Worst Game Evar!

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Blake Ryan Batman
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Worst Game Evar!

Post by Blake Ryan Batman »

*cracks knuckles* Okay...

Setting – Desert of Desolation Series.

In the year 2000 – Using 2E rules the group had miniatures, lots of cheap plastic dice, three players handbooks and the Fighters Guide and Thieves Guide. Four of the characters tried hard to help each other in each task.

What went down – The heroes went on each quest, completed the modules tasks but were hindered by one player and the Game Master.

What happened – One player was the Game Master’s partner, and their character got Eyes of Charming and Ring of Teleportation. Thus any time anyone else did something interesting, Bing! that character immediately showed up, took over the situation and the GM had no issue with this.

What went wrong – Over time the other players would get annoyed in their interactions with the special player, and often did nothing because they didn’t want to be overshadowed or interrupted.

When the other players just tried to roleplay conversations or perform their hobbies, not related to quests at all, they would be interrupted by the special players character, or a powerful NPC (like a solar, that is a major celestial) that use magic to force them back into the quest or to interact with the special character.

During character creation male characters had to roll for 'size' D4 for Gnomes, D8 for Humans etc... The GM tried to setup characters each session.

After three sessions, three of the players never went back to that group again.

To date it was the worst games in my 30 years of playing RPG’s.
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Lord Alfred Tennyson - Ulysses
Regards,
Blake Ryan
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Jared Rascher
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Re: Worst Game Evar!

Post by Jared Rascher »

It was 2006. The birds were singing. Not a cloud in the sky.

I had just wrapped up a 3rd/3.5 campaign that went on for several years and saw the characters hit 13th level.

The Pitch

One of my players, who eagerly volunteered to host the game, also offered to run. He had been chomping at the bit to DM because, and I quote "sometimes I was just bored to tears when you were running." (I would have taken this much worse if every other person in the campaign hadn't told me it was one of the best games they had been in)

He had a campaign that he had run multiple times, which he described as "like a novel," which consisted of his own meta-plot, ladled over several old school D&D adventures. The game would be a 3.5 game, but using several older adventures as inspiration.

Step One--We each had to pick a role. There was a prince, an advisor, a bodyguard, the royal chaplain, etc. I wasn't immediately wary of this.

"Can I play a swashbuckler as the bodyguard?"

"No, I think the bodyguard is more of a paladin or a fighter."

The Highway to Hell (or Railroad)

All of us picked our roles, and then let our DM tell us what he wants us to play, because he really had some specific ideas even within the roles. I'm not going to hit all of the "highlights" of the campaign, but here are a few:

My friend, who was playing the prince, mysteriously wandered off, because the DM said so, and my friend had to make a new character until we found the prince. This character was an Outlaw type that was the half-brother to the prince. My friend, already chafing at some of the railroading, asked if he could make a half-dragon ranger. DM said okay. The prince was human. The half-dragon was half-dragon, half-elf. My friend considered it a personal victory that the DM never picked up on that.

Halfway through a fight with an iron golem, the DM decided it was too easy, so we, in the middle of the fight, regressed from 3.5 rules, where we all had weapons that could hurt the golem, to 3.0 rules, where we could no longer harm the golem. Thankfully, we destroyed the floor it was standing on and dropped it down a level and never went back to that level later on.

I had also taken unarmed fighting feats, just in case, and when I got into a hand to hand fight with a lizardfolk champion, the DM made us use the old unarmed combat chart from 1st edition, instead of letting me just do 1d3+strength without taking a penalty to hit.

My fighter was attacked by cultists with "rust monster dust," which destroyed my plate armor and my sword. I had taken improvised weapon feats, since we were on the run in this campaign. The DM decided that since the old school adventure we were running didn't make provisions for improvised weapons, so I couldn't find anything useful to use, and spent several sessions unable to do any damage to anything, and thus used my only resource, my hit points, to take damage for other people.

Because he determined that the DM was very interested in keeping the prince and his brother alive, my friend with the half-dragon ranger was attempting to dive into dangerous situations continuously, just to see what the DM would do to save his character, since he apparently had plot armor until we reached the right point in the story.

The Final Insult

Eventually, my fighter spent lots of hit points taking damage from a vampire while our spellcasters actually killed it, because they could all still cast spells, even if I couldn't effectively use any kind of weapon. I took two negative levels, and when we finished the adventure, I asked the DM if we could reach a town in enough time to get restoration cast on me so I didn't permanently lose my levels. His map had no actual scale on it, so he looked at his campaign map, and said "I feel like you get to town about a day too late for you to have restoration cast on you."

At that point, I said uttered some expletives, realized I had stayed in a really bad game for way too long, and never went back to the house to play again.
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Ang
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Re: Worst Game Evar!

Post by Ang »

I'm not sure it qualifies as Worst Game Ever (because I do have some other con games that could qualify), but this one stands out.

I had just gotten back into gaming and joined a game group. We were playing D&D in this GM's home brew world. I realized we were in trouble right away because every single NPC was named Joe, Bob, or Joe-Bob. Even the freaking high cleric in the town we were operating out of. The GM's grasp of world building was painfully bad in ways that would take too long to explain, but suffice it to say it was the most unrealistic 'traditional' fantasy world I've ever seen. It was just bad. The GM was also really creepy and started hitting on me any time the two of us were alone. Don't judge me for sticking around. I was desperate for gaming and the other players were cool.

Anyway, the PCs decide they need to sneak into this stupidly unrealistic amusement park carnival thing, so they decided to non-lethally waylay some travelers that had passes to get into the carnival. We were successful in taking down the travelers without killing them when the GM decided his GM-PC (yeah, that kind of GM-PC) was going to SIT on one of the unconscious travelers. The GM rolled his dice and rolled a 1, "Ooops. Joe kills this one. He sat on him a little too hard while wearing spiked armor."

I lost it. I literally lost it. I started yelling at the GM that what he had just done was the stupidest thing I've ever seen a GM do and why would he fuck over his players like that by undoing the goals they had just succeeded at? Yeah, I was desperate for gaming, but stupidity was stupidity. He just sheepishly blamed the dice saying there wasn't anything he could do about it. From me, "WHY WOULD YOU ROLL THE DICE TO HAVE HIM SIT DOWN!?!?"

My actual last straw was the third or fourth session where he talked lovingly about this icky d20 book that combined sex and D&D in the most disgusting, exploitative way possible. I don't remember the name of it. I don't want to remember the name of it. That session also had the big battle at the stupid carnival. Where the GM rolled for every individual in the fight. So, we players would take our turns and then literally sit there for about 40 minutes while the GM took actions for every other person or monster on the battlefield.

That was the last time I went.
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Jared Rascher
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Re: Worst Game Evar!

Post by Jared Rascher »

Yikes.
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GMGERRYMANDER
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Re: Worst Game Evar!

Post by GMGERRYMANDER »

1) V&V 1 E. My sister and her friends (7-10 years older than me) invite me (age 10) to join their V&V campaign. IT's my first time playing an RPG with a group of Adults!

I was asked to take over playing for a friend who had to leave the group to go back to college.

The GM used the "each character is the player with super powers" design. (Which is part of V&V, at least it was back then.) So, I wan't playing myself. But everyone else was. And because they were playing themselves as a group of 17-22 year old with superpowers, the GM included himself as an NPC.

This was my first time encountering an actual MarySue. Because everyone in V&V has a weakness, he cranked down on them. If you had fear of heights, you had trouble walking up stairs. If you had Unfamiliarity with Powers, you had to roll under your Intelligence on d100 every turn or your powers acted out of control. So all of the PCs were constantly hindered by their own characters. (As someone who has played 1000's of hours of V&V, it was our game 4 nights a week in college, I know this is NOT how the weaknesses are supposed to work.)

Except for him. R.A.N. (Rapid AccelleratioN) was Gms character, with his name as the secret ID. His character had the trifecta of V&V superpowers: heightened speed (giving him 6-8 actions per turn to our 1-2), heightened initiative, Heightened Agility (giving him increased accuracy, damage, and # attacks), and Martial Arts (giving him increase attack and damage). Every encounter was the PCs waiting around for several ticks on the initiative track until RAN attacked over and over again, normally taking our one or more of the baddies, and then the heroes trying to fight their own abilities for the last action or two of the turn.

It was basically watching the GM play with himself. And is the reason our Buffalo (and Oswego and Syracuse groups) adopted the Tibolski Rule. No NPCs in the party unless the party asks for them.

One side note, it did teach me the importance of focusing the story on the players. As Gary (RIP) one of the other players in that horrible game put it, "The PCs don't ahve to be the most important people in the world. But they are the most important people in the story. Make them the focus."

I will have more later.
RoryMacLeod
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Re: Worst Game Evar!

Post by RoryMacLeod »

Jared Rascher wrote: Wed Jul 24, 2019 12:23 am He had a campaign that he had run multiple times, which he described as "like a novel," which consisted of his own meta-plot, ladled over several old school D&D adventures.
SERIOUS red flag anytime a GM says this. Walk away immediately.
Shadowwarl
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Re: Worst Game Evar!*** AS A GM ***

Post by Shadowwarl »

Ok this is my worst game ever and it lasted about 1 hour before it was over.

The system was Cyberpunk 2020

First session the group was given an extraction job at the end of session 0.
Simple job since there was 2 new players and 2 experienced players.

The job was to get a scientist and his daughter and deliver them to a rival corp.
They each leave their home at the same time each morning the kid going to school the father to the lab.

So the group decides to take the car with the daughter first and get the father second. Using 2 cars the box in the first car, tie up the driver and get the daughter. That went easy just like it should have.

Ok now they are going after the father so this is going to be a little more difficult becase this car has a driver and bodyguard for the father. Their plan was the same as the first they use the 2 cars to box in the car, out comes the bodyguard which they take out easily, and the driver gives up without a fight. They now have the daughter and father together in the rear vehicle.

Now I'm taking down a quick note and I hear one of the new players say, " I take out a grenade and toss it into the car to cause a distraction and make it look like a gang hit."

I put down my pen and look at him asking "what are you doing? Are you sure you want to do that?"
Player "Yes I do."
Me (slowly look around the table at each of the other players) who all remain silent. Again I ask him if he is sure and he says yes again.

Ok I say and ask what the damage from his grenade is and the blast radius saying I need to look something up, and look up the radius and damage for a vehicle explosion. Then I put the book down with the page open and have him roll the grenade damage and slowly slide the book to him hoping someone would say hold up and stop him but no one did and I then had him roll the damage for the exploding vehicle which resulted in a TPK in the first hour of the first session.

Needless to say the other players were shocked at what happened and I replied "I gave all of you several chances to stop the grenade and now you see how deadly the game can be so would you like to do new characters or start over with these again.

We restarted with the same characters and the game turned around from there.

Hated to do the TPK but a lesson was taught. :lol: :twisted:
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zircher
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Re: Worst Game Evar!

Post by zircher »

Joined a Morrow Project game back in the 80's. It was mainly a bunch of university students. That was the first mistake. At that time, I was an aircraft weapons troop that worked on A-10s. I literally had hands on experience with or went to school for most of the heavy weapons in the MP book. I think my knowledge intimidated them. Second mistake, I should have kept quiet on that, but I was young and brash. First encounter, my character takes a bullet that my armor should have mitigated or stopped. Instead the GM rules that it penetrates, inflicts damage, ricochets off the inside of my armor, it inflicts damage again, and he keeps bouncing the bullet in my chest cavity until I run out of of hitpoints. I took the hint and never bothered to speak to them again.

Oh, I forgot to mention, we were playing future versions of ourselves. So, the character that he murdered in front of me was Todd Zircher. Try not to take that personally. :-D
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