.

Fucking jerkasses.

>>7252444
What? No, that's not Mass Effect at all.
0/10

>>7252444
Fucking hell that really was ripped directly from Mass Effect

I have one DM who will occasionally for story sake force some railroadan bullshit.

For instance the party is going on a secret mission and manages to get all the security stuff disabled, cameras included, but later footage from those cameras that were undeniably disabled got them in trouble.

I sat out of last session of his Rogue Trader game, and was told afterwards that he had a temper tantrum when we wanted to send in some of the guys from the army we previously hired to do something.

If you don't want us using armies, don't let us hire them.

Here's a handy trick for DM'ing: if your players try to do things not laid out in the rules, or if they ask obscure things about events that are most likely unimportant (such as: "Did the elf prince's glove fall off when I beat him with a club?"), ask them "High or Low?" and roll and D100. Depending on the ridiculousness of the question, you can set the probability for whatever you want, but depending how close the roll number is to the extreme they called out will determine success or failure. This works very well for abstract or random things, and it helps the players keep a sense of immersion.

I think I told this story before, but here it is again.

The DM had been generally incompetent the whole game, but he was sick of my interfering with his railroad, so he edited my character sheet behind my back. I could tell he did it because some of my anti-plot devices were gone without explanation.

Instead of calling him on it, I played as though I didn't notice anything. Then, one session when the other players were eating pizza and he was in the bathroom, I swapped his campaign notes with a Twilight fanfiction.

It was glorious.

>>7252727
Or they could just, ya know, flip a coin.

>>7252788
Only faggots play with campaign notes. Real men do it all on the fly.

>>7252788

That's what you get for letting the DM keep the sheets.

>>7252788
I wish I had that Orson Wells slowclap.gif right about now.

You are one of my heroes.

>>7252839
It's more for the use of improbably shit, like "I'm going to do a backflip in midair, and use the centrifugal force shoot arrows faster!" In this case, instead of the 50/50, you could say that, if he called Low, you'd need to roll a 10 or lower for the attempt to succeed.

Never insert your dog as a GMPC into the campaign. We were playing D20 Modern, raiding some science facility, and the thing burst out the tank it was being stored in and mauled some of the guards with ease. Naturally, seeing this tiny ball of black fur tearing through the guards, we assumed it was an abomination of science. Our sniper aimed at it.... and got a deathblow on it. Our GM was horrified that we pretend killed his dog.

Different campaign, same DM, we were playing as a group of lizardfolk in 3.5, and a red dragon swooped down on us and said "Hey, you guys want to go raid a town. It'll be hella fun." The entire party does pic related, and we largely ignore the red dragon. I think it was feeble attempt at a sidequest, but I'm not sure.

Later in that same night, we go to the main quest destination where we meet some bronze dragons living near a lake. They tell us that about 20 ABOLETHS were in the lake, messing with the water and that they would have taken care of it "but they were way too sleepy." This campaign only lasted one session.

>>7252965

Later, he attempts to DM a 4th edition campaign, which I was not present for, but heard horror stories about, where the party had to put up with an annoying, railroading fairy entirely based on Navi. Yeah, I don't think I need to explain that one further.

In that same campaign, the party faces a pair of owlbears. They pop most of their dailies in the beginning of the fight, and the moron does not realize how dailies work, so HE BEEFS UP THE OWLBEARS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FIGHT! Then, when the players naturally start getting their asses handed to them, he then gives the players a bunch of bonuses to attack and damage. He fucked up combat in 4th edition.

Pic related. It was my reaction when I first heard about this.

>>7252984
In his defense, he is clearly the dumbest god damn motherfucker on the planet and not responsible for his actions.

-A twenty does not mean you always succeed.
-If you mess up and it benefits the players just let em have it, if you mess up and it hurts them then redo it.
-The DM is King, NOT GOD. Act as a wise and fair King would.
-If it's logical, allow it.
-If the players outsmart you or kill a boss that you thought would be alot harder, don't be an ass an suddenly give him a new form or alot of extra hp. Let them have their glory, there will be other bosses in the future.

>>7252965
Reminds me of the time a town was being raided by half-black dragons in one of my campaigns. They kept stealing their women and taking them back to the patron, to pump out the dragon equivalent of shovelheads. Anywho, the PC's already met a group of these guys out in the swamps, and killed their asses, until they got to the town, where they realized it was almost entirely deserted. One of the PC's was also a half-dragon (sliver) so the locals had gone into hiding. With a little searching, they discovered most of the citizens were huddled in the local tavern, hiding from the monsters.

A short conversation is cut even shorter when some more fodder starts moving into the village. After a tough battle, the PC's discover a child half-dragon, who tagged along with the warriors from god-knows-where. They decide to keep it, since it looked innocent enough. They also decide to stay the night in the shabby town, which now sees them as valiant protectors.

They wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of screaming and fire. After jumping out of the inn, they see the dragon itself (adult) tearing through buildings like no one's business. He sees the adventurers (particularly the silver half-dragon), and approaches.

Before I get the chance to speak on the dragon's behalf, the PC's literally toss the kid at the black's snout before leaping on their horses and running away as fast as possible. It was so gloriously ruthless, I let them get away with it. But it was humbling to see the PC's run away from the quest, since they never returned to that area again.

>>7251287
was Gene Wolfe your DM?

It is vital to get a good idea of who your players are; what they like, how they react to most situations, etc. The first session is a crucial time for this. Toss everything you can think of at them, subtly, and see what they seize on.

Example; monsters ravaging the countryside mentioned in passing. If their reaction is "LET'S GO MURDER SOME MONSTERS", prepare some doors for them to kick in. If their reaction is "huh. that's weird. I wonder why", tone things down and pull out some more subtlety. Etc, etc. Make it clear that they are to vanish preconceived notions of what sort of game you are going to run, so they don't assume that the monsters are there for fightan only.

>>7252788
Well played.

>>7253124
I liked this post. I just wish you'd fleshed out the details more. It has the potential to be something great with some revision (if you ever copypasta it for later storytime threads).

As an Exalted ST/GM/DM (whatever you want to call them), the DMPCs are favorites of mine... I rarely (if ever) attach one to the party, and typically leave it up to the players to pursue any attempt to 'recruit' any. Most of the real 'powerhouse' cameos or NPCs won't join the group, simply because they're busy or because they're ... well, a cameo. But because Exalted's powerscale can be so drastic, more often than not any DMPC is simply a heroic mortal. Most of the time, the players don't even realize it... until this NPC character they liked, asked to join them, and then travelled with, suddenly explodes in gore the minute their BBEG ends up being a Deathlord.

So, we decide to try oWoD mage for the first time, and since I usually DM and wanted a break, another guy volunteers to do the job.

Holy ass, that was a bad idea. For starters, he by and large ignored Paradox because he didn't understand it, and invented some bullshit "Paradox shield created by the BBEG" to explain it away. But that was only the tip of the iceburg.

The railroad tracks were retardedly obvious. The other PC in the campaign owned her own zeppelin and an air tours business, and held down a side job as a photographer for a paranormal pulp magazine, but he wouldn't let her use her ship to go anywhere. An example: "Okay, you get in your ship and try and leave Seattle [where the campaign was located]. You run into 20 Technocracy flying aircraft carriers, just like the Valiant from Doctor Who." "Why are they there?" "Iunno, you wanna ask them?"

>>7253188
I got a million of 'em. Like the time one of the druids in the party tried to figure out what to get as a familiar. He wanted an avion bad, and I was gonna give it to 'em, but he didn't feel comfortable with a falcon or eagle. Said they were too threatening. After a while he says, half-joking, "I'd like my familiar to be a Pidgey."

I look at him and smile. "Roll a search check." He rolls a natural 20. I mill it over in my head some and say, "You find a Shiny Pidgey. It seems attracted to your personality and perches on your shoulder." I give it the basic stats of an owl, with a few minor enhancements, and send them on their way.

After a while, it comes to pass that the druid dies. His Shiny Pidgey, heartbroken at the loss of his friend, isolates himself in his nest tucked in the many cracks in the King's Castle. The other PC's try to capture the bird themselves (after all, it was worth a lot of money to a discerning collector) and accidentally dump the nest on their heads after hitting it with a stick. Turns out it was filled with shiny pidgey shit, and it dumps all over the Wizard's head. He paralyzes the bird in spite, but one of the rogues identifies the shit as some sort medical salve, worth quite a bit of money.

From then on, they basically chained the bird up and forced it to shit them monies. Twas epic, but not quite fun for the bird.

Read the rules.

I mean I'm not a complete rules lawyer or anything, but if a game has a rule for something, I'd like it for that rule to be used, instead of the DM just making up something because he couldn't be arsed to do his homework, and then _I_ have to come off as a dick for pointing out that there is a perfectly fine way of resolving the situation in the rules of the game.

In general I dislike houserules, one in a thousand houserules makes sense, the rest of them are just there because DM/Players can't handle the game, and throw things off key.

>>7253371
Which, mentioning that, was also another thing he did. Everything that was slightly interesting was a direct reference to some TV show he saw sometime. Considering the only show he, the other player, and I had in common was Doctor Who, most all of them went over our heads, but he went waaaaay out of his way to make sure we got them. "You go into the bar. At the entrance there are three of those weeping angel statues. LIKE FROM DOCTOR WHOOOO LOL." or "See, this guy is named [x] JUST LIKE THAT ONE GUY FROM FARSCAPE."

He also handed out epic items like candy, giving the other player a laser rifle randomly she found in a mountain that'd do like 10d10 of damage with no penalties. My guy got a pussy crown that he never used, that he apparently thought was overpowered and so it had a ton of penalties tacked on.

Oh yeah, and he DMPC'd like no other. He even referred to the first DMPC as himself, like, "I say hi, and wave," and took a lot of persuading on the part of I and the other player to get him to stop.

My character's overt mission was to destroy whatever he was trying to do after the first session. The other character, sadly, decided to lie back and take it.

Several of my friends equally qualify for pretty much the same reason.

Pregame: Ok, guys, let's make some new characters. I have a great idea for a new campaign! Make mid-level characters."

Week 1: Lazy players finish their characters. We get through introductions and some cool scenes. A little foreshadowing for some great ideas.

Week 2: A few more cool scenes. Starting to wonder where the villain or crisis is.

Week 3: DM, "I'm not ready, how about next week."

Week 4: DM, "Sorry guys, but I'm still not ready."

Week 5: DM, "I can't think of anything else."

Week 6: Ok, guys, let's make some new characters. I have a great idea for a new campaign!

This is why I get roped into DM duty despite not actually liking it much.

>>7251577
>He thinks that video games have the best plots, and wouldn't dare touch a book.
wha...

ok.

He's an obnoxious furry? I can deal with that. Somehow. Probably.
He lacks creativity? Happens.
BUT FOR THE SHIT I'VE QUOTED I WOULD SET HIM ON FUCKING FIRE

I don't actually play role playing games but I love reading this kind of threads.

>>7253687
Same here. /x/ doesn't have shit on /tg/'s horror stories.

Seriously though, some of these DM's sound too horrible to be true.

I've got a tie, the breaker was only in that one of the DMs got better. The first one I'll talk about hasn't changed in the 3 years that we've played any kind of RPG.

The first DM had a huge, and I mean HUGE problem with inserting his fetishes into gameplay, regardless of how comfortable or uncomfortable it made players. It was impossible to play a female character who wasn't a baby factory or a baby factory with 8 vaginas and wombs. It was nigh impossible to play a race that wasn't either a cat person, centaur or an elf regardless of gender.

He would punish the party for not having any kind of know-it-all super genius guessing in advance what he had planned out in that they'd usually end up in a trap pit that there was no way the party could have found (DC 40 check at level 2) and the result was the PCs trapped at the bottom would be fished out by clerics of some town and turn the PCs into breedstock. This was what he'd pull with people he barely even knew, or those he actually did know, regardless of how pissed off they'd get. He'd shoehorn characters into relationships with NPCs whether or not the player wanted it (often didn't) and anyone who would get into any relationship, the DM would make the female in the relationship so fertile, they couldn't have sex without getting pregnant, and it was implied that even if the species wasn't remotely close it would still result in a child.

He was 40, and we were mostly in our 20s. He also weighed close to 400 lbs and looked like Kevin Smith if he let himself go a bit further. He also had homebrew races that were just absolute horseshit and either for min/maxxing or for fetish fuel purposes only.
Oddly enough, he considered 3.5 wizards to be pathetically weak and useless, and argued that vancian magic crippled any use any caster would have. He claimed a fighter could effortlessly take out an equal level fighter at any level, even epic levels.

>>7253488
Sounds just like my DM.

>>7254046
The other DM was bad in that there was not a single campaign he didn't blatantly steal from something else. Sure, it was fine when he wanted to run an Eberron adventure that was pre-made; it was the fact that everyone was a mix of a super hero on top of their normal classes, Spider-monk being my character and giving us hilariously imbalanced abilities, such as the ability to animate rope at will, spider climb at will, pyrotechnics at will, the ability to throw shields and they always return after hitting x amount of targets, and other similar marvel comics-based powers. When we tried something less derived, we made genuine characters he didn't prebuild and were on our way. At first, it was simple enough, the adventure set itself up to be fairly normal, then bam, out of nowhere, he has us helping an organization known as Moradin's SHIELD and having to recover some artifact on the grounds that some evil being, Galak Tuus, wanted it. We started questing that way, when the DM's pushover nature showed up as characters created in the other DM's game were imported by some pushy asshole players.

The DM tried to then get passive aggressive because he didn't like the idea of players without his okay running around in his universe were doing whatever the fuck they wanted, so he sent us to Quiet Knoll (pretty much Silent Hill). He was either too generous, and gave us shit like a magnificent mansion in a pocket plane that we could access from anywhere and any time, or he was too harsh and would try to wipe the party and wander off to sulk when we'd kill whatever "unkillable" creature he came up with would die in 1 round.

>>7254059
Oh, and forgot to mention, the second DM would DMPC Edward Elric, Steel Angel Kurumi, and half the cast of Ranma 1/2 from time to time.

A DM who was the incarnation of the retarded 3aboo "HURR DURR CASTERS SHUD B BETAR DEN EVERY1" crap. He actually though casters in 3.5 were too weak compared to mêlée types, so he gave them free feats and items to "compensate." He used to be a player in one of our friends' games, where he made a Cleric of Mystra/Dweomer Keeper that completely broke the fucking game despite the fact that neither Mystra nor any analogous deity existed in the setting, capitalising on the DM being new to sneak his bullshit past the radar.

When he finally DMed, it was pretty much the epitome of a shitty homebrew setting: he took a bunch of real-life countries and just dropped them in with next to no changes (Romans, but elves! Vikings who inexplicably live in mountains and have a tribal system! Egyptians! Arthurian knights! 16th century Spain! Okay, so that last one was pretty cool). When told by several of the players that the setting could do with some sprucing up, he went "sure, hit me with what you've got" and proceeded to veto every suggestion we made because he genuinely believed that just wholesale stealing cultures from history was preferable to subtly blending multiple cultures into an original fantasy nation. The worst part is, he was a history teacher.

>>7254184
>mêlée
I kind of love you.

My worst DM I didn't even get to play with, but considering what happened later it was probably all for the best.

He starts out by announcing he wants to run an Underdark game, and ALL races are allowed. This is cool, since I wanted to play an Illithid, my friend wanted to be a Lizardman, and my then-girlfriend was really into the Drow. So I tell him what I'd like to play and at first he allows it, and even tells someone else they can't play one because someone's already doing it. A few days pass and he tells me instead that under NO circumstances can I play an Illithid, and I'd have to be STUPID to think he would ever allow that. I was about to go on vacation and didn't give a shit enough to argue, so whatever.

I come back from vacation, and here's what happened: My Lizardman friend got KO'd by a critical hit first thing, literally first minute of the session, and then he died because he didn't assume that what killed him had a healing potion on it. My then-girlfriend is super-pissed, because in less than one session he has turned the intricacies of Drow society into cousin-fucking anal-fisting honey-licking rimjobs with another girl. We have mocked his games and everything about his life ever since.

Yes, that is him in the picture.

>>7254301

His later games have basically been PRETEND POLITICS WITH INCEST for him and the two or three girls he's e-fucking while the rest of the party stumble around having incompetent and largely irrelevant adventures.

>>7254301
>sword
>Old Spice
>animu
>empty beer bottles

Poor bastard should just an hero right now.

>>7254410
What is wrong with old spice?

Also, beer?

What is wrong with ANY of those things? It's the person who is the fucktard.

>>7254434
If you think drinking makes you cool, you're probably not cool. If you feel the need to save your beer bottles on your dresser to prove it, you're beyond hope.

>>7254434
a) Why does dude need two things of Old Spice?
b) Looks like Smirnoff Ice or some other pussy drink from what I can see of the labels.

>>7254301
This guy posts on /k/ as Gray Mucktard or something like that. He's some retarded Japanophile weeaboo who believes that we should burn all our guns and make sword ownership mandatory. Also, bring back Shogun-ism and what have you. As if he's going to be anything but serf for all his life under such a system.

>>7254540
Yeah. That's Smirffoff Ice. I used to drink that shit when I was 15.

>>7254556
No way this is the same guy. He's been known to have some ridiculous fucking opinions, but this I've got to see to believe.

>>7254536
It looks like all of the bottles are closed, so he might just have a 6-pack on his dresser that he hasn't drank yet.

>>7254540
It looks like the boxes are different sizes or perhaps different products altogether. Even then, he could have run out of one, got another, and been too lazy to throw out the boxes.

There are much more legitimate things to complain about:
>Terribly greased hair
>Expressionless face
>Jeans with belt with...what the FUCK is that shirt
>Shitty cologne
>Hair products IN HIS ROOM

I'm sure there's more.

>>7254536

Or the can could be not empty. But, drinking while someone has a camera out is a bad idea.There are REASONS for this.

>>7254603
>Jeans with belt

How dare he wear a belt with his trousers

>>7254601
I think it's just some troll who found a bunch of pictures of some guy posing with a sword in someone's photobucket and is trolling /k/ with them.

>>7254625
It's more the fact that he is trying to pass them off as anything other than casual by wearing a collared shirt, made out of I don't even fucking know.

I had a DM, now his story was good and the fighting fun, but the way he handled the group was pretty retarded. He let his favorite Players railroad the others. And all dead PC's came back in at level 1. And these fuckwit players that he endowed, loved walking around and doing shit all.

So the usual game went like this

WeabooTreeDruidBitch:I want a magical tattoo
FuckheadInquisitor:Sure

*que 2 hour quest to find a tattooist and get this shit done*

Me: I would like to shop around for some masterwork fullplate

DM: you dont find any

Me: How about some normal fullplate

WeabooTreeDruidBitch: C'mon we dont have time for this (not roleplaying this, dm was just rolling dice to see what i found)
FuckheadInquisitor: We begin our plan, <ME> goes to his assigned station, and <other pretty cool guys> go to theirs <TreeBitch> gets ready to use her spell.

Me: UM...


So i died a few times, unable to shop or anything, and everytime i came back at level 1. I quit the game when another one of the DM's weaboo friends came into the game and was automatically level 5. 2 levels above me, and 4 levels above what i was repeatedly forced to start at.

oh and they left me out of the loop, when the game was off i turned up, and when it was rescheduled, they "forgot" to text me. Shittiest group ever, and ive played in a high level beast races only campaign with 9 players with a dickweed dm who had never run a game before, and had barely participated in one. So thats saying something

>>7254713
Sounds fucking shitty. Did you at least rape the druid bitch?

>>7254734
I thought about it, but i wanted to leave the group and not get kicked out.

As it turns out she later almost got kicked out for plot related reasons that are too long and boring to list here, basically she sucked at roleplaying herself, but loved to force everyone elses characters

>>7253020
>-A twenty does not mean you always succeed.

What the hell nigga?

I had a gay guy DM.
He was homosexual.

>>7254881
Yeah, gay people make terrible DMs.

>>7254881
>gay homosexual

so, he was double gay? like, hetero? I'm confused

>>7254918
No no, you see, 'gay' also means 'happy'. So he was a happy homo.

>>7254928
Oh, thanks for the enlightment

I'm gay you could explain me that

>>7254881

The Redundant Department of Redundancy would like to hold a by sentential meeting, regarding redundancy, with you in 100 years; where upon the meeting will be redundant and you'll be sent home.

Okay, best advice I can give youy, based upon my years of running games.

Create a rich cast of NPCs to populate the world and give the players reasons to care about them. Friends, family members, old co-workers... No man is an island; everybody accumulates small connections with other people during their lifetimes, and yet most PCs in most games will know not one person on the planet who isn't (A) a member of the party (B) someone written into their character background, or (C) someone they meet in-game.

Give them a cousin in the city guard. A former friend from school who works in the livery. An ex-girlferiend who's now an influential cleric. And don't just use these as DMPCs or damsels in distress; they're part of the scenery, part of the fabric of the community, which gives the PCs a sense of their place in the world and gives you a means of delivering plot hooks in interesting, believable and compelling ways.

I ran a Werewolf: the Apocalypse game that lasted three and a half years, and by the end, there must have been a hundred named NPCs, many of them friends or family members, almost none of whom were integral to the plot, but who collectively made the locations, the world, and the experience of the in-game world that much more vivid and immersive for the players.

Your task is to cause fun. Never forget.

>>7254942

DM in question has a weird obsession with preparing our character sheets for us. Meaning that he picks out our names, races, classes, hair color, eye color, beardiness, skills, feats, class features, equipment, and sexual orientation, if it applies.

Speaking as a guy that likes to make his own character, I might be able to get over that. Maybe. But the fact that he adds in things like "Stone Age Setting, wizards still get their spellbooks," "You are all commoners, as the NPC class is dictated," "You must are all level ten characters with the gold of a level one group," "Elves rule the world, humans are savage outcasts, and guess which race I've prepared for you all" drives me absolutely batshit insane.

In addition, any time I manage to get some control over what character I play, I am inevitably beaten and robbed by rogues that leave no tracks, wear Hats of Disguise, and have connections with the local thieves' guild that make it suicidal to attempt a retributive strike.

>>7252842
>Only faggots play with campaign notes. Real men do it all on the fly.

This might be true in a hack'nslash campaign, but if the game is one of high-politics, mysteries and/or conspirations, those two hundred NPC's with names should be written down and expanded on.

>>7255087

What da zog? Why don't you give DMing a try for yourself? You might like it.

>>7255060
Well thanks anon I was looking for that jpg.

>>7255188

Oh, I save anything I find amusing. It's no trouble, and you are welcome.

very first time playing d&d... ad&d, i was in middle school.
we meet up in town,
dm is explaining the the system and stuff like thac0 to us while we wander through town.
we go into a weapon shop, dm describes the guy and the store, then leans forward to look at our sheets.
"how much money do you have?"
he pointed out on our sheets where it was listed and we all read off what we had.

"ok, the store keeper laughs at you for being so naive, and kicks all your asses and takes your gold.
he also sells you into slavery.
you all wake up on a boat in chains."

nice introduction to d&d.

Maybe unrelated, but

My first (and only) time DMing, my players were all pretty disinterested in working together. Whenever they went back into town, they all split up and did their own things, and it ended up with people passing me notes and waiting their turns and it seemed pretty boring. I'm wondering if this is normal at all, and how it should have been handled.

Worst DM ever, game over the net, with a guy who plays nothing BUT savage worlds. Every few months he tries to sucker us into savage worlds, which wouldn't be so bad but he has the most grating voice known to man. There is no enthusiasm, its like listening to Stephen Hawking narrate lord of the rings. Except stoned. He then tells us how great savage worlds is, breaking down the mechanics step by step by step in every combat situation just in case we don't "get it". Its not that we don't get it, we don't like it. But, he's a friend of a friend of a friend so we have to 'play nice'.

The guy then makes DMPCs who are perfect, hate the party members and railroad the game. I had my character search every room thoroughly and finally he asked me "What are you looking for?" and I said "THE FUCKING TRAIN TRACKS". Haven't been back since, but yeah, worst DM ever.

>>7251082


If I had to give one piece advice regarding DMing, it's to have fun. My motto is: If we aren't having fun, why are we playing? Also, remember you are supposed to lose. It is not the PCs vs. you. You are trying to make an interesting story, and have a good time. If the PCs figure out a clever way of defeating an opponent, reward them. I guess that's a good starting place. Good luck.

OP, I hope you're still here.
Here is the results of the thread about similar subject (DM'ing in the 4ed FG) which I've made earlier:
http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/3117/69138626.jpg
Hope it helps.

>7255240

Damn, that actually gives me a decent idea for a plot hook.

Adventurers walk into a shop which, they have heard rumoured, gives really good deals to young adventurers, considering it an investment in future repeat customers' survival.

The shopkeeper sizes them up and then attempts to kick their asses with the intent of selling them into slavery. Things go poorly for him; either he underestimates the PCs or else something goes awry for him mid-combat. When they're on the verge of killing him, he begs for mercy.

If they grant it, he explains that he'd been blackmailed into turning his shop into a trap for a slave trading ring (sense motives tells you this is a lie; there is no blackmail; he's a willing participant). He delivers these able-bodied young go-getters he lures in, who are healthy enough to be good workers but inexperienced enough to be easily subdued to a business associate in the dead of night, who takes them away to work on some secret and nefarious plot. The disappearing adventurers aren't missed, since it's assumed they've gone on an adventure in the wildrness or something, and the BBEG has one less group of would-be heroes to worry about later on.
The PCs now know where and when this slaver's associate is supposed to show up, and can plan their own ambush...

And if they don't show mercy and kill the evil shopkeeper, they can then find his wimpy assistant in the back room who can give the same information anyways.

Hrm. I kind of want to run this now.

>>7255494
see, that would have been a lot more interesting

>>7254556
I just read your post to my room-mate. I'm on his computer in his work room and he's in the background assembling a blunderbuss he just finished turning out (He's probably the best gunsmith in the state, known for his black powder work). Burn all guns? I wonder how he'd aim to accomplish that.

>>7255588

Well obviously he would cut them apart with his sword.

>>7255299
I ended up trying to tie everybody's stories together but it might have seemed a little forced.
I'll just give the whole story. It's not too long anyway.

They were on a little quest to find a dagger. I'd designed a dungeon for them to go through, and there was supposed to be a wall that would crumble at the end and take them to the beginning of the dungeon. Except they found that wall before doing anything else, and I told them they could feel a breeze between the cracks or something which caused the wizard to become set on destroying this wall.
So they did, and effectively skipped the entire dungeon, including the dragon boss at the end. Of course they didn't know this. So they walk into this room with a coffin in it, and inside the coffin is a skeleton holding a dagger. Meanwhile, they can hear the dragon breathing in the room above, and they're freaking out.
The wizard decides to piss off the dragon by using 'ghost-noise' or something and then he passes me a note, saying that he wants to use a levitate spell or something (he had it all planned out) to swap the dagger in the crypt with one he swiped from a kobold earlier. (he examined the dagger first, and found that it looked like any regular dagger.)
I thought it might be interesting, so I let him do it. I didn't remember that there was a ranger in the party with a passive perception of 21. Anyway, they end up taking the fake dagger, giving it to the ranger to hold onto. Then when they get back into town, they split up. The ranger examines this dagger he has and after hearing that it looks like a regular dagger, he gets the same idea as the wizard and passes me a note saying he wants to replace it with one of his own.

>>7255736
Meanwhile the Warlock is out performing magic tricks to win gold and entertain villagers or something, I really have no idea. I just decided to let him do his thing. The wizard went to his mentor in the city to examine the dagger for magical properties. This seemed like the best chance I had at linking everything together, because the rogue had previously stolen the wizard's journal, which was enchanted with something that protected it from being read. He was looking around in the city for someone magical to decipher it for him, for some reason. I have no idea why they were plotting against each other but I didn't really know what to do. So I had him learn about this elderly wizard, who happened to be the party wizard's mentor.
Suffices to say that it didn't feel as smart as I'd planned since they ended up going there while the wizard was there, and everyone was frantically passing notes around (the wizard was using telepathy or something, which I don't even think he had the ability to do, but I was kind of in a panic so I just let it slide.)
In the end when they all found out what was going on, nobody was all that impressed, and ranger was pissed that he didn't notice the wizard stealing the dagger.
Game ended with a pretty lame "you all retire and live happily" ending after they beat the only real villain I had prepared much more easily than I'd expected.

>>7255735

Cake.

First D&D campaign I ever played in, the DM...we'll call him K. K was very eccentric, and looking back there were several red flags that should have caught my attention before we even started playing. He had the books but didn't use them, He never had a clue what he was doing (even a skeleton plot is something), and he never rolled dice, just to name a few.

The campaign started off simple enough, it was 3.5e, and I was a Half-elf Ranger. Also in the party were two rogues, a Sorceror with a split personality, and a Dwarf fighter that had low Int, high Wis, and a Charisma of 8. Said fighter was played by a fugly fat bitch who insisted he ran around everywhere in nothing but a loincloth, and when your Cha is 8...yeah.

But K had us start off in a tavern where every staff member was a different type of dragon in human form. Our first task was to fight off 500 zombies, which I think was a CR 50 or so encounter, and after realizing what he'd done to us, he summoned in wizards that chain lightninged everything. After that things got worse when we found ourselves in the haunted mansion from the ride at Disneyworld, then a castle that had 400 doors, each of them containing something just plain fucked up, from rabid Muppet Babies (my Ranger died from getting tongue-raped by Kermit, I shit you not) to a Nazi version of the Von Trapp family to a hag version of Mary Poppins. AFter that session was over we got bumped to level FIFTY and then wound up teaching at Hogwarts or something. Thank god the Dwarf fighter changed to a pixie, pissed off the sorceror, and cut the campaign right there.

>>7256660
Addendum: These days K has some Vampire-ish game going on that is not connected to WoD at all and uses one of the most fucked-up homebrew systems I have ever seen. If you live in South Georgia, stay the fuck away from him, you'll be glad you did.

I had a bad GM once. The railroads were incapable. Every single NPC of significance, be they enemy or ally, would never die and all fell into two broad categories. The first were characters more or less lifted from whatever anime he'd been watching recently. The second were little girls. Whenever he wasn't GMing he played little girls as well. It wasn't out due to some creepy fetish either, at least I don't think so. I got the impression that they were all little girls so nobody would ever start shit with them because, hey, who picks on little girls?

Anyway, the plots were completely centred around the shitloads of NPCs he had. You were along for the ride though, if you tied yourself to one of the main characters, you might get lucky and get some say on things. But I couldn't escape because I was friends with the other players and, at the time, the GM. I hated those games so much that it shaped the way I GM these days.

>>7256670
Something I remembered, K also ran an epic Campaign. Well, he tried to. He invited said fat bitch (the one with the Dwarf fighter in the loincloth) to come along, as well as some of the most ferocious powergamers I've ever known. The one and only night anything happened, the assembled party was a Frenzied Berserker, a Monk with a Vow of Poverty, a Wizard with an Adult Gold Dragon for his familiar, A Ranger with three Dire Wolf Animal Companions, and the FB had brought in a Kender Rogue (FFFFFFFFFFFFF--) and was hugging her Book Of Erotic Fantasy all night. I was allowed to sit in and watch.

SO it's the same dragon-run tavern, and their first encounter is 100 Bugbears. I think only five survived the first round, and not by much. K gets a bit pissy, and throws a Tarrasque at them. Their making good progress when suddenly the Kender Rogue pulls out a Ring of Three Wishes and wishes the Tarrasque away to the Plane of Positive Energy. Jaws dropped around the room and K allowed it to happen. After a bit of silent raging, this party is then sent to the castle with 400 fucked-up rooms. Well, the party didn't want to play along anymore, so they blew up the castle instead. The look on K's face was priceless. He then quickly did a "Rocks Fall"-type scenario and kicked us out in anger.

Moral of the story for the OP: have a clue about what you're doing and use your resources. Also make sure you trust your players not to try and fuck you over too hard.

>>7251082
DM:"So you're all standing around when suddenly you have a vision of a Blue Dragon in danger!"

(Note: 2.0, Planescape, Abyssal Warrioress, coupla PW wizards, fighter. All lvl 12)

DM:"You get the feeling you need to go to the next city to find her."
Party:"Actually, we're going to try to find her by utilizing this here spell then using the Abyssal Warrioress's teleport w/o error/gate spells. Avoid intereference."
DM:"Umm...it doesn't work. Instead, you teleport to the king."
Party:"The king? Okay...lets question him, see how the spell relates him to the dragon."
DM:"Suddenly a loud crash of lightning sounds outside! You go running to investigate, and you see the word 'Deleth' burned into the ground! ((Deleth is, of course, the name of the next city)). Random townsperson says 'Wow, looks like the gods want you guys to journey to Deleth on foot.'"
Party:"Screw that, we're not servants of any gods in the Planes. You see a cleric here? We find out WHAT god, then planeshift to HIS plane."
DM:"Uhhh...guys...what about Deleth?"

Worst DM I ever had was G. He ran a D&D game which was pure railroady goodness. I couldn't leave a house and all attempts failed ; climbing the window was 'impossible' with no real explanation given.

The plot was retarded and practically non-existent. We would get pushed around from A to B knowing nothing, and then we'd suddenly be sent into some shadow realm bullshit where he'd throw "puzzles" at us ripped from a shitty Bleach filler. He genuinely thought he was the cleverest motherfucker on the planet for being so 'deep' with those retarded puzzle sections.

Every so often we'd run into a godlike NPC who'd mutter a sentence or two before talking to us, and that was as much of the plot as we'd ever find out ("the crystals... so they're coming back? Hmm..." was as much as we ever learned).

There were no gods in this world, like all his other roleplays, because at twenty he was still in his "religion is evil hurr durr" phase. All the players including myself - and none of us are the least religious - spent the rest of the campaign trying to mess with this, musing on the philosophy of a godless world and how a medieval society would explain various problems without science or gods, and what would happen if somebody had an experience of divine will. Just because we thought he was being such a douchebag about it.

In fact that's how we dealt with all his retarded railroading bullshit. Our female player made him deeply uncomfortable by turning her plot-centric princess elf into a spoilt rich slut, totally messing with him and his ideas on sexuality, morality, and women.

Because, just like all his other beliefs, absolutely all of the NPCs believed in exactly the same things he believed. No matter how backward or even repulsive those views might have been.

The worst DM I ever had, D, we'll say, started our characters in a forest seperate, and naked with no explanation (we played a couple sessions, I asked him out of game, really, there was no explanation). We were attacked by creatures randomly pulled from the MM, including a vampire monk.... In broad daylight. Until we reached a town, where all the guards were epic.

If TPK happens don't preemptively pass the blame onto the players, that will just make things worse. Don't start listing off what they could have done to avoid dying either, unless they ask. And even if they do, never EVER tell them they should have just ran away.

>>7256958
What should DMs do when a TPK occurs? Make them roll up new characters? Rewind the session to before they died? Pull a Deus Ex and have them resurrected?

Worst? The DM knows a lot about DnD, like a real LOT. He never lets anything slide, everything had to be by the book, to the point of it getting annoying. Whenever you asked him something, he consulted the Phb or DM to see if it will fly. Oh, and he had his mindset on how he treats other classes, and also gets his mind in every single npc out there.

I play a high level Paladin with a 19 charisma and try to win over some followers among the commoners? He plays a peasant who starts to question my dogma with the zeal that he, the guy dming as an atheist would do.

You punch a guy in a bar because your character got drunk and you're playing a rowdy, short fused character? Off with your hand for insolence. You make the tiniest mistake of trying to sneak in a person's home? Instant death because THEY WILL FIND YOU ALL THE TIME NO MATTER WHAT THE FUCK YOU ROLL AND KILL YOU DEAD.

Great guy, but a fucking douche as a DM that has his rigid vision of how it has to be done and everything outside that vision, outside the box is heavily censored.

>>7257002
Depends on the situation. If its early and was they're own stupidity, new party time. Don't reward stupidity. And don't give Get-Out-Of-Hell-Free cards, as they will make them more careless in the future. (Hey, we can't die, he'll just rez us. So fuck it, lets do whatever)

But, if you have THE right party, you can rez ONE of them and let him worry about how to get the others. And make certain there is a painful, painful price to pay for it. Let them know this ahead of time, and let them decide if its worth it.

>>7257002
Ask the players how they want to proceed. Some people would rather reroll than do the whole "It was all a dream/you wake up in the BBEG's dungeon" and vice versa. Hell, a lot of people would rather just quit the game when that happens.
TPK can be very demoralizing and if people want to try and salvage the game after it happens the DM should try and find a way to continue the game in a way that will satisfy everyone.

>>7257038

You just gave me an idea, semi-inspired by the CEO/Potato quests.

Party dies, and gets sent to Tartarus... They then have to escape with their wits, and whatever resources they can find.

They get TPK'd again? Have them get sent to a different hell.

Favorite moment as a DM- when my 4th-level PCs decided to pick a fight with a nest of shocker lizards because they figured I "wouldn't put it in the game if they couldn't kill it. Good times were had by all when the retreating party, 2 of them already killed by the big electrical burst attack they have, found out that shocker have a movement speed of 40ft.

>>7257058

FUCK shocker lizards fucking magical cockroaches of rape that live everywhere and sodomize us any time we fuck up fuck fuck fuck fuck them

>>7257069

I described them as "scampering about amidst the rushes by the stream, making squeaking sounds at each other and glancing at the adventurers from time to time". Tried to make them seem as if they were totally peaceful, which they were. The party decided, however, that charging them and eating lizard for dinner was a good idea.

>>7257080

Our DM uses them as instruments of terror. A local mountain is infested with them. They hunt you down. They live where nothing else can live. They band together. They hate you and everyone you live. They won't come bother you if you stay away, but if you come into their territory, get ready to die.

>>7253124

>Half-black dragons

Malatos?

>>7251287

Oh my god dude I lol'd so hard.

>>7257086

I desperately wish that there were shocker lizards in 4e. I don't remember if there are or not, but I'm running a campaign soon where I want to use them in the same way. Underground cave, full of mushrooms and tiny streams, with a nest of them inside.

>>7257130

Shouldn't be hard to stat up. They're pretty simple as far as monsters go. Bonus points if you make bigger ones. After fighting a swarm of shocker lizards, nothing says OH FUCK like a horse sized shocker lizard being ridden by a dozen normal sized lizards coming at the party.

OP here

wow, never had a thread get this big.

Thanks for all the stories

A thing my GM loves to do is to pick up and drop new villains and plots like a fat child with greasy fingers at a candy shop.
In the year we've been playing we've only defeated one of his villains and resolved three plots out of ten. I was really disappointed when we didn't follow up on the vampire who tried to blow us up.

Another thing he likes to do is to throw really powerful enemies at us but he gives us a lot of lenancy and powerful items so it's not too bad.

>>7256943
>including a vampire monk.... In broad daylight.
I will admit that I once rolled a vampire in a random encounter in the middle of the day, and rolled with it.

The players heard someone screaming for help from under a blanket, in the shadow of a tree. He had been feeding at a local bar and, well, dwarven ale was the special that night. By the time he woke up, he was stuck under the tree. The players helped the poor thing get inside a barn, and got full XP for the encounter.

>>7257102
Actually, they were more like swamp retards. Which would have made a rather entertaining conversation if they hadn't have attacked the half-silver on sight, for obvious reasons.

dm tried to make his own diceless rpg with zero character customization or inventories. still have no idea how the fuck to play it.

>>7257508
That's awesome.

>>7256943
You were attacked by Angel.

Think up a good story in advance.
If the story ever uses the words "And then the party should," fix it.

Also, DMPCs should never do combat.

Also, make sure that if you're ripping the story line off of something, that none of your PCs have read/seen it.

>>7257676
>Also, DMPCs should never do combat.

Except when they're, you know, actual DMPCs. As in, a PC controlled by the DM to fill in a gap in party composition, or because DMing is a thankless fucking task and it's nice to be able to roleplay AND DM.

I've had DMPCs in my Dark Heresy campaign before.

Most of them were nameless soldiers. Only the Sergeant had a name. They were there for the players to order around, so they could come up with tactical assaults on cultist buildings that just weren't possible with only a few PCs.

The Sergeant managed to survive over the course of several months (oftentimes being the only NPC left) to the final session, before his chest was exploded by a demon, just before one of the PCs managed to finish the demon off. There were manly tears.

>>7257086
Use the druid-blizzard-hack that someone posted the other day. Bury them under 900 feet of snow!

>>7257840
Those aren't DMPCs, those are NPCs. A DMPC is on equal or greater footing with the party, guys the PCs order around are just . . . NPCs the party orders around who you control.

Reward player creativity. I ran a 1st level 3.5 game where the PCs had to take out a necromancer in his tower at the top of a cliff, but he payed a group of hobgoblins to build a fort surrounding the entrance to the cave system that led up to it. So the PCs (rogue, fighter, and ranger I think) sneak into the hobgoblin camp. The camp had a bunch of wood buildings, like training areas, kitchen, sleeping area etc. So the PCs start torching the buildings (forgot to mention they waited til night) where the fort residents ..

>>7257860
>bury them under 2800 feet of snow per day!

So the PCs have eliminated most of the opposition via fire. They decide to take a goblin hostage and find the giant-sized door in the side of the cliff. They torture the goblin and tells them that the goblins leave a ton of meat inside the door to feed the guardian. So the PCs tie him up outside the door and poor oil all over in front of the door. They open the door and take positions on the fort's wall. They cut the goblin causing him to scream and awaken the guardian, a phaerlin (cave) giant. As the giant comes out to eat the poor goblin the PCs fire flaming arrows at the oil, nearly kiling the giant outright. He managed to destroy the section of wall they were on, so I allow them Reflex saves to not fal. The rogue fails and fals to the groun, puting him in a perfect position to run betwen the giant's legs for sneak atacks as the other PCs fire arows at it. Fun game.

>>7257517

Speaking of the Silver (I can't remember his name, he never really mentioned it; it's a pretty good idea, in retrospect), there was once a time when the party entered an Arcane Kingdom, under siege by tribes of feral orks. They were employed as warriors (since they were fairly high level at this point: about 13), and sent on suicide missions; after they pledged allegiance to the King, of course. They do especially well on one particular outing, destroying a good amount of farms and spawning fields, and even finding a fortress hidden up in the Gleiose Mountains. They report their findings to the King, who controls them directly, and they tag along with an invasion force to seize the fort. When they get there, they see a very large contingent hauling away what looks like cannonry. The group stays back, as they know they are too few to attack them now.

Eventually the force leaves, leaving behind a small garrison. The task group easily eliminates them, but gets into a bit of trouble as 4 VERY LARGE ork barbarians and a shaman start wrecking shit. They're eventually put down, though, and the party begins a search of the place.

It doesn't take long for them to realize it's a massive storage facility, perhaps used by an ancient dwarven power that retreated or died out long ago. One of the PC's rolls a search check. He gets a natural 20, so I say he finds a room full of "slightly rusted dwarven equipment". (There wasn't supposed to be anything useful to find, anyway.) He rolls another search, and gets another natural 20. I say he finds yet another lever, which opens yet another room full of equipment, roughly the same quality. He rolls another search. Another natural 20. I'm surprised, but I roll with it. He finds a crease in the floor, barely visible under the dust, like the crack in a door. For a while he's puzzled, until eventually the half-dragon (who had the STR of a fire giant, mind you) basically pries it open.

>>7259100
This is a pretty long story, so bear with me.

They go down a ramp and see an elegantly-carved cannon, surrounded by dust and a magically enchanted sword. On top of the barrel is a box, dwarven in origin, but locked tight.

With another search check, they find a oddly colored cannonball inside; it is painted red, in swirling patterns reminiscent of fire. Deciding it best to appropriate this cannon before the orks return, they haul it, along with the equipment, out of the warehouse. After taking the heads of the very-large orks, of course.

When they return, bearing much plunder, as well as the heads of very powerful enemies, they are treated as heroes, and granted lordship. Research begins on the cannon, and the PC's decide to develop their rather meager plots of land. I basically wing it for them, as they transform their buildings into combat schools, teaching the art of the bow and guisarme. By the time they're done, an emissary of the "Arcane Science Division" of the Kingdom approaches them with questions about the cannon. Eventually it comes up that they did find something else with the cannon, and they had forgotten to present it to the researchers. They are taken to the basement of the castle, where the artifact is being held, and the head of the division flips the fuck out on the PC's for wasting his time. (About two weeks had passed) However, when presented with the box, no one is keen on how to open it. A man is suggested, a noble they had spoken with before on different matters, who has a strange fetish for dwarven artifacts.

>>7259120

The PC's travel there and inquire about the box. He doesn't have much to say, besides the fact that he owned an almost exact copy, only he never opened it through regular means. Apparently he bashed it with a hammer in frustration, and the lock busted off. All he found inside was dust, however. Silver immediately identifies it as a bound disintegrate spell, and suddenly the party wants to know what the fuck's so important to have disintegrated should it not be opened in a lawful manner. They take it to a mage, who tries to divine what's inside, but fails a few random rolls, resulting in the box being obscured the magic item inside. He notices, however, that the box is not enchanted with any magical traps, so its assumed that the disintegration process is physical, and can't be dispelled.

The party's getting antsy about now, and hurry it to a locksmith, hoping he would know some way of getting the thing open. He can't do it, but with a little persuasion, they find out the location of someone who can. He's locally known as the "Lockbreaker", a sort of asspie whose obsession with opening locks has left him a fugitive of the law in many provinces. He's extremely talented, if rather eccentric.

The party meets him in an alley. When presented with the box, the guy is practically orgasmic. After a couple of rolls and an hour in-game, he busts through the lock without setting off the trap, revealing an oddly shaped stone, with indentations resembling finger-holds.

>>7259132

When the object is brought back to the researchers, it resonates violently with the cannon, and it can be supposed that one has an effect on the other. Everyone's a little bit stumped, until they realize they had heard of a dead historian specializing in dwarven military not long ago from the dwarf-loving noble. The team formulates a plan to commune with the man's spirit; they go to the Church under which he is buried, and ask the High Priest whether he would be so kind as to fulfill their wishes. He is...for a nominal fee.

The spirit wakes in the labyrinth, and the party speaks. Silver pulls out the stone, and the historian immediately identifies it as a trigger. The PC's are a little stunned that he'd know so quickly, but they don't pursue the matter. Instead, they ask how it is activated. The party visibly sighs when the ghost says they would need the fingerprints of a patron dwarf to activate it. I take note and add an addendum: that the crafting of these triggers weren't the best, and the indentations of the rock could be easily filled and activated with a proper wax mold. They leave with the information they need, as does the spirit.

After a conversation with the head of the Arcane Science Department and the King's Chamberlain, the party is sent to a remote area north to test the function of what is supposed to be a weapon. A small military contingent and a wizard are sent their way, and they head off.

>>7259159

The next thirty minutes is spent trying to make the thing work. Pointing it towards the sea, they insert the red cannonball and activate the trigger. An intense sucking is heard, and they immediately take out the wax mold. Looking inside the cannon, they see the cannonball is gone. They do practically everything but holding down the button; they knock the side of it, set up a buttress in from of it, and they even shove some regular cannonballs in it. After a while, my DMPC wizard suggests, "Maybe you should hold down the button, sir?" That they do, until I realize that the buttress is still sitting in front of the cannon. I basically yell out, "You feel the intense urge to move that shit out of the way of the goddamn cannon!" The party takes reflex saves to see if they can do it before the thing goes off. They succeed, just barely, and a red-painted ball bursts out, towards the sea. About 100 feet above the water, the ordinance explodes into a massive 300 ft diameter fireball.

The PC's are a bit surprised, to say the least. They test it two more times, with similar result, and then start heading back to the castle. On they way they're ambushed by a rather large force of elite orkish riders (I think I made them ride huge wargs, just to rip of LotR) and an elephant rider. Without the means to run, they stand and fight, using the cannon to destroy the elephant at a distance. The orks go down relatively easy, and the party continues home.

At the gates, they see the familiar head of the Chamberlain stuck through a pike, decorated with blood and feces. When asked, the gate guards explain that the man was a sympathizer and traitor. In front of the King, they are told the Chamberlain arranged the ambush, but that the testing of such a powerful weapon was much more positive than the treachery was negative. As a reward, the group is given Ring Gates, enchanted Dragonskin Armour (Red), and a heavily enchanted longsword. They thank the King, and are off.

>>7259171

From this point it gets a little strange. One of the PC's jokingly looks for a pimp to whore herself out. Playing along, I let her find one, but she gets rejected. Freaking out, she tries to kill the pimp, but he escapes. On this impetus, Silver decides it'd be a good idea to go help the military high-command. He asks around for whoever's in charge of the war, and he gets referred to two people: Lord High General Greenwich, and Lord High General Dionysus. Greenwich is actually in the city, in a hospital having wounds treated, so the party decides to go seek him out.

At the entrance to the military hospital, a young, political lieutenant stops them, refusing to let them go through. After a bit of intimidation, he concedes, but the party runs into a similar situation looking around the hospital for the general. Guards are everywhere, and they need written permission from the frontman is they wish to pass. They get it with some more intimidation, and then start searching. Eventually they discover the most heavily guarded room in the building, but, again, the guards won't let them through. That changes when the elf of the party starts throwing gold around. Strangely enough, though, while they were haggling, Silver spots the pimp out of the corner of his eye, before he promptly bolts.

>>7259198

They go inside to find a mess of naked bodies, awash in the sleepy glow of post-orgy. Greenwich, mildly drunk, mistakes Silver for the half-dragon he requested, and makes advances. Eventually he comes to his senses, and starts ordering the PC's to leave. Like moralfags, they keep asking "What can we do to help the military situation?" even though they're standing in a hospital turned brothel. The general catches on, tells the bastards to go see to the commander of the Southern Front. As a warning, he threatens to kill them if they tell anyone what they saw. As the leave the town a day later, they see the whores publicly executed, along with the man who took the bribe.

Off they went, 50 miles to the mobile command post of General Matrix, a slightly effeminate half-elf. He's busy with paperwork, so he refers the party to his assistant for things to do. He gives them a sly look and pulls them away; he tells them there is a problem in the ranks that needs to be "sorted out." Apparently one of the commanders, a close friend of the king, has been a complete mismatch for the job he's in. Being a friend of royalty and a prideful man, he pays little heed to the complaints of the administration. "He must be removed." It should have been readily apparent at this point that the military is full of corruption, but the party pursues it anyway, without any more investigation.

>>7259214

The party is referred to another commander, hidden in the orkish swamps, using a little blackmail to gain his trust. There they set up an ambush which, after some tricky maneuvering around shield golems, ends up with the death of the Commander. It's at this point that the party realizes that the Commander was a close friend of the king, which puts the good characters into a bit of a slump. Silver, feeling obligated to tell the King what he had done, returns with the news. The King arranges a discussion on the morrow. When the party arrives, its fairly obvious what was going to happen; the nobles are assembled, a ceremony starts. The party is about to be stripped of their lordship.

Their land taken, the party tries to leave, but is asked to give their armour, blade, and artifacts (including the cannon trigger) as well. Silver, not liking this too much, whips out the trigger and holds it above the audience. The King recoils in fear, and shakily says "We don't have to resort to vio-"

He sets the thing off. With a quick roll to determine whether or not the cannon is in range, the weapon, hidden in the foundations of the castle, discharges its explosive ordinance. Another roll to see if the structure holds; it doesn't. Another to see if it collapses violently; it does. Another to see if anyone in the audience chamber survives; they don't.

>>7259224

When they roll up their next characters, they come to know that that specific kingdom was eventually overrun, as the power vacuum created by the King's death brought Lord High Generals Greenwich and Dionysus into conflict for control. The orks took advantage of this, eliminated them both, and enslaved the entire province. It was glorious, if a bit annoying. I kinda liked the setting, and the corruption and lies were pretty fun; it's a shame they all had to die because of a half-dragon's butthurt.

I'm part of a roleplaying club; basically, it's half a dozen tables with lots of people playing different systems and settings; 1st edition Warhammer on one, Spycraft on another, that sort of thing.

I was having fun with eight other people on a Castles & Crusades campaign, when the guys in charge of the whole club announced a Guest DM Night; everyone would be paired up randomly with a pre-selected DM, so we'd get to know people outside our own tables. And it was three weeks away, so the DMs would have lots of time to come up with a fun little one-shot. Nice idea, right?

I didn't know anybody on this new table, and I didn't my GM for the night, which was just as well. Turns out, he hadn't decided on the system to use.

>>7259337
He gave us a choice: we could either have a horror campaign, a pulp campaign, or Dark Heresy. After we did some bickering whilst he took a smoke, I decided we should roll a d6 for it; we were playing a pulp campaign.

As luck would have it, the DM had a rulebook for Spirit of the Century. I'd heard good things about the system from you guys, and was looking forward to it. Character creation was, frankly, slapdash. Of course, we had no character sheets, so we just scribbled some skills and character names onto some spare paper the DM had. My spirits were still high.

We started off rather well, our characters arriving at an old mansion in DE BAI-YOO, for the reading of a will of some dead guy we all knew. Most of us did some pretty good roleplaying, setting up character and stuff. Then the dead guy showed up.

>>7259471
The dead guy knew he had been killed, and he was going to find out who. And by "find out who", I of course mean "send zombies to slaughter everyone". I'm thinking 'Hot dog! My sharpshootin' bad-ass is going to blast some zombie ass and chew gum, and I didn't put "chewing gum" on my Equipment list!"

Hour and a half of running from zombies, whilst some NPCs I didn't give a shit about got killed. I was the only one who rolled anything combat-related; one time I rolled a pretty good roll to blow some zombie kneecaps... then they just crawled at me on their elbows. Later, I was about to shoot a werewolf (one of the NPCs turned out to be a werewolf. Yeah.) at point-blank range, but I flubbed the roll, so I "jerked my hand back at the last minute".

At the end, everyone was bored out of their skull, one of the players had had to leave to catch a bus, and the DM was giving us blatant clues. By blatant, I mean:

"Is it PC #1?"
"No."
"PC #2?"
"No."
"PC #3?"
"Yes!"
"Great, I'm going home."

>>7259684
Turned out all the other tables had been good, and the guy we had DMing had a fanboner for zombies. Go figure.

>>7259684

>My sharpshootin' bad-ass is going to blast some zombie ass and chew gum, and I didn't put "chewing gum" on my Equipment list!

Thank you for this.

Don't let your players get away with stupid shit. And if they want to whine about you thowing a bunch of enemies they can't beat their way after they decided to do some stupid shit that got them into that mess, tell them to cry you a river.

>>7259798
You're more than welcome. I thought it was funny.

This seems like as good a thread as any to ask, since we're talking about DM faux pas. This might be a little hard to follow because I have to be intentionally vague- my players might be browsing /tg/ right now.

The party's been hunting down a macguffin that needs to be destroyed and they just recently got it. The macguffin originally belonged to X, who they were retrieving it for by proxy (getting it for Y who was getting it for X). Originally, around this time, they met X himself and he joined the party so he could lead them to X's old adventuring buddy, who could figure out and tell the party how to destroy it. On the way there, I have plans for X to be killed.

That being said, I'm afraid the party will take X as a DMPC. He's going to be either on-par or slightly below the party's level, not have plot armor, and be agreeable and malleable to the party's will. Is this ok, or should NPCs never join the party unless specifically sought out by the PCs?

I'm probably the worst DM I've ever had, well, excluding some ill-judged attempts at DM-ing by a few of my less roleplay-inclined friends.

I once killed a guy in Trail of Cthulhu, when it was his first time roleplaying. He tried to punch the horrible creation of flesh and bone that resulted from a sorcerer's pact with Hastur, and got poisoned and died. I was going to give him the offer to be resurrected by Hastur to sabotage the party, but he'd left by the time I got round to him.

I feel I may have put him off roleplaying for life, and I'm truly sorry. I regret it to this day. Apparently the rest of the campaign was pretty good, but that one stupid mistake haunts me to this day.

>>7260011
Ehhh... as long as you roleplay him okay and don't piss about, it should be okay.
>>7260215
CoC, man. Not exactly noob-friendly.

>>7260011

DMPCs should be tools for the party to use, not the other way around. As long as they don't drive the plot and steal the spotlight from the PCs, all should be well.

>>7260314

But still.

>>7254301
Same poster here, just thought of another one.

The group was just coming off of a long-term campaign, having lost the previous DM to drugs, rehab, and him having a kid. So we were all trying to DM, not all with stellar results but usually the game was serviceable.

Except for one, C's game. He started out by telling us we could make any race, any class, any alignment, and to not make any histories at all for our characters. He then told us that he would really like it if we didn't make clerics, since his big reveal turned out to be based on Baldur's Gate and we were all fallen gods or some shit. He wasn't good at adaptations or original ideas.

So the party ended up being: me, a Transmuter who hated elves, a human lumberjack, a dwarf cleric (all evil or CN), and two people who don't matter as well as the DM's girlfriend who played an elven ranger.

We start on a forest path with the way behind us blocked, and the trees have grown too close together for us to pass between them. So we go forward to find an elven tree city, which sucks for half the party. Since we started out with nothing, he makes us work for our starting equipment - not like giving us advances for the quest, we had to roleplay doing chores and helping clean the archives and whatnot. Naturally we broke everything fragile and stole what we could, to get our measly starting gold (wizards got 50, fighters got 200, HOW'S THAT FOR FAIR?).

>>7262257

So the BIG STARTING QUEST is that we have to go retrieve some wine they don't make anymore for the elf king. We do that, it's fairly easy, and get like 16 bottles which we explicitly tell him we keep in a locked chest guarded by the dwarf, lumberjack, and wizard since we don't trust them, nor do we trust each other. The DM's girlfriend tells him, while the party sleeps, that she takes a bottle and goes back to collect the entire 5k gold reward herself. We come back with the other 15 bottles and get shafted on the reward, since he only wanted the one for some stupid reason.

Well the minute we took this mission we became mercenaries, and mercenaries get paid. The wizard, lumberjack, and dwarf go berserk. We dig a tunnel under one of their gay habitat trees and start destroying the root system, and he sends down some weak-ass guards to stop us (it doesn't work). We continue destroying trees, cutting some, burning others, and finally make our escape.

>>7262279
C later tried to run another game, which never got off the ground. We gave him a month to prepare while I wrapped up the ongoing Star Wars campaign, we figured that would be plenty of time to write an intro adventure and flesh out the opening town a bit, right?

At first it's fun, if kind of bullshit (he rules that an assassin can't start with any poison, which, fine, but then he lets a necromancer make poison in the inn's sink). We're out roleplaying, having some fun, and he's showing off the world. Except that his world is totally stupid. A shop catches fire, and a wandering mage just puts it out with a water grenade he had around his neck. A shop is getting robbed, so the owner pulls out a 4-barreled crossbow to drive them off. The assassin decides to try to mug some drunk nobles for money, and discovers that townspeople have 10 hp, and my priest learns that, apparently, alcohol is NOT made of water, when he casts Destroy Water on someone's drink.

We put all of this behind us and go on to the meeting for a quest. He tells us to go to a lighthouse in the forest (?) to retrieve an object, and that it will be very dangerous. However, we will be rewarded... which he does not let us in on what the reward is. Right after this he breaks the session, because he had only written up to this point, and nobody ever mentions allowing him to DM again.

Pretend if you were playing while you were the dm. Would you piss yourself off? Don't do that shit.

Use the rule of the three Ys (as in Dream Pod 9's games)

For anything that exist or that you imagine being, ask yourself why. then take the answer and ask yourself: why? do this a third time and you have something that have common sense. And common sense is what keep your game running.

Example: The city is built into the crater of an ages-long innactive volcano. Why1: The innactive volcano has been calmed magically and offers both energy and nodes of rich minerals. Why2: The volcano's spell also traps a monolith fire elemental and the volcano's stability is actually colateral damages. Why3: The Monolith Fire Elemental was the final attempt of an Efreet Sultan at conquering the realm for his personnal profits.

Bonus: Campaign, or at least quest-plot involving an efreet sultan, a Monolith Elemental and threatening the said town, a rich background for the region as survivors of a planar war, etc...

Traumatized by a DM who made his 2nd in command NPC on a pirate ship a three-headed kangaroo who hit itself on the head to make the opposite head works... damn.