Thread 96667421

what's the worst dm you've ever had?

>>96667421 (OP)
You.

Some rando running one-shots at local gaming convention.

the first one when i was 14
he didn't know anything about how to run
we had so much fun anyway

>>96667421 (OP)
>Makes post to recruit people for game
>Invites everyone to a Discord server
>Runs through character creation and making a backstory
>Day of game arrives
>Everyone except the DM gets on call
>DM is late, but whatever, we're all having a good time chatting
>DM deletes the server and nukes the whole game without warning
>No response when asked why

No idea what he was going for. Haha, he wasted our time?

See post online with the same story a few week later by a different group about the same guy.

>>96667421 (OP)
I joined a game run by this BETAKEK who was assembling a team of TRANNIES and FREAKSHITTERS. I figured that I would class up the game and give the a taste of what enlightened 4CHAN /TG/ gameplay is like. They were intimidated, of course, by me DEEP and INTRICATE understanding of the rules of GURPS, though I could not persuade the dm from the stupidity of running an INFERIOR system like lancer. The just weren't really ON MY LEVEL, which I EXPECTED, as I dancerd circles around the players and dm alike with my immediate SYSTEM MASTERY. The players were constantly making SUBOPTIMAL plays, and flew into LIBERAL TANTRUMS when I offered them my WISDOM and EXPERIENCE. The dm, too, was an obvious HYLIC, lurching from plot point to plot point without any desire from my INPUT and CRITIQUE, inspite of my MANY years of experience in WORLDBUILDING and THEORYCRAFTING. I announced I was leaving the table, and they BEGGED and PLEADED with me to stay. They said they would be LOST without me. Ultimately, I had better ways to spend my time than WASTING it instructing a bunch of TRANNIES and ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS! When it was clear they could not persuade me with their PITIFUL pleas, they flipped the script and actually had the GALL to claim they were the ones kicking me out. I HAD to LAUGH. HA.HA.HA-HAHA. I told them if I caught them following me that they would feel the WRATH of my GUN! Then I left them QUIVERING in FEAR, a SMIRK on my face. More TRANNIES put in their PLACE by 4CHAN!

>>96667516
mindbroken

>>96667516
I think the worst DM is this tourist

>>96667774
I consider myself something of a CO-DM. I don't NEED to get behind the screen to PROVE my MASTERY! When one ASKS for my ASSISTANCE by inviting me to play in their game, they do so with the UNDERSTANDING that I will LEND my VAST EXPERTISE to the gamerunning process.

>>96667447
>No idea what he was going for. Haha, he wasted our time?
Probably just a sperg trying and failing to make it. He's got just enough guts to get to the moment of truth and then his anxiety ramps up and he chickens out and has a panic attack.

Then he tries again.

>>96667421 (OP)
A friend of mine. I thought I taught him better than that, but I basically felt like I was a character trying to escape a shitty movie. I knew the moment he started hyping up critical role it was going to end poorly.

The tl;dr version is the guy ran it like a REALLY shitty text-based adventure game, like he was intentionally trying to fuck you over. Also one of my first proper D&D experiences in my life to boot.

This is a small snippet of this tale I've told before:
>Look for a 5e pre-release game, called D&D Next back then.
>One of the other guys there kindly helps me with making a fighter.
Oh boy! I'm gonna have so much fu-
>"Oh, by the way, I'm a Kender"
>A wha?
>DM: "Hey, roll a d4. You got a 4? Hey, Anon, lemme see your character sheet. Ummm. . .you now have 1 less manacle"
>"wut. Don't I get a perception check or anything?"
>DM: "No".
>Ohboyherewego.jpg
>We start off in the middle of a picked up session
>DM: "Last time you were trying to track down a wererat. You found a house."
>DM: "Okay, you're at the house. The trail ends here."
>Literally, THAT much information about the scene or the entire start of the adventure. Just that.
>"Uh. . .search?"
>DM: "You find parts of the snow on the rooftop of the house are different."
>"Different in what way? Like it's new snow?"
>DM: "It's ALL new snow."
>. . .
>"How is it different?"
>DM: "Some of it is kinda like, scooped out in smaller places a distance away from each other, but not really scooped."
>"What? Uh...like footprints?"
>DM: Smug look before "Yyyeess." in the most shit-eating way possible
>Climb up on the house
>Had to roll a search check to track these fresh-snow foot prints across the roof to the edge
>DM:"You're at the edge. The footprints end here."
>"Do they jump down?"
>DM: "No."
>"I look up."
>DM: "Roll perception"
>Roll 1
>DM: "Roll Dex saving throw"
>Success
>DM: "You DON'T fall off the roof"
>...
>"I look up. are there any trees?"
>DM: "You see. . .sky." More shit-eating grins
>What the fuck is going on here?
>Other player: "Is there another roof?"
>DM: ". . .yes! There is!"
>Other player: "How far is it?"
>DM: "Jumping distance"
It went on like this for two more hours.

My second worst DM is a shorter story. Was a 4e DM fag(derogatory) that basically used his DMPC cleric to abuse and beat the shit out of our characters to go along with the plot. At one point when my character realized he was becoming a tyrant, he tried to run away as a rogue that specialized in a stealth check in the +15ish range. I tried to run, he still spotted me on a high roll while he had a medium roll, then used Dominate person to force my character to "return to the flock."

I wish I could remember more details, but I do remember one time I told this story in length to someone on 4chan, and someone who thought I was being an anti-4eFag got really nitpicky about the details and the math and pointed out it was impossible for his level to do any of that. I then remembered that night that I had the password to the character creator still. I looked at his character sheet and that's where I found out that he had magic items that were at MINIMUM 5 levels above his character's level, who was already above our groups levels. One of the items he had gave him an insane spot check on his character, and I realized that he didn't have it before and had added it once he saw me use my stealth check in a prior session.

Pretty sure it was some sort of fetish for him cause he kept hitting on my almost obsessively.

>>96668135
Who was the first worst?

>>96667852
Probably the case, guy paid for some DnD Beyond service so I doubt anyone would pay actual money just to troll.

>>96668190
My post right above that one, lol. I actually pondered about clarifying that but decided not to at the last second. My bad.

>>96667421 (OP)
Guy I knew for years. Close friends with other friends. He had a massive ego and considered himself quite good at running games even though nearly every idea he had was just stolen out of whatever fantasy novel he was obsessed with at the time. He'd hype himself up to play out this awesome, huge plot that would unfold over months... and then we'd roll badly or get wiped by a poorly balanced encounter that we had no chance to run from anyways. So he'd get salty, pull some excuse out of his ass for why we all survived or how the story was otherwise able to keep going... and then it would happen again. And again. He'd become increasingly adversarial about it. He'd blame us for not playing out the story exactly the way he expected us to, or for making the wrong decision, like not surviving some monster he'd throw at us (as if it was our choice when he'd miraculously roll numerous critical hits round after round)

We'd have flashes of fun, usually stuff we chose to do ourselves or finding some other way to approach problems he'd put in our way, which he'd sometimes begrudgingly accept as workable solutions. But eventually he'd get too angry and one day decide that the game was over. Rocks fall. Everyone dies. The bad guy wins. The city burns to the ground. The entire planet is corrupted and desolate now. Good job. "You guys are idiots for not following my awesome story." (never directly said, but that was always the tone of his end of game monologue)

The only reason we'd even let him run games was because several of the people in the group relied on him for a ride. If he wasn't running, he probably wasn't showing up. The few times I had him as a player, he was a fucking horror. Argumentative, hostile, totally unwilling to engage with the game, meaning he'd either do nothing all night and then complain that he didn't have anything to do, or he'd make trouble all night and insist that as a player character, the story was supposed to be about him.

>>96667421 (OP)
Plated cuties seem to be the best thing this universe has output thusfar

>>96667421 (OP)
Had a GM boot me from a game because he couldn't fathom why someone playing a legal SINner would want to get a gun license and own a gun for home defense in Shadowrun. Even after explicitly stating the gun and legal SIN would never be used on runs.
He even tried to say that gun licenses were only given to police, corpo-sec and the military.

>>96668227
>Argumentative, hostile, totally unwilling to engage with the game, meaning he'd either do nothing all night and then complain that he didn't have anything to do
Had a player like that. Set up a very sandbox OSR playground for him and the group, and then I had that rule in place that time ran at 1:1 ratio outside of the sessions. The other players were taking immense joy in getting little roleplay scenarios, or taking day jobs to earn extra money while also meeting new people, or taking in the history of the world, he literally just said "I stay in my room at the inn all week and do nothing else."

Only difference is when I made the mistake of letting him GM a different game one time, he kept up that exceptionally hostile and adversarial role and made it worse. Tried really hard to fuck you over on every single roll possible, made you make 30+ rolls on everything, and if you complained that this was railroading at best, and outright bullying at worse, he'd give these slimy lawyer-like arguments of "Well ACKSHUALLY it would make sense in REAL LIFE that this could happen cause there's no law of physics that says a train couldn't possibly drop on your head. >:^)"

I stopped playing with him when one time he metaphorically slapped me in the face by accusing ME of railroading that open sandbox OSR game cause I didn't DM the way that he did and "let people fail" things. His example was that I told a player one time that he would know that the blacksmith would not be open in the middle of the night during an active night-invasion and that trying to go there and ask for personal services wouldn't get him anywhere. My friend said I should have "let him go, find out the blacksmith wasn't there, then punished the group for wasting time by pouring in my soldiers."

I do not regret having stopped playing with him.

>>96668227
when a that guy becomes a dm, fucking shitty dude.
I had a similar dm but he wasn't adversarial he was just too into his own story; that was incredibly generic. basically he hand held the entire game and when the party would do something off script he would be like, "hey guys I really think you should wait around the inn until this specific time instead of going to that dungeon, something pretty interesting will happen", shit like that. he wasn't a bad guy, but he was a stereotypical reddit mod type of person. way too pc, way too much of a pussy to do anything that could be considered interesting.
he actually played a few sessions for a game my buddy was dming, but he left early on saying it was "a bit too pg13" his actual words.

>>96667516
4/10 I smirked.

>>96667421 (OP)
A friend of mine asked me to join him one night when his group was getting together.
They were running a star wars campaign and he said they could use an extra body, so, I thought why not. I've never played a star wars table top rpg before, could be fun.
Apparently his group happened to be big on drinking while they played; which didn't bother me, I was more than happy to have a couple beers.
I thought the game went fine for the most part; but, it got kinda weird by the end.
I was 60 to 70 percent sure that the DM was rubbing himself under the table.
Not sure enough to be call him out on it and be like, dude are you masturbating right now?
I actually thought that he did fine as DM for the most part; but seriously guy, what the hell are you doing under the table?
I never went back.

>>96669165
You are a shitty player. Jack him off with your feet, faggot.

>>96669165
>ATAIINII
I don't get it. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY TO ME?!

Seriously though why did you think he was rubbing one out? What happened?

>>96669191
Dude came out with white ropes all over his pant leg.

>>96669165
Motherfucker had JD Vance as a DM.

>>96667421 (OP)
Me, I am a fucking terrible dm.

Me at 19. I sucked.

I still suck, but far less

>>96667516
nice pasta attempt

>>96669211
No. If the dude straight up cam; I would have left.

>>96669191
He was being super fidgety and kept putting one of his hands under the table and start moving kinda strange like.
Maybe it looked extra weird to me because his DM screen sorta hid what he was doing, and it was a big table.
I tried asking my friend about it after we left, but he hadn't been paying attention. This girl brought her calc homework to the game and he was helping her with it most of the night. We were both math majors at the time.
I don't know. Nobody needs to reach for their crotch every two minutes unless they're doing. I get a quick itch, but dude was lingering. He could've been drunk too.

>>96669336
My non-pervert assumption would be a nervous tic.

>>96669336
>No. If the dude straight up cam; I would have left.
I respect it. Don't leave a bro 'til he finished.

>>96669346
I don't think so.
If it was a nervous tick then he would've been doing it all night instead of just at the end.
I'm pretty sure that I wasn't the only one who thought it was really strange. The guy to my left kept giving him funny looks, like dude what the hell are you doing?

>>96669378
Ha. Well if I was 100 percent sure the guy was jacking it. I would have left then too.

>>96669396
Schrödinger's Wank.

>>96667438
>it was (you) all along
not OP but kinda true
apart from school years which I don't think counts
I was the worst DM I witnessed in person

>>96667421 (OP)
I took part in a session with homebrew setting, where GM punished us for ignoring social rules of the homebrew setting he told us nothing about.
In my case I insulted a dwarven shopkeeper, only to learn that dwarves are considered somewhat holy around here and getting jumped by random townsfolk for not addressing him with a proper greeting.

>>96667421 (OP)
This guy.
It's been almost a decade, and he remains the worst of them all. And since then, I had a furfag GM and played under three different OSR fanatics that were trying to "improve" the game with their bullshit AND an obsessive CoC keeper that couldn't exactly wrap his head around the fact he's not running CoC.
None were as bad as this asshat

>>96667443
I had a similar experience. The GM ran it by the seat of his pants, and I still have fond memories of playing 4e one summer when we were off school.

Everyone else since who has GM'd for me has been more experienced and familiar with the system, and while there have been poor moments, their overall performance has been better.

>>96669880
>plays Fate
>regrets it
sounds about right

>>96669902
I don't regret playing Fate
I regret playing it under that moron. He should be using any given skill-heavy d100, but he insisted on Fate, clearly not understanding how to apply it or why it might be a terrible idea to use it for a realismfaggotry game

I had a dm who just did mission to mission no downtime, never gave any items, never gave a chance to buy stuff and then leveled us at an extremely fast pace. (dnd 3.5) So if you played a martial you were basically worthless also it didn't even matter because it was impossible to lose any of the combat sequences because he would fudge all his dice rolls so you'd just scrape by. It was basically a dungeon crawler but with no risk or reward and a boring dungeon.

>>96667516
This, but unironically.

>>96669665
This doesn't sound that bad but if I were the DM I'd had played it off as a gag with no serious consequence.

>>96667421 (OP)
helpful_comrade

I played a paladin and we finally got the big bad of the scenario. I smite the dude for all his evil deeds.
>yeah, you lose your paladin power because that was an innocent body double
I try to argue that such a close henchmen to one of the most evil dudes ever can't be called an "innocent"
>no you lose your power and the city guard is actively hunting you for murder now

The dude was absolutely obsessed with gotchas. Every time a player attempted to do something morally good the DM tried to twist it in some braindead monkey's paw kind of way.

>>96667421 (OP)
The one time I joined a game from the ganefinder on /tg/, unironically. It was the most miserable experience I've ever had, and I played with literal Discord trannies which was also miserable.

>>96667421 (OP)
>DM
lmao

>>96670012
Reading that made me mad.

>>96670024
How'd trannies showed up if the recruiting was done on 4chan?

>>96670012
It shouldn't break your oath if you were tricked to kill an innocent.

>>96667516
This has some potential, but for now, the only really funny part is ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

not even close to any of the real bad DM's from here, but just a player from my games I run wanted a crack and his world was boring, his NPCs all assholes and everyone was railroaded

>>96668274
>he literally just said "I stay in my room at the inn all week and do nothing else."
He is /ourguy/, fuck off normalfag.

>>96668190
>guy paid for some DnD Beyond service
Never has a more obvious red flag been flown above a man's head.

My sister in law let me wife go on a 45 min tangent while we all sat there twiddling our thumbs
We never player another session

>>96669880
Why didn't you leave immediately? Sounds like you got what you deserved.

Probably the guy who was running a published module (3.5) but tinkering with enemy stats so that the encounters were "more challenging". Instead every session became a slog where nothing would ever land. Insert Morrowind MISS MISS MISS webm here. The person who was fucked the most by this was probably the wizard because the opponents got from something like 35% to save against his spells to 60% and he had terrible luck so everyone saved all the time. That's honestly the worst thing I can say about him, I was lucky to have decent GMs.

>>96669880
>smoking break every 30 mins
damn, captain blacklung

>>96669396
Another anon here, I'm not really seeing strong enough evidence either to think he was jacking it. He could have just been holding a dice in his fingers and fidgeting with that beneath the table for all we know. It could have also been a fidgeting-tic that didn't activate until he had been sitting still for awhile. I can sit still when I start things, but after awhile I'll start bouncing my legs in place if I haven't been able to get up and walk. It could have also been a sign that he was getting nervous because he thought the session wasn't going well even if it actually was. Even the other guy thinking it was strange doesn't really do much for me cause I've known guys who will empathically pick up when a woman is feeling uncomfortable and react more accordingly, even if there is objectively nothing going on ("Oh yeah, I totally agree with femanon, that scene where the kid is sitting around the doctor's office getting scared was absolutely an allegory for rape. No I don't care that literally nobody else thinks this about this movie, femanon is just *right* okay? Did you see how she was reacting to it? That MUST mean that more women are reacting to it the same.")

If you had more pieces of evidence, like heavy breathing, flush faced, sexual content, prolonged eye contact with you or the other women at the table, etc., I think I'd be more inclined to believe it, but with what you presented this far, I really think you're overreacting.

>>96670012
It's shit like this that makes me intentionally play paladins in front of new DMs as a sort of bait to see if they'll make me fall for bullshit reasons like this. They really cannot help themselves.

>>96667421 (OP)
A friend who improvised a game with no rules.
What a shitshow it was, but we were worse players than he was a bad DM tbf

>>96671126
the chances this is talking about me is astronomically low but my bad bro.

>>96671147
As I said we were worse players than he was a DM, at least he tried something
Two were matching some sports match or something on their phone and I was laughing like a retard the entire time and not roleplaying at all

>>96671126
How long was the campaign?

>>96671187
One session kek
Too bad because I liked the setting and my character but well

Thats actually very hard for me. It comes down to either the DM that forced my PC to endure a fatal pregnancy or the DM who signed off on my corpsecrafter necromancer only to do literally everything in his power to ensure the only undead i had were summoned with the summon undead spell. Ill go with the second one because of the pure hypocrisy of him breaking the game when he is a player and threatening to take his ball home when any DM tries to put the brakes on his munchkinism.

>>96671183
>Two were matching some sports match or something on their phone and I was laughing like a retard the entire time and not roleplaying at all
damn yeah thats pretty bad. my group didnt deserve it but honestly I had a rough work week and half the people were no shows so I just fuckin winged it I even had fake notes I flipped through and decoy dice I would throw behind the screen while I was making things up. I don’t think anyone bought it.

The dude, a not-too-familiar friend of mine, who "rocks fall, everyone dies"d his childhood friend player out of nowhere for his beer and pretzels attitude, and then gave the entire table a 10 minute monologue of how much he struggles to "come up" with the sessions (it was a 5e Dragon Queen module) just to be met with unseriousness. Then remorsed kicked in and he revived the character through a deus ex machina, the cleric's goddess talked to him personally in a dream and restore his life because his "mission wasn't over" or somthing.
I get it but he didn't have to do that at the table. It's your friend, you know how he is, why invite him in the first place and then treat the rest of the table like a preschool class by association?

But at least that was a game. My actual worst GM was when I decided to try GURPS because of /tg/. I found a GURPS table in my native language on the internet. I joined the Discord server because the premise sounded interesting: "you're time travellers from different epochs investigating magical phenomena in another timeline", so I made a greek-inspired mythological warrior, since the GM gave us very high powerlevel creation options, and joined. Turns out it was all an excuse for the GM to be self-indulgent in a modern urban fantasy by inserting real-world pop culture references. He was generally a dick and a very unfunny sperg. One session, one of the players who created an optimized build for his robot waifu character, engaged in combat with a pedophile priest identical to a television show host who turned out to be a gigademon. Every turn took an eternity and midway through the player and the GM started (politely) arguing about some specific rule in the game and that derailed the last hour of the session. I didn't show up for the next sessions.

>>96671227
>I even had fake notes I flipped through
lol

>>96667421 (OP)
This was Cyberpunk 2020. The GM was clearly new to the game and seemed to take the whole "high lethality" thing way too seriously, to the point where the party was almost completely wiped out in the first combat encounter. He also seemed to think that the PCs were side characters in whatever story he wanted to tell and there would be frequent instances of him talking to himself as he played out lengthy dialogue scenes between his pet NPCs (who were all DeviantArt OC tier in terms of characterization) while we just sat there waiting for him to remember his actual players. On top of all of that, once he started talking about recording our sessions and doing podcasts, it became clear to me that he cared more about using TTRPGs to become an e-celeb than actually playing the games. After he killed off my character (who he seemed to enjoy picking on throughout the campaign) in one of his retarded "gotcha" moments, I dipped.

I myself was new to the game, then, and that experience kind of soured me on playing for a while.

>>96671241
it was more for me than the players. if you pretend you’re prepared you can trick yourself into thinking you are and its good for confidence. not much happened that session fortunately, mostly the party talked to each other and shopped and dropped a few deez nuts jokes. I threw one combat encounter and that was that. Everyone was happy I think.

So for the TQ I’m the worst DM I ever had. All the other DMs I played with were chill and they wrote interesting worlds and stories.

>>96667516
But do you have 80 points in Guns? That is the real question.

>>96668048
I can envision this pretty well and yeah that sounds infuriating.

The worst DM ever is me, for tolerating this retardation.

Probably Pathfinder Society. One of the DMs cannot speak louder than a whisper and it was played in a cafe. It devolved into us asking him to repeat what he said multiple times every minute. That combined with some of the characters I saw in society put me off it.

>>96671947
I would pack up and leave for half this bullshit. I’m almost afraid to ask what your breaking point was.

>>96671947
>I'm just gonna throw out a Spot check
that would be it for me, fuck that guy in particular

>>96671947
>>96672256
Honestly it's people like this that made be print up a huge poster of house rules so I could point at it and explain why I'm not letting that bullshit fly.
>Guy rolls dice over and over again
>Gets a 19
>"I ROLLED A SPOT CHECK I'VE DECIDED THAT NOW WHAT DO I SEE?"
>"Sorry, faggot," taps poster "You didn't wait until I called on you for a roll. You get nothing."

>>96667421 (OP)
His name is Flora, (guy) but everyone calls him Lee. Any ways this fat fuck always injected his peraonal frustrations into the gameplay, to the pointbit was no fun. He was total pig and slob his house was very unkempt not helping his mother was a Chronic hoarder. His imagination was limited to what ever anime/show/video game was he currently watching and his sessions had no consistency, sometime we felt bad for him, but then he started treating us like shit and insulting us via the game.

Eventually we all move on, took a hiatus and re joins that time without Lee.

Oh boy, here we go.

Had a guy I worked with who wanted to get a game together for a bunch coworkers. So he asks what games I played and told him I primarily do pathfinder, so he says cool we will play pathfinder. I bring this game up to a few friends from my normal playgroup who I also work with and they're down.

My group used to hard ban hybrid classes so when we got told it was cool to use them I rolled up an inspired blade swashbuckler and mt friends went bloodrager and slayer. In my typical character making fashion gender was a coin flip, this is important for later.

Game night rolls around and me and the guys show up to play, first thing I see DM has a couple notebooks full of notes and papers, neat. Old adnd manual. OK weird, maybe he converted it? Move on.

We start in pathfinder Andoran in some typical small town and this shit show begins first thing is we start getting lore dumped about how there was some local war between these ant people and the locals which was ended when some bard stopped the war with his ROCK and everyone is being force shuffled from area to area to receive this lore. Immediately me and the friends I convinced asked to leave the crowd. DC 23 strength. Only the bloodrager passes. Yay... now the rest of us are stuck on this shitty it's a small world ride getting introduced to all the NPCs.

Wond up at the tavern, it's like the size of a Buckees, marble floors and statues and indoor waterfall, ok near I guess. Get told for like the third time now about some NPCs famous apple pies and how the mayor is getting some other pie on the side. Once again get the tale of the bard ending a war with music story, and now forced character backstory dump for everyone.

Got a new guy who is playing his first rig who made a dwarf wizard, his story is pretty basic, got an ant dude cavalier who gives a story about being some honorable knight on a quest or something. Slayer friend opted out, passing a stealth check to avoid sharing. 1/

>>96675731

Me and bloodrager have shared backstory go into bloody detail of being drifters in arena fighting rings. DM quickly calls story time to a close because we were telling stories to children.

Finally meet the mayor. Once again hear he's plowing the pie lady. Still don't care. Once again get the ROCK story. Still don't care. Makes a sexual pass at me. nope.gif.

Bloodrager and I go sniffing g around for the plot because so far this has been 4ish hours of lore dumping and no plot in sight. Find a job to capture or kill a bandit group lead by the most racist caricature of a gypsie I have ever seen. Apparently it was official art from the manual he brought. Move on to intro gathering, crush the DCs, but the DM constantly gives us rumors about whose fucking who, some shit about farmers fighting over sheep, and that the bandit was in "the forest of eternal madness" which we knew from the poster we found. 3 people info gathered, 3 people got worthless gossip. When I brought it up the DM said when gathering info you will hear about town rumors. I fire back asking why anyone would respond to "how many men does this bandit group has" with "did you know the mayor is dicking the pie lady?" DM gets mad.

After 4 hours we finally get to do something resembling adventuring since up until now it has been one long and railroaded lore dump. Game guards make passes at my character. Get shut down. Take 2 steps out of the gate and were met with two injured rangers fleeing on a horse from 8 DIRE WOLVES... we are level 1.

I try to turn around and live, but the guards shut the gates. Guess we'll die then. DM assures us it will be alright. Slayer friend had checked out an hour ago, but initiative was called and we are playing his song now. And we are all immediately disappointed when the dire wolves all run into melee range, bark for a bit, some die, and the rest flee

2/

>>96675846

We go to the rangers a dude and a girl, the girl is hurt. I go to use a potion. Gets described she's giving "the eyes" and specifically told I could take her if I wanted. Drop her in the dirt and walk into the woods. No words.

We get to this farmhouse we were told about and start searching for clues this leads us to a road where we spot from like 100 ft away a dozen bandits hiding in a bush. Crush them in a 3 round fight and ho to interrogate a survivor. "How many more of you are there? Where is your camp? Any other ambushers? "We burned down this farmhouse" not what I fucking asked. Blood rager begins caving in the heads of other survivors. Session finally ends after 6 hours of this bullshit session. On car ride home one friend says he won't be going back. Bloodrager friend said if we can talk to dm about what happened and maybe fix the situation we'd go back.

Talk to the guy the next day at work, tell him "hey, one guy said he likely won't be back, just wanted to touch base and talk about what happened" and the motherfucker got all indignant and suggested that it was our own fault we didn't have fun and we all never went back.

tl,dr I say through 6 hours of the dm shifting from trying to get us to ask about his OCs points fan fic, to him listing after my fictional character, got an upclose look at how unapologetically racist the 70s were, all while riding the shittiest make believe railroad known to man.

3/3

Simple:
>I want to run a game in 3-4 months!
>here's the PDFs for my homebrew content, my crafting system, and my setting lore
>
>sorry guys, I actually can't run that game because I'm too busy. want to play league of legends though?

>>96675731
>>96675846
>>96675916
90% of this story was basically you describing yourself as kind of a shitty edge-lord prick. I wouldn't repeat this story to other people outside of whatever echo chamber you're used to instead of here. I'd rather not see another thread get derailed in shitflinging.

>>96667516
Literally me

Me

>>96667421 (OP)
You know I usually tolerate trannies but I had the worst one who was his "wife". The troon would play this cringy elf who never worked with the party and always runs off doing stupid shit that gets more monsters on us and never talks to us but has the gall to go "im looking for an experience where we socialize and connect together" fucking retard would not RP with us and always got whatever they want because the DM favors them in there hijinks, after sometime me and the others were bonding properly and finally was a group but the tranny just one day snapped at us for no reason and told the DM we were all problematic players because we werent good enough RP partners all because when we sat them down alone about how they should stop doing whatever without consulting us or get mad because we made mistakes in character that affects them, so it made them quietly seethe so much that they told the DM and he suddenly turned the tables on us and said we were all bad characters for not "talking with my wife" then proceeded to talk shit with how each of our characters are bad even though he wanted our backstory to be fleshed out then said his table is closed off to us. He wasnt a bad DM but holy shit he let that pet tranny of his manipulate him hard

>>96675916
>>96675846
>>96675731
Both you and the DM sound like massive losers, Gypsies are chaotic evil.

>Made us spend 4 sessions of 5-6 hours over an entire month literally walking through an overworld desert while constantly getting fucked by random encounters
>When we get to our destination my character gets killed in an unskippable cutscene by some person from my past that the DM wrote in for me
>DM makes another PC get possessed by a demon, player loses control of his character and the DM makes him sodomize a 13 year old girl and murder her
>Our party are then all immediately made pariahs to the town we just spent 1 whole IRL month walking to because of this and are forced to flee
>Said player loses control of PC completely and has to roll a new character
>Months later PC reappears as an NPC and is now our commanding officer in the foreign war we're fighting
>Watch him solo CR 10 enemies (we're like level 6) as the DMs way to try tell us we're too weak to take him

The cherry on top of the entire campaign is that the crux of the plot's conflict was resolved offscreen completely independent of our characters, meaning regardless of what we did we had 0 impact on the outcome of the main plot of the campaign. The evil cult we were trying to oust and dispel that was controlling a city was dealt with offscreen by an NPC we had never met before, and when this happened the party collectively decided to throw in the towel and end the campaign. I felt bad for the DM in a way, as I think he was trying to tell an interesting story, but not in a way that's very engaging in terms of TTRPGs go.

>>96675846
>8 DIRE WOLVES... we are level 1

Problem? He might've just rolled a random encounter. You're coddled.

>>96677093
did you guys start another campaign after ditching that GM?

>>96667421 (OP)
Willfuly-forever-DM: one, who won't let other members of the group run games, despite the fact that they always bitch about being tired and overworked; and if someone even tries to organize anything, they would act like a prissy passive-agressive drama queen until everyone aligns with their vision of the group.

>>96677127
Nope sadly. I became close friends with the other guy but the other one we drifted apart

>>96677205
Sound like you just need to exclude him to have fun.

>>96667421 (OP)
Heres another one, DM loved his random encounters and rolls for everything in the background to the point the plot just becomes influenced by stupid random chance where nothing felt natural because you would ask "is the man we are looking for in this village?" He would roll dice and he would not be here despite gathering info he was here. One time we were tasked to hunt for tiny little ice spirits to bring back so we travelled to the village then began asking about it and researching with the locals with them pointing out they are just outside the village so we go around hunting for hours and then he rolled on his unbalanced encounter table where we had to fight these damn ice wolves that had really strong breath attacks which proceeds to knock us down in the start of the fight then goes to pick out the rogue and warlock who is forced to flee leaving me and the dying rogue, rogue gets dragged away to be killed offscreen while I wake up with 1 hp thanks to my death save so I try to get back to the village and the guy just tries to corner me with a banshee which I stealthed away from even with bad stealtg . I regroup with the warlock which I dont blame him but We need to rescue the remains of the rogue in hopes we could rezz them but we realized we are to weak so we decided to sacrifice more gold to hire mercenaries, DM pulls out his Donut Steel DMPC in which he ripped off from the elder scrolls, we take time to track it down and his DMPC just cleans house then he rolls again because what if the wolves ate the body to fast? Nothing was left, we lost gold and didnt even find the spirits but the worst part was him going "you guys didnt go to the correct village" and we were pissed because he said this was the place to look for them so this motherfucker tells me we didnt gather enough information despite we spent 2 hours irl asking everyone about the spirits making sure we can find them but NEVER mentions they are near another village.

>>96667421 (OP)
>playing a homebrew, WoD-based JJBA game
>space setting because anything modern was overdone by then
>struggle through absurd setups wherein on top of actual Stands, basically every antagonist gets mystery magic items that just kind of have their own Stand-equivalent effects, making it so the game goes from solving the puzzle of how an enemy's power works, and then beating them, into 'just throw bullshit until something works lmao'
>beat a guy with a magical item that is basically an indestructible wardrobe, hiding in which protects you from literally all and any harm
>not sure why the GM lets us, but we get to have that item
>fast forward to a fight with some spooky fucking assassin who seemingly can make black holes
>reasonably, although we are in rush, being in a space race, we are used to being basically unable to hurt our enemies, and none of us want to die, so we jump into the wardrobe
>and just sit there
>and sit there
>and sit there
>the GM keeps getting fairly upset at us doing this
>"You guys will lose the race this way."
>"Yeah, but we don't want to die more than we not want to lose the race?"
>at a point one of us tries to go out, runs into the black hole assassin camping us, flees past
>me and another guy continue sitting in the wardrobe
>he eventually pulls out all sorts of bullshit mechanics to force us out of the wardrobe. Not some sort of energy draw by it, or some sort of wardrobe collapse, but Space Madness (TM) which we had to decide during chargenning, and which never, ever had an effect before or after this moment
>end up getting out of the wardrobe and try to fight the black hole guy
>instantly lose
>get put into the epilogue as alive, malnutritioned, yet out of the race
>the guy who got out gets assassinated, also instantly
>the race continues with 3 players of 5 out of the game entirely
Great game.

>>96670248
>How'd trannies showed up if the recruiting was done on 4chan?
Oh, sweet summer child.

>>96667421 (OP)
>do something the GM doesn't like
>he creates a no win encounter where my character is supposed to die
>starts changing rules and making up new ones on the spot for the sole purpose of fucking me over specifically
>brings out his DMNPC which is overpowered as hell, plus like 20 archers
>my character actually manages to bitch slap the DMNPC and survive the volley unscathed
>"you can't see them but they can see you" enemies appear out of nowhere next turn with absurd magical attacks
>character gets wounded and is starting to death spiral, I decide to fuck off (magical flight is great)
>"actually 300 archers are waiting over the ridge and instantly shoot you down the end"

The worst thing was after the session he basically said it was my fault and that I should have just done what he wanted. This wasn't the first time he pulled shit like this but this was the straw that broke the camels back. I noped the fuck out of that group immediately, which is a shame cause a few of the other players are alright but that GM was the absolute worst I've ever had.

>>96677093
I was in a very similar situation, and that is not an isolated incident. I actually sat down as part of what I call "The Circus," where I had
>A /Leftypol/ 8-c* DM who unironically failed the Sally-Anne test a few times.
>His childhood friend that had trooned out.
>His "wiccan" girlfriend that was playing a "Lycan" (waaaay different from a werewolf. How? It...IT JUST IS OKAY?)
>A single goth mother with Daddy Issues.
>A furry that made a female hyena and taught us all about the hyena's pseudo-penis and would try to rape defeated enemies.
>An MLP Autist that kept trying to introduce insanely overpowered custom classes because he was massively butthurt that my rogue was doing more damage than his bard at levels 1-2.

Easily, without question, the defining feature of that shit show was in fact the troon.
>Immediately began shitting on the campaign with LOLSORANDUMBXD antics and interrupting the flow of any story.
>Started to bully and harass the MLP Autist for the crime of *checks notes* roleplaying his bard.
>Screeched the group to a halt to yell at the MLP Autist cause the troon didn't want to sell a 3 second joke where he gets a bump on the head, causing the MLP to leave.
>Constantly injected himself into EVERY single idea/conversation/argument, then if you disagreed with him would suddenly shout over everyone "JUST GET ALONG" and bring all discussion to a halt.
>Had to get rides from the DM, so was also being a Rasputin in the DM's ear.
>Pretty much got all of his retarded ideas handed to him rolls-free.
>Constantly talking over the actual women and making them bored and uncomfortable.
>Suddenly "left" and tried to emotionally blackmail me into saying sorry to him in a dramatic letter, which I found out later was because I said something that implied I might have left the group.
>Came back 2 weeks later even though I refused his request.
It was such a bad experience that I no longer play unless I can host so I can ban trannies on sight.

One time I had a yes-man who couldn't deliver on literally anything they promised.
>he's running SWSE, Dawn of Defiance campaign
>"okay guys so we're gonna need a pilot! Who wants it?"
>I volunteer after being assured there will be space combat, or at least the chance for me to get in a fighter, roughly every other session
>I model my character around being an engineer, really go all-out learning the ship & space part of the game and make some sweet custom designs for ships.
>he encourages me to keep going this route and acts like it looks so awesome
>queue combat, first time we've been in a hangar. Some fighters are sitting there unmanned
>I ask him if I can hop in one & power up the guns to use the turrets
>oh sure thats cool, go ahead and try!
>I get into the cockpit
>a guy run to grab me out of it
>"can I use a free action to just close the cockpit? Ill make a knowledge check to see if I know this interface.. ok I passed"
>ok you close the cockpit but he seems to also have some kind of remote that opens it
>queue three turns of this fuckwad having the NPC nickel & dime my action economy over a fucking cockpit door. Never once was able to spool up the guns. Friendlies finished the dumb nigger NPC as he was still standing around the cockpit as the last enemy alive.
>we finally get to a goddamn space mission like 6 sessions in
>my skills are all-in on space & DM doesnt know what the fuck is going on. Im basically running the combat and blow the first ship to hell in 1 turn
>"okay at least we have time to man our stations properly before more show up"
>"oh no anon, thats it! That was the entire fight, Good job! Pretty cool eh?"
>months go by
>hey DM didn't you say there'd be more space combat? I'm starting to feel kind of useless...
>"oh no i promise there will be more, i cut some of the modules in the middle of the adventure, but I promise theres more!"
>there was never more

Fuck you, Joe. You're a nice guy, but suffering through your DMing was hell.

>>96667421 (OP)
me

It's very likely that I am a worse GM than the worst I've played under. His game wasn't really even bad-bad, he made an effort to get us to make our characters in advance. I was happy to do charbuilding even with a system and setting I was unfamiliar with, but games felt like walking on eggshells, and the GM was happy to let his GMPC and friends' character already decked out in high-level items lord over a bunch of level 1 newbies.

In honest truth though his game wasn't so bad that I'd quit in a vacuum, it's just that I was trying to GM my own game at the same time, The GM's style was very 'theater of the mind' while I'm a wargamer at heart, and the GM lived on the opposite side of the city, 2h plus each way by public transit and still needing to be picked up from a park-and-ride, only about a third as long straight shot by car.

...but not only have I given up on being an RPG GM, but these days I'm pretty done with being a player. If I try GM'ing again it'll be for a pure or near-pure wargame campaign. It's one thing to be a social retard, it's another to showcase it for an audience and remove all doubt.

>>96677309
Wall of text; Didn't read. Stop listening to retards who say "reddit spacing" and break up your paragraphs. If you don't make it easy for me to read, I won't.

>>96678297
Some more dumb shit DM Joe did
>allowed our clone trooper to use a custom 3x3 AOE rocket launcher
>yet my idea of doing strafing runs with 2x2 AOE was deemed "too broken"
>sometimes he'd forget i was even a fucking pilot. He'd turn & be like, "hey anon, your character is a doctor & a chef right"?
>No Joe, I'm a fucking pilot. But you never give me an opportunity to roll pilot. You're just remembering random Nat 20's i've rolled.
>simplified the last siege mission to the point it wasn't even SWSE anymore. Like some fucked up game of star wars checkers.

Friend of mine who couldn't describe a situation or come up with anything interesting to save his life, nor did he understand that when players didn't have fun, he could just change things from the module he was running. After we went through a bunch of featureless wildernesses, we arrived at a town where my character had to research our destination in a library while the other three players sat outside. We spent three and a half sessions like that: my character running from library to library, the other dudes doing nothing. One left the group over this. After two in-game weeks, I failed the last relevant research check, and an NPC walked up to my char and gave him the info he was looking for. Our group then left town to walk through more featureless wilderness for one session, then we all quietly dropped the game.

>>96667421 (OP)
I am the worst GM I know because I'm not good, I'm trying.
But man am I better than most of the GMs here. It has got to be baby's first attempt GMing.

>>96670327
I left after a single game with them, and this was a completely new group, so I wasn't even expecting much.
Which is why I stress up how bad this guy was - I had ONE (1) session under him and he remains the rock bottom. He was that pinnacle of fucking shit up on every possible level, to the point I made pic related way back when it happened.
My logic when joining that group was more or less "I can always join the group with A, let's see how those randos will work out, maybe I will have two groups to play with". Turns out I should go with the good group right from the start.

It kinda worked out in the end - I easily got spot in the other group that I declined originally, and we were playing together all the way till covid made it impossible (paramedic and nurse in a group)

(1/2) I have a fun story. Greentext to make it easier to type up.

>Ex (female) I am semi-friendly with invites me to 4e game run by her Canadian friend.
>Tells me we need another player.
>My current BF is insanely clingy and possessive, demands to join.
>Everyone loads into Skype and starts a group call.
>Awkward tensions, weird in-jokes, DM and his boyfriend are constantly bickering.
>Whatever, I want to RP.
>We join campaign in session.
>Everyone else has higher level characters.
>DM immediately forces me to play either a Blackguard or another class.
>Annoyed because I was not told about this before I offered to join.
>Unable to quit because BF is having fun.
>Pick Blackguard, get forced to make him in a specific way - DM actually would veto my ideas/options and just railroaded me into a specific build.
>Also stuck with a ton of rare/magical/special gear.
>Interest is at maybe 10%, but BF wants to play.
>BF starts talking a lot about how he is having calls with the DM alone.
>Do not think much about this.
>First session happens.
>Railroaded into a linear, miserable experience.
>Anything not pre-planned by the DM he refuses to acknowledge and just ignores.
>Every other player is a quipping munchkin, sex pest or combination of the two.
>DM has tantrums and sulks/pouts if we roll well.
>Absolute shitshow, but my BF raves about how great it is.
>Stick around reluctantly.
>We get a few months into it, weekly sessions.
>DM ragequits at least four sessions when players get good rolls and do something he does not want.
>Other times DMs boyfriend (who was a player) manages to coddle him into keeping playing.
>DM finally has us come against the BBEG.
>My Blackguard and the party min-max Rogue/Katana class super-ninja manage remarkable rolling and two shot him
>DM starts whining.
>DM stomps off.
>DM BF says he'll be right back.
>Keeps his wireless headphones on.
>DM starts screaming at him.
>DM BF tries to calm him down.
>DM aggrros.
>Hear a loud, meaty thud.
>A fall.

>>96679604
(2/2)

>Hear DM scream and start freaking out.
>We're all in the Skype call still growing increasingly concerned, aside from my BF who is bitching he is not getting enough attention from me.
>Hear yelling, a loud smashing sound.
>Fucking Canadian police were called by a neighbor.
>DM had smashes a large either metal or glass dragon statue into his BFs head.
>DM goes to jail.
>Game ends.
>Later find out that DM was grooming and sending black market "hormone" drugs to my BF who I break up with after I find out he is calling himself a woman and camwhoring.

Shit sucked.

>>96679621
I think this is more indicative of the people you date and are friends with than anything.

I think I could fill an entire afternoon talking about the shit DMs I had, ranking them is difficult
We had a former Friend who would literally play Videogames during the Session, but I only played once with the guy
One guy actually did a quite good job DMing, but he was a total ass outside of game, condescending towards others, who didn´t meet his personal standards and he rarely ran anything, like less than once a year. He was also a total ‘lolsorandum’ as a player
The groups ‘that guy’ was just bad at RP and planning and organizing and reading, per se not bad for a first time DM, just boring and uncreative
The online group I was in, was a total fuckfest. Apparently two players had bullied their pushover from another group into DMing, which sometimes led to a full 30min of arguing over some meaningless Bullshit. But the DM wasn´t just a pushover, he was also an Autist/Incel, whatever, it was quite obvious he wanted to fuck the girl in the group and thus gave her special treatment. He wasn´t that horrible, just a massive waste of my time and as equally uncreative as he was untalented

>>96679604
>>96679621
I genuinely have to agree with the other anon. You are definitely trapped in some kind of cult there. You should honest-to-God consider dissociating with every single one of them. In the words of my Ex, "if you surround yourself with fail, you can only ever expect fail."
>Environmental_Storytelling.jpg

>>96667421 (OP)
My 2nd GM.
We were playing pic related and it went full-on stereotype on the sort of play that's associated with the game and this specific edition
>AD 2005
>Dead serious tone, zero fun allowed
>Mudcore extreme, even for mud wrestling standards
>Muh vertisimmude taken to parody levels (but made 200% serious) before /tg/ was even a thing and coined the meme
>Apocalyptica, Iron Maiden and TSA blasting from the boombox, requring switching CDs every other minute when he needed different track
>The game itself is just endless kinder nationalism flag waving
>Endless slate of early 00s Al-Kaida jokes
>TPK every time we "progressed too much" or "too fast"
>Applying Jesienna Gawęda and bits from Monastyr for a good measure
>All GM rolls are either completely ignored, or blatantly fudged, because as a follower of JG, he didn't consider to be a "lesser being" to roll dice, he came there to tell us an existing story on how a patrol of Turks/Tatars/Cossacks/Russians put our characters on wooden spikes
The guy behind it was closing 40, but it felt more like playing under a petulant 14 yo. But this being 2005, it was either him, or any other random asshat that would run in the exact same style any other game. At least it turned out two other players were half-decent and we found a non-shit GM by early 2006. And I can confirm without a doubt that all the stereotypes around 2e of Dzikie Pola are real, because I went through that shit almost as if following a checklist, except that meme didn't spring up until 2012 or so, when sojs on polter decided to shit on all local-made games..

>>96680214
>>96680721
Trust me, it took the scales off my eyes. Absolutely sucked as a game and a group however. A pouting, petulant, incredible predatory DM - incidentally who also played in a MMORPG I played as an ERP-only character who a futa into SPH (This was all before he did years in prison for attempted murder) was enough to make me shun tabletop for over a decade. Ex's and current relationships at the time aside, he was very much a That Guy and it only gets worse, because in the hours past typing my post he came up with a few of the lads and one of them has concrete evidence that not only did he know the same DM, but that the DM was trying to solicit sexual and non-sexual pictures of my friends younger brother, back when they met through a gaming section of the Ctrl-Alt-Delete comic forum.

>>96667421 (OP)
Me in high school, unfortunately.

>>96681285
>Spoiler
Excuse me? Story time that shit.

>>96669289
this seems like a very jewish webm
were payed anywhere near 7k to post it?

>>96668048
He gives as little information as possible, forcing you to ask questions about every minute detail to such an extreme that it completely stalls the game for even the most basic things that your character should be able to see without a check?

>>96681305
Many such cases. Hope your games are better anon.
>>96671947
3.5 was a dark time.

>>96681778
Not much to storytime. Dude played a futa alien who was into SPH and would pester -everyone- they met in the RP zone to go to an instance and make fun of how small their characters penis was. They heard we played the same MMO and dropped their handle, which I unfortunately, immediately recognized as one of the sex pests who was infamous on the server.

>>96681872
Yes. Here's more of that story:
>Other player: "How far is it?"
>DM: "Jumping distance"
>Nigga, how the fuck am I not going to notice that shit?
>Get to the next roof fine, follow the footprints
>Ends at the edge
>Look for another building. Yes, a building is there.
>Other player: "Is it just one?"
>DM: Shit-eating grin, followed by "No, there are multiple of them."
>Meanwhile Kender guy actually has d% dice he rolls every now and then "to determine if he cares"
>Kender guy decides to 'fuck off cause he's bored' and walks into town, with the halfling thief following him to keep an eye on him
>Fuck it, don't need them.
>Other player manages to get DM to skip this rooftop nonsense
>DM: "You're at a warehouse."
>. . .
>. . . . . .
>. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>"And?"
>DM: "That's it."
>"What kind of warehouse is it? Describe it."
>DM: "It's your standard warehouse."
>Ooookay?
>Search around the building
>Forced to roll a search check
>. . .to find a common door in the back
>Try the door.
>Locked.
>Try fiddling with it for ten minutes cause the Kender is the only one with lockpicking skills.
>We can't get it open.
>Other player: "Are there any windows that we can see?"
>DM: "yes, there are."
>"Where are they? How far away are there? How big are they?"
>DM: "Uh. . .I dunno, like, 2 or 3 feet apart from each other?"
>"No, I mean, how far away are the windows from us?"
>DM: "Oh, uh, I dunno, like, three feet from the waist?"
>"wat. You mean they start at the waist and go up across the building?"
>DM: "Yeah"
>. . .

>>96681935
NO! Not that part, the murder part.

>>96681912
>Hope your games are better anon.
I ran a campaign I was really proud of through 2023 into 24, told a good story, players still tell me they miss it.

>>96681949
It was described >>96679621

>>96682050
Thanks anon, I somehow skipped that part when I read that post earlier.

>>96667438
A double-edged sword, the worst GM I ever personally experienced was also the wake-up call that made me realize I was That Guy making the game unfun for other players. Its a shitty thing to do, and I would have come to that realization eventually on my own as I grew up (I was just a shitty teenager), but ultimately I got better because of it.
>Regular group for many years
>All friends with minor gripes, the usual stuff any friend group has with enough time together
>We all jabbed at each other in good humor, except for much later when it wasn't in good humor anymore and somebody actually got mad and left
>But thats a lot later
>Playing World of Darkness
>My rolls are fucking terrible and I'm not enjoying myself because I can't accomplish even simple tasks
>GM is explicitly targeting my character for mistreatment by NPCs
>Confront him about it in front of the group
>He admits it, says he doesn't like me
>Half the group has an issue with it, half the group agrees
>None of them willing to take my side over the GM's though so I'm effectively blackballed from all future campaigns
>Still on the fringes, play in short side campaigns here and there
>Group implodes due to self-inflicted drama
I went years without playing any games after this before I found another group online willing to put up with my growing pains as a Forever GM. For my part I did the research into good and bad GM's and listened to what my players wanted. Today my guiding light is that no matter how much someone at my table pisses me off, I never sink so low as that GM who targeted me.

>>96682183
>A double-edged sword, the worst GM I ever personally experienced was also the wake-up call that made me realize I was That Guy making the game unfun for other players
If it helps, I had a very reverse thing going. After a string of utterly terrible GMs, I decided to be the good guy, save the group and GM for them, avoiding all the mistakes the others were making
Loot? Enormous and boundless, so we could move to the fun stuff.
Enemies? Tailor made for the party to deal with.
Quests? Idiot-proofed by describing them to my non-gaming parents, and if they could figure it out, anyone could
NPCs? Elaborated on and with actual effort and notes to keep them consistent, rather than convenient
End result: everyone being fed up, sick and tired of my GMing, as there was no real challenge and the group disbanding until they pushed to lvl 7, which I deemed the actual point where it should have started (without realising I could just start the campaign at lvl 7, being back then 13 and not really reading the rules sufficient enough)
I fucked up big time and my incompetence was made worse by attempt to over-compensate for the horrid experience under prior GMs.

>>96667421 (OP)
for some reason,
Bad GMs tend to like World of Darkness, FATE, and Lancer....

>>96682222
Bad GMs tend to like:
>the second most popular game line of all time

>>96682222
What a terrible waste of good quads

>>96682183
on the bright side you changed yourself that's really good. plenty of those *that guy* who never do.

>>96679604
>Ex (female)
>My current bf
>DM and his boyfriend

Well there's your problem.

>>96667421 (OP)
>just started group project at uni 2nd year
>meet bro (let's call him James) for the first time
>James is late for every single prep meeting for our project and always leaves early
>whatever he sounds like a cool dude
>mention I play d&d, he invites me to join a new campaign he's setting up

>go to his apartment that weekend
>apartment is tiny and the floor is literally covered in moulding food
>also there's like blood and sharpie writing all over the wall
>kinda red flag but willing to overlook it bc he seems nice
>start campaign, the problems begin

>Jamie ONLY ever talks to one member of the party, Mike
>Constantly railroads the party, never even the hint of choice or decision-making
>Mike always plays along and does whatever Jamie implies he should do
>literally 3/5 of us just sitting there on our phones because we have nothing to do
>constantly adding new characters, 10+ each session with full backstories that we're expected to memorize
>whenever one of us tries to interact in any way, Jamie acts very suspicious and accusatory and immediately undoes any action he doesn't like
>often battles are unwinnable to progress the story
>any attempt to fight back in a way that could affect the outcome causes Jamie to flip out
>frequently mutters insults under his breath, favourite being "oh my god these guys are retarded"
>sometimes violently throws dice at players
>plays "battle music" and it's like shit from Nikelodeon cartoons and so loud I can't hear what he's saying
>CONSTANTLY EATING during the session (yes he is a fat fuck)

>and worst of all:
>constantly ghosts me about the project for uni (which we need to pass)
>whenever I ask for progress updates he insists he's preoccupied with "writing for the campaign"
Ahhhh this guy pisses me off so much but he thinks we're like close friends or something and I don't have the heart not to go to his sessions

>>96667421 (OP)
The one that inspired me to DM myself.

He basically turned my sister into an ecchi anime character with constant wardrobe malfunctions. He didn't get how uncomfortable it was making her, so we left early.

A few weeks later I DMed Curse of Strahd for a few friends, and even today they say it was one of the most fun games they've ever played.

>>96682607
That's the reason why I'm avoiding D&D players as much as it is possible.

>>96667421 (OP)
>Acne-blasted DM who would hang around LGS suggesting a homebrew campaign.
>Decide to join with a group of three other guys.
>Play as a witch and use an AI pic since I don't like xitter homosexuals.
>Bro starts simping. For the time being I was allowed to have anything I wanted.
For context: I am a 20-year-old, tall, pale, hairy white man with more body fat than the average harbor seal on a good day.
>He introduces a DMPC in the tavern at the dawn of session 0 and can barely hide his obsession with this bitch.
>Seven-foot-tall pitch-black gnoll with blood red eyes, built like a truck.
>Other players leave as DM focuses entirely on me.
>Shortly after, a "perverted old drunkard" approaches my character and tries to assault her.
>Immediately my witch gives him testicular torsion and an aneurism.
>DMPC starts praising her, talking about how he was a hero across some big kingdom and that he'd never seen someone like her.
>She stops time and opens a portal to the 40k warp beneath him.
>DM decides that having the power to banish people to the warp is fine at level one and in another universe, but doing it to his character isn't.
>Leave the table before he can continue talking.

>>96678294
Why didn't you walk out before the first session? No D&D is better than D&D with these people.

(1/2)

Myself
>Early days getting into Tabletop. Watch videos, study OP builds that people post.
>Understand 5e down to its core pretty well.
>Unaware I have build some kind of ego where I believe what is best for a "good campaign."

>Gather friends who have also been wanting to try.
>Big 7 man group, I'll call three players Paladin, Orc and Bard.
>Orc has the same love for worldbuilding, resident group artist.
>Bard is like me, nogames for most of life but studied the games and yearned for this.
>Paladin is one of those genuine pure sweet people. Sunshine cinnamon roll, just excited to be included.

>Orc keeps taking big risks, rolls bad then gets punished for it.
>Stealing, Fighting Guards, Splitting from the party.
>Keeps asking what their character's motivation could be to stay with the group.
>Get fed up with the question.
>Imprisoned, Reroll character that actually wants to go on adventures
>Seemingly manage to placate the group enough with story reasons and we continue
>Fun fanart he draws takes a nosedive

>Bard pushes the game to the limit.
>Amicably rule lawyering at each other for the sake of understanding the game better..
>Aware I like to punish mistakes, Actions have consequences DM.
>Tailor adventure specifically around his character.
>Crumbling Sky Castle, Falling rocks, Falling to your Death almost everywhere.
>CR creature that I know the Bard knows is too high for the group to handle so they avoid it.
>High tension, High risk but they are doing good. Have some insane rewards waiting for them at an altar.
>Get giddy thinking about the Bards reaction when he gets items I know he'll love for a job well done.
>"Ok guys we gotta gtfo, jump and I'll featherfall"
>I panic and break the rules for the first time telling him he can't cast spells anymore. Bullshit excuse given. Try to comb it over with story reasons again.
>Railroad them to the loot but Bard feels cheated. All the rule debating came to a dead stop because I can veto whenever I please anyway

>>96667421 (OP)
A guy who was running on con this year test plays of Dragonbane
>Official stand of the local publisher
>Official event intended to promote the game
>Manned by a college kid, who is clearly and obviously drunk
>And it's barely 11 AM
>And gets completely wasted by 5 PM, when he was escorted out by security
It's not that he was unprepared or that his scenario was boilerplate (it's a promo event, of course it's railroaded boilerplate). It's the sheer, in-your-face brazen attitude that makes him the worst. He easily beats my first GM (since we were in high school and it was literally our first game at all, so both he and us were learning on the go) or that asshole from 2009 who obsessively railroaded and was doing TPKs by next session when any of the players questioned his style. Or the various randos from one-shots in the LGS, since the pure lottery of quality was integral part of the experience. This was an official fucking event and it was manned by some random college kid that barely prepared for it in the first place and then decided that getting wasted is the best course of action.

>>96683743
>Early days getting into Tabletop. Watch videos,
>Watch videos
You need to be 18 to use this site

>>96683743
(2/2)

>Paladin, a polar opposite of me and Bard
>Doesn't understand what half in their toolkit does, applies even less.
>He feels like useless dead weight during the most of the game.
>I tell the Bard he can't help him with his combat moves. Felt like the Bard was just playing 2 character to me.
>Because of all the time I've put into mastering 5e (lmao) I basically tell him to get good.
>Expect Bard to be on my side on wanting the Paladin to put the same autistic meta-slave effort we put in.
>Doesn't happen so I just give Paladin some overpowered shit and take it easy on him during combat.
>I think I'm being subtle enough about it
>He starts losing interest, but still really wants to hang out with the group and have fun
>Snap at him occasionally to lock tf in when I feel like he's dragging combat again.

>During the setup of the second to last dungeon the group suddenly shuts down hard.
>Like a clueless captain unaware of the mutiny happening I try to keep the ship sailing.
>Get surprise confronted at the next session. Paladin sobbing a bit during.
>Aside from all the shit I pulled in game they tell me I behave super differently during DnD
>The unfounded ego comes to light. It becomes impossible to defend myself.
>Wrap the campaign up early.

I was so obsessed with the suspension of disbelief that I rarely talked OOC aside from hard rules and combat.
Lack of communication and thinking you cover for everything with cool cinematic ICRP swings was extremely retarded of me.
.
Entire thing could've been prevented by simply pulling away the curtain for a bit.
>Talk with the Orc about his character motivations
>Tell the Bard that they have completed the dungeon and now the hard earned reward awaits.
>Help Paladin understand the game better and teach him
>Ask for any kind of feedback ever.

Group shrank to just Bard, Paladin and 2 of the others.
We still play weekly and I'm thankful that we handled it like adults and I'm a much better DM for it.

My buddy decided to pick up being a dm and was fine to begin with, but he started doing bad dm things until it became almost like he was trying to be a bad dm.

Railroading story, making choices about how players would upgrade their stuff (usually be only providing a very specific type of kit, or drafting the character into a story where he played the character for like 10 minutes), forcing people to use the dice he bought per character, and trying to make use his raw materials sale system.

I quit and didn't come back after hoping it would get better after half a year of this shit. I feel dumb that I wasted so much time at his table.

>>96683754
You can get into stuff in your 30's kiddo, Just so you know that life doesn't end when you will finally reach drinking age.

>>96683793
>I am 30!
[Zoomering intensifies]

>>96683743
>>96683763
Jesus, jokes of the other anon about your age (which is still fucking low, no sane adult would do shit like this), this is like the checklist of "Shit not to do". Right from starting with watching youtube nobodies and getting into 5e.
I always wonder how this actually happens that those mistakes are so fucking common with newfags. Like what in their mind gives them the impression to be vindictive or doing the good ol' "What's your motivation to be in this group". Because this predates youtube nobodies drilling it into people in their retarded "15 things your campaign MUST have" bullshit

>>96683812
I haven't posted on 4chan in a while. I forgot the charming novelty of random little haters.
Good to know that you are a person that obediently follows the rules of websites and you click away when you see 18+ though. Mama raised you well.

>>96683835
>Still mad over being called underage
>Still replying like a raging kiddo
Stay mad, just don't blame anyone when you start to get bald from this by your mid-20s

>>96667421 (OP)
A VtM story teller who knew less about thr system than I, a first time player, did and was flabbergasted when I and the other players pointed out he was running combat wrong.

He also had intolerable Mary Sue Anarch DMPC that everyone hated which drove the players to drive the local camarilla to ally with the sabbat and cut the DMPC and anarchs out of the alliance cause they spent the entire peace meeting trying to start shit and being ignored by the PCs.

Game fell apart when he had one of the bluest liberal puke cities in America get flooded with open hunters with a heavy Christian iconography outright executing suspected vampires and ghouls in the middle of the city. It fell apart cause he, a non American, had a melty when the Americans in the group started celebrating how good this was cause it'd ruin the city and make it vampire paradise as he'd said it had been taken over by the hunter group, openly and was sure to be invaded by the full might and dick of the US military because a extremist group had taken over a major city and started purging in its streets

Which he apparently thought was day to day in the good ol US of A, so we just stopped playing with the retard. It was a, the straw that broke the Camels back, sort of thing.

>>96683839
>Projecting
Oof sorry.

>>96683827
It was still that grey age where the internet was somewhat informative but the engagement bait content was starting to rise.

I know better now and thankfully didn't lose any friends over it.

>>96683881
>N-no, u!
Seething much?

>>96683907
>It was still that grey age where the internet was somewhat informative but the engagement bait content was starting to rise.
This was never true for TTRPG. It was always bunch of DnDrones preaching the dumbest things about [most recent edition] and bunch of grafters preaching equally dumb shit about [previous editions]. It's like this since 3e came out and predating youtube.
There is exactly ONE (1) guy doing videos on TTRPG outside of the graft and actually covering more than just DnD and adjacent while doing it on quality and giving sound advice - and he has his own problems and hang-ups, so your mileage might vary with him anyway. There is another guy who does this in form of a blog, so not even videos. That gives us grand total of two people in this business not giving shit advice and having vast experience with different systems to draw from. Given your post, you never stumbled at either of them back when getting into the hobby, which explains the problems you've recreated. No names, because I'm against online graft in general.

Besides, that still doesn't answer the basic question:
Why newfags always think being vindictive is the way to go. It's an overwhelming majority, and yet it happens time and again

>>96683954
That's true, I was speaking of internet as a whole. I wrongly assumed the same for the hobby. I was unlucky to have never found the good ones. I still watch some but only for the sake of reviewing new ttrpgs coming out.

Thinking you are right is the baseline for a lot of human conflict and our education punishes being wrong.
Doomed to repeat sadly.

>>96683066
You fucking idiot. Stop going to those sessions.

Man, I have several, not sure which can be worst
A few snippers would be

>DM 1 makes game
>is about epics action packed stuff
>always describes the most horrid shit ever for some reason
>like snot, shit, piss, filth and sewers
>also never commits to the actual games skips several weeks in a row meaning the action packed scenes get ruined as we forget what the fuck we were doing
Ended up leaving after he said "if you don't like it you can leave".

>DM 2 makes game
>allows homebrew
>is also a pushover and is afraid of insulting players or making them upset
>which ends up in him allowing all homebrew given and then spending sessions retconning it because "uhm ahah actually that's kind of strong"
Players got pissed and group dissolved.

>DM 3 makes game
>Based on Undertale/Deltarune
>one of the players basically stalk my character
>do everything I can to avoid them
>DM for some reason force me in situations with said characters
Ended up leaving after ripping my own heart out.

>DM 4 makes game
>fun simple 5e game
>join with friend
>game goes fairly well
>priestess to a deity of Loki prays
>two bears appear
Me and my friend exiled ourselves to the wastelands after witnessing zoophilia.

I can probably come up with actual stories but it wouldn't be anything that outrageous or infuriating, the highlight is pretty much all there is to 'em.

>>96683667
Genuinely "train wreck observer" syndrome. I knew in my heart I should have left, but the DM was a good friend of mine at the time who had been in my other games and he was doing his first DM stint for me, and I was having a blast retelling the story to a friend at the time. I mean, c'mon, with those descriptions? It sounds like the set up of a joke. (Except the joke is on me.)

>>96681174
Dunno, I fondly remember my own campaign about removing Emir al-Kebab and liberating his harem straight from Bakhchysarai. But I had a GM who came from 7th Sea background, so he understood what a swashbuckler is.
I miss times when 2e wasn't infested by edgelords and kuce, thou. The golden period was 2009 till about 2012-13.
Still, if someone would pull 1e, I would just play it without a second of hesitation. Epic game that sadly got forgotten and if people run Dzikie Pola at all, it's 2e and it's 2e with kuce.

>>96667421 (OP)
Not including one shots or first timers?
I’ve only had a few but the “worst” started as a 7 or 8 out of 10 then slowly began to slide into a 4 or 5.

He was a massive neckbeard (literally) and kind of ogre-ish in his demeanor, which always rubbed me the wrong way. He was best friend with one player and always kind of worked with him on some stuff and gave him little boons but he also was clearly manipulative and controlling of him, which always felt a little homo but whatever.

I joined the group about a year into the campaign and initially it was fun; he loved worldbuilding and was incredibly well organized. He knew the system and made fair calls. If anything he was too lenient with players at first.

But as time went on some Marvel fanboy brainrot and some D&D podcast shit really began to take over his mentality and by the end of year 3 we were all sitting around the table waiting for him to finish describing every detail around us in his masterpiece world, and inevitably making him quit in frustration mid-session when we didn’t want to indulge his furry DMPCs or take obvious plot hooks to lead to the NEXT super original location with several pages of unique culture to be explained and twelve more names to learn so we can almost accomplish nothing.

That and he ran 5e, which is just irresponsible DMing in itself.

>>96667421 (OP)
A woman a long time ago, she broke up the table with her fucking drama. She needs an actual Dungeon Master to tie her up and teach her obedience and when to shut the fuck up.

>>96685433
>Things that never happened in a game that wasn't held

>>96685582
>Things that never happened in a game that wasn't held
I wish it didn't. It was my first campaign, COS. Broke up less than two months in. Never fucking underestimate just how strange reality can be.

>>96685644
>I play games, trust me, bro
Nigger, AI could generate more convincing posts than your boilerplate bullshit

>>96678349
Sounds like a you problem buddy.

>>96683827
people with no social skills jumping feet-first into a social hobby because they think it's like the fiction they consume

>>96677102
why would you put up with this

>>96670248
>he doesn't know this board has DOZENS of tranons posting
Anon... you could be talking to one RIGHT NOW

>>96689553
I was the forever DM for our group and was keen to be a player after being DM for the last like 5 campaigns before that.

>>96667421 (OP)
For me it was the one time we didn't have fun. Even in the lowest of expectations.
>Set up a game with a group at a comic place
>Regulars decide to tell us our table is ackshuly being used. The one we reserved a month in advance.
k
>Join some D&D table that has 8 people, me and friend are the 9th and 10th players.
>Two other guys are on laptops playing WoW. GM says nothing
>GM tries to be a funny guy, gets us right into things. Invasion, there is a war camp and we need to get in.
>Okay let's take a stealthy approach....the rest of us plan it out. Takes 40 minutes because everyone has a thing to add. But we all agre-
>Laptop player: Ackshully here is why it won't work.
>Add on another 20 minutes. Okay sounds good. we agree let'-
>Laptop player 2: Nah that is a bad plan and here is wh-
THIS GOES ON FOR 3 HOURS BEFORE WE TAKE A BREAK. The GM just sat there the whole time and let these two retards keep shutting down plans. We ended up not taking the fort....
>Return from the break. They left. A bunch of other people left.
>The rest of the story is just some shitty encounter with trying to sneak around an alligator in a swamp because he got bored and moved the story to a different module I guess
>Me and friend head home...I apologize that we wasted our time.
>"Nah dude. Didn't waste any time. Just showed what we gotta avoid at our table."

>>96667421 (OP)
I moved in to a new city and decided to join a Pathfinder group. The GM was an American guy in his late 30s, who looked like an ex-Marine.
It's as if he was following every page in the book on what *not* to do when you GM:
>Doesn't run game as much as just straight *read* the scenario
>Consequently, the games are completely railroaded. Basically you go from one encounter to another, with a short reading of a description in between
>The dude is barely literate, reads very painfully and slowly, stumble upon every words that's over three syllables long
>He has a DMPC which always has the upper hand in every combat encounter
>He is completely goon-brained, with every single NPC trying to fuck every single female PC, including when said PC is played by a girl (which happened a few times). Including when said girl was my girlfriend.
>I had the bad idea of creating a female PC on one occasion, an old witch. She ended up being raped on the first scenario she was introduced in
>Whenever you tried to do anything non-combat related, he would make you roll multiple time for every single aspect of it, if you failed once you failed everything. Which means trying to do anything outside of combat always failed and it was pointless to even try
Still, the guy was there running games every weekend, week after week and I will always be grateful for that. Bless you D, love you to death buddy.

>>96668274
>and outright bullying at worse
Pussy. Fuck off back to Preddit.

>>96678294
>DM who unironically failed the Sally-Anne test a few times
Oof

>>96697895
I'll actually tell you the story behind that.
>During a dungeon crawl, we stumble into a magic trap the DM had set up.
>If these two skulls were positioned so that they could see each other, then they would both start clacking and making noise if their line of sight was broken by a living creature.
>After the fight, we just take the skulls.
>Much, much later, we're trying to spy on a city that had been overwhelmed by a demon army.
>Crawl up to a very tall hill to get a good look at the city with my spyglass.
>Having had similar interactions with this DM constantly inserting "surprises" on us, I thought about covering my rear.
>Remembered the skulls.
>Set them up in the bushes so they are kind of hidden.
>Start spying
>DM has me roll perception.
>Manage to roll high.
>A demon was sneaking up on me.
>After I take care of it, I go and check on the skulls.
>One of them was turned around.
>DM: "Yeah, he saw you setting them up, so he just came up and turned one of them around."
>Me, drained for other reasons that campaign, dryly and passive-aggressively say "Huh. That's very interesting that the demon knew exactly how these skulls worked without ever having interacted with them before."
>DM, starts profusely sweating now "Oh...uhhhh...he...uh....h-he saw that you were carefully positioning them, so he realized that it was important somehow."
>Didn't address any of the other multitude of questions that presented.
>Just dropped it and walked away.
God that campaign was such a huge mess, and that one interaction connected so many dots for me on why.

The campaign almost came to a screeching halt when the same DM sprung a trap on the players where the demon army had a magic item of ours that had a hidden property we never really discovered or interacted with to track down a MacGuffin the enemy had no idea we had to steal it away from us while we weren't looking, and our only clue was a single gag of that item in a ridiculous location.

>>96667421 (OP)
One of my friends insisted on running D&D 5e.

>>96667421 (OP)
My genuinely autistic friend from my long-running RPG group that's been together about 15 years now.
>comes up with vaguely interesting premises but never fleshes them out, resulting in the first 1-3 sessions having decent plot and then it's barebones filler for 2-6 months before he gets bored and throws us into the final bossfight
>very little ability to come up with things on the fly, often just goes "ehh, uhh, I'm not sure, I didn't plan for that" if the PC's deviate at all from what he had planned out
>his idea of challenging combat encounters is adding tons of basic enemies, buffing their HP until they're all damage sponges, and upping their AC to make combat-focused PC's hit roughly 1/4th of the time - even the most basic combats will take 2-3 hours
>gets petty and vindictive if the players are doing "too well", will very obviously fudge his rolls
>has an autistic fixation with inserting generic-brand batman and the joker into every one of his games, got very mad the one time we killed not!joker for terrorizing a city and killing a dozen people
>9/10 the final encounter is the PC's dealing with the big bad's #2 guy while his DMPC heroically faces the real villain on his own
The weirdest part to me though is that despite being a dogshit DM he's a great player, he'll happily jump into whatever role he's fulfilling in a party both mechanically and RP-wise, he takes initiative and often leads the party, does a decent job thinking through problems and encounters, etc.

>>96685118
>which always felt a little homo but whatever.
I adore this statement lmfao

>>96700091
Yeah he is a total shit DM. Sometimes I feel like I am a shit DM until I realize that I don't do this shit and it immediately puts me in the top 50% of DMs.

>>96667421 (OP)
I've com to learn there are no bad DMs, just bad systems and/or bad players

>>96700466
Oh believe me buddy
There are bad GMs
There are so fucking many bad GMs

>>96678297
On one hand he shouldn't have promised something he couldn't deliver, on the other hand what were you expecting the other players to do while you and the GM were engaged in space combat?

>Approved a party full of opportunists, got mad that we weren't acting like paragons of justice all the time
>Asked us for the general personalities of the NPCs in our backstories, ignored them and then got mad when we said he got them wrong
>Shoved references regardless of whether they were thematically appropriate, i.e. a country full of literal space marines in a high fantasy, no magitek world
>Hung on to a stray comment about how fun it would be if we had a cool base (which was said multiple months before we actually had any real clue about the campaign), his implementation was to throw us into a random set of ruins with NPCs who were antagonistic towards us and who asked us for up to 7k gold for pretty shit benefits. Got mad that we pointed out the NPC thing and also that our group had turned out too nomadic to really benefit from a base
>Would throw us into theatre of the mind scenes and then whine when we asked for details such as "are there multiple paths in this cave"
>Forbid us from discussing the campaign in his presence because we would either guess an incoming twist or have a better idea than what he had planned and that "made him feel self-conscious"
>None of the antagonists had any agency because they were all manipulated by the big bad, whose one and only motive was "to cause chaos"
>Turns out none of our characters had any agency in starting our journeys either because his super cool mysterious NPC was behind every single one of our inciting incidents
>Half the plot was resolved offscreen in the game he was DMing just for his girlfriend
It's not hard to choose the worst when your sample size is 2 but the contrast is genuinely astounding

>>96700466
So when did you hit your head?

>>96699154
I cringed out of second-hand embarrassment.
Fortunately all the GMs I've had passed the test or admitted the player right when the mistake was pointed out.

>>96702439
*was right

Most are just kinda boring
The guy who runs a module but doesn't read more than one page ahead. Ignored half the actual cool stuff the module had and didn't bother fixing the bad. (I read it afterwards)

The guy who just kinda runs things on fiat without knowing how to put any sort of interesting decision in front of the players.

The guy who has the apocalypses start all of a sudden on session 2/3 but didn't actually plan for us to do anything during the apocalypse.

>>96686247
imagine white-knighting for women that don't even exist
i hope she sees this post, lad

>>96676708
It sounds like bad communication. The DM was running some flirty bullshit game and the player wanted a normal fighty game.

>>96667447
Wheaty? I was in one of his games as well, though he actually did manage to do half of a session.

>>96706006
Doesn't sound like the name of the DM we had, but it could always be a different account.

I found a Reddit post a few weeks later with the exact same MO that I originally thought one of the people in my games posted it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/comments/1m8m95l/party_got_dingdongdmditched/

Luckily, we managed to find everyone and get a good DM to run the game.

>>96702992
>The guy who runs a module but doesn't read more than one page ahead. Ignored half the actual cool stuff the module had and didn't bother fixing the bad. (I read it afterwards)
Had this aswell. Why do they do this? Why make us jump through the boring hoops then don't make it lead to cool stuff, but rather to more boring stuff?

>>96667421 (OP)
>first session, we start at jail
>every time we try to do anything we instantly fail and get punished with a graphic description of what happens
>with time we just gave up waiting for some obvious hook or the overpowered dmpc
>even doing nothing the gm keeps torturing us with more and more complex descriptions
>at the end of the session all players agree to never play again and tell the gm
>dude goes bananas and even tries to badmouth the group online after

>>96711236
What the fuck was the purpose of this? That's not even fetish material.

The ones who started and quit after 1-2 sessions

I'm probably the worst dm I know have a short attention span, I overprepare all the wrong things, and underprepare all the right ones.

I basically handwave a lot and go by gutfeel; I expect characters to be integrated into the setting, but other than that, I say go wild.

My aspiration is to find people to participate in, or even run a "Westmarches" campaign, in my original but fairly derivative hybrid skirmish/rpg system and setting.

>>96667421 (OP)
a railroader

>>96667421 (OP)
I had a really fun DM until he ruined the group during COVID lockdowns because he had to know how many jabs you took, before he’d play again, after hiding for over a year. I moved on because who wants to spend time with a bunch of propagandize retards. Boring. Sad part is, the game was going well and the DM was decent, until he lost his mind over the coof.

>>96667421 (OP)
Archer.

>Online game with randoms
>DM actually rocks and we have plenty of fun.
>Does good voiceacting, sound effects on the spot, improvs well.
>Funny characters like an aged out bar wench that moonlights as a low-level information broker, a goblin who works construction and needs us to intimidate an inspector because none of his shit is up to code etc.
>Modwat through the second session DM just abruptly quits after finishing an NPCs line.
>Deletes discord
>Unfriends everyone
>Add him to inquire what's up.
>Get hit with a walltext about how he's a retarded loser who'll never have friends or gf and why even bother etc etc.
>Literally hadn't had a negative interaction with him up until he sperged.

>>96722228
He sounds like he's utterly insufferable irl

>>96667421 (OP)
Worst dm I had was probably this. I am pretty sure I posted this before. It got much worse than this though.

>He refuses to play or use anything besides 5e
>Make a monk before he said it was a Nordic setting. Offer to roll up a barbarian or make the monk themed as wildman instead or something.
>tell's me it's fine before proceeding to make every encounter somehow resist or hurt unarmed attacks.
>Passive aggressively gives gear and items to other members besides me
>Wants to give low money to encourage party splitting for different jobs then gives hard encounters while asking why did you split the party up.
>Game takes place as a show of sorts, where all adventurers are watched through magical scrying and have their own little cameras that follow them around.
>Eventually gets to a low tier dungeon filled with traps.
>Any magical means to detect traps do not work, any means or clever actions to find the traps do not work, etc.
>The traps it turns out are only there to stop people going through a door before pulling levers.
>Did not draw the dungeon since he thought it was a waste of time but gotm ade when we did not know where we were going or explore enough.
>Dungeon ends with doors locking behind us in a boss room with treasure and an npc we worked with who got captured.
>NPC breaks out and helps defeat the boss.
>Just then some random high level dude comes in and forcefully takes all the stuff in the room somehow. Acts like the rival bad guy who will steal everything and gloats how there is no proof
>Any attempt to ask why a high level guy would be here, how the cameras did not catch him gloating about being a cheat, how the NPC we helped was important enough to vouch for us, and how the doors were closed before this guy even got here make the DM angrier and angrier.

Eventually it got to the point where the DM just made shit up as he went to make this work somehow.

>>96667421 (OP)
A good friend of mine. Great guy–if a bit self-centered–and the one who introduced me to D&D twenty years ago, but boy he was hell to play with.

> New game, Cleric PC
> First day in the city, asks some guys for directions to the main temple
> Follow their direction
> They follow you, jump you, and knock you out, no you can't do anything about it, I mean I will let you try but you're 1st level so a single hit is enough to do you in
> You wake up chained in a basement and they raped you like Pulp Fiction, isn't this hilarious?

One of the main reason I went to become a ForeverDM within six month of discovering D&D.

I had other railroading and DMNPCing DMs, but he firmly takes the cake for worse.

>>96669276
I will ascribe the mirror not actually mirroring the guy to chaos shenanigans

>>96669336
>I don't know. Nobody needs to reach for their crotch every two minutes unless they're doing. I get a quick itch, but dude was lingering. He could've been drunk too.

I dunno.
I will tell you man, during some long relaxed game at my house that I ran in sweater pants, after a while I sorta fell into resting one hand on my leg under my baggy pants (but not in my underwear), guess the warm fleece feeling was kinda comforting

>>96701211
>On one hand he shouldn't have promised something he couldn't deliver, on the other hand what were you expecting the other players to do while you and the GM were engaged in space combat?
Whose idea was it to have a pilot character? The player or the GM? That part is important.

>>96668365
>he was a stereotypical reddit mod type of person. way too pc, way too much of a pussy to do anything that could be considered interesting
Got any stories with some of these moments? I imagine him shitting himself after one of your PCs used a slur against a goblin.

>>96669276
>>96669282
>>96669646
Tell us your stories, Goddamnit.

>>96671947
>"These rooms are so small" while moving his character through a room the size of the entire battlemat
One of my players for sure. Group voted 5e and I was DMing and allowed feats. Of course the player that usually tries to make the game tedious picks Sharpshooter (old version, I don't know what it's like with the 2024 rules) and complains constantly because surprise, few battles take place 600 feet away from enemies on empty fields.

>>96670248
>How'd trannies showed up if the recruiting was done on 4chan?
Ah, you must be new here. Just know that everything you heard in the news was a lie.

This friend of a friend.
There was my friend, one other guy he knew, his GM friend, and me. I'd never met any of my friend's friends.
We were playing a one-shot CoC scenario. I quickly made my character, a big game hunter.
Something odd was happening at an isolated mansion and we drove up to check it out. It was dark when we arrived. When we got out of the car the front doors opened and a servant invited us in. The GM also mention that we might have heard/seen something in the dense trees next to the mansion.
My character, being an experienced hunter, decides to check what the noise could be, while the two other guys go inside.
GM turns to me and goes: "You're dead".
Then he continues the game with the other two guys.
I kept waiting for something to make sense. Maybe we're all supposed to die and return as zombies? Maybe I'll return as a possessed body? But no, I had to sit there for 30 minutes until he gave me a new character, a policeman stopping by, to play as.
I've no idea what his thought was. Perhaps he didn't really want me in the game and just wanted to play with the two guys he knew? Perhaps he panicked and couldn't come up with something?
Never played with him again.

>>96730479
This isn't a DM, it's a fucktard in a monkeysuit.
Beat him with bricks, anon.

>>96667447
trolling via discord, at least its not grooming.

>>96722228
Hell is other people

>>96682212
I have a friend who kinda DMs like this, in a very pro-player way for lack of a better way to put it. But he balances it out with enough difficulty that our victories still always feel earned and sometimes when he does go overboard with loot etc. he'll just openly retcon it lmao

Notably in one game he gave us 5,000 platinum pieces in the opening session, only to later reveal they were chocolate fakes.

>>96683170
The whole system's rigged, we all know the riggers.

>>96734458
He sounds like he learnt GMing based on video games, while also being retarded.

>>96731453
>>96669282 here, there isn't really much to tell, I was just bad, bad at prep, railroad, thought I was much better at improv than I was. I'm still not great, I lose interest in things too fast but always set out to do grand campaigns because I am a moron, but I'm better at prepping and improv now, at least.

There was also a series of Delta Green games I ran drunk and high on pharmaceuticals and cocaine, but so were my players so I don't know if that counts.

Dm wouldn't let my kender have his pockets ability. Leland, fuck you and your shitty games

>>96683066
>frequently mutters insults under his breath, favourite being "oh my god these guys are retarded"
>sometimes violently throws dice at players
Why would you even envision accepting this?
>I don't have the heart not to go to his sessions
Jesus Christ, man up, the guy is treating you like a doormat.
Throwing stuff at you? Guy should be lucky not to have his teeth bashed in.
Bad hygiene is already enough of a red flag. It doesn't matter what he does in his daily life, if he can't even be bothered to clean up when he's having people over, then he doesn't give a shit about you.

>>96683337
>with more body fat than the average harbor seal on a good day
Considering you used the style from an artist notably known for his NTR, blacked and likewise stuff for your character, I'm not surprised.

>>96667421 (OP)
A dude supposedly running campaigns often in the past.
Pretty decent ideas for his setting, but the guy was anything but subtle and very pissy when people picked any hints.
I managed to call out most of his twists (while staying in character): "good" NPC being VERY suspicious, birds being used as survey drones by the evil order of druids (he got really pissy when I used my sling and killed one, and basically forced a second encounter upon us even though we were already drained from the one just before, just to "punish" us)... he also had pretty much every NPC I talked with calling me either a retard or conspiracy theorist when I preshot said twists and offered to either prepare ourselves or investigate further... even though I was right nine times out of ten.
He also told me that I could play an offensive Cleric (Tempest, I was some kind of ermit that believed he received divine revelation after being struck by lightning), but since he couldn't balance encounters for shit I had to serve as a healbot every fucking time to keep us even barely alive. I probably can count the times I used offensive spells with my fingers over the entire campaign. He would also never allows "creative" use of spells (Like using a electric spell on an area after "create water" wouldn't spread or even share (while halving) the damage between the drenched creatures because "it would be too strong" an effect even though it took two turns to set up) because "players I had before abused it".
(1/2)

>>96667421 (OP)
in utah circa 2012 i answered a dnd game ad and it was level 21 and they all had armies i didn't have an army and was level 1. didn't show up again.

>>96737417
Seemed also to be a hypocritical freak, since he forced pretty much every PC to have a "love interest" NPC that he would create on the spot, and would derail sessions asking the others to exit the room while he would describe some weird ERP to the one guy he kept at the table (same DM would later call out another player and try to pass him as a sex freak btw). I was kind of glad my backstory prevented that for me since my character was already infatuated with his goddess, I don't mind ERP as much if there's a point, but the way he did it was so mechanical that it made it very weird, as if he was checking cases with what he could get away with or not.
Relied A LOT on me even though I had little experience about roleplaying back then, because I was serious enough nonetheless and he couldn't be bothered to run everything by himself. On a one-shot we did, he got pissy at completely new, clueless players because they didn't pick up clues about things they had litteraly no way of knowing. Everything had to go the way he decided, but since he was too lazy to actually put in the efforts needed, new players couldn't get what he wanted from them, and he literally stopped that one-shot half-way because he had enough instead of giving them clues or helping them in a subtle way.
I ended up leaving when he tried to gaslight others about the friend thing I mentioned before and wanted to ban him from our circle of friends (nut since he was a coward, he never actually confronted him about it). I stuck up with said friend, and left the gaming group (and later our circle), but not before explaining the situation to the other players. We and the other players met right before our first session and they were actually very nice and understanding about what was happening, I'm kinda sorry that they got the short end of the stick.
(2/2)

>>96737417
>>96737443
Listening to the story, I'm actually leaning about 60-40 towards you being the dick here, maybe 55-45. Most of the shit you're saying has a very reasonable and potential explanation.
>Killing the bird summoned a battle suddenly!
Okay, if someone took down a security camera, I'd also send guards over immediately.
>I called out his suspicious NPCs, and they called me a retard or conspiracy theorist!
Deflection and gaslighting are common tactics for a person to cover their tracks. What, you're saying if you were evil and someone random you don't know just said you were suspicious, you'd go into a Scooby-Doo monologue explaining how you would have gotten away with it?
>I wanted to play an offensive Cleric, but then I had to be heal bot!
Who was fulfilling the healing role while you were trying to build off meta. At best, that sounds like a party issue. At worst, you were "That Guy" in the party not rounding out the group.
>He wouldn't let me use Create Water and an Electric Spell!
While this one I'm more iffy about, I can understand that breaking the math. If the electric spell does an average of, say, 5 points of damage, but you use create water to wet an entire group then cast it, then even if it's x3 creatures, you're upping the damage to 15 points per round, and they'll likely still be wet afterwards so you can suddenly start zapping them. I fully buy the idea that this was used before and banned.
Plus create water I think makes pure water, and pure water isn't actually conductive. It's impure water that is actually the issue.

>>96737417
>>96737443
>>96737838
>There was ERP! It was weird
Since you didn't leave the table and nobody else did for it, I can safely assume it wasn't that weird for the group and you're just using that as emotional leverage against him.
>Relied on me!
Okay? That sounds nice of him, actually. I like it when the GM involves me in helping out, cause it means he thinks I'm trustworthy and worthy.
>Got mad when players didn't get clues!
Having seen, as both player and occasional GM, a player missing a blinking billboard of clues, I can't say I can be sympathetic to you saying that the GM was "lazy" in expressing it.
>He tried to gaslight people about my friend!
You're not exactly an impartial witness to this, so it's hard to take this credibly. That combined with some of the other stories also makes this a tad difficult.

I've actually changed my mind, I think I'm 80-20 on you being the asshole here, now that I've typed all of this out.

Myself

Had a DM that couldn't balance encounters for shit and refused to try, massively overused NPCs for big setpiece battles so three quarters of the time he was just rolling dice against himself, when we did get allies he ran them facefirst into the enemy to die like bitches rather than use them in anything resembling a strategic manner.
Once he threw a Marilith at us - we were level 9 I think - with six different kinds of magic swords, one fiery, one poison, blah blah blah, last one was fucking vorpal. Being a life cleric I managed to healtank us through the fight and by some miracle he never crit with the vorpal, but when we actually started doing well he threw a swamp demon at us specifically to flank me, at which point I obviously fell down.

Another time, he threw a giant wad of maybe a hundred individual stirges at us, fuck knows why, not even a swarm just a giant wad of stirges, which he rolled for individually. I popped Spirit Guardians and walked into them, ending the encounter, because this game has AoE in it, fucktard. This pissed him off, I figure, because not long after we had to run a gauntlet of like thirty Korred. A Korred, if you didn't know, has nearly a hundred HP and can throw two rocks at 3d8+6 damage a turn. We were about level 11 at this point. I don't think he ever even justified the encounter, they just existed for no reason.

Recently, and despite all of this, I made the piss-poor decision to join another of his campaigns. Three level 3 PCs and a pet boar versus three giant lizards, six lizardmen, and a firing line of eleven kobold slingers. None of our casters were there, so we had no AoE or battlefield control. Oh, the kobolds were suicide bombers too, to the tune of something like 8d4 fire damage. We survived for one reason and one reason only - the bugbear threw one of the bombers into the rest of them.
1/2

>>96738460
This is the bit that took my blinders off.
Next session, we need to rescue an NPC from the lizardpeople camp. It's got something like twenty lizardman riders and twice that in kobolds. No problem, we can get in, get out, job's done. The bugbear actually has short-range teleportation for some reason, I'm not gonna question it. He extracts the NPC and his mount for good measure in a single turn, cleanest shit I'd ever seen.
Do we leave now? No. The accompanying NPCs who led us to the fort decide to Leroy Jenkins, leading us to commit to an attempted relief action, because of sunk cost fallacy. We make adequate progress chewing up lizard guards over approximately three turns of watching the NPCs stay in one place, unmoving, as lizards surround and spear them to death.
Our clean extraction gets more allies killed than it would've just to leave the guy. Ain't that grand.
That's about when I made my excuses and dipped. There were a few other factors, but I finally got it nailed into my skull that the guy would never stop doing this.

>>96737838
>Okay, if someone took down a security camera, I'd also send guards over immediately.
Except he was acting incredibly pissy about it. It's hard to put that into text form, but you had the impression that I broke his toy, that he wanted to feel clever about it and got angry that it had been figured out.
Oh, and he had a tendancy to ignore bad rolls for his creatures. If he rolled a 1, they would just miss their attack, when WE would hit our colleague, or lose a weapon.
>to build off meta
>you were "That Guy" in the party not rounding out the group
I don't play meta, that was like my second campaign, man. And did you miss the part where I spent the entire campaign playing a role I didn't pick for the benefit of the party, so that everyone else could play normally?
>Plus create water I think makes pure water, and pure water isn't actually conductive. It's impure water that is actually the issue.
Uh, I didn't actually knew that, good call.
>That sounds nice of him, actually.
I suppose it is pretty hard to retranscrit the feeling back then, but he was always pissy and would pout or get angry if I didn't spend half the time of the one-shot breaking off character to re-rail the story for him or babysit the others. I did help willingly because I wanted people to have a good time even if he was a pain, though. When I speak about clues, it's like... really niche trivia about vampires (he was a big vampire nerd) that you can't exactly know unless you've spent quite some time getting into that stuff (and no NPC even hinted at that sort of trivia, even though the PC spent an awfully long time looking around and talking to anyone in sight).
Ah, and when I say angry, it was like, scream suddenly, or go and pout in another room. Even though the players were his friends, and all of them were actually trying to get into it, even if most had no clue.
>I've actually changed my mind, I think I'm 80-20 on you being the asshole here
???
Sure, you do you, I guess.

>>96739119
>It's hard to put that into text form
The way you put that into text form is you describe elements of his physical actions that were indicating that you felt that way. Cause you just saying "He was incredibly pissy" doesn't mean much. You could have just falsely attributed that to him because YOU felt pissy that your "clever action" was foiled.
>ignore bad rolls for his creatures.
That would have been strong up front ahead of all the bad credibility you built up with your story, and would work better if you could cite some examples of it.
>I don't play meta
Sorry, I don't mean that you weren't playing an "OP muchiken build," I meant that you weren't helping to fill out the roles of the party members. If you build an offensive cleric, but then nobody is doing anything to step in the role of healing, then that will tend to happen.
>that was like my second campaign, man.
It's still a mistake though. But that's okay. We learn from our mistakes.
>Uh, I didn't actually knew that, good call.
I'm a little worried that THAT'S what it took for you to acknowledge that, not the game balance part. But as long as we're there.
>I suppose it is pretty hard to retranscrit the feeling back then
Honestly if there's one major take away you should take away from me, is rather than pointlessly attacking you (though /tg/ seems to be doing that more lately) is learning what parts of the stories you need to remember in clearer detail to present your case better, and which parts are not that convincing. That's why I think it's generally better to post stories more on 4chan than on reddit. Reddit will just pointlessly updoot you as long as you had a "valid emotion :)" about something, whereas 4chan will just rip stories to shreds on the smallest detail. You won't be able to avoid it 100% of the time, but you'll tend to get more people agreeing with you when you're right. My first few stories I ever told here got ripped to shreds. Looking back, they were right.

>>96734458
>>96736048
He did not understand why we felt mad when all of our loot was gone after a 3 hour dungeon with no map. I don't mind rivals are dick villains, but this just felt like a slog and then a gut punch. He tried the same thing with another group and only listened when one dude disliked it that this guy was friends with. This is only the tip of the iceberg though.
>He tried to hook up with multiple people's girlfriends and did not understand why people would be upset about that since he was cooler than them.
>Had a weird thing or fetish where he complains relentlessly about any relationship with a human man and any other race female pairing for being "boring" or "unrealistic".
>He was really weird and passionate about it and would get actively mad.
>This stretched into real life where he thought a white guy dating a black girl was problematic and colonization.
>Thought he was excluded from the boring white guy thing since he was part nordic and native american or some garbage.
>the one time he played a warhammer rpg, he kept asking why this could not be run in 5e.
>tries to argue that anything should and can be run in 5e.

>>96739395
>Cause you just saying "He was incredibly pissy" doesn't mean much.
>You could have just falsely attributed that to him
Now you're reaching. Pissy means pissy. Huffing, groaning. I litterally said that the guy screamed and left the room in a fit when things weren't going his way. Dude, back then I knew the guy for like three years straight. I know what he acts like, thank you very much.
>if you could cite some examples of it
I haven't seen you ask such details to other posts but alright.
Last I remember was a huge ape going Gung Ho on a single PC while we were all spread in an arena, trying to protect civilians. We had to use everything we had to barely stay alive ourselves, and the civilians were getting slaughtered all around by crazed animals (the druid thing I mentioned earlier hijacking them). He went and had a few bad rolls and I remember precisely a critical one on his ape. He shrugged it off "he missed, that's all". You'd think the thing would have at least gotten a malus for hitting on his next attack or something, like, he hurt his fist while trashing around? But nay, just an old regular miss.
I'd understand ignoring bad rolls, but considering that HE would trash us around whenever we landed one, it seemed quite unfair because there was always some kind of double standards to encounters. Especially since, once again, he started huffing whenever we asked if there were consequences for a failure. We only survived the encounter by ignoring the objectives when we saw it wasn't possible and turtled our way out by hiding in a corridor to avoid getting surrounded (something that also pissed him off).
(1/2)

>>96739849
> I meant that you weren't helping to fill out the roles of the party members
I was the first one handing out my character to him, but since others all picked up damage-dealing roles, it turned out that I had to step in, yeah. And once again, I did. But that wasn't what I signed for, for sure. This one is more on the way the group was formed, I guess. We should have met earlier and talked about it.
>not the game balance part
Because the balance was all over the place during the campaign. I think it was more a case of people abusing it in a campaign before, so he didn't want to deal with it and only took spells and abilities at their face value. There was really no point trying to do anything but attacking/using a skill/spell during a fight. No cleverness or using stuff laying around, it would always end up being less useful than just attacking the nearest thing like an idiot. Which, for me, is taking A LOT of the fun out from a game. If you can't be creative, what's the point? It just ends up being a poorly designed TTRPG.

So... yeah, I get what you're getting at, but all in all, he was mostly a control freak being bitchy and pissy whenever things didn't go as planned. That's... most of what to get from this. I had known him for years (helped him move out, did some home repairs at his place etc), and yet I never looked back when I decided to stick to the people he went after. Because the more I took distance from him, the more I realised how petty and manipulative he was.
>Reddit
No need to talk about le Reddit, I've never posted a single message there.
I've been flickering around a few boards here for nearly twenty years now (which is way too long, fucking Hell).
All in all, that's my last message on this story, no need to dwell any further on this matter, the guy isn't worth it.
(2/2)

>>96739835
>>the one time he played a warhammer rpg, he kept asking why this could not be run in 5e
Bricks alone cannot cleanse this sin. Anon, get the cinderblocks.

>>96683782
>half a year
Got any highlights?

>>96683849
Which state do you live in where this DOESN'T happen every day? Me and My friends are fighting off city takeovers from extremists every other week.

>>96684102
>Ended up leaving after he said "if you don't like it you can leave"
Good on you, Anon.

>>96699172
You stopped talking to him, blocked him on everything, and moved states right?

>>96739849
>Now you're reaching
Hardly. Just experience. I've seen first hand multiple occurrences of one guy inflating how over-dramatic another guy was because he hated the first guy. I actually even once pulled up the security camera footage at my work to settle an argument where one guy, much like yourself, was SWEARING that the other was screaming and raising his voice at him, and when we looked back at the footage, the voice was barely above ambient noise. The second guy just THOUGHT he was raising his voice, because the first guy spoke softly and second guy didn't like him.

So, when you say "BUT I SWEAR HE SCREAMED," unless you can give me physical examples of that (like something being knocked over, etc), then I'm just not going to take that very seriously in combination with all the other things you said in your story.
>I know what he acts like, thank you very much.
I am positive in your head that is how it appears to you, but I live out here in reality. I know your kind.

>One time he rolled bad and nothing happened! Unfair!
Okay. What was the comparison like? You've just mentioned this one thing, but you haven't really told us what it was like on your side that made it SO unfair. So what was it?
>This one is more on the way the group was formed, I guess. We should have met earlier and talked about it.
Perfect. Progress.
>Buh muh creativity!
I mean, I get that, and it's always a fine line, cause too much creativity and "do whatever you want" ruins the game. It's just a preference at the end of the day. At most you disagree with him, not that he's bad.

>Bitchy
>Pissy
>Control freak
This is why I think you are projecting your animosity onto his actions. I haven't heard anything damning, except tons and tons of your feelings on him. I really don't care about your feelings, my dude.

>>96740810
Nta, it's a really fucking weird amount of time and energy you're putting in to arguing about a story some other anon told on a Brazilian Jai alai Usenet board

>>96676178
Should I make a PDF if I want to run a small campaign? Maybe three or four sessions, it would mostly be all homebrew, reflavoured shit and some original stuff

>>96741454
>Should I make a PDF if I want to run a small campaign?
No, if you want to run a campaign, what you must do is invite players and play a session.
For that, you will need to prepare a map and some NPC/monster statblocks. Do not even think of publishing some kind of worldbuilding document for your players; condense your entire concept into a spoken campaign pitch and then deliver on that pitch immediately.

For example:
>"you will play as monster hunters protecting your village"
And then, in session one, your players hunt a monster.

>>96737443
hey, I think your dm found the thread lol

>>96741695
I had in mind mostly just wirting what the couple of classes and races did, maybe a short "Hey, this is the basic ass setting" description

>>96741936
The less homebrew, the better. Prep is the enemy of running games. Just find a system that works for you and run that.

>maybe a short "Hey, this is the basic ass setting" description
You should communicate the setting to your players at the table. The nice thing about fantasy is that everyone already "gets" it.

>>96667421 (OP)
The worst I ever had was this sexist, misogynistic crass gross old shitbag that runs a computer repair shop in Texas. There was this fat sack of shit player Steven who always played evil characters and attacked party members and did whatever the fuck he wanted, and this backstabbing geezer let him do whatever regardless of alignment, while actively shitting on anyone who chose a Good alignment. I tried to stand up for myself and as soon as i did, I was kicked out of the campaign, while being painted as selfish for doing so.

I hope that selfish fucking shylock dies from cancer.

>>96741265
>it's a really fucking weird amount of time and energy you're putting in to arguing about a story
5 minutes per post of my day to think about subjects and type them up is weird? That's more telling of you than anything else.

>>96679604

>>96679621
So these what those "LGBT friendly =D" game I keep hearing about.

>>96683835
>>96683793
You're trying too hard to fit in, quit being an insecure faggot.

>>96683103
Kek one time I went out of my way to avoid this and got called on it.

>Party going through dungeon
>Buddy gets surprise attacked by gelatinous cube.
>He's wearing shitty armor (none of it magical) so I tell him a lot of was destroyed in the attack and he is half nude.
>We all have a good laugh and one of the players give him replacement gear
>female player gets caught offguard by another cube with same effect but I avoid talking about her wizard robes getting destroyed
>She just stares at me after the fight and goes "So I don't have any clothes on right".
>I turn red like a fucking 12 year old and finally admit I just didn't want to make it weird

Man this still hurts me today.

>>96742226
Pls tell me this wasn't in monahans tx? If so I think I know who you are talking about.

>>96742280
The guy you answered to wasn't the original poster you started arguing with (me).
The way you are so nitpicky IS weird, man. I think you're projecting what you had to come across in your own circle. What reason do you have to doubt my words? What would be the point for me to shit upon someone I haven't seen in years if that wasn't the truth?

>>96741454
Sure, if you do intend to do this through.
As a player, I'd love to get some material on what we're going into, especially if there's stuff we, as PC, are supposed to know.
>>96741936
Sounds good to me. Not a bible, but providing some context, yeah.
All in all, it probably depends on what your players are like. Are they enthusiastic about that stuff? Or the kind that start sweating bullets whenever they need to read some stuff? Act thinking about the people you're doing this for.

>>96669336
Sounds like he prolly taps his leg and you were obsessed with his dick

DMs who think they're novelists are some of the most annoying, had one where half of a session was a flashback of the DM playing our characters who had been 'magically drugged' and have us agree to do the plot railroad quest, even though half the party would have had no interest in doing so, said DM would also override the rules and have players roll a single arbitrary d20 check to decide the outcome of events and fights, lo and behold the 'result' always meant that their decided upon narrative would occur. The campaign eventually stopped due to scheduling issues and the DM said there were at least 3 more years worth of sessions planned and told us exactly what would have happened.

>>96667421 (OP)
The current one I have
> Barbs can't rage if they have armor
> Only wizards can perform rituals
> Only tridents get the STR mod of the throwing weapons
> He doesn't allow Graviturgy and Chronurgy subclasses in his game
> If we play 2024 5e then we can only use the races and subclasses that have come out so far in THAT 5e
> Vengeance paladins must be complete murderhobos, including killing innocent people if they are mind controlled or if it is to kill villains

>>96743797
>Barbs can't rage if they have armor
That one is actually half-true for both 2014 and 5.5e. Heavy armor is specifically cited as a no-go for Rage.

>>96668048
That's not how kender work...

>>96683066
>DM sucks
>"I don't have the heart NOT to go to his sessions"

Anon, this is your Demiurge. There is no lock & key keeping you there. You may simply: walk away.

>>96668274
>He would know
Fucking railroading pussy bitch, the player wouldn't know that so he has to go on screen to be properly humiliated for not playing his character properly

>>96742567
Respect to her for trying to play it fair

>>96743797
Playing 5e was your first mistake.

>The current one I have
What's making you stay?

>>96667516
promo's good

>>96683103
You play games with your sister? That's cute.

>>96670248
>How'd trannies showed up if the recruiting was done on 4chan?
There's actually a tranny civil war going on now with some of them telling others they shouldn't come here because it isn't good for them (honestly good advice for anyone at this point) and others throwing fits at them for daring to tell them they shouldn't do something.

My fucking friend's mom lmao. I was an idiot child who knew nothing of how the game worked and uh my friend invited me to play with him and some other kid in our neighborhood. I remember he got yelled at because he was playing as a clown with PTSD from getting balls shoved up his ass. Anyways, she kept drilling it into us that you can do anything in this game, and im like k. so I try to roleplay and everyone looks at me like I have 3 heads or whatever. Anywas we're sneaking past some wolves and I suggest "why don't we just set them free and befriend them" and i was told "the book doesn't say that". anyways after a few hours all interest was lost. didnt play for about 6 years. the end.

>all these posts about DMPCs
>I have to bring up a healer NPC for nearly every campaign because nobody wants to be a healer and keep walking to near-death situations
shit.

>>96746285
Used to be that players could hire NPCs to fill gaps in the party but somewhere along the way it was just decided that that Wasn't Allowed.

>>96667421 (OP)
I'm not sure if he was the worst, but the GM I thought was trustworthy who plotted to ghost me mid-session for weeks was certainly one of the kings.

>>96746500
Why is ghosting you something that needs to be plotted?

>>96746285
if it make you feel better, fellow healslut, you are filling in on a necessary spot in the party, not being a special oc donut steal character.

>>96746285
>I run shit games
Say no more!

>>96670248
/tg/ unsurprisingly for its name is plagued with trannies. Even people on my discord friend list trooned out at some point.

>>96746598
I don't know. But he fessed up to it after I managed to track him down and ask. Dude turned out to be a bigger nutjob than I first assumed and really fucked with my ability to trust others.

>>96743323
>The way you are so nitpicky IS weird, man
It's literally no more "weird" nor requires "more energy" than you defending a very obvious self-reporting story, to be quite honest with you. I'm really not even nitpicking the story that much, I'm actually giving it good-faith interpretations and it's STILL failing the sniff test.
>What reason do you have to doubt my words?
I don't doubt that you FEEL that way, what I'm doubting is if the way you feel matches up with reality, and as far as I can tell with how defensive you are and deflecting this to me instead of talking about the story is telling me that it definitely does not. Honestly, just to play armchair psychologist for a moment, I think trying to call me "weird"(lol) is probably a good sign that you're worried that I'm right if you don't get validation.
>What would be the point for me to shit upon someone I haven't seen in years if that wasn't the truth?
Validation? Vindictiveness? Vindication? Valor? You genuinely thought the story painted you in a better light than it really did because you don't tell that story outside of your friend circle very much?

Take your pick.

>>96748082
NTA, I agree with the other guy. You're being weird about it.

>>96667421 (OP)
Some dude I found on roll20 many years ago. It was a game set in Exandria
We had
>OP Npcs that were forced on us
>encounters built around said NPCs
>Gets upset when characters built around doing something does said thing very well, such as when I convinced the group of Tiamat Cultists that I was one of them and the party were my prisoners which gave us a devastating Surprise round against them
>forced players to change their class for "story reasons"
>didn't like a pc that the rest of the party liked instead of his oc's so he just straight up stole control of the character and had him fuck off into the wilds
Shit sucked cause the party was top tier

>>96748236
This guy should've written a book.
>forced players to change their class for "story reasons"
On second thought he should've gargled buckshot.

>>96748191
I don't even believe you honestly, I think you just thought that the word "weird" would trigger me cause it was used so often in the last 3-4 posts.

>>96748274
You're fixating on this one fucking post and shitting up the thread about it. 'Weird' is on the polite side of descriptors for that.
Get over it and post a gametale or something.

>>96670248
trannies squat right on the intersection of 'always online' and 'pathological escape into fantasy', you pretty much can't run a TTRPG online without running the risk of one of them glomming onto your table unless you actively work to exclude such persons

>>96748312
I disagree, have this transgirl as a player and she is like one of the few people actually driving the plot forward

>>96748337
I have a trans friend who's a model RPG player. Unfortunately I've also known some genuinely insufferable pieces of shit.
The good players have tables, the bad ones keep bouncing around between them. Thus, whenever you get one at your table, the chance that they're an inherently terrible person is leagues beyond the standard distribution.
Y'know, like literally any demographic.

>>96748301
Not really, I'm just replying to the thread. It's natural that if someone talks to you, you talk back, isn't it?

>>96748337
>she
The tranny in mine was a fucking nutcase who had a meltdown for over eight hours and needed me to play mental health counselor.
>>96748359
Imagine how much better he'd be if he weren't.

Myself
>only prep the bare minimum, the day before the session at best or a few hours before at worst
>Shower the party with overpowered homebrew loot that should be at least 5 levels above their paygrade
>Pressure the party (which includes a wizard) to ally with what are basically anti-magic nazis by making them seem reasonable and sensible
>Railroad the party along a plot instead of creating open ended situations
>Come up with puzzles and then forget the solutions partway through, just have it resolve itself to keep the game moving
>Keep adding edgy "teleports behind you" rogues, ninjas, and other similar enemies who exist only to aura farm against the party
You may be wondering why I'm referring to this stuff in the present tense if I clearly have enough self-awareness to realise this stuff is bad. My party loves this shit for some reason and I don't know why.

>>96748861
>Shower the party with overpowered homebrew loot that should be at least 5 levels above their paygrade
My kid prother played D&D with his friends once. The phrase "it starts raining wishblades" was uttered. They never breached level 2.
Anyway, at least your players are having fun.

>>96748337
nothing i posted had anything to do with whether or not your tranny friend is or is not a good player to have at the table, it explains how trannies are overrepresented among--particularly online--TTRPG players, because fantasist escapism is their bread and butter and being online is their meat and potatoes.

for contrast, our one (closeted) trans player was our DM for many years, until he could no longer keep from injecting RL politics into the table and left in a huff.
i knew about his being a tranny because i'm also friends with his hag

>>96667421 (OP)
Josh. He knows why.

>>96748301
Drop it man, he's not worth the trouble.

>>96667447
Was this a Delta Green game? I know you used DM but everyone uses DM. If so, I went through the same thing. Had to finish the scenario myself by inviting everyone to an abandoned server.

>>96748861
>You may be wondering why I'm referring to this stuff in the present tense if I clearly have enough self-awareness to realise this stuff is bad. My party loves this shit for some reason and I don't know why.
Okay then you just saw this thread as an opportunity to brag, you're clearly full of yourself.

>>96750495
Tone down man, you're probably overthinking it.
We've all had those moments when we do good on a piece and bad on another, but people seem to end up prefering the latter. It's annoying, but eh... you're supposed to do stuff for them. So you adapt.
There's nothing weird about self-awareness yet choosing to indulge his friends' tastes from that guy.

>>96748312
How am I supposed to filter them out or at least shut them down?

I've only been at two tables before I started DMing, so I'm probably the worst
>Don't know how to properly reward nat20s, they only feel epic when I have a mechanical way to do it, feel like this pans out to favouring some players over others
>Consistently belittle the party for having ideas I consider unwise, but hate telling them out of character that something is a bad idea (Hearing there's 7 bandits at the camp, barely surviving the first 4 and then deciding to take a long rest in the 7 beds before getting wiped by the remaining 3)
>Town guard refuses to budge on allowing the strangers into town with a tied up bandit, insists that he should take the bandit into custody until it's unfun and the players exasperatedly give up and hand him over.
Although out of the other two..
>One of them ran 5e, had a single combat encounter is 3+ sessions
>The other spent half an hour monologuing about all the guilds of his fantasy setting. No one wanted to join a guild. The subject was never broached again.
>Poor personal hygiene
>Paper thin world
>Start session 1 with explaining to us that we're being recruited into the secret defenders of civilisation to combat extraplanar foes and shit
>One player couldn't make it, he gets the above hastily summarized for him but remains clueless.
>Infiltrate an Oni's castle. Poke head up over the ramparts in order to cast an illusion that draws attention.
>Four mechanical AA guns instantly swivel and almost kill my guy.
>"You take 40 damage. Also they saw you cast the illusion so everyone knows that it's a distraction."
>Make way into the keep, bypass the first boss with illusions and charisma ("Wow, I really thoguht you guys would've died there")
>Get to the top floor
>There's an Oni there that can attack, then cast invisibility and then move away on every turn
>Never hit him. The DM wins and we TPK so that he can take us captive and have us pledge loyalty to the BBEG
>I move away and the DM ghosts the rest of the party.
It was fun though.

It was a more experienced guy that we've been playing with for some time already at that moment. I was (still am) the forever DM so one time he agreed to DM for us so that my friend and I could play together for once. We made a duo of frost mage and a charging barbarian - we were only beginning to grasp the vast possibilities of 3.5 and we made strong character, having a lot of fun min-maxing. At the time I wasn't really aware of how much power discrepancy there was possible and the DM didn't really mention anything either, so a green light.
It started rather normally, but I think what started the problem was that for one session he'd invited a friend of his, whom he held in high regard. He made a paladin and we (my wizard, friend's barbarian and another player's wizard) were attacked by his, and another new player's characters. We won crushingly and eventually they managed to convince us not to kill the others (I would never derail a campaign by killing other PCs but I was a cold character, and they attacked us first) and the session ended at that.
Friend (barb) and I couldn't make the next session, but they played anyways. The paladin and other new guy weren't there (as it turned out, they were just there for a session), but the other wizard's girlfriend joined us (them) to play. We were attacked again (our characters were), and our characters died without us there to play them. What made it worse, was that they didn't know our stats so for my wizard they played the other guy's wizard, and for friend's charger they played a regular barbarian.
We didn't play anymore after that (they started looking for a new group behind our backs on a facebook group, too).

>>96750675
If you can't tell, you deserve them.

>>96750946
>Don't know how to properly reward nat20s
What system are you running? In My experience, there isn't really much of a need to "reward" lucky rolls like that anyway if it's something mundane like cracking a chest or forcing open a door.

>Hearing there's 7 bandits at the camp, barely surviving the first 4 and then deciding to take a long rest in the 7 beds before getting wiped by the remaining 3
I'm glad to know I'm not the only person this kind of thing has happened to. I don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out the flaws in this way of thinking, just as long as you aren't being a huge asshole about it y'know?

>Town guard refuses to budge on allowing the strangers into town with a tied up bandit
This makes sense. The guard has no evidence or reason to believe the bandit is guilty of anything. As far as he knows, these are just some thugs with a guy they assaulted and tied up. I think it'd make sense for the guard to want to be able to more accurately assess the situation.

Unless you're players are very reputable heroes, or there's a good-aligned champion/cleric in the party, pretty much nobody has any reason to trust or believe them in a situation like that.

>>96753022
*your ffs gonna kill myself

>>96753022
>>96753854
your're*

>>96753022
Running a NSR built off 5e called Five Torches Deep. It's just that my players hoot when they get a nat 20 and then I fail to deliver on that excitement.
>I'm glad to know I'm not the only person this kind of thing has happened to.
Video game brained PCs man. That's okay, they're new. They're learning.
>The guard has no evidence to believe the bandit is guilty of anything
Au contraire, the bandit was wearing the Local Lord's heraldry, looted off a slain guard. The guard, seeing this, did not let the players deliver the bandit to the church, assuming that as a man of the Local Lord it was his duty to enforce laws rather than strangers and the church.

>>96754154
And he hasn't marched in with his thousands of men at arms to arrest the party why...?

>>96730479
>>96739835
I actually remembered a bit more detail and found my game session notes with what happened.

>He made a half-elf warlock. He kept explicitly stating his mother was a human and his father was an elf. Kept repeating it since he didn't want anyone to misunderstand and assume his character was born from colonization.
>got mad when the dm randomly rolled up a villain who was a half-orc with a human father.
>Would make lolsorandumb characters while saying that is was deep roleplaying. Worse was probably a goblin who had a giant rodent pet that he would randomly just describe what it was doing no matter what.
>Thought roleplaying a barbarian meant not listening to npcs, being on his phone to simulate not listening, and also purposefully run into traps knowing they were traps.
>Kept trying to argue about why alignment is needed in every game.
>Followed up how his character in a forbidden lands game was lawful good, despite killing families, because he followed contracts and the law.
>Was genuinely mad and disliked the game after because his character had a bad reputation for doing whatever he was paid to do no matter what unsavory things he decided he had to do to accomplish the goal.

To top it all off, he would never adjust loot from pre-written adventures to fit the party members.

>>96667421 (OP)
She said it was all my fault and that I was ungrateful.
It was just another manipulation tactic because her own mother told me truth the next day.
She is a whore.

>>96667421 (OP)
I guarantee you she has taken it in the ass on multiple occasions

>>96754154
>my players hoot when they get a nat 20 and then I fail to deliver on that excitement
Meh, not your fault. Outside of critical hits in combat, it doesn't really mean anything.

>they're new. They're learning.
Oh YOUR players might have that excuse but mine sure as Hell didn't lmfao

>Au contraire
So the guard assumed the bandit was another guard/fed? Wouldn't that give him cause to straight up arrest the PCs?

To give you an idea about my worst GM, here is my second worst one.
>ffg star wars game
>furry with stickers of fat charizard with penis sticking out on his laptop is GM
Ohboy.jpg
>game takes place between movie 3 and 4
>our characters all get kidnapped by resistance leader
>infected with a virus that will kill us if we disobey his orders
>ordered to plant a bomb that will blow up the space port on the planet we are visiting
>pcs start planning how to get out of this without being killed
>GM gets all whiny and meta
Nooo. You can't. Besides the resistance leader is the good guy
>doctor pc uses bullshit starwars injection that cures everything to get rid of virus
>cue screaming from GM
>screaming from doctor player
>arguing over rulebook for 30 min straight
>doctor wins, pcs cure
>suddenly, random dmpc jedi
>force puppets pcs to follow him
>dmpc does the entire mission on his own while walking pcs right next to him
whyareweevenhere.mp3
>not a single die rolled since dmpc appeared
>space port explodes
>end of session
>hook for the next session! The resistance leaders assistant was a secret empire spy and we must save him
>spoiler: there is no next session
>we play a væsen game instead.
On to my worst GM, my current one.
>colleague finds out I play rpgs
>her husband is running his first dnd campaign
>ask me to join because he doesn't have many friends
>game is about setting out from tiny village and exploring large blank map
>we are in session 5
>still haven't left village
>each session follows a similar pattern
>1. QUIRKY npc vilager vomits his entire life story at us
>2. anemic combat encounter
>3. As a thank you for listening the npc hands us a few spell scrolls
>we have so many spell scrolls
>we have no reason to ever use them because we are still in the first village
>find out from colleague that GM got depressed and had threatened suicide after session 3 when one player suggested ignoring a npc and just heading out into the plains.
no end in sight

>>96667516
Lancer sisters….

>>96756706
NTA but on general principle fuck lancer, go play a mech RPG made by people who actually like mechs and I guarantee you will have a better time
>>96756689
>'resistance leader is the good guy'
right, because you're supposed to like the guy who filled you full of deadly virus.
>current GM threatens suicide when players want to actually play the game instead of suffering through another exposition dump
he should've gone through with it

>>96750946
>Consistently belittle the party for having ideas I consider unwise
If this consistently happens, you probably ARE shit, yes. Nobody's there to hear you tell them how bad they are. They're there to have you tell them the consequences.
>barely surviving the first 4 and then deciding to take a long rest in the 7 beds before getting wiped by the remaining 3)
You mean wiped as in the bandits made some amazing rolls and killed them in their sleep, right?

>>96756998
You don't even need good rolls for that, coup de grace has rules. Handle the sentry and the job's done.
Hurr durr I will kill several people and then take a nap in their bed while their friends are still alive and well. The fuck is this nonsense.
The bit with the guard was genuine sperg shit though, the fuck is wrong with the guy that he can't just say "This is Jeffery, he's another guard, he'll be accompanying you to the captain so you can hand off this bandit and you can collect the standing bounty, hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge."

>>96757073
>You don't even need good rolls for that
Wrong. The bandits would need to make stealth checks to sneak up on the players, and again after attacking one of them. If there's a sentry their odds of getting the drop on the players enough to just coup de grace them all should be very low (Though far from impossible).
>Coup de grace
Wrong edition.
>Hurr durr I will kill several people and then take a nap in their bed while their friends are still alive and well.
In fairness of the players, they were dealing with an evidently shit GM who probably encouraged the video game brainrot and didn't give them any means of engaging besides just rolling to hit.
The guard thing is pretty weird and unforgivable though, yeah. Why exactly he'd want to transport the one bandit alone and would NOT insist that the PCs just accompany him is beyond me, but the DM was probably just a confrontational twat who made everything the players encountered an obstacle they had to deal with.

>>96750672
>We've all had those moments when we do good on a piece and bad on another, but people seem to end up prefering the latter. It's annoying, but eh... you're supposed to do stuff for them. So you adapt.
This is basically what happened with this party, most of the time i test the waters with oneshots and mini-campaigns and i found that the stuff I put a lot of effort into, thought everything through, and when I treat my players like responsible adults and give them agency and allow their decisions to have weight, they aren't engaged at all. But when I basically wing it with zero prep, practically baby them and make everything ridiculous and over the top they're all over it.
The part about the edgy rogue npcs is definitely just a personal indulgence, since they do roll their eyes whenever it happens, but they do seem to enjoy brutally killing those characters in the same way as you might derive satisfaction from swatting a fly. So I don't see any reason to stop.

>>96756998
That's pretty uncharitable of you, anon! It's not nearly as bad as what you're extrapolating here and in >>96757088
TPKing them while they slept would be crazy. They lost a pitched battle they could've won if they'd, for example, decided to focus fire on one enemy at a time and the bandit chief didn't down my DMPC on round one. I even let them roll for 'tactics' for a surprise charge.
>>96757073
I agree. The fact that I didn't think of that bounty on the spot is a little embarassing. Played it all wrong and it was the last scene of session 1. Luckily the players stayed and they forgave me and all, but I remain frustrating and possibly obstinate. Need to take a moment before situations like that and recalibrate. Take my foot of the pedal and let them get away with things sometimes.

>>96757341
>That's pretty uncharitable of you, anon! It's not nearly as bad
No shit GM thinks they're as bad as they actually are.
>They lost a pitched battle they could've won if they'd, for example, decided to focus fire on one enemy at a time
And like that, I was proven right.
>DMPC
Lol.

>>96757493
>Players lost an optional boss encounter?! Wait, they had an NPC with them too?? That's absurd!
You almost got me there.

>>96757544
>they had an NPC
You said they had a DMPC, anon, not an NPC.
>optional boss encounter
Remember what I said about the DM encouraging the video game brainrot? Looks like I was right.

>>96756689
>væsen
Always been interested in this game (without having a group to try it out), but whenever I ask /tg/ I'm accused of being a shill. Mind telling me what you thought of it?

>>96757558
Yeah I googled the term just in case and I was wrong to have used it. Do you not like the phrasing of 'optional boss encounter'? Would it be less video gamey if it was an avoidable fight against a bandit chief with his own goals and motivations? Lol

>>96757602
>Yeah I googled the term just in case and I was wrong to have used it
Nah too late to change your story.
>Do you not like the phrasing of 'optional boss encounter'?
It has less to do with phrasing, and more that it's obvious that you have video game brainrot, a symptom of DMing like shit.
>Would it be less video gamey if it was an avoidable fight
What do you think an "avoidable fight" is btw?

>>96757617
Are you >>96748274 as well? Get a life, man.

>>96757750
No, why would you even think I'm that anon?

>>96748274
>>96748082
>>96742280
>>96740810
>>96739395
>>96737838
Kek, these made that anon seethe so fucking hard he's still thinking about you 3 days later.

>>96757755
Same prose and nitpicking over a story that isn't worth the trouble.

>>96757815
>Same prose
Not really.
>and nitpicking over a story
I didn't nitpick anything, I pointed out that anon was a bad DM which even he said was likely.
>that isn't worth the trouble.
What part of this do you find to be "trouble"?

Had a DM who insisted that we should roll 3d6 for stats, because "That gives potential for interesting low stats while still potentially getting as high as 18's". I pointed out that the average roll for those is like, 10-11 which isn't great for a party member but they insisted. And then proceeded to not vet any players rolls and let people make characters at home.

Unsuprisingly, two players turned up with multiple 15+ stats and one absolutely shameless player showed up with like 16+ in every stat. I decided to be an asshole and rolled as word of god intended, 3d6.

My highest stat was a 12 in strength, followed by 11 which I put in dex, everythine else was a negative in the 6-9 region. So to suit these commoner level stats, I decided to play as common of a commoner as I could, I was a commoner fighter with a trident (pitchfork) and a shield, and spent my last 10 gold on a cow, because I wanted to farmer-max.

Not too long into the session we end up talking to the town mayor about his bandit/cultist problem only to hear some commotion outside. When the party head outside, we found my cow had been decapitated and his head mounted on a spike. The DM stated "Sorry, nothing personal I just have in my notes that if anyone has an animal companion or familiar, the cult would kill it like this so you had a fun in-character reason to fight them."

Losing my cow was one thing, but the implication that if we had a Beastmaster Ranger in the party, he would have just insta-lost his entire subclass for the forseeable future is hilariously bad.

I don't think I came back to that group for a third session, and it didn't last much longer than that.

Without a doubt the worst DM I've ever experienced.

>>96757839
Yea, you're definitely that guy.
Or a troll pretending to be him.Same difference.

>>96739849
>You'd think the thing would have at least gotten a malus for hitting on his next attack or something, like, he hurt his fist while trashing around?
...No, why would I think that? I've had silly DMs who would make natty 1s turn into fumbles of some kind but failure begetting extra failure sounds exceedingly dumb, especially for enemies in a game that's already designed to guarantee that the players win.

That said, he sounds like a mediocre DM, but you evidently have many unresolved mental issues.

>>96757962
I can be whatever helps you sleep at night, schizo-kun.

>>96757967
The DM literally had a player lose his magic sword with no way to get it back from landing a 1 during a fight.
"The sword is stuck in the beast."
"Uh, I try to get it back."
"No, the beast is running away."
"I pursue, then."
"Too late, it's gone."
If you have to deal with that kind of bullshit, you'd expect opponents to at least suffer from some minor inconveniences when they land a bad roll as well.
>>96757978
That wasn't me, btw.

>>96700091
Kek I have an autistic friend that does the same stuff. He’s my favorite player even though he can be a little power gamey, but all his campaigns are anime to the extreme and burn out after a few sessions

>>96757898
>And then proceeded to not vet any players rolls and let people make characters at home.
Lol, he intended for you to just pick your stats and you didn't get the memo.

>>96756689
>>find out from colleague that GM got depressed and had threatened suicide after session 3 when one player suggested ignoring a npc and just heading out into the plains.
In the off chance you see this before the thread dies, get far away from this person. Manipulating people by threatening suicide is psychopathic behavior.

>>96757750
>>96757962
>Yea, you're definitely that guy.
That anon here. We're not the same, I was off with family all night yesterday and just woke up. And I actually think that anon is being uncharitable as the other person in the thread said, unlike how I was being very charitable with you. So I can't say I agree with him. But I do think that >>96757839 is definitely mimicking my earlier post.

Either way, whether or not he's trolling, you gotta get over yourself man. You're not that special and it isn't worth it to go this crazy cause someone disagreed with you.

>>96758680
You're answering to two different people, man.
Let's not derail the thread any further.
>>96758474
True, it'll end as you being treated like a doormat because you're too nice to upset him, and in the very little chance he actually does go through it, it'll only bring trouble to anyone around. His girl should certainly have gotten the hint, but I doubt that's the first time he implied such thing in her presence, so if she fall for it that's on her.

>>96756689
>no end in sight
What's making you stay?

>>96755485
>purposefully run into traps knowing they were traps.
That's genuinely one aspect of roleplaying - disassociating PC knowledge from player knowledge.
I also don't really see a problem with him describing his rodent. But otherwise, yeah, sounds like a retard.

>>96757617
>
Ok
>
Ok
>What do you think an "avoidable fight" is btw?
Come on buddy, we've been talking about it the whole time

>>96758100
>>96761294
Back at it already?
>Come on buddy
I like how you got turned around by a very simple question. This is also a common thing among shit DMs.

>>96756689
last one is straight up sad

Way back when, I was invited to a rpg event by a friend. First time meeting this GM. We all rolled up characters quickly and went through a standard AD&D module. At first, things were great. The GM introduced original characters who were funny, memorable and didn't railroad the game (I should mention I bought this exact module some time later and knew which characters were his own creation) and the pacing was fairly good. Descriptions were clear and quick, didn't get bogged down in long, boring fights, etc.

Then we get to the big bad guy of the dungeon, a wizard. First round, he casts Color Spray, which meant as we were all 1st level characters, we get no saving throw and automatically fall unconscious. I didn't think was unfair at the time, as I was hoping for a dramatic escape from the villains scenario.

Nope. The GM leans back, thinks for a moment and says “Well, he's a pretty evil guy. So, while you were all asleep he walked around and slit all your throats. Except for the one female character. She gets tied naked to his bed as a plaything.”

And with that, the game ended. He packed up and left, saying he'd see us next week to make new characters. I didn't go back. I kept thinking if I were running the game, I'd have the evil wizard want to know things, like who sent you? How did you find his secret lair? Does anyone know where you are? Could anyone pay a ransom for you? But no, just slit throats and be done with it. What annoyed me most was all the wasted potential for what had been thus far a great session.